csr

I've been running Tina MacIntyre's arc "The Instant Army" and I'm noticing that in the Clockwork Lab mission maps most of the interior doors are now open from the start of the mission. I'm fairly certain most (if not all) of these doors were closed before. Has anyone else noticed this? Is it an intentional change?

You survived the recharge period because the mobs were savaging your teammate(s) [and because you are a Rad Def with AM and Hasten]. My estimate for Rad Infection on my top Rad Def is around 2.8s [max(Rech, BF use)+TimeToEffect] on Live and 5.7s (BF use+SuspendDur) on Brainstorm. Another thing I noted in my testing but didn't mention: Hurricane's debuff lasts 10s. My Fire/Storm on Live can have it back in action in about 3.4s. On Brainstorm it's about 5.7s again. So it actually gets back into action before the debuff wears off in either case. Yes, Hurricane loses the Repel/KB for a couple of seconds with this change, but that debuff just keeps on giving. Choking Cloud may also last long enough to do that too. On the other hand, most of the other debuffs only last 0.75s (with a 0.5s tick rate). Time's Juncture lasts 1s (and ticks every 0.75s). Those powers go down and out pretty fast.

These two statements are inconsistent. If you were very aware of the time to effect then why did you state that you'd be losing 2.X seconds of effect instead of the correct 4.X seconds? The second part of the second statement about being a sitting duck for over 3 seconds (instead of the 0.5s it takes for DN to kick in) also belies that claimed awareness. Oh well, not important. I would agree that Fearsome Stare is often a better choice than DN for #1 priority for a Dark Corr, but not always. It's recharge is 4 times that of DN, it takes nearly twice as long to take effect, it is a 30 deg cone which requires you to back up to hit much of a spawn if they've closed in, it doesn't debuff DAM (-30% on a Corr is not trivial) and it doesn't Terrorize Bosses or higher. But in any case this change isn't only about Dark Miasma on non-Controllers. There are sets that don't have better mitigation options than their debuff toggles. Yes, you can do other things instead, but you can already do every one of those things on Live now. The only gain is the eventual saved toggle activation time and effort. And there is a point there I don't think anyone has brought up: Many debuff toggles are anchored on foes and expire when that foe's body derezzes. Which means you end up having to retoggle them again in the not too distant future anyway. So those anchored debuffs are really in a different class than the always on ones which pretty much universally benefit from this change. Anyway, I'll reiterate... at 5s I think the giant heap of very minor QoL improvements from this change are balanced against a small number of sets that are getting a minor nerf. I use the term "minor" twice deliberately. This change is a whole lot of "meh" to me and I wonder if it's worth making such a change for that. As far as I can see Capt P had to add a "Target Requires" expression and a "Target Ignores" tag to every affected power.

1) Those debuffs aren't just protecting the user. They debuff the foes attacking the rest of the team too. And as the team starts dropping the danger to whomever is left increases. I may be perfectly safe until that Fire Blaster bites it and all his aggro starts looking for a new home. It's not all about you. And it's also not all about Incarnate teams. At lower levels Darkest Night is often great mitigation. 2) Darkest Night only takes 0.5s to take effect, not 3.432s. People keep mentioning the Arcana cast time, apparently unaware that the power starts working well before that is finished. 2.9s of DN's activation is just hand waving after the fact. I believe every one of the powers on that list above starts working at 0.933s or less.

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.