Umbral

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The bigger concern for me is recharge debuffing. No other set in the game has quite the same weakness to such a common (and stackable) debuff type.

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Dark armor. To slows, or -to hit.

What do I win?

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Actually, nothing. You're pretty wrong.

While recharging their 4 click powers, */regen only has Integration, Fast Healing, and Resilience. That's not really much. While recharging its one click power, */DA still has all of its shields for 22.5% resistance unenhanced and CoF/OG, which are going to provide a good deal more mitigation than 13 hp/sec unenhanced. It doesn't help your argument that Dark Regeneration recharges twice as fast as Reconstruction, so there is actually less time lost from recharge debuffs.

As to tohit debuffs, */DA still has its shields. */Regen still just has Integration, Fast Healing, and Resilience when affected by recharge debuffs.

I've actually played both DA and Regen to 50. DA isn't nearly as negatively affected by slows as you seem to claim, and I never felt particularly endangered by tohit debuffs (mainly because all the damage coming at me at that point is negative energy, which is laughable).

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Pali is also going to be taking a lot less damage per second because he's lower level as well, but that's beside the point. The entire point was that you're pretty much going to need -regen in order to solo a GM because without it you're just not going to overcome their incredible regen.

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Or just have -resistance available to you consistently and in a sufficiently large amount. -Regen is far overrated when it comes to taking down AVs and GMs. My TA/A Defender single-handedly allowed a group to take down the Kronos Titan with just his two -Resistance debuffs, though I only needed to use one of them anyway.

-Regen helps, but -Resist can help even more. Having both is, of course, far better.

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-Regen is overrated when you've got a team. While you're solo, -regen is going to contribute more than any other effect at your disposal just because you don't have much damage to multiply. Since we're talking about GM Soloing, -regen is probably the most important tool at your disposal (aside from the player, that is).

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Aren't we snarky this morning, lol

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No more than usual :P

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in theory the stun mag does stack,
(though it might be good to ask a Math-fu Guru)

Remember though it is also a "chance for" so not gauranteed,
And my experience of the power is that it mezs them rarely enough as it is anyway, so a bit extra certainly wouldn't hurt.

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You're wrong on both counts. The stun in OG is set to not stack so, no matter how much you increase the duration, you won't be able to stun anything but a minion without some outside help. Secondly, OG is not a "chance to stun". It is simply a stun with normal accuracy. If it hits, it puts the stun on them.

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The regeneration figure of 350 hp/sec also isn't a set number. It greatly varies from GM to GM. While they all have the same regeneration rate, they don't all have the same amount of hitpoints (Kronos with his 73k hp would regenerate alot more health per tick than Paladin with his 11k hp)

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Pali is also going to be taking a lot less damage per second because he's lower level as well, but that's beside the point. The entire point was that you're pretty much going to need -regen in order to solo a GM because without it you're just not going to overcome their incredible regen.

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Where do I get the The Mender Silos arc/Ozone TF or who is the contact and zone.

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If you paid attention, you'd know that you've already been given the information. Mender Silos is in the same place as all of the Menders (Ouroboros) and the "Ozone" is a common colloquial term for the zone (Ouroboros).

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GMs lack the incredible debuff resistance of Archvillains

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Not quite. GMs have the same debuff resistances as an AV of the same level (all GMs have base levels)

Babbage is base level 17, Lusca is base level 25, Jurassik is base level 40 and Kronos Titan is base level 50, just to cite a few examples. They all have the same resistances as an AV of the same level (effectively making the Kronos Titan harder to kill than Lusca for a defender)

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I knew about the levels I just couldn't find anything to support them also having the Archvillain Resistances. It still doesn't matter much because when you're reducing 350 hp/sec by 75% (15% of 500%) that's drastically reducing the dps required to take them out (to 87.5 hp/sec).

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Smite is weak? Wha...?

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It's not so much weak, as it's small attack. Moderate damage, if I remember correctly. It's fast-recharging, of course, which makes up for it, but what I noticed the most was how much harder the set hit up-front, at which Smite isn't actually that good. Syphon Life is, off memory, around 50% stronger.

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Siphon Life has a base damage scale of 2.058. Smite has a base damage scale of 1.386. Siphon Life does 48.48% more damage than Smite does. However (and a big however), Siphon Life animates in 2.112 seconds, and Smite animates in 1.188 seconds. Siphon Life takes 77.77% longer to animate, demonstrating that it's actually worse for dealing damage over the long run.

Either way, the I13 improvements definitely made DM/* a much more entertaining set to play. Siphon Life is actually useful, and you don't have to wait 10 seconds for Midnight Grasp to actually kill something. The extension of melee range hasn't really changed Shadow Maul much for me, but that's mainly because I was already getting 5 targets every time I used it.

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I think a heavily IO'd dark/shield with fully saturated AoO and Soul drain SHOULD be able to do it. I've never heard of one actually pulling it off though.

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AFAIK, the damage it puts out is incredible, but the regen of GMs is just too high to be outdone. GMs regenerate on the order of 350 hp sec. A twinked out, fully saturated DM/Shield can put out ~300 dps.

The primary reason that some specialized controllers and defenders can defeat them is the comparative potency and dps contribution of -regen debuffs. Lingering Radiation will do an absurd amount of functional dps, especially since, iirc, GMs lack the incredible debuff resistance of Archvillains, though they do gain some benefits from the purple patch thanks to their coding.

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Of course, I still think it's annoying that Castle designed a defensive powerset around doing what */regen used to do and was considered too strong for doing, namely, stacking multiple methods of damage mitigation with absurd levels of damage recovery. Couple that with */wp having greater levels of debuff resistance and greater scope of mez protection and it just gets worse.

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Now, to be fair, Regen didn't stack stuff. At most, it would stack Tough+Weave and maybe CJ. Not really "stacking" anything there. It ran IH constantly. You never even took the clickies, except Dull Pain because it helped buff your regen from IH. :P The only thing it "stacked" was regen through Health+FH+IH.

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Actually, many of us who did completely unwholesome things with */regen did it by layering gobs of other defensive mechanisms on top of IH as possible. Very few "top end" builds (which, compared to now, were largely laughable in that they were generally completely by level 40) didn't stack as many forms of +res and +def as possible. You could get plenty of survivability from IH, but if you really wanted to push the envelop beyond where the devs intended (at least past where they intended with the first few */regen nerfs), you slotted up Resilience, Tough, Weave, CJ, and anything else you could get your hands on.

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Aside from that, yeah. I agree with your post. I always wonder what people are thinking when they say "Regen needs -regen res!" No, it needs SLOW res. And a good chunk of it. But apparently Castle disagrees.

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Slow isn't what you're thinking of, or, if it is, it isn't exactly what you're thinking. Slow, as you're using it, is actually recharge debuff. Slow effects, as most people use it, are either the movement debuff (like with Hot Feet and Quicksand) or the combination of movement and recharge debuff (like with the Ice Blasts). I don't really care whether */regen gets any movement debuff resistance. In fact, I don't even think it really applies. However, */regen needs recharge debuff resistance bad, and I've been saying so for a long time (re: since adding debuff resistance to sets was actually considered).

There already is a way to get an absurd challenge like this: get a group of like minded crazies together and start a TF with the debuff self and buff enemies options turned on. That'll make you reconsider.

I think the OP is referring to level pacting, not sidekicking.

The devs have actually stated that they would like to open up level pacting to more than 2 people when they first put the mechanic in game. The issue was that they wanted to start it small so that they could find out if anyone was going to exploit it much. It's arguable that some people did. Either way, they've already considered it.

P.S. To the OP, please get your terminology correct next time.

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The noon run might be iffy for me but I can make the two later ones

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Afraid of my awesome debt-proof skills?

The stated reason that */wp has regen debuff resistance and */regen doesn't is that */regen has click heals to get it through periods of regen debuffs whereas */wp doesn't. Castle actually told us this.

Of course, I still think it's annoying that Castle designed a defensive powerset around doing what */regen used to do and was considered too strong for doing, namely, stacking multiple methods of damage mitigation with absurd levels of damage recovery. Couple that with */wp having greater levels of debuff resistance and greater scope of mez protection and it just gets worse.

Honestly, I don't really care about */regen getting regen debuff resistance any more. Castle has effectively made it so that */regen no longer finds much use from regeneration. */Regen is all about the clickies now.

The bigger concern for me is recharge debuffing. No other set in the game has quite the same weakness to such a common (and stackable) debuff type. When it was determined that */SR was inordinately affected by def debuffs, it got loads of def debuff resistance (along with every other def based set out there). */Regen has a similar weakness to recharge debuffs but, because it's assumed that you're going to allow each of your click powers to recharge when you're not fighting, it's not really factored in. */Regen does fine for short fights but as soon as the fight lasts longer than a single recharge of MoG, you're going to be feeling a lot of pain, especially if recharge debuffs are quadrupling the recharge of all of your powers.

I've sent Castle a couple pms concerning giving */regen some debuff resistance, giving reasons ranging from "everyone else has some form of debuff resistance" to "it's exactly like def debuffs to */sr" to "it would give people reason to take Resilience beyond a Steadfast Protection mule". I never got a response, but, then again, I'm reasonably sure that Castle is perfectly happy where */Regen is, even if it is the set most severely affected by debuffs and is generally easily outclassed by */WP if you consider average player skill and SO slotting. It doesn't help that */WP can manage better average regeneration than */Regen can even though it's the very effect */Regen is named for (658.273% +regen w/o Health v. 682% +regen w/o Health and 7 targets for RttC).

I seriously doubt Castle will ever address it because, like it or not, the devs use data mine many players take a power or power set as one of the primary tools to determine if a power/set needs fixing and */regen is one of the more popular sets simply because it's one of the more famous comic book super powers.

Wait a sec? A */regen scrapper actually took Revive? And is using it? wtf!?!

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It seemed to me, considering how Claws performed, that Defenders suffered inordinately in this regard.

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And this is where you need to learn the game. The secondary effect of Claws is a reduced endurance cost. Thank you for using completely inappropriate comparisons.

Billz, you're conclusions are so blatantly wrong and lopsided that I'm not even going to both explaining it to you. Please, have fun not playing any more. It will be nice not to have to deal with all of your juxtaposed and misapplied conclusions.

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Also, the redraw would be practically mandatory. I can just hear the complaining now: "Why does my AR/Energy put away his gun when he uses Bonesmasher when the [Pistols/Martial Arts] blasters get to keep their guns out?"

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Actually, I would consider this one of the main selling points of the Set. It doesn't have to be ALL kicks, but with a few of them it could overcome the redraw problem that other Blaster Secondaries have. AR could always pair with this set if it wanted that capability...

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I think the both you and the OP are either misinformed or ignorant of the reasons that redraw is in game.

A character will always put a weapon away in order to do a new attack unless the attack their using also specifically uses the weapon. From what BABs has told us, it's an issue of changing stances. You can't just flip a switch stopping a power from having redraw.

In order to stop redraw for a secondary like this, every power would need to have a huge block of code that specifically picks the animation for whatever weapon is out that the moment, be it a bow, a rifle, or the pistols. As we've also been told by BABs, the only power in the game that currently does this is Brawl, and it's got a huge, unwieldy, barely comprehensible amount of coding attached to it for something that is almost never used.

Shields get around this thanks to one very important thing: they're not a weapon. All it required was creation of a new stance (think what happens whenever you're flying) whenever the shield was out that forces the powers to default to different animations. You can't do this with the weapons. This is why you won't get a secondary like this that doesn't have redraw.

As to the actual set, I don't see it passing muster at all.

DA/Parry is already a stupidly strong power. With the Blaster self buff mod, it would only be reduced to 14% +def (melee/smashing). Considering the recharge and activation time on it, you'd still be able to easily softcap those defenses right out of the box. Numerous Kat/* and BS/* Scrappers have readily admitted that DA/Parry is the single most powerful defensive power they've got at their disposal. Blasters ain't gonna get it.

As to Foresight, I don't see that happening either. It's a significantly powerful auto power that, after the Blaster self buff scalar were applied, would be granting 5.25% +def(melee, ranged, AoE) unenhanced. That's completely out of the realm of a Blaster secondary power, especially considering all of the other stuff (psi resist, mez resist, def debuff resist) it does.

To me, it doesn't seem like you want a "body mastery" secondary. You want a "gun fu manipulation" secondary that will allow you to get higher levels of survivability than any other manipulation set currently allows. Everything else looks passably decent, though I think you're going a bit too heavy on stealing the good attacks from MA and not having any of the outright control powers that are supposed to be in manipulation power sets. Replace Sticky Hands with Cobra Strike and Foresight with some new power focused on control and you'll be closer to something that would actually show up in game.

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So what's REALLY the big green elephant in the room? Only the fact that brutes get tank mitigation caps. A fact that I've noted repeatedly that I disagree with. Just as much as I disagree that scrappers should have the same mitigation caps as squishies.

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Set them both to 80% and call it a day. Then tanks can stop griping because they'll have the highest caps in the game and higher base mitigation values to offset their sucktacular damage output while brutes and scrappers will be completely interchangeable without stepping on tank toes.

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Perhaps I am reading this wrong, but aren't you pretty much agreeing with Umbral and Cybernaut? To leave both ATs mitgation the same and boost scrapper damage, vs deceasing Brute mitigation while boosting Scrapper mitgation are opposing approaches to addressing the exact same issue.

The debate seems to be arguing to agree with it's self.

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My big point of contention is that the 2 ATs aren't equal when many people are saying they are. Personally, I think it means that there needs to be a change in base numbers to account for the increased base survivability of Brutes, but, as long as there is some change to generate better parity, I really don't care. To determine if Scrappers need to be brought up, Brutes need to be brought down, or any combination of the two, I'd have to say that it would require an examination of all of the other ATs out there. If Brutes are already more powerful than average, powering up Scrappers wouldn't really solve the problem (unless the devs plan on bringing everyone up to a similar level). The opposite also applies for Brutes if they're overpowered.

As to Billz's comment of...

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Taunt is only beneficial for teammates. It is detrimental to the taunter due to the increased incoming damage. You obviously understand this. You also admit tanks get higher mitigation because of it.

This and the mechanics of fury generation are why brutes should have higher mitigation (hello extra hit points) REGARDLESS of the parity in damage output.

Tanks get lousy damage output because they get gauntlet, they get taunt, but much more importantly, they get higher base mitigation values, higher base HP and higher caps. I repeat, again, tanks do NOT have damage parity so they must get something ELSE for their higher risk. They do. They get higher base mitigation values, higher base HP and a much higher mitigation cap.

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Team contribution is a valid point of balance for all ATs. Any amount in which you are capable of force multiplying your allies is factored in to balance. Taunt is a force multiplier for defense. It's focusing as many attacks as possible to the, ostensibly, most survivable party member.

The problem here Billz is that you've got the cause and effect wrong. You don't get higher mitigation because you've got a native taunt. You get a native taunt because you've got high mitigation and can stand the extra damage you'll have incoming. Brutes also get the side benefit of improving their damage thanks to Fury from being attacked, which means that they get even more than tanks do.

A Brute with Scrapper level hp and caps would still be just as survivable as a normal Scrapper. They're going to be facing the same encounters and the same amount of damage is going to be coming at them. The only "increase in risk" is the additional level of risk accepted by the Brute by going in to a fight unprepared because they don't want to lose Fury. That's not a designed risk. That's a player generated risk. Player generated risks aren't part of balance considerations.

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YOU just flatly ignored that brutes have the EXACT same base mitigation values and preceded that by accepting that my analysis based on 75% fury showed equitable damage output.

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Actually, you're ignoring the fact that Brutes have 12.5% more hit points at base, which means that they're going to be more survivable in all equivalent situations. That is my primary point of contention. Brute damage scales with situational danger: more attacks coming in, more damage going out. That doesn't necessitate greater survivability. All it necessitates is for Brutes to have a greater need to be in higher risk situations in order to achieve peak damage. That's just like Blasters with old defiance. A need to be in a more dangerous situation does not equate to a need to be more survivable.

You're also ignoring that you've only generated a single set of data points for Brutes. You're ignoring the numerous other data points that have been posited as needed, including various buff states and other points that need to be shown (we got a little in to this in the DM/SD Brute v. Scrapper debate a couple weeks ago). Those showed that the Brute and Scrapper combinations in question were approximately equal. The Scrapper had advantage in the middling regions whereas the Brute had a distinct advantage in the top end and bottom end regions. And that was based exclusively off of damage.

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Where are you getting that better aggro management, in the form of taunt, will EVER lead to better utility and less damage for the taunter? That makes absolutely zero sense to me. Taunting ONLY means more damage for the taunter. What it means for teammates is irrelevant to the comparison of brutes and scrappers.

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Actually, taunting provides a great deal of in-team utility. That's the entire point of it. It's pulling damage away from squishier members of the team to oneself, who is hopefully more disposed towards damage mitigation and recovery. That's why Tankers have it as their inherent. That's why Willpower is designed specifically around having a weaker taunt effect. Aggro control is a benefit. It isn't a static, ignorable quantity that exists outside of balance considerations.

As to how it relates to Brutes and Scrappers, think on this: a Scrapper cannot serve for functional exchange for a Tanker. Scrappers cannot get nor can they maintain the same levels of aggro control that a Tanker can (which is, of course, ignoring the significant survivability disparity otherwise). A Brute, on the other hand, because all but 1 secondary has a taunt aura equivalent with the Tanker version for magnitude and duration as well as the increased aggro gaining capabilities derived from their punchvoking, is capable of attaining and maintaining near similar amounts of aggro. A generic Scrapper cannot replace a generic Tanker. A generic Brute can replace a generic Tanker. This means that Brutes have more team utility than Scrappers do thanks to their ability to more easily attain and maintain aggro on targets.

How well an AT handles aggro (if given aggro capabilities natively) is a factored value when balancing. Brutes have team utility (aggro control), similar damage in most situations (Fury makes up for low base scalar), greater top end damage (crazy high damage cap), greater baseline survivability (higher base hp), and greater top end survivability (higher caps). The only things Scrappers get are less variability in damage. That's not parity.

And, as soon as they diverted development resources from more commonly asked for and appropriate things like power set proliferation, new power sets, costume pieces, content, and the like, everyone who realizes that it would be a significant amount of work for very little effort (as well as being nonsensical because inf doesn't actually represent money) would go up in arms.

It would be an interesting distraction, but, like many ideas that would simply be moderately entertaining distractions from the real game, I'm going to say no exclusively on the grounds that there are better things for the devs to spend their time on.

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You state that brutes get better aggro management. True. This means they end up having more incoming damage than scrappers. More incoming damage means a need for more mitigation. Balance.

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This statement is only vaguely true. Better aggro management = more utility and more incoming damage; more incoming damage = more survivability; more utility = less damage.

This is the exact mentality that Tankers operate of that Brutes get to ignore. Aggro management is not something an AT gets that ignores balance considerations (or shouldn't, at least). That's something that is consistently ignored. Aggro management is a benefit, not a cost.

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It takes X time to reach the fury value needed to match scrapper damage output. As more buffs are added to the scrapper, the amount of fury needed rises higher, thus increasing the time it takes the brute to catch up. Balance.

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The problem is when determining how specifically variable Fury is whenever effort is made to maintain it. Fury should be treated like Containment. It requires a certain degree of maintenance and provides significant rewards to those that perform that maintenance. With Controllers, it's pretty easy to figure out Containment contribution (AoE Immob is easily perma, therefore 95% of the attacks after the first should benefit from Containment). With Brutes, it's harder because Fury is significantly more variable thanks in part to having a 101 pt scale rather than a binary scale which is exacerbated by bringing in player skill.

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The only imbalance that exists is the one you are perceiving, and your perceptions are clouded due to ignoring pertinent data.

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Actually, the problem is that those of us trying to see if there is a discrepancy are constantly at odds with those that believe there isn't. The primary problem is that, in order to actually get some decent baseline of AT performance, it's necessary to eliminate player performance, which is compounded by every Brute player in existence having a different opinion on what peak Fury is, minimum Fury is, and Fury variability is.

The best numerical comparisons for this purpose are the ones that operate exclusively off of a functional scalar level, allowing us to ignore powersets because, as we've seen from Billz's comparisons, they're all roughly equal. That's not the hard part.

The hard part is removing any variability in Fury contribution. In order to eliminate Fury variability, it would also be necessary to actually have the community as a whole decide on an acceptable average Fury contribution number when dealing damage. This has yet to happen because, as far as I've seen, no matter the situation, Brute players have consistently said that any calculation we make is weighing Fury to high. Average Fury contribution ignores Fury during downtime because neither the Scrapper nor the Brute would be dealing damage. All downtime serves to do is create a lower starting point for Fury contribution whenever the fight begins.

At 90%, it's too high because the only times you'll be doing that are on long fights in which the period that you'll be below 90% are less than 5% of the actually length of time for the entire fight and those fights are outliers. At 75%, that's too much Fury because, even though during a fight it's going to get significantly higher, it drops down in the run to the next group. 50% is probably just right for some people, but, seriously, anyone who is only managing to maintain 50% Fury on average is an incompetent.

The biggest problem I'm still having in this discussion is that Brute players are unwilling to actually have their Fury contributions quantified. It's always too high, even when those of us who don't play Brutes often can maintain higher numbers than we're crediting with sub-optimal builds.

The fact that Brutes and Scrappers are even having this discussion when Brutes would be better compared to Tankers for all intents and purposes tells me that something is disturbingly wrong. Brutes have more in common with Tankers than they've ever had with Scrappers from a design standpoint. Higher survivability, the same survivability caps, superior native and inherent aggro control, and the same power sets, for the devs' sake. The only thing that Brutes and Scrappers share is a common mindset among the players of running from one group to the next with abandon.

It might work to be able to replace clickies with the environmental effects, that way they're not going to replace or interfere with normal mob placement.

The biggest problem I can see is, if you fill the mission with patrols and environmental hazards, how are you going to prevent enemy groups from going into the environmental hazards and either weakening or outright killing themselves? Probably the best solution as I see it is to just make whatever power effects the environmental hazards activate have an attached afraid effect to "encourage" critters to get out of it if they do find themselves in it.

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I don't want to make it a purple immobilize set, I want to leave it exactly as it is except it will have the same set bonuses as purple sets do.

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You might as well ask for the devs to actually do this to all of the rare but unpopular IO sets out there. The purple sets are potent not just because they've got higher enhancement values. They're potent because you get more bang for your buck from the set bonuses, which may or may not be useful at all considering some IO sets (Toxic resist? really?).

Something else to consider is that the devs would also need to make the IO set unique in order to prevent players from getting a load of the set bonuses. That's another balance consideration involving the Purple IO sets that you don't mention.

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Technically, a solo friendly task force is a story arc. If the task force is solo friendly, it defeats the purpose of making task force instead of a story arc.

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I'm going to have to agree with the sentiment here.
Story arcs are designed for a single player with the help of small groups on occasion (for EB/AV situations). Task Forces are, by their definition, designed for a group of players to tackle at once. If you want to solo a Task Force, you should go into it knowing that you're trying to solo something designed for a group.

It's not the fault of the devs that most players are purposefully skipping over the stories just to get to the rewards faster. If you really want to take it slow and fully enjoy the story, get together with some friends who all want to take their time with it. You're not being forced to PuG.