csr

The change isn't balanced, because it also doesn't hit Absorption, Regen or Healing. So some sets still do better than others. It is more balanced than it was though. For clarity on Defense being hurt worse. Let's say you have 50% Def (most build for a bit over the cap to deal with debuffs) and 20% Res. You take about 4% of all damage directed your way by even level foes with no Acc or ToHit bonuses (I've ignored streakbreaker for simplicity). A build with 100% Res and 10% Def takes the same 4% or so. With the old crash the first would take 16% and the latter 6%. A 300% increase compared to just 50%. With the new crash the Def build now takes 10% of incoming damage and the Res build 10%. Both seeing a 150% increase in damage taken. Just to throw out a less edge-case example, let's take a Brute with 50% Res and 25% Def. This Brute would currently go from 12.5% of incoming damage to 22.5%. With the change they'd go up to 24.5%. If the latter Brute were making up for taking 3 times the damage as the previous two with 3 times the Regen/Healing, then she'd actually still be better off, as her Regen/Healing would still be working at full strength. I use a mitigation index metric, which is basically just Regen divided by the percent of incoming that I calculated above. So if we have two whose Regen factor is 1 divided by 4% they have indices of 25. While this third example is at 24 because I stuck to round numbers (3 divided by 12.5%). The three with the old crash drop to 6.25, 16.7 and 13.3 respectively. Under the new crash the indices are 10, 10 and 12.2. Anyway, those are just three quick cases. The crash is more balanced. It could be more balanced still if there is some clever way to essentially debuff HP/Regen/Heal/Absorb all based upon current HP. But I think you'd end up having to debuff off base HP, which would require some balance tweaking to get the amount where you wanted it, and probably leave those with HP buffs ahead on points, so to speak.

I'm getting the same results. Rage always crashes, regardless of whether or not it's stacked.

Stacked Rage shows two overlapped Rage icons or one with the number '2' on it. When the first expires it drops to one, but you get an identical debuff icon for the crash. The latter needs new art work.

The Inherent Status Icon for Gauntlet blinks constantly. I assume this is a bug.

I was actually agreeing with you. The final comment was meant to be more general - it made no reference to damage at all, just high end performance. I should have made that more clear. What I meant is that the buffs to Tankers are seemingly targeted at a Brute's overall level of high end performance. And, IMO, the high end performance of Brutes is OP. Logically, if you accept the latter assertion, then you need to nerf Brutes high end somewhat (85% Res Cap, 700% Damage Cap, for example). And then target the overall high end performance of Tankers off that. Which would require a lower high end damage output, since they'll have significant survival advantages (at the high end now the HP difference and higher base Res/Def isn't particularly significant, even my moderate cost /Regen Brute build can tank anything at the high end). Personally, I agree with you in general that differences should be accentuated rather than buffed out; to give the maximum value to having choices. The problem Captain P has here is that there really isn't any head room to buff Tankers' ability to survive much, and the ability to generate aggro is only of so much value as long as there is a aggro cap of 17, so buffing damage seems necessary - if only for solo play. And balancing the SO level performance to the IO/Incarnate level is tricky. Brutes have it wrong. Specifically because their caps are too high. Tankers shouldn't get it wrong too by doing the same.

Damage potential off a given power's base (DS Multiplier times the Damage Cap)... Proposed Brute: 581.25% Melee, 581.25% Ranged/APP. Proposed Tanker: 570% Melee, 480% Ranged/APP. Scrapper: 562.5% Melee, 250% Ranged/APP. The reality is that instead of boosting every non-Brute AT's high end performance, Brutes top end simply needs to be lowered, and Tanker buffs should target that level, rather than the existing Brute level.

Regarding Rage stacking: I have two SS Tankers, one stacks for 48 seconds, the other for 46. And that's without any +Rech from the team. On a side note: Some here seem to think they're adding a crash. The crash is already there right now. What they added was a way to avoid it.

With Bone Smasher I get a bunch of spam, apparently one brilliant red message for each debuff applied to the target. The debuff effect also seems to apply if I've queued BS while Whirling Hands is animating.

I believe being able to skip Thorny Darts - or having it buffed - would mean that some of these other changes would need to be offset in some way. My choice would be to up Darts to a 4s recharge with the DS boost that goes with that, and then dial back the -Def in the set substantially. I honestly think the two secondary effects coupled with the new DPS buffs pushes this set to the border of OP even with the crummy Thorny Darts required.

So, there's a 4s difference of which 3s is interruptible and can be reduced with enhancements?

I'll second that on Voltaic Sentinel. As for Skewer, it has a base DPA of 92.5 DPS. Throw in the Toxic DoT and that goes up to around 108. It also does -20% Def on top of that. When the Recharge was at 8 seconds Skewer was simply too good for a T2. Now, IMO, it's still the best T2 in Dom secondaries, edging Smite. The only T2 outlier left is Stone Mallet (and that set has lots of buffs in this patch already), all the rest are now fairly comparable. Overall, the difference in powers in Thorns in this patch now makes it hard to choose what to skip. Thorny Darts is easily the worst power, but you can't skip it. Thorntrops and Thorn Burst are probably the next two weakest. Though I suspect Skewer will be skipped by many, despite it being quite good.

Thanks for the clarification and information. Invisibility needs better tuning in both PvE and PvP. Though perhaps the latter should be part of a more general reworking of PER v STEALTH in PvP. As an aside you can add Focus, Shockwave, Savage Leap and APP ranged attacks (I believe every set has at least 2) to the list of those that Stalkers can use to strike without warning. Contollers can get some +PER from Mace Mastery or the Fortunata Seer in Soul Mastery. Dominators only get the latter. Corruptors get the former. Stalkers can get +PER through Body Mastery or Weapons Mastery. Tankers through Energy Mastery or Mace Mastery.

I thought there was a base 500' PER range for players. Your calculation assume 0 base PER for characters. That can't be right, can it?

Well, it's certainly not the first time the consensus is wrong. 😄

Any +ToHit (up to 22%) ups the DS.

I think Superior Invisibility should be clearly better than either Stealth or Invisibility, not just the inferior of those two powers (Invisibility). What's the rule of thumb on APP powers? 75% as good as set powers or some such? If SI's defense is comparable to Stealth's (they both provide 2.25%+2.25% suppressing on my beta test Controller), then it's costing more endurance to provide 200' stealth instead of 35'. That seems pretty massive, but in practice it means little. Stealth plus an IO gives 65'. Which means the only things that would see someone with that combo but not someone with SI are Turrets, GMs and Snipers. That's pretty mediocre, especially given that the set with SI also has a 60' team stealth power that isn't an exclusive toggle. I'll reiterate the desire to see SI be a non-exclusive toggle that can be used with Controller secondary powers such as Shadow Fall and Steamy Mist or to provide some sort of movement buff.

Only ToHit, It ups the base Damage Scale of the fast snipe, which is then modified by the Damage Enhancement slotted.

I still don't like that the power is ringed most of the time. It should be ringed for the special use, which is now slow snipe. Yeah, cottage rule, but you changed Propel physics, so consider this now "broken" too.

I'm not crazy about these changes. Skewer and Impale got major buffs, while the under-performing T9 got a minor one and the T1 remains awful. Impale is clearly superior to Thorn Barrage. It does better DPA, comparable D/cycle, and has -SPD/Fly/Jump and Immob to go with the high -Def (-22.5%!) and Toxic DoT. Skewer is now one of the highest DPA powers in the game. And with the change Thorn Barrage remains a dubious power choice. I'd like to see TB go to 16s recharge and Impale come down to 10 and Skewer to 7 to spread the buffage more evenly. On a side note, the -Def in this set remains questionably strong. It's comparable to Radiation Blast on a Defender; and Defenders are debuff specialists. Also it's a tertiary effect on the powers, behind the base damage and Toxic DoT.

The clarification regarding Unkindness' Blood Frenzy usage is missing from here. Also, the description for the power still includes "While exhausted you cannot gain Bloody Frenzy" and makes no mention of it adding a stack.

It appears very close to the 2.92 ST damage if you apply the 2.8 multiplier only to the AoE portion. It also hits 16 targets. Still, it really should have gotten the 2.53s animation buff that Total Focus and Tremor got. The issues most people I know have with it are the animation time and the combination of weak AoE damage coupled with KB so that it barely scratches foes and then scatters them. It's just not an attractive power to those of us who love ST DPA (where it sucks), powerful burst AoE damage (which it doesn't even come close to providing) and despise KB because we like our foes packed 200 to a dumpster. Personally, my /Elect Dom is Earth, so I can fix the KB, but it still simply takes too long on a class that has better things to do than casting a 3.3s mostly ST attack that requires setup not to scatter the spawn I'm trying to control. EDIT: Whooppsss, got caught up in TS and didn't respond to what I meant to. As far as I can tell the only change to Electricity Assault was the snipe change to Zapp.

And presumably Superior Invisibility will do both? Heck, it may even be justified in having a small movement speed buff.

Re Stealth Changes: Stealth and Invisibility are now too much alike. Invisibility is better in every way save E/s and the need to take Stealth or, far more likely now, Grant Invisibility. Balanced against those the 55' stealth instead of 35', -100% Threat and triple strength suppressing Def seem about right. So it's not that they're imbalanced, it's just that Stealth seems to be useful only as a set mule or as an option for those who only want to invest one choice in Concealment. One thought is to make Grant Invisibility into "Conceal" (or whatever) and make it function as it does on friendlies and act as a single target Placate on foes. That makes it a little more interesting choice for those interested in Invisibility. Making stealth toggles non-exclusive with other stealth toggles would make Stealth a more interesting choices for those intending to take more than one power from the Concealment pool. Though perhaps a slight nerf to Invisibility's Defense would be in order in that case. Also, making Invisibility suppress aggro generating toggles until you are in combat would be a nice QoL addition.

Bio Armor has Inexhaustible that you can take at level 1 that is +25% Rec, then Adaptation at 6 that allows Efficiency mode reducing END cost, DNA Siphon at 18 which siphons END and boosts Rec off foes (defeated or not), and lastly Parasitic Aura at 32 which gives a large +Rec boost. The last two are click PBAoEs. Electric Armor has Energize at 12 and Power Sink at 26. Energize is roughly the equivalent of an extra EndRdx in all powers (+59.6% EndRdx with a 120s recharge and 30s up time). Power Sink is an END siphon. Fiery Aura has Consume at 8. Basic END siphon. Ice Armor has Energy Absorption at 26. END siphon/Def buff/Slow Res. Radiation Armor has Gamma Boost at 1 (scaling +Rec that is stronger the higher your health), Radiation Therapy at 8 (weak END siphon as secondary effect), and Meltdown at 32 (meh click power with over-long recharge). Shield Defense has One with the Shield at 32 (another meh ultimate def that grants +30% Rec with 1/3rd up time). Willpower has Quick Recovery at 20 and Strength of Will at 32. The latter is another mediocre ultimate with 40% up time (neither it, nor One with the Shield are affected by recharge). So... I'd break tanker sets into four tiers for END use: 1) Bio Armor 2) Radiation Armor, Willpower, Electric Armor 3) Ice Armor, Fiery Aura 4) Everything else

For PvP yes, PvE no.