Frosticus

This is irrelevant from an end user viewpoint if they result the same number regardless of whether it is derived through more regeneration or more hp.

If you regen 25hp/sec it doesn't matter if you are doing it by having 25,000 hp with 0.1% regen, or 250 hp with 10% regen.

Your ability to repair damage (ignoring overkill on the latter) is the same.

It's not like adding resistance because resistance doesn't change your net regeneration, it just provides a cushion for damage. Adding hp will affect your net regeneration and provide a cushion for damage.

Define "difficult target"

edit: it's not just a matter of "stack 60% -res and shout will do more than blaze". Take a closer look.
(we'll ignore damage buffing because it makes no difference for this analysis)
Shout does 88.6 damage.
So we stack 4 sonic blasts, and 2 acid mortars. For a total of 100% -res.
Shout now does 177.2 damage

Blaze does 113.7
We only have the 2 acid mortars for a total of 40% -res
Blaze now does 159.8

Shout is looking pretty good so far. But what about cast time?
Shout casts in 2.904 seconds vs Blaze at 1.188 seconds.

Lets assume we have some good recharge and have each attack recharging in 4 seconds.
Shout's cycle time is now 4+2.904 = 6.904 seconds
Blaze's cycle time in now 4+1.188 = 5.188 seconds

Shout 177.2/6.904 = 25.67 dps
Blaze 159.8/5.188 = 30.8 dps

Flares and fireblast both similarly do more dps than shriek and scream.

A sonic running at peak -res can just about keep up with fire, but remember that each time you pause to lay a trap you are going to lose most of your blast stacking. And you pause often to lay traps.

In Praetoria maybe?

Yes it buffs creepers, but that isn't that relevant other than when you refresh them as they show up to the fight kinda late once they are already out and following you mob to mob.

The damage comes from the fact that roots does double the base damage of other aoe immobs.

The speed of a plant/kin comes from roots, creepers and seeds.

TS only does 40 aoe damage in a 7ft radius around the target. The full damage is only single target
FS on the other hand does 59 aoe damage with a 15 ft radius. From an aoe perspective FS>>>>>>>TS.

I'd suggest doing it then.

Yes mace is a bit better set that axe, but you don't get a huge battle axe with mace. IMO none of the mace models are particularly intimidating.

Well yes and no. There are a lot of different ways to build VEATS, whereas stalkers are pretty much cast into a single mold.

For instance a Widow, melee fortunata, or Bane (w/ pets) will keep up with pretty much any stalker in terms of single target damage, while also providing very powerful aoe buffs and in the case of the bane very powerful debuffs too. All three of those VEAT's tend to do more aoe damage than stalkers.

Crabs are aoe machines that can off-tank, which is really quite unlike a stalker.
Ranged Fortunatas are more like a Psi/SR blaster.

In terms of burst damage though? no, stalkers are pretty much unrivaled in quick st take downs.

And I do love me some fireblast.

Even when defs get fire I think superscourging Rain of Fire and not having to wait until 28 for blaze will keep me rolling fire corrs. For better or worse it is the only blast set I go with on corrs anymore though.

Then again, a traps/fire/dark def would be pretty astounding...

Dev whim I guess, because it makes no sense. The inconsistent application of pseudo-pets and straight up power errors is one of the reasons I harp on Castle a lot. Yes there are a butt-load of powers in the game, yes there are a butt-load of errors too. The game is absolutely playable and enjoyable, but if that is signaling complacency then I'm unhappy.
Tomax is fine. You just need to look at the right powers and used a recent version (which I linked). It isn't just pseudo-pets though that you have to be careful about. For instance, you'd be similarly incorrect if you made assumptions based on the expected damage a sonic corr would do with shriek and scream if you scaled the defender version. For w/e reason the corr version does more damage than you'd expect in that case. Or the def does less if you went in the opposite direction.

Powers can and sometimes do differ beyond the AT expectations. Sometimes it is special exemptions and sometimes it is just random.


If -res were unresistable you'd end up doing a lot more than 30% more damage when you encounter resistance.

I'll use a very clear example, but it applies to any resistance.
Unstoppable puts you at 90% res.
So if your attack did 100 damage vs 0% res, it would now do 10 damage vs unstoppable.

If we add 30%-res it would go to 130 vs 0% res and 13 vs unstoppable.
Both cases are a 30% end damage increase.

If it were unresistable is would strip unstoppable down to 60% res meaning it would:
be 130 damage vs 0% res and 40 damage vs unstoppable. Which means it would have increased our damage by 400% from what we would have been doing if we didn't apply -res.

This is one of the main reasons why defenders were so potent under the i12 pvp rules set. They could do this.
AV resistance protects against a lot of things. -resistance and -damage are not two of them. Similar to how their mez protection is arbitrarily set to have holes to sleep and immobs.
This link explains it
http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Archvillain
Making sense of the chart is done by looking at the level of the AV and applying their resistance to debuffs. For instance:
A lvl 30 AV will resists things covered by AV class by 75%.
A lvl 50 AV by 85%

On top of that you need to factor in the purple patch for fighting enemies of different level.
For instance:
A lvl 50 fighting the AV's on the STF/RSF will be 4 levels below them.
They have 87% resistance to debuffs and your powers are 48% as effective.
So as an example a defender using hurricane would have it reduced down from 58.8% debuff to 28.2% debuff and then resisted by 87% down to 3.67% tohit debuff.

At that point you wonder why even bother using it. It is one of the major reasons why buffs are so much better than debuffs in what comprises our "difficult" content. Not only is the debuffer risking getting agro, they are doing next to nothing. While a buffer can stay in safety and contribute a lot more. Some games counter this with "healer agro". Ours just ignores the issue and lets ai be incredibly stupid.

As mention it will cut through AV debuff resistance, but is still affected by Leveling difference, or purple patch.

I'm pretty sure the reason it is unresistable is so that you always receive a 20% buff from it. If it wasn't you'd see it doing weird things when resistance to slow/-rech was in play.

Blaster shiver is sick. An /ice blaster that spams chillbain, shiver, and stands in range of CE is a very potent recharge debuffer. Adding in ice mastery and a blast set that debuffs as well is even more deadly.

AV's don't have any special resistance to resistance debuffs. Yes resistance itself resists the debuff, but it is not unique to AV's. In fact very few AV's even have very much damage resistance at all, and it is rarely in very large doses. Of course there are a few that have god modes, but the same can be said about normal npcs.

30% -res will ALWAYS increase your final damage by 30%. If the target has 99% res and you hit it with sleet you will still do 30% more damage than before.

Similar to how 30% +dam will always add 30% damage.

If -res were unresistable in pve they would probably make some drastic changes to it, such as lowering the values a lot because they give npcs resistance for a reason.
This isn't entirely accurate. It is a crap shoot as to whether the power will have an altered version for the different AT's. If the dev doing the port felt like doing a complete job, or if players were vocal enough then the pseudo-pets differ. For instance defender storm summons a more powerful version of Freezing Rain and LS than controllers, but they share the same tornado. Corruptor Rain of Fire is very different from the Blaster version as it has been coded to scourge, which happens to make it considerably better, but oh well. Shield Charge and Lightning rod were the same for everyone, but then the players were loud enough to get it changed.

Defender Sleet is the same as controller and the heatloss pseodo-pet has the same version shared between def/troller, but differs when looking at the corr one. Anyone trying to find rhyme or reason when examining the consistency of pseodo-pet application would probably go nuts.

If you look closely at the "pet" powers you'll find so many mistakes that you wouldn't even know where to begin fixing them. Like did you know that corruptors actually drain more endurance with transference than defenders, but gain back considerably less?

Ya someitmes they'll fire the damage while still drawing the weapon. That is a bug though and looks silly to prove it heh.

The old way was each attack had a set time. If your weapon was out you'd pause at the end before you could do the next move. Old Broadsword was horrible in this regard. If you didn't have your weapon out there would be no pause at the end as that time would be spent drawing the weapon.

The way it is now* is that they removed the baked in draw time so that if you are chaining weapon attacks it is now smoother and faster. In some cases, much faster. However, if you force a redraw you experience the "old" cast time.

*spines and thorny still have the baked in times. So aside from the stupid redraw sound and hitch in your movement they don't gain or lose time by keeping the spines out or redrawing constantly.

Careful is my middle name. I have the power and have checked it in game and via Red Tomax.