aethereal

I feel like nobody has really gone all-in on a big mechanical discussion, so here I go: The basic sins of current CoH on a mechanical level are the way defense and recharge work. They distort everything in the game. Too much stuff is built on top of them to really rework them in CoH as it stands, it would just be too disruptive. But if you're starting from the beginning, you should definitely change how they work. It should not be possible for carefully built high-end players to divide the cooldown of every power by three, while a "normal" 50 gets about 40% off the cooldown. It should also not be the case that there's a hard increasing-returns curve towards 90% mitigation available to everyone in the game. So, recharge reduction: This is probably relatively simple. Strongly limit the amount of recharge available, very especially global recharge, then rebalance everything to lower base cooldowns. A power like Hasten (high global cooldown available to everyone) should simply not exist. If you feel the need to thematically support super-speedsters in globally available pool powers (and I'm kind of dubious that we've ever had a great experience with that, instead of building a speed powerset), then the way to do it is not a perma-able cooldown reducer, it's probably something more like a brief buff that reduces animation times (which is not possible in current codebase, but in a hypothetical CoH2 could be). Defense: Somewhat less simple, and more so than global recharge you have to make real decisions about playing off the power-fantasy of superheroes who can wade into groups of foes with some level of niche protection for more armored classes and challenge level. But broadly speaking, removing the increasing-returns cycle would be great. Make it easier to build meaningful amounts of defense for low investment, harder to build defense that achieves >75% total mitigation. Probably entirely remove the confusing accuracy/to-hit distinction (do we in fact need two different traits that both represent being better/worse at landing a blow, that trade off with each other in impossibly nuanced ways?). Probably have class-by-class caps on defense values. Maybe make armor sets that are defense/resistance oriented raise the normal cap for the chosen type of mitigation, but have lower caps for building either outside of your actual powerset. Then, in response to a sane amount of mitigation based on Defense, we remove the doctrine of building content that responds to that defense mitigation by essentially entirely removing Defense (whether through gigantic to-hit/accuracy bonuses or huge defense debuffs). Some bonus mechanical changes that aren't the two above: 1. Remove the increasing-returns cycle on Resistance, too. This is a little less extreme than for Defense and probably only a really big deal for the high-resistance ATs, but it still should be easier to build moderate mitigation, harder to get to 90%. 2. Revamp how mezz protection works. We currently have a situation where armored classes are mooooostly immune to mez and unarmored classes are horribly screwed over by it, we should move both towards the center a little, making mez less problematic for the unarmored classes, but less ignoreable for the armored classes (this probably looks something like armored classes mostly get mez resistance, not protection, so they still get mezzed but for short periods of time, plus everyone gets a period of invulnerability or nigh-invulnerability after they get mezzed, like in PvP, so that large mobs don't lock you down). 3. End the City of Toggles. This game has way too many toggles. Make a focused effort to say that all-in, most characters should have at most two toggles from pools and, if they have a toggle-heavy powerset, two toggles from their powerset. Convert lots of powers that currently are toggles to being auto-powers, or to adding an effect to another toggle, or just rethink whether this power needs to be an always-on bonus to begin with. This should be aided by a decreasing-returns curve with defense/resistance, in which we aren't chasing every last 2% defense obsessively.

Dark melee does debuff to-hit. Unfortunately, you're kinda backwards: it would be a nicer pairing with defense sets like Shield if it debuffed accuracy instead. (As far as I know, nothing debuffs accuracy). Basically, moderate accuracy bonuses are much more common than moderate to-hit bonuses, and while to-hit debuffs are wasted against most enemies when you're soft-capped, accuracy penalties would increase your durability. Notable cases where enemies do have to-hit bonuses (like hard mode or Devouring Earth Quartzes) usually involve a ton of to-hit, such that the mild Dark Melee debuffs don't really make a dent.

I think Bio probably offers the best endurance economy. A good passive early, then a really powerful click later on. Energy Aura and Electric armor eventually get top tier, but their endurance tools come late.

Pet classes have a big unearned benefit in pylon runs specifically, which is that the level deficit of pets doesn't apply to Pylons (which are always even-level to everyone). It's similar to, but much more dramatic than, the overperformance of -res procs (and -res in general) in Pylon runs. So it would be similar for this: if you talked about an "everything-capped" run against a pylon, then pets classes would do amazingly. If you talked about everything-capped stuff against a +3 opponent, then pets classes would have much less of an advantage.

So, important Bio tip: DNA Siphon gives you endurance and health for every living enemy it hits, but recovery and regeneration for every dead enemy it hits. Getting the most out of Bio, in my experience, means using DNA Siphon carefully, when you have a good mix of alive and dead enemies for it to hit. If you hit only alive enemies in a large spawn, you easily fill up your endurance and health bars fully, but then you've got a long time before you get any more use out of it. If you hit a mix of alive and dead enemies, you still refill both bars, but then you get a bunch of regen and recovery to tide you over until it comes off of cooldown. I do not suggest proc-bombing DNA Siphon unless you largely work in big groups in unchallenging content. It's a powerful survivability tool, you need it on the relatively fragile Bio armor.

Yes, you can activate Active Defense through mez. In the case of Super Reflexes and Ninjutsu, I wholly endorse not worrying that much about clicking your mez protection power with absolute infallibility, since you can activate through mez if you screw up a little it's NBD. For Shield Defense, a lot (all?) of your DDR is tied up in the click protection, and there's MUCH more value in double-stacking it than there is for SR or Ninj, so it's probably the one get a little more religious about than the other click-mez-prots. Honestly, some people really, really, really seem to be bothered by click mez protection. Energy Aura and Stone (or Ice!) are fine defense-oriented sets that have toggle mez protection.

Yeah, the way it works is that powers have a "time before effect." That's the difference between when you start the cast and when the first mechanical effects start to resolve. Procs will go off at that point. But each effect of the power can optionally have a further delay between when the effects start and this particular effect goes off, and it's possible for damage to be delayed further. But proc damage won't be, because procs have no idea what each individual effect group does, or what one they "should" go with -- they just go off at the start of effects.

So, to be clear: I said that you'd get a 58% proc rate with a power that had animation plus cooldown including local recharge of 10 seconds. You, in contrast, said that a power that had a 30 seconds cooldown would have a proc rate of 35-50%. You then used a power that had animation plus cooldown of 7.5 seconds, and got a proc rate of 44%. And you are claiming that this proves you right?

AoE attacks get a penalty to the proc rate based on the size of their area. Since Axe Cyclone has quite a large radius, it takes a pretty hefty penalty to rates, but I haven't done the math on it to figure out what it'd be. It also depends on the PPM of the proc! EDIT: My spreadsheet says that the proc rate of a 3.5 PPM proc in Axe Cyclone with no local recharge should be 42.9%

What? No, this is seriously wrong. With a typical damage proc (3.5 PPM), and a single target power, then if the power's cooldown including local recharge + animation time is: 5 seconds, proc rate is: 29% 10 seconds, proc rate is: 58% 15 seconds, proc rate is: 87.5% Higher: maxed out at 90%

Blizzard (on Sents) looks like it has a 90 second cooldown and an 8 second duration, so at maxed recharge it'd be 18 seconds of recharge, so basically about 40% on, 60% off. That's with maxed recharge, usually impossible to achieve without a pocket Kin or something. Ice Storm has a 60 second cooldown and a 15 second duration (and about a 2 second cast time), so it's theoretically possible to perma it.

Yes, it's true, and yes, it does have other bonuses. For a comprehensive look at the mechanics of the Electric Blast set, you'll want to look at the patch notes from the issue where it was overhauled.

...and has had a heal for like 10 years.

Ninjitsu is a misspelling of Ninjutsu.

You can have any number of Sudden Accelerations. The rule of five is about set bonuses. If you were slotting 6 full sets of Sudden Acceleration, you'd only get five sets of set bonuses. But you can use the KB>KD any number of times.

Power Crash was what was the Stun power was made into during the EM revamp. It is indeed the case that pre-EM-revamp, EM wasn't very good on any AT, including Stalkers.

EM has one of its two AoE in Stalkers (power crash, the cone), and it gets a higher damage version of power crash than the other ATs. But, I mean, the other reason why people like EM on Stalkers is that it has truly exceptional ST damage in return for poor AoE. Martial Arts has a bunch of good-but-not-great ST attacks.

Nope, that's entirely your pathology. I enjoy the leveling process so much that I don't create arbitrary barriers for myself, like inability to slot IOs or take power pools, so that my characters can feel awesome from the start.

Repulsing torrent also gets a weak crit, which is insult to injury. It should get a full doubling of its damage.

I have never topped this bio: "What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?" Thank you Mr Yeats!

On the same note, Ninjutsu.

Yes, there are attacks that are real stinkers. Both the T1 and T2 (Nimble Slash and Power Slice) are both pretty bottom-tier in terms of ST damage for T1s/T2s. Vengeful Slice is unforgivably bad, I don't know why it's so terrible. It is somehow lower DPA than the T1/T2, and over time at that. You do get guaranteed knockdown. One Thousand Cuts is pretty bad too, and it has one of those "just walk away from the computer and make yourself a drink" animation times. Typhoon's Edge is an uninspiring PBAoE, but it is a PBAoE and people tend to like those. Really, a lot of the reason why people land on Blinding Feint, Sweeping Strike, and Ablating Strike is: Those Are The Three Good Attacks In Dual Blades.

Guys, for real, just buy some IOs.

I believe, but am not sure, that it works like damage resistance, so if you could have 100% regeneration resistance (as I said in my previous post, max appears to be 95%), it would eliminate all regeneration debuffs. If you're at say 60% regeneration debuff resistance and you get hit with a -500% regen debuff, it would reduce it by 60%, leaving you with a -200% regen debuff.

Regen Resistance Max appears to be 95%. Honestly, I think that the (Damage) Resistance Max not applying to resistance's property of resisting resistance debuffs is a borderline bug and it should also be capped, probably at 90 or 95% (but I expect that this may be a difficult-to-change element of how the game actually works on a low level). I think that this mentality that people have that obviously armors should be highly resistant to things that are intentionally supposed to cut through that particular mitigation type is conceptually weird. When are regen debuffs supposed to shine, other than, "When you're dealing with a regenerator"? What is the point of regeneration debuffs if they don't work on "people who depend mainly on regeneration"? But we have SR, and how resistance works (again, that's probably not so much a feature as an emergent property of the deep nature of the game), so people expect it.