aethereal

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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I'm not saying that Stalkers have the best version of energy melee or anything, just that the AoE deficit they have is mitigated by a better cone attack. I believe that to the extent that we think of pylon tests as having anything useful to say about ST damage, scrapper EM comes out slightly ahead of stalker EM (though to some extent that's surely due to scrapper bio armor as well). I think the big case for stalker EM is being able to predict exactly which attacks crit much more than scrappers can, given the unusual crit mechanics for TF and ET.

Note that their version of the cone attack is higher damage/longer recharge.

Envenomed dagger is a temp power you can buy from P2W that gives a substantial regen debuff. It's very useful in soloing AVs and GMs because it dramatically lowers the dps you need to stay ahead of their regen.

That's because it doesn't exist.

The meta right now seems to be more extensive use of Tactics (and Farsight) than was the case when I played on Live, which probably means that teams aren't really seeing much from this. Solo, it's probably more painful. Especially if your solo character either doesn't have a build-up/aim or has one that rolls to hit (such as Dual Blades/Claws/Dark Melee). But, you know, that's part of the deal if you're trying to solo TFs?

Well, if you take X dam/sec in the long run with a resist set, you take X dam/sec in the short run. With a defense set, sometimes you take less than X dam/sec and sometimes you take more. This is a significant problem! Like, for example, I was soloing Infernal with my Ninjutsu scrapper the other day. I was fine with the expected damage in. He'd hit me sometimes, and I'd heal, and that would be that. But about once per run at him, he'd do something where he'd hit and then get another lucky hit in again and my heal would be on cooldown and oh shit I need to run and sweat and worry until I could get back to good. That wouldn't have happened if I had had the same overall mitigation with a resist set. Now, don't get me wrong, I think defense sets are better for scrappers/stalkers than resist sets, mainly because you cap out at mitigating 90% of expected damage in with defense vs 75% of expected damage in with resist, but also of course the stuff you said about dodging debuffs and mezzes. Lower HP doesn't actually strike me as a good side of defense sets -- the weakness of defense is spike damage due to random variation, so having low HP would be better for resist sets, which take their damage steadily, not in spikes. But the cap is really dispositive if you're building for performance.

They don't! Invulnerability, for example, loses nothing to get hide. It does get a static, rather than scaling +to-hit/def toggle, but it's not in trade for hide -- it's just that Stalkers don't get scaling auras. Super reflexes, I believe, loses literally nothing on Stalkers. The lost auto power just gets folded into evasion.

With some exceptions, Stalkers usually lose an AoE for AS. The idea is you lose something you miss, not your worst attack.