Hopeling

There aren't enough stats to go around. Fully enhancing acc/dam/end/rech would be 400% total pre-ED, and in your screenshot for example, the four pre-ED values in that set only add to 349.8. You usually don't need or even want all four of those stats ED-capped, anyway. Damage usually, recharge occasionally, acc and endredux you just need "enough" and even just 60% is routinely more than enough. And if a set needs all 6 pieces to cap its damage at 50, it's going to be terrible at level 30, and heaven forbid you run less than 6 pieces. The original devs in particular seemed to very deliberately design sets with weaknesses, like Obliteration having very high recharge (and giving a recharge bonus) but little endredux. I don't know that this really had the effect they wanted overall, since in a lot of enhancement categories there are still sets that are obviously better than the others, but it doesn't seem fair to say that a set is only "properly designed" if it's perfect with no downsides or tradeoffs. Making a build is about tradeoffs. One of those tradeoffs is deciding if you want that 6th slot just for the set bonus.

It reduces the recharge of the toggle. Nothing affects how quickly you reenter hide. And yes, the ability to slot recharge in most toggles is quite pointless.

To throw another name in the ring, She-Hulk is *very* clearly Super Strength as a powerset complete with foot stomps and hand claps, she starts at full power and doesn't ramp up, she is best known for her solo work, and she struggles a bit to fill a role when she's on a team, all things that scream "I'm a scrapper, not a brute and not a tank".

For what it's worth, I think it would make significantly more sense to remove the defense crash, rather than to leave it in and make the set OP to compensate. For one thing because that's just weird design, and for another because how much of a penalty it is varies wildly by armor set. It's OK for attacks sets to have some degree of synergy or anti-synergy with primary/secondary, but "borderline unplayable with SR and you don't even notice it with Elec" is too much variance IMO. That second part is totally fixable; just make Hurl and Hand Clap powers you actually want to take. The set already has powers that aren't just punching, they're just terrible.

I think we are talking past each other somewhat here. SS should not have a defense and endurance crash just to do the same damage as other sets. That's just true. People specifically avoid playing SS with defense sets because the crash is too punishing.

Right, again, I agree that the defense crash is unnecessary and should probably go. The endurance crash could go too, I don't feel strongly about that either way. The damage crash, you can't just remove without other changes, because that crash is why SS is merely on par with the other best sets, instead of a huge outlier.

Right, we agree that the attacks in SS itself are mostly bad. Removing the crash wouldn't fix that. You would still keep leaning on Gloom and Cross Punch, you just would be better at it. If anything, Ston testing with Willpower underplays how impactful Rage is, because it's not buffing Burn or a damage aura. Yes Battle Axe doesn't have a crash, but it doesn't get a 120-second duration on Build Up either. A defense crash, no, as I said before. A damage crash, objectively yes, because that tiny difference is after accounting for the crash. It's not on-par and then has a crash to boot, it's well ahead and then brought back to mid-to-high-tier due to the crash. Again, I hate the crash and I would be happy to see it go; it's simply not fun regardless of how good the power is overall. But removing the crash and leaving the power otherwise the same would just buff the set to outlier levels without fixing the weird reliance on pool attacks. I think you have to make broader changes to both Rage and the other SS powers to address that.

SS isn't middle of the road though. It was #1 for brutes in Ston's rankings, for example, and not #1 but still S tier for tanks. Without the crash it would likely be a pre-nerf-TW level outlier; you can get an idea of what that would look like by shaving 10-20s off Ston's pylon times and 30-40s off the Trapdoor times. I don't think this should be surprising to anyone; just glancing at the power info will tell you that Rage is Build Up except with quadruple the uptime. It is a very good power even with its downside, so good that it props up the whole set (and any actually-good attacks you can get from elsewhere). I mean, I hate the damage crash; it's incredibly annoying to play. But just removing that would be a pretty significant buff to SS, without addressing the fact that the attacks are mostly trash, and that seems like the wrong place to start. The defense crash could easily go; it already basically didn't exist on live, and it is disproportionately punishing to some armor sets while ignorable to others. The -def should at least be resistable, or replaced with a resistable -res, which would be exactly equally punishing to all sets due to the way that damage resistance is also resistance debuff resistance. The end crash is fine. Nobody cares that eg Hasten has an end crash, and it's kind of thematic that going into a rage could leave you exhausted.

Do you mean vertical progression then? Horizontal progression is the kind of progression that does not grow your power.

I agree with basically everything you said, and I think this one is the biggest fundamental problem with trying to fix or proliferate SS. It's a kind of terrible powerset by itself, propped up entirely by the insane buff power that is Rage, particularly its ability to boost secondary/pool/epic attacks. You can't nerf SS because then it's truly terrible, but you can't buff it or the Rage interaction takes over the world. I think that, if you radically reworked the set and made other parts of it awesome, that might be enough for the playerbase to not riot too hard against reworking Rage as well and you could end up with something like a decent set. Maybe something like this: Jab, Punch, and Haymaker go from 2/4/8s recharge to 4/8/10s respectively, with damage increased to match. Hand Clap now does damage. The regular damage formula would put it slightly higher than Foot Stomp, but if that's too crazy, on par with Dark Obliteration would still be worth taking and using. Hurl's recharge increased to 12s (maybe higher), damage increased to match, with reduced damage in an aoe, similar to Thunder Strike. Hey look! It can now run a decent ST chain without pools, it has multiple aoe attacks, and two of the most thematic powers are good instead of automatic skips. Now you gut Rage in one way or another, and that's OK because the set doesn't lean so hard on it. Maybe you make it, say, a 30s buff on a 120s cooldown like Soul Drain, and at that point it probably doesn't need a crash at all.

I don't think there is such a gap; literally a majority of armor sets have both resistance and defense. In particular it sounds like you're just describing Invulnerability here: it has some resists (but not great except to S/L), some defense (but not easily capped to everything like SR), even a little bit of healing in Dull Pain that you can either conceptualize as the wearer occasionally being able to power through the damage that their armor doesn't stop, OR as a limited self-healing capability like Infinity War Iron Man's nanites. It even has a psi hole, as you would expect physical armor to. For a more street-level body armor like Batman or Punisher, Willpower fits great. For high-tech power armors, EA, Elec, or Rad can also fit very well. Power sets tend to be designed based on what they do and not where they come from, so that the player has more freedom with concept. If bullets bounce off you, that's Invulnerability, whether it is due to armor or you just have unbreakable skin.

What differences would you want? Invulnerability and Willpower are already good all-purpose low-FX options, and elec or energy fit well for many power armor types. I'm not just trying to dismiss the request; I'm legitimately not sure what you are looking for here.

What exactly is the difference between that, and playing Invulnerability or whatever other set with the power coming from your armor? The name of a powerset is pretty unimportant; people can and do routinely play Broadsword and actually wield a khopesh, or Water Blast and tint it green to make acid blast, or other such conceptual substitutions. Is there some particular gameplay or aesthetic you'd hope to get out of an Armor set that none of the defensive sets currently do?

The tanker damage scalar has been 0.95 ever since it was raised from 0.8 in i26p4. That just means tanker base damage is 95% of what a blaster would do with the same (melee) power.

Vuln could maybe be stronger in magnitude or have better uptime or something, but at least conceptually I think it fits Sentinels well. We are more of an ST class than blasters, and instead of raw personal damage like stalkers, we get a shot-call mechanic to both highlight and weaken a priority target. This is not only useful, but helps answer the question of what role Sentinels are supposed to do on a team.

That's exactly why you don't want the armor visuals tied to your powers instead of your costume. You wouldn't have nearly as much ability to customize.

Primary attacks crit. Secondary, pool, epic, temporary, etc attacks do not.

Scrappers have higher base damage than stalkers, not lower. Stalkers also generally give up an AoE attack for AS, so depending on the primary they are somewhere between a little worse and a LOT worse at general group clearing than the corresponding scrapper set. In addition to the ATO thing, a scrapper's higher base damage means then benefit substantially more from damage buffs than a Brute does; for example, an Elec/Shield scrapper's telenukes will be noticeably superior to a brute's since you use those attacks during Build Up. Brutes do have a higher damage cap, but even at their respective caps the brute still doesn't hit as hard once you count crits, and the brute cap is harder to reach than the scrapper cap is. This is perhaps the reason Super Strength has been unavailable to scrappers for so long; as powerful as Rage is on a tanker or brute, it would be even more busted on a scrapper because of how much we benefit from damage buffs.

Focused Accuracy is a very expensive toggle, and its bonus is relatively small. Since you can usually get plenty of accuracy from set bonuses, it's not great just for that unless your build has a ton of extra endurance. It does give very high resistance against tohit debuffs, which is sometimes useful, both on certain AVs and elsewhere.

AoE is definitely the set's weakness. At least Tremor is decent now that its animation was sped up; it used to be kind of sad. Shield Charge or a damage aura definitely helps, as does Fireball, but at best it still blooms a little late. I have always thought Stone/ would pair very well with /Fire. They almost perfectly cover each other's weaknesses: Stone gives massive control (hard and soft, AoE and ST) to cover /Fire's relative squishiness, while /Fire gives endurance and extra AoE damage to fuel Stone/'s fast attacks and help it get through crowds. But I can't stand Burn without a taunt component, so this combo might be better on a brute. I actually did make a Stone/Fire brute recently, and he's just as excellent as I had hoped.

The original devs already did that. Most attack powers follow the design formulas, and by those formulas Fire really does get more damage than most sets, since its DoT damage is "free" on top of what the formula would give. The problem is, ignoring activation time is objectively the wrong way to design powers, since in practice animation time is extremely important, and even the original devs eventually recognized that ignoring it was a mistake. Plus, FM isn't the only set around that gets to "cheat" on the design formulas, and there are also structural issues with it like the fact that it has only one decent (not even great, just decent) AoE attack in a game where almost all fights are multi-target, and that DoT damage is worse than the same amount of instant damage. So even if we're not worried about DPA and what high-end attack chains look like, it's still 'only' upper-middle of the pack for actually killing things, and has no debuffs or control to back that up. Relatedly, I like /FM better on tankers than FM/ on scrappers, precisely because it gets a second AoE attack in Combustion. I wouldn't say FM/ is anywhere near a bad set; it's not even the worst Scrapper primary. It's just kind of vanilla, clearing spawns at average-ish speed without any particular strengths or exciting things to call its own.

Mainly inspirations. On /WP or /Fire I try to keep a few purples around for rough moments; on /SD or /Inv I keep a few greens. I'm also not above using /ah to load up between missions; I often zone in with a tray that looks exactly like my avatar. Passive regen is also more important than you might think; 300%ish from set bonuses and uniques means you can take about twice as much sustained damage as you could with just unslotted Health. Every 100% regen amounts to a free Respite every 60s, more if you have +HP from powers or accolades. War Mace specifically is also very good at juggling enemies. Picking out either the hard-hitting boss or the annoying-debuff minion/LT and keeping them on their back until they die really reduces the danger.

I'd slot more endredux in your attacks. Two blues and two reds is probably better than one blue and three reds at this point; you can always carry red inspirations to make up for the difference. Frankenslotting would also work. With a typed defense set, I'd consider dropping Defensive Sweep at this point, and getting a sixth slot in some of your other attacks. Unless you're going to use the Numina/Miracle uniques, 3 slots in Stamina and 1 in Health will almost certainly serve you better than 2+2. I would definitely turn off Tough and possibly Weave until you can get them slotted more, maybe toggling them on situationally in hard fights. They're expensive toggles, and Tough doesn't do much by itself without slotting. Also, don't be afraid to abuse temporary powers. A recovery buff from your SG base and a stack of Recovery Serums can handle a lot of problems.

It works exactly like endredux slotting, and stacks additively with slotting. But since it isn't actually slotting, it isn't subject to ED limits. This is just like how damage buffs stack with damage slotting.

How much more consistency? Can you, say, run HeroStats for a session and check the results?