ClawsandEffect

It works like any other proc in a damage aura. Meaning it only checks to proc every 10 seconds. If it is 5 PPM, that means it will proc on 5 out of the 6 chances it has per minute.

If the Superior version increases the PPM to 6, then it should proc every time it checks in a damage aura (assuming you have a target). I'm not 100% clear on exactly how it works in an AoE, but logic tells me that since it only gets 6 chances to even check for a proc in a given minute, it should stay triple stacked most of the time.

I can tell you from personal experience that it double-stacks consistently in my DA tank's Death Shroud.

It will triple-stack, but that is the maximum.

The Superior version should stay triple-stacked most of the time in a damage aura, but probably not 100%.

I would stick it in whichever power you use most often for a Shield/Electric.

Yes.

I would not, however, use the rocket board in an Incarnate Trial.

It shuts off any and all toggles you may be running, and you cannot attack while using it. Doesn't sound like a good combination when you're fighting level 54 enemies.

While this:
is true, it's a little more complex than that.

In your case, the names you had genericed were in use as specific characters by a comic company. Marvel in at least 2 cases. Since those are common words, they cannot actually be copyrighted. What they are is trademarked as the names of characters with a specific appearance and backstory. A company that makes alarm systems can name their product Sentinel and be fine, because their use of the word does not infringe on Marvel's use of it as a character name. Paragon Studios can call their enhancement set Apocalypse and be fine, because they are using the word as a reference to a highly destructive event, not as a specific character name.

The centuries old mythology part is absolutely true. You can't trademark anything that falls into public domain, such as mythological characters. They were not the intellectual property of any person or organization and those names existed before the idea of trademarks did.

Marvel does not own the rights to the name Thor. They can't own them for the reason that the name existed as the name of a deity long before the idea of owning a word existed. What Marvel DOES have is a trademark on a character named Thor with a specific appearance: blond hair, bluish/black armor, red cape, winged helmet. NCSoft only blocked the name because they know that if they did not someone would immediately create a character that infringes on that trademark, even though the name itself cannot be owned.

The character you mention that is named after a well-known Greek God? Well, if no one has ever trademarked a specific version of that particular deity, then the name is fair game and cannot be genericed. Even if someone had, if your version of the character were different than the trademarked version you would be able to argue your case with the GM. Thor is only blocked because Marvel's trademarked version of him is so well known.

Hope that helps clear it up. I'm running on 2 hours of sleep, so it may not have been explained very clearly.

My in-game experience contradicts this statement.

Many times during my play sessions I see people requesting that a Tanker join their team because.........they see a need for that role.

I mentioned it already, but what is said on the forums bears almost no resemblance to what people actually think in the game.

Remember that only about 10% of the playerbase uses the forums, so the vast majority of the players do not have any clue that a "forum consensus" has determined that their characters fill an unnecessary role.

Any role is only as necessary as the people playing the game feel it is. Telling someone else their role is unnecessary because YOU think so is the height of arrogance.

Not exactly.

It was about Tanker changes, and whether they are necessary at all.

I feel they are not, and was elaborating on my reason for feeling that way. Specifically, I feel it is not the performance of Tankers themselves that make people feel like they need improvements, but rather the fact that a similar AT performs better.

If that other AT were brought back in line with where they are allegedly supposed to be, a lot of the perception that Tankers underperform would disappear. At least that's my opinion on the matter.

I still also feel that IOs and Incarnate powers need to be tossed out the window when you start discussing AT balance. When balancing something in an MMO, any MMO, you need to balance it by the lowest common denominator. In this case, that would be SOs. Everyone who will ever play this game, whether VIP or totally free, has access to IOs. It is not fair to people who can't use IOs to balance AT performance based on what those ATs can do when you slot full IO builds.

Forcing people to pay money if they want their character to be balanced will probably not entice them into paying money, it is far more likely to make them find something else to play. As such, saying Tankers need more damage because Scrappers and Brutes can obtain survivability through IOs and Incarnate powers is foolish, because when you use the enhancements the game is balanced around (and should remain so), Tankers have a significant survival advantage.

I was guilty of wanting to nerf Stalkers for a little while. Then I did my research and discovered all on my own that I was wrong.

I'm not advocating that anything be balanced at the high end extremes.

My reasoning for reducing Brute caps is that they are slightly more survivable than a Scrapper in most circumstances, by virtue of having more HP. But their potential survivability is too close to a Tanker for the amount of damage they deal in heavy buff situations.

I'm advocating that Brute survivability be lowered a little bit. Can't really reduce base values in this case, so that leaves the caps for any tweaking.

I am also advocating that their damage cap be lowered slightly, as they are capable of outdamaging a Scrapper when they are both at their respective caps (which will happen when there are 2 Kinetics characters on the team)

That is not the "Between a Tanker and Scrapper" balance point that the devs at one point said they are shooting for.

I don't want one AT to be clearly superior to the others here. I want there to be balance between the 4 melee ATs, and from what I've researched 3 of the 4 are what I'd call "close enough". The 4th, Brutes, are still out of line in that they are too close to or above the ATs they are supposedly balanced to be right between.

As StratoNexus already pointed out, it's not simple addition. It's multiplication.

Give offensive survivability an arbitrary number. Lets say 5.

Multiply your arbitrary number by 5.

100 x 5 = 500

75 x 5 = 375

Look at that, still 75%.


Now, why does this sound so familiar?

Oh, that's right. It's what I've been saying all along.

Please explain your logic here, because it makes NO sense.

You assert that Scrappers, Tankers, and Brutes get the same amount of mitigation out of their offensive powers. I won't argue with that, in fact I will agree with it.

What doesn't make sense here is your assertion that because the mitigation from offensive powers is exactly the same across all 3 ATs, that means that Scrappers somehow get MORE than 75% of Tanker mitigation.

If the mitigation from offensive powers is identical in all 3 cases, it adds nothing to the relative amounts of mitigation for the 3 ATs.

Meaning: If Scrappers have 75% of Tanker mitigation before mitigation from offensive powers is calculated, and the mitigation from offensive powers is identical, then Scrappers STILL have 75% of Tanker mitigation, because the offensive mitigation being identical has not changed it.

If Scrappers got MORE mitigation from offensive powers than Tankers, you may have had a point. But they don't.

Looks to me like you couldn't find a valid argument to my assertion, so you made some crap up that doesn't hold water.


Then raise the Tanker damage scalar to .85. That is approximately 76.3% of the Scrapper scalar, and being slightly ahead should make things more even in the AoE department.



And how exactly do you propose this happen?

Oh, and for the record: I never said that 90% of the people in the game play Tankers. I said 90% of the players don't care what is said on the forums. Of that 90%, the people who DO play Tankers aren't going to stop because the forums say their role is unnecessary.

Stop trying to twist what I say in an attempt to prove me wrong. My meaning was clear and you know it. So does everyone else.

People who WANT to play Tankers (with a few exceptions) are enjoying them just fine as they are. They play them because they want to tank. And the Tanker AT fills that role better than any other AT.

Arguments that tanking is an unnecessary role fall pretty flat in the face of the fact that people can play the game however they like, and if they see it as a necessary role, then it is. Regardless of whether anyone agrees with their viewpoint or not.

The fact of the matter in this case is: 90% of the players of the game could not give a crap less what the people here on the forums say. They are not going to stop playing their Tankers because some people on a forum they don't care about and don't read say the role they were designed to do is unnecessary.

This assumes that Tankers are in need of fixing, which I still disagree with.

Note the use of the terms "reasonably well" and "roughly". I am aware of, and fully understand that no 2 ATs in this game will ever be perfectly balanced with each other. There are too many variables for that to happen.

At the moment, 3 of the melee ATs are close enough to balanced that no one of them is getting screwed over by the other 2 in a given category (Johnny's disagreement notwithstanding).

That leaves the last melee AT, which is outperforming ALL THREE of the others at the same time. I fail to see the logic that is saying that isn't the AT that needs to be looked at.

Actually, it makes perfect sense.

Tankers and Scrappers are already balanced reasonably well with each other.

Scrappers have 75% of the base values for survivability (defense, resistance, max HP), and the relative caps reflect this as well.

Tankers have 75% (roughly, it's not exactly 75%) of Scrapper base values for damage. The relative caps also reflect that balance point.

Scrappers and Tankers are almost exactly where they should be, relative to each other.

Brutes, on the other hand, have 75% of the base values of a Tanker for survivability, with the same caps. They can also deal slightly more damage than a Scrapper at their cap.

When you start talking about balance between all 4 melee ATs, the only real outlier is Brutes.

When Stalkers finally got the love they've needed for quite a while, they fell in line roughly where they needed to be. That's 3 ATs balanced with each other, and 1 AT that is not balanced with ANY of the other 3.

That's a problem, and buffing Tankers up to the level of the unbalanced AT is not the solution.

As much as I know it's going to piss people off, the answer to balance between the 4 melee ATs is to bring the outlying one back into line with the 3 that are already reasonably balanced.

The only suggestions I have for that is to reduce the resistance cap of Brutes to 85% or so, and probably reduce the damage cap slightly. That would make them not quite as tough as a Tanker, and not quite as damaging as a Scrapper. Which is where they were supposedly intended to be at from the beginning.

Neither of those will be popular moves, and will generate much hatred. But, in my opinion, they are necessary if you want to even pretend that there is balance between the 4 melee ATs.

And this is coming from someone who has at least 3 of each AT. A Brute nerf will hurt me just as much as anyone else, and I STILL think it should be done.

You are wrong.

Kinetic Melee has a few things going for it that Energy Melee can't even hope to compete with:

1) Its AoE power, Burst has a 100% chance to critical when Hidden.

2a) Concentrated Strike will instantly recharge Build Up instead of dealing extra damage when it crits.

2b) When you put the Stalker ATO Chance to Hide in Assassin's Strike, it will fire every time you use it. So, use AS, automatically Hide.

2c) Concentrated Strike will automatically crit when Hidden.

I'll let you figure out how 2a, 2b, and 2c relate to each other

KM is pretty high on the single target damage charts for the above reasons.

Street Justice is apparently the highest damaging single target set currently available to stalkers.

Nope......WAI.

The ATO proc is a PPM formula that will proc 4 times per minute.....and it's based on the BASE recharge of a power. Since AS's base recharge is 15 seconds, it HAS to fire every time in order to meet the hardcoded 4 procs per minute the ATO provides.

I suspect they didn't really think that through very thoroughly before they went ahead and did it. Kinetic Melee on Stalkers breaks that mechanic pretty badly.

It's not a BAD combination, it just doesn't get as much out of the things Staff brings to the table as other sets (specifically the pure resist sets)

It's actually better on Stalkers than either Scrappers or Brutes.

Concentrated Strike instantly recharges Build Up when it crits.

Stalker ATO proc in AS will fire every time you use it, putting you in Hide and allowing you to crit with Concentrated Strike every time.

I haven't played it myself because I'm not a big fan of the jazz hands, but the damage it puts out is pretty crazy. There's also the 100% crit chance on Burst when Hidden going for it as well.

I'm sure you can see the insane damage potential there.

My build made the Kinetic Combats unneeded.

I put Hecatomb in there, which you could simply move to whichever attack you use the most if you want to mule 4 Kin Combats into Boxing instead.

If you do that, I'd move the extra slot you'll end up with into Weave.

Oops, 2 slots freed up. My bad.

If you drop Thunder Kick, pick up Assault. You can definitely afford to run it with the ridiculous amount of recovery you have. Or maybe pick up Resurgence and put 3 Numina's in it for more regen/HP.

I didn't change the slotting.

I turned accolades on, and switched the Alpha from Nerve to Agility. That's where the extra end recovery came from.

And thanks.

I didn't see the point to chasing it much farther than I did. Pretty much every Cold attack you'll encounter regularly is paired with Smashing or Lethal, and a good chunk of the Fire attacks do as well. I was mostly thinking about things like CoT demons that like to throw lots of fire at you.

And since Psi resistance is so high on Dark Armor, it doesn't really matter too much if they DO hit you.

That said, all the Psi attacks that slow your recharge have a positional vector (ranged), the ones that have no position are almost always mez powers that have no -recharge component. Flash deals no damage, and it won't hold you unless you get hit with 4 of them simultaneously (a Master Illusionist and her 3 Illusionist pets can do this to you)

As far as whether it's better to go with typed or positional, that depends entirely on your primary.

And for the record, you can softcap all positions with Broadsword or Katana without having to use Agility. My BS/DA scrapper was soft-capped for almost 2 years before Incarnates existed.