Sunsette

I'm Commander Sunsette, and this is my favorite suggestion on the Citadel.

Hm, would a "Changes" section specifically to note any significant differences from the scrapper or brute version of the set be a good idea?

I agree with much of your analysis, to be sure. I attempt to defray these concerns by discussing slotting separately for mid level and max level, as well as basic rotations with necessary recharge breakpoints to make. I understand that judicious use of procs from attacks with multiple proc categories is a good way to get one or two attacks significantly up in power. But in most cases I've encountered this, most of your attacks need to ideally remain 5 or 6 slotted with a set in order to get enough recharge to make good use of this on your attacks generally. Re: Survivability. I won't get too much into Sents vs. Blasters generally right now but to say I agree in many respects at 50. Leveling up, though, is a very different matter and depends a lot on the blaster secondary too. I think calling attention to powers and IOs that should be taken early would cover much of this for leveling yes? How would you recommend that the breakdown better encompass this?

If anyone is interested in testing, then I strongly recommend doing so on Rikti Pylons, if you can survive them. They output in Smashing damage, which is one of Bio's weaknesses until you've spent a lot of cash, so that may not be feasible. That said, I would really like to direct conversation back towards the question of analysis formatting for now... we can split up discussion by powerset later.

Just to be clear, my research was on offensive opportunity, not offensive adaptation -- I have never used nor tested bio as a set.

Seems to be about 10 seconds but I wasn't specifically timing.

Stealth IOs just make you harder to detect. Unless you have surplus of slots, I recommend putting jut in a sprint and binding the sprint to a key for when you're out of combat, toggling it off during. A stealth IO will make it as if you ate 30 feet farther away for the purposes of being detected. CJ and Hover are an ok combo... for defense. No reason to toggle hover off. Bind prestige jump jets for extra speed in short bursts. I usually spend four slots on Hover: Fly, Fly/End, Defense, and Defense/Global Recharge, but that last is pretty pricey.

Alright, here's my preliminary suggestion for a powerset evaluation format: Powerset Name Basic Qualities: If damage primary: High/Med/Low Single-Target Damage, High/Med/Low TAoE Damage, High/Med/Low PBAoE Damage If survival secondary: High/Med/Low HP/Healing, High/Med/Low Defense, High/Med/Low Resistance, High/Med/Low "Clicky-ness". Note any type or positional weaknesses here too, before IOing. If pool: The main purpose of this pool. Special Qualities: For primaries, list secondary effects here: knockback, knockdown, -regen, -res, -def, etc. Do not include the benefits of Passive or Active Opportunity. For secondaries, list things that aren't defense, resistance, healing, absorbs, or max HP here. So +recharge, defense debuff resistance, any notable mez protection the set lacks or is weak in, etc. If pool: Can skip Beginner's Notes: Any powers or strategies that are especially beneficial to low level or new players to this set. Skippables/Must-Haves: For primaries or secondaries, list the powers that typically are considered optional or bad. For pools, list powers that are the strongest in the set. Whenever possible, please explain your reasoning. Slotting: Suggest notable IOs for slotting at mid-levels (try to keep it under ten million) or at 50 (sky's the limit for budget). Whenever possible, please explain your reasoning. Base Rotation: The standard attack rotation leveling up or at early 50s, for people to refine. Note any cooldown benchmarks that may be necessary for a specific rotation if it requires over 70% or so enhancement or global recharge. Strong Synergies: Suggest any primary, secondary, or pool (save ones that are mutually exclusive with this one) that synergizes with this one, and explain why. Ex: Energy Blast synergizes well with pools that contain an AoE immobilize with knockback protection and a strong melee attack to make the most of position with Nova; Dark Blast synergizes well with Dark Mastery to completely floor the opponents' accuracy. Whenever possible, please explain your reasoning. Potential Conflicts: Suggest any powersets you think do not pair with this one well generally, or may have specific problems. Ex: "While this primary works well with Bio Armor, they both demand a lot of power choices, which may be difficult to fit into some builds" or "Dual Pistols already drops opponents' defense a lot, so Ninja Tool Mastery may not add a lot of benefit at 50." Whenever possible, please explain your reasoning. Incarnates: Would skip this for pool powers generally speaking, but incarnate powers that pair notably well with this powerset. Whenever possible, please explain your reasoning. Other: Anything else that you think should be noted about this powerset. Taking suggestions to improve this format. We'll need to set benchmarks for the High/Med/Low before people can submit even if they like this format, so don't rush to submit anything.

If anything, I'd just say the HR you manually insert should not be as visible as the HR that separates the signature, so as to make it clear where the post ends. (So I'd swap them around, albeit a little less bright.)

Since you were so kind as to ask, I did have one tiny last suggestion -- the ability to insert a horizontal rule. It would be helpful in guide formatting. Not a big deal, though. Thanks again, the new forums are looking fantastic!

Ahahaha. I am an idiot. I forgot that I had added an extension a while back SPECIFICALLY to intercept sites trying to prevent right-clicking. I whitelisted this site, and whaddayaknow, it works. I'll make sure to REMOVE EXTENSIONS before commenting about functionality errors next time. My apologies. As for the other changes, thank you very much. I appreciate your hard work and responsiveness.

Uh. I don't know what you mean by patrols, specifically, but all that other stuff is still in the game.

Rare is the game, even those not endgame focused, that does not eventually make its old content trivial in difficulty.

That is the same formula as in Bopper's thread, FYI -- the two sources agree. It's only a different inasmuch as it ignores recharge even if it is a toggle with a significant recharge period, which makes such toggles the literal worst places to put them in. Just stating this for clarification, not intended as a criticism of anyone.

Oh, I don't blame you for not knowing about it -- I only know about it because I happened to do a bit of work theorycrafting PPM before. Glad it was helpful. Cheers!

Okay, but this is in fact a bug that commonly occurs: Incidentally I did some basic testing -- all of my characters I was able to replicate the issue on right away were below level 50 or had become exemplared below level 50. No level 50 characters had the issue without exemplaring. However, some non-50 characters did not trigger the issue. It appeared to occur irrespective of the amount of global recharge, so probably a spurious bit of memory on my part prior. Anecdata tabulation Character Security Level Combat Level Has Global Recharge? Grayed Out? A 50 50 ✔️ ❌ A 50 29 ✔️ ✔️ B 50 50 ❌ ❌ B 50 29 ❌ ❌ C 50 50 ✔️ ❌ C 50 29 ✔️ ✔️ D 32 32 ❌ ❌ E 35 35 ✔️ ✔️ F 30 30 ❌ ✔️ G 12 12 ❌ ✔️

This is all showcased far better than I could manage in this thread by Bopper.

Results on Chrome. Because I was dumb I haven't tried disabling all addons yet though none of the ones I have on are typically interference heavy. Will do when back at my desk. Firefox gives me better-ISH results, but I can't actually alter the number of rows or columns, which is a bit of a bummer.

Um. Okay.

Ctrl+Right-Click does not appear to work for me in editing an existing table. Tested on Google Chrome. Sorry to be a pain in the neck. As a much, much more minor point, it would be nice to have shortcut functionality when editing where hitting tab advances to the next cell, but I have no idea if that would be difficult to implement.

That may be how it's supposed to work -- I vaguely recall that from live, now you mention it -- but then it's inconsistent the other way: Runs the full 30 seconds, recharges, no problem. Notice this on my 50s, while my low-levels are stuck with that not working. I think the characters that don't have this issue have global recharge, which would indicate some incredibly sloppy coding.

So this is interesting. I don't have all my incarnates worked out on this character yet, but BR/EA DPS with Havoc Punch: 245 DPS. Without: 230 DPS. It's really amazing how much all the -res and -regen adds up. Should get a mild increase when I have my interface up to T4 from T1. Furthermore, -12.5% confirmed:

It would not be my preferred option, but it would be an option I would definitely be willing to take.

Oh, wow, first contribution already! Thanks! I'd like to hold off on any other contributions for the moment because I think we should work out good formats for this, but I'll type up something when I'm back to my computer -- on a phone atm.

Will also point out the drones are a surprisingly good choice for low visibility pets.