Starsman

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fulcrum shift, speed boost, and siphon speed are identical for both ATs

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Missed this earlier on the thread.

Fulkrum Shift is not identical on both ATs, the corruptor debuffs 20% dmg (not a damage buff nor resist debuff, its a foe damage output debuff) and buffs 40% damage while the defender is 25%/50%, mind you, either can easily take anyone to the damage caps with enough foes.

Speed boost and siphon speed, yea those two are basically the same, defender version of siphon speed has a stronger -speed debuff but it's not like anyone cares about that debuff anyways.

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I would assume the sonic build would always keep 4 or 5 stacks of -resist
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I made a bit of numbers and if you are fighting pure minions or lts, the defender may actually pull ahead against even level foes

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The only issue here is that it doesn't take that many attacks to kill even level lts., much less minions. By the time you stack your 5th blast on a lt., he is probably also dying (maybe that is with Aim up though).

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Perhaps, but I'd argue that lts can survive more than 3 attacks from a defender or corruptor at the mid levels and higher, unless the attacks are heavy hitters.

Now do note that the corruptor's 7% scourge benefit against minions is an average of thousands of simulated kills, many kills may get no scourge and perhaps about 7% will get a useful scourge that was not wasted due to the base attack being overkill on it's own, so against small sample of foes you may find the rad/sonic defender out damaging the sonic/rad corruptor. These are single target analysis though, and things get ugly and complicated once you enter AoE and even more once you go to complex real game experiences. I'd put my money on the defender against large groups of minions and the corruptor against EBs, AVs and GMs ST damage, at least as far as that specific combo goes.

Just was correcting the note on the 21.25, the guide includes a huge table of averages you can look at, if interested.

As for the Rad/Sonic debate:

Based on cast time and duration, I would assume the sonic build would always keep 4 or 5 stacks of -resist, 20% a pop vs corruptor's 15% a pop, plus the anchor -res for -30%/22.5% respectively, plus Adrenaline Boost 25%/20% respectively (i also ran without it)

I made a bit of numbers and if you are fighting pure minions or lts, the defender may actually pull ahead against even level foes, did not run numbers for purple patch but I assume it would also stay the same up to +3s.

Fighting bosses the fight evens out and both ties against evens, off course corruptors will fare better against higher foes due to purple patch.

Against AVs and GMs, the corruptor will have the edge at all times.

Woops i missed answering that last question!

I can’t remember clearly now, but I think I used variant enhancement for level ranges (can’t tell exactly the level range but sure before lvl 10 there were no enhancements and at 25+ everything was 95%)

And now I remember why I never replied to this, you made the second question hard! Got the numerics but got derailed.

I made this table that denotes at what point a foe matches the next rank.

For example, you will notice that level 1, fighting a foe that is +4 equates a level 1 lt (HP wise, he hits MUCH harder) while at level 50, a +3 Minion equates a level 33 Lt HP wise (as if you fought him at even level) so the purple patch may do something but won’t make scourge jump to the next rank easily. By the time you find something that will take you to the next rank, it will also likely kill you with eyes closed.

The best you can actually get from scourge is about 20.7% bonus damage and thats while fighting the biggest of the biggest HP bags in the game: GMs. And this assumes you are soloing them, too, so also an inflated number.

The link to my experiment can be found here.

Depending what you are fighting, the bonus is minimal, against even level minions its just about 7%, note this may be better against higher level minions but it requires a lot of level jump for a minion to equate the Lt, who gets about 11% out of scourge.

The flaw with a simple formulaic analysis of scourge (as I attempted to describe in my guide) is that although you may get 21.25%, in practice, even the weakest of attacks will make your target jump from something like 40% to dead or 25% to dead, this makes the optimal scenario impossible to achieve against anything but GMs, or perhaps the new Reinchsman encounter, or extremely resistant foes.

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And Stalkers already have Energy Melee for this.

But BS gives better mitigation than EM...

Well we have Katana for *that*.

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And an in-between, although not sounding extremely epic, can be a HUGE difference. Thats not to note, it would still retain one cone, thing EM does not have.

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(1) Version control. Everything I write gets checked into a Mercurial repository, even if I work on something alone. But mostly I also collaborate with at least one other person, so a shared repository that we all have access to is generally our best choice. Word or OpenOffice.org versioning is not a suitable replacement for modern version control software.

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If this online version is anything like Google Docs, it will have version control. Google Docs does, and It's a feature I love. The ability to roll back to previous edit have saved many charts from being lost forever!

I am not sure I understand what the TeX features you talking about are, never dealt with that (at least not by that name so am lost)

It depends how they treat the set. If they go with the trend established recently for Claws, the narrow cone that is expected to hit just one foe may get turned into plain ST attacks making the set a bit distinct, not to mention that power always crit from hide.

But yea, other than animations expect a slower version of Ninja that hits a bit harder. Then again, that may be a huge difference in gameplay for stalkers, as they are all about heavy hitting attacks when stealth.

Got to admit, for uniqueness, I would had liked to see Mace instead of Broad Sword.

Think Shield/Elec will fare better.

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To be honest they should have given us fire. That would have worked out better than this so long as we keep fire sword circle and get rid of scorch.

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You realize if they did this they would get rid of Fire Sword Circle and leave you only with Breath of Fire for AoE, right? By default, PBAoEs are the first thing to be removed from Stalker ports.

[/ QUOTE ]I dont know about this, they almost did this to elec but then we explained to them we already had enough single target damage and how hand clap wouldnt help us so they changed. My hope is that they get rid of one of the single target attacks since we get AS. If they dont give us FSC then I just wouldnt play the set. It wouldnt be worth it to me. Just think of the crits from hide on that thing.

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You can be sure, if Thunder Strike had been centered around you, it would had been removed no matter how much people whined. I can see Castle going after Thunder Strike in a port, but also can see many reasons to keep it since it has more in relation with a cone than with a PBAoE (requires target, cant be used if your perception is debuffed or against stealthed targets.) Just look at Martial Arts, and Energy Melee, both were entirely stripped off AoE capabilities despite having utility powers that could had been removed instead. They just did not want freely activated PBAoEs on the stalkers. With Spines they would had been forced to replace two powers, though, something they were likely with no time to do.


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Spine Burst, Thunderstrike...

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Spine Burst survived because they remove Damage Auras even faster, but its the only offensive melee set with a damage aura so that wont happen again.

Electric's Thunderstrike is a targeted AoE. The PBAoE was Lightning Clap, and it got removed.

[/ QUOTE ]Thunderstrike isnt a TAoE its a PBAoE. lighting clap was removed because it sucked for stalker playstyle.

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You should forget what IOs say, remember they didnt show up in the game until recently.

Targeted AoEs exist, its a game mechanic that is all too real. The same goes for Cones, another very real mechanic. The devs just found themselves with way too many damage categories to keep making IOs for, they had 5 already and still were lacking Melee AoE and Cone, they just decided to treat PBAoE as MAoE and fit cones on either ranged or PBAoE depending on their reach.

The end point is, and you can try to find one case that is not true: they always removed powers that were AoE and required no target to activate, even in Electric Melee (although that set had a chance to be different since Castle was doing it, not the previous guy.) Spines just got lucky they had two options to remove and the devs decided to remove the one that would constantly break hide.

Xbox Live, Windows Games Live, its basically the same thing, although I hear the Windows side of things sucks. Never used it, though.

The same as blasters do now. Before they feel forced to give patrons to heroes gone bad they may just rename villain patrons to seem more hero-standard.

With the changes to patron pools, they no longer are really patron pools. I mean, I do widdow's arc, pick her my patron and then take Scropion's set.

What I forsee is removing the requirement to do the patron arc to get your epics villain side, although it's nifty to get a respec out of it, and keep the arc as your pick of patron badge. Heroes gone bad can just do this.

It's very likely power customization will allow (eventually) to customize these so they dont feel so tied up to the patron concept.

Souls set is basically just dark epic.
Leviathan is basically cold.
Mu is electricity.
Mace is energy (sort off, its the only weapon based epic around.)

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"Through Windows Live". Hmm.

I'll wait to see how it works exactly before cheering.

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Not related to XBox Live, btw. Live is just Microsoft's label for Online Services. I doubt it will be much different than google docs integration with the rest of Google's Mail and other online services.

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Oh and for the rest of you out there, this also means you wont have to pirate Office ever again, you can now use it free online, well not now, once it comes out.

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Never had to pirate Office. OpenOffice is free.

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I tried that, my company uses it because they are cheap like that but it does really not compare with the feature set in MS Office, reason why us developers and the rest of IT and management get actual MS Office copies and Open Office is given just to regular staff.

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So I never have to install an office suite again? I can get the striped down version of Office without all the "value added" features I couldn't give two [naughty word] about?

AWESOME!! Thanks, I hadn't heard this.

And you're right, that actress sucked!

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Another added bonus! No more MS junk installed on your PC!

Although if they do any like Google Docs they m ay provide some plugin that may let you work offline and sync in case you are forced to be without internet connection. Never bothering with that plugin with Google Docs, though.

Another bonus: never loosing your files due to a computer crash!

On the bad side, seems they are sticking to the stupid ribbon thing instead of a menu bar... oh well, I can live with it, hate it but every time I use it for a few weeks I do get used to it.

Link

Now, why on earth am I posting this in the Archetypes and Powers section? Well, if you are hardcore number cruncher like me you likely are very familiar with both: Excel and Google Docs. You may stick offline in Excel due to google Docs raw feel, or prefer Google Docs due to the huge sharing and colaboration advantages that come with it being online.

Well, coming 2010, all of us true number crunchers will get access to online versions of Excel that will likely make Google Docs look ... even more raw.

Now... if MS could just hire good actors for to do their presentations... that woman was stiffer than a popsicle...

Oh and for the rest of you out there, this also means you wont have to pirate Office ever again, you can now use it free online, well not now, once it comes out.

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Apart from Spines being able to use the geometry from Thorns, and Thorns being able to use the geometry from Spines (both of which can be colored), there will be at least one other set of alternate geometry/FX.

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Is that the steel-y spines that whats-her-face uses? Uh, Silver Mantis? I always thought that'd be a keen look for a spiky hero and/or villain...

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No. It never occurred to me that Silver mantis had spines. The ones I made are very basic, conical, metal spikes.

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Now that you been refreshed about it, how about adding them in?

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That may be dubious - other weapons have been excluded from our use because they were unique to an enemy.

Ex: Shadow Spider's broadsword ("Shadow Blade", or something like that) was added during Weapon Customization's initial pass, but was removed before it went live. To be honest, I didn't even know she had a broadsword, let alone that particular model.

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Darnit!!! Why you had to say that!!! He may had forgotten that too but no more, you had to remind him that too!!!

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Looks good. Not great, but good. But then the City Traveler is going to be hard to beat. The Fog of War Reveal will help with my OCD about uncovering zone maps. Hopefully, it's permanent.

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This, but it will cheapen the experience!!!!

However: now I'll get those spots that were unreachable in many maps, like outside the bobbles in the shard.

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Apart from Spines being able to use the geometry from Thorns, and Thorns being able to use the geometry from Spines (both of which can be colored), there will be at least one other set of alternate geometry/FX.

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Is that the steel-y spines that whats-her-face uses? Uh, Silver Mantis? I always thought that'd be a keen look for a spiky hero and/or villain...

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No. It never occurred to me that Silver mantis had spines. The ones I made are very basic, conical, metal spikes.

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Now that you been refreshed about it, how about adding them in?

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Well with a fully slotted CP, Hasten and fairly pedestrian global recharge, you can get CP down to 150s recharge. Add in a second CP with the same stats (what would happen here if nothing changes in ElA (that's for Kioshi ) and that would make CP effectively perma, no?

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It would Kruunch, which is why I doubt they are going to allow it. Perma-CP is very powerful when you think about it. Also with some of the high recharge builds out there plus a lil team support and you enter the realm of double-stacking. THAT is scary in and of itself.

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It would be rather asinine to make such a build, that requires 2 powers, locks you into a specific epic, is not available while exempted, if the same recharge and investment would make Power Sink available every 15 seconds. You should NEVER need more endurance than what Power Sink because anything you can do to make Conserve Power better will make Power Sink that much better.

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but other than that they were able to directly port everything over or at least pull powers and visuals from existing powersets.

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Then I really don't get earth assault for doms. I know we have the melee attacks from stone melee... but where are the stone blasts coming from?

Or are they using the same animations as other blasts with new particles, which you don't consider different animations?

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Earth Assault is a special case.

When Sunstorm first started, we gave him some training (read: shackled him to the desk and forced him to look at spreadsheets) and gave him a bunch of bugs to fix to learn the systems.

Fixing Bugs doesn't teach everything, though, so he put together Earth Assault as a set to experiment with and learn the ropes. Eventually, he got it into shape and it turned out to be quite a fun set. We wrote it up as a full proposal for the next round of proliferation, since all the work had already been done...and, here we are.

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I bet he just pulls Hurl Boulder and that toss rock power most low level minions get, plus an adapted Hurl Huge Boulder and.... Hurl Huger Boulder.

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Anyhow if Elec Armor for Tankers/Scrappers get something actually useful instead of CP there will be hordes of Brutes and Stalkers screaming...

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It strikes me that the ability to pick up Conserve Power at level 18 on a tanker would be one of the main attractions of the set. This is when you'd get it if it were ported over without changes. With auxiliary powers, you could have it twice, and any Electric Armor tanker I probably would make likely would have it twice.

Not sure why I am seeing the hate for what looks to me to be the most fun and useful power in the set.

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The power has a duration of 90 seconds and a recharge of 600 seconds, thats an uptime of 15% without enhancements and 29% if fully slotted. Thats not going to help anyone skip Stamina.

Making Power Sink tier 7, though, would.

Power Sink has a 60 second cool-down and it can literally refill your full endurance bar with enough foes around. That's every 31ish seconds with 3 recharge SOs. Conserve Power is entirely redundant in the set, not to mention horribly weak compared to the alternative.

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Cool. It will be hard to improve on Footstomp. Smashing both fists on the ground, maybe? That would be sweet.

How about a "random" option, in case you like both the old and new animations?

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Random option would be sweet.

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I THINK this is all tied up to the costume. IF so then all you have to do is make a costume that uses the old foot stomp and one that uses the new foot stomp and just keep a macro that switches your costume every time it can.

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Spine Burst, Thunderstrike...

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Spine Burst survived because they remove Damage Auras even faster, but its the only offensive melee set with a damage aura so that wont happen again.

Electric's Thunderstrike is a targeted AoE. The PBAoE was Lightning Clap, and it got removed.