Umbral

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Did you figure in procs? The charts I'm working on now don't take any procs into consideration at all.

Also, correction on the FU/S/F/S/FU/F/S/F chain: With 250% recharge, there's a pause before the 2nd slash and another pause before the last focus. New total is 155.2 DPS.

Edit: And I'm only considering 5% chance for crits unless the power specifically has a crit buff listed.

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It was a done factoring in everything, though it wasn't a proc heavy build.

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You were right. When I went back to check my numbers I found that I'd artificially inflated the unenhanced damage numbers because I forgot that Mids' adds procs directly to the baseline and to the enhanced damage numbers.

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DM: One of the attacks takes 6 seconds to animate. Variety of powers with different utilities. Accuracy debuff inheirant. No direct Build Up Skill.

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That's... wrong.

The attack you're talking about is Shadow Maul and it only takes 3.432 seconds, though it is still really long, in the grand scheme of things. At high recharges, it's got the best single target damage available, plus some excellent utility in the form of a direct control/debuff power (Touch of Fear), a self healing attack (Siphon Life, though it does enough damage that you probably want to slot for damage before the heal), and an endurance recovery tool that can actually give more end/sec than Stamina or Quick Recovery (Dark Consumption).

It does indeed have a Build Up type power (Soul Drain) that can be used without any enemies near, it just gets stronger for each additional enemy you hit. Soul Drain is oftentimes considered to be the best of the Build Up type powers (Blinding Feint and Follow Up from Dual Blade and Claws, respectively, are the other contenders for the crown) because it has a much better up time : downtime ratio than the traditional build up powers, making it significantly better over time.

As for damage, it's got a very strong focus on single target damage, though it does that very well (as indicated by the plethora of min/maxed DM/SR and DM/SD builds out there). The only AoE potential is in Shadow Maul, which is a small, max 5 target cone that is balanced with single target damage numbers. This means that, if you actually manage to get good with it and routinely hit 3-5 targets with it, you're going to be doing reasonably competitive AoE DPS with it, though you'll still fall far behind sets like Spines and Claws that can routinely hit 10 targets without using any time for enemy placement.

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I agree that the LFT option should be improved!

As a workaround for searching specific levels, you can use the slash command /search

E.g. /search +18-22

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I know, but when you're changing the criteria based on AT and the LFT tags, it can get quite cumbersome.

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This is a discussion forum. If all you have to contribute is "shut up" in not so many words, then you're not contributing anything.

We'd be delighted to hear your actual thoughts on the subject of discussion. If you have none, don't waste everyone's time telling us to shut up. We're enjoying the discussion. If you're not, don't read it. No one if forcing you to.

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Isn't this quote just a bit hypocritical?

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What do you do once you have a level 50 with all purple IO sets in every power?

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Build a better character because the purple sets aren't always the best option for a specific power in a build?

I think it would work quite well actually, though I'd still have some degree of support locked in. Making the pets low damage but heavy on the support would work out well in my opinion. Just give them 2 pets (level 8 and level 28), 2 upgrade powers, and fill the rest of the set with minor control and debuff powers.

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The need to slow down, however, is a disadvantage not shared by the scrapper. That's a sign of imbalance. This is also why I don't like the argument that Defenders have an advantage in buffing others, and that they pay for that by not having much offense or personal defense. Being able to buff others is not an advantage when solo. Thus, a solo Defennder is more disadvantaged than other classes, and that isn't fair.

The same applies to Tankers relative to Scrappers in this case.

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The need to slow down is an incorporated benefit of operating in the optimal situation for one's AT/build. There's a reason that Fire/Kin controllers are great at steamrolling through 6 man spawns but slow down significantly when presented with bosses and other hard targets. They're built to plow through large numbers of reasonably soft targets, just like Tankers are designed to get beat in the face and draw aggro from their teammates so that their teammates take as little damage as possible. Dealing damage isn't as critically important to them as the ability to take damage is.

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ok so I returned to this game after a long long break and I see a power set for scrappers that I haven't seen before and I was just wondering how willpower stacked up. In everyone's opinion between willpower and regeneration which one would be better? I know both are probably good but I am just looking for some input from other people on which is better in their opinion and why. Thanks in advance.


Oh yeah I guess I should state that my primary power will most likely be spines I have always just loved it. Anyway I figure that might add some pluses or minuses for the secondary power

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I find them to both be roughly equal. Honestly, the biggest difference between the 2 is that */WP is more toggle and passive based and */Regen is more active (re: lots of clicking) and more player skill intensive. They'll both achieve roughly equal survival (though */Regen's survival is going to be much more variable than */WP's).

I'd also like to be able to look for a specific level range within the confines of the search function rather than the inborn level range searches that are there atm.

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Umbral, I'm not really interested in convincing you specifically about the merits of such a change. At this time all I care to dissmiss is the false statement that the tanker can kill the same things that the scraper can given enough time.

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I was stating that was what you were trying to do. I still don't see the point. And the reason why you should care about convincing me is that I'm probably going to be a much easier person to convince than Castle is, especially considering all of the repercussions of your proposed change (lowered effect of end drains, lowered comparative benefit of +end, other balance considerations that you'd just ignore).

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I'm replying to Bill because he appeared to care for my evidence.

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I'm amused that you think I don't care for the evidence. I care for it. I just don't think it's valid because you're ignoring a number of other variables in an attempt to make your entire argument appear artificially valid.

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The only thing I do have to say to your post right now, though is that yes, I have played blasters. Fire Fire to be precise, arguably the most dangerous to play solo. I used to dismiss "ranged as a form of defense" until I played that guy. In certain situations, range made this blaster more survivable than my tanker, and no, that's no hyperbole. Staying at range (via hover or smart immobs) can keep you at arms reach from some devastating attacks to witch your specific tanker may have holes.

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Now you're assuming that I don't argee with the "range as defense" argument. Excellent way to read something into my statements that I never said.

The argument that you're using here (that, if you use immobilizations and range, you can become more survivable than a tanker whenever s/he is fighting a target that s/he is weak to), it fundamentally flawed in a couple respects. First off, Tankers have 55% more hp than Blasters, which, isn't really going to outweigh ranged attacks doing 80% of the damage of melee attacks for NPCs unless you're talking about some very specific outlier situations that are capable of ignoring the significantly higher resistance and defense values of a Tanker. The only possible disparity would be in the Tanker having to be exposed to danger a longer period of time than the Blaster thanks to the Blaster's higher damage (close to 40% longer) but you've got to keep in mind that all of that immobilization is going to eat into damage dealt and increase the time it takes to defeat your targets. However much time it adds to the fight is dependent on the individual attack string and how many foes are present, so it's not going to be as easy to quantify. Of course, we're talking about an extreme outlier case in which a Tanker with a complete defensive hole is forced to fight these targets. Interestingly enough, that's the only time that the "Range as an equivalent defense" argument becomes valid.

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Whoever denies that range can be an effective defense either does not play blasters AND melee ATs regularly, or simply happens to always play in teams.

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Strangely enough, I do play both varieties of AT (in fact, I regularly play all ATs blue side) both solo and on teams and agree that it's a viable defensive mechanism, but I've found that it doesn't come remotely close to outweighing or even being equivalent to the defensive advantages of having a power set devoted to personal survival. You're assuming they do. They don't. This is why Blasters aren't Tankers.

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Side note: relying on range as a form of defense happens to be endurance free. When 100% of your end can go to damage, you end up killing much more than you can with a scrapper. I admit that was a shocking discovery.

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Actually, relying on range as a form of defense is not endurance free. You've either got to rely on mez effects or flight powers, neither of which are free, in order to do so. Thank you for being wrong, and, before you attempt to tell me that the mez effects are incorporated into the cost of attacks and don't have an additional cost associated, you're forgetting that they're going to extend the duration of the combat because you're not using all of your endurance for damage.

Yes, that looks decent. There is still some slotting that I would change pretty significantly, but that would be going in to the realm of "start copying my build if you're going to start trying to copy it".

I meant that completely as a joke. I think you guys are taking my comment a bit too seriously.

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I swapped the slots around a little in MoG. Do you really think I need to go farther than this?

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You're still getting 2 largely useless set bonuses when you could just use the other 2 slots for common recharge IOs, which is what I've been recommending since the beginning. Faster recharge is going to be much more valuable to you than an extra 9% accuracy that's going to be mostly redundant thanks to the loads of acc you're already packing.

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You shouldn't put the Steadfast Protection in Earth's Embrace. It only lasts 120 seconds, which is to say it won't be very reliable. Stick it it something like Stone Skin that you'll have running all the time, and that will benefit from the resistance. I went ahead and made that swap before calculating. I also gave you High Pain Threshold.

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Untrue, good sir! The steadfast +3% Def IO functions as a set bonus, not a proc. (It has no 120s duration and shows up in your set bonuses window.) As such, it's always on, whether the power is on of off.

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Ooh! Sick burn! :P

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Did you figure in procs? The charts I'm working on now don't take any procs into consideration at all.

Also, correction on the FU/S/F/S/FU/F/S/F chain: With 250% recharge, there's a pause before the 2nd slash and another pause before the last focus. New total is 155.2 DPS.

Edit: And I'm only considering 5% chance for crits unless the power specifically has a crit buff listed.

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It was a done factoring in everything, though it wasn't a proc heavy build.

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Are those numbers factoring in the +dam benefit of FU?

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doublestacked for +.75

The reason I got higher the other day on the pylon run is because I have a chance for BU and chance for lethal in FU, a chance for BU and an Apocalypse chance for neg in Focus, the Achilles' -DR and hecatomb chance for Neg in Slash and finally the ToD chance for Neg in swipe.

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I ran the numbers for another Claws player and I was getting 233 dps and that was with only 150% uptime for FU. It could have gotten more had there been more recharge (it was rather low for a claws/SR).

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Werner, another note:

Fu, Slash, Focus, Strike: 154.2 DPS
Fu, Slash, Eviscerate: 153.4 DPS
Fu, Slash, Focus, Slash, Fu, Focus, Slash, Focus: 159.4 DPS

Guess who's on the BOTTOM of the pack for scrapper DPS right now?

For comparison:
BS: HS, Hack, Dis, Hack: 154.8 DPS

But both the BS chain and the FU, Slash, Evis chain can slot both the Achilles' Heel (2 Ls, Bill.. TWO Ls in Achilles!!!) and the Gladiator -DR procs.

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Are those numbers factoring in the +dam benefit of FU?

Does this mean that we have someone we can start PMing issues concerning Mids to on the US forums? I'm not a Titans Network or EU person, so I've never been able to address him concerning a few of the issues I've found with Mids' numbers.

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The other thing that you're doing is paying attention exclusively to solo considerations. On a team (which should be the primary location of comparison anyway),

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Because in teams, endurance efficiency means nothing, only the ability to kill fast means something and it's something the tanker does not aquire from improved endurance efficiency.

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I'd disagree that it means nothing. Endurance efficiency means less, but it, by no means, shouldn't be a consideration at all. The only time it's going to be pointless is when there are plenteous +recov buffs being thrown around, which isn't every team anyway.

However, the important thing to bring up is that Tankers are not designed to be particularly effective soloers. They are designed to be aggro magnets that can survive holding all of that aggro. We can tell this because Tankers have so much mitigation that it's largely redundant while solo, and an inherent power that grants no benefit while solo (they're already attacking you). They have lower damage (and thusly lower DPE efficiency because the scalar balance metric used considers the 2 to be part and parcel) to make up for the mitigation capabilities that are only useful on team.

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You're also ignoring inspiration contribution

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There is where any argument ends. Inspirations are not part of any balancing and are not available on demand. This argument is a dead end.

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Actually, it's not. You just don't want to consider it. If you're a Tanker and you're prepared, you're going to bring in some blue inspirations. They're not available on demand while in a mission, but every player is capable of getting the same allotment at every level before he or she begins a mission thanks to the numerous inspiration vendors scattered throughout the city.

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You keep coming up with situations in which you can discount the advantages of the Tanker to make the offensive deficit seem out of proportion with the vast increase to personal survivability

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Witch means next to nothing solo. You said it yourself, its all wasted. Heck using your own logic: the scrapper gets enough survival bonus to survive any solo challenge in the game, in solo play, his secondary is just as effective as his primary. I am not even asking for the tanker secondary to be as effective as the scrappers, the notion of endurance efficiency does not even land in that realm, it just allows the tanker to keep going until he does what the scrapper finished 50% faster.

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If you want to tell me that a Tanker is going to be having more problems than a Blaster when soloing on the same difficulty (and, according to you, soloing is fighting Bosses and EBs rather than minions and Lts) thanks exclusively to the ability to deal less damage with a full endurance bar, then I'm going to ask if you've ever actually solo'd on a Blaster. It's nowhere near as easy as it is for a Tanker because of the lack of mitigation techniques. The Blaster is going to either be bringing in inspirations or waiting 3 minutes after most fights just to use Rest again (which is another thing you neglected to include, especially).

Ahh... Rest. It's a wonderful little power that most people ignore (except Arcanaville, who is simply the deific manifestation of universal inclusion, though I do think she counts it a bit high). It's going to provide pretty much all of the additional recovery you need when soloing because the enemies aren't coming at you in some uncontrollable manner. You choose to continue running at them even though your blue bar is low. When solo, you're not going to face 2 bosses in one group at any time, unless you're specifically choosing to collect them as such, which is your own damn fault.

As to the EB issue, the only time you're going to fight them is when you are specifically warned. If you choose to forgo that warning, it's your own fault, especially if you're not bringing every tool available to you to bear because another AT that is uniquely suited to the task doesn't have to.

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For someone who likes to think of themselves as considering everything within their calculations and concepts, you're continually ignoring the contributions of the higher hp and superior damage mitigation capabilities that work in a multiplicative manner that are designed as the offset to their lower endurance efficiency in attacks.

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You mean those things that bring nothing to solo play because they are only useful in teams? Precisely the teams where endurance efficiency will mean nothing?

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So you want to provide a buff to an AT for solo situations whenever it's an AT that only actually finds itself meaningfully challenged when on a team? Are you being serious? You're specifically looking for a situation in which the AT is not ideally suited and using it as a reason to receive a substantial buff for all situations.

The other big problem you've got is that you're comparing Tanker performance to the performance of an AT designed specifically for solo play (just enough capability given over to personal survival with everything else dumped into damage; that's optimization). Scrappers are, for good reasons, considered the perfect soloing AT. Compare Tanker performance to Blasters if you want something more accurate, especially if you're willing to actually consider that personal survivability contributions matter whenever you're solo and don't have team members there to back you up. You'd probably find a greater degree of parity than you'd be comfortable with though.

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The tank will finish. He just takes longer.

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Im not guessing. Without additional endurance sources the tanker will run out of endurance or be stuck fighting weaker foes.

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Why does the tank have to fight at the same pace as the scrapper when he has the mitigation to let him take longer to finish the race?

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The question is not about fighting at the same pace, I am not asking for them to fight any faster only the endurance to be able to fight longer to finish the same encounters. Again, not guesses this is pure math accounting for boss/eb regeneration.

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Then shouldn't Scrappers and everyone else get an increase in their regeneration and resistance to allow them to survive fights that are going to last longer?

It's the same argument. A tanker has a much higher immortality and survivability curve set than any other AT in the game thanks to higher base mitigation values and higher base hp. They've got to pay for that somehow and having a lower dps but greater DPE doesn't balance out.

As to the metaphorical couch potato to marathon runner analogy, it's hyperbole. I don't believe that Billz was attempting to say that Tankers are completely bad at dealing damage. He was trying to say that the person who is less equipped for that specific challenge (the Tanker is less equipped for dealing damage than the Scrapper is) should be, by their very definition less efficient. That's part of what makes that a primary function of the AT (and no, damage is not the primary function of the Tanker AT).

The other thing that you're doing is paying attention exclusively to solo considerations. On a team (which should be the primary location of comparison anyway), the mitigation difference is much more significant. A Tanker is capable of surviving aggro that no other AT (with the exception of a buffed Brute) can match. Their mitigation capabilities are wasted when they're not on large teams in challenging circumstances.

You're also ignoring inspiration contribution, which, when talking about soloing EBs, should be taken into consideration. In the Scrapper/Tanker, situation, assuming it's an EB that will actually require the Tanker's greater mitigation capability (elsewise it's pointless because if we're only including situations in which the Scrapper's defenses are perfectly adequate, you're not including any of the situations in which the Tanker has the advantage), the Scrapper is going to have to use green, purple, and orange inspirations to account for the lower mitigation and the Tanker is going to increase his damage and endurance efficiency by popping reds and blues.

I'm still trying to figure out a place wherein you can actually say that this is a problem, anyways. You keep coming up with situations in which you can discount the advantages of the Tanker to make the offensive deficit seem out of proportion with the vast increase to personal survivability. For someone who likes to think of themselves as considering everything within their calculations and concepts, you're continually ignoring the contributions of the higher hp and superior damage mitigation capabilities that work in a multiplicative manner that are designed as the offset to their lower endurance efficiency in attacks.

PS. Didn't I specifically tell you that 40% +end was too high because you weren't incorporating the additional recovery to go with the greater pool of endurance? Vindication is most gratifying.

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So you would go more like this? I slapped a training origin in there as a placeholder.

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You still want to fix your MoG slotting. You're giving it redzoned +def and half of the +rech it needs when it already gives you more +def than you should ever need just to get some +hp (redundant because you're already permanently over the cap with perma-DP) and 9% +acc (which is probably of less benefit than shaving the recharge down to 66.8 seconds). I recommended this back in my third post.

Set bonuses are not always as beneficial as just getting good slotting.

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I'm not really familiar with proper accolades, to be honest. I'll definitely be working to get anything so valuable as that.

So you wanted me to swap it around like this?

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That's right. You'll also want to drop the last slot in Dull Pain. It's a mostly wasted slot because you're already nearly at the redzone for heal enhancement and more than 80 hp above the hp cap with perma-DP. Put it into either Soul Drain or Dark Consumption for a the 3.75% +def(melee) set bonus or put another slot into Resilience for the Shield Wall 3% +def IO (it's not in Mids yet but Mids is a bit behind the times).

If you're going for frankenslotting Siphon, you may want to tweak your slotting there too. The Accurate Healing IO sets are worth checking out. I don't really bother slotting it up for healing personally. I'd much rather get some more +def out of it.

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What happened to Moderators 00-07?

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Obviously he decapitated them to gain their powers.

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There can only be one, apparently.

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No, there can be only 08.

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Would you think it should be more like this?

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Looks decent enough. You went the path of greater hp/sec (on the order of 37.7 hp/sec more than mine) but lower defense (on the order of 18% melee, 8% ranged, and 11% AoE less than mine). Something you're going to want to remedy is your slotting on Midnight Grasp. As it stands, you're MG has a recharge of 4.9 seconds, and it needs to be up in 4.488 seconds in order to have a gap free attack chain. Your best bet is to simply switch the slotting of Smite with that of Midnight Grasp (and put the proc in there rather than the Hecatombam, you'll get more out of it because you won't be going absurdly red zone).

Also, if you're going for a build as expensive as this, it's pretty much going to be assumed that you're going to have all 4 of the perma-buff accolades. You may want to turn them on so that you're not wasting that 6th slot in Dull Pain.

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The 2 separate -res procs could easily add that much dps, especially factoring in the speed of the gapped attack chain. The mentioned attack chain generates 3 proc chances every 8.156 seconds. Doing the math (the simple version that doesn't account for redundant procs), you're probably going to get ~14.7% -res over time. 1.147*(203.6 + proc benefit) = 233.53 + (1.147 * proc contribution). I'm pretty sure that the damage procs are going to contribute more than 2.15 dps.

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This is pretty much it. In point of fact, I'm doing about the DPS that Bill suggested for saturated AAO when I'm just dueling the pylon by itself.

In the pylon results thread, it was pretty clear that my BS/Shield is no DM/Shield, but I definitely don't lag as far behind DM/Shield as these results suggest.

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Keep in mind that the AH proc is pretty much the reason why Katana and BS are capable of competing on these the top end damage potential lists. Dual Blades and Claws can both be put up there because they've got impressive DPA and integrated stackable +dam powers. Fire can compete because it's got bonus damage as an innate benefit. Dark Melee does well because it's packing Soul Drain. Katana and BS just have Build Up, which is great for burst but horrible for sustained. The AH proc is the only thing they've got to compensate (and, even then, Claws and Dual Blades can still manage to use it but to a lesser extent).