aethereal

Correct, +damage does not change proc damage. Almost nothing affects the damage of procs -- the only thing that really will cause an enemy to take more damage from a proc per se is a -res debuff. Aside from that, all you can do is try to get the proc to fire more frequently (ie, global recharge + using the attack as soon as it's off cooldown). One generally gives up a lot to really proc out a character, because you need to, first, give up all set bonuses in several attacks that would normally carry some global recharge/defense, and second, you tend to want to build heavily for global recharge, since that's what really improves procs, and that tends to leave you Very Short On Mitigation. I had hoped that the secret sauce of proccing a character was to just build a tank, since they simply don't really need significant amounts of mitigation from their set bonuses, and their lower damage modifier doesn't affect procs, but both my own few experiments there and the overall feeling of the board seems to be that, you know, procs can be good on tanks, but they still won't be competitive with other melee ATs even with a very heavily procced build. (This is why I don't really believe that procs need a nerf. I do think they need some rounds of simplification, because holy shit are they complicated.)

All that assumes you're fighting even-conn opponents, and that you're achieving 50% uptime on opportunity on all opponents that your party is fighting. Defenders are also hurt by the purple patch, of course, so that's somewhat apples to apples (their buffs aren't affected by it though). But it's important to note that if you're comparing sentinels resistance debuffs in a +4 world, you're doing half those numbers.

Okay, some actual suggestions: 1. Base proc rate (or scalar) on unenhanced recharge (plus animation time) Due to ED, it is fairly trivially possible to get more global recharge than local recharge. We don't gain much "balance" by scaling proc rate to local recharge, when global recharge is the controlling factor for how fast the power actually recharges. Doing this removes complexity and newbie traps. Reduce PPMs or change the formula as appropriate, and then just let recharge be recharge. 2. Either replace proc rate with a scalar, or create schedules of proc damage For procs that do damage or healing or other scalar values (as opposed to ones that, for example, proc a stun or +2 mag hold or whatever), introduce something that allows a low-damage, fast-recharge power to proc at a reasonable rate, but for lower damage (or healing value, or whatever). That might mean just changing the proc formula to being a modifier on the damage. So instead of proccing for 71 damage 50% of the time, proc for 36 damage 100% of the time (or instead of 71 damage 10% of the time, 7.1 damage 100% of the time). Or perhaps fix proc rate to 50% and then scale damage appropriately. Or create a few schedules, so schedule A might be 30 damage, schedule B 50 damage, schedule C 70 damage, schedule E 90 damage, and have powers define which schedule they proc. This gets us out of being so interested in "sweet spot" powers that are more than 10 seconds, and ideally more than 15 seconds, of recharge time. You can also use this to tune the AoE stuff a little better, I think.

T2 revive is actually a neat concept, I'm into it.

So the devs have stated that they're going to take a look at procs. It seems possible that we're at the right time in the dev cycle to actually have an impact on what, conceptually, they do (unlike Energy Melee, guys, you really need to let it go). So I thought I'd create a clearinghouse thread. Here are my problems with the current PPM framework: 1. It really rewards a narrow range of powers. You kinda want a power with like a 15-20 second base recharge time. Any more recharge time than that is wasted, any less and your proc rate drops precipitously. If you have a power that is perfectly hovering at the edge of the point where you get a 90% proc rate, then a normal damage proc adds 64.575 damage expected to the power without any ED concerns -- that's way more than a damage enhancement at that scale of power would add (roughly: even a high end IO adds at most about 50% damage to a power, powers with a 15 second recharge time don't do 130 damage). But get longer recharge, damage procs are less exciting, get shorter, they're less exciting. This is just... weird. We shouldn't be pouring through sets looking for powers that have a 15 second recharge time. 2. They're very independent of the actual power. The only thing a proc cares about is "can I be slotted in this power," "what's this power's AoE," and "what's this power's recharge time." A minimal-damage hold is exactly the same as a high damage blast etc. It kind of robs sets of individuality. A lot of normal CoH is about managing factors that build up your damage normally -- it sucks that procs ignore scrap/stalk crits, ignores build-up and other damage boosters, ignores almost everything except getting into a power with the right recharge time. 3. It puts more pressure on slotting for global recharge Global recharge was plenty good before it was a way to triple the DPS contribution of your procs. Here are things I do not mind about procs: 1. They allow low-damage ATs to close some of the damage gap with high-damage ATs. The supremacy of blasters and scrappers/brutes does not seem to me to be empirically threatened by current proc mechanics. We aren't seeing everyone just run defenders. You give up a lot to cram 3+ procs in your five main attack powers, and I think there's a pretty good tradeoff right now in terms of how much you have to give up to get a damage boost. My testing with, for example, extremely heavily procced out tanks does not suggest that they can get brute-like damage from procs.

PvP procs are normal damage procs, they don't get anything special. They're 3.5 PPM, 70-whatever damage instead of 4.5 PPM 100-whatever damage. So it's way worse.

Here is a change nobody will like: Instant Healing becomes a 5% (enhanceable) heal with a 1 second animation time and a 4 second base recharge time. It gives a 2% damage bonus, stackable, for 5 seconds, for every percentage point of health below 50% you are (so, +100% damage bonus if below 0.5% health). If you have not attacked or been attacked in 8 seconds, it does 100% heal and gives 100% endurance.

This would be in a redesign that removes Opportunity. I am honestly... pretty doubtful that this level of ambitious redesign of Sentinels is going to actually... happen. I mean, it's been more than six months to redesign Energy Melee. I don't think there's any suggestion that a Sent revamp would happen in page 6. The thing that CP has been talking about -- completely changing the inherent of Sentinels -- seems like a bigger lift than anything that has so far happened in Homecoming.

Because when you have a totally permissive set, you quickly end up going 1, 2, 3, 1, 4 repeat for a lot of gameplay. Having something that adds some tension to your decisions of what power to cast next, where you MIGHT want to press 2 but also you MIGHT want to press 3 is more engaging. Now, I'd argue that in general CoH has had difficulty actualizing that idea, but it's a good idea at base. Classes like defender/controller/corruptor/dom have some of that anyway because their powers are much more diverse than the melee sets, so there's just generally more of, "Should I fire off this mez or this debuff or this heal" going on in combat, but classes that mostly have a choice between "damage, more damage, and aoe damage" have a harder time staying interesting.

Per the powers api, it's 1.33 seconds nominal cast time, and thus presumably 1.584 seconds arcanatime.

I dearly, dearly hope that Page 6 is way past the point where they're still looking for fundamental philosophical approaches about how to change Energy Melee.

Sentinels do about 150% defender damage based on scalar (before resist debuffs or opportunities). This whole idea that sentinels barely outdamage defenders is just wrong. Now, some defenders can get big damage boosts out of their primary. But that's different.

Yeah, I was thinking something where it's more pronounced than that, but also without the high bar of mag resist to get over from the start. So you could hold an AV with just your normal T2 hold, but just for a very short period of time. Could potentially use it strategically to give someone a chance to fire off a heal or whatever. But, again, we aren't going to scrap mag resists as the primary defense against mezzes at this stage in the game.

I kinda wish that AV resistance to status effects was more based on shortening the duration than being flat-out protected from it. It feels like being able to hold an AV for 2 seconds every 12 or so wouldn't be out-of-control powerful. Maybe with then a 2 second period afterward of mag 1000 protection so multiple controllers couldn't statue an AV by working together. But too big a change for the game as-is.

Just checked Rubi's powers API, assuming I'm interpreting it correctly (which is never guaranteed), here are the relevant effects of Ball Lightning: 1. 16.68 energy damage 2. 4 ticks of 10.01 energy damage 3. 7% chance of 56.72 energy damage if NOT hidden 4. 50% chance of 56.72 energy damage if hidden So, basically, it's a totally normal Stalker AoE attack in this respect: 50% chance critical out of hide, critical damage is the sum of all the DoT in one up-front package.

So for example my build can't run your attack chain, I think, because it has less recharge in Assassin's Strike than is needed for your two-AS's-in-one-12-second-or-so chain. Conversely, my build doesn't go crazy on proccing Moonbeam, but if your attack chain doesn't use Moonbeam (or Zapp, whichever) at all (as Croax's attack chain did not), at least one slot is going completely wasted in my build, since it's going to carry a proc which isn't giving a set bonus in Moonbeam. And honestly maybe the power pick is going wasted too, it's mostly providing some global recharge that I think none of these builds really need. My build uses tactics, which I don't think is necessary to hit things, but I chose to try to improve the damage of Moonbeam. My build 5-slots HB with Superior Blistering Cold for the S/L defense, because it doesn't use HB in its attack chain, but your attack chain uses HB. Build and attack chain just can't be separated from each other. I definitely think that my build needs work -- it is really hard to try to wring all the juice out of a build without Mids. Doing stuff through the respec tool, even on test where everything is free, is just much, much, much more clumsy than doing it in Mids.

I think the overall distaste for Agility comes from two things: 1. You can get a LOT of global recharge from sets and of course Hasten (+87.5% recharge just from LotG and five +10% bonuses from ATOs/Purples, and that gets you most of the way to perma-hasten in and of itself). You can not reasonably get +20% to +45% damage from sets. So why not use sets to get your recharge and free up your alpha for something only it can get. 2. Agility potentially reduces the efficacy of proc builds. I think #2 is pretty overstated, honestly. First, there's a fairly narrow range of powers that are going to be hurt in their procability by Agility (like your telenukes wouldn't, though they won't be great at proccing anyway). Second, most people don't end up having build space for real proc-heavy builds anyway. Third, on stalkers at least, proc-heavy builds aren't obviously super powerful anyway. See for example the StJ Attack Chain thread also up towards the top of the forum right now -- I've been building with a real eye towards maximizing proc value and, like, maybe it's mildly useful? Or maybe it's actually disadvantageous to DPS.

Wait, this doesn't make sense. Attack chains and builds are interrelated, not independent. A given build might not even take a power used in a given attack chain, or might take it but slot it as a mule or whatever. A build designed for a given attack chain might push for far more recharge for a power than it needs for another attack chain. An attack chain might not be gapless on build A, but is on build B. I also just did another round of testing and did an 88 second time on the first pylon with my attack rotation (with assault hybrid toggled on -- I agree it should be off, but just apples-to-apples comparison since we've been doing it on). I don't understand why Croax and I are getting such different results. Okay, and here are my first two pylon results with my rotation, assault hybrid OFF: 113 seconds 119 seconds Then I accidentally got killed by the dropship. 😛

Huh. I've had way better results than that. Like, even with my kind of clumsy setup in which I'm pretty sure I lose at least 5 seconds just starting and stopping the timer, and where I have several times self-sabotaged by imagining I can jump to the end of the thing and use my heavy attacks out-of-order to get the last few percent of health and then had my cooldowns get screwed up, I've never gone above 97 seconds. But thanks for trying it out!

Sniper attacks are instant in-combat, you no longer need to get +22% to-hit. Instead, your damage will increase as you go from +0% to hit to +22% to hit. Base recharge of Moonbeam is 24 seconds, so getting it down to 8 seconds is pretty trivial and to 6 seconds is doable with effort, especially since you're using Agility. It's unlikely that your attack chain is less than 8 seconds, so using it once per rotation is pretty simple. Meanwhile, the long base recharge helps in terms of damage and procs. It's expensive in terms of endurance, for sure. There are lots of different strategies for handling your endurance economy in CoH, but thinking about how to get there is important, especially for Stalkers who also have the relatively chonky Assassin's Strike in their attack chain.

Looks decent!

It's not really about moonbeam, zapp is basically as good. I didn't proc it out to the point where I needed the extra damage proc for moonbeam. Okay, so basically this: Initial Strike: 3 slot with Superior Stalker's Guile: Dam/Rech, Acc/Dam/Rech, Dam/End/Rech Heavy Blow: 5 slot with Superior Blistering Cold Sweeping Cross: 5 slot with Armageddon + Fury of the Gladiator Proc Assassin's Strike: 3 slot with Super Stalker's Guile: Acc/Dam, Proc, Acc/Dam/End/Rech, plus 50+5 common damage enh, plus touch of death proc + mako's proc Build Up: 1-slot with Gaussian's proc Shin Breaker: 50+5 Crushing Impact Acc/Dam, 50+5 Mako's Acc/Dam, Achilles heel proc, Mako's proc, Touch of Death proc, Hecatomb proc. Crushing Uppercut: 5-slot with Hecatomb (minus the proc) + Unbreakable Constraint proc Spinning Strike: 6-slot with Superior Assassin's Mark. Moonbeam or Zapp: 5-slot with Apocalype (not the pure damage one) + Sting of the Manticore proc I got Assault. Probably would've been a good idea to get Tactics for a bit more Moonbeam damage, but I failed to. For everything else, just, you know, two-slot hasten and work on survivability and global recharge. I didn't have to touch a defensive clicky during the pylon fights. Musculature, Degenerative, Ageless, Assault, all Core/left side. Make sure you use Spinning Strike on some trash mob in the zone before engaging to engage the global proc. I'm not sure about the Crushing Uppercut slotting. I wanted the recharge, but you could pretty easily marginally improve its damage by slotting it for acc/dam and then a bunch of procs.

Like I said, I can't use Mids, it doesn't run on Mac Catalina. Closest I could do is screenshot the enhancement interface.

99.3 average compared to 92.1 and 96 average doesn't seem awful to me. I did a modified build and tested out, and got numbers more like averaging a bit over 90, but I didn't see any step-change function better than your previous tests. I suspect I'm just not as good at doing these tests compared to you, though. My differences: Hecatomb proc in shin breaker, not crushing uppercut. Kismet proc for increased accuracy. Moonbeam 50-slotted with the ranged Purple + some other proc. Assassin's strike has just three of the ATO (including the proc of course), a damage enhancement, and two damage procs, with very minimal local recharge to improve proccing. Sorry, I'm on a mac with Catalina so I can't run mids and just share a build. Doing these tests with Assault hybrid turned on is a nightmare, it slows it way down, since you have to wait for Assault hybrid to come off cooldown between every pylon.

You can tell Mids to show you your combat values. I forget the exact way to do this. Options and then a bunch of checkboxes for like "has attacked" and "has taken damage."