Kosmos

I think you're underestimating just how much of a drawback Shadow Maul's cast time really is.

One thing that's often overlooked is that the cast time tends to get left out when people discuss recharge times. Shadow Maul's cycle time is 11.07s, but only 8s or 72% of that is affected by enhancement or buffs. By comparison a faster cast power such as Bone Smasher has a 15.5s cycle time but 90% of that is reducible. On my moderately high recharge Fire Blaster build the two would recharge in similar times as a result: 5.87s for BS and 5.57s for SM with equivalent slotting. So Shadow Maul's low Recharge Time isn't quite as good as it might seem at first glance because of the long activation that has to occur before it can start recharging and the fact that activation time is fixed. Even on modest 2 SOs worth recharge build that 8s to 14s Recharge Time advantage is reduced to just an 8s to 10s final cycle time advantage.

For ST attack chain consideration the most useful statistical measure by far is the ever popular Damage per Second of Activation or DPA (sometimes also called DPS). Shadow Maul's DS is 2.156 (the number you posted includes Scrapper Crits). It has an ArcanaTime cast of 3.3s. That makes it's DPA 0.653 DS/s. And that's with the 1.0 multiplier Blasters have for Melee instead of the 1.125 for Ranged. Which results in 36.3 DPS unslotted. If you're running at around 250% base from enhancements, buffs and Defiance that's just 90 DPS. That's a good number... for a Defender. For a Blaster it's poor. So it is NOT a good single target attack for a Blaster unless you've managed to leave large holes in your ST attack chain. Most Blaster ST attacks do at least 45% better DPA than Shadow Maul. Even the ST immobs are typically at least 30% better at DPA. All four of the attacks you mentioned are all a LOT better as part of an ST attack chain. Ice Sword does 89% better DPA. Fire Sword is 128% better, and Bone Smasher and Havoc Punch are each 132% better. Even Total Focus does 59% better DPA. Many Blaster AoEs have better DPA too. Buckshot is 48% better. Ball Lightning 33% better, Explosive Arrow 31%. I won't touch Fire Ball because it's too embarrassing, however, Fire Breath beats Shadow Maul's DPA by 4%. Yes, that's right, Fire Breath is as good a ST attack chain filler as Shadow Maul.

Shadow Maul as a mini-AoE on Blasters is mediocre. As an ST attack on Blasters it's downright bad.

As much ragging on Shadow Maul as I've done, I feel I should state I have 2 L50 Scrappers who were designed with concepts specifically to use SM because it was the second power I saw in CoH that made me think "I gotta have that" (Propel was the first). Oscillator was the first Scrapper and second toon I got to 50 behind only my Fire/En Blaster. Dark Harmony was my 1st Pinnacle 50. So I'm not a Shadow Maul hater, I just think a lot of people are being unrealistic about its value to a Blaster.

The "can [...] be modified by" criteria is a good one. However, using it makes only one change to the list and it is utterly irrelevant to my point. It removes Claws/Shockwave. It doesn't do anything to move Shadow Maul out of the group comprising the smallest cone attacks in the game, melee or otherwise.

I disagree with the "will far exceed" assertion. Exceed yes, but far exceed, no. The 10' range on GD reduces the "wait for them to clump" part of the multiple target tactic time cost. It's not germane to a discussion on the Blaster forums though.

The real comparison here is with Combustion, and trying to get SM up to the 40% as many foes hit level or so it needs to match Combustion isn't particularly easy. It's not particularly hard either, but the claim I was arguing against was that it was easy. My position is that it's about what you should expect to get without adopting inefficient tactics to try to get more. Shadow Maul and Combustion are comparable in overall value. I just happen to prefer Combustion because I think a Blaster will find more occasions to use it effectively than Shadow Maul.

I'll restate my general position regarding Shadow Maul in Dark Manipulation: It's a mediocre power most comparable in value to Combustion but also close to Thunderstrike and Total Focus. I like the latter two better because they satisfy a tactical role for a Blaster that's harder to fill than "more melee damage against small groups". In my opinion, Shadow Maul is a weakness in Dark Manipulation, along with Death Shroud, not a strength.

There is no distinction in the game engine between a "melee cone" and a "ranged cone". So whatever you choose to distinguish between them is going to be somewhat arbitrary. I chose to call those that the game labels as melee in its attack types - i.e. those that check against Melee Defense - to be melee cones. Given the number of errors in IO sets allowed for powers that option seemed a less reasonable choice.

I only said it would be a stretch to call hitting 3 or 4 with Shadow Maul "trivially easy". There's a wide gulf between "not trivially easy" and "impractical".

Furthermore, I only stated that it is arguable that the double target cap is worth more than Shadow Maul's 10% larger area (it's actually closer to a 5% larger usable area since the front 2' or so of cones is actually occupied by the caster and therefore not available for housing targets). What I had in mind is that if you AE farm then the 10 target cap actually has value as you can see the good old stacked mobs bug fairly often.

What relevance does that have? The important differential isn't the one between your toons, but between your Recovery and END use. And that would improve by at least 0.4 E/s if you get rid of FA (it uses an appalling 0.78 E/s unslotted), resulting in a surplus END of +2.15 E/s or better on the Invuln. Which is more than the WP Scrappers (+2.00 and +2.10) that you say have no problems.

Bottom line: You consider Inv heavy on END use because of what you're comparing it to and because you run the massive END-hog Focused Accuracy. FA uses more END than all three Inv toggles put together (0.78 vs 0.728 base). So I'll say it again, there's you're problem.

Well there's your problem...

... it's not Invuln, it's running Focused Accuracy on anything that doesn't have QR.

I'd say any cone with a melee attack type vector for defensive determinations is a "melee cone". Which includes Shockwave (Claws version), btw, but not Repulsing Torrent, Breath of Fire or Throw Spines.

With that definition of "melee cone" only Head Splitter, Golden Dragonfly and Cleave have smaller areas (5.6 sq ft versus 6.1) and they all have double the target cap at 10 vs 5. Jacob's Ladder has a slightly wider arc of 50 degrees (making it 11% larger) and Shatter is 1' longer (making it 31% larger).

The smallest non-melee cone is Fire Melee's Breath of Fire at a mere three times the size, and with twice the target cap, of Shadow Maul.

So Shadow Maul is arguably effectively the smallest (considering both area and target cap) cone attack in the game.

Actually, they did fix that, then appear to have broken it again when they had to make a change to fix melee cones having trouble targeting fleeing foes.

[Edit:] Also, I think you're basing your assessment off use on toons that are fighting a large group of foes aggro'ed on them, still active so they move and clump, and in melee range. A situation most Blasters try to avoid.

I guess you don't care about mitigation. Presumably your Blasters never solo or are pimped out so much that they don't need active mitigation. For me this boils down to SM having little value beyond the damage it does - like Combustion - and Blasters typically having more effective options to provide damage than a long cast+maneuver time melee attack.

As for the assertion that it is "trivially easy" to line up 2 to 4 targets for Shadow Maul... that's simply not true. I wouldn't even call it merely "trivial" to line up 3, let alone 4.

I did a fair bit of testing with Shadow Maul during the beta where DM was buffed (using 2 Scrappers and a Brute), and found that the time taken to line it up was often more than it (the maneuver time that is) was worth. My DPS capped with strategies that produced somewhere between 1.8 and 2.3 targets per cast on Shadow Maul. I was actually a bit surprised by this, as I thought I'd be hitting about 2.3-2.5 targets per cast of SM when used optimally. However, the Damage Scale per sec of cast for Shadow Maul came out lower than expected when I used demorecord for the maneuver+cast time. I topped out at about 1.35 DS/sec with 2.3 targets hit per cast. More time spent setting it up for more targets resulted in a drop in DPS for Shadow Maul alone, let alone for the complete attack sequence which also saw a drop from less use of Smite and Midnight Grasp. However, the big hit to the optimal targets hit per use didn't really come from what I could be doing instead, but rather from the cost in lost personal DPS opportunities due to what my teammates were up to while I was doing the Dark Melee Two-Step.

As I said, I think the value of all of these powers is in the same area, but I think TS and TF are slightly more useful since SM mostly just provides damage a Blaster can usually get in a more efficient manner another way while TS and TF provide mediocre damage but also significant mitigation that often isn't readily available elsewhere.

If you include Ice Patch you need to include Trip Mine too. IMO, both of those are quite a bit better than even Fire Sword Circle. Though it's really hard to do a direct comparison with Ice Patch.

The four I think are in the same general area performance-wise are: Thunderstrike, Total Focus, Combustion and Shadow Maul. I consider the last two pretty close, but TS and TF a step better than either. TF mainly because of Power Boost and the stacking of Stuns. TS because of the Stun/KB (and I hate KB). None of these powers are great since TF lost its Mag 4 Stun. But none of them are complete Time Bomb level garbage either.

A quick comparison of Combustion and Shadow Maul reminds me why I rerolled my Ice/Fire Blaster and moved Combustion WAY down the build.

Combustion does 1.5 DS with an 18s cycle time and 13 END cost. It also takes quite a while for the damage to complete (7.1s). Shadow Maul does 2.156 DS with an 11.07s cycle time and 8.528 END cost. So, SM's DS/cycle is 2.34 times that of Combustion. As for the END. Shadow Maul does 2.19 times the DS/E of Combustion. Both of these numbers are close to the effective damage multipliers I get for Combustion versus Shadow Maul. On average I hit 1.8 foes with Shadow Maul (that's on Scrappers though) and get 84% of the full damage (which surprises me, I would have expected it to be lower - I guess that's because I don't use that long cast when I don't expect to get most of the damage). For Combustion (on a Blaster, I'm ignoring the Tanker numbers as laughably inappropriate) I hit 6.8 foes and get 64% of the total damage on average (I don't have a lot of data on this unfortunately, but the numbers don't seem too far off what I'd expect). That's a 2.88:1 advantage to Combustion.

Anyway, the discount to Shadow Maul's Recharge and END both seem about right for the tiny AoE it provides compared to Combustion. So I still consider Combustion to be a generally better use of END and to do better damage per cycle. Though that will change if you solo or duo on x2 or lower. Shadow Maul also provides a small -5.25% (Blaster's attrib mod is the same as Tanker's) ToHit debuff. On the minus side, it also has a somewhat longer effective cast because of the time to position to get the extra foe or two hit.

All-in-all I'd call those two close to even, and tied for dead last amongst the PBAoE click damage powers in Blaster secondaries.

Ignite is a pseudo-pet the uses a toggle. So it should have a chance to proc every 10 seconds. Which unfortunately means just on cast. It's analogous to Caltrops, but with a tiny (4') radius and only a 10s duration for the pseudo-pet.

Just because other powers are iffy doesn't mean Shadow Maul gets a pass for being so too. The argument that they can't all be winners has some validity in considering the whole power set, but my comment was specific to Shadow Maul, not Dark Manipulation.

The long cast time melee powers are: Total Focus, Thunderstrike, Combustion, Fire Sword Circle and now Shadow Maul. Fire Sword Circle blows Shadow Maul away. The other 3 are also mediocre powers. I don't really see an argument in favor of Shadow Maul versus any of them either, making it probably the worst power in the class.

I consider them both OK but not great. My point is they don't work together well except for the stacking -ToHit. Having to close to melee to use most of Dark Manip (2 ranged powers, 7 melee) reduces the value of the AoE Immob and KB that Dark Blast can use for mitigation.

No.

Stone isn't that great prior to Granite Armor on a Brute. Odds are you've just run into a foe that debuffs Defense or something. What have you been fighting?

Shadow Maul is an awfully long animation to be locked into in melee range on a Blaster.

As for Gloom... I'm sure they'll handle that the same way they handled Fire Blast and Ice Blast, which is to do nothing with the animation at all. Both of those drive me nuts with the half second of dead time at the end.

I had a feeling I wasn't going to like the Dark Blast/Dark Manipulation combo.

To me Dark Blast for Blasters looks to be a nice ranged combat set while Dark Manip appears strongly biased to melee.

Phantoms look like Phantom Army. The support pet will cast Adrenalin Boost twice during it's summon period. That gives 150s of the buff every 15 minutes or 16.7% up time on +400% Rec, +250% Reg, +50% Rech and 40% Slow Res. It also has Heal Other. That makes it a nice pet for an SR Scrapper.

The Vanguard buff pet runs a weak version of Assault and uses Twilight's Grasp, making it a good buff pet for large teams. The Boss has a self-heal, is a pure ranged fighter and has 2 targeted AoEs (but neither is great). I'm not crazy about the offensive Lts, since they melee. I don't think Vanguard are a great choice for a Scrapper. They're better for something that can multiply the value of the AoE heal.

I'm pretty sure streakbreaker is built right into the to hit calculation and applies to anything that makes a tohit roll. However, keep in mind that with floored tohit of 5% streakbreaker only kicks in after 100 consecutive misses. That means the tohit chance for a given attack is 5% if there has been 1 hit in the last 100, which will be the case 100% of the time for the first 100 attacks and on average 99.4% of the time thereafter, and then 100% that remaining 0.6% of the time after 100 attacks. That gives the adjusted tohit probability of:

5% for attacks =< 100
(5% * 100 + (5% * 99.4% + 100% & 0.6%) * (attacks - 100)) / attacks for attacks > 100
...which equals...
5.57% - 57% / attacks for attacks > 100

Mediocrity would be a step up for most Microsoft products.

Start the launcher and under File->Settings->Advanced there's a check box to allow launching multiple instances of a game. You can get to the settings with Ctrl-S, but for some reason they seem to have required using the mouse to access the Advanced tab.

Leveling to 50 in 24 hrs of play doing just radios would require a double XP weekend or a significant amount of PL'ing. Now, if you build an AE fire farmer you can hit 50 in less than half that time.

Normally, I'd say it takes me somewhere between 60-150 hrs of play time to reach 50. I think the longer times there are a thing of the past though, and I'd be surprised if any of my more recent 50s took much more than 100 hrs. My Dark/SM Tank probably took the longest of those recent 50s. Let's see his current patrol time... 119 hrs. I'd have to guess about 20 of that is since hitting 50, so call it 100 hrs.