Umbral

You're on pretty much the right track. The big reason that constant survivability on that scale is broken because you're reducing risk almost to nil while still able to generate reward, even if it is at a slower rate (reduction in reward).

I challenge you to make a non-IO'd character that can survive as well as a Granite tank. Don't use anecdotal evidence, either. Try comparing the outright survivability numbers: hp, defense, resistance, etc. I can assure you that it won't happen.

Granite Armor is just that strong. It's that strong because god mode powers are all that strong. Every other god mode power has an enforced downtime, generally paired with a substantial negative side effect as well. Granite has a not-particularly substantial negative side effect (it's remarkably easy to get around them compared to the others) along with a complete lack of any real downtime. Unlike almost every other god mode power which has substantial reasons why you wouldn't want to use it as often as you can, Granite Armor doesn't.

And I like it that way!

Honestly, ask yourself, if I acted with as much tact as everyone thinks I should, would I be nearly as entertaining or loveable? My preferred lack of utilizing tact when dealing with most people is part of my indelible charm!

The very fact that you're assuming that most of the people on the internet are smart enough to play around with even the most cursory of number systems is pretty friggin' stupid. The very fact that you don't know how long and how much effort is involved in rebalancing a set without simply scrapping it and starting over thanks to the incredible amount of interplay between powers within a set simply shows that you don't have a clue about what's going on.

It seems pretty obvious to me and pretty much everybody else that is posting in this thread that you don't have a clue about anything.

Show me where I dislike an idea of my own admission. Please, show me.

I don't have a problem with players generating powersets and suggesting them for fun. It happens all the time, and I've done it on more than one occasion. However, do not confuse the fact that I have no problem with powerset suggestions being posted on the forums with any admission that even half of the ideas posted are even remotely well balanced, intelligent, or, much less, feasible.

People are stupid. Half of the people in the world have a double digit IQ. Most people don't even know what balance looks like and even fewer have any idea about what the mechanics of the game are even when you explain them slowly and use pictures.

It's a massive waste of resources to create tools that players already have access to. If you want to make an attack set, there are already models and formulas to tell you how long attacks should recharge and how much endurance they should cost for how much damage they deal and how much area they cover. If you want to make a defense set, there are survivability spreadsheets that will tell you how strong the set is compared to all of the other sets in the game. If you want to make a control set, the model for those sets, along with the formulas that they follow, are all rather obvious if you actually look.

Your suggestion is that the devs should make tools for everyone that the people that actually generate intelligent, well made sets already have. These tools aren't being hoarded either. Everything that players use to determine the balance of specific powers and powersets is out there publicly. It's not even hard to find them (half of them you can find by just doing a cursory search of Arcanaville's posts). I can assure you, anything that the devs would put out with this suggestion, would be functionally identical to one of several other tools and formulas that already exist. Hell, half of what is involved in generating new sets is actually based around the precedent set by other similar powers rather than formulaic determination.

I already know that, if any changes are going to be made to Stone Armor, they're not going to be made until after Going Rogue comes out. I still am interested in this discussion (many people probably interpret my snappishness as irritation when, most often, it's more my intense interest and enjoyment of intense debate and balance discussions) which is why I'm still taking part in it. I'm not dead set on these specific changes being the ones that make it, and, though I strongly feel that they're the best changes recommended to date, I'm not unwilling to modify them to account for new ideas and suggestions (albeit, only ones that actually have some basis in a balanced implementation rather than hard-headed refusal to admit what is patently obvious).

A lot of the browbeatings I've been handing out have mainly been due to having to explain what I (and most other people that are actually likely to have opinions that bear weight with the devs) find to be obvious. Things like Granite Armor needing to functionally remove your ability to do anything if it's going to be available all the time or that the set isn't resistance based and that the only reason people view it as such is because of Granite Armor. I don't mean to browbeat anyone that agrees with me, I just have a problem with someone acting as if someone else has brought something new to the discussion that has been present from the very beginning.

By that same token, anything you do is keeping you from dealing damage. Endurance is not simply a resource fit solely for dealing damage. It is simply the mechanism chosen to enforce resource management for your actions.

Keep in mind that, just as much as endurance is required for damage output, there is no mechanism in the entire game that can allow you to make an attack consume more endurance in order to deal more damage. The optimal contribution of a power is set in stone and the only thing that can be improved upon is the efficiency with which that contribution is accessed. If it were, endurance recovery beyond the point of infinite sustainability would actually be useful, but, as it stands, it does virtually nothing because there is no way to increase consumption to meet your capabilities beyond a certain point.

Considering the degree of survivability that is associated with Granite Armor (i.e. the same level as virtually all god mode powers), I would have to say that it would have to be on par with the only other power in the game that provides the same degree of immortality: PFF. No other meaningful mitigating factor exists that would prevent a power as strong as Granite Armor from being completely overpowered unless the side effects were as extreme as the drawback of Personal Force Field. Endurance costs are laughably simple to mitigate (just look at the case of toggle Instant Healing), especially since basic end redux slotting reduces the cost to functionally half (which means that the base end redux would need to be obscenely high to be even remotely balanced knowing that). Mobility reductions that people would actually accept (i.e. no "no teleport" coupled with automatic mag 1000 immobilization) are similarly out because those are laughably simple to get around. Damage reductions that people would accept (i.e. no 9999% -dam) are similarly out because, as evidenced by Brutes, Super Strength, and easily perma-Fulcrum Shift, +dam is laughably simple to access in large enough quantities to completely bypass all but the most extreme debuffs.

The only way I could possibly imagine allowing Granite Armor to remain as an at-will defensive mode (without doing one or all of the things previously mentioned) would be to do something that the engine cannot handle without a helluva lot of largely redundant tweaking to the powers database: have Granite Armor apply a decrease to base damage rather than the +dam attribute to ensure that, no matter what, you can't bypass the reduction in damage that Granite Armor provides (30% -dam does not equate to a 30% reduction in total damage dealt; with virtually any defender around, it means virtually nothing). Considering how much work would be involved in doing that, I can assure you it's just not going to happen.

Yeah, I thought I fixed that when I was making the original post. My apologies on that. I intended it to be on a 180 second cooldown to enforce the maximum 40% uptime ratio. Fixing it now.

Cuz, you know, that's exactly what I've been saying since my first post. /facepalm

I'm not entirely sure where I said this... anywhere.

You must be confused. That's not a toggle you're designing. That's a click power.

Toggles do no begin recharging until they turn off. No matter what, you're never going to have a toggle that shuts off automatically be permanent unless the recharge of the power is non-existent. At best (400% +rech), you'd get 71% uptime with those numbers. Unless you want to turn Granite Armor into a click power (which I don't think anyone supports), your solution wouldn't work.

AT mods are why the melee ATs get hosed. I'm still not sure why Defenders and Controllers get Tanker grade self buff mods when they're intended to be squishy. Even if they don't get any native personal buffs (all of their buff powers use the ranged buff mods rather than the melee buff mods), Controllers and Defenders still get high melee buff mods. Tankers and Scrappers, on the other hand, because they're intended to be bad at ranged combat and support even though they don't get many ranged attacks (and those attacks use the melee damage mods anyway) or ranged buff/debuff powers, get saddled with crappy mods for all of those.

The APPs have always sucked for the melee ATs specifically because melee ATs get crappy mods for the things they don't get natively and support ATs get high mods for everything except damage, even if they are supposed to be bad at them and don't get them natively.

First off, I am not altering the focus of the set in the least. Look at the actual powers in the set. Not just Granite Armor, but the entire set. There are 3 powers that grant resistance and 4 powers that grant defense. The set is not a resistance set. The only "resistance bias" the set has is when you're operating entirely under the assumption that Granite is the only thing that exists. Hell, if you actually look at my changes, I'm increase resistance more than I'm increasing defense. Please, know what you're talking about. You continually demonstrate how little you know about anything we're talking about the more we continue on this discussion. If it weren't against the forum guidelines to do anything more than facepalm at your obvious inability to perceive what is in front of you, I'd say more about this.

The game is balanced around SOs but that does not mean that sets are designed ignorant of their capabilities with IOs. The devs aren't going to reduce the defense of a set that has plenty of natural defense just because you know you can make up for a loss of defense but not a loss of resistance when you're dancing around in the known overpowered perma-tier 9.

He's better than you obviously. I doubt you even know what the set is even capable off when you're not stuck in Granite the entire time.

Actually, he does. You'd know this if you actually read the thread in question.

I'd then ask you to compare the performance and costs of those builds. Survivability is not a binary state. It exist on a continuum. Learn this, please. If you don't know what a continuum is, look up the word in a dictionary.

I have 3 apples and $10. You have 2,000 and $9. That's balanced, right? /facepalm.

I think I just noticed something else... You're assuming I'm transferring stuff out of Granite Armor and into the other armors (not that I have any idea where you're getting this since the decrease to Granite Armor's numbers isn't even close to the improvements I gave to the other armors). You're wrong. I improved the other armors while ignoring Granite Armor and then chose new numbers for Granite knowing that the new numbers would be used as a baseline.

You're right. I'm using the wrong term. I shouldn't be using the term "tier 9", even though in colloquial discussion it amounts to the same as the correct term: god mode power. Granite Armor is a god mode. Unstoppable is a god mode. Instant Healing is a god mode (MoG isn't the tier 9 or even the tier 9 equivalent any more and you'd know this if you didn't simply make arbitrary groups and assign powers to them as you assume they apply). It doesn't matter what tier it is in. It matter that, while it is active, you are at your peak survivability for an extended period of time.

The problem with this is that, when you're allowed to have a god mode perma, it is no longer a god mode and instead becomes a standard armor. The devs learned this mistake with Instant Healing and have continually move away from having anything remotely close to a god mode power that functionally acts as a standard survivability toggle within the set. Players are ******** that will exploit anything possible, regardless of whether the devs intended those attributes to be limiting which is why the only way to effectively prevent this exploitation from occurring is to use mechanisms that even the players can't get around.

Quote:

Ex. Why do Fire Controllers get three pets? They're pets! They should only get one! There are two responses to this. Three weaker pets are balanced against one stronger pet in other sets. Control sets are all different. Similarity would make things boring

You're assuming that the pet powers are intended to behave anything like god mode powers. I can, in fact, assure you that they're not. The controller pet powers are intended to be up at all times to address the lower damage that Controllers (used to) have to deal with to get to 32. Having three pets versus having a single pet doesn't do anything to affect the fundamental nature of the power in question. They're all intended to deal damage and be functionally permanent. God modes are all intended to be functionally temporary (by the very admission of the devs thanks to the fact that the penalties of Granite Armor are intended to encourage players to not have it on at all times). Your argument doesn't even stand up to surface analysis.

Reduce without a quantitative qualifier infers that there is some remainder. If you had someone tell you that the speed limit was reduced on the highway, would you ever think that the speed limit was now 0? No, in fact, you would assume that the speed limit were taken down just a small amount. Please, if you're going to use loaded terms in an attempt to make your point seem more poignant and the needed limitations to not be as intense as they need to be, please try to make sure that you get a bit more creative and don't attempt to pass it off as a semantic argument. I kick *** at semantic argument.

It's quite simple actually. With enhancement slotting, that 30% -dam just got reduced to being a ~15% decrease in overall damage. Some damage procs take care of that remainder quite easily, since the Tanker and Brute damage scalars are so low that procs easily constitute a good deal more than 10% of the damage of many powers. With Hasten and basic SO slotting, even factoring in the lower recharge, you're going to get 20% +rech on average. Throw in 4 LotGs (since you've got 4 def powers in the set) and you just gnabbed yourself another 30%. 3 5% +rech sets allows you to get rid of that as well. The mobility issue is a joke to get around by just taking Teleport. With that little difference, try pulling any other tanker to the same level of survivability that a Granite Tanker manages. That's 4 IOs and 2 power picks to mitigate all of the disadvantages. Now try doing the same to avoid the Unstoppable crash while reducing the recharge to make it permanent (which you can't since it's not even possible).

I understand exactly how hard it is. I don't think you realize quite how easy it is to get around. There's a reason Stone Tanks are so popular, and it's not just because people like all looking the same.

You're assuming that Tankers, Brutes, Stalkers, and Scrappers were all intended to be completely unkillable all the time if they're willing to kill stuff slightly slower. PFF and Granite Armor provide roughly the same level of protection. PFF prevents you from doing anything. Granite Armor simply makes you take slightly longer. If you want to keep the same permanent unkillability that is available whenever you want it, be prepared to not be capable of doing anything while it's active. If PFF is really the balance precedent you want to go with (and, yes, you'll likely have to choose between either PFF/Hibernate or a more classic god mode as your precedent), I don't think you'd be happy with it. I'd much rather go with a more classic variant since it lets you actually continue doing what you're on the team to do.

As described in the forum rules and guidelines, necroposting has nothing to do with intent:

Honestly, if you wanted to make any headway, you would probably do best to simply send a tell to a dev stating your case (and one that I agree with). If this hasn't been seen by now, it won't get seen just by necroposting and power changes aren't made based on the democratic process to trying to make sure people know about stuff doesn't do anything to change anything.

From Positron here.

I know you may get alot of this but I've written down a few ideas for content for later issues would you guys mind taking a look at?

Posi- Paragon, like most studios, does not accept unsolicited work. This is due to the legal nature of the fact that we might be working on the exact same idea.

This right here demonstrates exactly how little you know. Rebalancing a power takes almost as much time as outright creating a power. It involves doing calculations and recalculations and testing. I assure you, it's a question of man hours.

You're deluding yourself. Just look at AE and then try and tell me that a majority of the content out there is actually worth it. AE is a perfect metaphor for this too, even more so since AE doesn't involve any technical expertise like developing a powerset does.

The question is not whether you want to do the job. The question is whether NCSoft wants to hire you to do that job. I can assure you that NCSoft does not. They don't want to hire someone(s) to sift through the dross to look for a chance at a single nugget of gold when they have people that they know are good at their jobs already creating nuggets of gold (of various purities, of course, but I can assure you that anything Castle came up with is going to be better than 99% of the "worthwhile" sets you'd find from the player base).

Okay, I'm not entirely sure you understood what I said. The people that like the game enough and know what they're doing already have the tools to make the appropriate comparisons and design sets. It's not a question of getting the tools made: it's a question of whether there is a point to spend time making the tools look pretty and then making them available to absolutely everyone. Just look at even half of the ideas that are even remotely respectable on the suggestion forums: they're simply bad. The devs don't need to give anything resembling more hope to the people that don't even know what DPA is, how animation time affects functionality, or how certain attributes interact with each other within the same powerset.

Which is why they're roughly equivalent mitigation mechanisms. Resistance is allergic to debuffs because you can't avoid them. Defense is allergic to the RNG (though no one ever seems to bring up the fact that you're just as likely to have the RNG provide you with more mitigation than you're supposed to).

You're assuming that providing 50% +res(all but psi) on top of the levels of resistance I recommended fixing to address the problems with levels wherein Granite is unavailable. Unless you want to weaken the levels wherein you don't have resistance, you're not going to get a reasonable fix that doesn't either weaken Granite's resistance or totally **** everything up. I chose those numbers for a specific reason. Realize that. Plug them into the spreadsheet and you'll see. They weren't an arbitrary choice.

And I realize what you mean. It doesn't matter how you overcome it. If a weakness is easy to overcome with any mechanism, then it's not a weakness.

You're quoting a post from Castle wherein he lamentably demonstrated a noticeable lack of knowledge concerning what's going on. You're not really going to make much headway with people that actually know what's going on by quoting that.

Are you sure you want to accept the level of nerf that it would take to offset the ability to be completely unkillable all the time? Are you really sure? You bring up PFF. Squishies characters get the ability to achieve tier 9 level survivability all the time by not being able to attack. Anything less than that is going to be imbalanced.

There is a damned good reason why you can't have a perma-tier 9: it's a friggin' perma tier 9! If you don't believe that it's fundamentally flawed to be able to not die while you're able to kill them, no argument is going to address that. You've pretty much decided that it has to be perma.

They didn't reduce the offensive capabilities of the PFF: they removed them. And the reason they removed them was because it was too easy to bypass the restrictions. The same thing applies to Granite Armor (grab a kin and go, or just slot some +spd IOs). Are you sure you want to use PFF as your precedent for Granite Armor? I highly doubt you would like what would happen if that occurred. The changes would not please you, I assure you.

I'm not challenging what you're saying based on an external trait that isn't directly linked to your argument. I'm challenging you based on a trait that is integrally linked to your argument. Please, learn what you're talking about first. Your wikipedia skills are obviously failing, though I laud your ability to herd lolcats.

It's a 60% chance now and has been since I17 hit.

Except that you didn't. Nice try. You might want to actually try doing something concerning balance rather than just spouting drivel that seems intelligent to people that don't know what they're talking about.

You're assuming a lot about endurance cost balances to survivability. You're also assuming a lot about how well that performs. Just look at Dark Armor for a model of a powerset that uses endurance as the primary limiter on performance. It generates obscene levels of performance, both sustainable and short term, but the very fact that it's endurance limited makes it largely unpopular. Even more, you're assuming that you could make the endurance costs of the set balanced while allowing the set to remain toggle intensive. Changing endurance to be the primary limiter would do one of two things: the set would be unplayable at low levels and when solo or the set would be incredibly broken (because you can mitigate the costs even easier than you can mitigate the movement penalties). One of the primary concerns that needs to be addressed with the set is playability. You're not addressing any of the parts of that in any substantive way.

In my experience, I see defense and resistance as being functionally equivalent. Sure resistance is constant, but defense allows you to avoid the secondary effects of attacks that would otherwise bend you over (-rech, -end, -def, etc). The power is still mainly resistance oriented and provides more resistance than the rest of the set does. The point of providing those number is twofold: Cottage Rule prevents removing any function of the power (so it's impossible to simply remove the defense) and intelligent design prevents reducing the defense value to an arbitrarily low value (so that there's no real point in enhancing those attributes). The lowest I would probably go with the +def is 5%(all but psi), which would probably increase the resistance contribution to something around 20%. It might be possible to push it higher if the movement penalties were made worse (to prevent it from being able to used across multiple fights), though I doubt many current Stone Armor users would enjoy the loss of teleportation and a reduction in their movement speed cap to only a few feet per second (to prevent the +spd and +res(spd) workarounds that are currently in use so often).

However, a statement like

is simply asking to be overpowered. If the negative attributes of the power are easy to work around, you're not asking or balance. You're asking to be overpowered. One of the primary problems with the set (and the devs agree that it is a problem) is that non-Granite is too weak and in-Granite is too strong. Asking for the problems with Granite Armor to be easily worked around isn't asking for balance: it's asking for the current overpowered state of Granite Armor to remain. If any change happens to the set, I can assure you that's not going to happen.

Quote:

Automatic detoggling is something I am against for many reasons.

I can respect these issues. The aesthetics of the set outside of Granite Armor is definitely something that I find problematic, especially if you actually enjoy the appearance of Granite Armor. I don't really attempt to address the aesthetic issues of the set here, as this is intended to be a purely numerical and balance oriented suggestion, but it might work to ask BABs to put in some animation options that grant Granite-like appearance to the other toggles.

The issue of having Granite Armor turn off after a specific period of time is something I think is rather necessary to prevent the set from being the current overpowered monstrosity that it currently is. I thought of a couple other workarounds, but I suggested the one that I think is the most applicable and hardest to work around. The only real solutions, while allowing the power to remain a toggle, are likely those that will bother people in the same way that the Phase Shift changes bothered people. The other main one that I considered (though not the one I prefer because it is substantially easier to work around than a hard-coded maximum uptime) was having the endurance cost of the power slowly ramp up the longer it is on. The recharge time would still need to remain high to prevent simply toggling it on and off in order to reset the endurance cost, but it would allow you to keep it on indefinitely... if you can pay the continually rising cost.

If you honestly think that this is anything approaching an intelligent reason to allow for the power to be perma-capable, you have no clue what you're talking about. You might as well ask for Instant Healing to be perma-capable (and not "perma at cap recharge" either; I mean "perma with moderate IO slotting") or for the rest of the classic tier 9s be up all the time like they used to. The ability to maintain tier 9 survivability at all time is simply broken. It's not a question of maintaining high sustainable survivability. It's a question of whether you should be able to have sustainable survivability that high. As Castle has shown with his treatment of every other set and tier 9 in the game, the ability to indefinitely sustain survivability as high as Granite Armor is an anomaly and not one that is present thanks to good design. Asking for the power to be perma simply because you want to be unkillable all the time isn't a viable argument, especially when the discussion is supposed to be revolving around balance rather than arbitrary desires to maintain the status quo of survivability knowing that it's stronger than it has any reason to be. There's no risk involved, much less any question of skill.

Actually, it only takes a single enemy in range to equal a */Regen Scrapper's passive regeneration.

This was largely what I was thinking of with giving Rooted the Grounded treatment. When I think of Rooted and the +regen benefit it provides, I think of drawing strength from the earth via a physical connection, an action I don't really see preventing you from walking or even running around as long as you actually remain in contact with the ground. If you were getting some kind of mitigation benefit (like some substantial +res) conferred by setting yourself into the bedrock, I could see a reduction in movement speed (bedrock isn't really known for being particularly mobile). The +regen benefit just doesn't really grok with a decrease in mobility as I see it.

1. I'm not reducing peak mitigation. The changes actually generate greater levels of survivability with Granite Armor active than they do without.

2. The only "negative" change is the removal of the ability to simply maintain peak survivability at all times if you're simply willing to deal with a reduction in damage output and recharge. Stone Armor builds aren't built to use Granite Armor only some of the time. Virtually every Stone Armor build out there comes under one of two categories: builds that always use Granite Armor and builds that never use Granite Armor. The only "option" is one of build rather than one of situation.

Actually, Castle is on record with saying that he would change the set to remove the crippling reliance on Granite Armor and balance out the discrepancy in effectiveness between pre-32 and post-43 gameplay if he could and had the time. Castle doesn't like Stone Armor in its current incarnation. One of the biggest reasons that he hasn't yet is because of all of the players that love having a perma-Granite and the incredible backlash that any change that prevented it from being possible would generate.

The very fact that you're having to bring up an IO'd build to demonstrate how a non-Granite Stone tank can be effective proves my point.

I play */Regen and I do stuff with it that spreadsheets say it shouldn't be able to do. I do not rely exclusively on spreadsheets in order to determine the effectiveness of such things. Arguing that just because a spreadsheet is used to determine what effective modifications and comparisons would be that the argument is based entirely on said spreadsheet is utter lunacy. Try doing some comparative analysis yourself rather than assuming that your IO'd build is the standard for non-Granite performance. You'll agree with me. There's a reason non-Granite's are seen as being less than effective. It's because they are.

So you /unsign specifically because you like a set that turns on Granite and lols away? How are any of the changes I'm making drastically affecting playstyle other than forcing players to operate outside of Granite Armor while improving performace in those conditions as well? The entire crux of your argument is that you don't want all sets to maintain uniqueness though Stone Armor is, quite possibly, the least unique set in the game: you're either Granite and... that's about it or you're not-Granite and you need IOs and teammates in order to allow you to keep up with any other tanker in the game.

You're suffering from the delusion that correcting problems in the design of the set is going to make it just like every other set out there. I am not changing anything to make the set more like any other powerset out there except for removing the ability for players to constantly maintain tier-9 survivability. Perma-MoG and Perma-Unstoppable had their own issues of balance to deal with (crashes at the end), but the devs fixed those exclusive of the fact that those capabilities had commensurate weaknesses. Granite Armor has gotten away with being so overpowered this long because the rest of the set wouldn't be playable without fixes. What I propose would fix the rest of the set, maintain the playstyle for those powers, and remove the ability to have Granite Armor on at all times as should have been done long ago.

So you chose Stone Armor specifically because of Granite Armor being completely horribly borked with rather simple workarounds for the "weaknesses" of it rather than the fact that it's got 4 other armor toggles that actually exist? Stone Armor has always been the mix of defense, resistance, and regeneration that I'm proposing (and it's substantially more focused on mitigation than */WP is and doesn't rely on saturating an aura to generate respectable damage recovery). Hell, the only difference in playstyle I'm proposing is forcing players to use the tier 9 only part of the time like every other set does rather than keeping it going all the time. Every set used to be able to do it back when the game first came out but those powers go quashed pretty quickly. The fact that the set kept a perma-tier 9 this long still boggles my mind.

Actually, I arrived at the numbers for Granite Armor in question specifically because they would provide a similar level of survivability as Granite Armor provides now. In fact, they provide a higher level of survivability that Granite Armor currently provides. The only occasions that it wouldn't provide more survivability would be those situations in which the target ignores defense, which, if it's a problem for a set like Stone Armor, is going to be an even bigger problem for the powersets that are actually built around defense as a whole. Assuming that the power is being weakened simply because of an incredibly rare situation is tremendously idiotic. You might as well compare Elec Armor to Super Reflexes when fighting Rularuu Overseers for how applicable that assumption is.

Unless you're building for PvP, I would drop Eagles Claw before I dropped CAK. They've got virtually identical DPAs though CAK has the definite advantage of not taking 3 seconds to animate, which is going to hurt both your DPS (because that's time you're not able to use Storm Kick) and your survivability (because you can't use clickies while you're stuck animating that horribly long power).

Of course, if you actually built yourself a bit more intelligently and prioritized sets and bonuses, you'd probably be able to solo AVs. I doubt you'd be able to with that build (attack selection isn't optimal, nor is slotting or set bonuses), but you could easily do so with that same budget spent more intelligently.

I would debate the definition of "do well" as you use it there. You definitely can solo EBs, but EBs are intended to be able to be solo'd by almost any AT while in SOs. Soloing EBs isn't really a mark of a well made build. The fact that you've got virtually the same budget as builds that are capable of soloing AVs while not having nearly as much effectiveness demonstrates that pretty well.

Dull Pain is one of the strongest tools that */Regen gets. It,is one of the big reasons why the set does so well (and can manage without any real native mitigation). Not attempting to use Dull Pain to the fullest is like refusing to slot Invincibility or RttC: it's not required, but it's going to be really cost:benefit inefficient.