aethereal

I think that people are underestimating the additional difficulty that would be created by making specifically minions and lieutenants last longer. Making just the boss last twice as long when the minions and lieutenants are gone would just be a pointless speedbump. Letting another 10 mobs actually get off some attacks would increase the danger at least somewhat. There would also be more chance that the tank missed a minion or two and the squishies drew some fire.

I think it would be worthwhile to have some (not all!) enemies have substantial damage mitigation powers that are detoggled or suppressed by mezzes. Something that packs a punch, like a 50% DR or substantial self-heal.

Well, to start, your powers seem under-slotted. You've got empty slots in two of the attacks in your attack rotation. Dual Wield still has the low-level premium enhancements. And the ones that are fully slotted are using common IOs. Look, I get that not everyone loves to fuck around with procs all day long, but DP is a set that has kind of low base damage, no aim, and takes a ton of procs. It's really going to help you if you slot sets for higher enhancement values and then have 2-3 procs in your best attacks.

I updated the spreadsheet (still https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wzj1VBlH9NGqAO01Y8QSz4DBBVLzqkQ6aENtaF9bYnI/edit?usp=sharing) to include some information about procs. It's... very far from a definitive worksheet for proccing, but hopefully it gives some ideas. I also have a very janky, much-hand-coding necessary attack chain worksheet. Some commentary: In general, you get pretty close DPS for filled attack chains for these three sets for the values I tried (which was a pretty straightforward, one-proc case, I'm sure not the best possible ones). Feel free to mess around with the sheet yourself. My scenarios showed Martial Arts > Energy Melee > War Mace, but by just a few percentage points (with very high levels of global recharge, it might be possible to get a war mace attack chain of just Clobber > Jawbreaker > Pulverize, in which case it would outperform both EM and MA, but it would need a LOT of recharge). But remember that both sets have better AoE than EM. Either of TF -> 2s animation time or ET -> 1s animation time dramatically improves the EM DPS in the scenarios I tested (again, certainly not the most sophisticated attack chains in the world).

Yes, but what are the absolute damage numbers?

I'm trying to write some tools to understand the exact quantitative effects of proccing a power. I found a (very old) guide here https://guidescroll.com/2011/07/city-of-heroes-damage-procs-faq/ that suggests that at level 50, a normal damage proc does 71.75 damage and a purple proc does 107.09 damage, is that still correct?

Fair enough, and it's easy to add. I put columns for arcana activation time and arcana DPA into the spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wzj1VBlH9NGqAO01Y8QSz4DBBVLzqkQ6aENtaF9bYnI/edit?usp=sharing) You're right that it changes things more than I was imagining.

I know, but it feels like the details of Arcanatime are unlikely to make a big difference in how the powersets compare.

There's a vast gulf between EM-as-it-is-now and "an AoE set." Its AoE could be improved significantly without making it into an AoE-centric set, and I think almost everyone on this thread who has suggested improved AoE for Energy Melee has not been trying to turn it into a competitor for Best AoE In Brute/Tanker/Stalker Melee, just "not the worst by such a wide margin." Martial Arts has a PBAoE on the same cooldown as Whirling Hands that animates in 60% the time and does 18% higher damage. Would you consider Martial Arts to be "an AoE-centric set"?

I made a little spreadsheet comparing (Brute) Energy Melee to War Mace and Martial arts. I transcribed the info from the JSON power files that someone created in the tools section, hopefully I avoided any transcription errors. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wzj1VBlH9NGqAO01Y8QSz4DBBVLzqkQ6aENtaF9bYnI/edit?usp=sharing You can play around with stuff yourself to get a comparison, but here are some highlights: Energy Melee's best DPA attack is Energy Transfer, at 71.23, its second best is Energy Punch at 50.25, and its third is Bone Smasher at 45.60. Total focus comes in fourth, and honestly it needs a lot more help than Energy Transfer does. Clobber destroys the DPA of Energy Transfer (Clobber is 99.02!), though then War Mace has Jawbreaker and Pulverize both around 45. Of course, War Mace has three AoEs, all of them better than Whirling Hands. Martial Arts doesn't have any single attack that has the DPA of Energy Transfer, but it does have Storm Kick at 66.33, Crippling Axe Kick at 55.26, and both Cobra Strike and Crane Kick at 48.95. Its single PBAoE attack has almost twice the DPA of Whirling Hands. Nowadays, you have to look at the procability of attacks to get a real sense of things, but with Stun not having a damage proc, I don't think this really is a big advantage for Energy Melee. It has several 20s recharge attacks, so they're reliably procable, but probably that's overkill -- other melee sets usually have 12-16s recharge times which are still pretty reliable for getting a proc off (if you don't slot for recharge) and mean you need fewer attacks in the attack chain to get them off. If Energy Transfer were to get a 1s animation time, its DPA would be positively stupid -- 190! It's hard for me to argue that a one attack should be that much of an outlier. Total Focus is really disappointing and could in my opinion use a drop to a 2s animation time, which would give Energy Melee at least some claim to fame in having two different notably high-DPA attacks. One ultra-high DPA attack on a 20s cooldown doesn't salvage the set, for me. Giving stun the "cobra strike" treatment has always seemed nonsensical to me, and continues to. Total Focus should be better than it is. If we cut it to a 2s animation time, then we have Total Focus, Energy Transfer, and Energy Punch already better DPA than Cobra Strike is, and Bone Smasher just barely inferior to Cobra Strike. At very reasonable recharge levels, we can have a seamless attack chain consisting of Energy Transfer, Total Focus, Bone Smasher, and Energy Punch. If we replace Bone Smasher with a Cobra-Strike-like Stun, then we are, first of all, only microscopic amounts higher damage, and second, we've now obviated Bone Smasher. Power players would probably just reach for higher levels of global recharge and drop Stun or Bone Smasher anyway. Improving Stun makes some sense if we continue to have Total Focus be an arguably useless attack, but why would we do that? Energy Melee's AoE is dismal. It's not just that it has one AoE, it's that it has one bad AoE. Making Stun do something to help out AoE makes a lot more sense than trying to crowd another single-target attack into a set with five other single-target attacks. Stun should either be AoE or else it should up its mitigation game in some way (it doesn't really make sense for this set to have another single-target stun when it, again, already has a ton of other single-target stuns). If Whirling Hands continues to be the only AoE in Energy Melee, it should probably get some mild help. Improving its DPA to 20-ish would still make it way less than Dragon's Tail, Shatter, or Crowd Control, but would at least throw some kind of bone to this set. It certainly would not change the set to be "a good AoE set."

2 HOs and 4 procs will be higher damage, I would expect (especially if two of those procs are purple procs). But more expensive, and 5-piecing Hecatomb gets you a 10% global recharge bonus plus whatever other bonuses.

So Genetic Corruption seems pretty solid to me. If your resistance to S/L is 75%, then it's the equivalent of an additional 2.5% or so resistance, and much more than that to your less-resisted damage types (assuming that your opponents are in range of it). And with Freezing Aura, the sleep effect is pretty noticeable. I'm actually thinking of just going ahead and enhancing it with a 50+5 sleep IO to increase mitigation/chances of overlap with freezing aura.

RubyRed's tool looks like exactly what I'm looking for, thanks!

Is there a spreadsheet or database floating around that includes a listing for power recharge time, animation time (or Arcana time), damage, and other factors? Something to play around with to put numbers to suggestions for this forum?

Does anyone know the numbers for Genetic Corryption? The detailed info is literally completely blank. To answer my own question, per the JSON powers data that someone on the forums created: It's a 66% chance of mag 2.0 sleep, auto-hit, for 7.5 seconds, that grows to an 85% chance with offensive adaptation 30% regen if in efficient adaptation (no regen bonus in other adaptations) -11.25% to strength of all damage, auto-hit, growing to -14.96% with defensive adaptation

Very few do, as far as I know. The one I'm aware of is the burning forest that is used for the Kronos titan in regular missions. Does anyone have a list of maps that can take GMs? Is there a way to filter maps down to ones that allow certain details?

Southeast, not southwest.

If you're at Ms Liberty facing south, it's towards the southeast, and vaguely visible. It's a building with a slightly domed glassed-in roof, and there are doors that let you go up some steps into the glassed in section, which is a small park.

Are there any places that are potentially neat spots to visit/rolepay that are... maybe not secrets, but not the obvious places? Some that I know of: The Monkey Fight Club in Sharkhead Paragon Dance Party in Talos and I forget where else The rooftop park in Atlas The floating islands around Ouroborus Anything similar? Ideally with few or no enemy spawns and featuring some kind of interesting element to them. Not supergroup bases. Not that they aren't great, but they're a separate topic.

Yeah, I've seen it used as an RP thing.

I totally believe that. I just don't really know what else to put in the default slot for gen corruption.

I'm not sure I understand the objection to sandman in genetic corruption due to bio already being heavy on healing/regen.

I see that both builds listed on this thread use the Fortunata's Hypnosis Placate proc in genetic corruption. I was kind of vaguely thinking of the heal proc from call of the sandman. I haven't used any placate in the homecoming era. Is the thought here just that it's a bit more damage mitigation from people not attacking you? Or are you trying to set up more crits?

So in terms of should moonbeam (or zapp) be part of the ST rotation -- do stalker epic snipes get damage bonuses from +to-hit the way that Blaster snipes do? If so, are people making the comparison with that in mind? It seems like with offensive adaptation, the uptime of build-up for a stalker, and potentially things like the kismet +to-hit special enhancement, or tactics or something, it could make a noticeable difference.

Five-slotting Boundless Energy with a set that includes lots of things it doesn't need (end/recharge) seems like... a lot. It's got the 7.5% recharge, obviously. But you could get the same things minus the set bonuses by dropping two slots and doing the panacea proc + two common heal IOs, I think.