Frosticus

DP attacks are very slow in comparison to other sets. They are twirly and full of dance moves and some people may be impressed by moon-walking halfway across the map just to shoot once, but others won't be.

The set breaks down like this:
Pistols = same as all other t1's at 1 sec
Dual Wield = same as most at 1.67 sec, slower than fireblast, iceblast, aimed shot if you are a corruptor
Empty Clips (cone) = slower than everything at 2.5 sec except frostbreath/firebreath. Does way less damage than either of those attacks though, so much lower DPA.
Bullet Rain (taoe) = slower than everything at 2.4 sec. Next slowest is explosive arrow at 1.83 sec
Suppress Fire (mez) = at 1.67 is pretty decent. Faster than bitter freeze ray, telsa cage and stunning shot, slower than freezeray and screech
Executioner (high dam) = 2.57 is much slower than other high damage st attacks except shout from sonic.
Piercing (high dam, -res) = 2.5 sec. Unique attack, no real equivalent in other sets. It isn't fast though.
Hail = slow like rain of arrows, faster than full auto, but requires melee range.

The set is slower than any other overall and has the potential to be even slower still if you pair it with anything that causes frequent redraw. It is visually flamboyant though, which is of high value to some people.

I would not be at all surprised if this set receives some trimming in animation times down the road once the shiny wears off. It is slow like old archery.

Interestingly enough, putting the proc in bu/aim is one of the worst places you can slot it. He's not using anything else that takes the set though so it makes sense to slot it there along with all the other bonuses of the set of course, as already mentioned.

Putting it in a toggle is probably the best option we have available to every combo. It is irrelevant that it fires when you aren't in combat because you aren't in combat. It will fire more often while you are in combat than if you stick it in buildup on average anyway. You'd need terrible luck for it not to work out to be more beneficial.

It is the same thing as perf shifter +end. It fires all the time even when you are full of end, but it is still much better to put it in an auto power that will roll the proc every 10 sec than in something that rolls it a third as often.

Huh?

I'll take a stab at your q's
1. It looks like he has enough recovery to keep on trucking. CP is useful if Strength of will and hasten happen to crash at about the same time, which can knock you down 70 end instantly. It's also useful in those rare times you start to bottom out from carnies, sappers and such. For instance you'd need a ton of recovery if you are hit by mask of vitaration (or w/e it is called), but you hit CP and can keep on fighting through it.

2. EN def is more important if you are going to be fighting Rikti

3. Full sets of Eradication kind of suck for enhancement values
4. Yes, the def bonuses to everything help round out a toon. The hp, recovery, and dam buff are nice too.
5. Yes, it is a free slot that you just flip the power on for a sec and then have 2 min of stealth.

edit: watched the vid (or most of it). That thing is a beast Iggy!

that's my point.
Did SC actually go live with varying damage away from the epicenter? I never noticed it on my shielder. I could have missed it as 3ft is pretty small, but it seemed like it was just doing a flat 2.4 scale damage across the entire function.

According to what Castle said it should have been released doing 94.5 damage (1.7 scale) across the 20ft radius and the 133.33 (2.4 scale) over the 3ft radius. I just remember it doing 133.33 across the whole thing when it first hit live. More accurately, I remember it doing ~110 damage across the 20ft radius when I picked it up at level 35 and it was unslotted for damage. That said, I wasn't aggressively testing it so I can't say it with absolute confidence.

No one is asking for him to do that though. And thankfully it doesn't need to occur to resolve issues like this from popping up with significantly less frequency. Most powers are very simple and very straight forward and should be delegated to other people with little concern. A bunch of pseudo-pet powers do things that are more complex and have been massaged to perform in certain ways. Handing those off to someone that lacks extensive knowledge of the system is inviting trouble in. One need look no further than this thread.

Numerically? yes. In actual practice creating a build that can do it? I dunno

Well that isn't true, I have a 1 sec off of perma PA ill/cold build sitting in mids that could easily do it, but getting enough defense and a heal as required on other cold builds while still having enough recharge would be a challenge.

The Standard Code rant does not apply to SC, but rather the Standard Not Doing Your Job rant does.

Unless some part of the "subtleties of programming" includes not checking your work before hitting submit? But if you guys have built that into your profession then I'm impressed and disappointed at the same time.

How ever many steps you want to say there are for programming something I'm 100% confident one of the last ones is to check it before going into production. Why am I so confident? because programming is not a unique snowflake in this regard, it is the same as every single industry on Earth. SC went live not working as designed, so that step was skipped. The reason(s) for it being skipped are irrelevant excuses and do nothing to change the fact that it was skipped.

When SC was buffed is when tunnel vision applies, but no one is blaming the programmer that listened to players and asked the boss if it would be ok to apply AT mods to the power. This does fall under the standard code rant. What doesn't in this situation is green lighting a power for a massive change (which the diff between brute and scrap AT mods is) without doing a least a cursory audit of the power against the original design notes and equally importantly without the person who cleared it for a massive change taking a look at the final result before again going in to production. Which again falls under the Not Doing Your Job rant and not the Standard Code rant.

If you want Not Doing Your Job to be covered under the Standard Code rant, or if it already is, then a lot of respect for the profession is going to disappear.

Now all that said, and before anyone gets too upset; we all make mistakes in every line of work. Luckily, most programming mistakes have less consequence than me forgetting to put my gas cap back on after filling up. Some do though, but not in this game so all's good.

Track-able and easily preventable mistakes are the best kind of mistakes because once they are made and documented they never need to happen again. Which is to say, a power never needs to go live again without it being checked against the design documents. It doesn't matter what's going on with any other aspect of the game because one of the last steps before production is checking the product.

I wouldn't be saying "my hope is that as we go forward this type of mistake occurs with far less frequency" if it wasn't something that could happen and should be a minimum expectation of acceptable performance.

I'm not mad at all, just that mistakes like this prevent resources being spent on more valid errors and from an end user perspective, prevent resources being devoted to improving underwhelming aspects of the game.

I agree. In teams cold is a better force mulitplier and can provide more team mitigation. Solo I give the nod to rad because it has more self buffs (am, heal) and enough mitigation to move quickly and handle most anything the game can throw your way.

When I say "better" that isn't saying that the other is bad in the least though.

I sure do wish they'd flip sleet and FW order in the set though.

The facts. You aren't even trying to have a discussion you are just being belligerent, ignorant and purposefully obtuse.

We get that you think Castle overnerfs, I'd probably agree in many cases. That doesn't change the fact that SC is NOT working as intended. It is NOT working as he designed it to work and it is grossly outperforming everything like it.

If you want to be productive in the least you'll stop frothing at the mouth and start using your brain to come up with intelligent and meaningful arguments based on logical understandings of the game to persuade Castle to introduce your fix to the issue. It sounds like he is still in the deciding stage of exactly what to do to the power, so here's your chance to actually contribute something. But just so we are clear, when he does look into the power it is going to go down in damage.

I'd be doing just that right now, but imo the numbers he listed for SC as it is supposed to be are still extremely impressive to me, so I don't feel it is necessary.

Anyway, I think I'm probably done talking at you for now. I'm not talking with you because you either aren't comprehending what I'm saying or simply choosing to be stubborn which is leading to a level of obnoxiousness that is grating. Quite frankly I have better things to spend my time on.

'Top performing' and 'vastly overpowered' are not synonymous.

As for what's next, I could list a few things, but based on the fact that Castle had no idea until this thread I'm not going to say anything because the ones I have in mind don't break barriers on nearly the same level as SC. My hopes is that many (and I mean there are a ton) of underperforming, or just underwhelming, powers get attention.
I think I even mentioned in this thread that if you want to start tossing out SC in the epics for everyone to grab this conversation probably wouldn't be happening. Of course, the devs would likely scale the enemies to this new level of offense that everyone has and the net result would be the same as reducing SC in the first place, except instead of just SC all offense powers would be reduced.

The rest of your post I more or less agree with, but not much can be done about it. The mistakes (plural intended as there was more than one) happened. They are done and in the past. I'm sure if Castle could go back he'd make sure that whoever was responsible (him or otherwise) did a better job, but that isn't an option.

I'm sure the standard tacky apology will accompany the fix when it finally occurs and that will placate those that require it. Hopefully the cause of the error is understood and similar things will occur less frequently in the future. Beyond that who knows.

At any rate, if SC was introduced at ~106 AoE damage it would still have been considered an amazing power by the player base. How do I know? because it was deemed so at 133 damage.

If the choice is only between Psy and Elec I'd take elec if you have endurance issues and psy if you don't because elec fence and thunderstrike are both throw away powers on an /ice blast imo.

I think it is the devs over valuing range, or under valuing how easy using melee actually is, or a combination.

Something is amiss because you have brutes and scrappers that are second only to blasters in dealing damage in actual play (sometimes more because they don't have to restrain themselves) and they are second only to tanks in surviving.

The devs must think ranged damage is just amazing and being melee is a huge disadvantage because the damage to survivability ratio found in the "damage" classes is out to lunch.

I have to agree that playing squishies is stressing at times because they are so blatantly squishy compared to the armored AT's while often dealing less damage. I still prefer to play squishes because for me they are more fun and because all my melee toons ultimately play the same way. But the difference in relative power is astoundingly in favor of scraps/brutes.

Ya AAO is a very very good power. It really does a lot more for a character than "make me hit harder" in the grand scheme. The comparison between AAO and Energize is neat, it just shows another benefit of AAO that most people don't realize.

It would be interesting to look closer at some various build levels, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Shields is the most endurance efficient damage delivering set of all the armors. Well it probably still trails ELA with an aura, energize and powersink, but SC has insane DPE, and AAO increases DPE by a lot. If I'm bored one day I might take a look at it heh.

It goes doubly for the dollar amount. The pop spike from CoV wasn't really that large to begin with. The dollar spike was, but GR will be puny compared to it. If for no other reason than they are spreading the surge out with pre-purchasing many months in advance. But there are other reasons too.

lol, true enough. And when you aren't killing entire spawns for that cost you have AAO giving Shields good endurance efficiency by improving dpe.

ie.
Hack w/ 3 dam SO's
23.45 damage per endurance
w/ 3 dam SO's and AAO
up to 33.23 damage per endurance

Compared to the conserve power affect of Energize found in ELA
Hack w/ 3 dam SO's + energize discount
37.46 damage per endurance

Not really. You'd have a large "trap" where everything inside stays inside and performs the "gravity well" function as well as can likely be constructed in this game.

The idea is that it is large enough to place around an entire spawn. Stragglers are SOL for being jammed into the clump from the power alone, but that is consistent with single resolution powers like flashfire. Those outside the casting are still being actively mitigated in some form though which is still of minor benfit vs single resolution powers. Unfortunately the chances of it operating in a two distinct functions (ie lets things in, but not out) is unlikely.
I'm doubtful the system can strategically place a series of "minature bonefires minus the damage" like I'm talking about. There is likely no way it could do what you are talking about. You have to find a balance between thematics and what is possible in game. The geometry and precision required for what you are talking about is extreme. The system I'm thinking of only requires the engine to place single function pseudo pets in a circular pattern, which as mentioned I don't think is even possible unfortunately.

The idea of repelling pseudo pets is fine, but it could never be aimed. It would go in all directions at which point you are doing the same thing I suggested just trading kb for repel. KB offers more mitigation so that would be more to my liking, but repel is probably more visually satisfying of the criteria. Of course it could do both like singy, which is even better.

For clarification what I'm talking about is essentially a ring of singularities that don't attack just kb/repel away from the entity. Anything inside the ring has been trapped in the gravity sink. Anything outside of it is repelled from it. More powerful foes would have the ability to escape the sink and there is absolutely nothing preventing you from using the unique aoe foe teleport also found in gravity to put stragglers into it. In fact it is encouraged.