jack_nomind

You can make anything work, but dropping Hasten will always drop your damage significantly. Since you're already giving up well over half of the Defense of the build without Storm Kick, it might be easier to just lose Combat Jumping. You're losing that ~1.3% on psi, so it's ~4.7% better psi. So what you're trading is about ~1/18th of your mitigation to both slashing and lethal for is about ~1/12th more mitigation to psionic. It might be worth it if psionic damage was more common or a bigger threat than s/l, but I'd say it's overall a bad trade. All but Psionic, in-game. The power description is misleading, the effects are correct. You inadvertently changed two of the High Pain Tolerance slots to use level 40 enhancements instead of Level 50 ones.

Well, sure. It can get a little expensive but the Winter attuned sets make it pretty straightforward. Invuln and SR are probably the only two kits that don't need Fighting. (Edit: oh right, granite)

CO has that. Doesn't really work. A guy can wish though can't he? Just because Jack and Cryptic couldn't figure it out either time doesn't mean some new corporate overlord couldn't come up with a solution...But I agree that without balance, it doesn't work... Sure, it's just less fun that it sounds like. You can have a system where people can choose any powers they want, but they have to choose their power modifiers somehow (so for example, if you pick having a Scrapper scale on melee powers, you simultaneously are signing up for a Scrapper scale on Control powers). The trick there is, first, very obvious; and second, has the unintended consequence of making alts less attractive (since you've still collapsed all possible Scrappers into one character). But I wouldn't mind some kind of hybridization of the CoH and DCUO methods. Spitballing, but maybe something like four choices at character creation: Archetype, Style, Source, and Props. The Archetype works similarly to now, and sets your power picks; the Style hones you in to a particular theme (like Fire or Ninja), the Source gives you some tools to customize your powers more (in a sense, it's like making Origin give you the ability to swap your powers secondary effects -- so in CoH terms, a Psionic source/Fire theme pryokineticist might have their fire powers do -rech instead of DoTs, or psionic damage with a fire DoT instead of fire damage), and the Prop is how you 'channel' your powers (power armor? mystic sword?). I can think of some huge problems (and time costs) with a system like that, but I do really like the idea of DCUO's approach. I can't even say exactly why the game never really drew me in the way CoH does. Superspeed was hella fun.

Yep. Pizza and beer are both great mixes of ingredients. They're even good in close succession to one another. But if you throw them in a blender, the taste and texture is ruined. Good food is more than just ingredients; it's preparation, presentation, organization -- structure. Good games, maybe good anything, are similar. Maybe nothing, but I bet you don't really believe that. There's a mission at the beginning of the alpha slot unlock arc that gives you an "intangibility" power and amps up all your stats immensely. You spend the whole mission beating on AVs and GMs that can't do a damn thing about it. If you're sincere that all that matters it the power fantasy and all the "minmaxing" bits are irrelevant, I imagine you spend 100% of your time in that mission. Is that so? I'd bet not. There's no sense in being pointlessly reductive about this. There's room for this to be a power fantasy most of the time and a good game most of the time. Just like you don't need to run around literally invincible all the time to feel powerful, we can have constraints that enhance the fun and feeling of success, rather than diminish them for many people.

Not only did it happen when Cryptic was testing the CoH alpha, but they did it again with Champions Online and the same thing happened. And yes, it was a tanky ranged build for CoH alpha (and basically similar for Champions), but the reason for that has less to do with Sentinels/Strikers being categorically OP and more to do with a dilemma about altruism. Without inherent AT powers, a team of eight Sentinel-type builds is ~eight times as good as a solo Sentinel, while a team with seven Sentinels and a Controller-type is ~twenty times as good as a solo Sentinel; but a solo Controller is way worse than a solo Sentinel.

Because the alternative is an undifferentiated duplication of the same two or three builds endlessly. Here's an analogy I like to use to explain the concept ludologically. Another analogy is "If you like sushi, and you like chocolate, and you like beer, and you like pizza, you don't get the best food by putting all those things in a blender and drinking what comes out."

Morality's a factor in a way, but how about, "I don't want to be one of the bad guys' legbreakers." I love the Praetorian content because even though it's almost always clear who's giving my character orders, I feel like I have a lot of agency in interpreting them. Some of the redside content tries to do this with optional objectives, and I appreciate that, but I still end up in a lot of situations where I feel like I'm playing a mook hitting random strangers for cash. Most villains are the heroes of their own story, they're just 'driven to it' because 'nobody understands.' I'd love to be a bank robber, a mad scientist, or a superspy. I'd love to be a robin hood, someone who really is hitting strangers for cash but doing it to e.g. fund an orphanage or w/e. I'd love to be one of the assassins in a John Wick universe. I don't want to be Leg Breaker #6791. I play Praetorian content solo, where the NPCs are literally telling me I am just a mook with a number but then the story makes me feel like I'm not, and that's fine. Redside tells me I'm a super-being who is treated as a credible resource or threat by others, but makes me feel like I'm an interchangeable mook, and that's... obnoxious.

This is a reasonable, interesting, implementable suggestion, which is why I assume no one's paying attention to it. ::)

I would've said the same thing, but with smileys back. :P It's a legitimate objection and deserves a legitimate answer.

I think you'd have to be really cavalier with those comparisons. In this case, I'm proposing an Axe set that is very high endurance cost, needs most of the set to function, and has good range and AoE on its attacks. The comparison is that it's a slow 'big weapon' set that does 'big weapon'-type things. If you mean that you want to borrow something else from TW for Energy Melee -- like its DPA -- that's an entirely different proposal. I'd be interested to see it, to be sure... I might even agree with it. But whatever you do decide to propose elsewhere, I don't think it's appropriate to judge these numbers by fear of analogy alone.

Terrorize can still cause fleeing (it cycles between a root and a flee). The best solution that I know of is just to immobilize everything. /signed for a universal damage set with a good Immob proc, but I don't think there's any simple way to do what you're explicitly asking for here.

To be honest, I put the blame almost entirely on Destiny Slot. Alpha, Judgment, and Lore are great but they're pretty contained effects. I'll agree that a full team of Judgment nukes can trivialize some content, but in a predictable and manageable way for content development (surprise adds, pats, Freakshow, etc). The Hybrid slots are all over the place; Hybrid Melee (either) is probably the most problematic for content gating, with Assault Radial and Support Core strong, Assault Core and Support Radial interesting, and Hybrid Control... also exists. But even the best Hybrid is at least gappy. Interface, similarly, is more or less in "also exists" tier -- I've got a love/hate relationship with it because I don't understand what it's doing as an Incarnate power but in some ways it's also my ideal Incarnate template. Destiny, on the other hand... what the french. And specifically Barrier, Clarion, and zomg Ageless. Rebirth is OP too, but in an "let's tone this down a tick" way. Ageless is literally an entire build's worth of set bonuses. If somebody wants to open the floor to nerfing Destiny Slot I'm all ears because sincerely wtf.

TW and Staff have extended ranges because of the size of the weapon. It's silly, but visually I don't see Axe being 2 ft longer than Mace. Animations don't have to be trimmed to be shortened; they can be sped up. Whether that looks good or not is a different subject. *eyes Mental Blast* Yeah, I meant "sped up" by "compressed." I don't even know what format the animations are in, though, so I'm a bit hesitant even for something so seemingly small. Funnily enough I think both of these comments kind of go to the same point -- the power visuals are mutable and can be adjusted into the desired effect, rather than necessarily constraining the effect to specific visuals. If we're agreeing that a better radius is worthwhile and not broken, we can increase the scale of the weapon models so they're mostly "rikti axe" sized rather than "hatchet" sized. Or we can use the "line of force" FX that Cleave already has, or one similar to Staff or Claws (30ft cone!), to indicate the larger ranges. Or we can just accept that a 4' tall Titan Weapon user already does a 15(!)-ft radius with Whirling Smash, Staff hits 40ft away with an 8-ft weapon that you don't throw, and we live in a world of lies and illusions. ...I'm thinking a combination?

Well, you picked Electric Armor and thought you were picking a Resist set. But -- surprise! You actually picked a self-heal set, and you don't get your heal power until L28. And you picked a combo set to compliment it but you don't your DPS combo until L26! Well... what now? My very first, most important piece of advice is drop Lightning Field, if you picked it up already. Until you have Energize, it's the most efficient way to sap yourself dry and accomplish nothing. As for the rest: Make sure to take Tough as early as possible, and three- or four- slot it and Charged Armor (two or three Resist IOs and one Endurance one). Slot your attacks for endurance reduction. Spam the Weaken combo as much as possible (it's an aoe -dam proc). Carry insps (and buy the P2W power that gives you three free large ones every half-hour), don't be afraid to rest between fights, and use Blackwand/Nemesis staff to pull things to you rather than leaping in if you don't have any support. Edit: It will, absolutely, get better once you have Attack Vitals, Energize, Power Sink, and of course Hasten to run them all. You picked a good combo but it has to coast for a few levels. If you have some merits, you can invest early in some uniques (Shield Wall, Reactive Defenses, Numina's, Panacea, Steadfast, and Gladiator's Armor all have unique set IOs that you can start getting around level 20 without any issue. Any one of those will make a significant difference in your survivability. I personally would recommend the Reactive Defenses one to start, since it's going to have the biggest immediate impact on survivability; you'll need to take Combat Jumping, Weave, or Hover to slot it into. Getting both of the +3% defense IOs, CJ and Weave all together would have a bigger impact but it'll take some time to handle the endurance costs of Weave.)

I like to forget I have a green bar whenever possible. I usually two- or three- slot Numina's and add Panacea. If I have space left over and no other reasonable Heal slots, I get Regenerative +25% regen, Preventative +Absorb proc, and Miracle +Recovery in that order. I tend to handle endurance by slotting for +maxend/global endredux or using Incarnate abilities with those effects.

But you are making a suggestion for four ATs already. FF can do that with a single power (Repulsion Field). The issue here is excessive redundancy. If we don't ask, we probably won't . What would be convincing to you? I can give you an EHP analysis -- it's a little tricky with KD and we'd have to run it for probably three sets of assumed team values (e.g., the "newb teammates" that have no baseline mitigation at all, the "average team," and the "endgame team") but as long as you can establish the parameters you'd find persuasive I think you'll find the numbers to be pretty in favor of ~doubling FF's mitigation. (You'd need to pick at least one other Defender with at least one Defense power set to compare FF to, I'd want to run the numbers against assumed AVs/EBs since most teams don't have much trouble with anything less, and you'd have to set some assumptions about build constraints like yes/no Incarnate, yes/no sets (or no attuned/purple/etc). We'd also have to agree on how to model KB/KD.) That's not any special effect though, that's just a 4s Mag1000 Hold on an Ally with the HitFX being the 4s long vomiting animation. I don't see FF getting a Mag1000 Hold to use on foes, even if it's only for 4 seconds. I think you might be confusing this with the "throw up effect" from Traps/Poison Trap which is just a forced animation without actually being a mez. Strong agreement. Elixir of Life works the same as most other Rez powers; there's a brief forced animation at the beginning of Rise of the Phoenix, Howling Twilight, etc. There are no player powers that work the way you (PK) are suggesting, and I think there's an evil djinn in that bottle if we try to open it here.

My proposed ones are, yes. Narrow cones in melee are typically 19° cones with a low target cap (3 or so). They get evaluated as single-target powers because it's very difficult to hit more than one target unless you're in a packed melee or take extra time lining up shots. Out of curiosity, why not? I'm making this set deliberately comparable to TW, which does more damage but has the same ranges. Staff also has 9ft+ ranges and does a little less damage, but has an auto-Build Up and damage procs. My proposal for Axe is in some ways secretly all about the range increase (see below). That... is probably a good idea, although boosting Cleave's range and arc this way was intended to help it capitalize on the target cap. One of the things I noticed while working on this is that basically every melee cone and AoE in the game ignores or heavily "massages" the damage scaling. Here are some comparisons: Name Radius Expect. Actual DPA DF DF The Lotus Drops 8 1.18 1.54 43.2 Titan Sweep 10 1.23 1.79 37.6/83.6 Crowd Control 8 1.34 1.61 39.9 And I'm including the DPAs to help show why I think the "massage" is warranted in this case. Even the few powers that do ostensibly conform to the formula, like Eye of the Storm (expected and actual base DF of 1.18) usually end up cheating in some way (damage procs). (Also, that TW DPA isn't in error. With Momentum up, the T3 really does do more DPA than most T9s. Nerfing or recalibrating TW is a different topic, so pay more attention to the 'base' DPA for now but bear in mind the absurdity of what I'd have to do to actually catch up to TW in damage.) To put it another way, I basically decided that "range" was going to be part of Axe's bonus under the proposal, so I did the AF calculations with about half of the actual attack ranges. I played with this number a bit but anything less significant than that was still giving unsatisfactory DPAs. I didn't provide END costs because I intend them to follow the standard formula -- which means that increasing the powers' recharge will also increase their endurance cost. This would be one of the most endurance-hungry sets out there at high recharge, although the longer cast times helps put an upper limit on it. They possibly can't. I'm hoping that one tick can just be eliminated from the end of the cast time without affecting the animation, and that we can eliminate another tick just by compressing the animation slightly. If that's not the case then the set will just look kind of weird until we can find someone who can donate better ones. BS might be my next project but unlike Axe it's got a couple of letigimate uses now (it's good on Stalkers and it's the only Parry kit that works with Shield). Mace needs no DPA help. It just needs new, custom animations and some better weapon models.

So first, as always, it's a visual treat to see your writeups. As for the set itself -- hmm. Hmm. I'm not sure I see Havok or Starfire as 'controller-y.' I'd almost go with a reverse-combo system in this theme; your big attacks bring the pain but put debuff stacks or DoTs on you, which you have to burn off with the little ones. I do love the narrow cone in a T1.

So this looks to be a Defense set -- in particular, it looks a fair bit like Ice Armor. It probably doesn't have enough overall resilience to stand up with these numbers without a self-heal or a strong Regen component, particularly with that gaping Energy hole. I see you have both regen and a click heal elsewhere in the set, but I've got some questions about those. On the upside, it does have pretty strong S/L Defense (even with the weaker Smashing aspect). You'll also need DDR somewhere in the set to keep it going. Standard protection is 10 for Brute/Scrapper; you generally can include a handful of nonstandard protections in-theme for the set without 'paying' extra, so you're probably fine to throw Terrify protection and about 30% -rech/-movespeed protection in as well. If the effect is flagged to ignore resistances, there isn't a version of "resist that ignores ignoring resistances." There might be a way around it but it wouldn't be as clean as 50% resist. For similar reasons as above, debuff immunity on players isn't going to happen cleanly or easily -- particularly within a power that also wants to impose the same effect the player is ostensibly specially immune to. Regen is measured in % because it works on your HP total; is that 15 hp/s after Self Repair? For that matter, That's a pretty anemic version of Dull Pain, so I'm guessing this is intended to be a shorter-recharge power. What's the recharge? Does the maxhp stack with castings? Ah, yeah -- sorry, the brawl index specifically is obsolete; I linked you to that thread to get an idea of the kind of modifiers that apply to e.g. "Brute powers" or "Scrapper powers." And yeah the formatting is a bit broken after all this time, but you can fix it up into a spreadsheet or html table. (Unfortunately, the actual spreadsheet link from that page is broken.)

I think Battle Axe is one of the most lackluster melee sets in the game right now. So in the hopes it was just some numerical errors, I looked at at Battle Axe powers in light of Leandro's post on damage design formulas and, well... (Damage numbers are at Melee Scale 1.00. The Expected Damage Factor includes the AF calculation.) Current Battle Axe Expect. Power Range CD Cast Damage Expect. Actual Expect. Actual Notes Time Factor Damage Damage DPA DPA Beheader 7 4 1.584 1 55.6 55.6 35.1 35.1 40% KD Proc Chop 7 8 1.584 1.64 91.2 91.2 57.6 57.6 50% KD Proc Gash 7 10 1.716 1.96 109 109 63.5 63.5 50% KD Proc Swoop 7 12 1.98 2.28 126.8 126.8 64 64 70% KU Proc Whirling Axe 8 14 2.904 1.18 65.6 55.6 22.6 19.1 50% KD Proc Cleave 10 15 2.508 2.3 127.9 153.5 51 61.2 80% KD Proc Pendulum 7 15 2.244 1.73 96.2 105.7 42.9 47.1 50% KD Proc ...To be honest, they mostly fit. That's depressing. The powersets of course aren't balanced around DPA, but around recharge time -- so the slow animations of Battle Axe make it a grindingly bad set for straight damage, and its secondary effect of "sometimes knockdown" isn't enough to redeem it. The "simplest" fix for BA is... just to increase all its recharge times. But adding one or two seconds to the attacks still doesn't quite cut it unless their animations also get nicked down; anything more than a second or two puts the set into 'nearly unplayable' territory, delivering a heavy alpha strike but having the same miserably poor dps overall. And what was particularly interesting to me anyway were the three powers that don't fit the expected values. Whirling Axe is just... miserable, a lower-than-predicted actual damage on top of a longer-than-usual cast time... but Pendulum and Cleave both do better-than-expected damage. Cleave was particularly interesting to me because I happened to compare its actual damage to its formulated damage factor as a single-target attack: it's an exact match. Cleave, as far as power balancing is concerned, is a ST attack. Looking at other "narrow cone" powers like Shadow Maul or Head Splitter, I realized that this is true generally; slow-animating narrow cones are calculated as though they were single-target attacks. They end up with low-ish DPA anyway because of the long casts, but have at least a chance to line up multiple hits. Of course... *all* of BA's powers are slow animating... As the gears turned I realized also that *modern* slow-animating sets like Staff and Titan Weapons also get better reach (melee range). This combines well with narrow cones, since they ordinarily have a very very hard time hitting multiple targets. From all this, I ended up with the following proposal. Here are the numbers, using the traditional area factors to contrast "expected damage" even for the narrow cones (which are as mentioned above, traditionally exempt anyway): Proposed Revision Power Range CD Cast Damage Expect. Actual Expect. Actual Notes Time Factor Damage Damage DPA DPA Beheader 9 5 1.188 1.16 64.5 64.5 45.4 54.3 Narrow cone; 50% KD proc Chop 10 9 1.584 1.5 83.4 91.2 52.7 57.6 Narrow cone Gash 10 11 1.716 1.87 98.4 104.6 57.3 61 Narrow cone; 75% KD proc Swoop 9 13 1.98 2.28 126.8 126.8 64 64 100% Mag 6.23 KU Whirling Axe 12 15 2.64 1.44 51.7 80.1 19.6 30.3 100% KD; PBAoE Cleave 12 16 2.508 2.57 131.8 155.7 52.6 62.1 80% KD proc; cone = 30° Pendulum 10 18 2.244 2.31 100.1 128.4 44.6 57.2 100% KD; cone = 180° tl;dm: Most of the power animations stay the same, except Beheader and Whirling Axe, which each lose two arcanaticks (edit: three on Beheader) because they were miserable at their old cast times. All of the ranges go up. Nearly all of the power recharge times increase; in general, the new damage factors represent the increased recharge time, but they deliberately reflect lower radii than the new ranges would suggest. Chop loses its old KD proc since it's the better of the two starter powers, but the remaining KD effects are improved. Gash actually loses a little DPA but remains a high-damage, high utility attack. The net result is that this set ends up with a high DPA average on its attacks, but needs more of them to make an attack chain than other sets. For comparison, Katana has a >60 base DPA attack chain at around 300% recharge with Soaring Dragon -> Gambler's Cut -> Golden Dragonfly -> Gambler's Cut -> Repeat. But for this version of BA, Cleave (analogous to Soaring Dragon) won't recharge quickly enough for that tight of an attack chain, necessitating at least one additional power and potentially diluting the overall DPA. At merely SO levels of recharge, the entire set less Whirling Axe and Pendulum is needed to construct a single-target attack chain. The desired feel is a "poor-man's Titan Weapons," with a subjectively slow feel despite steady, good DPS. I'm not very good at wrapping up a proposal so uh Edit: Dropped Beheader's proposed cast time from 1.32 to 1.188 and gave it a narrow cone. Gash is still better DPA but Beheader being a cone with KD makes this a more compelling Tanker set.

Don't we know someone who can sticky this?

I'm not sure exactly which map you've got, but cave maps are a huge pain. In both Council caves and regular caves, you sometimes will come in either on the top level or a middle level of the map, and need to find a random hole in the floor or ceiling to proceed. For the built-up Council rooms, there are usually stairs, but the stairs going *down* aren't visible until you're right over them.

If you have 25% Defense, you reduce incoming damage by half. If you add 12.5% more Defense to that, you reduce it by half again. In other words, the more of one type of mitigation you have, the more (not less) valuable a little bit more of it becomes. Combat Jumping on a melee can easily be more valuable than Scorpion Shield on a Blaster. The only time you should care about your green bar is if it's almost empty. Otherwise, your Fury and Endurance bars are far more important. You want to be punching as close to 100% of the time as possible, and you want to be getting punched not very much less often than that.

Okay but like, give some numbers, here. I've got a laundry list of a dozen set lists and most of a few EATs, but 'list of powers' only gets you so far. I'd love to see you pick one of these sets and start statting it out. You might find this interesting.

What having CJ available really means is that you can run this build with Musculature instead of Agility, although you'll need to factor in Ageless to make up the lost +rech.