Unknown Magi

That makes a lot more sense, thanks for the elaboration! As it stands right now, the only -tohit or -damage I'm aware of in tank epics is entirely in Soul Mastery, and there is no +resistance buffing (for self or others) anywhere in the current epics. So, while this is a neat idea, it isn't actually doing much (yet?). Would it be possible to consider also modifying recharge debuffs in tank epics, as those also play into survivability equations and would mean this is a more impactful change now? In particular it seems like this would improve several sets that aren't top picks right now, and I"m always down for increasing diversity of good choices!

So then if Melt Armor was not intended to be modified, can you please elaborate on the vision/goal for "Tanker modifiers to debuff enemy ToHit and Damage and Resistance with support abilities in epic pools have been increased" from the patch notes? As it stands, there are only 3 powers being modified (and potentially one that should be but isn't?) so I'm confused as to what was intended when the patch notes talk about buffing epic pool debuffs if Melt Armor wasn't intended for buffing. Was this *just* intended to be a buff to Darkest Night? I like the idea of "make tank epic/patron pools debuff more" in general that you seem to be aiming for, it just seems like it's not actually applying to most EPP/APP debuffs due to the scope.

Just to clarify this thing: there is no such thing as "resistance debuff resistance", because resistance *is* resistance debuff resistance. If you have 50% resistance and get hit with a 20% debuff, you will in fact only lose 10% (because you resisted 50% of the debuff). AVs have inherent defense that scales with level (IIRC, it goes from 60% up to 87% at the top end). Therefore, in terms of raw numbers, AVs do have resist debuff resistance. However, if you look at it from a *relative* perspective, this is working as intended. In our example before, where you had 50% resist and got hit with that 20% debuff (and thus lost 10% resist), you now have 20% less mitigation than you had before, and thus are taking 20% more damage than you were before.

Not to interrupt on the various back and forth here, but here's some numbers and observations. Numbers first; this is just for anyone else who had been hunting numbers and couldn't find them, like me. Buff Leadership Changes Maneuvers: Old base tank defense buff: 2.28% New base tank defense buff: 3.5% Assault: Old base tank damage buff: 10.5% New base tank damage buff: 18.75% Tactics: Old base tank tohit buff: 7% New base tank tohit buff: 10% Epic Pool Changes Melt Armor: Resist Debuff: 9.75% > 15%. Defense debuff unchanged Darkest Night: Tohit Debuff: 10.5% > 15%. Damage debuff: 21% > 30% Gloom and Dark Obliteration: Tohit Debuff: 5.25% > 7.5% Leviathan Mastery - Arctic Breath: Defense debuff unchanged. Resist debuff...unchanged? This seems like a bug Observations The fact that this is only to tohit, -dam, and -resist is somewhat annoying given that those only pop up in a total of 3 epic pools, and one of those appears to have been excluded. I would like to see -recharge and -defense included just for even-handedness, personally. While the patch notes talk like tanks have had buffing in general improved, and Leadership benefits from that, it seems more accurate to say that tanks just had their leadership numbers buffed. Grant Cover from Shield Defense, for example, is still at the same values that it was before. The patch notes in this regard are either inaccurate, or some things have been missed. Questions @Captain Powerhouse can you confirm whether things are "Working as Intended" in regard to Leviathan Mastery Arctic Breath, Shield Defense Grant Cover, etc. or whether these were intended to receive the benefit from the patch notes and were just missed?

Herostats can still work, if you utilize chat log file parsing rather than direct memory scanning. Just make sure you're chat logging in CoH, and adjust your settings in HeroStats to use that method and point it to he correct folder for the logs.

If that is the end goal, then this fails. Tanks are *still* not any tankier than brutes, but can potentially deal more damage in AoE. And when I say potentially, I mean a tossed-together tank build is outperforming top end brute farmer builds by as much as 30-40% in terms of damage and overall speed. Does this update provide something in the ballpark of parity between the two archetypes? Sure. But it does it in a way that feels more and more like we don't even need both archetypes. Why have 2 tank archetypes with the same survival caps, same sets available (mostly), and and similar damage, where the only difference is one has a fury bar? What I was pointing out is that saying "Brutes are a tank archetype too, and therefore should have the same survivability numbers. That's how support archetypes work" is patently false. Support arechetypes have varying numbers based on what *else* those archetypes do. Rather than just turning tanks into better Brutes and continuing the power creep arms race, why don't we get both archetypes to where they should be in the grand scheme of things, which as you say is with Brute being higher damage and Tank being better *at tanking.* There have been plenty of suggestions here for how that can be done without huge tank damage buffs. But if the new mentality is "they're both X archetype, so Y numbers/caps should be the same" then Masterminds and Sentinels would like to have a word with you.

So I haven't mathed it all out, but both myself and Warlawk (of brute farming fame) did clear speed comparison testing last night. I don't have all the data on this computer, but the general consensus was "Fire/Fire tanks are outperforming all brutes at kill times and clear speeds" but how much was difficult to say because the AoE change also affected Ionic Judgement in a big way which was difficult to fully quantify. Warlawk did some napkin math, though, and I think he calculated Fire/Fire tank at ~2.38 mil inf/min (as compared to the 2.3 mil inf/min of top brute builds). I'm still building my dataset for sets that aren't outliers like that, but what I have so far puts Tank behind Brute in overall clear speeds/kill times. Scrapper isn't part of the comparison yet, so I can't comment intelligently on that, but generally scrappers are slightly higher damage than brutes at the cost of lower survivability, so contextual factors would be important.

No, but the other "support archetypes" don't get Defender numbers, they get reduced-but-still-effective numbers. That way, the "pure" support archetype has higher numbers in those buffs and debuffs than the ATs that also do something else (control, pets, higher damage) Sort of like how the tanker should be better at tanking than the AT that also does something else (scrapper level damage). An archetype can be "a tank archetype" without stealing all of Tanker's numbers, in much the same an AT can be "a support archetype" without stealing Defenders numbers; otherwise, can my Mastermind please have defender numbers on all buffs and debuffs please, because same logic?

Yes, you can totally argue this. Brutes can achieve tanker level mitigation while also achieving permahasten level recharge, while also vastly out-damaging tanks. That's the problem right now, why we're all here. Sure, the tanker +res ATO is nice, but it's a proc so building around it is tricky; brutes on the other hand get a 6% resist *to everything* flat ATO set bonus. But comparing specific enhancements is sort of academic; one needs to look at the overall picture of where both ATs end up. As previously mentioned, with damage cap changes brutes still win at the top end. Solo, Brutes also still win, because Fury puts them ahead of what tanks can achieve on their own in terms of damage buffs. Excepting a couple of outliers (like fire/fire tanks on Pineapple), Brutes should still win at damage in pretty much every case versus comparable tankers. Thematic purposes? Small quality of life buff for the underperforming AT? We must tank differently,because most of my tank builds leverage Ageless, personally, but this is a 'different strokes' argument where there isn't really a right answer. The short version is that it's a nice to have, and it doesn't take away from other ATs by giving to tanks (unlike many other options which would steal something from some other role).

Okay so, having done a fair bit of testing since this went live yesterday, some thoughts: -As pointed out previously, the damage is nice but not outperforming other ATs *in most cases*. There are outliers of course, namely Fire/Fire which does approximately *all* the damage right now (it actually outperforms spine/fire and rad/fire at farming on Pineapple). Once the outliers are corrected, I like this. -The other changes (fixed gauntlet, increased end, increased AoE) are all quite nice and I think of them as general "quality of life" as a tank. Please keep these. And now for something completely different. Since so many people are railing against tanks getting more damage and becoming "more like brutes" (which is insane to me. Where was all this complaining when Brutes stole tanking from Tankers?), here's an idea which was coalesced from discussion on the tank channel: -Lower brutes to 85% Res cap, to match other "non-Tanker tanks". This gives tanks a small edge in end-game survival which gives them a bit of uniqueness without significantly injuring Brutes. -Revert tank AT melee damage scale to .75 or .8 (wherever it was), and match their ranged damage scale to this. -Keep tank increased AoE size, increased End, fixed Gauntlet. -Reimplement Brusing, but in a different way. Rather than a resistable debuff stuck to a mediocre power, make it work like Blaster Defiance damage buffs; in other words, add a bit of stacking resist debuff to every tanker primary/secondary attack. This lets tanks have Bruising back in a way that makes more sense and works more fluidly. This *should* be unresistable or at least partially unresistable, because Bruising 1.0 was pretty much worthless against the hard targets where you would truly care. -Give tanks a team support mechanic. This is tricky, because most team support mechanics are covered by the *support* archetypes; that's their job. One particular area that isn't well-covered by support sets is in Debuff Resists. What if tanks granted a stacking chunk of debuff resists to their team (and got some themselves?). Suddenly tanks become super nice to have for dealing with Malta, Freaks, Carnival, etc. as they now provide an answer to some of the most frustrating mob groups in the game just by being part of the team. I don't have specifics for this suggestion because it would likely be the trickiest to balance and implement. -Aggro changes? This is more wishful thinking, but something to consider tweaking at least. Overall, this paints a picture of the Tanker as managing aggro and making the team more resilient in mostly-unique ways, while also contributing to team damage meaningfully without being major damage dealers themselves. It also cements a (very small) difference between Brutes and Tanks to further separate their archetype identity. Just my 2c,

This is a thread about buffs, not nerfs 😜

@ineffablebob Can HeroStats leverage saved chat log files in order to parse out the requisite data regardless of client? That's how the little unity damage meter is currently tracking such things IIRC, and would give you some freedom from having to directly monitor memory?

Are there extra steps to take to make this work? When I try to get the Unstable build to recognize either the HC Beta or HC Beta Legacy clients, it recognizes the process but never pulls any data

I noted Burn as having an oddly high proc rate for damage a couple weeks ago, and some folks have been poking at that since then. At least that's my guess?

I can very much understand where Kimuji is coming from, this is Fire's version of "The Rage Fix", where a bug has existed so long that it's considered baseline and it's suddenly being fixed in a way that will drastically reduce the power level people are used to. Going to do some testing this week when I get some time.

@KimujiYoui'll probably want to provide feedback on the specific changes currently in testing on the Beta forum for maximum visibility. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/57-homecoming-beta/

IMHO, it does seem like it would be more desirable to make the resist element of the cold shields unenhanceable and thus allow power boost and PBU to function properly on the defense element. If I'm understanding the above description of limitations correctly, that would work, yes?

The many burn patches phenomenon certainly explains why it has an insane proc rate, which is something I've been trying to puzzle out for weeks. Many thanks for the educational post!

Much appreciation for the file replacement! Unfortunately, this only solves it for me, not any random teammates unless they've proactively performed this fix, so I'm still going to ask that the devs consider this one for adjustment.

Sonic Repulsion has standard activation and ambient sounds, but it also has a sound which triggers each time it knocks back an enemy. The knockback sound is particularly loud and off-putting. When slotting KB-to-KD in this power (generally agreeable as the most optimal usage), the knockback sound plays at least once per second, creating an extremely annoying situation for everyone in the group. This is bad enough that the power cannot be used in large groups due to the noise pollution. Request: fix Sonic Repulsion to prevent the repetitive knock sound, as has been done on some other powers with repetitive sound issues.

Because they don't get enough recognition for being awesome, Ninjas had to make an appearance here. Ninja/Cold Mastermind - Unknown Popsicle Time to kill: 72s (reproduced 3 times consecutively) T4 Assault Radial Embodiment - Clicked T4 Barrier Core Epiphany - Clicked T4 Degenerative Radial Flawless Interface (Passive) T4 Agility Core Paragon (Passive) Note: Summoning and Upgrade powers to create ninjas before entering combat were not counted in 72s. Add 4-5 seconds if you want to count that. Special mention to the Jounin, who were clocking 80-90 DPS *each* per run. Build (Mids Reborn): | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1491;656;1312;HEX;| |78DA65934B6F125114C7EF30335228B4202D8F165A8B56FA8216DBEA4E13A976613| |14DEA73452630A5638041A0892EFD266EDD9818A3766B628C2E7C7E0C935612DB85| |26068F73FE74283399B9BF3BE771EFFF9C3B937FB4E67BBEFEE48A9002B98AD66C1| |6F25AB3A537AA46ADA4E6B5B25194055D6E7AA2B6A7B0B55BAD9AB5CC4DA3F6406B| |4EF638AEEE6E6F677266A5545833C9A0B50CB32686374DB392D9D0B592DE68EE187| |55FF7BD6ED4CA5EEB65ABAEEB25BF35BD6E94775AE4885FAB1BC54CCFDA79ADA843| |DEE328099AA3E7852A70755471E81222AB08571B3C12169536784BB178EA2EB332D| |B93FB9D73029F99235FC0AFCCF03766F42D31A4882AE54A9C2B49A312AF1B6006A9| |5BB2E5ECB864F806E01B5825B3228B97A49BA577843AC5FAC294E7E63CD98D3CEF2| |FD962F606F897DC094598B4BF07FB7BBAB1D8E3152D3C88BA0673ACDBF709DCE7BD| |867E80F7B817813BCC2469F043BB7F9E63E6C005F034C50C738C1886F6D7B46790F| |77405BB715327F9903487384F0D7959EBC210338D1AD297B93FE943AE77F18819A2| |3D4739571A450FC3A044BE087A19E9D025DE909A183A10FBC02B8CBD07DF31E31FC| |1DB5CF9C47D6683548E73AE328E4A52DD4E8C9D641695C9A42081CA12A86002CA27| |B2CC33BFC10B6044B24E728FB44E42FD24D66B928624F4272FF2C99DBB042E832BC| |CD42A73165F668B72A7A17F1ABACFF713FA53E01E499AC1A9CFA0ABB37D3CF00931| |8F2F6EBEEF8B50A8FE0CF233885FEC639D742DA1CE25D419578EFF40BAFF9FDC9CC| |3B2E4B0641D96658765C561D97058F2B6A5B3A91CFFCF42B2BC9E00FDC5F0EE7BC9| |2BF57A7FDA16952D516B9C728C67ADF1C0B142DBB6B8A49E481EFF84A941ECED3C4| |BDAF3A7219A43D57AC4B6C746ECF93F08141103| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

During my testing, if I summoned the pets *then* turned on the toggle, I didn't see doublehits. Traditionally, pets check certain things at spawn times (like Enhancements) and then "snapshot" them for the duration of the pet's life (I think they may be rechecked at zoning for MM pets, unsure). My theory here is that Doublehit is being applied similarly, such that if you turn on doublehit post summoning the pet doesn't catch it because it already snapshotted. I'm unsure why this allows MM pets to get it again later when you reactivate, but it's probably because there's an "If doublehit active" clause similar to the if power active clauses used elsewhere (like AR snipe and targeting drone for example)

What I have observed to far is this: 1. Activate Assault Hybrid Embodiment. 2. Summon pets. 3. Pets have Doublehit chance for remainder of two minutes. 4. When my toggle falls off their doublehit seems to go away as well, but 4a. If I activate it again 2 minutes later, and the doublehit pets from before are still out, they start doublehitting again. The most relevant use case for this is MMs, obviously due to the life of the pets.

THIS JUST IN!!!!! If you summon pets while Assault Radial Embodiment is running, they inherit the doublehit chance for the remainder of the duration. This includes Mastermind pets. Go. Hunt. Kill skulls. Edit: And Gang War. And the overall numbers seem to double DPS (or possibly more) for T1 and T2 MM pets, based on initial numbers, although numbers are hard since HeroStats isn't registering Doublehit.

I don't have time for any more research right now, but something I'd like to report for further testing: Pseudopet-summoned pseudopets inherit all proc chances, but seem to have independent proc activation periods. For initial testing tonight, I utilized Carrion Creepers out of Plant Control. The power had 4 3.5 PPM damage procs applied. I was also doing some testing with Assault Radial Core T4 to determine if the Doublehit proc can be inherited by pets (or pets of pets) but this is so far inconclusive. As to the original testing, however: Targets: 0x8 warriors mobs in AE recreation of old BM farm Power used: Carrion creepers, slotted with 4x 3.5PPM damage procs, 1x Force Feedback proc, and 1 Nucleolus Exposure lvl 53 (to ensure accuracy during testing) Sample size: ~1 map of mobs (initial sample only, more testing required) Observation: A single casting of carrion creepers was capable of achiever a stagger 90 PPM over the lifetime of the power. One casting was used against two groups sequentially over the course of 1:38 seconds and generated 146 instances of Pet Bonus Damage in herostats (which is differentiated from my own bonus damage procs). We should, perhaps, do some more testing on pseudopets? Edit: One other observation: the creepers also triggered Force Feedback (Pet) procs, but these were not inherited by me, leading me to believe that once you go "down the chain" of summoned pseudopets, something interesting is happening to buff procs as well.