Omega-202

Herding is slow and inefficient on PI radios. Ideally, if you're leading as a Tank, take Fold Space. Instant herding without the wait, and the largest area aggro grabber in the game. Everything instantly in your taunt aura and prime for AoEs. If you're killing slower, FS is up every spawn. If you're moving fast, it's up every other spawn and you probably have Judgement to aggro grab the down spawns and can just give them a second to clump. To the point about lowbies missing or feeling unable to contribute...that's not going to change whether they hit or not. At -5, they're doing 30% damage, 30% debuffs, 30% mez duration, etc. It takes more than two -5 players to even contribute the same as a base 50+1 (65% efficacy against +3) with the same powers and slotting. And that's ignoring the greater slots, powers and incarnates that a true 50+1 has. When I'm lowbie'ing on a PI radio, I just go along for the ride and provide what I can. I don't think it's reasonable to expect that the whole team will run Tactics so I can plink away 12 damage attacks.

You want to get pedantic? Fearsome stare is a 45 degree cone. And 0% incoming damage from minions and Lts is nearly always better than 70% damage from everything. How about instead of nitpicking statements, we just agree to disagree on this point.

1,000s of hours on my Ice/Dark Corruptor does not match your description of events. 1) That Fire Blaster can fend for himself and if not, I'll be there in a few seconds to pick him up with Howling Twilight. My survival means the team continues fighting. Sometimes being good support is knowing how to continue fighting so you can continue supporting. 2) I'm very aware of the time to effect. That doesn't really matter though because you're a sitting duck for over 3 seconds. Unless you perfectly jousted a jump to cover before activating (eating another 0.5 s to execute the jump), you are just sitting there getting swarmed instead of escaping. In a do or die situation, healing and escaping is going to save you infinitely more than standing there like a dingus with your arms out. 3) Fearsome Stare is the better mitigation, hands down. Given the choice, I'm hitting Stare every time.

Day Job rez power (hospital+university) is free and good to stock up on for new characters. The heal other day job power (hospital+Midnighter) is also nice and both can be restocked by logging out at a hospital. I always make sure to have these on my "do I plan to drag a few anchors" characters, as long as I feel like I have enough Cimerora+TimeLord banked away. To the larger question: Tanky Crabbermind with Leadership.

You are correct. Removed from my overview.

Exactly. Especially when the most common culprits that MIGHT be considered a priority when coming out of a CC are all 2-3 animations. Taking my own advice from a few posts up, I went through Luminara's list, picked out all of the survivability linked toggles that are on squishies (the only ATs that are likely to even be impacted by this) and checked their animation times. Arctic Air - 2.244s animation Beta Decay - 0.924s animation Choking Cloud - 1.188s animation Conductive Aura - 2.244s animation Darkest Night - 3.432s animation Enervating Field - 1.716s animation Entangling Aura - 2.244s animation Force Bubble - 1.32s animation Hurricane - 2.244s animation Radiation Infection - 1.716s animation Repulsion Field - 2.244s animation Snow Storm - 2.244s animation Sonic Repulsion - 2.508s animation Spore Cloud - 3.3s animation Time's Juncture - 0.924s animation Venomous Gas - 2.244s animation World of Confusion - 1.848s animation So of the squishie defensive toggles impacted, 10 of 17 have a greater than 2 second animation time, and Force Bubble is not really relevant because FF has mez protection. So at worst, for 2/3 of the impacted powers, you may be losing out on 2.X seconds of effect from those toggles when factoring in the proposed 5 second suppression, but you are gaining 2.X seconds or more, of time to do anything else to survive. The only potentially reasonable complaints could be coming from /Rad Blasters. The next most impacted short animating toggles are in Rad Emission and Time Manipulation, both sets with plenty of other options to fill the 5 second gap. When I play either set, I'm popping my heal first and then reassessing, so retoggling isn't even first choice. Hell, Rad Emission can barely get all three toggles up in the 5 second window. If the window was further shortened, this would just be a massive buff to squishies with offensive toggles instead of an amazing QoL change. EDIT TO REMOVE BLASTER SUSTAINS AND ADD ARCTIC AIR

These two may be a plausible priority. The instant chance to cc are decent effects, but on the flip side, both sets also have solid alternatives. A short back hop + Gale or Thunderclap can substitute for retoggling Hurricane. Bastion or Growth are active options for Nature that can be more useful in a pinch, especially considering the unreliability of EA. 50% chance to hold minions, 40% for LTs, 0% of bosses is not something I'd always prioritize.

It's only available outside of Miasma on armored ATs with mez protection (Brute, Tank, Sentinel, Soldier, Widow). Its a distinction without a difference because (a) armored ATs barely need to care about this change because they rarely ever get mezzed and (b) have way more survival tools, most of which are way better. If Darkest Night is your best survival answer on a Brute, Tank, Sent or VEAT, then you built a terrible character. I'm not trying to argue with you on this one, but its objectively a bad choice to prioritize DN over almost anything else in most build's tool kits.

You're talking about the 3.42 s Arcanatime power that MIGHT slow down damage enough for you to not get insta dropped? Not a chance! And even if it does help, you really think it makes sense to waste 70% of the proposed toggle suppression window reapplying it? I've never been saved by Darkest Night. When my Miasma-ists are mezzed and/or low on health, the priority is Twighlight Grasp to refill 1/3 of my health and then pound candy and teleport out of danger. There's no way using Darkest Night is going to be more effective than that.

What toggle is saving your ass better than an active power like a heal, escape or inspiration? Honest question, because I cannot think of a single powerset where the offensive toggle is going to save me better than popping all of the greens and purples in my inventory, or hitting Eye of Magus and running to recoup. Give us a concrete example.

No "reasoning" will satisfy the people complaining about these changes. By engaging the populace on "reasons", it shifts the conversation even further from testing the changes and even more towards arguing over something that they feel is needed for the health of the game. But also, anyone with 2 brain cells can fighre out the reasons. Building almost exclusively for S/L defense had a disproportionate benefit over any other defensive strategy due to the fact that so many attacks are partially tagged as smashing or lethal. This resulted in "squishy" ATs being overly durable with minimal investment. It also stifled build creativity because the default APP/PPP recommendation on most builds ended up being a 1 power dip into Scorpion Shield. Now, if someone on the dev team came in and stated the above as the reasoning, would you accept that statement and move on to testing, or would you just move the goal posts and attack the reasoning?

Not everyone chases those bonuses. Plenty of builds have more than enough innate defense, alternative opportunities for generic defense, or chase positional. Honestly, I've got one characters out of my current main 6 in rotation that will even be impacted on paper, and probably wouldn't notice in practice. The rest literally won't be impacted at all.

Not really. It only really impacts characters with heavily skewed typed defense levels. I have plenty of characters with pretty flat defenses between types or have positional defenses, neither of which are really affected. A character with 40-42% typed defenses across the board or 30% for all positional defenses isn't going to notice this change. This is a targetted nerf to Scorpion Shield and Ice Shield and S/L/M defense bonus stacking.

My guy...you're really not seeing that YOU are exactly the person that this kind of fix is meant to address. You are the problem and the vulnerability of the market, not the solution. The answer to a dragon hoarding loot is not to hope a different dragon swoops in to help the villagers by taking the other dragon's loot. The answer is to address the dragon problem. You have a bad case of "selfaware wolf" going on. I don't want to tell you how to have your fun, but the fact that you are sitting on a mountain of goods and currency and don't think there's a problem IS THE PROBLEM.

That's a blip on the radar. We're talking about someone throwing thin markets into a spiral by setting hundreds or thousands of buy orders at well above market prices, relisting above that and keeping it up for a month or more. An individual Purple IO market can probably be captured and flipped for about 2 billion, forcing people to pay whatever price over 25 mil that they relist for, or forcing people to either start using merits and craft their own or buy something else and play convertor roullette. 12 billion gets you a whole set cornered. 120 billion could get you the whole purple market. The thing is, plenty of people have that kind of money squirrelled away. Could they keep it up forever? Probably not. People would just default to alternative means of getting their Purps. But it would inflate the price and slow the market to a crawl for an extended period of time.

There are a lot of effects on the AH that most people don't perceive. It's really not that stable under the hood. There's too much accumulated wealth disparity and too few participants for it to be truly stable. The whole AH balance is incredibly artificial and rests heavily on an unspoken "honor system" from the veteran players sitting on warchests of billions upon billions of inf. At the drop of a hat, I (and any number of others) could corner a market for a stretch of time and throw things off just from accumulated wealth. Case in point, someone tried to mess with the market again with yellow salvage a few months ago, throwing billions of inf at the market simply to screw with salvage price and supply, only to be exposed by another player throwing even more money at the AH to show where the huge buy/sell positions were set by draining the whole non-seeded market. Lo and behold, the manipulator(s) got bored and yellows are back to 100 inf a pop 40 days later. I think the dev team is very aware of this weird quasi stable state and are trying to figure out a way to curb the number of whales who are able to put their thumb on the scales. If that means removing Emp conversions or stemming Emp generation, then fine. Might as well try something.

I believe the link below is up to date: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Temporary_Powers#Powers_from_hero_and_vigilante_missions Some powers can be re-earned, others can't, still others are only partially re-earned, where you get a lesser version.

Circling back to this thread, I've done a lot of playing and tweaking with the build, and here's what I've settled on. Posting here for posterity and any further feedback. @Sovera, thanks for a lot of the feedback. I took like 75% of it, but some just wasn't going to jive with what I was trying to do. This version can easily face tank 54/8 of anything I've thrown at it while still putting out substantial damage, especially with the 30 target proc'd out Ground Zero. I went back and tested Touch of Fear again, but the issue is the dismal DPA and the redundant IO sets it takes. While Dark Obliteration does do less damage overall, it takes a unique IO set that I can't slot anywhere else and has nearly double the DPA and radius. Shadow Maul is up A LOT, so ToF would just be fighting for activation time with it. What really surprised me with this build after playing it is how sturdy it is against hard targets, without really needing to do much. Once you drop Darkest Night down, you can just hit Siphon Life on cooldown and survive pretty much anything outside of 801's and Aeon hard modes. This Hero build was built using Mids Reborn 3.2.17 https://github.com/LoadedCamel/MidsReborn Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 50 Science Tanker Primary Power Set: Radiation Armor Secondary Power Set: Dark Melee Power Pool: Concealment Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Teleportation Power Pool: Leaping Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Alpha Barrier (A) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance (3) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance/RechargeTime (3) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance (5) Unbreakable Guard - RechargeTime/Resistance (5) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3% (50) Impervium Armor - Psionic Resistance Level 1: Shadow Punch (A) Touch of Death - Accuracy/Damage (7) Touch of Death - Damage/Endurance (7) Touch of Death - Damage/Recharge (9) Touch of Death - Damage/Endurance/Recharge (9) Touch of Death - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (11) Touch of Death - Chance of Damage(Negative) Level 2: Gamma Boost (A) Performance Shifter - Chance for +End Level 4: Shadow Maul (A) Armageddon - Damage/Endurance (11) Armageddon - Damage (13) Armageddon - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (13) Armageddon - Accuracy/Recharge (15) Armageddon - Chance for Fire Damage (15) Cloud Senses - Chance for Negative Energy Damage Level 6: Stealth (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed Level 8: Proton Armor (A) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance (17) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance (17) Unbreakable Guard - RechargeTime/Resistance (19) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance/RechargeTime Level 10: Fallout Shelter (A) Unbreakable Guard - +Max HP (19) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance (21) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance (21) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance/RechargeTime Level 12: Radiation Therapy (A) Touch of the Nictus - Healing/Absorb/Recharge (23) Touch of the Nictus - Chance for Negative Energy Damage (23) Perfect Zinger - Chance for Psi Damage (25) Obliteration - Chance for Smashing Damage (25) Eradication - Chance for Energy Damage (27) Scirocco's Dervish - Chance of Damage(Lethal) Level 14: Beta Decay (A) HamiO:Enzyme Exposure Level 16: Siphon Life (A) Superior Might of the Tanker - Recharge/Chance for +Res(All) (27) Superior Might of the Tanker - Damage/Recharge (29) Superior Might of the Tanker - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (29) Superior Might of the Tanker - Damage/Endurance/Recharge (31) Superior Might of the Tanker - Accuracy/Damage (31) Superior Might of the Tanker - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge Level 18: Particle Shielding (A) Preventive Medicine - Chance for +Absorb (31) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime/Endurance (33) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime (33) Preventive Medicine - Endurance/RechargeTime (33) Preventive Medicine - Heal/Endurance (34) Preventive Medicine - Heal Level 20: Hasten (A) Recharge Reduction IO (34) Recharge Reduction IO Level 22: Teleport (A) Range IO Level 24: Combat Teleport (A) Winter's Gift - Slow Resistance (20%) Level 26: Ground Zero (A) Superior Avalanche - Recharge/Chance for Knockdown (34) Superior Avalanche - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (36) Touch of Lady Grey - Chance for Negative Damage (36) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (36) Obliteration - Chance for Smashing Damage (37) Eradication - Chance for Energy Damage Level 28: Soul Drain (A) Superior Gauntleted Fist - Accuracy/Damage/RechargeTime (37) Superior Gauntleted Fist - RechargeTime/+Absorb (37) Superior Gauntleted Fist - Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime (39) Superior Gauntleted Fist - Accuracy/Damage (39) Superior Gauntleted Fist - Damage/RechargeTime (42) Superior Gauntleted Fist - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime Level 30: Fold Space (A) Recharge Reduction IO (42) Recharge Reduction IO Level 32: Combat Jumping (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (40) Reactive Defenses - Scaling Resist Damage (40) Shield Wall - +Res (Teleportation), +5% Res (All) Level 35: Meltdown (A) Gladiator's Armor - TP Protection +3% Def (All) Level 38: Midnight Grasp (A) Hecatomb - Damage (40) Hecatomb - Damage/Endurance (43) Hecatomb - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (43) Hecatomb - Accuracy/Recharge (43) Hecatomb - Chance of Damage(Negative) (45) Cloud Senses - Chance for Negative Energy Damage Level 41: Gloom (A) Apocalypse - Chance of Damage(Negative) (42) Apocalypse - Damage (45) Apocalypse - Damage/Recharge (46) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (46) Apocalypse - Damage/Endurance (46) Cloud Senses - Chance for Negative Energy Damage Level 44: Dark Obliteration (A) Ragnarok - Chance for Knockdown (45) Ragnarok - Damage (48) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Recharge (48) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (50) Ragnarok - Damage/Endurance (50) Bombardment - Chance for Fire Damage Level 47: Darkest Night (A) Endurance Reduction IO Level 49: Grant Invisibility (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed Level 1: Gauntlet Level 1: Brawl

With the new Sonic changes on the horizon, I've been revisiting various concepts and am thinking of giving Cold/Sonic a shot. I have a Storm/Sonic that is pretty solid, but it's end starved and "busy" with all of the active powers, meaning I don't really make use of Sonic as much. Cold seems less busy overall and might be a better partner for the new Sonic. Thoughts on the build below? Power boost and clarion help get the build to and over the defense soft cap, and it's backed by pretty bulky resists for a Defender. Should be able to put out some nasty -res on hard targets, even after the -res stacking nerfs coming. I also planned out a Corruptor version, but the defensive numbers were much less impressive, even though the damage was quite a bit better, on paper. I'll need to hop on Brainstorm to see how they work. EDIT: Swapped around the ATOs and it works a bit better. New build below, replacing the old one. I ran a few missions on Brainstorm and this thing really chews through enemies. Easily able to survive 54/8 radios solo and can nuke down spawns pretty quick with PB>Sleet>Heat Loss>Wail>clean up. Procc'd Infrigidate is a monster combined with revamped Screech. I was able to hit two sub 2 minute pylons with Banished Pantheon Radial, and two 3:30ish pylons without, all runs including getting knocked down once or twice and popping PB/Clarion to keep my defense up. Might need to try and sneak in some more KB protection, but overall I think this will be worth building once the current Issue goes to the live servers. This Hero build was built using Mids Reborn 3.2.17 https://github.com/LoadedCamel/MidsReborn Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 50 Science Defender Primary Power Set: Cold Domination Secondary Power Set: Sonic Attack Power Pool: Sorcery Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Leadership Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Infrigidate (A) Shield Breaker - Accuracy/Defense Debuff (3) Impeded Swiftness - Chance of Damage(Smashing) (3) Shield Breaker - Chance for Lethal Damage (5) Touch of Lady Grey - Chance for Negative Damage (5) Ice Mistral's Torment - Chance for Cold Damage (7) Achilles' Heel - Chance for Res Debuff Level 1: Shriek (A) Superior Defender's Bastion - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (7) Superior Defender's Bastion - Recharge/Chance for Minor PBAoE Heal (9) Superior Defender's Bastion - Accuracy/Damage (9) Superior Defender's Bastion - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge (11) Superior Defender's Bastion - Damage/Endurance/Recharge (11) Superior Defender's Bastion - Damage/Recharge Level 2: Ice Shield (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (13) Luck of the Gambler - Defense Level 4: Howl (A) Ragnarok - Chance for Knockdown (15) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Recharge (15) Ragnarok - Damage (17) Ragnarok - Damage/Endurance (17) Ragnarok - Damage/Recharge (19) Annihilation - Chance for Res Debuff Level 6: Glacial Shield (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (50) Luck of the Gambler - Defense Level 8: Mystic Flight (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Knockback Reduction (4 points) Level 10: Shockwave (A) Bombardment - Damage (19) Force Feedback - Chance for +Recharge (21) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage (21) Overwhelming Force - Damage/Chance for Knockdown/Knockback to Knockdown (23) Bombardment - Chance for Fire Damage (23) Positron's Blast - Chance of Damage(Energy) Level 12: Hasten (A) Recharge Reduction IO (25) Recharge Reduction IO Level 14: Boxing (A) Empty Level 16: Tough (A) Gladiator's Armor - TP Protection +3% Def (All) (25) Gladiator's Armor - End/Resist (27) Gladiator's Armor - Resistance Level 18: Weave (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (27) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance (29) Luck of the Gambler - Defense Level 20: Maneuvers (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (29) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance (31) Luck of the Gambler - Defense Level 22: Spirit Ward (A) Preventive Medicine - Chance for +Absorb (31) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime (31) Preventive Medicine - Endurance/RechargeTime (33) Preventive Medicine - Heal/Endurance (33) Preventive Medicine - Heal (33) Preventive Medicine - Heal/RechargeTime/Endurance Level 24: Benumb (A) Recharge Reduction IO Level 26: Rune of Protection (A) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3% Level 28: Siren's Song (A) Superior Vigilant Assault - RechargeTime/PBAoE +Absorb (34) Superior Vigilant Assault - Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime (34) Superior Vigilant Assault - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (34) Superior Vigilant Assault - Damage/RechargeTime (36) Superior Vigilant Assault - Accuracy/Damage (36) Superior Vigilant Assault - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime Level 30: Sleet (A) Recharge Reduction IO Level 32: Heat Loss (A) Preemptive Optimization - EndMod/Endurance/Recharge (36) Preemptive Optimization - EndMod/Accuracy/Recharge (37) Preemptive Optimization - Accuracy/Recharge (37) Preemptive Optimization - EndMod/Endurance (37) Preemptive Optimization - EndMod/Recharge (39) Preemptive Optimization - EndMod/Accuracy/Endurance Level 35: Screech (A) Apocalypse - Chance of Damage(Negative) (39) Apocalypse - Damage (39) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (40) Apocalypse - Accuracy/Recharge (40) Apocalypse - Damage/Endurance (40) Gladiator's Javelin - Chance of Damage(Toxic) Level 38: Dreadful Wail (A) Armageddon - Chance for Fire Damage (42) Armageddon - Damage (42) Armageddon - Damage/Recharge (42) Armageddon - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (43) Armageddon - Accuracy/Recharge (43) Fury of the Gladiator - Chance for Res Debuff Level 41: Dark Embrace (A) Unbreakable Guard - +Max HP (43) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance (45) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance (45) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance/RechargeTime Level 44: Tactics (A) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Chance for Build Up (45) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Recharge/Endurance (46) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge/Endurance (46) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge (46) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff (48) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Endurance Level 47: Arctic Fog (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (48) Luck of the Gambler - Defense (48) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance (50) Reactive Defenses - Scaling Resist Damage (50) Shield Wall - +Res (Teleportation), +5% Res (All) Level 49: Power Boost (A) Recharge Reduction IO Level 1: Vigilance Level 1: Brawl

Beyond just taking Ground Zero and proccing out, I'd also recommend swapping the slotting in Radiation Therapy to a proc bomb. I've found that slotting so heavily for healing is often overkill, and just using 1 slot for a Heal/Rech and 5 procs is still plenty of healing and gives you a second mini nuke with Ground Zero.

No, the changes are still amazing for Defenders, just that it feels like the numbers need tweaking on the -res system. It feels like a HUGE upgrade while soloing or playing standard missions/trash clearing, but AV fights are slowed down. Napkin math, my Storm/Sonic went from putting out -100% to like -60% resistance debuffs in average conditions. I think the numbers should be tweaked to get it back up a bit. Instead of 12/8, make it 10/10 or 8/12 on the debuff splits.

Just finished testing out the new Sonic on Blaster, Sentinel and Defender and I have to say I like it. The DPA increases are a massive upgrade and you can really make a very solid "king of cones" build with Siren's Song now in the mix as a real damage power. Regarding the drop in debuff efficacy for Defenders...yeah, maybe that should be tweaked a bit, but all of the calls and crying to roll back the changes are being melodramatic in my opinion. 10%/10% sounds like a reasonable split instead of 12/8, and Scream/Shriek should have separate stacks but I fully understand why something needs to have been given up to not further push Sonic as the end-all-be-all Defender secondary. After playing through some standard PI 54/8's on my rebuilt Storm/Sonic, I have to say I really don't notice a huge difference in taking down hard targets, and my AoE and single target chains are massively improved by now having 3 solid damaging cones to link. I also have freed up a power pick and slots by not having to take 4 single target attacks. However, the Sentinel Sonic is dead on arrival. The target cap drop on Howl and Shockwave is basically game over for that build and I'm not seeing any way of making that work when I could be playing basically anything else. I'm really hoping Sentinels as a whole can be salvaged in the next update. It would be a shame if these changes got reverted and I really hope they stay as it would let me dust off my Sonic Blaster who's been shelved for a long time.

Yeah tons. But the comparison is that a normal 20ft / 90 sec AoE can only innately slot ~78% recharge before impacting proc rate, while a Gauntleted 15 ft / 90 sec AoE can slot up to and past the recharge ED cap without ever worrying about impacting proc rate...while still having a 5ft wider diameter (15 ft x 1.5 = 22.5 ft radius). That's an extra 26.5% area compared, in case a 5 ft wider diameter doesn't sound like much.

Touch of the Nictus lvl 34 Heal/Rech + 5 Procs is what I go with. Exactly at the 90% threshold while maxing recharge and getting some extra HP.

Not Bopper, but can confirm that I have tested and Tank procs operate on the pre-Gauntlet area factor. It's like how procs calculate based on the enhanced recharge rate, but don't factor in set bonuses or outside recharge buffs.