csr

That's how I treat it. Initially... I had some builds where I thought I'd make do with a cheaper alternative, but after you realize how easy it is to make 12-15M INF that thought goes out the window and every toon ends up with a Panacea even if they have only 1 slot in Health.

Electrical Affinity seems to have a hard time remembering power customization. I made a Controller and as I tweaked my costume to look better with the power customization I chose, each time I came back to power customization EA had reset to Heroic. [Edit:] On Masterminds and Corruptors Power Customization of EA would reset to Villainous each time I backed up to change a costume part. On Defenders and Controllers it reset to Heroic.

It is. It's also a PvP set. Though I was just picking numbers to make the ST effect of the new proc weaker (45% Regen equiv instead of 60%) and the AoE stronger (50% stronger if you get at least one proc on cast, though the chance to proc on each target would be half as much). I'm afraid the truth is that IOs need some tweaking, with some clearly too strong - like the Panacea. Do you have a single character that doesn't have (or won't have) the Panacea slotted?

I know they don't. I was responding to Bopper's comment that if support powers on Defenders and Controllers do the same thing then it's a bug. I agreed with that sentiment. +Recharge and +Recovery are key buffs, they really shouldn't be the same for Masterminds, Controllers, Corruptors and Defenders.

Re the Power Transfer Unique: It's an IO that's equivalent to 60% Regen. At 3 PPM I think this IO is over-powered in passive powers. And at 1 proc/cast I think it is under-powered in AoEs. I just don't like this compromise. Maybe 1.5 PPM and 7.5% Health?

I tend to agree with this, which is why these two fixes by themselves stand out to me. My first thought was "where is the Speed Boost fix?" My second was "should Defender SB get buffed, or everyone else get nerfed?" I think the balance issue is much broader than those two Dark powers and should be handled more systematically.

I'm not quite sure why Twilight's Grasp and Tar Patch got special treatment here. It seems to me that such adjustments should be part of a general support set balance pass. There are lots of powers that don't vary the way they should between support ATs, and not all of them are pseudo-pet powers. Speed Boost, for example. This just seems out of left field.

OK... I took a minute to read your post on the PPM mechanics. I didn't know about the linear adjustment to AF for PPM mechanics (I'd been using ParagonWiki's page). So Mass Hypnosis would be 4.75 * 0.75 + 0.25 = 3.8125 and the proc chance I had above 29% instead of 23%. So the Call of the Sandman proc will be 50% better for ST and roughly 2 to 4 times worse for AoE. I can't help feeling the top non-Purple Sleep set is now pretty darn weak. Which is insult to injury given how little value AoE Sleep has in the current game environment.

And the power most likely to have a Heal proc in it (Mass Hypnosis) has a 25' radius. By my calculation with 5-slotted CotS you'll have about 50% slotted recharge (47.7% in my builds), giving a cycle time of 33s or so with the activation and a 4.75 AF [Edit: This should be 3.8125]. So the proc chance would actually be about 23% [Edit: should be 29%], not 90%. To achieve 90% the PPM would have to be 8, not 2. So it's not firing 10 or 11 times (I'm assuming it isn't always hitting 16 targets), but about 3. Which matches my experience. [Edit: I believe the AF for a 15' sphere is 3.25.]

Wait... doesn't the chance to proc get divided by the Area Factor? [Edit:] Looking over my builds in Mids' the change results in exactly one CotS being left in my 140+ character builds. Paired with an Entropic Chaos in Mesmerize for a Mind/TA Controller build.

Assist works, it just doesn't work well solo as the Galvinic Sentinel won't hold aggro over you if you're attacking. So you'll soon have the foes targeting you, and assist with ally-targeting powers doesn't work if they're targeting you, since you're not an ally. You can however assist the GS and use it to choose targets for your attacks, as opposed to using assist for your buffs. This will be sub-optimal, since the pet AI is poor at choosing targets, but it works better than having to re-target all the time. A combination of this and attacking normally with a bind to switch back to the pet for assist-through-pet seems to work best solo.

My only feedback from my most recent testing is just a re-iteration of what others have said: I don't like having to switch to targeting the pet while fighting. If only you could assist through foes when they are targeting you instead of a teammate...

I'd say Domination is the main cast-while-mezzed power. Add Kuji-In Rin and Inner Will to the list as well. And I believe Indomitable Will from the APPs (Controllers and Dominators) can also be cast while mezzed. There are actually quite a few of them. (And should be a few more, as I think all the "classic" T9s from Armor sets should be cast-while-mezzed.)

To get an idea of why it's a bug, go on Live and eat a red pill before casting Fade and see what it does to your +Res from the power. Now imagine what Fulcrum Shift does to it.

The phrase "Each successive jump along the chain will [...] the next target for less" in each of these powers is no longer true and may be misleading. Something simple such as "The first two targets receive stronger X" still misses by a bit, but is closer to the truth.

Except it's actually two powers - Soul Drain then Dark Equilibrium - and the first of those has a long cast time. So you're talking about 3-1/2 seconds as is. Please take that into account on the DoT duration.

Indeed, I thought about doing some runs myself. But I think 4 or 5 would be my limit. The number you've done is beyond me. The next time I log to test DM I'll try to sneak in a practice run at the least, though I think it needs more like 3 practice runs minimum before the times would be really meaningful to compare.

First, thanks for taking the time to do these. I think Dark Melee is apt to benefit a bit more from IOs than most. For example, in this chart DM is only about 1.7 minutes per run behind Battle Axe, yet in the previous SO:IO differentials that you posted it gained about 3.1 min/run more than BA did. If that held for IOs in DM2 then it would move ahead of BA. As a result I think it isn't unreasonable to assume that for those of us that use IOs DM2 should now be in the neighborhood of sets such as BA or perhaps even Rad (in your differentials DM gained about 7 min/run on Rad with IOs and in this latest DM2 sits about 6-1/2 min/run behind Rad). Also, we should be cautious about taking the results of 10 runs by one person as being an especially accurate gauge of the sets performance. It's the best one we have here, but there are undoubtedly some play-style biases and very likely even in this much play time (6 hrs), some random fluctuations. I wouldn't be surprised if a 2nd set of runs with DM2 were better than BS or worse than MA, for example.

Wow, DC/DE took a beating. Heck, it's almost down to where I suggested in the Tanker patch testing. 😄 [That was DS 1 on a 60s timer (to match Energy Absorption/Energy Drain), but with no change to the END recovery.] I now have the set AoE on par with Martial Arts and better than Energy Melee (I'll say it again because it bears repeating... boy does that set suck). By my metric it now gets right on the average buff from the Tanker Inherent while moving up from being an outlier off the bottom for AoE to just one of several poor AoE sets. And keep in mind that Soul Drain means it does better damage with Pool attacks than most sets, so it gains some ground on them there. I think some additional improvement might be in order for the set, but I think it should be put into the set's worst power - Touch of Fear - instead of back into Dark Equilibrium.

Devouring Darkness. Or alternatively... whatever name gets us the next patch the soonest.

I played a bit more at L25-26 then L40 on a Shock/Elect Defender. The testing I did was to try to maximize the value of Faraday Cage. Based upon what I saw I think the buff duration needs to be pushed out to about 10s so that at the extreme Recharge you can recast it as you move and have it perma. And the tick rate should be dropped to 2s or less so that those entering the cage get the buffs more quickly. The buffs shouldn't stack of course.

I think "that other guy" was just me again. I've tried three shots at explaining the SD mechanic in this thread. Mids isn't clear, but does list both the 40% and 8% +Dmg, as well as the +12% ToHit. What it's missing is anything about the +8% being per target. The +ToHit is confusing too, since it is really two buffs combined: +10% (8.5% for Corruptors) for hitting at least one plus another+2% (1.7%) for each target up to 10. Even the detailed info in game doesn't tell you how the two buffs are applied, it just lists their magnitudes.

Typo.

You are laboring under a false belief about how Soul Drain works. There are two buffs. One that is 40% if you hit at least 1 foe and one that is 8% for each foe hit. That means the Soul Drain buff starts at 48% for the 1st foe hit and 8% each for the next 9. (Scrappers get 50+10 per and Corruptors 34+6.8 per due to different Damage Self-Buff Modifiers,)

Well, in that case Sorcery's Mystic Flight and Force of Will's Mighty Leap fail the test. Each is exactly the same as its travel pool equivalent and then has a nice bonus power on top of that. By comparison Speed of Sound doesn't match Super Speed as you don't get the stealth. And the bonus power has two major drawbacks that Translocation didn't get. First, it has a cooldown. And second, it lacks the hover component like Translocation while not being tied to a primary power that provides +Fly, resulting in the loss of utility that I noted before. Furthermore, a tp power on SoS is of less value to begin with, since SoS is much faster than Mystic Flight. As a result I'd say SoS is inferior to Super Speed despite the bonus power. I'd be OK with that, if it weren't for the two previous Origin pool travel powers being better than their travel pool equivalents. The best fix for this may in fact be to buff Fly and Super Jump so that Mystic Flight and Mighty Leap are inferior to them as SoS is inferior to SS. [Edit:] To be clear though, I still think Jaunt is just plain bad. It's better than nothing and free save for the activation time and END cost, but in an absolute sense, it's just plain bad.