Was Bio Armor ever balanced?

[JnEricsonx]

9 hours ago, TraumaTrain said:

Bio Armor is balanced by being so ugly.

That's why I turn off the visuals.  At worst, I have glowing vein effect.

[Haijinx]

5 hours ago, Outrider_01 said:

So yeah, KIB protection standing in a burn patch which is effectively a very over powered damage aura like Blazing Aura shouldn't have a penalty?  Get knocked out, as everything runs towards it...not to mention that taunt pulling them back when they run away causing self immolation.  Why wouldn't Fire Armor have a weakness?

Its already got weaknesses.

 

 

[AerialAssault]

Even if Bio Armour had been subject to rigorous testing, it would still outshine it's pre-F2P peers. Most of the purchased power sets do. After all, nobody wants to buy a power set that is worse than something that was there at launch.

[Ironblade]

11 hours ago, cohRock said:

@Ironblade, I think your source had it backward.

Oops.  I went back and re-checked.  I had it backwards.

[Saikochoro]

15 hours ago, nihilii said:

Adding Barrier and luck insps to all other powersets won't give them the extra damage output or the endurance tools Bio gets. Adding luck insps to SR or Shield won't help them survive. Adding Barrier and luck insps to Fire still leaves it behind Bio on KB protection, damage output, aggro ability (on scrappers), passive endurance drain, etc.. Adding Barrier and luck insps won't raise your practical HP beyond 4K on a Tanker, and so on.

Inspirations shouldn’t be included to “prove” a set is overpowered.  If you are going to argue luck inspirations make bio overpowered then I could say enrage inspirations make less offensively focused secondaries overpowered. This argument is a complete non-starter.  

Edited October 17, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Sarrate]

53 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

Inspirations shouldn’t be included to “prove” and set is overpowered.  If you are going to argue luck inspirations make bio overpowered then I could say enrage inspirations make less offensively focused secondaries overpowered. This argument is a complete non-starter.  

That's not exactly the same. Remember, the benefits of def/res scale exponentially as you get more of it. If a set without defense eats 2 lucks, they half incoming damage. If a set with 25% defense does the same, they drop incoming damage by 80% (on top of the original half). A def-less set could eat 4 lucks to attain the same results, but that means they'd be storing more lucks instead of other inspirations and they could only do it for half as long.

 

As a counterpoint, rage inspirations (and all damage buffs) are completely linear in benefit. I'm not saying rages are bad, but they're not in the same league.

[Heraclea]

19 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Not sure Fire Armor is balanced for today's game.  

 

But in the other direction. 

 

It makes no sense they don't get KB protection.  That should be fixed.   

 

Bad enough you have to DIE to use the T9.  

In the pre-invention game that was a constraint on builds, basically requiring you to take a deep pool power in addition to Stamina.   But since the Karma and Steadfast Protection -KB IOs have been in the game since i9 IIRC. the hole turned into a benefit for characters with deep pockets and a supergroup that could be used to transfer one IO -- not completely trivial in the days of rent and base costs -- and now they aren't even that.  They don't even add flavor to the sets. 

 

Now, being knocked around and into things is iconically comic-book, but it just doesn't translate into the pace of play expected here. 

[Saikochoro]

4 hours ago, Sarrate said:

That's not exactly the same. Remember, the benefits of def/res scale exponentially as you get more of it. If a set without defense eats 2 lucks, they half incoming damage. If a set with 25% defense does the same, they drop incoming damage by 80% (on top of the original half). A def-less set could eat 4 lucks to attain the same results, but that means they'd be storing more lucks instead of other inspirations and they could only do it for half as long.

 

As a counterpoint, rage inspirations (and all damage buffs) are completely linear in benefit. I'm not saying rages are bad, but they're not in the same league.

Lucks can’t overcome the base to hit chance.  Rages provide benefits all the way up to the damage cap. I know kins can provide a damage bonus, but if everyone is at the damage cap then bio/shield/rad/ etc aren’t really all that much higher than the competition.  Most of the time people aren’t running around at the damage cap. Therefore rage inspirations can dramatically alter performance. 
 

Even so, it doesn’t matter if they are linear or not. Inspirations usage can dramatically alter the performance of a set and should not be used as arguments in how powerful a set is.

 

I could pop a tray full of purples, oranges, and reds on my Regen scrapper. Then say how over powered regen is because it does insane damage, has capped resists, softcapped defense on top 1600% Regen with HP being capped.  That would be a completely illogical argument. 
 

Inspirations should never be considered in balance discussions. 

Edited October 17, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Leogunner]

20 hours ago, Coyote said:

 

I'm kinda thinking it's balanced. It's quite strong offensively, but far behind the top defensive armor sets on defense. So it racks up great stats against Pylons, but it's more vulnerable to more situations (-Rech, -Def as the obvious, but also Endurance drain and -Recovery) than many other sets. And on the offense side, I'm not sure that it's out of balance compared to Shield (which is far stronger defensively at the top end) or to Fire Armor (which, granted, does have its own issues) or to Rad Armor (though that needs procs to do it). So, overall, it looks to me like it's comparable to other defensive sets that are on the strong offensive side... good offense, with some holes to balance it out.

Is this in offensive mode, defensive mode or taking into account a players is freely able to swap into said modes + efficiency mode?

[nihilii]

1 hour ago, Saikochoro said:

I could pop a tray full of purples, oranges, and reds on my Regen scrapper. Then say how over powered regen is because it does insane damage, has capped resists, softcapped defense on top 1600% Regen with HP being capped.  That would be a completely illogical argument. 

Full tray popping seems highly inefficient outside of an AE farm. What happens once your minute is up?

 

For me, Bio can chomp 1 to 2 luck insps per minute and be essentially invincible against most types of content. This is maintainable more or less forever against regular foes, as even on a team of 8 where all 7 others are doorsitting, your kill rate is fast enough to convert and replenish 1-2 luck insps per minute.

 

(To be clear, I am not saying Bio needs to pop luck insps left and right to survive. Just that it is an option readily available, that stack uniquely well with its native mitigation.)

 

There's other considerations:

- your full tray of insps will not give you extra damage beyond the damage cap.

- your full tray of insps will not grant you an aggro aura on a scrapper.

- your full tray of insps will not allow you to go beyond the HP cap.

 

So either way we spin it, it's still good to be Bio.

 

Anyway, it was never my point insps made Bio OP. I find bio tankers fantastic in solo MoITF +4/x8 with insps disabled. Bio performs uniquely well at low level and low slotting/exemplaring with Offensive Mode +dam/+tohit. Bio has a higher ceiling thanks to the extra toxic damage going beyond damage cap. Bio has loads of +absorb.

 

Well, I'm repeating most of what I said earlier. In short, even if you have some personal moral code disallowing the use of inspirations, Bio Armor comes out on top. It has a bunch of advantages and one real weakness, lack of DDR. Maybe two with the psi hole siolfir pointed out. Other powersets have these weaknesses and more, and no powersets has the plurality of advantages coming with Bio.

 

Inspiration use doesn't create the imbalance, it only compounds it.

 

I mean... If you think Bio is balanced = "not significantly more powerful than other options", you're the winner here anyway. You get to roll melee alts of all stripes. I'm the one stuck looking like a walking pile of poo OR accepting I'm playing something less powerful for the sake of diversity.

[Saikochoro]

20 hours ago, Tsuko said:

Yeah but AAO is still simple + dmg, where Bio and fire are additional dmg, clearly better when you re capped by a Kin (or inspirations).

I get that the extra tick of toxic that bio does is part of the offense perks of the set. However, the majority of the buff is due to the +dam with hardened carapace with offensive adaptation. 
 

I did some testing with my level 50 savage/bio scrapper. Tests done on level 50 Death Mage using vicious slash. 

 

No reds with offensive off:

432.82 lethal

 

No reds with offensive on:

479.11 lethal + 28.14 toxic = 507.25 total. Toxic tick of 5.87% of the lethal damage dealt. 
 

With reds boosting me to damage cap and offensive on:
1,065.01 lethal + 30.95 toxic = 1,095.96 total. Toxic tick of 2.9% of the lethal damage dealt. 

 

Dont get me wrong, offensive adaptation does add a good damage boost. And the toxic tick is nice, better than nothing. However, the toxic tick from offensive adaptation is a fairly small portion of the added damage and is pretty immaterial when you are at the damage cap as the toxic tick barely changed. 

Edited October 17, 2020 by Saikochoro

[macskull]

22 hours ago, Vanden said:

And Shield has to deal with clicky mez protection which is *blows raspberry* so I'm sure that balances out

Not sure if this has been addressed since I can't be arsed to read this thread, but a not-insignificant portion of Shield's DDR is tied up in its click mez protection, so by stacking it you can increase your own DDR which is A Good Thing.

 

EDIT: On topic though... is Bio Armor good? Yep. Is it really really good, like Titan Weapons good? Nope. It's versatile and has a good amount of offensive potential but requires a pretty significant IO investment to be made as survivable as some other armor sets. It's also a pretty click-heavy set that is relatively susceptible to -rech since it is not primarily a defense-based set. Yes, most of the best pylon times posted are with Bio Armor characters, but that's like looking at the powersets that are best at AE farms and going "See! Spines and Fire need nerfs!"

Edited October 17, 2020 by macskull

[Saikochoro]

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

Full tray popping seems highly inefficient outside of an AE farm. What happens once your minute is up?

 

For me, Bio can chomp 1 to 2 luck insps per minute and be essentially invincible against most types of content. This is maintainable more or less forever against regular foes, as even on a team of 8 where all 7 others are doorsitting, your kill rate is fast enough to convert and replenish 1-2 luck insps per minute.

 

(To be clear, I am not saying Bio needs to pop luck insps left and right to survive. Just that it is an option readily available, that stack uniquely well with its native mitigation.)

 

There's other considerations:

- your full tray of insps will not give you extra damage beyond the damage cap.

- your full tray of insps will not grant you an aggro aura on a scrapper.

- your full tray of insps will not allow you to go beyond the HP cap.

 

So either way we spin it, it's still good to be Bio.

 

Anyway, it was never my point insps made Bio OP. I find bio tankers fantastic in solo MoITF +4/x8 with insps disabled. Bio performs uniquely well at low level and low slotting/exemplaring with Offensive Mode +dam/+tohit. Bio has a higher ceiling thanks to the extra toxic damage going beyond damage cap. Bio has loads of +absorb.

 

Well, I'm repeating most of what I said earlier. In short, even if you have some personal moral code disallowing the use of inspirations, Bio Armor comes out on top. It has a bunch of advantages and one real weakness, lack of DDR. Maybe two with the psi hole siolfir pointed out. Other powersets have these weaknesses and more, and no powersets has the plurality of advantages coming with Bio.

 

Inspiration use doesn't create the imbalance, it only compounds it.

 

I mean... If you think Bio is balanced = "not significantly more powerful than other options", you're the winner here anyway. You get to roll melee alts of all stripes. I'm the one stuck looking like a walking pile of poo OR accepting I'm playing something less powerful for the sake of diversity.

My example was a pretty clear example to show that it is pointless to try use inspirations as points in a balance discussion as is evident by the last sentence. You brought up inspiration usage to counter the weaknesses of bio armor. You say bio can pop 1-2 lucks to overcome its shortcomings? Any other set can chomp 1-2 reds and achieve the same offensive advantage that bio has when not at damage cap. At the damage cap the difference is minimal. At the damage cap the extra toxic damage is also fairly minimal comparative to the total damage going out. 
 

Inspiration usage is not unique to bio armor. It doesn’t help bio armor more than other sets. I will repeat inspirations are not a relevant factor when arguing balance. 
 

I will also repeat my opinion that bio armor is not an overpowered outlier.  Other sets have advantages that bio armor doesn’t. Bio armors greatest advantage is offensive adaption. Offensive strength is not unique to bio armor as other sets have large boosts to offensive power as well. 

Edited October 17, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Saikochoro]

35 minutes ago, macskull said:

Not sure if this has been addressed since I can't be arsed to read this thread, but a not-insignificant portion of Shield's DDR is tied up in its click mez protection, so by stacking it you can increase your own DDR which is A Good Thing.

This is very true. I actually like that it can double stack for the extra DDR. 

[Solarverse]

On 10/16/2020 at 6:52 PM, TraumaTrain said:

Bio Armor is balanced by being so ugly.

Have you tried the minimal effects? It makes Bio Armor look wicked. Almost like dark hell energy seeping out of your body.

[Heraclea]

10 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

Have you tried the minimal effects? It makes Bio Armor look wicked. Almost like dark hell energy seeping out of your body.

What I think is that minimal Bio armor makes you look like Pigpen from the old Peanuts comics.  It isn't intolerable, but you have to plan your costume around it. 

[nihilii]

9 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

You brought up inspiration usage to counter the weaknesses of bio armor.

What I explicitely said, and that you quoted: "(to be clear, I am not saying Bio needs to pop luck insps left and right to survive. Just that it is an option readily available, that stack uniquely well with its native mitigation.)"

I offered just as well the possibility to use Shadow Meld, Barrier, Vorpal, Divine Avalanche, Defensive Sweep, Parry, or even to manage with the native tools Bio offers.

 

It is not a "weakness" to be able to crank 10 up to 11 in a situation where others might be stuck at 10.

9 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

You say bio can pop 1-2 lucks to overcome its shortcomings? Any other set can chomp 1-2 reds and achieve the same offensive advantage that bio has when not at damage cap.

Sarrate previously explained the point, 1-2 reds simply do not bring the same benefit as 1-2 lucks. One multiplies survivability by a factor of 200%+, the other adds 10-20% net damage.

 

Let's even look at the second statement carefully. You need in fact 1 red just to make up with the +damage part of Offensive Adaptation (+25% damage). This one red insp will not give you the +tohit which allows bio to slot less acc/tohit in favor of procs. We'd need to use 1 red and 1 yellow there. This 1 red + 1 yellow does not give you the toxic portion of Offensive Adaptation. You'd likely need almost one extra red to make up for that.

 

Now we're at 2 reds and 1 yellow, call it 1.5 reds and 1 yellow if you want to stack the game against bio. That is just Offensive Adaptation. Time to add the damage aura!

 

"Some other powersets have damage auras", you say? Well, let's take a look at them, and see whether they have the survivability advantage over bio to realistically use reds in situations where bio would use lucks.

- Fire Armor: nope.

- Elec Armor: nope.

- Ice Armor: mayyybe, although the situations where bio would use lucks would likely compel Ice to use sturdies / hibernate.

- Dark Armor: yes.

- Stone Armor: yes.

 

Invul, Regen, WP, Shield, EA, Rad, SR and Nin do not come with damage auras.

 

So out of 13 contenders:

1) against 8 out of 13, /bio damage aura is an advantage.

2) against 3 out of 13, /bio would almost guarantedly be able to use reds in the same situations they used reds

3) against 2 out of 13, /bio damage aura isn't a significant advantage. But these 2 powersets come with notable end issues, and Stone Armor directly affects your mobility and damage output.

 

You can't make up the lack of damage aura with inspiration use. We know from HeroStats and other tracking programs just how much damage these contribute over time. Let's round up the 1.5 reds to a laughably undervalued 2 reds anyway.

 

So that's Offensive Adaptation + damage aura, being equal to 2 reds + 1 yellow.

 

And then we throw the -res aura for more damage.

 

Which also aggroes. Yet more "hard to quantify" damage that is nonetheless damage. Runners aren't exactly great for AoEs.

 

On scrappers specifically, having a damage aura and aggro aura is an unique advantage. Notice I'm not out here saying stalker bio is grossly overpowered. I say again for emphasis, I think Stalker and Sentinel versions of bio are the most reasonable of the bunch.

 

I believe the above shows "any other set can chomp 1-2 reds and achieve the same offensive advantage that bio has when not at damage cap" is not a true statement.

 

9 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

Inspiration usage is not unique to bio armor. It doesn’t help bio armor more than other sets.

Addressed above. Sarrate's post is an excellent read to understand the relationship here.

 

Going from 35% defense to 47.5%/60% defense on a character with no DDR but ample amounts of +absorb/healing and slight resistances (bio) benefits you more than going from 20% resistance to 40% resistance on a character with 59% defense and full DDR (SR).

 

Going from 20% defense to 45% defense on a character with no DDR and good resistances (fire, elec, rad) may benefit you as much in some situations. But we have to go from using 1-2 insps to always 2, and the situations where bio would need to bump to 60% defense would likely demand further insp use to retain the same survivability advantage from fire/elec/rad here (i.e. heavy defense debuffs, incarnate foes, mix of both...).

9 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

Other sets have advantages that bio armor doesn’t. Bio armors greatest advantage is offensive adaption. Offensive strength is not unique to bio armor as other sets have large boosts to offensive power as well.

Whether Offensive Adaptation is bio's greatest advantage has no bearings on whether the sum of bio's advantages outpace the advantages of other powersets.

 

To put it another way: take 2 home owners, Bob and Joe. Bob owns one house worth $400k. Joe owns three houses, worth $200k, $300k and $350k. Is Joe less wealthy than Bob?

 

Offensive Adaptation + damage aura + -res/aggro aura. Does any powerset offer this sum of offensive advantages?

 

Shield has AAO and Shield Charge. SC isn't actually all that hot post proc world. AAO only compares positively while fully surrounded. All in all, the numbers don't stack up. Shield might deserve honorary mention for its great survivability, though. It is the most likely contender for "pop 2 rages where Bio pops 2 lucks, and maybe almost keep up".

 

Fire Armor has Burn, Blazing Aura and FE. All admittedly awesome tools. Fire pays the price for this with significantly lower survivability, gets the weaknesses Bio has + a few extra holes. Fire has no aggro ability, so in practical terms you're unlikely to build to make a Fire Armor scrapper as selfsufficiently damaging as a Bio Armor scrapper. Even against static targets, it's notable Fire Armor scrappers don't top the charts.

 

All other 11 contenders are not even in the running. They generally offer one or two offensive boosts. These boosts aren't sizeable enough to match up.

 

Edited October 18, 2020 by nihilii

[Ukase]

On 10/16/2020 at 3:57 PM, Vanden said:

Bio Armor never got released before the shutdown, so I'm not sure it ever got rigorous playtesting. The reason I ask is because I just found out that its T1 armor power gives 25% damage bonus while in Offensive Adaptation (31.25% on Scrappers). That seems insane. You need something like 181% recharge in Build Up for it to match that in extra damage over time. That's in an armor set, a defensive power set that also includes a -Resistance aura that gets stronger in Offensive Adaptation. It feels like there's no way those numbers would've gone live if it had actually been playtested.

So...let me shed my own experience with this armor on a ...you guessed it, tw/bio scrapper. 

I had a thought that it would be somewhat, somehow amusing to play a character only using what dropped. No AH except perhaps to sell something, no merits until level 50. 

I wouldn't team until I had at least an SO or IO in each slot, aside from brawl or boxing from the fight pool. 

This armor is crap. TW is even worse. At least, before level 25. After that, you finally have enough slots to actually fight. It was like waiting to level 14 to get stamina, only I had stamina. 

Now, I hear what you might say. "Dude, you had crap for enhancements. TOs at level 19? DO's past 22? WTF?!"  

I am fortunate to have learned how to make inf in this game. I could easily blow a billion on IOs - and I did make an identical scrapper only spend whatever it took to get my build as nice as I knew how. Because I farm sometimes, I can use those drops to fill most of it, and stashes from my base and email for the rest. Best guess 600m of patient bidding or maybe 800m of buy it NOW. 

The contrast is stark. I doubt most players who solo a lot would play this turd past level 25 solo. If they teamed, they'd certainly be shy or very nice, because they would be dying in any kind of large crowd without some buffs/debuffs or some other AT to help take alpha.  Granted, I've never done this with any other character. The Offensive Adaptation and Beginner's luck (boosts the toHit until level 20) were the only thing that saved me. The levels 21-27, IO recipes started trickling in. I'd actually gotten a kismet 6% accuracy at level 11, but never got the salvage to craft it until I did the fortune teller through ouro at level 20 when I was desperate for accuracy. 

There's no question the TW/bio scrapper is phenomal when slotted well with the best IOs money can buy. Most of my characters are slotted well, and I do pretty good. Haven't tanked a normal MoTF run yet - though there was this one time when inspirations were disabled and some DoT on a +4 itf got me. I can live with that. My point is - we can't just test our uber builds and reach a conclusion that something is OP. We need to approach it like a new player and see how OP it is. 

While we're not all new players of course, we still need to keep that perspective in mind. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

5 hours ago, Ukase said:

While we're not all new players of course, we still need to keep that perspective in mind. 

We do. Absolutely. But we also have to keep in mind the folks that can start a character at lvl 1 in Atlas and peruse the powers and immediately have an idea of what the set will be capable of later.

 

Ya know how I know that this game we're playing right now is not even remotely the thing we were playing at shutdown?

 

I've got a time/fire defender that I actually enjoy playing.

 

That would have NEVER happened before the snap.

[Yomo Kimyata]

As a real-money set, yes, it's overpowered.

 

It's by far my favorite armor set right now due to it's versatility more than anything else, but they could easily change the -7.5% resistance penalty for offensive mode to -15% and it would still be worthwhile.  imo.