Umbral

I could have told you that from the very beginning. Considering those enemies would have, at the very minimum, a 9% chance to hit you, each point of -defense functionally counts as 1.4 points of -defense thanks to acc mods, and every defense debuff is going to be hitting you 44% harder, it's rather obvious you're going to cascade both fast and hard. 5% -def from a +4 Cimeroran minion is going to be the equivalent of getting hit by 10.08% -def from an even level Cimeroran minion. Without DDR, you're pretty much paste, especially since one out of every 11 is going to hit you even when you're softcapped, and, since the alpha strike of a +4/x8 spawn with bosses is going to be comprised of roughly 14 attacks. The chance of a horrible defense debuff cascade not happening on the alpha strike is less than 33%, which doesn't bode well for the rest of the fight.

Considering I said "rather sure", which means it's purely an opinion and is by no means definite, combined with the assumption that you're a moderately well educated American (based on communication style and the pictures of yourself you've let be seen) combined with your internet Ron Paul Libertarian fanboyism all sums up to have me conclude what I've said about you.

The fact that, rather than trying to refute anything that I've said with any information beyond "I don't want your stinkin' safeguards!" (which, if you had lived in "lawless Ethiopia" you would most likely appreciate because you're no longer living in "lawless Ethiopia"; this I actually know because I've met and lived with people that spent their formative years in third world African nations with barely anything in the way of infrastructure, with a government that has devolved to the natural state of a Libertarian regime, and would much rather exist in a system that guarantees a basic minimum standard of living and quality of life), you're simply abandoning the discussion in disgust at the simple notion that I could be outing you for your both farcical and hypocritical beliefs rooted more in the rebellious nature of the immature, internet-crawling, fad obsessed teen psyche sure of his own invincibility than on the basis of any sound political, psychological, or sociological model is simply verifying to me that I'm in the right about you.

If you're unwilling to have your own history brought into question as to whether the system that brought you up and protected you so that you could attain your current stature and begin berating the very system that helped you into a position that would allow you to berate that system without much risk in the first place and the ability to capitalize on it without much risk if the system were ever brought down then I don't think you're really in a position to neutrally gauge the merits of the system in the first place.

The problem isn't always needing to be caught by the safety net that you're falling in to. It's also the needed to prevent other people from impinging on your rights. Without that, you wouldn't be given the ability to do much of anything because then you would just be subjected to the rule of the strong.

Plus, I'm rather sure you've never actually been in what would amount to a freefall into the abyss. When you or someone you are close to is actually subjected to a completely uncaring system that will allow them to continue falling forever, then I'm reasonably sure you're going to pull a complete about face on your "I'd rather fall into the abyss" comment. When a single mistake completely ruins your life, it's not a good environment to encourage any kind of risk taking.

Excellent job with the Libertarian pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstaps, I-don't-need-anyone's-help-but-my-own speech, though. It's complete economic and social bupkis without any bearing on a world outside of the sheltered conceptualizations of those that the current system has never failed before and thereby never had the chance to prove its merits to. Still, you're free to believe it and continue to believe it, no matter how complete wrong it may be, without fear of repercussion thanks to the very safeguards you so adamantly rail against.

Aside from the fact that it completely removes the "I earned it!" value from the costume pieces. You might as well argue that everything in the game should require half or less the effort that it used to. It's functionally the same thing as reducing the number of merits required, especially since I'm pretty sure the devs designed it as such that they're incredibly hard to get unless you do a few RWZ raid (where VG merits rain down on you from on high).

I support the presence of a more moderate and less oppressive regime than that being fostered by the leaders of Praetoria. Human societies operate most effectively when subjected to enlightened benevolent control designed to protect fundamental human rights and ensuring a secure enough safety net to encourage risktaking while simultaneously giving its peoples the freedoms to take these risks and enjoy those rights. Government control is not a binary value with yes and no correlating to good and bad, or vice versa. An abundance of control is just as bad as a shortage of it. It exists as a continuum with the extremes being bad and the stable, moderate areas being good.

It is my hope, and the reason for my enrollment in the Resistance, that by taking down the oppressive regime currently in control of Praetoria that it will be possible to institute a new government that is there to ensure the good of the populace without enforcing the good on populous.

Besides, as my brother within the Resistance, we both believe in freedom, and you can't believe in freedom without the belief in the freedom to believe what you want to believe (no matter how crazy, unrealistic, unsupported, or outright crazy it is; as long as you don't start trying to impinge on other people's rights and freedoms, of course).

Didn't it get released somewhere (possibly Herocon) that the devs had a system that would show you the locations of enemies on a map after a certain number of them have been defeated and everyone is going to get it automatically as a QoL improvement? I'm not sure, but I think it is supposed to be a GoRo release.

Eh, even on an AV build, I never think of any of the powers that I slot 6 piece Obliteration with as purely set mules. Whirling Sword and Slice will, within the confines of soloing AVs, act purely as set mules, but, within virtually every other situation you can imagine, the power will be quite useful.

I was really just trying to make a joke about the Obliteration set being my absolute favorite set in the game, though. It's got awesome acc, recharge, and damage along with what I consider to be the greatest suite of set bonuses you can find. That's right. I'm admitting it: I'm an Obliteration fanboi, and I'm proud of it.

Sorry for getting to this a bit late, but let's get to correcting your math.

First off, the game lies about how long it takes to animate powers. For reasons I don't feel like explaining right now (but has been explained by Arcanaville in a single massive thread and numeroues other in a number of other threads that I'm too lazy to find any of right now), powers actually take up a larger period of time than the real numbers indicate. The actual amount of time powers take to animate (also know as Arcanatime) is determined by this formula:

((roundUp(baseAnimation/.132)+1)*.132) = realAnimationTime

Secondly, powers don't begin recharging until they are finished animating. This means that Heal Other's base activation cycle (re: no enhancements) is actually ~6.508 seconds (2.508 second Arcanatime + 4 sec recharge). With the slotting you're suggesting, the cycle would be reduced to 4.508 seconds (2.508 sec animation + 2 sec recharge). At the recharge cap (400% +rech = .8 seconds), the cycle on the power would be 3.308 seconds.

Now, getting around to comparing Absorb Pain and Heal Other, it's quite easy to see which is better for outright healing: Absorb Pain. Even factoring in how long the recharge is, the fact that the both of them have the same animation time should immediately tell you that Absorb Pain is better if only because animation time wasn't originally accounted for (and still isn't in most places) in effect. The only things that supposedly mattered way back when were recharge and effect.

To mathematically prove it, let's check out the fundamental cases of comparison: no (0%) recharge, SO (95%) +rech, and hardcapped (400%) +rech. They both got an animation time of 2.508 seconds (which we learned earlier), so their operational cycles are equal to (2.508 + ((baseRech)/(1 + rech)).

Heal Other(0%): 4 sec recharge, 6.508 sec cycle
Heal Other(95%): 2.05 sec recharge, 4.559 sec cycle
Heal Other(400%): .8 sec recharge, 3.308 sec cycle
Absorb Pain(0%): 15 sec recharge, 17.508 sec cycle
Absorb Pain(95%): 7.69 sec recharge, 10.200 sec cycle
Absorb Pain(400%): 3 sec recharge, 5.508 sec cycle

Now, because +heal slotting is a percent increase, it doesn't really matter what value you give it: as long as they would receive the same healing enhancement, the ratios between their two effectivenesses will remain the same no matter the enhancement level. Level also doesn't matter because the effectiveness of the heal is simply a percent of base max hp. Healing Aura heals 13.2% of base max hp with each application and Absorb Pain heals 65.8%.

Heal Other(0%): 6.508 sec cycle, 13.2% heal/cycle, 2.03% heal/sec
Heal Other(95%): 4.559 sec cycle, 13.2% heal/cycle, 2.90% heal/sec
Heal Other(400%): 3.308 sec cycle, 13.2% heal/cycle, 3.99% heal/sec
Absorb Pain(0%): 17.508 sec cycle, 65.8% heal/cycle, 3.76% heal/sec
Absorb Pain(95%): 10.200 sec cycle, 65.8% heal/cycle, 6.45% heal/sec
Absorb Pain(400%): 5.508 sec cycle, 65.8% heal/cycle,11.95% heal/sec

So, at first glance, you can immediately see that Absorb Pain with no +rech slotting is nearly as effective as Heal Other at capped recharge. Further making Absorb Pain look better is the fact that it uses up substantially less animation time than Heal Other. You will spend less time animating Absorb Pain than Heal Other because it's a larger effect per animation. In mathematical terms, assuming you're using the power as soon as it recharges, animation time usages would look like this:

Heal Other(0%): 6.508 sec cycle, 2.508 sec animation, 38.5% animation time used up
Heal Other(95%): 4.559 sec cycle, 2.508 sec animation, 55.0% animation time used up
Heal Other(400%): 3.308 sec cycle, 2.508 sec animation, 75.8% animation time used up
Absorb Pain(0%): 17.508 sec cycle, 2.508 sec animation, 14.3% animation time used up
Absorb Pain(95%): 10.200 sec cycle, 2.508 sec animation, 24.6% animation time used up
Absorb Pain(400%): 5.508 sec cycle, 2.508 sec animation, 45.5% animation time used up

Once again, Absorb Pain is the obvious winner. Of course, this makes sense. Absorb Pain is supposed to kick the crap out of heal other. It has the side effect of significantly weakening the caster. Of course, Heal Other has one other big benefit over Absorb Pain that makes it useful: Heal Other is a smaller heal with a greater potential rate of use. Absorb Pain has a substantially longer recharge time so it's really only useful for healing a single target. Heal Other recharges fast enough that you can generally use it every other power (quite easily interposing it with Healing Aura and a blast). You can spread the healing love substantially easier than you can with Absorb Pain, which also has to deal with the issue of overheal which, with its ginormous healing ability, is rather common.

Either way, trying to claim mathematically that Heal Other and Absorb Pain are even remotely close to being within the same realm of effectiveness is an outright lie. Absorb Pain is worlds better than Heal Other. Of course, since heals aren't really all that necessary except for a few outlier situations, it's not like the choice between the two really matters. You can oftentimes get by perfectly fine without taking either so it's a moot point for most people.

You mean having at least one Obliteration set mule isn't one of your top priorities when designing an AV build? But... it's Obliteration. Every build is better with some Obliteration in it.

Well, I can think two different mentalities the devs could use for determining whether a costume piece or other cosmetic benefit merits placement within a booster pack or should just be freely given. The first is that if the costume piece was thought up specifically to be introduced as a booster pack combo piece (i.e. "I think the next booster should have orc costume pieces; Sexy one, make it happen") then the piece would be in a booster pack; otherwise it's free distribution. The second is that costume pieces are only given out freely under 2 conditions: either they are thematically aligned from either a visual or design standpoint with a specific in-game story arc or zone (i.e. Roman and Vanguard costumes), or they are assumed to be so neutral in theme as to be impossible to be put into a booster pack (i.e. Ulterior). Honestly, it could just as easily be a combination of the both insofar as it's an arbitrary decision on the part of the devs using both assignment mentalities.

Either way, I doubt the devs will ever stop giving us issues that doesn't involve some "free" costume stuff, even if it is just overflow that the Sexy one has lying around.

I would probably keep at least one or the other if possible. Slice is nice to keep, especially if you took it at a low level, because it allows you to have another attack at low exemping levels (re: Positron), but Whirling Sword is the better attack overall, so which to keep is debatable. Once you get enough recharge to actually run a decent attack string though, you can probably bring them both back in thanks to being able to get rid of other powers that you no longer need to use.

We still get a fair share of free costume pieces with the basic price of subscription. Depending on your view of it, in I16, we got a boatload of new "costume pieces" in the form of power colorization/customization. In I15, we got the Ulterior and Vines costume sets. In I14, female widows got buttcapes. I13 gave us a number of other costume pieces and costume sets as well.

You can't say that the devs haven't continued to give out free costume pieces and character customization options for the price of your basic subscription without having it be an outright lie. We're still getting them for free. We're just getting the option to buy more costume pieces (along with a bunch of other stuff) for free as well.

Well, both Slice and Whirling Sword are AoE powers specifically because they affect an area and can hit multiple targets (which is actually a better descriptor of AoE than "affects an area" because even hitting a single target is affecting an area, albeit a small one). Personally, I'd get both Slice and Whirling Sword while leveling up, if only because it's a more efficient leveling mechanism to kill more targets at once. Of course, the fact that you're running at a low level (and pre-IOs to boot) and don't have much in the way of +rech to let you have a fully rounded attack string without a large number of attacks is a big reason to have more attacks.

I understand this rather well. It's why I haven't stated anything about how ignoring Dark Blast's tohit debuff (or other secondary blasts) would contribute to additional survivability. The problem with assuming that your Z would be mitigated in the same manner under conditions wherein no survivability contributors outside of the Defender's primary powers are present as under conditions in which there are preexisting survivability contributors (such as another Defender's primary or a Scrapper's secondary being present) is fundamentally flawed. Adding 25% +def to a situation in which no +def is present would generate a twofold increase in survivability (getting hit 25% of the time rather than 50% of the time). Adding 25% +def to a situation in which 20% +def is present would, instead, generate a sixfold increase in survivability (getting hit 5% of the time, rather than 30% of the time). This is why I suggested simply ignoring them completely (it might have seemed as if I was attempting to be snarky) and adding an addendum to the analysis to tell anyone checking them out the specific manner in which preexisting survivability mechanisms would affect the model.

Yet no matter how much +def you add, you're not going to be mitigating any more damage. The players are already at the softcap so giving them more +def would be pointless. Assuming that no value is ever going to be at the point of functional saturation (i.e. soft or hardcap) is a fine assumption, especially considering the massive complexity involved in such models. All it requires is simply admitting that you're admitting as much and that, in a specific list of situations, you're going to get substantially less than what is listed.

Well, survivability models have already been done a number of times, accounting for pretty much everything possible. The only difference is that you're attempting to quantify Defender contributive survivability rather than personal survivability (which are the only comparisons I've seen, to date). Arcanaville has done a number of them for the Scrapper Secondary sets, along with other, and my experiences reading through and critiquing those, as well as calculating contributive defense values for various defender powersets and combination in an attempt to determine what would be effective, have taught me a lot about how to view survivability comparisons.

I've actually given you all the information you would need to use the model that I would operate off of. The only problem is putting in the time to actually calculate it (when finals are over later this week and I have more freetime, I might just start crunching some numbers to amuse myself). I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't try to design a model. I'm simply telling you that you it would behoove you to build your model back up to account for all of the problems I've brought up. You don't have to use mine (though the variable increased time frame is something of a standard for most of the numbercrunchers because it's a more accurate and useful metric), but it should still account for what I've brought up.

For the formula I gave you, you would simply need to run the numbers to determine what the comparative offense and defense values, averaged over time, would be. There are still some hard to quantify variables left over, such as healing, which, since it acts as a flat value based upon the percent of base caster HP, scales in an additive manner, and -dam, which is resisted by a target's base increased damage resistance (i.e. pre-debuff, post buff) for each damage type (which means you will rarely get the full benefit of -dam, especially since enemies have a tendency to resist damage types that they deal themselves), but, overall, it's a rather accurate model to operate off of.

I've actually met quite a large number of people that didn't like the idea of City of Heroes initially because it was about super heroes. When I convinced them to start checking out the gameplay, story arcs, and number crunchery (yes, the fact that CoX is actually substantially more complex to crunch numbers for than WoW was actually a drawing point for several of my friends; those who didn't care appreciated the fact that it was simple just to tell them what to do) they were actually intrigued enough to try leveling a couple of characters. CoX isn't just about super heroes. It's a game that uses super heroes and super powers to operate and, because of that, it's important to play up the game attribute to many people, especially those that are genre-biased or -neutral.

Well, I would probably argue, for all the same reasons and a few more, that Quickness is balanced. Quickness provides only slightly less recharge than completely unslotted Hasten for no endurance cost whatsover and at all times, while simultaneously increasing movement speed (a QoL improvement) and resistance to -move and -rech debuffs (an improvement to situational stability of the character). It provides 44.7% of the benefit of slotted Hasten (44.75% +rech) while costing 2 power slots less and being completely unaffected by state changes (dieing and resurrecting, -rech debuffs, etc). The cost in power choices are functionally the same, but Quickness comes out rather far ahead in terms of required additional slotting (none v. 2) and permanence, not to mention the additional QoL value (which is probably the only thing making it arguably "better" and thereby more "powerful" than a pool power). I'd argue that it's actually reasonably well balanced, though, I don't think it would be untoward to increase the +rech by a small amount (most likely 5-10%) in order to account for its presence in an AT power set, but not much more.

It's not an issue of the length of the time frame. The issue I have is that you feel to constrain the model to a single specific time frame that you arbitrarily picked out for every power and suite of powers. Very few powers actually fit nicely into a 30 second time frame. How would you adjudicate a power that was on a 12 second cycle (1 second activation, 8 second recharge, 50% penalty for situational use). Would it be use 3 times or 2 times? Similarly, this completely ignores the fact that, when fighting higher level foes, it takes longer to kill your opponents that it would otherwise. Players are dealing less damage (forcing you to extend the time frame that damage needs to be mitigated for) and enemies are doing more (forcing the intensity of the time frame to be expanded).

In order to correct for all of these inaccuracies you would have to functionally do away with the arbitrary assignments of difficulty because they are intrinsically tied to the underlying buff and debuff values that the Defender is generating. Assigning 100 means nothing when everything is a multiplicative modifier to the base value. You might as well assign it the value "kumquat" for all the good it's doing. The important value isn't the end value that the total defender effectiveness modifier is generating in combination with your arbitrary assignment. The important values are the modifier that the Defender is generating upon the arbitrary value in the first place and the amount of time that the Defender consumes achieving that multiplier.

Rather than using "Blast Ratio", it would instead be better to give every power an independent time frame in which to operate under to determine a more accurate gauge of use rather than how they fit within an arbitrary 30 second window that ignores animation time requirements of long duration buffs (functionally ignoring the fact that they have durations in the first place). The added benefit of this is that you don't have the flimsy tool of "Blast Ratio" and the arbitrary need to attain a specific ratio within the model for whatever purpose. Some sets need more animation time to be effective within the confines of a team/solo role (Force Field, Empathy). Others need the same amount of time both within and without a team (Dark Miasma, Radiation). How some sets operate differently within a team and without is less a question of attempting to attain a specific arbitrary ratio of actions and more the process of identifying the new suite of powers that the defender would be using to successfully solo. A Force Field Defender is going to spend a lot less time animating in either situation than an Empathy Defender so it's rather pointless to attempt to enforce the same restrictions on both of them.

Your end value should look much more like this:

baseDamage and baseTime don't matter whatsoever since they're arbitrary values in the first place, so you might as well assume they are equal to 1, as in "1 amount of damage that is incoming in 1 period of time that matters". This means that you'd get something more like...

Decreasing defense (by increasing survivability) would increase the size of the variable at the top of the equation, generating a higher end number. Increasing offense (by increasing the damage) would decrease the size of the variable at the bottom of the equation, generating a higher end number. Then you would compare this value, along with the others gained by doing the same calculations for the full suite of desired comparisons (team size, level differences), and the total amount of time it would take according to percent usage of overall animation time to achieve this level of survivability with those of the other sets.

Of course, there are still problems that you would have to deal with, no matter what metric you use for comparison. How do you deal with the potential for preexisting defenses in other ATs? You're not going to be running with just Blasters, Defenders, and Controllers below level 41 that haven't taken the Fighting, Leadership, Leaping, Flight, Stealth, Medicine, Speed, or Fitness pools (all of which have powers that generate different values in the end value by if being factored in). People have this strange habit of regularly taking powers outside of Teleportation and Presence (and the exclusion of Presence is only based on the fact that, although present in the last 2 powers of those pools, the contributive value is incredibly low thanks to poor durations, low mag, and high animation times that would make not using them more beneficial). It's probably best to simply assume that no one is going to have any of these abilities and declare that the presence of certain attributes (damage recovery not granted by the Defender set being examined) would generate a decreased functional value (because additional damage recovery diminishes in a functional comparison), others (defense, resist) would generate an increase (because they operate by decreasing a base value by a percent quantity to arrive at incoming damage) until softcap is reached (at which point they ignore the value in the first place), and others (AoE mez) are functionally ignored (because putting another mag 3 of hold on a held target doesn't do anything but look pretty).

The problem with doing as such is that buffs still drop off in the middle of fights and need to be applied. You can't simply assume that 30 seconds is all the time you need to analyze for. If you're simply assuming an arbitrary time frame of 30 seconds and simply normalizing everything to that specific time frame, you're just adding a rather pointless step to the variable time frame that is used for each power in question because it's all being analyzed on a percent scale anyway: rather than just giving the percentage, you're converting it into a percent of the 30 second arbitrary time frame.

I'm disagreeing with your methods of generating a metric as well as metric of comparison as a whole because it ignores the fact that every method of contributed survivability operates upon the total survivability in a multiplicative manner rather than an additive manner. Increasing damage by 25% increases survivability by 20% (due to shortening the time that the fight will last; it's actually slightly more because the magnitude in which you've increased damage that overcomes enemy regen is actually higher than 20%), but increasing damage by another 25% doesn't increase survivability by another 20%. The sum of the two benefits are such that it only increases survivability by 33%: (1/(1 + .25)) = .75; (1/(1 + .25 + .25)) = .67.

In your Radiation model, you summed the two values (assuming that they were the only function being added), rather than realizing that the two different sources of +dam would actually operate in a diminishing manner as a mechanism in which they increase survivability.

I was giving you an example of a model that you could adopt that would be both more comprehensible and more accurate. In that model, because the time frame is an arbitrary assumption based on how long it would take the enemy group to defeat you, the debuff functionally decreases in effect thanks to the lower percent of total targets that it is affecting.

As I said before, your math and assumptions, and thusly your model, are wrong. Shortening the fight doesn't increase survivability in an additive manner. It increases it in a diminishing multiplicative manner.

Just look at the same page I linked before. On that page are lists that describe the increased effect that higher level enemies have on lower level targets (as well as the increased NPC chances to hit against enemies of different levels, though more information on that specific variable is available at the bottom of the page here). Enemies that are one level higher would be 10% more accurate (thanks to having a level based AccMod of 1.1) and deal 11% more damage (thanks to the 1.11 purple patch modifier to effects). This means that a +1 enemy would deal (1.1 * 1.11) = 1.221 times the damage that an even level enemy would deal. +2 would be (1.2 * 1.22) = 1.464. +3 would be (1.3 * 1.33) = 1.729. +4 would be 2.016. +5 would be (1.5 * 1.55) = 2.325. Anything that is higher level, aside from being virtually unkillable thanks to the crippling reduction in player effectiveness, would need to be modified to account for the fact that individuals more than 5 levels above their target's level gain a tohit bonus along with an accuracy bonus, though it's not like you're attempting to do so into such a range.

Even so, I still think that it would be a much more appropriate thing to use the increases in damage to account for a shrinking of the survivability timetable rather than a flat increase in target difficulty. Using the arbitrary time frame assumes that you're going to be in the fight for 30 seconds, no longer, no more, rather than realizing that the length of the fight itself is variable.

That'd probably work, though it's doubtful they'd do it without doing the same to all the pools. An ST confuse would be an interesting addition to the set.

Okay, here's your first problem. Not every set operates on what amounts to a 30 second survivability cycle. In fact, just look at any of the shield power sets (FF, Cold, Thermal, Sonic). You can't assume that the Defender is going to reapply all shields every 30 seconds when the shields last 3 minutes. It would be much better to base the survivability model not off of an arbitrary time frame, but rather off of a variable time frame that accounts for increased offensive capabilities (which would shorten the period of time the players are exposed to danger) and increased survivability capabilities (which would lengthen the period of time before anyone starts dieing).

Essentially, survivability would be equal to (base time to death) / (increased offensive capability) * (increased survivability) and powersets would be compared based off of these numbers: high would be better than low because the players are being exposed to less damage. Base time to death could honestly be any arbitrary assigned value because the defender benefits are simply factors associated with it. You might as well just assume a base time to death of 1, meaning 1 period of time that it would take all enemies to kill them, and then simply reduce the contributions of ST debuffs to account for the fact that only a single target is affected (a power that increases survivability by 20% against a single target would be reduced to a 10% increase against 2 targets).

With this model, you would also simply determine, based off of assumed usage based on power cycles and need, the percent of any arbitrary time frame that the Defender would spend using its primary powers to support. A high number would mean that the defender has substantially less time to spend doing anything except for using its primary powers. A low number means that the defender would be spending substantially less time doing so.

For example, Force Fields, activating just Repulsion Bomb, Deflection Shield, and Insulation Shield would have a primary time usage of when on a team of 5. 4 applications, each taking 2.244 seconds, every 240 seconds of both Deflection Shield and Insulation Shield would use up 7.48%. One application of Repulsion Bomb every 21.4 seconds (3.3 animation time, 18.1 second recharge assuming 66% +rech enhancement) would equate to 15.4%. The total time usage would then be 22.88%.

If you really wanted to get complicated, you could then take the remaining percentage of time that the Defender spends doing other things, multiply it by the offensive advantages granted by the primary powerset and determine the exact offensive benefit that the Defender contributes as well (as a function of 1 Defender; 1 being what the Defender would do if it spent all of its time attacking), giving the powers an offensive contribution score and a survivability contribution score.

No matter if you adopt the model I suggested earlier or continue using your own, the question of what level variance would do to survivability is actually well known and easy to account for. Check up on the Purple Patch. Because enemies that are higher level than the players they are engaged with have greater effects from their powers, greater chance to hit with their powers, and are affected less by powers of players, you can actually determine, quite easily, what the comparative difficulty of fighting those targets is, though not through some arbitrary increase to whatever value you're arbitrarily assigning them.

With your model, buffs and debuffs are treated exactly the same no matter the level of the enemies you are fighting with. Because of the purple patch, buffs are actually substantially better because those values are never reduced in effect. While the debuffs of a Radiation Defender would be drastically reduced in effect against a +4 target (reduced in effect by 52%), the buffs of a Force Field Defender would still be at their full strength. In order to make it a useful model, you would need to modify downwards every debuff based set when used against higher level targets based exclusively off of the Purple Patch. Of course, this is completely ignoring the issue of native debuff resistances that most NPCs have. Ignoring anything not within the scope of "normal" teaming situations, all Lieutenants and Bosses have native tohit debuff resistance that would need to be accounted for.

But the OP isn't referring to the having to take Provoke. He's referring to the fact that he has to take either an ST Taunt effect or an AoE Taunt effect. It doesn't matter that he could just as easily take Challenge as Provoke. Both of them are Taunt powers.

What in the world are you talking about? It's impossible to skip Challenge and Provoke. Also, presence is a pool power, not an APP or PPP, which it looks like you think it is, considering your comment about a "44 power".

The OP is disturbed by the fact that, in order to gain the ability to intimidate a target, he first has to have the ability to taunt either multiple targets or a single target. I'd actually support this for PvE, but I'm not sure how it would operate with PvP since you're essentially giving a hard to resist mez effect to everyone without much in the way of cost.

You can't use an example of a divergent issue in an individual to determine what "normal" is. Individuals with Asperger's syndrome are, by definition, not normal. Of course, Piaget would agree with you insofar as the ability to view things from an internal standpoint develops before the ability to perceive from an external standpoint (and Asperger's isn't so much the lack of development of empathy insomuch as the retarded development of it). However, since self-awareness and empathy are neither mutually exclusive, binary attributes (as evidenced by the fact that some people are more self aware or empathic than others) or exclusive to humans (which are oftentimes considered to be the only true intelligent beings), it's hard to argue that the exclusive presence of one or the other is the primary hallmark of intelligence.

Oh, I was always the small kid growing up, but I didn't get picked on much. People soon learned that I don't consider it anything dirty fighting when a guy who has a foot on me and is twice my weight tries to push me around. It helps that I've actually had a lot of experience with grappling so that I actually know how to take out big guys.

The big reason that I get mistaken for a girl is that I have long hair. Edward Elric (from FMA) looks disturbingly similar to me, which is one of the reasons why I have him as my avatar. I imagine that he would be mistaken for a girl plenty often if females in anime had cup sizes below D.