csr

One more comment... there is a small QoL issue with this change as well. You need to be more aware of where your toggle anchors are. I had an instance with a Beam/Cold Corr that used Snow Storm to bring some flying Freaks down, then hit them with Freezing Rain (EDIT: Sleet) and was slept briefly. It didn't occur to me to keep track of the Snow Storm anchor. I saw he wasn't there, but assumed he was in the mess on the floor in the rain. He wasn't, he was off getting 2 more spawns for me to fight. So when you get mezzed now you need to remember that maybe you want that debuff detoggled before those 5 seconds run out.

It's not the "first two or three seconds", it's the full 5 seconds it takes for the Suspend to expire. And the debuffs are typically back in less than 1 second after getting free of mez (some take longer if I get a BF used quickly and have little +Rech) even if the rooting and animation take longer. To me, the QoL gain just isn't that huge. Most of the retoggling time for offensive toggles for me is done outside of combat and is of little concern, while that done in combat tends to involve important powers that I now get back later in the fight than before. Do I really care how this change affects Blazing Aura on my Tanker? No, because it almost never detoggles/Suspends at all. Do I care how fast I can get Hot Feet back up on my Controller? Not really. The gain for most of my toons is that their offensive toggles come back without having to worry about it. And in some rare cases they get them back in long fights without spending fight time on retoggling. So those advantages to the change mean very little to me. It's the critical debuffs that carry the most weight to me with regards to this change. The powers in question are the key survival tools for some toons. Radiation Infection takes 0.5s to get back into use with 1.5s of root and ~1.7s of ArcanaTime used. Venomous Gas is 0.833s, 2.03s and 2.244s respectively. Hurricane is the same. Darkest Night is one of the worst at 0.5s, 3.17s and 3.432s. Time's Juncture is only 0.567s, 0.67s and 0.924s. The balance point for me actually hinges on Recharge Time, the likelihood of the toon having inspirations handy and the likelihood of my having a bunch of dangerous aggro. And that in turn depends heavily on build, level of difficulty and team size and composition. The way I build toons and the fact that I solo a lot and often on higher difficulties means that I find that not having my key debuff toggles is life threatening for a number of toons. As I said, this will just require a change of tactics for those toons. More stopping into the base to get inspirations, lowering diff, more use of Clarion or whatever.

To me this is now in the neighborhood of a wash. I'd be happier with a 4s, window since then it would be only a minor nerf to a few toons and be a net gain overall. In either case my Rad Defender will probably get more use out of Force of Nature. And I'll probably keep more purple pills handy for various toons. A slight change of tactics can help cover for the nerf element of this. So at 5s I think the nerf to toons reliant on offensive toggles for survival and the QoL improvement for those that aren't is close to the balance point. I'd just prefer the change to be a net gain, instead of this "why bother?" middle ground.

Out of curiosity... which version of Dark Regeneration is a toggle? I thought they were all clicks.

I could not get that post to work. It simply wouldn't let me edit outside the quote box. There are math errors in this post... First, the times should be 5.2s, 6.9s and 8.6s as the first toggle was listed as taking 1.7s but only 0.7s was added. Second, Bopper's should show that you had 5.1s to do other things; the amount of time spent on retoggling. Of course, you didn't have to redo all three toggles. In the end it still comes down to losing your toggle powers for 8s. If those are significantly more important than what you could do otherwise then it is a net loss. For debuff-reliant squishies it almost always is. For others, it usually isn't. Truly offensive toggles typically just reduce the length of a fight, while the defensive toggles being lumped in with them can frequently mean the difference between winning and losing; at least, far more often than is the case for the truly offensive ones. One fix would be to go put all of the defensive elements of the debuff toggles into Activation Effect Groups a la the Blaster sustains so they'd keep working. Messy. Personally, I just think the Suspend period needs to be shorter.

I think it's technically feasible, but I believe there would be a significant issue: The Suspension appears to check a "Target Requires" test each tick, and each check would have to use your Mez Res at that time, rather than at the time you were mezzed. This could result in the Suspension coming back if your Mez Res dropped. It just doesn't seem like a good idea based on my understanding of how this is implemented. I'm inclined to the good old KISS engineering principle. This game most assuredly doesn't need any more kludgy code. Of course, I could be wrong about how it works.

I think 8s is too long, mostly because from what I'm seeing there's sort of a Catch-22 going on: my toons that get the most QoL benefit from Suspension instead of retoggling are those least likely to get mezzed and least likely to need their offensive toggles back quickly, while those most likely to get mezzed lose the ability to prioritize getting their protection back after getting free of the mez. Anyway... Cap P has stated the number has already been changed, so at this point it's probably best to see what's in the next patch before testing further. At least for me.

Spirit Ward detoggles if mezzed on Brainstorm. It appears to be unchanged from Live. Enflame appears to Suspend.

Does that means all the Child Effects in the AEG don't suspend? According to CoD2 many of the sustains that do similar things show as being implemented in oddly different ways. And quite a few don't show the use of an AEG at all. Only those with an offensive component appear to. If the AEG Child Effects don't suspend (I assume that's sort of the point of an AEG... so that things like that apply to the whole group), then it looks as if all the sustains should continue working. I wonder if I still have my AE mission for testing Blaster sustains on Cryptic...

Wait... are Blaster sustains with debuffs going down for 8s? I guess I have a few things to test out tonight once Live iTrials are done.

He could be using Enflame for a 3rd. Does Spirit Ward count as an "Offensive" toggle?

The latest patch (July 18) changed the stacking. Using just Shriek and Scream you should do slightly better DPS (due to Scream being quicker) on low HP targets, though less on high HP targets as your -Res will cap at around -44% instead of -73% (if you have high global +Rech and do nothing but spam those two attacks).

The thing about Cones is that their area can be increased by +Range effects. I believe the lower caps may have been a response to that. If mobs were less inclined to clump up in melee, then it might make sense.

To me it comes down to the definition of "offensive" toggles including debuff powers whose main purpose is actually mitigation. But then a lot of the better ones also have offensive components. Rad Inf is mostly about the -ToHit, but it also does -Def. Enervating Field does both -DMG and -Res. Venomous Gas does all those things. But many, such as Time's Juncture, Darkest Night, Lifegiving Spores, Snow Storm and even Hurricane, are pure mitigation. Having some of those out for 8s is a bit painful.

Looking at CoD2, Gotterdammerung has a PvP only (I'm assuming that's some quirk to make it only work on the Arena map) component on Earthshaker that does a 2s Mag 1000 Stun. It has base accuracy and targets Smash/AoE, so maybe it just misses a lot.

The mouse-over tool-tip info for Brute Unstoppable in the Enhancement Management screen does not include Psionic Resistance in the list for Buff/Debuff. It also still lists "All DMG but Psionic" in the description header. The Psi Res appears to be unenhanceable. In the Detailed Info it shows the Psi Res as 33.75%, which is the base Brute value, despite my having +15.9% enhancement in it. When I use Unstoppable I get that base, unenhanced 33.75% listed in the Combat Attributes.

I'd like to point out that the debuff durations on Shriek and Scream have gone UP from Live. They are currently 5s and 7s respectively. (Of course, most of the debuff doesn't stack now and the rest has limited stacking, but that's the payment for the buffs elsewhere.) Shout and Screech have gone down from 10s and 12s. However, Shout casts nearly 25% faster and so applies pretty much the same -Res*Dur/Cast as on Live (ignoring stacking). So the nerfs to the -Res of Shriek, Scream and Shout are all now pretty much entirely in how they stack. I can even get -30% Res from just using Shriek as a filler on a busy Corr, down just 2% from what I get with that tactic on Live. The build flexibility is now far better than Live. And I might now even be able to use Shout in MoM iTrials without dying The Pink Death.

If possible it would be nice if a "Warning" tag was added 3-7 days prior to name release. Maybe just a yellow version of the current exclamation point graphic and "This character will soon be subject to..."

I only tested briefly, but 8s seems awfully long. I rarely take that long to get offensive toggles back up on Live. What I particularly don't like is that it seems to make avoiding mez to begin with more important, rather than less. It would be nice if a BF somehow reduced the period, but it would be simpler to just reduce the duration. On Live I think BF use and retoggling takes me less than 4s on average. My Rad Defender with the old cast time probably took close to 8s, but at least she would have Rad Inf back up in about 4s (faster now with the new cast time) and EF added in at about 6s. Now she has nothing at all for 8s.

I think both PBs and WSs need more thorough revamps, including the addition of Patron Pools for each, more powers (particularly pool powers) usable in forms and probably a damage increase in general.

The only Psi Res I see on PBs is in Cosmic Balance (10% per damage dealer teammate). I think Light Form getting it would be awfully nice, but it's a perma capable power with a reasonably manageable crash, so I don't think it's going to get it. With the self-heal and Cosmic I doubt PBs are in line for a buff at this time.

I think for hard-content min-maxers that's where Sonic Attack already sits on Live. Buffing the DPS without changing the -Res would simply make it more of an outlier.

Trying to take a new look at this, if I were to start with the idea of different debuffs as in the current implementation, then what I would have done was make the splits 8/12, had Shriek, Scream and Dreadful Wail have their own debuffs and have Howl, Shout and Screech share one. That gets you the same -44% sans DW, but it removes the issues of T1+T2 that Blasters, Sentinels and Defenders (at lower levels) have, and it also reduces the time it takes you to get to -44% to about 4.62s (Shriek, Scream and Screech). Anyway, I still like the basic idea of the changes, I just think the nerfage to the -Res component needs some tweaks.

The use time really is a key comparison. On my relatively high recharge Defender builds I can get around -25% stacking Piercing Rounds and Piercing Beam. On my /Sonic I can maintain an average of about -48%. However, it takes me about 35% of my time on the DP and BR toons, and about 70% of my time for Sonic. It may seem like that should be higher, since the total cast time to get 4 -8s is 6.976s vs the 2.508s to 2.64s for the other two sets to get to -20%. The reason it isn't is because there's no point in trying to stack buffs from the same power with Sonic. However, it also means you have to be aware of when it is worth casting a power again or not, and if you aren't running the Power Analyzer, as I was in my testing, that isn't so easy to do. Here are the Defender Minus-Res-seconds / ArcanaCast for all the relevant powers. I include these simply because I had the Sonic ones for use in setting up my attack priority queue for my log parsing experiment. Beam Rifle Piercing Beam -20% Res 10s dur 2.508s cast -79.7% Dual Pistols Piercing Rounds -20% Res 10s dur 2.64s cast -75.6% Sonic Attack Shriek -12% & -8% Res 8s & 10s dur 1.188s cast -157.4% Sonic Attack Scream -12% & -8% Res 8s & 10s dur 1.716s cast -102.6% Sonic Attack Howl -12% & -8% Res 8s & 8s dur 1.848s cast -86.6% Sonic Attack Shout -12% & -8% Res 8s & 12s dur 2.224s cast -86.3% Sonic Attack Screech -12% & -8% Res 8s & 15s dur 1.716s cast -125.9% Sonic Attack Dreadful Wail -12% & -8% Res 8s & 20s dur 2.112s cast -121.2% Notes: Because of stacking the comparisons are not like-to-like. Howl and Dreadful Wail are AoEs.