aethereal

Well, one of the reasons i bring this up now is that Powerhouse had intimated that a change to procs is coming down the line at some point.

It is possible to figure it out using all the knowledge in the world. It's definitely not possible just with in-game sources. I mean, I don't think that even the 5% floor/90% ceiling of proc chances is noted in the game. Much less the area factor, the global recharge/local recharge distincton, and lest we forget, if the power happens to be implemented with a pseudo-pet, then it has profound effects on procability. EDIT: Oh, and lest we forget, the patches applied on top of PPM, like the 10 second lockout on the chance-to-hide proc for the Stalker ATOs, or the however-long lockout on the power transfer heal. If you're designing for whatever percent of the players obsessively follow mechanical threads on the forums, this isn't a particularly valid complaint. If you're designing for what I presume are the large majority of players, whether a proc will work well in a power is basically just raw luck.

That's a debatable definition of "balanced," but yes, this would mean that procs are no longer best for defenders and brutes and worst for blasters and scrappers.

Right now, an effect can be tagged enhanceable or unenhanceable, which pretty much do what they say on the tin. We could replace that with a scalar multiplier instead of a on-off flag. So "enhanceability" for a currently enhanceable effect would be 1.0, and "enhancibility" for a currently unenhanceable effect would be 0.0. You multiply the enhancement power you get from an enhancement or from an alpha slot by the enhancibility of the effect. But why? We already have powers that we essentially want partial enhancibility -- we hack it together now by having, say, a heal for 7% max hp that's unenhancible and another heal for 3% max hp that's enhancible. We could more elegantly express this as a 10% heal that's 0.3 (30%) enhancible. This would somewhat reduce the complexity of power expressions, make the detailed info more clearer, and reduce chance of errors. But the real reason to do this would be to explore greater-than-1 enhancibility. For example, a possible benefit of the otherwise underperforming electric blast set is that you can put the power-transfer-chance-to-heal proc in every attack and get some healing out of your attack chain. We could instead give a very small actual heal in each attack -- so small that its base effect isn't very useful -- but set its enhancibility to 2.0 or 3.0, meaning that healing enhancements would affect this small heal at double or triple strength, allowing people to trade off damage performance for healing in a more flexible way than the decision to slot or not slot a particular proc in every attack. Particularly, I'm offering this suggestion alongside my damage proc suggestion If we want a power that currently has a very minor damage component that can be procced into a respectable damage power, we could redo that as having a very small damage component with enhancibility scalar 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever the math works out for that would allow people to make this tradeoff without using procs.

Basic Proposal Replace at least the damage procs in Melee, Targeted AoE, PBAoE, and Ranged sets with special damage enhancements that enhance damage by let's say 25% (subject to playtesting of course), but which ignores ED. Justification All damage procs really do is add damage. They do so via PPM, which is a super complex, weird system that attempts to basically scale the damage that the procs do to the power they're put in, so that procs aren't a waste in high-damage big hitter powers while also not being overpowered in rapid-recharge buzzsaw powers. This works to a point, but it does so at the cost of transparency (it's essentially impossible to figure out from just in-game sources whether a power procs "well" or "poorly"), it creates weird incentives to pick narrow ranges of powers, and the performance of procs in fast-recharge powers, even if it averages to the same as in slow-recharge powers, is avoided because you can't rely on it. It also has created weird additional emphasis on global recharge. Well, we already have a way to scale damage with the power of a power -- we can just, you know, enhance the damage. Replacing damage procs with damage enhancements which ignore ED gives the same basic design tradeoff: you can sacrifice set bonuses for additional raw damage. But it does so in a smoother, easier-to-understand way that allows more diversity in which powers people use for best effect. Additional Commentary You wouldn't get the damage type diversification with this proposal that you do with current damage procs. But do we want that? I've never seen anyone advance a build with, like, themed damage procs for particular damage types. Nobody seems to be using damage procs to create Frostfire-style characters who use fire + ice. Nobody even really seems to be picking and choosing procs for best utility with their damage type -- it's pretty much "every proc you can stuff in" or "whatever comes with your sets." And do we want every melee character doing negative energy damage because Touch of Death is a pretty good set? Why do we want that? If you value the randomness of procs -- and I see little sign that anyone does -- there could still be a random factor in this. Like, basically, "75% chance for +25% damage enhancement." The randomness could be a fixed amount rather than scaling with recharge, since the damage bonus scales with the damage of the power. That way, if we think that part of the intended effect of procs is that you can't fully rely on them, we can have that to whatever degree we think they should be unreliable. Purple procs could grant a higher amount of damage enhancement than regular ones. This would prevent us from using these procs with powers that do no damage, or from usefully using them with powers that have very low base damage. That's why I proposed only replacing the damage procs that are in the damage sets, not the ones that are in, for example holds, taunts, or fears. There are still a few powers that people turn into highly damaging attacks which have very low base damage, and this proposal would make that not work. Is this something we want? Should DP characters be able to proc suppressive fire or whatever it is into a high-damage attack? If so, I have a suggestion to continue to enable it that I'll put as a linked post. This would mean that you couldn't use procs as a way to partially get around damage debuffs such as a Rage crash. This strikes me as fine. This would also potentially somewhat reduce damage in cases where characters were at or near damage cap, since these "procs" would contribute towards damage cap instead of being separate from it. Again, this strikes me as fine. This would improve the performance of procs in classes with critical-like mechanics (stalkers, scrappers, and corruptors), since their crits would essentially magnify "proc" damage. That may be a significant concern, since scrapers and stalkers are already in very good place. Linked suggestion to allow continued enhancement of low-damage powers into good attacks via proccing (ie, additional commentary #4):

BTW, you can toggle on walk, and it overrides the stance, so that will straighten you up.

Yes, don't have to toggle on/can't toggle off. I get this. If you really just completely want to live in a stance forever and ever, the auto-power is more convenient. I see that mainly for beast run. Surely not even the ninja-iest ninja who ever ninjaed literally wants to be in ninja stance all the time? Similarly, characters who straight up do not ever move their legs to walk? A potentially happy(?) medium that may be too complex is to have both? An auto-power for people who want to live in their stance, and purchaseable toggles that override it?

Love the idea behind this. Love Athletic Run. I would prefer it if we just got three toggle powers: Ninja Stance, Beast Stance, and Slide Stance. They would be mutually exclusive, zero-cost toggles, either inherent or available through P2W, that do what the stance power does now, but you could then, you know, change between them at will. If you want the current status quo of "one stance all the time," great, you can get that, just toggle the power on and forget it. But if you want to sometimes be in one stance but not all the time, you get it. I guess the current way does make it easy for werewolf-style characters to get a human-form costume and a beast-form costume, but you could do that easily with a macro, or just two clicks, in the "several toggles" system. Anyway, current change is way better than status quo, thanks!

Does literally anyone like the change to not allow shinobi-iri stack with ninja run/combat jumping? In terms of feedback it's like 0 for 20.

They should be solid for brutes. Brutes get the full benefit of fury for energy transfer and total focus, so that's nice for them. They get the better AoE and option for fast energy transfer and improved animation times. There may be some possibilities for scrappers/stalkers to do some advanced stuff with critical manipulation, and brutes will never get two fast energy transfers on a row, but it's a bummer for scraps/stalks to only get quarter-power crits in terms of damage, and brute damage should be ferocious.

I think it'd be nearly impossible to make an AoE mez on a very rapidly used pool power be balanced. It would almost certainly be absurdly short-duration and like mag 2 at the absolute most, non-stacking. The criticism that Defense is boring is on-point, but, I mean, look, the T1/T2 attacks in melee and blast sets are invariably boring as well. Sometimes you need boring stuff to make the game actually work.

If Combat Teleport is to retain the to-hit rather than defense component (which I think is a bad idea and will end up punishing people who thematically want to be like Nightcrawler), it should at least get more duration on the buff. Yes, I get it, it's a little less-than-thematic since the idea is that the to-hit represent surprise and are you really surprised 10 seconds later that the guy teleported? But it's both a huge pain in the ass to teleport every 5 seconds and a significant DPS drop. This may mean either eliminating the stacking or restricting it to only 2 total stacks. Also, people were saying back at the beginning of the thread that CT seemed incapable of proccing Gaussian's proc, did we ever figure that out? EDIT to add: I think people who are comparing CT to Tactics really need to think about power pool opportunity cost. Leadership gives you both to-hit (easier, albeit perhaps more expensive to-hit that has a chance to proc Gaussian's) AND defense AND damage. Combat teleport is the only power in its pool that offer a boost to combat stats. There is no way on God's green Earth that anyone is giving up Hasten for Combat Teleport, this means that most people are now down to just two pools that can accommodate defense bonuses -- Fighting and probably Leadership or Concealment.

Stays around all spenders. TF (crit) > all three spenders light up > use any one of the spenders > all three spenders stay illuminated > use any spender again > highlights go away.

I've been playing a scrapper EM character and I have definitely, on many occasions, critted on TF and correctly got the two stacks of EF, that were correctly spent one at a time.

Don't believe that's true in beta, though I didn't check it with actual teleport, just combat teleport.

I have also seen a hellion inside City Hall on live, it's not exclusive to Beta.

Hey, honest question: What's being solved with the teleport phase thing? Were people finding teleport unsafe as a travel power? Or is this an in-combat thing?

This sounds potentially quite hard, but it'd be cool if there was a command that was like /matchcooldownbyname <power name>, which, if included in a macro, caused the macro in question to cooldown and show the normal grayed-out-and-smaller-icon representation of a power being on cooldown, matching the cooldown of the power named in it. So for example you could do: /macro ice "powexeclocation target ice storm$$matchcooldownbyname ice storm" and thus have a macro that actually behaved like a power.

Sorry for the triple-post. So I'm starting my first mission with (four-slotted) Energy Transfer available, level 33. My very initial impressions are that oh my god, my health is so swingy. As a /invul scrapper, I don't have a ton of healing/regen, so depending on if I crit or not with ET makes a huge difference. Without the superior versions of my ATOs, my crits are somewhat less reliable than they will eventually be (my +50% crit chance proc is in Total Focus, which I think is The Right Move for scrappers), but it feels like they'll never be so reliable as to avoid this -- getting a little unlucky with crit rates for ET seems like it's gonna be big. Stalkers have more ability to near-guarantee crits, which may be a big deal for them -- I was thinking that the ideal stalker move was AS (hide) > TF > ET (fast), but maybe it's TF > AS (hide) > ET (fast), to near-guarantee a heal in your ST attack chain (at the cost of a second fast ET). (I mean, or maybe invul is just a bad pairing with EM -- I'm increasingly feeling that way. Energy Aura is obviously to some degree "the canonical" pairing here, and if I had a big regen boost from Energize, I presumably wouldn't be feeling these ET hits as much.)

How does ET's "health cost" interact with to-hit debuffs? If you miss, do you pay the health cost? I assume you can't "crit" on a miss and self-heal.

Regen debuffs aren't like resist debuffs, where they magnify based on team size. If a regen debuff is "worth it" in terms of your own lost DPS solo, it's "worth it" on a team, and conversely if it's "not worth it" solo, it's "not worth it" on a team. (With a possible exception for enemies who get a regen boost per opponent, but as far as I know those are rare as hen's teeth.)

Okay, walked my EM/Invul scrap through the first Croatoa arc to level 29, then cheated to 33. I finally started to feel a little less fragile towards the ends of the twenties, probably due more to getting Invincibility than anything to do with EM. I continue to think that EM could use a little more polish and care at low levels, though. The move of the guaranteed stun to Barrage is nice, but between endurance issues and very unreliable mitigation, those sort of late-teens, early 20's doldrums were particularly bad. Not a ton else to say, really. Ghosts with their to-hit debuffing suck, you don't like missing on this character. Combat Teleport was only a weak help. Looking forward to having Energy Transfer to play around with.

I am pretty unconvinced that anything would be too horrible if taunt auras allowed procs to auto-hit enemies. Back before PPM, when procs in auras were good? Maybe an issue. Now? Checks once every ten seconds with a low proc rate? One available damage proc? Who cares?

Defense is obviously thematic for combat teleport, and it would not need to be balanced differently. Combat teleport, if it provided defense, would replace hover or combat jumping in some builds. People who are hardcore looking for a fourth pool to add another defense power (after speed, leaping or flying, and fighting) already have concealment and leadership as options.

I remember @Bopper speculating, with seemingly decent evidence, that stalker hemorrhage might be badly coded, and that some of its larger damage might be a mistake. Does the fixing of scrap/stalk savage melee powers nerf any power?