Sarrate

While looking at some builds, I noticed something I found peculiar, the ability to further strengthen s/l resists. I don't recall that being a thing on live (or at least, not to the extent that some have managed it), so I did a little bit of looking, and I found this. The 4 piece set bonus changed from "2.5% debt protection" to "3% s/l resist and 5% mez resistance." I wasn't even paying attention, but the 6 piece was modified as well, from "3.13% toxic res" to "4.5% toxic/psi res and 7.5% mez resistance." Is this an outlier? How prolific are these changes? Are they just changing certain bonuses (eg: all debt protection to s/l res) or certain sets (eg: set x is under performing and needs help)? I'm guessing it's more the former than the latter?

For the most part, I agree. I brought up those other circumstance because not everyone plays the same way. (Time to invest, influence to spend, time to get Incarnate abilities, play in teams with lots of support, etc.) So there is a niche for Tankers as they stand, but outside that niche, yeah, they struggle to compete. It's just tough trying to find a way to improve them without going too far. Improve their taunting abilities and multiple still aren't needed on a team. Increase their aggro cap (already off the table, just using as a thought exercise) and it disincentivizes multiple Tankers in teams even more (1 could do the work of 2 today). Increase their damage too much, and they encroach on Brute/Scrapper domain while being tougher. Increase their buffing or debuffing potential and they could interfere with other classes (Defender, Controller, VEATs, etc) while being tougher, and potentially giving them more damage (in the case of stacking Bruising). Heck, even if you gave Tankers stances (offensive/defensive stances), it could get to the point of "why play a Brute/Scrapper when I can choose between comparable offense and superior defense as a Tanker?" You know what I mean?

I'm not convinced Tankers have an advantage when it comes to aggro control, and if they do, it's pretty minor. Tankers and Brutes have the same threat modifier (4) and they have the same taunt durations (auras, attacks, Taunt, etc). The only advantage Tankers have is Gauntlet, which is overrated (imo). Consider: 1) It only effects single target attacks. So a set like Titan Weapons with a plethora of AoEs gets less benefit from it. 2) Its radius changes based on a power per power basis, with longer recharging powers having a wider radius. Take a look at Tanker Energy Melee. Look at Barrage (I know it's a weak power), Gauntlet's radius is only 3 feet. That's less than half melee range. If your target isn't holding hands with someone, they're not getting hit by Gauntlet. (In fairness, Energy Transfer and Total Focus have much larger radii, 11 and 17 ft respectively.) 3) It's likely only hitting things in melee, which are more likely already hit by your aura(s) and/or AoEs anyways. Okay, so it sounds like they're marginally better AoE tanks than Brutes because they do have extra AoE taunt effects. However: 1) Brutes deal more damage than Tankers. More damage = more thread. More threat = more aggro. 2) Taunt effects are heavily based on duration, and Gauntlet's duration (well, all other taunt effects) is completely outstripped by Taunt - which as I said, is equal to Tankers. If a Brute is Taunting, anything other than Taunt will not pull aggro. Tankers shine when playing in sub-optimal groups (not bashing these groups, just stating a fact), non-tricked out builds, more casual tanking (eg: less/no active Taunting), and overbuilding survivability. If you're going for maximum performance (builds, teams, etc), then a Brute has the edge. Prior to CoH's shutdown, one of my most played / invested characters was a tank, and I enjoyed being reliably survivable in a wider range of situations, so I'm not trying to hate on Tankers, here.

At least Brutes benefit by way of Fury. Scrappers, on the other hand... :o (Of course, Taunt duration outstrips Confront, so they'd be fighting a losing battle, there!) Ah, so he did. Well, alright then. Check out entaicritter.c, specifically the aiCritterFindTarget around line 450. Here's how I read what's going on: The for loop at line 478 takes all entities (players or NPCs) affecting the given ai, and iterates over them. It calculates the total threat (total), stores it in status->dangerValue, then handles the aggro cap. After the loop exists, it takes the target with the highest threat (dangerValue, stored within the loop) and targets that entity. The taunt multiplier get calculated at line 697. Note that taunt.duration is the total duration, the remaining duration has to be calculated (hence code like "taunt.duration - ABS_TIME_SINCE(taunt.begin)." I could be looking in the entirely wrong file, though. We were told that debuffs affect threat, but - based on this function - I don't see it. It's entirely possible that it's hidden somewhere (maybe damage.toMe has that baked in somewhere else in the code, for example). Anyways, it took me a bit just to find this, so I haven't gotten much further than that.

I actually forgot that was even an an option. I did some very quick spelunking and taunt duration is definitely used, but there's enough code that speaking authoritatively on it would be silly without spending more time. Three things I did find interesting (at least in one function): 1) When we heard Taunt is a 1,000 multiplier (I had a typo in my previous post), it looks like it was 1,000%, not 1,000x. In other words, it's a 10x multiplier. Still big, but not quite as all encompassing as we originally thought. 2) It looks like Taunt is retroactive. If you first deal 500 damage then Taunt second, the 500 damage will be affected by Taunt. 3) If your taunt's duration isn't double the remaining taunt duration of the current target, your taunt is nullified. I was going to post where I found the above logic, but now that I think of it, I'm not sure where the line for what is acceptable to post here is, so I'll stop there. If it's okay to be more specific, I will. Assuming the team is working well together (eg: not struggling with the content), that's living the dream. Yep. I wasn't as clear as I could have been. What I meant was, "if you don't have Taunt, you'll likely lose aggro to [all] Brutes and Scrappers [with taunt auras]."

Threat/taunt isn't as well understood as other mechanics, and it can be situational (eg: the AI modifier), but some basic principles apply: 1) All threat factors multiply with one another - that is they compound. 2) The longest active taunt duration on the target is used for threat formula. So if you have a 5s taunt and a 10s taunt, you'll get a 10,000x multiplier (10s * 1,000). 3) While the threat multiplier of taunt is huge, it's not enough by itself, you need to do damage. 4) Since debuffs have a threat multiplier, attacks/auras/etc with debuffs are stronger than those without. Using this very basic framework, the best way to make enemies stick to you like glue is to Taunt frequently and attack the things you Taunt. Why? This will make your threat multiplier huge (unslotted at 50 it lasts 41 seconds, slotted that's ~80 seconds, or an 80,000x threat multiplier) so all your attacks are more effective. Additionally, it will help make it last in situations where you're not actively attacking an enemy (have more enemies around you than Gauntlet can hit, enemies out of aoe range, you're herding around a corner, you have to move to grab adds, you're effected by tohit debuffs, etc). Again, I'm not saying spam Taunt and do nothing else, that's nowhere near enough. I'm also not saying you have to take Taunt if you don't want to. To me, however, I dislike the feeling of being unable to hold AV aggro off another non-Tanker. For reference, I had a WP/Fire on live that would out threat pretty much any other character that was not also Taunting. ---- Addendum 1 If you don't have Taunt, you'll likely lose aggro to Brutes and Scrappers (with actual Taunt auras). Why? You'll both have roughly the same taunt duration (taunt auras and Gauntlet have the same duration), but far less damage. With Taunt you can overwhelm their damage advantage with a bigger threat multiplier. Addendum 2 This also helps explain why Chilling Embrace is so fiendishly effective: *) It's auto-hit, so it will always hit the target. *) It ticks fast, so it will build up threat quicker and help keep your taunt duration up there (if you're not Taunting). For comparison, CE ticks every 0.5s, Invincibility every 1s. Damage auras tend to tick even slower (Blazing Aura is every 2s and it has a tohit check). *) It has a plethora of debuffs (run speed, flight speed, jump speed, recharge, damage x8 (one per type)), recall that these are threat multipliers as well.

Something else to consider: Bruising is implemented as a temporary power that reduces resistance, not as a debuff from the power itself. What this means is that it always operates at full strength and isn't reduced against higher level mobs (the mob is debuffing itself). How useful that is depends on what kind of content you're facing, of course. (A +4 would normally reduce its effectiveness to 48% (source).)

The question was about slotting while leveling, so I'm assuming enhancements that are basically as strong as SOs (33.3% for schedule A). The third enhancement is reduced in effectiveness, sure, but not by the 1/4 - 1/2 you cite. If memory serves (and Paragon Wiki backs me up), three SOs is +95% vs the +99% without ED. That means the third SO would function at ~87.1% effectiveness. A small hit, but worth it. If you're talking about raw lvl 50 IOs, then you'd have a point, but then I'd franken slot to the ED soft cap. Yes, you have a point about recharge and deprioritizing (or straight out eliminating) other attacks, but my experience was rarely possible while leveling alone. Some sets might have an easier time than others (like Regen or WP), but even those could run OOE in prolonged encounters while leveling. What I'm driving at here is that by not 3 slotting damage you're leaving damage (eg: alpha strike potential, and the need for fewer attacks) and endurance efficiency (more damage for the same end) on the table. Get that squared away before adding recharge. This calculus changes when you start going for IO bonuses, but soft capping damage is still a priority. I don't follow how you're coming up your numbers. Hack (no end redux): 8.53 end / (8 + 1.33 sec) = ~0.914 end/sec Hack (1x end SO): (8.53 / 1.333) / (8 + 1.33 sec) = 0.686 end/sec Hack (1x end IO, lvl50): (8.53 / 1.424) / (8 + 1.33 sec) = 0.642 end/sec In order to reach 0.625 end/sec you'd need 45.6% end reduction. How are you calculating the costs of 0.625 and 0.485? Maybe I build differently, but I rarely - if ever - remember thinking "man, where am I going to put these slots?" It was more "if I had X more slots, I could do Y." That's why I'd suggest 4 slotting a standard toggle (1x end, 3x res/def/heal), or 6 slotting (damage toggle, for example). The extra end reduction on a standard defensive toggle is minimal (Dark Embrace, 0.21 end/sec, each end SO saves 0.052 end/sec). For comparison, on a character with 100 endurance, a single SO in Stamina yields +0.14 end/sec. If you're at the point where your toggles are going to drop, either stop attacking early or you're going to crash anyways (in the case of end/recovery debuffs).

This is what I remember doing on the original servers. Another option would be to franken-slot with set IOs that affect multiple things at once (eg: Acc/Dmg). Slotting, say, Acc/Dmg x3 would provide better bonuses than could be achieved by single enhancements in the same number of slots. I disagree with some of the advice here. 1) Primary attacks that you're going to be using all the time should eventually be 6 slotted, with 1 acc, 3 dmg, and then 2 other slots of acc/end/rech - depending on various factors (difficulty you play on, if you have other sources of +acc/tohit/recovery, etc). My defacto slotting (outside these other factors) would probably be 2x acc, 3x dmg, 1x end. I think damage is better than end reduction because it kills enemies quicker and provides just as much of an endurance savings as an end reduction. Consider an attack that deals 100 dmg and costs 10 end. With 1x dmg it would deal 133 dmg / 10 end = 13.3 dmg / end With 1x end it would deal 100 dmg / ~7.52 end = 13.3 dmg / end Of course, if you're fighting an enemy with 120 hp, slotted for damage, 1 attack would kill it (10 end) and 2 attacks when slotted for end (15.04 end). Lastly, when facing tougher enemies (higher rank and level) health regeneration becomes a factor. The fast you deal damage, the less time enemies have to regenerate, and the less health they can regenerate. If we were talking about Brutes with a lower base damage and more damage bonuses from Rage, then you could get away with 2x damage and more end/rech. 2) You're recommending over slotting toggles for end reduction. Consider a single attack, like Hack: 1.33s cast, 8s recharge, and 8.53 end. Just that one attack will cost 8.53 / (1.33 + 8 ) = ~0.91 end/sec. Now take Dark Armor running Dark Embrace (0.21 end/sec), Murky Cloud (0.21 end/sec), Obsidian Shield (0.21 end/sec), and Death Should (0.52 end/sec) all together weigh in at 1.15 end/sec. A single end reducer in Hack would drop that cost to 0.685 end/sec, a savings of 0.225 end/sec for 1 slot. Two end reducers in all of the above toggles? That would drop the usage to 0.862 end/sec, a savings of 0.288 end/sec for 8 slots. 3) Passive slotting should be taken on a per passive basis. For a defensive set like SR trying to reach the soft cap? By all means, slot the passives. You're already stacking copious amounts of defense, and each percent more you have becomes that much more valuable. On a set like Invuln? Taking the elemental / energies passives is okay, but there isn't much else to stack with them, so slotting them isn't terribly valuable compared to using those slots in other places.