aethereal

Enhancement Diversification doesn't affect the bonus recharge from Blood Frenzy, as it's, you know... not an enhancement, it's a global recharge bonus.

Its de facto damage bonus is higher than it seems: the most overlooked part of Blood Thirst is that it turns the bleed effects that Savage Melee attacks have from being 75% chance to continue (per tick) to 100% chance to continue. So on say a level 50 Brute Vicious Slash, this goes from: 13.5133 * (1 + .75 + .75^2 + .76^3) = 37.1815 To 13.5133 * 4 = 54.0532 So a fairly solid increase in damage there (which is in turn affected by both the actual damage bonus of Blood Thirst and by Fury). Is it still worse than normal Build Up? I dunno, probably.

You have to be 50 to slot purple enhancements. And there's no point in getting attuned purples. ATOs are auto-attuned and can be slotted at 10 or 7 or something. However, you won't be able to slot superior ATOs until 50, though they still are technically attuned.

So here's what I'd specifically propose: a difficulty setting that's called Eliter Bosses. It's a binary difficulty setting that is separate from the AV/EB toggle. It makes Elite Bosses Eliter. This applies to any Elite Boss spawned when you're the mission owner, whether that EB is an enemy who is only spawned at the EB level, or whether they're a scaled-down AV due to the solo-EB difficulty setting. Eliter Bosses would have something like 2x the normal EB hit points, a resistance to debuffs that's roughly half of what an AV's debuff resistance is, and, I don't know, maybe a scaled down purple triangles of doom. Something in that general range. People who are like, "No, the point of EBs is to not be that much tougher than a normal boss" can leave that setting unchecked and never see an Eliter Boss. People who want a challenge consistently between EBs and AVs can turn the "solo AVs" difficulty OFF and the "Eliter Boss" difficult ON, and they will never face an AV, but they will face Eliter Bosses instead of EBs. And people who want all the difficulty they can get can have solo AVs on and Eliter Boss on, and they'll face AVs when available and Eliter Bosses when AVs are not available.

There certainly is a big gulf between an EB and an AV. I don't know if EBs should exactly be moved up, but it would be nice if there was something in the middle so the challenge level wasn't so dichotomous. The kind of thing that might challenge a small group of people (maybe 3-5) with levelling builds who are slotted but not 100M+ inf builds? EDIT: to expand, the specific problem is that it feels like there are lots of group power levels (be the "group" solo or small or large or whatever level) that find EBs trivial but AVs too difficult.

The bug fix for Savage was a huge nerf to Hemorrhage on Stalkers only. The power was legitimately bugged, but it was bugged in such a way that, I forget the details, you could get like 2x crits by critting specifically from hide, I think? This wasn't the most recent SM bug sweep, which mostly didn't do much, but from a couple of pages ago.

Yes, I mean... everyone knows. For what it's worth, Hemorrhage with 5 Blood Frenzy is the highest DPA attack in Savage Melee (that is, when factoring in its animation time, it does the most damage per unit of activation time). Damage and recharge time are, in general, linked in a strict ratio. I don't think that Hemorrhage's basic problem is too much endurance cost (in general, Savage is, due to its inherent, a very endurance-efficient set). But again, the point of the post you quoted was not to defend Hemorrhage's holistic worth as a power -- it's a bad power -- it was to point out that it gets a significant "extra" bonus when used at Blood Frenzy 5. I mean... those are all really good powers that definitely don't need any buffs.

It's another 4% plus a higher base damage and an extra tick of damage. You seem really determined to turn this into an argument about whether Hemorrhage's 5 blood frenzy bonus is worthwhile. I'm really not arguing with you there. I agree that Hemorrhage is underwhelming at all levels of Blood Frenzy. But there is a significant extra bonus on the transition from 4 to 5 Blood Frenzy, that is not just a linear increase of the same kind that you get from all the other levels of Blood Frenzy. I think that the design concept here is that this is a significant trade-off, and is the "minigame" of Savage Melee -- deciding whether the additional bonus effect that you get from burning 5 stacks of Blood Frenzy is worth the lockout that follows, or if you should take the lower outcome of 4 Blood Frenzy in return for the ability to quickly rebuild your Blood Frenzy. It just doesn't work that well, because Hemorrhage sucks. By the way, comparing Hemorrhage to Vicious Slash is maybe a little unfair because Vicious Slash (on Brutes) actually is a very good single target attack, with a better DPA than Total Focus, a very attractive cast time, and a worthwhile secondary effect. Vicious Slash is very good! Savage Melee arguably shouldn't get another attack that's as good as Vicious Slash. It's worthwhile to note that Hemorrhage with no Blood Frenzy is in fact lower DPA than Maiming Slash as well as Vicious Slash, and that Hemorrhage doesn't benefit from the somewhat underrated Blood Thirst bonus of turning bleeds from 25% chance to cancel to auto-hit.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=brute_melee.savage_melee.hemorrhage&at=brute So the way that Hemorrhage works is: For Blood Frenzy 0-4, it does 5 ticks of 13.597 damage plus an additional 4% damage per level of Blood Frenzy. For Blood Frenzy 5, it does 6 ticks of 14.306 damage plus an additional 20% (ie, 5 x 4%). (EDIT: both of the above are on top of the instantaneous 31.6979 damage that it does -- that amount is not affected by Blood Frenzy) So, is that "worth" it? I mean, I think no. Hemorrhage remains a bad power. But the point is, you get things from level 5 blood frenzy that you don't get from levels 1-4, in exchange for the lockout. The difference between 4 and 5 blood frenzy is not just another 4% damage boost, like the difference between 3 and 4 is.

Note that both Rending Flurry and Hemorrhage get an additional bonus for spending all 5 blood thirst stacks, over and above the linear bonuses they get for other blood thirst expenditures. I think that the implicit "game" of Savage Melee is supposed to be deciding when to tactically spend down below 5 and avoid the lockout, and when to go all out and suffer the lockout. This is one reason why SM really needs both spenders to be worthwhile powers -- if you just have Rending Flurry as a spender, it's very awkward to manage your blood thirst stacks, both because at low global recharge it's pretty easy to earn up to 5 blood thirst before Rending Flurry comes off CD. and because sometimes you're like fighting a single opponent and don't want to use Rending Flurry for its bad ST damage.

In fairness, the base damage of Hemorrhage is better than Vicious Slash as soon as you have I think one point of Blood Frenzy, and when you have 5 points of Blood Frenzy, the DPA of Hemorrhage is better than Vicious Slash. That doesn't stop Hemorrhage from being a pretty garbage power. I think its position as a Blood Frenzy spender sits awkwardly with its status as a heavily DoT power. Hitting your opponent with a DoT sort of implies that you expect the fight to go on for a while, which suggests that Blood Frenzy lockout is bad for you. It seems like Savage does need this additional Blood Frenzy spender (without Hemorrhage, the only spender is Rending Flurry, the PBAoE). I don't know that it's super valuable to game out exactly what fixes it needs -- I don't think the devs pay much attention to that kind of specific suggestion -- but some kind of up-front damage, or maybe applying the same buff to you that the Build Up does where your other attacks' DoTs become guaranteed.

As usual when discussing this topic: 1. Armor sets don't really need a buff (in PvE). You can be plenty invulnerable with Invulnerability. Giving it another power that either made it more efficient to achieve invulnerability or gave it a spike of no-downsides additional mitigation isn't really warranted. 2. The current crashing godmodes make the sets in PvP, and changing them to provide less of a bonus with less of a crash would probably nerf the sets in PvP.

That works.

Or you're looking at a different shard.

There's a costume suggestions thread in the Suggestions forum -- it doesn't seem likely that devs are going to add costumes that are completely unrelated to anything they've made available here during the final stages of the public beta.

You attributed that quote to me, but it's not me, it's, uh, Zepp I think. And: yes. Realistically, the people who are at risk of losing names under the current proposition is not "people who have one or two beloved non-traditional characters." They can advance those characters to level 6 with ease, or just log into them once a month (and emergencies where you actually can't log in to a computer once in 30 days are rare as hen's teeth). It's the people who have 20 or 30 such characters, for whom it would legitimately be a slog to log into them once every 30 days -- not a huge problem, but a tiresome chore -- and where they'd have to devote quite a few hours to get them all to level 6. And that's as it should be. Because that's name squatting. Having a whole stable of characters who you don't play but sit on should be a pain in the ass, to discourage people from doing it.

I dunno! Maybe not that much. I grow bored of non-RP toons, so. But if I had a character who was literally just a mule for item storage or an interface to the AH, I don't think I'd care if his name got changed.

Exactly how urgent is it for your marketing toon to have a highly desirable name?

CoD doesn't show the NearGround tag for individual power effects (as far as I can see), so I can't check that for recent versions, but looking back at the old JSON files, it seems to me that immobilize protection is, like the knock protection, flagged NearGround. That's also what the power description implies. So, with fair confidence, I think: Only when near the ground: knock protection, immobilize protection Regardless of whether near ground: Resistance to energy, negative energy, and endurance drain.

I suggest getting attuned sets for low-level characters, not either SOs or common IOs. It doesn't really cost much money (or rather, it does, but you can resell them once you no longer need them and the total difference after you've resold them is a pretty small amount of money), and it makes a drastic difference in how your character plays in the 20s and 30s. People have really convinced themselves otherwise to their detriment. Even just getting uncommon yellow sets really helps your enhancement values and the set bonuses add up to a lot of QoL even if they don't bring you to unkillable god. If you're playing through the levelling process at a relatively sedate pace, it's absolutely worth it.

So, uh, we lost Diamond Cut and added Mystic? Here's what Mystic looks like for anyone wondering.

Couldn't you just delete the character and recreate it? I mean, you'd have to stow any enhancements somewhere, but otherwise, why do you need a respec when you can just create the character at level 50? You can just create a brand new TW spec it, transfer enhancements from the old one, then delete the old one and rename the new one. EDIT: I guess this way you'd have to use unslotters, which is a mild expense.

So, basically: If you have 0% resist, then you get hit by a 20% resist debuff (a resistable one), then your resistance drops to -20%. If someone hits you with a 100 damage attack, you take 120 damage, or 20% more than you would've without the resist debuff. If you have a 50% resist, then you get hit by a 20% resist debuff (a resistable one), then because resistance resists resist debuffs, you resist half the debuff (so it's 10%) and your resistance drops to 40%. If someone hits you with a 100 damage attack, you take 60 damage, or 20% more than you would've without the resistance debuff. If you have a 75% resist, then you get hit by a 20% resist debuff (a resistable one), then because resistance resists resist debuffs, you resist three quarters of the debuff (so it's 5%) and your resistance drops to 70%. If someone hits you with a 100 damage attack, you take 30 damage, or 20% more than you would've without the resistance debuff. So basically, if you hit someone with a 20% resist debuff, then no matter what their starting resistance is, they take 20% more damage after the debuff than before. I think that's nice. In contrast, defense debuffs: If you have 0% defense, then you get hit by a 20% defense debuff, then your defense drops to -20%, so an enemy who ordinarily hits you 50% of the time hits you 70% of the time, so you take 40% more damage than you would've without the defense debuff. If you have 20% defense, then you get hit by a 20% defense debuff, then your defense drops to 0%, so an enemy who would hit 50% of the time unaided, and who hits you 30% of the time with your normal defense, is back to 50%, so you take 67% more damage than you would've without the defense debuff. If you have 40% defense, then you get hit by a 20% defense debuff, then youor defense drops to 20%, and you take 200% more damage than you would've without the defense debuff. This is why DDR is such a big deal, and in my opinion it kinda sucks as a game dynamic. It makes a really sharp line between "extremely high levels of mitigation" and "extremely low levels of mitigation." So I like the resistance dynamic better. Unresistable resistance debuffs work like defense debuffs. I'm still not sure if the purple patch is technically "resistance" and whether unresistable means "ignores the purple patch" or not.

Does unresistable even affect purple patch reductions in values? I'm not clear. Anyway, unresistable on resistance debuffs creates the whole Defense Debuff dynamic where resist debuffs become massively better on high-resistance characters than low-resistance characters, which is not, I think, a great dynamic.

Some notes on resistance debuffs: Remember that resistance debuffs are affected by the Purple Patch! If a team is at +4, as lots of teams are, what does that mean? If the team level and your level are both 50 and the team is +4, then enemies are 54, and so they're either +4 to you or +3 to you if you have a level shift. If the team level is below 50 and you're at or above the team level, and the team is +4, then enemies are a 50/50 mix of +4 and +5 to you (+3 and +4 if you have a level shift) If the team is below 50 and you're below the team level, and the team is +4, then enemies are a 50/50 mix of +5 and +6 to you (impossible for you to have a level shift in this situation) Debuff modifiers if enemies are: +3 to you: .65 +4 to you: .48 +5 to you: .3 +6 to you: .15 Corruptors get a 15% debuff per attack (on Live, split into pieces on beta). If you have a .65 modifier to that, it's roughly 10%. If you have a .48 modifier to that, it's roughly 7.5%. If you have a .3 modifier, it's roughly 5%, and .15 is roughly 2.5%. Yeah, you'll do better than that against +2 and lower opponents, but... does a large team really need help against +2 and lower opponents? Even AVs? Unfortunately, like all debuffs, there's sort of a catch 22 where the things that you most need the help against are least affected by the debuffs. Like, the 10% debuff per attack that a Corruptor with sonic blast gets against a +3 opponent (ie, a level 50 team when you're level 50 and you also have a level shift) is pretty substantial. But then we're talking a large team of incarnates against an AV. That's usually zerg-o'clock. Are there teams where you're like, "Some of this team is underleveled and we're fighting someone tough and I'd really like the help?" Sure. But then you're probably at 7.5% or 5% per attack, and it's honestly not a ton. So, TL;DR: Test it out, don't just rely on your intuition about resistance debuffs.