jack_nomind

I find the damage numbers more 'readable,' and provided them at 1.00 (tanker/0.8 or scrapper/1.125), but that's fair. The thing is -- it's not just those powers. Here's a few more: Name AF Calc. DF Actual DF Frost 1.5 1.41 1.62 The Lotus Drops 2.2 1.18 1.54 Crowd Control 1.7 1.34 1.6 Shadow Maul 1.2 1.37 2.12 When I can't find a single hit for the expected result, I feel like I've gotta question the formula.

I mean I get plenty of use out of them when I'm low in health. Plop them as far away from everything as you can and run. If that's accurate, the pets are written in a way that no other buff aura (e.g. Dispersion Bubble) is in the game. It seems like they could be revised to use the non-broken version of that effect.

Just tested on Justin with Sprint, Walk, Ninja Run, Slide, CJ, SJ, SS, Stealth, and Invisibility. Walk, Stealth, and Invisibility detoggled Shinobi-Iri; nothing else did.

Pines allows it, but the power description of Shinobi-Iri (including the version in Pines) explicitly mentions that it doesn't work with CJ or Super Speed.

I don't see those listed anywhere on Paragonwiki; do you know the name of the tip mission? (Or, importantly, what their powersets are?)

I tried using the given AreaFactor formula as a divisor, and it doesn't seem to work. Ex: Whirling Axe has an AF (per above) of (1+(8*0.15) = ) 2.2, and Pendulum has ((1+(7*0.15)) - (((7/6)*0.011)/5)*(360-180) = ) ~1.6. The standard damage formula above gives . . . ~144.6 and ~153.5 for them, so you'd expect ~65.6 and ~96 damage respectively; but it's actually about 55.6 and 105.7 (so the AoE is doing less than expected and the Cone is doing more than expected).

Hmm. With everything active, it should be 48/47/47 w/o Manuevers. Is this pre-Alpha Slot?

Given all the spaghetti code complaints from Paragon devs, I'd bet that that's handled somewhere in a function that resolves attacks or applies damage rather than here in the aggro function.

Ick. Always the problem with theorycrafting. But hey, problems are just opportunities in disguise -- dropping Stealth gives us a better build. Concealment was always an idiosyncratic choice. I'd keep the pool and do Grant Invis -> Invis -> Misdirection. (However, a potentially better choice is to go Leadership here; the build can still function with one fewer LotG unique, or you can put Vengeance in the third pick and keep it.) But I'd keep Concealment, so I'd move one of the Stealth slots to Arc of Destruction to finish out Obliteration, gunning us back up to 48% melee and dropping our end consumption. I'm a sustain junkie, so I'd probably put the other one into Health for a third Numina's to gain a net hp/s improvement on the lost LotG set bonus... or for others, there's a pretty good argument to be made for finishing out one of the other 5/6th Obliterations in Whirling Smash or Titan Sweep, given /Nin's pretty low DDR. Edit: The third option would be to put the slot into Sprint and two-slot Celerity for 2.25% S/L resist and the Stealth proc. That's a bit attractive to me but it does make me want to see how much I'd have to trade to hit >68% S/L res. Getting to 65% isn't too tough... hmm.

To reinforce/rephrase, cloak of darkness is what ultimately sets Dark Armor on a league of its own; it's significantly more defense than Combat Jumping, acting as a second Weave. Your stealth status won't matter in combat very much as long as you're running Death Shroud and taunting, and CoD and Cloak of Fear let DA/ function as a layered set. However, you can *delay* it and take Combat Jumping early instead, in order to help manage the high Endurance costs DA/ is famous for. And to reinforce another point Justaris made that might've gotten lost in the shuffle -- Dark Armor needs the pool power Tough (from Fighting) as early as possible, since it directly affects DA/'s primary, resist-based mitigation. Here's my recommended 1-35 levelling build for this combo. You won't be able to run CoD, CoF, or Weave very much until you have Dark Consumption, and even then not really until you have it slotted. Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 35 Magic Tanker Primary Power Set: Dark Armor Secondary Power Set: Dark Melee Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Fighting Hero Profile: Level 1: Dark Embrace -- EndRdx(A), ResDam(3), ResDam(3), ResDam(5) Level 1: Shadow Punch -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(5), Acc(7), Acc(7), Dmg(9), Dmg(9) Level 2: Murky Cloud -- EndRdx(A), ResDam(11), ResDam(11) Level 4: Smite -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(13), Acc(13), Acc(15), Dmg(15), Dmg(17) Level 6: Obsidian Shield -- EndRdx(A), ResDam(17) Level 8: Dark Regeneration -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(19), Acc(19), Heal(21), RechRdx(23), RechRdx(34) Level 10: Shadow Maul -- EndRdx(A), Acc(23), Acc(25), Dmg(25) Level 12: Combat Jumping -- EndRdx(A) Level 14: Boxing -- Empty(A) Level 16: Siphon Life -- EndRdx(A), Acc(27), Acc(29), Dmg(29), Dmg(31), Heal(31) Level 18: Tough -- EndRdx(A), ResDam(31), ResDam(33), ResDam(33) Level 20: Super Jump -- Empty(A) Level 22: Acrobatics -- EndRdx(A) Level 24: Taunt -- Empty(A) Level 26: Death Shroud -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(33), Acc(34) Level 28: Cloak of Darkness -- EndRdx(A) Level 30: Weave -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(34) Level 32: Cloak of Fear -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(36) Level 35: Dark Consumption -- RechRdx(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A) Level 2: Health -- Empty(A) Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A) Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(21), EndMod(27) ------------

One thing that is not at all clear from this function is how AI targets sources of mez or healing, which we know from gameplay that they do. The ranged Taunt powers are supposed to trigger the same behavior, which is evidently separate from their effect as a Taunt status. But emphatically it does not appear to be the case that targets are ever affected by more than one Taunt multiplier period -- literally all of them are scrapped except one (the first one that lands, replaced by the next one that lands subsequently with >=2x duration, replaced same). Even with six tanks, the target will only have one Taunt. And this does gel with my experience. My observation has been that when I am tanking and lose aggro to another tank or brute, and they go down, the target will aggro whoever attacks them next rather than me (even though I would have expected to have Gauntlet or Taunt still multiplying my aggro). Don't read too much into the language. The taunt is a) gone (the word the code documentation uses is "scrapped," and what it actually appears to do is set the new taunt duration to 0 so it gets removed on the next clean-up) and b) if it wasn't gone, there are no circumstances where it would matter because it would still expire before the longer-duration one.

Corruptors play redside. They were introduced at a time when side-switching wasn't possible. Because of the shake-out of faction crossing, Defenders, Tankers, and Scrappers to this day have an identity crisis. MMs are already, explicitly, a tanking AT, and (as other posters have commented) are even capable of the play style your AT would use. I think you'd do much better to propose something like a "golem" or "elemental" pets set with a Stone-Armor-like power as the specialty.

Remarkably efficient of you. Revised Psionic Shielding Still no such thing as "toxic defense." But I think you might've over-corrected a little on this set. You can keep singles of any given mez -- it's stacking them that starts to cost you. You also don't have to cost Sentinel armors the same way as Scrapper armors; I don't know exactly the development paradigm for them but I can gauge from the existing sets that they get a lot more leeway in trading in resilience (def or res) for sustain or mez. ...And to be honest, I'm a little disappointed you took the safe route and didn't just redesign the set entirely around Drain Psyche. Sure, you'd have to cobble together a working set out of some truly miserable numbers, but that's what makes life exciting! Revised Mechanical Frame Again, no "toxic defense," only resistance and zuul. Radiation can be pure energy (e.g., Shivans) or a mix of energy/toxic (Radiation Melee, iirc Vazhilok barrels). Most robots in-game have a Smashing weakness; I'd honestly do that over Cold, but nbd either way. How do you see this set as comparing to Invuln numerically? Revised Toxic Aura I like it! -Dam/regen set is genuinely viable, and not something we've done (my half-written proposal for a psi armor set works similarly, with an emphasis on -dam, -tohit, and -rech for its toggles and much less innate resilience). If we're getting into intermediate setbuilding, the budget for s/l defense or resist is slightly cheaper than other types. I'd kill the disorient on the first power -- I do see how it's thematic, but disorient is actually a handicap in an armor set -- as well as the -dam, and give it a smallish (~10%) amount of s/l Defense. Click powers also get a better budget for the most part, so Poisonous Shield ends up as an effective "keystone" power that you can pile on a pretty good amount of -dam, most likely with a decent radius. I'd also kill the damage on Malicious Clouds and give it a teensy-tiny (~3-5%) amount of defense-all. Living Wasteland is a little redundant with the other powers in the set. I'd suggest turning it into an Unrelenting/RotP style power that can be activated while standing or defeated. If you're standing, it does a strong +regen and +dmg, and perhaps a bit of +def. If you're downed, or go down during the power, it does a Rise of the Phoenix-style nuke and pops you back up with the bonuses, but after 30s you take a penalty to maximum endurance for a little while.

Certainly we all have a lot to refresh on; welcome back, in that case. You seemed very confident in some bad information, which I've grown to associate with people learning from Twitch streamers.

I think this would be worth addressing before wading in. You know Defender FF probably better than anyone, but balance adjustments are ecological as much as specific. I think of Sue Storm as an FF/Energy Defender; she gets her force bolts from her secondary. I would see a power that holds enemies in place so friendlies can hit it as less of a "hold" in CoH terms and more of a -def, or maybe a strong -slow/-rech. It's also a bit difficult to plan mitigation around mez powers, since they're all-or-nothing effects. If you hit an AV with a -60% tohit like Dark easily can, they resist 5/6ths of it but that's till -10%. If you hit them with a mag 3 Stun, nothing at all happens. This is probably the core of why I'd advocate for different changes to FF. FF is only marginally better than Cold (FF softcaps with set + manuevers, Cold softcaps with set + manuevers + grant invis and an alpha) and conditionally worse than Dark (which achieves -60% tohit with Darkest Night and Fearsome Stare, as opposed to four powers providing an equivalent -45% for FF; but ofc, Dark has to hit first). Both Dark and Cold provide additional mitigation in the form of -rech, -dmg, and soft controls. FF does as well; knockdown is a form of active mitigation. But while Cold and Dark multiply team damage with -Res, -Def, -Regen, and the like, FF only does three things: AoE mez protection (fantastic!), defense (good!), and knockdown (okay, but this is usually sufficient as one strong KD power or as a secondary effect on several powers, not the primary point of half the set). Defense as the sole point of the set also ends up problematic for two other reasons. First, Defense is by far the most common direction to build up a high-level character's resilience. It means very little that FF can softcap a toon from nothing when in practice, Time can softcap most toons from where they actually rest. Further, even if it were to be simply "the best at defense," FF provides no defense debuff resistance. All Defense-reliant armor sets (and many mixed sets) do, and for good reason. As far as VEATs: VEATs softcap defenses very easily, provide a good amount of offensive buff, and can do other debuffs and/or Blaster-level damage on their own. Granted, they are an EAT, but their tradeoff is supposed to be flexibility -- their bag of tricks is impressively strong but shallow. Putting FF into the "impressive but shallow" category invites a comparison that they're likely to lose. Finally, there's the issue of action economy. Force Bolt is interesting as an active defense but it ends up being really disproportionate in terms of cast time-to-effect. Compare for example Dark Blast's Torrent, which is another strong KB power has about 4x the recharge time. Even with that, you end up with more effect time in most cases -- you only have to cast Torrent once to affect four enemies, as opposed to four separate casts of Force Bolt. Suggesting that FB is specifically a single-target mitigation seems... strange, since it still takes multiple castings to break through an AV or EB's resistance and protection (eating up a lot of action economy vs eg Benumb, which just eats 62.5% of the target's damage for 30s on one cast). The community thought has generally been to amp up FF's debuffs, its debuff resistance (especially for Defense), and provide it with absorb; the last either by cottaging an unpopular power like Force Bolt or reworking the shields somehow. The reason an Absorb power is preferred is because a direct heal is a bit out of theme for FF but Absorb has a similar effect and makes thematic sense with force fields. I think it'd be great if I could convince you of that, and if we could figure out how to keep FF's active role in combat without either making the set OP on controllers or eating a Defender's entire action economy to maintain the effects.

idothisoutofloveeeeee No. Anti-mez powers are very rarely auto powers, and never in blanket form; having an endurance cost is a deliberate point of failure for them. Similarly, damage-boosting powers in armor kits are essentially never auto powers. That effect alone, as a click or toggle, is worth a power pick. I'm not clear either if when you say resistance you're referring to the protection already there, or if you also mean this grants AV-level effect resistances, which would be another no. This is an overloaded kitchen sink of a power for no clear reason. Okay, but it's gonna cost you. Drain Psyche is basically Instant Healing, except perma-able. Putting it into a melee set moves you from "a layered set" to "a regen set," with about half of your budget blown on this one power. Your other powers' defense and resistance numbers are going to be looking at WP with envy. First, no because we can't do thorns with current tech. Second, no because you just made Moment of Glory a toggle. Third, no because you already have a Confuse aura and stacking the same mez as an AoE within an armor set is, itself, a sufficient power pick. Each one of these is a sufficient "no" on its own. On to the robots! Toxic defense is not a thing. Also, toxic damage includes poison and also things like acid and radiation. It's weird that you made acid-proof robots. There's nothing wrong with this power, but it's the only anti-mez power you list and grants no protection to anything. Any power with an affect-enemy effect is automatically a taunt aura on Brutes or Tankers. This means most sets have several taunt auras. The few that don't have one get it slapped into their anti-mez toggle. You can pick either defense or recharge bonus for your thing. No on the proc. If you want a damage aura just make a power that is that. I like this idea. Make it your T9. Rephrase it. Okay, but it's on an unenhanceable 1000s timer, works about half as well as I think you're imagining, and lasts for 30s. And now we're moving to . So you clearly looked at Fiery Aura's first power and were like... okay, but those numbers are just too high. Let's water down the power by adding more things on to it! So Fire Shield has four typed damage resists, one of which is very low; one mez protection because Fire's weird; and no enemy effect. For a Scrapper it hits something like 35% on the 'good' resists and 12% on the bad one. What you're going to get for your power is something like 2/3rds of those numbers thanks to the additional typed resist and the -tohit. This is better than your Psionic set is looking, tbh, but still. No they don't. Bio Armor is breakin' all da rulez by putting one of those effects on a below-average damage aura, and it pays through the nose for its weirdnesses. Assuming you mean "protection," we had this talk already about passive powers. This is another kitchen sink power that tries to cram half a set into one auto. "Toggle: Your attacks gain a small -regen proc" is a T7 Scrapper power entirely on its own. You also just cleverly took one of Fire's problems -- the bad in-set Immob protection -- and went "nah, my set's cooler." No. A click heal is fine; a click heal that has an accuracy component and minor damage is fine. Another pile of debuffs isn't. It's like deja vu. Are we stuck in a loop? This is the most OP blast set ever. *checks notes* Armor? That can't be right. Well, without getting into whether or not zero is a number, I've gotta say kudos on the power name. The reason I started this by saying "i do this out of love" is because if I hated these ideas as much as you probably think I do by now, my post would have been way, way shorter. Literally eight characters long. Your ideas are -- let me not pull any punches here -- broken, and frankly show some spotty knowledge of the game. But they are also interesting. Start over, slow down, and pretend that you're on a budget. Your budget is, "+11.25% defense or +22.5% resistance to one position or type pair is, itself, worth one toggle; dealing 7 dps to 7 enemies in melee is worth one toggle." Every time you add something to any power, every other aspect of that power and every other power gets worse. Imagine that everything on an auto power costs three times as much, and that debuffing an enemy is exactly as expensive as buffing yourself.

Nearly every attack in the game is tagged with one or more damage types and a position. When the game is calculating the hit chance, it uses your highest applicable defense. This means that you (generally) only need either positional defense or typed defense, but not both; SR is a positional defense set. You mention that you're looking for "40% or more" defense, but that's a bit of a low target for a Defense set. To floor basic enemies' hit chances to the game's minimum of 5%, you want 45% or more defense... ideally more, on a defense-focused set. The difference is between enemies hitting you 10% of the time, or enemies hitting you only half as often; in other words, you're taking double damage by stopping at 40%. I agree that the Brute build has lower S/L resist than I'd prefer. I'd've gone with the Fighting pool over Leadership, and included some skipped Resistance bonuses. However, SR has up to 50% (on Scrapper or Brute) resists that are not shown in the Pine's summary that take effect as the character loses health. Without some familiarity with the game's mechanics, the summary screen can be misleading. I'd recommend reading up on attack mechanics and some of the other game systems. And welcome to CoH!

What does this proposal offer solo, teamed, in TFs, or in PvP that existing MMs do not do?

PK, what do you see as the core reason (other than theme) to take an FF defender over a cold defender or a VEAT? Any of those can softcap the team's defense, so what's FF bringing that other kits don't? (It looks like what you're saying here they ought to bring is damage, and I'm a bit concerned that you're thinking of FF specifically as a long-time defender. Giving FF blaster-like damage on a Defender is going to play out very differently on the other three ATs with access. I personally would see the set moving in a more support-ive direction, adding Absorb, maybe some other ally buff like tohit or damage auras, playing up the Knockdown, and making Detention Field a time-limited toggle rather than a click.)

Oh man. Best possible 4th of July event: To celebrate the 4th, the mayor has commissioned a giant robotic Uncle Sam for the parade. Unfortunately, the low bid came from a 5th Column front group. Now Uncle Sambot has gone rogue and it's up to the heroes to disable him and defeat the Nazis! I don't know anything about Mission Architect but it might be time to learn.

Expanded somewhat, these could make interesting options for a new Incarnate Slot.

Canny, you're divine. Nobody believes these things when I say them, but now I can quote God Herself. Sure, but is it turing complete?

Now I'm itching to do some old-school Warburg/Shivan/Katie Hannon runs and crash STF with six Blasters or something. Or none of those things, and five Defenders. Hah. I don't know which possibility amuses me more -- gear checks for content runs, or PUG hard way badge runs based on slotting alone.

Staff fills in gaps in almost any set. It has a positional parry, a +res finisher, a regen finisher, and a global -end stance. I think it works especially well for Resist sets like dark, fire, or rad; and pretty well for SR, Bio, Stone and WP. It can't be used with Shield and it offers the least for Ice (it doesn't directly address any holes in Ice nor does Ice benefit much from minor +res).

1.5 * 2.2 is 3.3. If you multiplied >1000 by 3.3 and got a number in the 2000s, you should check your calculator or fingers.