Hopeling

Define "better". The scrapper will deal more damage, and benefit more from the +damage buffs. /Shield doesn't have enough resists for the lower scrapper cap to be super important most of the time. Clobber crits are beautiful. You won't need to build fury to deal good damage, which is especially nice when you want to lead with Shield Charge. The brute will be tougher, and can viably tank for a team thanks to the taunt component in all their attacks. 90% resists on top of /Shield's defense is really really good, even if you can only get there during One With The Shield. I think /Shield tends to be slightly better on scrappers than on brutes, but is still very good for brutes, and War Mace doesn't really favor either. It's basically a question of taste.

Eh, this is only slightly true. Typed defenses come in pairs, so there's still only three things to chase: S/L, E/N, and F/C. Psi is an issue for typed defense sets, as is Toxic (there's not even such thing as toxic defense). But these aren't common enough to be large problems.

Regen ticks don't cause 200-DPS swings. Regen occurs in 5% ticks; one regen tick for a Pylon is about 1500 HP. At the levels of DPS we're talking about, it takes 2-3 extra seconds to deal 1500 damage. A 60-second run is 766 DPS, a 63-second run is 736. Not a huge confounder. There's always going to be randomness; no test can remove it. Crits are random, procs are random, misses are random. All you can do is smooth it out by using a larger sample size. Longer fights do that, but so does averaging multiple fights together. The only issue with averaging multiple fights instead of one long fight is that it can overcount things like Hybrid whose cycle time is longer than a pylon test. But Hybrid is basically the significant factor that has a cycle time of multiple minutes like that.

Sure, but doing five pylon tests and averaging them smooths out variance too.

Yep. Battle Axe is essentially a clone of War Mace, with the powers in a slightly different order. Besides slightly tweaked numbers on the cones which are basically a wash, the two main differences are: Lethal damage instead of Smashing damage Swoop instead of Clobber And both of these things are drawbacks! Lethal is resisted more than Smashing, and Clobber is much better than Swoop. Yeah, Mace was widely considered pretty bad before the Clobber change. I know MA got some buffs late in the game's life. I haven't played it or heard a lot about it since then, so maybe it's OK now? Dunno. I've only played one KM character, but I was kind of underwhelmed, and that seems to be a common feeling. I don't really know where it stands in objective terms though.

A custom punching bag might make a better version of a pylon, but that's still testing solo sustained single-target DPS with zero movement in a vacuum. I don't know what would constitute a more holistic measure of performance. Something like "time to clear a Battle Maiden map" would be a kind-of-reasonable metric of overall (AoE+ST) damage under something resembling real-world conditions. There's movement, there's a mix of bosses and minions, you're facing groups but not ridiculous target saturation like an ambush farm, you have to hunt down runners. We could test that with a variety of powersets, with/without IOs, with/without Incarnates. But we'd have to nail down the parameters (are inspirations allowed? Can you go in with a full tray of reds? What about a full tray of Furious Rages?) And we're still testing solo performance in a vacuum, while part of Infinitum's objection is that the set interacts badly with kill-sniping from teammates. I don't even know what kind of metric to use for that. Since Clobber became a Knockout Blow-level attack with a stun attached, instead of just a stun. It's been quite good since that happened. Proliferating it to Scrappers in i21 made it more popular too. Broadsword, Katana, Battle Axe, and War Mace are all very similar structurally, but with tweaked values. War Mace and Katana do pretty well overall; Battle Axe and Broadsword are basically worse versions of those and probably should get buffed somewhat. Martial Arts, Ice Melee, and Kinetic Melee are also candidates for underperformance, I think.

There's a lot of room between "literally everything is fine and absolutely no improvement can be made" and "the whole game is melting". There is quite a lot of feedback other than contentment about the state of game balance. People routinely complain about power creep, about how too much content is easy, about how new sets seem to be categorically better than old sets. There are plenty of people asking "why play X when Y is clearly superior?", and the Flavour of the Month numbers show that this isn't idle speculation, TW really has displaced other sets to a significant degree. I've personally talked in this very thread about how TW's superiority pretty directly sucked the fun out of several other power sets for me. On the other side, people routinely complain about underpowered sets like EM or Force Field. These are all game balance complaint. It's not that the righteous Bufficans defend our freedom while the degenerate Nerfocrats try to take things away; buffs and nerfs are both tools to keep the game balanced, and balanced games are more fun. You and I have a difference of opinon over whether TW is balanced, but not over whether balance is desirable. You say we need more data, which is also fine. I'm asking you: what kind of data? What metric convinces you that TW is fine, and how could that be supported with something besides anecdote and opinion?

It's funny how all successful games, including this one, get where they are by employing teams of professional full-time busybodies. Almost like game balance is important or something.

Yes, I agree that doesn't have it covered. That was the point of that comment you quoted. I'm asking you to help me come up with ideas for what kind of data would cover it. I honestly don't know what metric to use for performance in regular team play; I have my own subjective feelings about it, but yours are different, and there's no clear way to reconcile them. If you feel that it's fine in regular play, by what measure are you saying that? How could that be made objective?

I'm saying there are chains that use FT only once per cycle and do almost as well as running it twice per cycle. I don't think there are any chains that don't use FT at all and do very well, certainly not while also skipping CB and TS. I honestly don't see how to make a gapless attack chain using just FT, Arc, and RA, so I don't think I can answer your question directly. But for comparison, using your previous chain Rend-Arc-Whirl-Rend-Arc-Whirl, you do 598 damage base during Build Momentum. If your Build Momentum chain is Rend-FT-CB-Arc-FT-Rend-CB-FT, you deal 731 damage in the same time period. So if the same proportions hold, your 295 DPS would turn into about 400 DPS.

Again, what kind of testing? I really don't know what kind of data you would consider worthwhile here. Any plausible data is either going to be in a sterile testing environment like a pylon, or heavily confounded by other effects like the powers of your teammates. So far, the evidence we have is: TW is the most popular scrapper set at 50, and disproportionately popular for Tankers/Brutes once you get past the iconic pairings (Inv/SS) and farm builds (Spines/Fire). TW consistently posts top times on pylons, TF solo runs, and other metrics of solo performance. TW attacks numerically outperform other sets across the board. I would say that gets the "sterile testing environemnt" side pretty well covered. I agree that some kind of data for performance in a team environement would help, but I really don't know what kind of metric to even use for that. Do you have any ideas?

On further testing, I think you're right. I have two big gaps trying to run Rend-Arc-Whirl-Rend-Arc-Whirl during BM - one gap between Whirl and Rend, a second gap between the second Rend and Arc. Build Momentum actually expires before I get through it. With more global recharge (I already have +156%), I'd believe you can get through all six attacks, but it doesn't look plausible to get it gapless. I had thought that FT seemed to start recharging before its animation was done, but it must have been in my head, because it lines up just about perfectly now when I'm trying to replicate it. Double FT is not the big offender. Every attack in the set overperforms, even with lower amounts of recharge or in AoE situations. You to run a chain like SlowCB-Rend-FT-Arc-TS-SlowCB-Rend-FT-Whirl-TS with just Hasten and SOs, which only does about 6% less DPS than Rend-FT-Arc-CB-FT. Gaining 6% DPS going from SOs to a purpled-out build is not at all unreasonable.

Bruh, that's what you spent the last 10 pages doing with Follow Through. Meanwhile you've also repeatedly told all of us you don't believe we've even played the set. A little less condescension would be nice.

"Best" is admittedly a loaded word for me to use here. What I mean is: in a decent ST chain, Follow Through is going to do more total damage than any of your other attacks (you can see this directly if you run HeroStats on a pylon test). It doesn't hit the hardest or have the highest DPA (that's Rend Armor), but it does hit almost as hard as Arc (101 for FT, 108 for Arc, 134 for Rend), faster than other attacks (1.188s for FT, 1.716s for Arc, 1.452s for Rend), and recharges faster than either (10s for FT, 20s for Arc, 16s for Rend). It's your bread-and-butter attack. You can put out three FTs for every two Rends, and two FTs for every Arc. Which leads us to... I mean, that's fine. Nobody said that you have to build your character for max ST DPS. It's one thing to not build for pure damage; you don't HAVE to stack purple procs and Musculature and Assault to get decent performance out of the set. But you didn't just not specialize in ST damage; you deliberately sacrificed a significant amount of ST damage for other things. This would be like me slotting Total Focus for stun and then saying that it doesn't hit hard. Sure, it doesn't with that slotting, but that's not the power's fault. Semi-relatedly, even if you don't have FT, Whirling Smash still shouldn't be in a single-target chain; on a single target it has the worst DPA in the set besides Defensive Sweep. Titan Sweep or Crushing Blow would be a strictly better chain. No, in fairness, I think Infinitum is right on this one and I'm the one who made a mistake. TW attacks do weird things with recharge; I think that (in Momentum, at least), they start recharging when the power starts activating instead of when it finishes activating (or something like that; see below). That means that, in a Rend-Arc-Whirl-Rend-Arc-Whirl chain, Arc only needs to recharge in (1.716+1.188+1.452)=4.59s. That may still have a small gap for realistic levels of self-buffed recharge, but nowhere near 1.3 seconds. If I'm right about how TW handles recharge, the chain Slow Rend - FT - CB - Arc - FT requires FT to recharge in less than 2.508+1.188=3.696s when you use it on both sides of a slow Rend, which requires +170% recharge in Follow Through (counting both slotting and global recharge bonuses). In practice, my scrapper has a gap after Rend when doing this without Hasten (99% slotting + 86% global=185% total), but no gap during Hasten (255% total), so maybe it doesn't quite work like that I guess? So the answer to your question is "somewhere between +185% and +255%". Assuming ED-capped recharge slotting, that translates to somewhere between +90% and +160% global recharge. Doing it in a team setting doesn't seem to be much more difficult than doing it solo. Being able to stand still for five seconds in a row isn't THAT rare.

They don't, actually! Sentinels cap at 500% too. Trust me, I'm a huge inspiration whore, hence my avatar 😉

I really like the Sentinel version of /Elec. Its regeneration is kind of ridiculous, and with some defense from IOs on top of near-capped resists to most types, it's very tough. Immunity to endurance drain and high resistance to slows is also a nice perk. I agree that /EA might be a better choice if you're going to fly though.

Just did. Bopper has them here. With Momentum and Arcanatime, they come out to: Defensive Sweep: 1.188s Crushing Blow: 1.452s Titan Sweep: 1.188s Rend Armor: 1.452s Arc of Destruction: 1.716s

Nice, thanks.

I don't follow what you're trying to say here. I said that you should use a single-target rotation for single targets; you said that was finnicky. I'm asking why you think that using your single-target attacks when measuring single-target DPS is finnicky.

"Actually using your ST attacks" is "finnicky" now?

I'm pretty sure Crushing Blow was 1.2 seconds with Momentum, ie Arcanatime 1.452 seconds. You can view their power info by typing something like [Crushing Blow.Momentum] in-game, but I can't remember what the syntax was and none of the obvious guesses seem to be right.

It isn't close, unless you do something profoundly silly like use a terrible AoE chain on a pylon. That chain isn't even gapless; even at the recharge cap, you're just standing there doing nothing for about 1.3 seconds between Whirl and the second Rend. You could at least throw a Follow Through in there. It's the best ST attack in the set; of course ST performance is going to suffer if you don't even use it. In regular play, using your chain, TW would kill the boss about one second later than EM, but would also hit 4 other guys with two Arcs, and nine other guys with two Whirls. That's one boss dead for EM vs basically the whole spawn dead for TW. Or if you want to focus the boss, TW goes Rend-FT-CB-Arc-FT, and at this point the boss is dead about six seconds before EM kills his, and you still have enough time to get off three more attacks before Build Momentum expires. Either way, TW is blowing away EM's performance, either by beating it at its own game, or doing equally well while also throwing out a ton of AoE.

Yeah, I'm not surprised you did less than EM with this chain, haha. RA and Arc are the big hits, but Follow Through has the best DPA and a short recharge. Crushing Blow is also a better filler than Whirl for single targets. Try something like RA-FT-AoD-CB-FT and you should see better results. That's one complete Momentum cycle, so it can be repeated indefinitely between BM uses.

Absolutely, and Broadsword really should get buffs. Seeing TW get a version of Headsplitter with 6x the arc and a faster cast was just LOL though.

What would constitute data from actual gameplay? I'm honestly not sure what you're looking for here. I realize that your past experiences with EM have made you fear nerfs in general, but no, I don't want to make the game less fun. I want the game to be balanced, and I want that because I think balanced games are more fun than unbalanced games. Performance doesn't exist in a vacuum. We can't help but compare sets against each other, because we all play in a shared world, and we play multiple characters. Your own experience with EM is actually an example of this: if there were no other power sets and it had always been nerfed, you wouldn't know it was "bad", you'd just think killing stuff was supposed to be hard. But because you have points of comparison, it is bad. Similarly, Titan Weapons sucked the fun out of multiple other melee characters for me, because TW is so overwhelmingly superior that Broadsword just doesn't feel good to play anymore by comparison. I really do feel like TW has plenty of room to come down and still feel good to play, yet not be strictly superior across the board to almost all other sets.