aethereal

Scrapper Primary powers with non-standard Crit Chances: Broadsword > Head Splitter: 15% Claws > Eviscerate: 15% Dual Blades > Sweeping Strike: 15% Electrical Melee > Lightning Rod: No crit Energy Melee > Total Focus: flat 10% instead of 5% chance for minions/10% for LTs or higher. Note also reduced crit damage Energy Melee > Energy Transfer: flat 10% instead of 5% chance for minions/10% for LTs or higher. Note also reduced crit damage Katana > Golden Dragonfly: 15% Kinetic Melee > Concentrated Strike: No crit (20% chance to recharge Power Siphon, but note that this is not tagged as a crit, so it won't be affected by Scrapper ATOs etc.) Martial Arts > Storm Kick: 10% minions/15% LTs and higher Martial Arts > Eagle's Claw: 15% chance to crit, plus applies a +33% chance to crit for 2 seconds Radiation Melee > Irradiated Ground: 10% chance to "crit," regardless of enemy rank, but not actually tagged for crits so will ignore crit chance modifiers Stone Melee > Seismic Smash: 20% chance to crit, note reduced crit damage but raising the Mag of the hold to 6 (this is a real crit, it's affected by crit modifiers) Titan Weapons > Arc of Destruction: 15% I think that's an exhaustive list, though it's based on a manual scan of City of Data and it's possible I missed things. Note that there are other powers with non-standard critical damages, this is just non-standard critical chances. This is pure theory-crafting, but I think that if you put the ATO2 into Eagle's Claw and it went off, then you stacked two of either Cobra Strike, Crippling Axe Kick, or Crane kick so that they fired with zero delay after Eagle's Claw and each other, you would have a 99% crit chance for the two secondary attacks (assuming you're attacking an LT or higher, and that you have the superior ATO1 (10% base, +50% for ATO2, +33% for Eagle's Claw, +6% for ATO1). I'm not totally sure that you can actually get both of the follow-up attacks into the window of the Eagle's Claw and ATO2 effects, though.

I don't know that the T9 is all that important to the set anyway, especially on a brute or tank. It gives a mild damage buff, but it has pretty bad DPA. The reason to play it is Storm Kick + Dragon Tail + some decent ST attacks on a Brute, so if you hate the T9 but otherwise like the set, I think you could feel good about playing it on a Brute.

Titan Weapons also provides a +defense power, Defensive Sweep (11.25% defense to melee and smashing). Martial Arts does for Brutes and Tankers, but not for Scrappers (or Stalkers, ironically, because man does Stalker MA need something).

Taunt auras do have explicit calls to taunt effects -- either a redirect to the inherent, a normal power effect, or, confusingly, both. I think (but am not sure) that this is because if they tried to operate through the global proc, it would follow proc rules: so it would pulse once every ten seconds in auto-powers and toggles. The desired behavior is for it to pulse every one second, so they explicitly call it rather than using the global proc.

I don't think this is correct. Here's, for example, Tanker Whirling Mace: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=tanker_melee.war_mace.whirling_mace&at=tanker Note no specific taunt effect, and no tags that key to Gauntlet's taunt effects (it does have stuff about Gauntlet's radius and target cap). The way that Gauntlet's taunt effects work is by adding a global proc to all your powers, so they don't need to be specifically tagged for it or to have an effect like, say, Scrapper criticals have on the power itself. Now, the exact ways that global procs work are slightly mysterious to me, so I wouldn't be totally shocked if there were some weird exception, but I think that the way Gauntlet works is that it'll affect any enemy-affecting power.

I'm not sure I fully understand the intricacies of global procs like Gauntlet, but I don't see anything obvious that would prevent it from proccing. I think it'll work, but don't take that as gospel. That said, Takeoff only has a 10' radius base, and a max targets of 10. Your taunt aura will have an 8' radius base, and max targets of 10. You probably won't taunt many enemies that you aren't already taunting with your aura.

Does the boss Mag 3 status protection that they get to most status effects also affect taunts? Not a huge deal if it does -- the Scrapper taunt auras will pulse twice and quickly overcome the status protection, and everything else is mag 4 -- but it might mean Scrapper Energy Aura and Willpower have a lot of difficulty taunting bosses at all, especially if they're purple-patched. Do purple triangles affect taunt? I don't think they do -- I've never noticed tanks/brutes losing aggro on AVs when the purple triangles come up. (EDIT: Wiki suggests it does not). Does AV resistance affect taunt duration? (EDIT: Wiki suggests it does not).

Taunt durations (and magnitudes): Scrapper Aura (Willpower): 1.25 seconds, mag 3 Scrapper Aura (Energy): 2.5 seconds, mag 3 Scrapper Auras (Invul, Rad, Bio, Shield): 13.6 seconds, mag 3 Brute: Inherent punchvoke & Auras (all, I think): 13.6 seconds, mag 4 Tanker: Inherent punchchvoke & Auras (all, I think): 14.96 seconds, mag 4 Scrapper Confront: 26.6 seconds, mag 4 Brute/Tank Taunt: 41 seconds, mag 4 Provoke from the Presence pool seems like it has a different duration per AT.

It's not really "many" aura powers -- it's one aura power per set for Brutes/Tanks, none for Stalkers/Sentinels, and the six sets mentioned above for Scrappers have one taunt aura each as well. The general mechanics of threat seem to be something like this: As long as you are within an enemy's perception range, you get an escalating amount of threat Targeting them or their spawn-mates with powers adds some threat as well, and the amount of threat depends on the damage or debuff caused And then: Taunt multiplies that threat And probably how far you are from them also multiplies the threat And your AT has an inherent threat multiplier If they don't currently have a target, they target the person with the highest modified threat. If they do have a target, there might be some level of resistance to changing target. But what we don't have is much in the way of a sense of the magnitude of these factors. People anecdotally feel like debuffs generate a lot of threat, but we don't know how you generate a number from either damage or debuffs, we don't know what the multipliers are, and I'm not even sure if we know how the magnitude of taunts plays in. As a result, we only really have some basic impressions of how it all works. My impression is: Taunt is strong. Taunted enemies very reliably change to target the taunter, albeit not necessarily for the entire duration of the taunt. In general, my impression is that if you're peeling aggro off a taunter, it's more likely that they have not recently hit the target with a taunt, than that you overcame the taunt (unless you have a taunt of your own). But I can't quantify that, and neither can anyone else.

I don't think anyone really categorically understands how threat works on a mathematical level, so it's hard to say for sure. Based on my understanding, the damage aura will in fact enhance the stickiness of enemies that are already in the taunt aura -- but for that to matter, you have to be in a situation in which they were in danger of being peeled off in the first place. Is that a realistic concern? A wiki page claims that an active taunt multiplies the threat of the originating character by 1,000 times the duration of the taunt, which seems like, uh, a lot (but is it? How much do threat levels ordinarily vary? As far as I can tell, nobody really knows). I generally do not see people peeling actively taunted enemies off the taunter. I could believe that in the case of multiple competing taunts (like, the Bio scrapper is on a team with a Brute or certainly another taunt-aura Scrapper), the Bio scrapper was meaningfully more sticky. But without competing taunts, it seems to me that the most likely way that a taunt-aura scrapper loses aggro is not "someone peels off an enemy who is within the taunt aura," but rather, "someone peels off an enemy who is not taunted at all, due to being more than 8' away or in excess of the target cap of the aura," in which case the damage aura is not going to help either, because it has the same radius and target cap as the taunt aura.

Ninjutsu is an overall strong armor that will go well with lots of things. Its two big problems are: 1. It's a very defense-based armor set with low DDR 2. Its offense boost is on the weak side, just an increased chance to crit once per combat. Ice is this very feast or famine set: it has one of the strongest ST attacks in the game (Frozen Touch), it has good-to-great AoE in Frost and Frozen Aura, and it has good additional mitigation in Ice Patch, but Frozen Fists is dire, Ice Sword is weak, and Greater Ice Sword is mediocre, so you don't have much single target beyond just Frozen Touch. Energy is one of the stronger ST sets in the game, but has weak AoE. Electric is not a great set. Lightning Rod is good and fun, but other than that it has extremely mediocre ST and its AoE is like.... fine but not great. Street Justice has strong ST, mediocre AoE, and is overall a pretty good set. I don't think any of them have incredible synergy with Ninjutsu, but again Ninjutsu is a solid armor set that goes well with most stuff.

I mean, what's "obviously" going on is probably that you just have developed an incorrect impression. People develop anecdotal impressions that are incorrect all the time. Did you actually hold everything constant besides the scrapper armor? Maybe the rest of the team in the case of your Shield scrapper was just better at generating threat! Maybe they did a variety of things that took aggro from you before those enemies closed into the (short!) range of your taunt aura, so the enemies were never taunted. Maybe you did it yourself: to the extent that shield charge knocks down a bunch of enemies, that gives them a window of time in which they aren't getting close to you and thus aren't taunted. Maybe the Shield scrapper's group was less good at immediately winnowing a group down to 10 or fewer enemies, which is the target cap for the taunt aura. Maybe some members of the Shield scrapper's group generated taunt themselves. Brutes and Tanks generate actual taunt with every attack, so when they jump in with their AoEs, they continuously taunt enemies repeatedly and heavily push them to get into the range of their taunt auras. Scrappers do not, and an 8' range 10 target cap taunt aura is a fragile way to tank. City of Data means that we can see "under the hood" what is going on with powers with a high degree of fidelity. There is no taunt in Bio besides the 8' range, 10 target cap aura. Does the damage aura make a difference? I don't think it is very likely to make a serious difference: it just generates threat, not taunt, and it won't generate a particularly overwhelming amount of threat, and it will overwhelmingly only generate threat on people who are already being taunted by your taunt aura. Bio does of course have two wide-area AoEs (DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura), that can help generate initial threat, but again it's threat, not taunt -- it'll be relatively easy to peel enemies off of you if they don't get in close and get taunted by your aura.

Nope! Bio, Invulnerability, Radiation, and Shield all provide the same level of taunt (13.6 seconds base pulsed every one second). Energy Aura and Willpower provide a lower level of taunt (energy does 2.5 seconds of base taunt pulsed every 2 seconds, willpower does 1.25 seconds of taunt pulsed every second. Both might provide gaps in taunting against higher level opponents if their taunt is not enhanced). All scrapper taunt auras are mag 3.

You're desperately wrong, but even if you were right that it's "foolish" to balance sets, not powers (and it is very much the opposite of foolish), they do in fact balance sets, not powers. If you want to go yell at the clouds regarding how it should be cool for let's say Claws to get Frozen Touch because powers should be balanced atomically, feel free. But recognize the fact that despite your preferences here, your preferences are not being followed. To go back to the (correct) point that you had at the beginning, regardless of the reason for things, facts are facts. ~100% of all Bio Armor characters have a taunt and a damage aura surrounding them. What actual difference would it make to anyone's actual play experience if those two effects were colocated into a single power versus being effects of separate powers? For sure! You said, "It's not a coincidence, it's by design," where the antecedent of "it" was "scrapper damage auras don't taunt." The wrong part is suggesting that there is a design principle for scrapper damage auras not to taunt. As we both agree, they don't (besides Bio), but it's not a design principle. Yes, I know. Jesus christ, trying to follow the conversation. You said, "[scrappers get] single target Confront vs AoE Taunt." I used that as an example of one of the things that you said that was straightforwardly correct, because you later asked why I was laser-focused on the thing about Scrapper damage aura/taunt as a design principle. I'm laser focused on things we disagree about. When you say things that are straightforwardly correct, I don't argue with you about them. Are you caught up now? You! Quoted above. Taunt auras are one-per-set. You don't get separate multiple taunts in any set in the game. Again, if you want, you can shout at clouds that sets are designed and balanced as wholes, nobody can stop you from having bad opinions. But the clear fact is that sets are balanced as wholes. So the question is, do sets get taunt auras, and do sets get damage auras. Scrappers usually don't get both, with one exception, Bio. But this is not because there is a design principle forbidding Scrappers from getting both, it's because taunt auras are only given to Scrappers in certain somewhat narrow circumstances, and it just happens that Dark, Fire, Stone, and Electric don't have that circumstance.

This is a distinction without a difference. Bio has a damage aura and a taunt aura. It doesn't matter if they're in the same power or not. Nor do you need multiple taunts in one armor set. It's really important for people to understand that sets are balaned as sets, not as powers. Because that's what you said that was wrong, or at least somewhat wrong. I'm not arguing with you about, for example, "Tanks get Taunt and not Confront" because, you know... you're right! It is a fact that Scrappers have only one armor set that has both a taunt aura and a damage aura. Which I agreed with, and said, in my original message, was a useful thing to note! But things like, "Under what circumstances do Scrappers get taunt auras" are interesting things to know about the game, and I don't think that you're correctly presenting the way the design works here. You decided to spend a lot of time telling me what I should or should not say, and didn't really seem to spend a lot of time actually thinking about what I did say. Think about the term "buff aura." What's a "buff aura"? There are all kinds of Scrapper sets that get toggles that buff the scrapper -- that's so unexceptional that we don't even have a name for it. Look at the Stalker version of Invincibility: it's a toggle that gives the Stalker +to-hit and +defense. Nice, simple, straightforward power. For something to be a buff "aura," it pretty much has to be a scaling power, because you don't need to count enemies in range of a buff power unless you're giving a scaling benefit. "Debuff auras" are different, and indeed Scrappers get plenty of debuff auras that don't come with taunt. Cloak of Fear in Dark Armor debuffs to-hit. Lightning Field gives end-drain. Mud Pots slows. Chilling Embrace gives slow and -damage. But none of those offer a scaling bonus to the scrapper. There could be various design reasons why some Scrappers get taunts, but there aren't! There's one. It's about whether that armor set as a whole gets scaling benefits from close enemies. It's not about debuffs, and relevantly, it's not about damage auras.