...

Cute. That said, trollers are very middle of the pack right now. Doms might have a use for such sets, depending on the bonuses and enhancement values. But I doubt it would change doms much to have your single target hold do a little bit more damage. Maybe in something like seismic smash. But hecatomb would still probably be better there.

It sounds like, if dominators ever get PA, it will be a nerfed version. I'm not sure why? Dominator damage is very middle of the road. Agree. Perma PA on a dom requires loads of recharge set bonuses, agility/spiritual, or both. Illusion control would still offer less "lockdown" than many other control sets (earth, plant).

If you feel insulted when I stated that your argument was dumb, then I apologize. The "city-of-statues" argument is akin to all-too-frequent invocations of the cottage rule. These arguments amount to little more than "a dev said so once." This is frankly exasperating, hence the tone of my dismissal. The game has changed a great deal, and the situation is more complex and nuanced than at first glance. To explain a little further, the "city of statues" argument was pre-ED and pre-IO. Specifically at a time when Hasten could be made perma on 6 green SOs. There was no aggro cap, and no target cap. With hold duration that was twice as long at base, you can start to see why it was necessary to nerf AoE controls very, very hard. In the current meta? AoE holds are pretty skippable. A nice "oh shit" button. Rather, I'd like to see them have a more central role in the control arsenal. For me, their primary limitation is that they are up to infrequently to feel "worth it." This is, I suspect, one reason nukes went to a 145s recharge. In a game where a tanker can neuter a group by just standing in the middle of it, or a blaster can annihilate a group every 40-80 seconds, I think it is very reasonable to ask that control classes be able to shut down groups every 35-70 seconds. Note that, even with a 120 second recharge, AoE holds have a base 14.9 second duration on controllers. At IO slotting levels, the recharge will come down to approximately 35 seconds. Perma holding a group might be possible with incarnates, +hold duration set bonuses, or a secondary that gives recharge. But at that level of play, AoE control becomes superfluous. At level 15-40 SO/early IO play, perma holds would not be the norm by a long shot. Dominators would have an easier time getting perma holds, assuming perma dom. But they would still be less valuable to group than a controller in many scenarios. In summary, the "city of statues" argument/nerf made sense at the time. In the current meta, that change is an over-nerf. I believe that half of that nerf should be rolled back: return AoE controls to 120 second but leave the base (controller) duration at 14.9 seconds (location AoEs such as earth and dark may require more fine tuning).

Debate? Nah. My opinion. Cashless nukes on a 145s timer are a much larger problem than aoe holds on a 90 or 120s timer. Especially when many of those nukes apply significant status effects.

Yes. No. The "city of statues" argument is dumb. Most of the time the mob is dead, or close enough, before the hold is over. The rest of the time, well, isn't that the point of playing a control class? To control things? It's a bit like saying tankers tank too well. Literally. The. Thing. They. Should. Do.

Yes. Just port as is. No change required.

Yes. The current design formula is sorely lacking. A good reference point is highly desirable. If only to give the current developers a benchmark when planning future changes. Rebalancing each powerset one by one around said formula would be a tedious and long process... but was overdue long before sunset. I don't expect the current developers to do it though. Too much to ask from volunteers. That said, a formula should probably get done before any changes to titan weapons... TW is good specifically because it manipulates DPA mechanics, and without a good reference point, you're just fiddling/eyeballing.

You definitely started off on the wrong foot here. Tempted to just /jranger. Anyway, I mostly play dominators. Domination is fine. Permadom is a strong buff with that you have to work toward. But it's not as if you can't use domination before you have 90% global recharge. Your thinking is too binary. Yes, permadom is gravy. But domination is still great before permadom. What I would like to see is synaptic overload and ground based effects (static field, etc) affected by domination. That would be a lovely change. I'd absolutely fall in love with electric control then. But I suppose my opinion isn't welcome here.

@Galaxy BrainThat's either a feature or a problem, depending on your perspective. Personally, I'm ok with lower damage ATs getting more "bang for your buck" from procs (ie I think its ok for different ATs to have different slotting goals). But making procs scale to AT damage modifiers (ie nerfing them on defenders) is a potentially viable solution. Won't be popular (though none of this is, I'm sure). @AlouuWhat about chain powers? May be difficult to implement the dynamic area factor; at the time that damage is dealt to the first target, you may not know how many targets are going to be hit (especially with slow chain mechanics such as synaptic overload). Also, what about rain powers? If you could find a reasonable way to make procs behave nicely in location based AoEs, I suspect you'd garner a fair bit of support.

@Alouu, @Bopper, well done. Has my vote and support. I especially enjoy the dynamic area factor. Makes it reasonable to keep fireball in a single target rotation.

@Alouu, you may have won me over. Would you be willing to provide a few concrete, worked examples of how your proposal would compare and contrast with the current ppm mechanics under various base recharge, enhanced recharge and global recharge values? (I acknowledge that your solution is independent of enhanced and global recharge, but the current mechanics are not). I think doing so would help to explain your ideas.

I'd like to see a system where proc-builds are a viable alternative, but one that does not break fundamental game design, i.e. corruptors should do more damage than defenders in most scenarios. I mean, class balance is the reason that the tanker changes were made, no? That said, I have no personal experience with either defenders or corruptors, so I can't comment specifically on their current balance point. I also think the current implementation is quirky and counter-intuitive. Maximize proc chance with high global recharge but no enhanced recharge (and without alpha slot giving recharge). This is weird, not obvious, and requires calculations to maximize (do keep in mind that in most games, there are huge amounts of players than never visit forums or discord, and huge amounts of people who simply lack reasonable skills with algebra). I'd go so far to say that the current implementation by the Paragon Devs is exactly the kind of poorly done rush job that @ScarySai is concerned about. That out of the way: one potential pitfall of lockout timers as suggested by @Alouu is that a lockout timer does nothing if your attack rotation is sufficiently long; I can imagine a scenario wherein players manage to avoid the lockout timer by cycling through a lot of attacks in sequence (maybe some pool powers thrown in). Or to put it another way: a lockout timer may simply encourage players to push their "proc powers" less often if you know that a given power won't proc for 5-10 seconds. This adds complexity (I'd like to see a system wherein your power behaves more-or-less similarly regardless of how long it's been since the last time you pushed them). The suggestion by @nzer seems relatively elegant and simple. Easy to code, too. But it leaves us with the strange scenario of maximizing global recharge and minimizing enhanced recharge.

Dominator and troller ATOs could benefit from offering both control duration and damage enhancement. Then you would be very happy to slot them into your single target hold or immob (the latter on trollers). Would be nice if both sets gave 10% recharge. Honestly, lack of that bonus keeps me from slotting the set in most cases. For doms, would be nice if you could use some ATOs in the secondary. Honestly, doms basically have two primaries, depending on the team, fight and build. Only the dominator +dmg proc is good. The other 3 procs are very unexciting.

Oh. Maybe I have an old version of mids. Or maybe mids is wrong. Those aren't the numbers I have.

This is the real truth. For example, combustion on a blaster deals more damage with a lower recharge than on a dominator, even though dominators have a 1.05 melee modifier and blasters have a 1.0 modifier.

Human and forms use different scales. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Damage

I'm not sure I follow. You'd still have 67 slots to distribute, you just wouldn't be able to put them in nova or dwarf specific powers (so those slots would go into human powers). Like every other AT. Overall, it would be a buff in the sense that all 3 forms would be powerful in a given build. It would drastically change builds though. So I'm not a huge fan. Again, I think it's simpler to just buff the AT overall.

This is super complicated. Because of set bonuses, slots = power. But in a way that is hard for developers to directly control. Particularly if new sets are added or players find creative slotting options. Honestly, just increase the power of the AT overall. Another reasonable option might be: Make the nova and dwarf attacks similar to jaunt or translocation. Gives developers direct control over them (ie easy fine tuning, so that the powers can be, you know, good) without allowing/forcing players to slot loads of set bonuses. All that said, I'm still not convinced that all 3 forms need to be powerful at once. A player who devotes a lot of slots to dwarf and nova, but neglects human, has made a choice. A different player who devotes all their slots to human has made a different choice. To me, this is the crux of the epic ATs.

I think that power creep would be extremely high here. That's a lot of extra slots, and therefore a lot of extra set bonuses. Especially if it was also considered for dwarf form. The recharge and defense values that could be stacked... Even "human only" builds would take nova and dwarf just to mule sets for their bonuses. I also have no idea how they would balance this. Lot's playtesting necessary. It would also make kitting out a Kheld considerably more expensive. Which isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but is a consideration. It might be reasonable if the bonus slots in nova and dwarf accepted only basic SOs and IOs, letting the forms feel powerful without power creep. Players could still get set bonuses from their human abilities. But then... isn't the point of HEATs that there are a lot of ways to build them? I think we'd lose some of the distinction between multi form and human only builds if it were "easy" to make the forms powerful. I think it's a lot simpler to buff the AT in general. More slots is probably Pandora's box.

Just to reiterate, I acknowledged in a later post that this was not an entirely fair comparison. And I agree, having ranged defense on TAoEs would be a big improvement.

Yeah it's not the fairest comparison, but my point is that it's not way out of line with what people can currently do. Honestly anything new for taoe will likely be an improvement.

This. Let's take a dominator inspired example. Coercive persuasion (10% recharge, 5% ranged defense, 5 added slots) Dominator ATO (10% recharge, 5% ranged defense, 5 added slots) Expedient reinforcement (6.25% recharge, 3.13% ranged defense, 5 added slots) Sniper set (7.5% recharge, 2.5% ranged defense, 4 added slots) Basiliks gaze (7.5% recharge, 1.25% ranged defense, 3 added slots) For a total of 41.25% recharge, and 16.88% ranged defense, at the cost of 22 added slots. That's arguably a better deal on set bonuses than what 5x the original bombardment offers. The point is, the set bonuses from the OG bombardment are very much in line with currently available (though unique) sets.

Or maybe a small damage buff, tAoE version of the decimation unique? The original version of decimation was extremely compelling exactly because it had recharge and ranged defense. That said, I'm not entirely convinced that the ranged defense and recharge need to split; obliteration exists. And to get 5 copies of any set 6 set bonus you need to use 30 slots. That a lot of slots.

Another option might be to keep the original bombardment, but make the proc unique. Leaves us with a great set and solves the stackability concern.

Might be time to lock the thread.