Umbral

Because Hasten is turned off. With Hasten on, its recharge is 109.1 seconds. If you do the math and determine Hasten's uptime in order to determine the average +rech contribution, you'd find out that the actual recharge for Hasten, factoring in the fact that Hasten isn't always on, is just under 120 seconds.

What you have to realize about Mids' is that it's not a fantastically smart program. All it does it crunch some straightforward numbers. It can only tell you the values of something while a power is on and while a power is off. It can't tell you the averaged value of a power based upon uptime ratios, so the recharge times of long recharge powers like Dull Pain, IH, and MoG aren't really accurate.

The Gaussian's 6 piece plays a big part in why I took it. The other big part is the fact that FA provides +tohit, +acc, and, most importantly, tohit debuff resistance. I like hitting things, even when they're substantially higher level than me, and it helps to have FA there to bolster and secure my chance to hit. Even so, it's an expensive brick of a power that costs twice as much as it should considering what it does, but, eh, it's a */Regen build: endurance isn't something that we really have to worry about, is it?

Slotting the uniques isn't really all that difficult now that the devs have fixed them to be unaffected by enhancements and buffs. The most important thing to remember is to try to get a set bonus if you can and to put them in early powers that you plan on having on at all times. I can't really provide any more rules of thumb that I already have in the review I gave you. A lot of what I provided was the standard slotting I give powers.

In general, when you're building a */Regen, +rech is king: it increases your offensive capability and defensive capability, virtually nothing else you will find in game will do both of those for you simultaneously. After +rech, +def is what you're after, with melee coming before ranged coming before AoE damage. Melee is the most important because that's where you are the most often and where the most damage attacks are coming from. Remember, most PbAoEs are flagged as both melee and AoE positional so melee protects you from those as well (which is why you can afford to skimp on AoE defense a bit).

And how would this impact the gameplay? It's more of a roleplaying thing than anything else, and it's an optional one. It's just as easy to simply slip your secret identity into your bio if you really care about having one listed. Other than that, there's no need.

Yeah, once again, bad idea. The zones aren't designed to allow for hostile players to be able to navigate much, not to mention that, even if they did allow villains to run hero content and heroes to run villain content, it doesn't make sense because of the dialogue and stories themselves. GoRo fulfills all of the functionality that you're asking for without any of the bad ideas of cross factional hostility variance and running content that makes no sense for your current alignment.

By the way, the devs have actually stated that the reason that markets are not being merged isn't due to an arbitrary dislike of the idea. It's actually a database issue. Sorry, but that's not going to happen.

Yes. Each application of DA that you're adding to an attack chain is lowering the DPS because you're forcing yourself to use an attack with lower DPA than your other attacks to bolster your survivability. Optimally, you wouldn't want to use DA at all if you're aiming for as much damage as possible.

The attack string takes just about 10 seconds to go through a single cycle (because it's based around DA's duration, if you're curious), so it shouldn't really matter where you activate it. I'm not in the mood to do the math now, but if you're looking for the absolute best time to use it, it would be just before GD in place of a GC. Remember, Build Up has an activation time, so it's going to have to take the place of something within your attack string. If you're attempting to do as much damage as possible while inserting BU into your attack string and maintaining 1 stack of DA, your best bet is to nix a GC for it right before your strongest attack just in case the duration of BU is just long enough for a slight overlap to catch GD twice.

First off, it's not perma-DP. Perma-DP requires 55% global +rech. You only think that it's perma-DP because the recharge of DP is 120 seconds whenever Hasten is active, even though it only has an uptime ratio of 75%. You're going to need to grab at least 23% more +rech if you want perma-DP.

And now for my scathing criticism of your build.

In Fast Healing, you have a single Numina and a single Doctored Wounds. You're not getting anything from those. You might as well just go with common IOs if you're going to do that. You'd actually manage more +regen if you switched out the Doctored Wounds for a Numina's Heal/End because of the Numina's +regen 2 piece set bonus.

The same thing as you did in FH has happened in your Reconstruction. With those same 5 slots, you can manage to get more by using 5 piece Doctored Wounds (all but end/rech).

Quick Recovery doesn't need all of those slots. You're regen, so you don't need +hp. You have CP, PP, 2 Perf Shifter procs, and the +end accolades, you don't need that +recov set bonus. 2.5% +dam is going to do almost nothing for you. 3.13% +def(AoE) is not worth all of the slots you dumped into it. Just go with what I consider standard slotting for QR and Stamina: Perf Shifter proc, Perf Shifter EndMod, and a level 50 common End Mod.

For your AoE attacks, nothing trumps 6 piece Obliteration. Nothing. You get awesome enhancement values and awesome set bonuses. You're in melee. Melee defense should be your primary concern.

For DA, you're not getting much out of slotting that single common def IO. A much better use of that slot is another LotG +rech because, if you didn't already know, +rech is 90% of everything that */Regen cares about.

Don't bother overslotting Dull Pain for healing enhancement. You're already busting over the hp cap and Dull Pain already heals you for a crapload, so there's no real point in going deep into the redzone. Dull Pain should get 5 piece Doctored Wounds (all but Heal/End). The 6th slot for a common is pointless (especially since you could put a Doctored Wounds in there for the exact same values and come out with another bonus, however bad it is).

Health doesn't need that many slots. Seriously. It's the weakest +regen power you've got and all of those enhancement values you're throwing into it are only enhancing one thing that's already into the redzone.

You've done to Integration the same thing you did to FH. Fix that.

Resilience doesn't deserve slots. Ever. There are only 2 things you should ever consider putting into Resilience: the Steadfast Protection 3% +def IO and the Gladiator's Armor 3% +def IO. The resistance values that Resilience provides are way too low to even bothering slotting up. Enhancing Resilience is right up with Physical Perfection on the uselessness of enhancing thanks to pitiful base values.

If you want to 3 slot Build Up, go with 2 piece Adjusted Targeting (Rech, and Tohit/Rech) and a level 50 common Rech. You get pretty much the exact same recharge enhancement (well, you lose 2.3% rech enhancement, but that's less than half of a second) with the added bonus of a 2% +dam buff.

Headsplitter, as one of your heaviest hitting attacks, should receive better slotting than you'd get from Eradication. Once again, 6 piece Obliteration is friggin' awesome.

For MoG, you can push your regen up a tad and bring the recharge enhancement to the redzone by putting in another slot and giving it a LotG def/rech. I use that slotting as my standard for MoG because it gives you good enhancement values and good bonuses, all with as little expenditure of slots as possible.

For Weave and CJ, 3 piece LotG is relatively pointless. You're a */Regen with slotted DP and the +hp accolades. DP combined with the accolades puts you within a single +hp set bonus of the Scrapper hp cap. There isn't much reason to end a power's slotting on a +hp set bonus because you can get more by simply replacing the final IO with a common IO or adding another slot and replacing one of the original IOs for a 2 piece set bonus.

Here's the BS/Regen-noPurps, noPvP IO build I've got on file. It's softcapped to melee with but a single Parry, so you're not going to be killing your DPS just to stay alive. It doesn't pack on the ranged and AoE defense, but you don't really need that. You've got your */Regen clickies for those.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.621
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Natural Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Broad Sword
Secondary Power Set: Regeneration
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Hack -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(3), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(3), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(5), Achilles-ResDeb%(7)
Level 1: Fast Healing -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A), Mrcl-Heal(50)
Level 2: Reconstruction -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(7), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(9), Dct'dW-Heal(9), Dct'dW-Rchg(11)
Level 4: Quick Recovery -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod(15), EndMod-I(17)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), Winter-ResSlow(11), Zephyr-Travel(13), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(13), LkGmblr-Def(15)
Level 8: Parry -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(17), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(19), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21), LkGmblr-Rchg+(21)
Level 10: Dull Pain -- Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(A), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(23), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(23), Dct'dW-Heal(25), Dct'dW-Rchg(25)
Level 12: Build Up -- AdjTgt-Rchg(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(27)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A)
Level 16: Integration -- Numna-Heal(A), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(31), RgnTis-Regen+(31), Heal-I(50)
Level 18: Whirling Sword -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(33), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Oblit-%Dam(34)
Level 20: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(34), RechRdx-I(36)
Level 22: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 24: Tough -- ImpArm-ResDam(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(36), ImpArm-ResDam/Rchg(36), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(46)
Level 26: Disembowel -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(27), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(37), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(37), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37), T'Death-Dam%(39)
Level 28: Instant Healing -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(29), RechRdx-I(29)
Level 30: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(31), GftotA-Run+(40), GftotA-Def/EndRdx(43)
Level 32: Head Splitter -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(43), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(43), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45), Oblit-%Dam(45)
Level 35: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(39), GftotA-Run+(42), GftotA-Def/EndRdx(42)
Level 38: Moment of Glory -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(39), RechRdx-I(40), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 41: Focused Accuracy -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(42), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(48), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(48), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(48), GSFC-Build%(50)
Level 44: Physical Perfection -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-End%(46), EndMod-I(46)
Level 47: Resilience -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 49: Conserve Power -- RechRdx-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 0: Ninja Run

IIRC, it used to be 1 merit for 5 minutes (12 merits/hour), but then the reward scale was updated to 1 merit for every 3 minutes (20/hour), though many people still confuse the two because of confusion between converting between base 60 (hours) and base 100 (percentile). I have to correct myself quite often when giving pug groups expected completion times because I often find myself quoting the 1:5 ratio rather than the 1:3 ratio out of habit.

CI has fallen out of favor with a majority of IO builders for a 2 big reasons: 5% +rech set bonuses are friggin' easy to get and defense set bonuses are more necessary for more people's builds. The only places I use CI in builds I make nowadays are those powers that absolutely require a slot devoted to an out of set IO of some kind, which pretty much only means DA and GC because of the LotG +rech and AH proc, respectively. For a 5 piece set, CI is pretty good (without jumping into purple sets), but, most of the time, I'd rather have the 6 piece set bonuses for my attacks.

Dull Pain isn't really a heal that is going to provide a substantive benefit because it's on too long of a recharge. The primary advantage of DP is the addition of functional resistance by increasing your max hp (which, essentially, decreases the amount of damage you're taking by the proportion of your previous max hp to your current max hp). Of course, the heal portion of DP lands before the +hp portion, iirc, and you keep the same proportion of hit points, so the actual heal benefits of Dull Pain are actually closer to a 128% heal.

Dark Consumption isn't a heal either. It's the endurance recovery power. You may be thinking of Dark Regeneration, but that is, similarly, not really applicable because it's pretty much a guaranteed 100% heal every 10-15 seconds, assuming we're talking about a well IO'd build.

I have a bit of a problem with these values. 1.6 Acc mod suggests that you're fighting uplevel enemies. 8 enemies suggests that there will also be different ranks of enemies. Assuming a reasonable distribution of enemy ranks for your 8 enemies (1 boss, 2 lts, 5 minions), you're going to have an average 1.075. Using this normalized rank mod, this means that the assumed level of the group of enemies is 4 levels higher than the target (1.5 * 1.075 = 1.6125 average acc mod).

Now, getting even more involved, we begin to delve into the effects of the level upon the debuffs themselves. Assuming a base def debuff value of 8% (which is standard for the Cimerorans last I checked), the level adjusted debuff is going to be 44% higher for a total of 11.52. 11-12% would be a better number to assume for your debuff assumption considering this.

Honestly, there isn't really much aside from your given assumptions that really presents a problem with your model (though you forgot to assume the lack of kill assumption). The one thing I might point out is that you're similarly assuming that absolutely every enemy is debuffing defense whereas in most groups only a few enemies within the group debuff defense. Another assumption is that there are no auto-hit defense debuffs being used (CoT Earth Thorn casters, some Longbow iirc, etc), though that's an assumption that is going to hit SR a lot softer than others. Neither of these assumptions is really going to skew the information in any particular direction because you've stated multiple times that you're only looking at the situations of cascading defense debuffs.

Of course, it gets a bit more complex because there isn't really a "Generic Resistance" set. Your model isn't really going to mean much to a Dark Armor character because a well IO'd DA is going to be able to use Dark Regeneration once every 3 rounds of attacks or so. Similarly, it doesn't mean much to an Invuln because Invuln has more resistance (thanks to both higher resistances and Dull Pain) along with a modicum of defense debuff resistance. It might be more applicable to look at the generic capabilities of each set that can IO for softcapping independently when subjected to the situations of a defense debuff cascade.

Except that he doesn't actually address the question of the stock of time across diverse groups. The only times that were addressed were those of optimized groups even though merit awards aren't determined by the maximum efficiency but rather by the average efficiency as determined by the devs actually getting that information from the servers. As I have been saying since the very beginning of this argument, bringing up a single completion times does not represent an accurate average whatsoever for merit awards. The devs do not use a single completion time to determine the reward of a TF/SF. They use a compilation of every completion and then arrive at a conclusion from there.

Now, if you want to make a case that there is a problem with the accounting of variance in the completion times of TFs and SFs, I might have to agree (from what I've seen, SFs have much lower variance in completion times so the theoretical opportunity to be more efficient is lower), though I'd want to get that information from the devs rather than from anecdotal evidence. Of course, when you're assuming for variance, you also have to realize that this means that, while you have less chance (assuming standard probabilities of arriving anywhere within the normal curve) of being more efficient, you also have less chance of being less efficient, which actually occurs with relative frequency for blueside tasks. Variance is not a one-way phenomenon: in order to be able to optimize for greater efficiency, it has to be possible but difficult to do things faster than average while substantially more common to run longer than average. Variance such as this means that the average group is going to get less than the desired merit award while skilled groups are going to get more than the desired merit awards.

I dunno... I think it's more akin to a tier 6-8 attack power than a 1-3. It wasn't really a basic attack, but not really a top tier one either.

Except that it could never kill anything! If it was so strong, why did they always have to use the Kamehameha to kill things afterwards?

Praetoria isn't an evil mirror world of Primal Earth. It's less "everyone is switched" and more of a "what if..." world, where the "what if" question is, "What if supers decided that existing governments and morality structures were flawed enough to simply overthrown them". The Praetorians don't think that they are evil. In fact, as we have seen from everything from GoRo, they think they're doing good with all of their thought policing, memory modification, and the rest of their draconian judicial system. The Praetorians aren't intended to be a direct mirror but rather be just like this world only with a single major facet of it changed (supers as authority rather than servants of authority).

The doubt the Singy is going to get a substantial overhaul considering that he already has Repel on a toggle. I think that it's more likely that Singy might get an AoE attack that gives the target KB prot, applies the currently impossible Attraction, and then deals however much damage before catapulting the offending targets well away from it when the -KB ends.

Well, Scrapper Confront and Tanker Taunt already have a large -range penalty which forces the target to get close to you if they want to attack. That alone already does what you're asking for most targets.

Now, if there were a Spear set, I don't think it would be untoward for some kind of harpoon attack to be in the set (in addition to Confront) where you throw it at the target and then reel them back in for a short time with an attraction effect, but, if any set gets an attract, I would probably expect it to be in addition to Confront/Taunt and thematically appropriate for the attack or set.

Well, Thunder Kick is actually worse, and EC is pretty much equal to CAK (especially when you compare stun to slow/immob). The big thing that completely kills EC is that the animation is so long and doesn't have a decent DPA to justify it. Between a short attack and a long attack with an equal DPA, you almost always want to go with the short attack because it allows you to cycle faster and get more from procs, and EC just has this mediocre DPA that stops it from being useful.

Personally, I think the devs should just increase the dam/rech/end on MA to 14 or 15 seconds (160-170 dam before adding in the 15% crit chance, 13-14 endurance). The DPA wouldn't be high enough to oust Storm Kick's awesomeness (66-70 DPA v. 97.7), but at least there would be a better reason to take EC. Of course, even better would be to just speed up the animation by a half second or so along with a dam/rech/end change so that the DPA is actually competitive with its level 1 power (81-87).

I know of a number that do something like this but you have to realize that there are outright engine limitations that no amount of recoding will fix. Some things can only be solved by creating an entirely new engine for the game to operate out of. I'm pretty sure that reverse Repel might be one of them.

Remember, when you're comparing powers, tier isn't really important. Damage and animation time are substantially better determiners of effectiveness than tier. GC has an excellent DPA and works incredibly well with procs. It's for this same reason that Storm Kick is actually the best attack in MA.

I've long supported this mentality. Blueside has a whole lot of mediocre content that's just sitting there waiting to get a facelift. Redside has less content but it's of a substantially higher caliber and playability.

Personally, just because if the only things happening blueside are revamps and no new actual content is being added, I'd want to alternate between new zones and revamped zones: every blueside alternates between revamped (like the new Positron) and new content (like the ReichsTF) while villains just keep getting new content (like the ReichsTF). Development resources are still being divided equally, both sides are improving on a roughly equal basis, and it addresses the major concerns of content on each side individually rather than attempting to address their separate concerns with the same band-aid.

But what about his mutated pirate zombie ninja ballroom-dancing-instructor biological-experiment-gone-awry scientist post-grad sidekick?

It would also be ridiculously weak on survivability. The only survivability contributions you've got going on are a self defense/res toggle, a def/res siphon, a mez siphon, and a self heal. Fiery Aura has more survivability contribution than that, and */Regen provides a better structural design for a set that requires skill to perform with.

Even if it was decided that a siphon based survivability set were needed, I can assure you that it wouldn't be modeled after the existing Kinetics set. It would probably have a definite mez toggle, 2 def or res toggles to provide baseline survivability, 1 passive survivability power, 1 QoL power (re: Quickness/Temp Prot/Quick Recovery/etc), and then 4 click powers (likely 1 similar to Dark Regen, 1 similar to Eclipse for either def or res, 1 that's a clone of Repel, and 1 that's similar to Dark Consumption). Of course, the problem with all of this is that you quickly get into a situation where you're either bouncing god modes or you're alternating period of useless and badass.

If the devs were going to implement an click based survivability set, I would probably make it static benefits similar to what */Regen has. I actually did a write up for a Sonic Defense set that was built around the idea of a decent bit of baseline +res from passives and toggles augmented by +res click powers with varying uptimes and secondary benefits (+dam, +def, +regen, and none, respectively). There isn't really a decent precedent anywhere for the use of a buff/debuff set to provide anything remotely close to a structure for a personal survivability set.

I've never thought that the powerset itself was ever held in disdain by much of the playerbase. A large number of players that use Empathy are held in disdain because they simply "rock the aura" and never bother to buff, which does make them less than useful on teams towards the end of the game.

If you're having a problem finding teams, try advertising yourself as an "Empathy Defender that uses his/her buffs" rather than just "Empath" or "Emp/Rad". Try to emphasize the fact that you know that you have buffs, enjoy using them, know how to use them, and enjoy blasting when you're not having to support your team (I can't stand Defenders that don't use powers from their secondaries, much less use them). I can admit that I tend to avoid Empaths whenever I'm grabbing people for pugs but I also admit that I'm much more likely to grab an Empath that emphasizes the buffing role rather than the healing role.

Well, considering Castle said here, I'm expecting the set to have target -dam and self +dam as a secondary effect.

Now, something that might be very interesting if it did do (and you heard it here first) would be a powerset that is semi-combo based. What I'm thinking is that your tier 1 and 2 attacks (and possibly the Siphon lookalike) give you "Kinetic Points" that you can unleash with your other attacks to do other weird things with. Give the "Kinetic Points" a 10 second or so duration, and you get a pretty interesting mechanic that's something like the Rogue from WoW. With a system like this, you could build up with some weak attacks to unleash a massive AoE or provide yourself with a huge self buff or hit something really hard.

Now, the really cool thing about this is that we know it's possible to remove powers from a target or oneself because of Nectanebo's Curse Breaker, but, because it has to refer to the specific power effect and not the functionality of it (which is why there aren't any "remove stun" powers in game: the list would simply be too long), each of the "finisher" powers could be coded to check for any of these "points", total them up, do the power, and then cut them all off. Conversely, it could just be a really complicated mode growth system that simply goes through a series of modes that grow with each application of a non-finisher power that are then ended (and functionally sensed) with the finisher powers.

I'm really liking this idea. If by some strange chance this is what Kinetic Melee actually turns out being, I'm going to be very afraid, since this is pure supposition (albeit, really awesome sounding supposition).

I recall Castle saying that it was possible to do reverse knockback because it was simply reversing the vector of the knockback effect, similar to how they created knockup by turning the vector 90*. I remember him stating that reversing Repel such that it would act as something more akin to Attraction wasn't as simple because Repel operates in a much more complex manner than knockback. I would similarly love to see a reverse Repel simply because it allows for so many interesting effects (imagine being able to create an effect that sucks targets in to a targeted location to compact them for AoEs; Singularity from Mass Effect, anyone?).

The biggest problem with this that I can imagine is that, if you used the power in melee, you would yank the guy through and behind you. It's a delicate thing to balance. Personally, I think the TP Foe mechanism works better simply because you can place them outright rather than having to finagle with predicting knockback style travel distance.