Frosticus
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Posts
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Joined
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In many cases you are looking at things like a defender supplying 7.5% more res debuff than a corr.
7.5*8 = 60% more force mulitplaction that a corrs "higher" damage will need to make up for. That typically won't happen until you are exceed the defender damage cap and into the realm of the higher corruptor ceiling.
In any event, they are pretty interchangable, similar to brutes and scrappers there are some combos that shine more for the particular AT, but at the end of the day most teams are going to really struggle seeing the difference if you sub one in for the other.
The notable exception is fire blast. It is vastly superior for dealing damage and even when defs get it they won't have a triple scourging rain of fire that checks scourge every tick capable of bringing entire spawns down. -
There being no players on your server is a perception issue.
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The crashless nukes in the game are amazing (RoA, full auto, Lightning Rod, Shield Charge) and I haven't tried Hail of Bullets, but it looks like it could be pretty solid now.
I like the traditional nukes if you have a way to recover quickly. For blasters that is hands down a nice full Drain Psyche. I'd have to check blaster numbers, but I think saturated it can recover right through the -recovery the nuke applies. Which is pretty nice.
Pop a blue+powersink is decent too. I found it works really well with blizzard just because the targets are alive long enough to ensure it works immediately after the nuke cast with no bothersome target hunting.
I wouldn't base my pick around a traditional nuke (whereas picking arch is clearly because of RoA), but if you are planning to have uber recharge then the crash based nuke might be a deciding factor. For which the only answer is Inferno! Which means roll a fire/psy, they are crazy fun and very powerful with insane aoe, extreme st, and very high survivability (for a blaster and if built right, just plan high survivability period). -
I'd play kin/rad over any of the remaining ones you listed. Seeing as how the "power" sets are eliminated I'd also consider a kin/dp, it is a pretty cool looking set.
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Quote:Sure you have. Well maybe not personally, but it happens. Pop a dam/range HO into a power like thermal plasma shield. ED capped res w/ just two slots and a handy range boost. Those HO's are also cheap too. Nice way to save slots on a therm.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I sincerely hope that this is a display bug and not the actual numbers the summon is getting. On that note, do damage enhancements really enhance his damage resistance toggle? I haven't seen that before. -
Even though brutes tend to be a bit stronger when it comes to the shared sets I like scrappers better. Ridiculous overkill via criticals is a lot of fun. I restrict my brutes to the extreme "tanker" sets like stone and ss (and em before it was gutted).
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Quote:Pretty sure I already did in a previous post under the "SO" heading.Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
So what is the offensive difference exactly, lol? Please show your work because I'd love to see the equation that takes into account the massive variables that exist in this game.
If you have a more accurate way of measuring expected survival then be my guest. I believe werner has a far more indepth system, maybe ask him. I tried to keep it as simple as possible by not including anything other than the set in question and SO's. That is to shields benefit I assure you as the powerpools benefit it more than FA as do IO's.Quote:I think your far too basic equation for survivability, that clearly ignores pretty much every in game variable, makes your 14% calculation pretty questionable too.
21% def is what 21% def is. I didn't make up the tohit mechanic in this game. If you feel 21% def is unobservable then that is your feeling. The system doesn't agree with you though.Quote:I think FA is underpowered overall, but in your example you have the SD running at 21% defense. If you can't vastly outsurvive a SD running at 21% def in the vast majority of game situations, you're doing something horribly, horribly wrong, unless the SD is downing purples like oprah at a cake convention.
You've also conveniently overlooked the +hp and the res that shields also offers. Standard layered defenses rant yada yada.
Not really, I'm just using the most basic numbers I can think of because people cried that shields sucks on SO's. The numbers don't agree, but feel free to calculate them differently.Quote:The point I'm trying to make is that trying to create a 'balance equation' in a game with so many different variables is pretty silly imo, especially at this stage.
Rather than just throw one's hand up in the air and say "it's too hard" I think picking away at things is great. I'm not going to sit and do a massive analysis like Arcana or Starmsan would do, I don't need it to be able to differentiate my experiences with fire armor on brutes and scrappers vs Shields on those two AT's as well.
Like deja vu regarding old PSW. But clearly the only thing I said was to reduce Shields down to the same level as FA...right.Quote:It seems most of us agree that FA is one of the few scrapper secondaries that is underpowered. I would argue that it is a terrible idea to weaken one of the popular secondaries so you can balance it down to an underpowered, unpopular one. Unless your goal is to anger your customers and make your april fools joke move closer to reality.
I've already made my suggestions about how I would alter burn. Burn is mutually exclusive from Shields though and Burn warrants alteration as a standalone from Shield. The only purpose Shield serves in relating to FA is to show just how bad the "other offensive" set is in relation.Quote:Look back at how they buffed up dark melee. They took a pretty unpopular set and made it an instant fan favorite. They should do the same thing for FA. I would suggest buff burn somehow and see how it works out in game, not on a calculator. I would make it a much larger aoe, keep the fear, and front load the damage. -
Here's another fun little comparo to talk about around the water cooler tomorrow.
Scrapper SC vs Old PSW
*AAO+bu for the scrapper, Domination for the dom.
(you may not like the inclusion of bu, but it is on the exact same timer as SC, I know I use it every single time)
SC
200/cycle time(90+1.716)
2.18*target cap (16)
34.89*damage buff (1.95+.813+1.0)
=131.3 aoe dps
*251.5 w/ 3 rech SO's
*433.1 w/ "perma dom" level recharge
Old PSW
70/cycle time (10+2.112)
5.78*target cap (10)
57.79*damage buff (1.95+.75)
=156 aoe dps
*261 w/ 3 rech SO's
*377.2 w/perma dom (hasten+80% global+3 rech SO's)
Now I'm not saying SC is the new PSW, the numbers are painting that picture depending on whether you accept the assumptions made or not. I will say that a lot of the arguments being made to leave SC alone are the same ones made about PSW, but maybe a bit weaker cause doms at least had the fact they were grossly underplayed to prop up their side of the story. Scrappers can make no such claim. -
Nice work as always guys.
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Shields and FW on all three imps makes them pretty robust. As mentioned though in order to maximize containment you need to negate the knockdown of sleet.
Unfortunately arc fog doesn't give typed defense, so it doesn't play as nicely with the epic shields as it could, but that said, both cold and stone mastery are easy enough to gain very high s/l def with and both provide a "heal".
fire/cold/ice and fire/cold/stone can both be very tough and very offensive as well. Having unlimited endurance to fuel fire control and fissure spam makes the latter combo very desirable imo.
The problem is (imo) getting high def and high recharge on the combo without breaking the bank. -
Quote:I think the 10.3 already includes a ~10% crit rate.Originally Posted by Kioshi
I knew Quills did less damage, but it's the only damage aura that crits. Maybe it gets closer to the others because of that?
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Quote:Definitely, it is significantly easier to build s/l (and energy too) on to a corr. It tends to be about 33% easier to build all the other defenses onto a defender.Originally Posted by Warkupo
As I said (albeit very briefly), without going through every single Primary/Secondary for both AT's, I can't come to a conclusion either way. I would have to sit down and make a comparative build of everything to decide that "this has better survivability with scorpion shield" or "this is buffed by defender so much that it is better." I am going to assume that sets that start with fairly large numbers of defense gain favor on a defender because of the nature of buff values, but even that is just guessing until I make an actual comparison of every single combination for both AT's that I consider fairly balanced, which is not something I'm going to do unless I'm actually going to play as the set. Call me self-centered, but I like what little mental stability I have left.
I've never found resistance on a squishy overly useful, which is primarily why I ran over to Corr's to see if they had a defense toggle, and sure enough they did. When I build for defense, my primary concern is evading mez effects, as these are usually the quickest method to my downfall. Resistance has no method of addressing this problem, and you will get hit with mez effects of every variant more often, resulting in a lot of cascade failure that can make your resistance seem paltry. Defense, on the other hand, has the ability to evade the mez effect entirely, while simultaneously reducing the amount of incoming damage. While I am in no way stating that defense is entirely safe from mez effects either, you are hit with them with far less frequency than if you had only gathered resistance. As such I consider defense the true method of mitigation building for a squishy, with resistance being nice to have until such a point that the squishy in question actually HAS mez protection, at which point I am prompted to take another look at which value is giving me the most benefit.
Keep in mind too that, given the way defense and resistance are calculated, significantly lower values of defense are equal to comparatively higher levels of resistance. What I mean by this is that when calculating To-Hit "most" enemies only have a 50% chance to hit you to begin with, where as they will "always" do 100% damage to a resistance set. For defense, half of the work has already been done for you by the enemies own incompetence. We could infer that 2 defense = 1 resistance, and thus Scorpion Shields 12.8% defense vs, say, Charged Armour's 20.2% actually has a 2%-ish value advantage in Scorpion Shield's favor. We'd probably be wrong in several cases, but we could infer that.
Scorpion Shield is a point in Corr's favor, but I in no way mean to imply that it is the leading factor that allows Corr to stomp all over Defender's lovely rose garden. It is definitely worth addressing, but until I've personally gone through and done a numerical analysis, I'm not going to say anything other than "it seems like it's easier to build defense for a Corr because of Scorpion Shield."
If you are building from the ground up on a toon with no innate defense scorp shield is a huge leg up.
FWIW if Def's every get a s/l defense shield it will probably be ~17% base. That will be pretty crazy though as just the shield+weave+1 slotted cj+steadfast will give 40% def. Not entirely unlike how trivially easy it is to cap s/l on a /stone app troller (16% base).
I'll honestly be a bit surprised if defs don't get some kind of defense based shield in GR though as they are the only squishies that don't have one now. -
Quote:DP also gained enhanceable +hp iirc.Originally Posted by ArchGemini
So has Regen simply just been downhill from launch, and a small bump with the MoG changes?
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Quote:It's generally done as a deflection. Very similar discussion around PSW and how it was only "uber" on perma doms.Originally Posted by Werner
Shield Defense compares just fine to any other secondary I've leveled, and I level on the cheap. I don't get where this whole Shields sucks with SOs idea is coming from. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing a different game than other people.
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Quote:Not to mention how lame it is versus blaster Lightning Field.Originally Posted by StratoNexus
Those lists makes me sadder about Blaster Blazing Aura only having 7.13 DPE.
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Quote:Ya I think so too. Unfortunately it is pretty nice on a 2 min timer and pretty lame on a 4 min timer. so if/when it gets changed it is not going to be very fun.Originally Posted by Silas
To be fair, given what happened to Dominator Soul Drain, the recharge on the Defender version is almost certainly an oversight.
I personally don't have an issue with a power that inherits such high risk to use being used well on squishy AT's, but I do understand that generally epic powers have upwards of double the rech of the normal version... -
Quote:Not at the moment, no, but eventually I'd like to see more consistency in the presentation.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
No, I don't think that's a good idea at the moment either. I don't think very many people will like where that ends up either.
When the time does come I don't see it hurting FA because it is pretty clear that active mitigation is permitted to reach considerably higher levels of force than proactive mitigation and it would seem apparent that someone is valuing the fear of burn. Unless that paradigm is changed, but that would be far more devastating to the buff/debuff AT's than the armored AT's.
But I agree, I'd prefer his
is cast onto other things at the moment.
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I'm not sure handwaving the greater values defs have on everything by simply stating "corrs can just pick scorp shield" is really addressing the matter.
A corr can get Scorp Shield at the opportunity cost of 32% res. In the case of a defender it will be at 43% res (s/l).
Scorp Shield is awesome for allowing "cheap" ways to achieve high mitigation, but if you are spending the inf and reach softcapped def anyway like a defender can with the higher values then the loss of that resistance is now pretty significant.
Case in point my fire/traps has softcapped: s/l/e/ranged - 12.7% res s/l
My traps/sonic (will have) softcapped: s/l/e/n/p/f/c/range/melee/aoe AND 65.3% res s/l.
Also the def has much stronger -dam debuffs in seekers adding even more survivability.
Basically the defender will eclipse the corr when it comes to mitigation, but the corr (being fire) does a lot more damage. However, if the corr had a matching blast set that damage advantage would be more or less gone... especially with soul drain recharging twice as fast for defenders. -
Quote:Actually it is probably because they are looking at the game as a whole that Shields conjures negative attentionOriginally Posted by Cyber_naut
That's why when I hear people crying for SD nerfs, it just sounds ridiculous to me, but maybe these people are focusing only on the scrapper at and not the game as a whole.
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Quote:The thing you should look at is the relationship between damage and mitigation as presented in armor sets.Originally Posted by Castle
This thread makes my head ache. I *really* don't want to look at Shields, do I?
Using just SO's as everyone quickly wants to deflect this to IO's and brush the issue away
Fire Armor:
1338.6hp
652.3 heal every 22.22 sec (cast+rech) = 29.36 hp sec
35.1% res to s/l
base regen 5.58hp
vs 200 dps incoming damage (s/l)
44.68 sec survival time
Shields:
1338.6*1.195 = 1599.63 hp
21.3% def
15.8% res s/l (2 res SO's in deflection)
base regen 6.67
vs 200 dps incoming damage (s/l)
38.4 sec survival time
*flee effect of burn not calculate, nor the fact that SC would just one shot the whole group
*Nor does it account for Shields having a usable Tier 9 with 33% uptime.
Even on SO's which is where fire performs best relative to other armors and Shield is apparently "really weak" there is only a 14% difference in survivability. Yet there is more than a 14% difference in offensive output in favor of shields. IO's just exasperate the issue to the point of ridiculousness due to a variety of reasons such as def stacking better than res, the offense of shields responding to recharge better than fire's and so forth.
Personally I play both armor sets and I like both armor sets because I like offense more than uber survivability. Shields invalidates my Fire armor toons. Which leaves several options:
1. Buff FA so it is as clearly offensive as Shields
2. Nerf Shields so it is as clearly underwhelming as FA
3. Buff FA a bit and nerf Shields a bit and meet at some nebulous balance vector in the middle
edit: Shields probably should suck compared to Willpower at surviving, cause WP sucks compared to shields at killing things. Those two sets aren't as directly comparable as FA and Shields unless you have clear metrics on how survivability and offense is being weighted. But just looking at fire vs Shields that metric is not defined. -
BS is you aren't looking to spend much money, or if you aren't a fan of using inspirations while leveling.
Fire if you plan on upping your def through IO's.
I went BS/shield, it is a very strong toon as soon as you get parry. It performed much better for me than the dm/shield brute I ran up to 38 before it, but the BS is eclipsed by fire if you spend some money getting shields into the uber status. -
Roll a fire/dark. It feels insanely powerful right from the start. /dark is probably the strongest solo set, which isn't to say other choices won't be really good, just not as solo friendly as dark.
Fearsome stare is such an "i win" button. -
Quote:I don't mean what I said as a main form of control, I meant that is how I would change the endurance drain mechanic for everyone. Elec control is still going to need forms of hard/soft control which it will be getting regardless of endurance drain.Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon
That's a worthy goal but I don't think your system does that. Basically, unless they are absolutely floored (with your system) and stay there, they'll still have a base attack they can use cheaply, which means you can get full alpha. So, I don't really see how that'd make such a power a reliable main control.
Now, if they have a regular/reliable main control, such as a stun, but they also have an END drain power (say a toggle like RI that drains end around a foe target) then that'd be cool. Having a blend of hard and soft control is always nice.
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Excluding the epic ATs it is still stalkers and doms.
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I'd blow up so many things on a /thermal MM with RotP if you could use it on a pet.