aethereal

Let me re-derive Bopper's "combined formula," I was blindly following it, but I agree that everything seems too high. EDIT: @arcane, it looks to me like you're using the "undampened" area factor. Per @Bopper's guide The simple sphere formula of AF = 1 + 0.15 * Radius, for example, which it seems like you're using above, is the undampened value, and the actual area modifier is 0.25 + 0.75 * AF.

Ice doesn't have a DoT secondary -- I believe that in all cases its DoTs will be considered for crit damage (I had an ice stalker, and certainly the important ones -- frost and freezing touch -- work that way). But in general Ice has a big feast-or-famine story. Freezing Touch is one of the best single-target attacks in the game. Frost and Frozen Aura are both solid attacks, especially if you enhance the range on Frost. Frozen Fists is traaaaaaaaaaaaaash. Ice Sword is, you know, fine I guess. Greater Ice Sword is mediocre.

To @arcane's request, I added a second sheet to the spreadsheet that tries to address procability of the powers in some way. Basically, I put in the proc chance for a standard damage proc (ie, a 3.5 PPM, 71.75 damage proc), and then put in how much of a damage enhancement that constitutes to the power in crit and non-crit situations. I'd appreciate some eyes on the (complicated) formula to determine proc chance. I've triple-checked it, but the calculated proc chances seem kinda high to me.

Fwiw, I considered adding proof chances to the spreadsheet and didn't not because of any philosophical objections to considering procs, but because I didn't feel like I could show useful information without cluttering up the sheet with lots of additional columns that made it harder to absorb.

Hah, it was a lot of work and I'm not sure I'm up to doing the much larger number of ST powers, but I'll consider it for some other lazy weekend. So this is just bothering me now, and I'm wondering: Frost, Repulsing Torrent, and One Thousand Cuts all have irregular crits for... reasons that are unclear to me. Like, they don't seem to have any terribly coherent reason why they shouldn't have normal crits. Frost and Repulsing Torrent are both "ranged cones" (that is, cones with unusually long ranges and those ranges are enhanceable), but Shockwave in Claws and Throw Spines in Spines, also "ranged cones," have regular crits. Frost is a pretty good power all told, so maybe it doesn't mind having a slightly low crit, but it's not amazing or anything. Repulsing Torrent is pretty bad and could use all the help it could get. One Thousand Cuts has a pretty complex damage (a bunch of DoT and then a lump-sum power at the end), so maybe either I just screwed up the regular damage calc or maybe the designers did, but given the low difference between its actual crit and what it "ought" to be, this just seems like an oversight? Anyone know anything about this, and why it is the way it is?

I got interested in how much that was true, so I made this sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WMSg3mw5r6Y0R1lD5c0fGnfaLnsQcU5r2zIm7rb0YdM/edit?usp=sharing My conclusion is that Savage Melee has decent AoE, but it's not one of the top AoE sets in Scrapper primaries. It looks better by comparison as a Stalker primary, since the field is weaker and it doesn't lose any AoE as a Stalker.

(Oh, why I did this, when the info is available in CoD and in-game pretty easily: The advantage of this spreadsheet is that you can more easily compare several or lots of powers together. CoD has better data, but you're only looking at one power per page, it doesn't show you DPA, and it doesn't sum up damage across various effects or DoTs. So it's hard to get a holistic sense of several powers by looking at it.)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WMSg3mw5r6Y0R1lD5c0fGnfaLnsQcU5r2zIm7rb0YdM/edit?usp=sharing This is a google sheet I created that includes every AoE power in a scrapper primary, and compares their damage and other attributes. All DoTs are summed up and presented as a lump sum. I got this data by looking a CoD and, in many cases, handle-copying and adding up things, so there are several different ways it could be wrong. CoD could be wrong. I could be misinterpreting CoD's somewhat cryptic power effects (especially for non-standard things). Or I could simply have made mistakes/typoes/whatever in actually entering the data into the sheet. If something seems wrong, double-check it. Corrections gratefully accepted. I don't have info about non-damage secondary effects here. I do try to note in the notes when there's something strange going on. Some things that might be interesting to do: Sort by DPA. Filter out some of the powers by arc rating, if you're only interested in AoEs that are relatively easy to use (you can drop out the very narrow cones pretty eassily) Make your own copy and screw around to your heart's content Some things that were surprising to me: The number of powers that have crit irregularities, some of them not mentioned in the power description How non-standardized arc sizes were

Both of these sets are lackluster. On Brutes, their secondary effects (DoTs) get bonuses from fury, and that hasn't been enough to make them be overpowered or particularly sought after on brutes. Giving them either a second DoT on crit, or else an increase to crit damage lump-sum that's equal to the expected amount of bleed damage, would give both of them a mild bonus on scrappers/stalkers that would probably take them from "low tier" to "lowish-mid-tier" in overall power level.

As I looked into it to post a bug, I discovered that I was somewhat wrong before. DoTs that are the "main" effect of a power (like, say, Hemorrhage in Savage Melee) do get summed up and applied all at once when they crit. DoTs that are the secondary effect of a power (like the bleed damage in non-Hemorrhage Sav Melee or the burn damage in most Fiery Melee powers) do not get doubled on crit, and so they are better on Brutes than they are on Scrappers/Stalkers.

All numbers through City of Data: Savage Strike Normal effect: two ticks of 23.7734 damage (the two swipes of the claws), plus three ticks of 8.5709 damage, 75% chance per tick, cancel when a tick misses (bleed damage) Critical effect: 23.7734 additional damage Commentary: The critical damage should be at least twice as high (the combined damage of the two claw strikes), by vast precedent. The Stalker version of the powerset, for example, does a critical for the combined value of both claw strikes. I think that the crit should also double the bleed damage (perhaps simply as another DoT, now that we have that technology), but it looks like traditionally we have only had crits sum up DoTs when they're the primary effect of the power, not the secondary? Rending Flurry Normal effect: 73.948 with a 4% boost per level of blood fury, plus three ticks of 5.6931 bleed damage, 75% chance per tick, cancel when a tick missses. Critical effect: 73.948 additional damage Commentary: Somewhat more arguably, the critical effect should get the same bonus based on blood fury as the main effect. I know that there are other attacks that don't follow this precedent, such as Crushing Uppercut, but CU does off-the-scale large ST damage, it's not a mild bonus on a fairly ordinary AoE attack.

You're right about Savage Melee on Scrappers. I think it's a bug. Savage Melee on Stalkers, for example, crits for both ticks of damage on SS. I'm gonna put it into the bug channel.

I checked, it looks like that's pet AI, not something about the power -- it's just choosing to use an "affects ally" power specifically on their owner. I don't see how that could be used to make a power that was targeted on an enemy also cause an effect on the pet's owner. (I mean, obviously nothing is impossible -- but I think they'd have to write new powers code to do this, it's not something you can do by configuring a power's data.) The Ember Demon thing has a separate auto-power that only affects the entity "pet root owner." So it's an AoE that affects the owner. Again, I don't really see how you could use that technology to make something proc an effect from the Voltaic Sentinel's attack.

But then you can't select specifically your owner in that AoE as far as I know -- you could select *allies*, but not your owner? Unless there's a tech I'm not aware of, which is certainly possible.

I'm not sure that's within the technology of the game. A given power has a given set of targets, and it doesn't have two targeted targets. Maybe pets have some kind of special way to affect their master in the same way that you can have some effects affect "self" even when the normal target is someone else, but if so I've never noticed it in power effects.

Sure. But damage of non-DoTs is also based on fury. That doesn't mean much. I'm wondering if people think that dots like Savage or fire don't crit in Stalkers or scrappers. They do. In the case of a crit, in general, the crit does all the damage of the dot up front when it happens. There may be some exceptions to this rule, I haven't looked at every power. But in general, I see no reason to believe that dots are better for brutes than they are for other ATs. @Bill Z Bubba mentions damage auras, which do not crit, and are relatively better for brutes than scrappers. But dots like Savage and fire melee are different.

Why do people think DoTs are good for brutes?

Once you've enhanced your powers, it's about a 5% difference, maybe a little higher. If you want to make up the difference with set bonuses in both S/L and E/N, you're probably looking for at least three set bonuses that probably come fairly late in a set, so it means a pretty significant difference in set prioritization. Is it night and day? No. But if you're chasing 90% on a Brute, every resist bonus counts.

An unslotted /elec brute with all the defensive powers except the T9 activated would have: 26.25% S/L resist 61.875% E resist 22.5% N resist 26.25% F/C resist 26.25% P resist 0% T resist An unslotted /fire brute with all the defensive powers activated would have: 22.5% S/L resist 22.5% E/N resist 67.5% F resist 15% C resist 0% P resist 15%+ T resist depending on how many times you can stack Healing Flames So Fiery Aura provides generally slightly lower resists than Elec (3.75% less S/L, and 3.75% lower E/N than Elec gives to F/C). It's not a huge difference, but it's noticeable. In turn, I think that Fire gives better offense than Elec.

Bio is S/L resist, not defense, so I'm not sure that Cimerorans are their worst-case (though I think that the Nictus and so forth have the one-two combo that Bio characters hate of doing energy/neg damage and debuffing defense, and mixed romans and nictus will suck because the romans can hit easily and debuff the energy/neg defense that you need to survive the nictus).

Possibly my trouble with Praetorian Clocks had to do with my prioritizing S/L defense over E/N. They debuff defense and regen, so with no debuff resistance I quickly find my e/n defense floored, I have little E/N resist because Bio doesn't give E/N resist, and the usual solid mitigation strategy of DNA Siphon into strong regen doesn't work because regen is floored as well. I imagine that if I were overcapped on E/N defense, they might not be able to get into the rolling debuff ball. I've generally had to reduce to +2/x5 or less with Praetorian Clocks with my /bio characters. With, for example, my /Ninj scrapper, I could wade into a group of +4/x8 Praetorian Clocks with no trouble at all.

I've run bio tankers, stalkers, and brutes to 50, and I've found that all of them struggle against Praeotrian clocks and IDF.

I run CoH on catalina, it's been fine. But note that you will lose Mids if you use it.

Scrappers and Brutes are too close to each other. It's really hard to find a stable equilibrium where they both have a role. For a long time, brutes were just a little better than scrappers, such that there was little point to playing a scrapper. Now scrappers are a little better than brutes, and it's hard to justify playing a brute. In both cases, it's not that the dominant AT was a lot better, it's that when the ATs are so similar, even a small imbalance becomes, "Well, there's no real point in playing the other one." Scrappers are also probably a little better than stalkers, but stalkers are better-differentiated from scrappers, so there's less pressure to just never play stalkers. Right now, I'll consider Brutes if I want a resistance-based armor on a DPS chaaracter.

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