aethereal

I removed the -5% resistance debuff. Wishing away the Scrapper ATO doesn't change the reality of the game. They have it. I'm not a huge fan of just how much of Scrapper performance is locked behind the ATO either. But it exists. I think this is totally fair, but it's hard to come up with dimensions of the AT beyond direct damage that don't just make them "bad defenders or controllers" instead of "bad blasters."

I think that people really overestimate how much of the blaster damage excellence is due to their scalar, and how much is due to other things. Blasters have both aim and build up. They have defiance. They have full-strength nukes. They have snipes. And they have a bunch of very attractive attacks in their secondaries. Compare Sentinels to Scrappers. Scrappers have 1.125 damage scalar, and then they have crits. The superior ATO for Scrappers gives +50% to-hit rate with 3 PPM. If you have just 100% global recharge (ie, much less than perma-hasten, which is 180% global recharge), then you expect to have 6 procs per minute. Each proc lasts 5 seconds, so that's 50% uptime of your +50% crit rate. Your base crit rate is 8% (minions)/16% (non-minions). So during your proc uptime, you have a 58-66% chance to crit, and otherwise 8-16%. Let's call it 60%/10%. That's a 35% overall chance to crit. Crits mostly double your damage, but they don't double procs or a few weird powers. So all in all, your damage is increased by let's say 25% by crits for a competently slotted level 50 Scrapper. If we translate that back into scalar, that's the equivalent of a 1.4 scalar! Another way to say this is that if you created a total clone of Scrappers (the Shmapper), but just said, "No crits anymore, we'll just give you all the damage directly into your scalar, otherwise literally exactly like a Scrapper," then you'd want to give the Shmappers AT a damage scalar of 1.4. It's harder to calculate the damage that Blasters and Stalkers get beyond their damage scalar -- it's not as clean and simple as Scrapper crits. Like, you have to go into a lot of very specific assumptions. But if we say that Stalkers and Blasters are not crazily far behind Scrapper damage (and, for example, Stalkers get pretty comparable pylon times to Scrappers), then it stands to reason that their effective damage scalar is not way off from 1.4 either. I think it's really important to understand this when talking about Sentinels. An increase to 1.125 damage scalar -- without other bonuses -- still puts them way behind the other damage classes!

The game is easy. You can play it successfully with vastly underperforming builds (certainly including Sentinels, my first 50 on Homecoming was an archery/ninj sent, and I soloed AVs and so forth). But that doesn't mean we shouldn't consider how ATOs affect classes, and very specifically how they differentially affect classes. Again, I didn't propose gigantic, game-changing ATOs. I proposed broadly useful ATOs, not broadly useless ones like Sentinels have now. Scrappers have more of an aggro-management role than Sentinels, they are protective of the group in a few ways: 1. Some scrapper sets have taunt auras. 2. Just being in the middle of melee means that AoEs that get sent a scrapper's way will not tend to hit the fragile ranged classes who are keeping their distance. Sentinels who do draw aggro will tend to draw AoEs into the fragile folks. 3. I guess confront, but who cares. At any rate, well-built Scrappers have ST damage that I think is comparable to or exceeds Blaster level. Blasters have nukes and 16 target-cap AoEs.

I did. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

Scrapper and Stalker damage without their ATOs would collapse compared to Scraps and Stalks who do use their ATOs. A basically competently slotted Scrapper who uses their chance-for-+50%-crit-rate ATO should get around a +20% to their damage just there (that is: it's not particularly difficult to get 50% uptime with this proc. A crit is roughly +100% damage for a power, but not including procs etc so let's call it +80%. So if you crit 50% more often, that's +40% damage. Half uptime, +20% damage). That's not a tip-top, I'm going to actually get the most out of this ATO build, it's a basically competent build. Their other ATO gives another +2-5% damage just by itself. It's harder to put exact numbers to the Stalker ATOs, and probably certain sets value the chance-to-hide one more than others (it really shines if you have another really big hitter in your set that you can crit with), but it shouldn't be hard to get +15-20% damage just by using the two ATOs for most Stalkers. Scrappers without their ATOs would be comparable to or worse than Brutes in damage output. It's a big deal. (It's worth pointing out that I'm NOT proposing huge-deal ATOs. I'm proposing ATOs that are broadly useful and support damage dealing, without being game-changers like Scrapper/Stalker ATOs. As opposed to current Sent ATOs that don't really add any damage.) If Sentinels are to provide a team benefit based on "merely damage," then their damage should be comparable to Blasters (who also provide mere damage). That'd be a HUGE damage increase for Sentinels, something I don't think anyone has much appetite for.

Just as a point of order, that's @nihilii's idea. That's a bad assumption. Hope this helps! Look, it's everyone's God-given right to make unsourced, dubious assertions. It's hard or impossible to back up every point with rigorous data, and we all have limited time to talk about imaginary superheroes on the internet. But trying to take victory laps and declare the conversation over after you decide to make one-sentence dismissals is just dumb. EDIT: About tactics, I agree. I was just trying to take seriously the previous poster's claim that tactics was more prevalent than maneuvers, not commenting on my assessment of the likelihood that they were correct that tactics was more prevalent than maneuvers.

You really haven't. You made a bunch of dubious assertions with no sourcing and people mostly ignored you.

The inherent is interesting, and I'm worried that my proposed inherent is less interesting. But also, the current inherent is baaaaaaaaaaad. So bad that trying to fix it is I'm not sure a workable approach. Problems with the current inherent: 1. It's really confusing. You have to increase the meter to full, then use a T1 or T2 power. Then the visible effect that people notice is a heal/end heal for defensive opportunity, or a damage proc for offensive opportunity. So much so that people don't necessarily even realize that with either opportunity, you're also doing a -20% res debuff on your main target. People have a LOT of questions about the sent inherent. 2. It's single-target, and comes late in a fight. In most situations, by the time you can get the inherent off, the person you want to target with it is half dead or more. The actual -res effect is useless for AoE. 3. You have to slot your T1 and/or T2 to at least well enough to hit things, which is often a waste -- specifically, in the context of sentinel blast sets that almost invariably have at least two powers that are on rapid-enough recharges to be in your main rotation and do a lot more damage than your T1 or T2. So it kinda doesn't play well with the basic dynamic of sentinels. 4. People get excited about -res as a mechanic, but we should note that against a +4 opponent, your debuffs are at 48%. It scales really badly against high-level opponents. 5. They sacrifice one of the ATOs for it, and it's an underwhelming proc. I mean, that's one concept for design, but it's not CoH's one. Scrappers' damage collapses without their ATOs. So does Stalkers'. I feel like the inherent is the weakest part of my proposal. I'm pretty hemmed in. Powerhouse is on record as not wanting to give sentinels any kind of taunt, and wanting to be somewhere between rolling back the -res and at least no more of it. I'm trying to give sentinels a role as sentinels, as like watchful guardians, and do it without taunt. They'll never be allowed to have blaster-level damage, so giving them some kind of protective role without taunt is tough.

It's a 12-13% increase in damage outside Opportunity (packaged with things that remove Opportunity). Let me suggest that if you buff the damage of a class by significantly less that 10%, nobody will really notice.

If people are taking tactics more than maneuvers, that seems like it's very likely due to procs.

This is an integrated proposal for rehauling Sentinels. It has a 0% chance of being implemented, so I wouldn't get super bogged down in details. More like maybe someone will take inspiration from it. Problem Statement/Goals Currently, the problem with Sentinels are three-fold: 1. They are a damage class that does mediocre damage. 2. Their inherent is interesting but underwhelming, and tries to make somewhat irritating demands on the use of T1/T2 powers. 3. They lack a clear team role, where their defensive excellence is low value for a few possible reasons and their mediocre damage is even worse compared to blasters or other melee classes. 4. Their ATOs fail to add much of anything to the class. Beyond the defense/recharge that are characteristics of most ATOs, Sentinels mainly get a bit of a range buff (which, why did we nerf their range to begin with?). The procs are both bad. Expanding on point three slightly: In a fast-moving steamroll team, nobody's defense matters, and the only contribution you can make to a team is high damage (Sentinels share problems with Controllers, Defenders, Brutes, etc on this kind of team). In teams that do care about defense, but which have tanks, Sentinels can't really help tanks at all. In a team without a tank/brute, but which isn't steamrolling, where defensiveness is actually relevant, Sentinels lack any ability to defend other, less-armored members of the team, lacking any form of taunt/increased threat generation. Proposal 0. Things we're removing The current Opportunity inherent is gone in its entirety, including the -5% resist debuff that Sents get for free with most attacks, also both the -20% resist debuff that comes with both Opportunity modes and the proc-like effects of offensive/defensive Opportunity. In fact, there will be no opportunity meter for Sentinels. 1. Improving Sentinel Damage Scale Increase the Sentinel damage scalar to 1.125. Commentary: Sentinels will still lag behind Scrappers (they have no criticals), and Blasters (no Defiance, no snipes, radically less-powerful nukes, lower target caps). But they'll be much more straightforwardly powerful, and by moving their damage into damage scalar and out of resist debuffs, they'll be much better in high level-differential content (ie, +4 enemies) and against hard targets (AVs etc). The only benefit of their resist debuffs was in team content, and it's just frankly the case that Sentinels aren't particularly valued on teams -- their resist debuffs won't be missed. Against even-level content, previous Sentinel damage was .95 * 1.05 = scale .9975 outside of Opportunity, and it will now be 1.125, a 12.8% improvement. Against +4 content, their old damage scale was .95 * (1 + .05 * .48) = .9728. (Contrast: Scrappers eventually get pretty strong -- 75%ish? uptime on their ATO, so that improves their damage scalar to something like an effective 1.5. Blasters are a more difficult comparison, but probably do will continue to do about 20-50% more damage than Sents with these changes.) Their damage will be further improved by their new inherent and ATOs. 2. New Inherent Sentinels get inherent improved Perception, and all their attacks have a -stealth component to all targets. Commentary: This is a minor flavor bonus for the AT. It's pretty unnoticeable for actual play, but it seems appropriate for a class called "Sentinel." In the (very rare!) case where stealthed enemies are a problem for a team, Sentinels help the whole team by stripping down stealth on their targets. Additionally, Sentinels get an inherent, zero-cost toggle power called Hunter. When this power is OFF, they get the following bonus: All of their AoE attacks in primary/secondary powers give -damage (say, 10%) and -recharge speed (also 10%), stackable twice, relatively short duration (10 seconds?). Resistable. When the toggle is ON, they do not get the bonus to their AoE attacks, but get the following bonus to all the ST attacks in their primary (and secondary, but I don't think there are any ST attacks in armor sets): All of their single-target attacks do an additional damage component with 50% probability (about 20% of their normal damage, enhanceable), and give a minor slow-movement (but not slow recharge) component with 100% probability, stackable let's say 2 or 3 times. Commentary: Sentinels have the potential to have pretty boring gameplay. All they really do is attack. Positioning is not as critical for them as for melee damage classes, since they have range, and they generally do not have many powers that can be used particularly strategically -- their attacks are on fast timers and even if they have holds or whatever they tend to be high-damage attacks that they will use in their attack chain, with very short holds, not things that they'll use situationally to remove an opponent from a fight. As a result, we want an inherent that adds some interest to their core gameplay loop, not one that disappears into the background. Hence a fairly high-management inherent. The toggle-off mode of play gives Sents an additional mitigation technique that helps teams and "stacks" with tanks (that is, it improves mitigation even when there's a strong tanker), without being taunt-based. This allows a Sentinel who finds themselves the most durable member of a team to take a somewhat protective role, taking alpha and spraying enemies down with -damage and -recharge, without stepping on a tank's tose. In order to keep the debuffs rolling, a Sentinel must step into its role of "sustained AoE," trying to keep the debuff spread on as many of the opponents as possible. The toggle-on mode of play gives Sents more damage against single hard targets, without concern that they'll impinge on a blaster's role as premier AoE combatant, and helps keep hard targets from running all around like an asshole in solo play or team play that lacks a taunter, again without stepping on the toes of the taunting classes. It also allows a Sentinel to kite somewhat better, despite their shorter range, which again adds some potential interest to their play. 3. New ATOs Opportunity Strikes gets renamed to something else, idk, I suck at names, but there's no more opportunity. So maybe something dumb like Sentinel Strikes. It has the same enhancements except for the proc. The proc is replaced with a 3.5 PPM (4.5 PPM in the superior version) proc that does a 10' PBAoE around the target that it procs on, target cap 4, that does standard proc (70ish) smashing damage. It has a one-second lockout, so it can not fire multiple times if slotted into an AoE attack. Remove the level 2 set bonus (the range bonus), and replace it with a 5% accuracy bonus in the non-superior version. Sentinel's Ward also gets renamed. It has the same enhancements except for the proc. The proc is replaced with a 3.5 PPM (4.5 PPM in the superior version) proc that does a normal proc (70ish) smashing damage (to just one target) and simultaneously a knockdown. Remove the level 3 set bonus (the range bonus), and replace it with a 3% damage bonus in the non-superior version. Commentary: Both sets now have damage procs that are strictly superior to a normal damage proc, aiding overall Sentinel damage. The "sustained AoE" role is improved by the first proc, and the second proc gives Sentinels a small mitigation tool that they can use without loss of damage, that helps mitigate the fact that I'm shortening their range and removing defensive opportunity (and removing the Sentinel's Ward proc, but haha it was awful). It also gives them a strategic choice about using that mitigation tool in a ST or AoE power, depending on their focus. 4. Changes to APPs Remove whatever is the least good power in each Epic, and replace with something patterned after the appropriate Blaster sustain -- ie, a heal or absorb shield and powerful endurance bonus, plus potentially some other minor things. However, these won't be toggles but clicks with 30 second durations and unenhanceable 1 minute recharge times (so, 50% uptime with out slot commitment). Commentary: This finishes off compensating Sents for their removed defensive opportunity/ability to sustain. Numbers would probably have to be adjusted off the Blaster versions.

I think this is on-point. Let me throw out some things that I've seen people talk about. These aren't all my own views, just trying to synthesize what I've seen in this and other threads. Goal 1: Reduce the dominance of "Proc Builds" Some people feel that the most powerful builds in the games are ones in which many or most of the powers most commonly used are slotted very heavily for procs (4-6 slots devoted to procs, necessarily mainly-but-not-exclusively damage procs, but also heavily featuring -res procs and maybe Force Feedback). This strikes people as undesirable. Analysis: I think people should be a little more crisp in their definition of why this is a problem. If someone wants to slot heavily for damage at the expense of set bonuses, why is that a bad thing? I think one element of the critique is simply that it's overtuned, that the differential between a proc build and a non-proc build is too much. But I think another element of the critique is more aesthetic, like it's just not really "right" to have a build stuffed with damage procs at the expense of all else. Like maybe it's a reversion to the pre-ED days of 1 acc, 5 damage slotting? It's one-note and tired? There may also be an element of feeling like it's exclusionary. Solutions: People should contemplate whether all they want is for the damage amount of damage procs to be reduced by about 10%. That would certainly make proc builds considerably less attractive. Goal 2: Specifically avoid turning non-damage powers into damage powers People like @arcane have been explicit about this. They feel like they don't like the ability to turn for example DNA Siphon, or various low or non-damage holds, into powerful damage powers because they're on long recharge timers and can slot a ton of different damage procs. Whether or not this is part and parcel of an overall "proc build," some people may feel this is a problem even if there's only one power in the build that's heavily procced. Analysis: Again, a bit more clarity into why this is a problem is in order. Is there a sense that a power has a "purpose," and you shouldn't be able to change the power's "purpose" with slotting? Or perhaps it's more that they feel like it puts the spotlight on powers that are intended to be situational, and don't like how central certain epic/ancillary/patron powers can end up being (though is that it? Do people who hold this view not care if people slot out Suppressive Fire, a primary power pick, in the way they might slot out an epic hold?) Solutions: You could imagine point solutions here. DNA Siphon doesn't really need to do damage, its damage is completely negligible. If it couldn't take PBAoE Damage sets, it couldn't realistically be turned into a proc bomb. But the holds, it kinda depends on how much we care about the absurd number of damage procs in hold sets. Those seem to be explicitly created to allow Controllers/Doms to turn their hold powers into damage powers? I think? Goal 3: Improve AT balance Very specifically, I think a lot of people feel like the only advantage Corruptors have over Defenders is damage, and that Defenders can entirely close that gap with procs, leaving Corruptors without a role. Similarly, I think, though perhaps somewhat less well-foundedly, people worry that Tankers have entirely overtaken Brutes. And then more holistically, I think some people are concerned that a change to procs, if it does not change CoH's current "balance meta" might result in (further?) dominance of Scrappers/Blasters over lower-damage ATs. That is, that the current system allows a role for non-damage ATs and that nerfs to procs may push everyone further to Scraps/Blasts. Analysis: I think it's true that Corruptors have a rough time of it right now. The concerns about Brutes seem overblown. This seems like a place where procs have a very marginal position in the overall problem and I doubt that this is a place where we can make big changes with any reasonable change to procs. I think that people who are claiming that the current proc mechanics help AT balance need to make their case clearly: are they saying that without procs, most non-Blaster/Scrapper ATs are fundamentally bad? Presumably the overwhelming majority of players aren't creating proc-heavy builds, and that will be true of any reasonable change to the proc system. Procs are a bad patch to AT balance, I think, unless you can make the case that the AT balance problem is only an issue at like the tip-top of the game, people trying for Masters-of badges of hard TFs and such. Solutions: No idea, I don't really buy this as a problem. Goal 4: Blunt the Meta/Reward more Builds (Note: this is my goal, so I may present it more sympathetically) Procs currently have mechanics that are much less legible and much more complicated than almost any other mechanic in the game (maybe with the exception of some "strength to" relationships). They are unfriendly to anyone who isn't heavily invested in reading about game mechanics and discussing builds offline. This makes the game less newbie-friendly. Current proc mechanics are also very attached to "building global recharge" and "concentrating on four or so powers that can be used once per 5-10 seconds with lots of global recharge," in a way that reinforces previously dominant character build strategies. Analysis: It is certainly true that procs are not the only reason to read about game mechanics, get invested in builds, build global recharge, or focus on 15-20 second recharge powers, and reasonable changes to the proc system will make at most marginal headway in improving these problems. That said, I think it's also the case that procs are genuinely the worst offenders in this category. Solutions: @nihilii's proposal to have proc rate not be affected by local recharge would make headway here. Having in-game "real numbers" that calculated proc rates for you would help. I think there are clearly some bigger changes that we could make that would make proc rate less dependent on knowing the minutia of internal details about powers (so for example we could establish power "schedules" or modifiers to proc rates that are explicit -- and yes, short-recharge and area effect powers could have ones that make procs less likely to fire, but it'd be like damage, where if you happen to know the design principles, you know that damage and recharge are related, but the game clearly tells you what the damage is, rather than expecting you to calculate it yourself based on recharge). Goal 5: Preserve Advanced Build Options @nihilii has been forcefully pointing out that he likes making the tradeoff between additional damage and set bonuses. In the past, we've definitely seen other people make similar comments: that the proc system creates productive tension between build goals, and this makes for more stimulating, interesting build options. Analysis: Note that to some extent this goal stands in tension with goal 4, as one way to make builds more complex is to make an ever-more-baroque chain of unique effects for any given power to proc. But they aren't entirely incompatible -- you can certainly still have procs be valuable and stand in tension to set bonuses while also making them more legible. Solutions: Not adopting solutions of "only allow fewer procs per power/per build" is the main solution here. Also not nerfing procs into the ground. Goal 6: Avoid randomness/Avoid Low Proc Rates @America's Angel advocates for removing elements of randomness from the system in order to make PvP more deterministic. I think there is also a broad sense that low proc rates in general aren't productive, even if they have on some level a high rate of return. Analysis: @America's Angel should be realistic about the possibility of removing randomness from the game, which I think is a very minority position. But there's a difference between removing randomness altogether and avoiding very low/spiky rates of proc firing, where everything is just a crap-shoot of "nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, whee I got lucky and got a huge reward!" Solutions: Moving from a PPM doctrine of purely varying proc rate, and starting to vary scalar effects, would I think be pretty valuable. Making a proc not have a 10% chance to activate for 70 damage, but have a 50% chance to activate for 14 damage, seems like it would be a win on fast-recharging powers. Goal 7: Avoid certainty/Avoid High Proc Rates In direct contradiction to goal 6 is the sense that allowing a 90% proc rate removes in some sense the concept that these are procs, and that part of the trade off on accepting procs should be accepting randomness rather than near-certainty. We have an assertion that @Captain Powerhouse thinks this is important. Analysis: I think people should be clear that this stands in pretty direct opposition to the revealed preferences of pretty much everyone. The entire build community has rallied around building for the highest proc rates possible. I think we also deserve some clarity on whether this considered a problem only for damage procs, or whether it will have (much more significant) impacts on things like the Scrapper chance-for-+50%-crit rate ATO, the Stalker chance-to-hide ATO, the Gaussian's chance-for-build-up proc, etc. Solutions: Despite being the opposite of goal 6, you can use the same solution, varying the scalar of the proc effect rather than purely the rate. Instead of a 90% chance for 70 damage, you can have a 75% chance for 84 damage.

This seems like it would potentially be a major buff to Scrappers, who could now achieve ~100% uptime with their ATO. In general, any changes to the PPM system per se (rather than adjustments to how many procs you can slot where) risks pretty major changes to the balance of Stalkers and Scrappers. Potentially Tankers too, though less likely. Damage procs are fundamentally pretty easy to balance. Special ability procs, like the Stalker/Scrapper (and other) ATOs, the Gaussian's Chance to Build Up, and probably a few others are much less easy, and are a fulcrum point for the effects of any PPM change.

Procs are certainly not the only thing that's wrong with the global recharge meta -- and the incentive to seek perma-hasten goes back to the very beginning of the game. But it's hard to fix Hasten. It's straightforward to make procs not pile more power onto the already-dominant meta. On the margin, the PPM system disincents anyone from finding clever builds that don't rely as heavily on building 180% global recharge. It sharpens the meta and reduces build diversity. It makes people less likely to say, "Well, I can deal with a 10 second period where Hasten isn't up." See the exchange I had with arcane about this. It's not about it being so difficult once you're clued into it (and have third-party tools). It's that it's hostile to the people who aren't us, who don't get onto the boards and do deep dives on game mechanics. And, look, there will always be some reward to doing deep dives on game mechanics, that's life. But here the reward is completely out of whack. I submit that if you don't go to third party sources, you'll have literally no idea whether a proc is doing a good job or a bad job in a power, why, or how to change anything. Just... NONE. This isn't like knowing about arcana time, where you might squeeze out another 5% damage by being super efficient. It's just straight up like "the game tells me essentially nothing about how this important mechanic works." The problem, as with #1, is that you're piling more power on the things that were already high-power. The old system benefitted T1/T2 powers, which are otherwise not-that-attractive powers. The new system benefits the powers that are already the hardest-hitting powers in the game, and already often have secondary effects that are very attractive. The result, as with #1, and in combination with #1, is yet-more-incentive to have a smaller and smaller number of viable builds within a given power range. Now, I don't think the old system was great either -- just spamming buzzsaw powers isn't very exciting, and I'm not proposing a return to flat proc rates. But we inflated the power level of the game in going to PPM. I think it's the least-problematic of the four problems I noted. However, it's a real effect. People want their 90% proc rates, and trying to fight against them with a system that says, "Hey, good news, you have a 40% proc rate," creates a big drag on the system. For non-damage procs, I think it's potentially a bigger issue. For damage procs, you can kinda say, "Well, dude, I dunno, we're looking at total DPS and it's just a scalar number." But if we're talking like +2 mag on the hold or additional chance to build up, I think people reasonably say, "Having the ability to get this effect reliably when I need it is more than twice as valuable as getting it more often but unreliably."

Did you see my post on what the problem is with PPM?

It's not exactly confusing -- none of this is rocket science -- it's just illegible. You would have no way within the game itself to figure out that local recharge reduces the rate of proccing, but global recharge doesn't. Or that the recharge you get from Alpha incarnate slots, despite applying globally, is "local." Or that a power would proc once every ten seconds in a rain power or a damage aura. Or that some procs have their own global lockout. Or that there's a min and max chance to proc. I mean, honestly, I don't think most people who just see the verbage in game would even intuit that what that means is that the chance to fire is based on the recharge of the power. Certainly not how the area factor works. Once you know those things, none of them are individually that complicated. But I think the idea was that players wouldn't have to worry their pretty little heads about any of that stuff, because the PPM system was gonna make procs roughly equally good in every power. So the details don't matter, when you slot a proc, you get a stable power boost. That's not at all the way it turned out, and now we've got a system with a bunch of weird little details that just rewards trivia knowledge.

I don't think anyone is suggesting changes that will, like, turn damage procs into self-resistance-buffing powers. Builds with procs in them will continue to "function," though they may be tuned up or down in various ways. Personally, my problem with procs is not really the overall power they provide, it's the way they sharpen the meta. So my preferred solutions would leave current proc builds just fine (perhaps shaved down a bit in overall power, but not much), but other builds more viable with procs.

So @Naraka I feel like what this thread is missing is a breakdown of what's wrong with the current PPM system. Here's my list: 1. It further emphasized the value of global recharge. That was insane. The idea that, at issue 22, you looked at CoH's meta and said, "What this game needs is more incentive for everyone to pick Hasten and gather recharge set bonuses" is just... it beggars the imagination. 2. It is incredibly illegible. In order to figure out whether a power procs well, you have to understand not just the raw formula of the PPM math (which isn't hard, but isn't something you can do in your head, especially for AoE powers), but also the caps on proc rate, the whole global/local recharge difference (including the distinction that alpha recharge is "local"), the lockouts on sustained powers, the lockouts on certain procs (like the healing ones and the stalker ATO), and whether a power procs on its own activation or on a pseudopet (completely impossible to find out within game, you have to go to external sources). As a result, if you aren't someone who obsessively reads the fora, you have no fucking idea whether a proc is good or bad in a power. 3. PPM in its current form rewards 15-20 second recharge powers. With perma-hasten levels of global recharge, those powers recharge in 5-10 seconds -- ie, about one attack rotation. That makes them the highest-damage powers that you can likely fit into a reasonable attack rotation, which in turn means we've really focused the game on 15-20 second recharge powers. Your best powers are also the best powers to proc. 4. The fundamental conceit of PPM was that people would be roughly equally happy with a 20% chance to proc 70 damage 10 times per minute and an 80% chance to proc 70 damage 2.5 times per minute. But they aren't. People hate low proc rates, even if they are on fast-recharging powers. As a result of these problems, I think that there is no possible tweak to the PPM formula that will make this system work. PPM is bad. It needs to be replaced with a fundamentally different system. PPM delenda est.

You might like my proposal from a while ago to turn most damage procs into damage enhancements that ignore ED cap (in return for a lower overall damage enhancement).

Didn't realize you could do this! Okay.

I got to level 35 on my blaster, did my patron quest, and did a respec to get Scorpion Shield. Kind of thoughtlessly, I was like, "Okay, well, I'll want at least two slots each on my defensive powers" and put an extra slot on Tough/Weave/Scorpion Shield. I shouldn't've have been allowed to do that, right? SS is my level 35 power, so it should only be able to have one slot.

Damage buffs in armor sets are at a huge premium. Why is Bio so popular? It's not because its mitigation is top-notch, it's because it gives you a damage bonus. Why is Fiery Aura the top-notch set for farming? Burn. Shield is a mediocre defense set except that it has Against All Odds and Shield Charge. If we used Revive to get a damage bonus into Regen, I guarantee that people would work a lot harder to deal with Regen's issues in mitigation.

Hardly unique in that regard. Super Reflexes, Energy Aura, and Electric Armor all have substantially similar crashing "god-mode" T9s to Invul's. T9s in armor sets are generally speaking unimpressive. Shield and Willpower have god-modes with lower crashes that remain not-that-useful, though perhaps better than the classic ones. Regen, Fire, and Dark have self-rezzes, also generally skippable (though, again, perhaps better than the crashing god-modes). Bio's T9 is fine, though not particularly more impresssive than several other powers in the set. I think of the armor sets only Regen, Stone and Rad offer T9s that you feel like really change the game for the set.

It'd result in a different playstyle, to be sure. But getting a 50% uptime half-build-up in your armor set seems like it might be worth intentionally dying once a minute.

Revive only works while dead, but it gives a +10% to hit/+40% damage bonus for 30 seconds and takes away all debt, recharge enhanceable to about 1 min reasonably (so let's say 3 minutes base recharge). Discuss.