Sunsette

Brutes, Masterminds, and Scrappers are the ones that can do this reliably. Corruptors, Sentinels, and Stalkers can do it fairly often but it's a bit more picky about how they build. The rest is really build dependent as far as non-EATs and I've never invested any serious effort in any EATs so I don't know anything about them really.

... that's brilliant. Already ended up going with a different concept for my next tank project but I'm snatching this. +1 inf.

Rule of fives with two sources mean ten. Ten times 7.5 is 75. It's a little initially unclear, yeah. That said, the 7.5% seems to be a flat added value based on base movement speed, and not an enhancement bonus to any movement categories. I'm not sure it'll be anywhere near significant even if it is possible to ten stack. 7.5% move speed gives me the most dramatic effect on hover, since it's the slowest to begin with, but GotA only affects run. (It should probably stack since affecting only run is different from affecting all movement speeds.)

One step ahead of me! I would be rather indebted to you if you could let me know, either by reply here, or private message, whenever you conclude the results of that research.

I'll update the guide accordingly. I've been experimenting more with Super Speed. I'm not sure I'd take SS with Hover, myself, but given the number of other forms of mitigation of KB that's not an issue. I am beginning work on an update right now, but it's rather extensive and may not be up right away; I need to re-evaluate every attack power's IO suggestions based on my new understanding of PPM. I'm really glad you found it helpful!

First of all, thank you nihilli and TankShock for clarifying my points! I can ramble and that hurts my clarity. Second of all, YOU'LL TAKE MY FOOTNOTES FROM MY DEAD HANDS.1 I also appreciate the explanation provided by jack_nomind. I may have actually underestimated this effect myself, focused as I was in seeing its effects in my own, high global recharge build. It's something I'll need to consider deeply in the revision of my guide. First of all, this information is incredibly useful, thank you. Second of all, this brings up a question I had; in the case of cones, is the radius based on their original radius or on their modified radius? I am fond of increasing cone range. Does anyone know? Much appreciated. --- 1 This is a joke.

That is something I miss from the early days of MMOs -- not just WoW, but Asheron's Call, where I started. It used to be that you could run into people in the wild and they'd be struggling with something hard so you could run past them and just go 'huh' or you could choose to take a moment, get involved, lend a hand. Make a friend. You can still do that a bit in WoW and SWtOR (not as much as you used to) and I imagine FF14. (Confession: I couldn't bring myself to play it for long. But my BFF's a big fan.) A lot of other MMOs these days, and definitely in City of Heroes, that's... not really a thing. The only real outdoors content is 'god DAMNED SNIPERS IN FOUNDERS FALLS!!'

I think that's very well put, EggKookoo. I'd quibble with one point there, and expand on another. (The quibble: ten years ago, WoW was in the Lich King expansion; we were past the era of tank and spank in raids by the end of Vanilla, and in dungeons by the end of BC.) Expansion: No one goes to World of Warcraft saying "I'm playing for the lore." Granted, I don't think anyone goes to any MMO for that reason. (SWtOR, once. No one's ever going to repeat that.) But it's a great way to keep players. I was never a constant player of CoX in live, and it was because I frequently found myself going "this is repetitive and meaningless." You're absolutely right about the way WoW uses the content to shape the narrative and also vary it. What keeps me in Homecoming is all the QoL features now that we're not implicitly being strung along on a subscription; I can cut past the grind to get to what I like, but not so quickly it feels meaningless to me. WoW shoved every bit of this well-crafted content in service of raiding. When the content wasn't in raiding, it was meant to try to convince you that raids were a good thing, somehow, even if that part was five steps removed from the front door of the activity you started doing, be that tradeskills or pet battles. (I mentioned that 'contempt' for Blizzard a few posts above? Yeah, this is where it gets into play.) Many developers were hired away from raiding guilds in Everquest and asked to make their vision of a better game. And what did those guys like? Raiding. Hooboy, did they ever love raiding. When WoW hit, it was big news in the MMO community, and it was big news because of the combination of a relatively major license and the fact that it was an MMO that was easily accessible and presented a lot of illusion of choice and character value. Look how granularly your character can be mechanically customized! Look at how lively the background NPCs are. You get rewarded XP for -EXPLORATION?- WoW really felt like: play your own way. And these devs looked at it, and they looked at their subscriber numbers, and they were happy. But they weren't happy about one thing -- one big thing. Raiding engagement. Less than 1% of players ever set foot in Naxxramas 40. As people got higher up into raiding, they found raiding went from a social activity you did with your friends to a job. Decurse this immediately; avoid the fire; keep up max DPS; don't let this buff expire. Oh, you did any of those things? Various mods will helpful let the whole raid know who to blame. Guess you're not going to be awarded the loot. So people said: hey, this isn't for me. Which, really, fine. Not every part of a big game has to be for me. I had a lot of friends who legitimately enjoyed the social environments of raiding in the early days of WoW, I didn't, and that was OK! There was a lot else the game had to offer me. But these raid devs, they loved raiding. I mean, I guess that's what happens when you literally hire guys because they were so good at playing a certain type of gameplay. They make more of that gameplay. They fixed a lot of the things cutting people out of raiding in Burning Crusade. Yet, a problem persisted. I don't believe they ever released hard numbers for this period, but I'd guess anywhere from 10 to 30% of the active population ever seriously raided in Burning Crusade. Whatever it was, the engagement was too low and not to their liking. They wanted more people raiding. So they made more changes. They started tying five-man dungeons to the raid dungeon plot. More and more prominent questlines that began innocuously had to finish in a high level raid. People wanted to finish the stories they began, but they didn't want to raid.So Blizzard simultaneously loosened up more restrictions on raiding -- disquieting the people who actually enjoyed the model -- while forcing more and more of their game to essentially revolve around the endgame raid. Here's a lot of free, good gear: please go raid with it. This talent is cool, but isn't allowed to work in PvP worth a damn; please try it in a raid. This story is continued in a raid. This pet is locked in raid. This mount is locked in a raid. Etc. Etc. Etc. Character builds became meaningless; it's not that the 31 point talent system was ever good in a meaningful sense, but it presented the illusion that your character was unique and belonged to you. Soon, the only thing that differentiated two characters of the same class was a 5 second cast time to respec and the amount of DPS/HPS/TPS & Mitigation they could output with their current gear. All of this had to happen in order to make raiding as accessible as possible, without ever stopping to consider the idea that maybe ... a lot of people just didn't want to raid under any circumstances. They didn't consider that those other features, those other convenience features, should have been treated with as much respect and love as raiding did, rather than relegated to being a gateway drug to convince people to do raids. No, the only feature that ever got anywhere near the amount of respect that raiding did was PvP, and while I have some very fond memories of battleground PvP, I was never competitive enough for arenas, and cross-server battlegrounds added convenience at the cost of server community -- turning PvP into one more toxic, high stress, interchangeable grind. I think what we're seeing now is the draw-down; people who were led by carrot and stick (often the lore they had grown invested in) through content they never really wanted to do to begin with have finally just gotten tired of it. There's nothing effectively hiding the illusion anymore that everything in the game is a speedbump before the raid that the EQ devs and their handpicked successors have always imagined at the heart of WoW. So they jump ship to other games that provide respect to those other qualities, or at least a better illusion of respect than WoW. Can WoW recover? I think it can. The Warcraft name still has a lot of power and respect. I have enough good memories that it's not inconceivable a better expansion could bring me back; Legion managed to get my attention for a little while. Will WoW recover? Well, only time will tell. I think at this point they need leadership that isn't coming from a highly WoW background, has instead played other games in-depth, and goes "okay, here's the button we need to press to fix this." That's essentially how FF14 came out of nowhere from a joke to the current juggernaut of MMOs, and I don't think anyone saw that coming either.

Perhaps surprisingly given that I've been explaining what I think WoW does right as well as i can muster, emotionally I have little but contempt for Blizzard, and will probably just laugh if that happens. There's only one Blizzard game that I have loved without qualification and the rest is a lot of eye rolls from me. So... meh!

BfA is straight up terrible, and there are a number of reasons I don't foresee a return to Azeroth in my cards anytime soon. However, virtually all of WoW's strengths at its apex are shared by Final Fantasy 14, and much of the commentary here is relevant to it as well. I'm not responding to this topic as if it were asking "why should you play WoW right this instant" so much as a general inquiry regarding the appeal of the EQ/DIKU MMO lineage.

CoX has far better lore as far as the skeleton of the events that happen. WoW lore is kind of a joke when read as an outline. But what Blizzard nails is presentation. You have to stop and think and go "wait, this is actually dumb" and they do a great job of making sure you don't have a lot of headspace to think about anything but how awesome any given moment is. This shouldn't be read as their writing being deceptive or their writers unskilled. At worst, their universe lacks coordination at points. Really, the problem is the inherent nature of an endless treadmill of bigger and bigger threats needed in order to emotionally engage the audience. The story can't end, no matter how much it may make sense to. In this, WoW writing actually shares a close relationship with the comic books it's clear their writers are intimately familiar with. The canon is best treated as a suggestion if you get too far back from the present; stay invested in the current storyline because you enjoy the characters starring in it. And in the face of that problem, WoW manages to make the end of every dungeon land with an emotional impact. I would rather roleplay in City's world any day. But there are a lot of storylines in this game that are pretty forgettable.

I was under the impression that benefits stop at 99.

I... Like this is something from an actual build I am actually playing, and it affects one or two of my attacks (depending on exact variant) and I've been repetitious about the somewhat anomalous nature here.

It's a little bit more complicated than that as a result of the existence of global recharge and animation time. Using Focused Power Bolt as the example there, at 200% global recharge, it can be used (roughly) every 5.71s due to attack clipping, which makes it actually 6.072s in my attack chain. Over one minute, that's ten chances to activate at 63.01%. First of all, I like the higher predictability more with buffs like Build Up and Recharge because they actually affect how you play. Chance of no activations at 0% enh recharge is 0.00004795603%³ and there is a 87.96350087%¹³ chance that at least five activations will occur in that time period, which covers the entire minute with the buffs I want, basically. When it's at 100%² individual recharge as well, that shortens to 4.21s, or 4.884s in attack clipping. That's twelve chances to activate at 37.03%. Chance of no activations at 95%² enh recharge is 0.00980250185%³ and there is 47.540585129%¹³ chance that at least five activations will occur in that time period. That's a substantial loss of consistency -and- efficacy. The lower the animation time the closer it comes to the ideal, but there's never an attack with less than 1s (less than 1.188s?) animation. Animation time is, time and again, -the- limiting factor for recharge in this game, a stark contrast to games like WoW and SWtOR where Haste is never allowed to increase by more than 10 to 30% under normal conditions but does speed up both animation times and often cooldowns, thus keeping attack chains the same and avoiding breakpoints like this. I want to stress that your analysis is mostly correct at low levels of global recharge, such as leveling and builds that can't dedicate a lot of focus on recharge, this is just a particular instance of perverse incentive that arises at very high gear levels for a specific type of builds. However, since the specific type (endgame damage builds) is fairly common, it's worth noting. --- ¹ Don't ask me for the calculations, I just know to use a binomial probability calculator here, not how binomial probability actually -works-. It's witchcraft imo. Sorcery! Mathemagicians! ² I use 100% in one place, 95% in another, because I'm actually not good at math and I wanted to get this done quickly so I used calculations I already had laying around on hand. Don't worry; not only is this error approximate, the error is in favor of the high enh. recharge case, which is still inarguably worse. This clearly demonstrates my point. ³ At no point did I calculate the individual chance for an attack to miss due to a Natural 1, but it shouldn't substantially alter this comparison and would affect both sides equally.

Agreed that this is an edge-case scenario. Thought occurs though; Assault Radial Incarnate is believed to be a 6 PPM system. While mids/pines/etc. doesn't currently have a model for Assault Radial Hybrid, if it's using this PPM system, that really underscores the beneficial effect of substituting global recharge for enhancement recharge (where possible) in attack builds.

Yeah, this is basically an entirely endgame concern at this point; what I did was I worked out a three attack rotation that's fairly high DPS to begin with, then added two attacks that are based around proc fishing (one with a five-slotted purple but very high base recharge and extra proc, one with pure frankenslotting). The result is a 25% increase in my DPS staying at pure range, and a 50% increase at melee range. That's the conservative estimates, non-conservatively I'd guess it's more like 30 to 60%. So somewhere in that range.

I'm not surprised. It's a big paradigm shift and it only heightens the value of global recharge. All the same, I also understand the reasoning behind the change; for various reasons it somewhat countervails the tendency to try and strip a rotation down to three moves, which can feel monotonous and unsatisfying.

What is the benefit in dismissing differing viewpoints so casually? CoH and WoW; one of the biggest MMOs ever and the biggest ever, launched in the same year. There's been considerable overlap in the userbase over time. You don't have to like something to acknowledge what a thing does well.

WoW is leagues better at group combat design, offers a lot of fairly fun minigames, and it's nearly impossible to not understand the plot importance of the missions you're doing. Dungeon designs are far more interesting and varied. WoW is basically better in every way when it comes to content. What CoH offers is a player, rather than content, focused experience. You don't have to struggle to not look like a clown. You have meaningful build differences between players of the same class. Few are the concessions that must be made to composition of the group to succeed at any content. Few are the restrictions made because a specific combination was very efficient at killing in a very specific circumstances. WoW is a game you play to explore the content. I love the aesthetics of Ulduar still, as well as its fights. They reward strong knowledge and fast reflexes, while the story is conveniently disconnected from the worst of WoW writing but had a clearly comprehensible idea. City of Heroes is a game to enjoy how cool my character is. The content is meh; why are we in some weird Hellenistic pastiche? Haven't I seen this cave a dozen times before? Wait, we killed an AV in the middle of that fight? But... I can fly at 40 mph in three dimensions while one-shotting a Nazi with a rocket launcher and dodging shots from robots like a boss in my boss outfit that doesn't mandate overlarge shoulderpads.

Okay, slightly clickbaity title so let me get definitions clear upfront: - Enhancement Recharge: Recharge that comes from slotted enhancements and Alpha Slots - Global Recharge: Everything else (Hasten, etc.) I recently discovered the updated PPM formula and I've been experimenting with it; having zero enhancement recharge on a power (as opposed to the natural inclination to get it to 95%-ish) not-quite doubles its chance of getting PPM. This has a dramatic effect on a few powers and minimal on others. All data rounded to two sigfigs. Ex: Focused Power Blast at... 0% Recharge/2 PPM: 63.01% chance to proc 33% Recharge/2 PPM: 49.78% chance to proc 50% Recharge/2 PPM: 45.24% chance to proc 95% Recharge/2 PPM: 37.03% chance to proc 127% Recharge/2 PPM: 33.17% chance to proc 0% Recharge/4 PPM: 95% chance to proc 33% Recharge/4 PPM: 95% chance to proc 50% Recharge/4 PPM: 90.48% chance to proc 95% Recharge/4 PPM: 74.06% chance to proc 127% Recharge/4 PPM: 66.34% chance to proc Ex: Power Push at... 0% Recharge/2 PPM: 31.06% chance to proc 33% Recharge/2 PPM: 24.45% chance to proc 50% Recharge/2 PPM: 22.18% chance to proc 95% Recharge/2 PPM: 18.08% chance to proc 127% Recharge/2 PPM: 16.15% chance to proc 0% Recharge/4 PPM: 62.12% chance to proc 33% Recharge/4 PPM: 48.90% chance to proc 50% Recharge/4 PPM: 44.36% chance to proc 95% Recharge/4 PPM: 36.15% chance to proc 127% Recharge/4 PPM: 32.29% chance to proc Obviously the downside is that you're using the attack less, which is where global recharge comes in. it's relatively easy to get global recharge into the 180-200% range for defense-oriented builds, before including Force Feedback: Chance for Recharge, which roughly works out (considering its internal cooldown) to an average of 33% recharge provided you have it slotted on enough attacks you use frequently. This means there's a serious benefit to high recharge builds finding one or two attacks that have multiple weird IO categories that aren't part of your standard rotation with a high cooldown, frankenslotting them to the aPROCalypse, and then letting go. It's especially great since IO procs don't have their effects limited by being low level IOs; you can grab a level 20 IO that procs for damage and if you keep the attack slow, it's a free 50% damage on each use of the attack. (Exact percentages of damage vary by power and IO). Generally purple/very rare damage IOs aren't a great candidate for this because they have a higher than normal PPM at 4.5; you still want them on your slowest animating, slowest recharging attack that actually has enhancement recharge, because they'll very quickly hardcap at 95% activation chance otherwise (as shown by the Focused Power Bolt example at 0% recharge/4 PPM; FPB could get up to 50% recharge ish on 4.5 PPM and not overcap at all). This also seriously devalues Alpha Slot recharge for such builds. I am shooketh at the moment, and wondering if there's anything big I'm missing here. With this build philosophy, I essentially tripled an attack's DPA (rather than the normal ~double) while giving it a 66% chance to give me +100% recharge for 5 seconds and a 33% chance to give me free build ups and I can use it about every 8 seconds. The downside is it's slightly endhoggy and more susceptible to -tohit effects from enemies than the rest of my attacks.

If you want "I don't die after effort at level cap", Energy is probably a superior choice to Invuln for Sentinels since it also comes with recharge.

Happy to have helped, Rath! I'm currently experimenting with a radically different build based on a new understanding of PPM (the Paragon Wiki formula is outdated). Sacrificing a bit of survivability,but on paper, at least, it should be radically higher damage and -- best for me -- looks prettier and doesn't turn me into a psuedo-scrapper forced into melee range.

So after some thought: - Web Grenade could also impose a placate. - Increase Caltrops' base range to 40 feet (up from 25). - Decrease Triage Beacon's cooldown to 30 seconds (down from 200) - Force Field Generator could also grant the user (and only the user) powerful stealth, a la Invisibility. - Trip Mine and Time Bomb could be double damage maybe? - Time Bomb should be a Remote Bomb instead that you can explode with an additional power rather than on a tight timer.

n.b. This is exactly why I suggested being precise with specific powers you wanted to see a buff. Easier to nail down arguments. Which AT is this from btw? Different ATs can have different versions of the powers.

My biggest issue with web grenade is that on top of being bad, it's a forced power pick unless you're a defender. It would be so much better if it was AoE or threw in additional debuffs. Aside from that, so much of Traps would be improved with just shorter cooldowns it's not even funny. Triage Beacon in particular. In addition to all your other comments and suggestions for Traps I would also throw in that Caltrops could use a much longer range on a support set imo. Also it would be appropriate if Traos got a stealth or placate effect added to one of its powers (IDK which) to make setting up actual, like, traps much easier. Would also love to see those Energy Blast changes implemented.