Umbral

It's actually fairly easy to account for Fearsome Stare. I generally treat it exclusively as a tohit debuff, though it's not difficult to apply enemy rank differentiation (i.e. 1 out of every 10 enemies wouldn't be affected by it because you generally get 6 minions, 3 lts, and 1 boss in a 10 enemy mob) and then apply the fear affect as well (cut DPS roughly in half further reduced by the lower acc).

The reason why I discount LR is simply because it's only really a useful power against hard targets like AVs, GMs, and so forth. The -rech and -spd doesn't really do much in the way of increasing kill speed or decreasing risk particularly because enemies normally have more attacks than they're using already so it doesn't really inhibit them. The powers I would choose to ignore were those that are useful only for a small subset of encounters and largely useless for a majority of play.

It requires about as much work as determining the potency of different melee attack sets under different recharge assumptions, so it's not that much more, especially since you don't really have to deal with the entire issue of determining the attack strings in the first place.

I only did it for a couple powersets (I think it was Emp and FF), though I've still got the model so I could potentially do it for more. FF actually made out quite well, but a lot of that is because I actually placed a good deal of importance on animation time consumption, which FF wins out quite handily on, not to mention the fact that it also manages ~7.5% more +def than Cold does (which, when combined with Maneuvers, means that FF is contributing roughly 2.5 times the pure mitigation that Cold provides via defense). The model still makes a lot of assumptions (such as number of targets affected by AoEs) that prevent it from being perfectly accurate, but it's fit with most of my observations about the sets I've played.

I'm not smoking anything. I doubt the devs would provide a dark attack set without some kind of life drain type attack, and it's not like Life Drain is particularly stunning in that respect. It's a 10% heal on a 15 second recharge and blasters don't have the native mitigation or high enough hit points to make that a particularly impressive value. The same thing applies to Dark Regen: my version quadruples the recharge time. A self-heal on a blaster seems impressive until you realize exactly how little it will actually do.

Even so, I'm not entirely married to the Blaster variant of Dark Regen being a self heal: it could just as easily be a +regen power (with -regen debuff; designed along the same lines as Drain Psyche with damage rather than +recov and -recov), though personally I feel that a radial stacking +regen buff is actually stronger than a straight up self heal because it is proactive rather than reactive. With any real personal survivability mechanisms, an in combat heal is going to be a lot less useful the people give it credit for.

It wasn't as extreme as you might think. I did some pretty comprehensive math for the Blaster primaries and that was worse because I forced myself to account for Defiance accurately rather than going with an arbitrary assumption of average Defiance contribution (even worse for Sonic Blast /shudder).

There are a bunch of permutations, but it's honestly not all that difficult. The contribution number I used was simply the factor by which the powerset decreased risk (survival contribution / offensive contribution, where survival contribution is the factor by which the set allows the team to survive longer and offensive contribution is the factor by which the set decreases fight duration). I had to ignore some things mainly because they were a bit too situational (like Lingering Radiation), but it was remarkably straightforward to determine the overall contributions. The most complicated part was simply deriving assumptions for team makeup (I generally assumed a teammates to be Blasters because they're the most "team neutral").

Tell that to Energize. Or Energy Drain. Or Unyielding.

Castle is actually more likely to add functionality to a power than he is to remove existing functionality. He's as much as said it. There's also the issue that you can model the contribution of support sets just as easily as you can for mitigation sets (I've done it before on several occasions). Just because someone hasn't created a spreadsheet for it doesn't mean that it's not possible.

You can now add attachments to global mail. If you want to send one of your other characters something, you simply attach it to an email, email it to your global name, and then claim it on a different character.

Well, the real thing that protects non-FA/DA chars from KB isn't the actual KB prot: it's the KB resist. The 10000% KB/KU resist would allow you to get away without any KB prot except in the most extreme cases (and, even then, you'd be able to get away with just .1 mag).

Weighing in on the topic myself, I think the prevalence of KB/KU in the game makes the lack of protection in DA and FA rather substantial and it's not like either powerset really gets something to make up for it. If a set like SD is allowed to get away with permanent KB prot while getting everything else at its disposal, I would expect that there is decent grounds for FA and DA to get some KB prot and resist somewhere (probably add it straight to Obsidian Shield and either Plasma Shield or Burn).

I'd normally agree with you, but Shadow Meld has me torn. Is it really worth it to get more than 25% +def to any defense when you've got insta-softcap waiting right there for you along with MoG? I guess it really depends on whether you'd be getting Shadow Meld or not. If you aren't, then go with the melee defense since it's so much more useful to a Scrap. If you are, I'd go with the more even keeled build.

Try Hurdle + Ninja Run instead. You'll get a bit faster travel over distances and a bit more height. When you need to really clear tall obstacles, you could buy the Good v. Evil in-game item pack for the Jump Pack which lets you jump in mid-air while it's on and it lasts long enough for you to get around almost anything you might need to (the only zone I've ever not had it last long enough was the Shadow Shard, which should tell you something).

No, there hasn't been. Sprint has been increased in speed a bit, but it's not particularly huge.

From DP, you're going to want everything with the possible exception of Suppressive Fire, which you should only take if you really want the hold/stun (it's a stun unless you have an ammo toggle on). Everything else is largely useful (especially HoB). Since you're DP/*, I would avoid the ST attacks in MM simply because the redraw on DP is long (but stylish), but the AoEs will contribute nicely, especially since you're going to be dancing in and out of melee to use HoB and the rest of your attacks.

The current incarnation of defiance works rather simply. First off, you can use the first two tier powers from your primary and the first tier power from your secondary even when mezzed. Secondly, all of your non-pool attacks (i.e. primary and secondary only) provide a +dam buff based on their animation time and what type of power they are: ST attacks provide the most, AoEs provide the least. This +dam buff lasts for 7 seconds after you finish activating the power. With a decent ST attack string, you'll generally manage between 30-40% +dam from Defiance alone.

I expect that Blasters would get BU for almost the exact same reason that Stalkers got BU rather than Soul Drain: they're not classes that stay in fights particularly long and Soul Drain is a power that's only useful if you use it when surrounded by large numbers of enemies and give them enough time to get a full volley off on you. Even if you stealthed in for it, Soul Drain would end up killing a vast majority of Blasters than it actually helped.

It might happen sooner than you think. Synapse has commented on various problems with proliferating the various Dark sets so the devs have put at least some thought into it. Considering how few blast sets have yet to be proliferated to Blasters, I would expect Dark Blast and Dark Manipulation to be the next logical proliferation, though I can tell you with a strong sense of security that Dark Blast wouldn't be proliferated as is. One of the things that Synapse commented on about how proliferating Dark Blast was that it would require a good deal of tweaking to be turned into a viable Blaster set.

I doubt Dark Consumption would be the tier 9 simply because Consume (which is now stronger than Dark Consumption) is the Fire Manipulation tier 6 power. I would expect either a heavy hitter or an AoE control power in the tier 9 slot and Dark Consumption to be made available at one of tiers 6-8.

My personal set up for Dark Manip looks like this:

1. New Power - Clone of Ice Manip Chilblain except for neg dmg and 7.5% -tohit for 11.8 secs
2. Shadow Punch - 1.96 nrg/sma base damage scalar, 5.63% -tohit for 9.9 secs
3. Death Shroud - Clone of Fire Manip Blazing Aura except for neg dmg (potential increase to 20' radius as well)
4. Smite - 2.6 nrg/sma base damage scalar, 5.63% -tohit for 14.8 secs
5. Build Up
6. Touch of Fear - Direct clone of Scrapper version
7. Dark Consumption - Clone of Consume except for neg dmg
8. Dark Regeneration - Clone of Scrapper version except for 120 sec recharge
9. Dark Pit (or new name) - 40 sec recharge, 15.9 sec duration mag 2 stun, 10' radius PbAoE

Of course, the design here is meant to dovetail in with my tweaked version of Dark Blast (designed with damage in mind; note the addition of Aim, a viable tier 3 ST blast and Dark Obliteration):

Dark Blast -

1. Dark Blast - 1 sec animation, 1 neg base scalar damage, 5.63% -tohit for 6 secs, 5.2 end, 4 sec recharge
2. Gloom - 1.67 sec animation, 8 * .22 neg base scalar over 3.6 secs, 5.63% -tohit for 10 secs, 8.528 end, 8 sec recharge
3. Moonbeam
4. Aim
5. Dark Obliteration - 1 sec cast, .9 neg base scalar damage, 5.63% -tohit for 10 secs, 80' range, 15' radius, 16 targets max, 15.184 end cost, 16 sec recharge
6. Torrent
7. New Power - 1.848 sec animation, 2.2 base scalar damage, 10 sec recharge, 10.4 end cost
8. Life Drain
9. Black Star

It's not a big deal except for the fact that the set is losing something that is functionally a standard of the design, it doesn't get anything special to compensate for the lack of it (unless you honestly believe that the slightly higher base acc in the attack really counteracts the loss of the spike damage capability), and there is no feasible reason why it shouldn't be there. There isn't any reason why the set couldn't be given Aim functionality.

Of course, the entire counter-argument of "just grab BU from your secondary" doesn't really mean much anyway. BU doesn't simply replace Aim, and one of the big reasons to grab both of them is to have them stack (or put them on alternating cycles). You'll virtually never find a build with the option to take both that only takes one because they're both useful and powerful. Telling a Blaster to take BU is like telling a Scrapper to take their mez toggle: it's going to happen anyway if they've got one. The presence of a similar power in most secondaries isn't a reason for the set to not have Aim especially when there is no reason within the design or numbers of the set why it shouldn't.

Then you'd be paying end to access something you're getting right now for free. They could make the toggles cost something and increase the swap ammo secondary effects to compensate but then you're paying endurance simply to access the schtick of the set, which is the ability to change you secondary effects. It still doesn't address the whole "lack of Aim" problem either. Best solution is to simply leave the ammos where they are and to provide the set with burst damage functionality like it should have gotten from the beginning (provide [Swap Ammo] with a 90 second recharge, 10 sec duration, 62.5% +dam buff; problem solved).

Dark Blast isn't available to Blasters so the lack of Aim in the set isn't really incredible (BU/Aim's primary utility is in generating a powerful alpha strike to mitigate incoming damage by defeating a majority of foes early on in the fight). AR suffers from problems far greater than a simple lack of Aim, though I'm more than sure that it would be a problem were the rest of the set anywhere near the same design as the other blast sets (and remember that DP is designed in the same mold as every other blast set out there with the sole exception of coughing up Aim for Swap Ammo).

The only problem with the lack of Aim or an Aim equivalent it is that there is no practical reason why Dual Pistols shouldn't have Aim. Swap Ammo is no longer the power that actually alters what ammo you're using like it did in beta so there is no need for the set to lose an otherwise baseline functionality, especially since that functionality confers no greater benefit than any other set gets automatically (variable debuffs and damage types are balanced by lower overall power of those effects). It is both entirely possible and almost assuredly quite simple for the devs to simply turn Swap Ammo back into a "normal" power as an explicit clone for Aim while still granting the ammo toggles as they already stand: the animation for the original Swap Ammo still exists and the actual Swap Ammo power still exists in game. With a few keystrokes, the devs could get rid of the silly notion that somehow Dual Pistols is somehow getting something for losing Aim (which is isn't).

Power Siphon is stronger over time than Soul Drain. If you think Soul Drain is weak

Remember when you look at SS and KM (or any two powersets) and compare the two that you shouldn't compare a single power to a single power. Sure, Rage is stronger than Power Siphon, but KM isn't hobbled with completely useless tier 1 and 2 attacks.

Well, KM doesn't drain their damage even more. It allows you to absorb the damage that you're already pulling out of them with your attacks.

Say what?

At level 50, Dual Wield deals a baseline of 82.58 damage (57.81 lethal and 24.77 ammo variant). The incendiary DoT provides an additional 16.7 damage (sum of 7.07 * .8 ^ n, where n is each integer from 1 to 4). Unless you consider 20% more damage (because it's enhanced by all of the same things that buff your baseline damage) "not much", you have no clue what you're talking about. It's similar for the other attacks such Empty Clips (56.92 base damage, 13.8 bonus damage for 24% more damage with incendiary on), Bullet Rain (62.52 base damage, 13.8 bonus damage for 22% more damage), Executioner's Shot (132.63 base damage, 24.96 bonus damage for 18% more damage), and Hail of Bullets (204.48 base average damage, 33.6 bonus damage for 16% more damage). The only attack that doesn't benefit from incendiary ammo's DoT is Pistols, and it doesn't get anything except for the damage type alteration for any ammo type. Incendiary Ammo adds a massive amount of damage, especially for your AoEs.

As to the damage type changing being more useful than the damage itself, that's just as much of a joke. The damage type alteration is too small to have any meaningful effect upon the performance of the set (it's only 30% of your total damage that changes). Even against enemies that heavily resist one type of damage and are weak to another (like CoT behemoths with their 20% resistance to fire and 20% weakness to cold), it's still better to use incendiary ammo for the bonus damage than it is to use cryo ammo for the damage type advantage:

Assume that incendiary ammo contributes roughly 20% more damage from the DoT. A 100 damage attack with cryo ammo is going to deal 70 lethal damage and 30 cold damage. The same attack with incendiary ammo would deal 70 lethal damage and 50 fire damage. Applying resistance and weakness, the total damage on the two attacks would be 106 for cryo ammo (70 + 30 * 1.2) and 110 for incendiary ammo(70 + 50 * .8). The ammo type advantage simply doesn't exist. The only real difference in the performance of the various ammo types is simply in the secondary effect of the powers themselves. For damage, none of the other ammos beat incendiary ammo, even in situations that are good for them and bad for incendiary.

The problem with making one handed versions of those is that the base weapons in question are both two-handed weapons. If you attempt to "shrink" them into smaller versions, you would need entirely new animations to make them look right.

The problem with simply providing an "empty hand" option for Dual Blades and Dual Pistols is the same: you would need new animations. How are you going to explain your single pistol user's apparent need to shake his fist at his targets, or the fact that your empty hand is still somehow emitting projectiles and spent rounds even though there isn't a gun in that hand. In order to make a single pistol a viable option, the devs would need to create entirely new animations that make sense for having only a single pistol (and, as BAB has told us, you don't get to have both weapon customization and power customization so it's not possible to do that without some codescrewery).

Brutes get way more mileage out of resist sets overall thanks to their higher resistance cap. That's one of the primary reasons why you'll see so many more */elec Brutes than Scrappers. Another big reason is that Lightning Reflexes and Power Sink are a massive boon to Brutes attempting to push their Fury as high as possible (never run out of end and get your attacks back faster). Something else to consider is that while Lightning Field can't crit, it can benefit from Fury, which means that Brutes will be getting more out of it than Scrappers will. Similarly, Brutes have higher hp so that Energize gives a bigger heal to Brutes than it does to Scrappers.

All in all, elec is a nice set for Scrappers, but it's not nearly as nice for Scrappers as it is for Brutes or Tankers.

I think a lot of the problem with the perception of FF has to do with the fact that, unlike almost every other defender set in existence, you're going to be spending a vast majority of your time using your secondary powers (or not doing anything at all). This means that much of your perceptions of the set are going to hinge on the effectiveness of your secondary (because that's what you're seeing the direct effects of for a majority of the time). My FF/* was a */Sonic so, while I didn't get to deal all that much damage thanks to being a Defender, I got to see enemy groups melt away after I dropped some -res loving because I was still supporting as I was blasting. Your FF/* is an */Elec, which means that you're dealing with crappy damage thanks to the pitiful Defender scalar coupled with the mediocrity of */Elec's damage and further compounded by the large scale uselessness of -end and -recov. If you had taken a "better" blast set (like Dark, Sonic, Archery, or Ice), you likely would have had a substantially better time because you would actually be generating real benefits for your team by blasting away rather than feeling like you were contributing almost nothing.

Not sure where the build you posted is, but Consume is going to provide more endurance than Physical Perfection will. Time for maths!

2 Slotted Physical Perfection (83.32%) is going to provide .38 end/sec. The Perf Shifter proc will add an extra .2 end/sec. You'll get a total of .58 end/sec from Perf Shifter.

In a mid-tier IO build (which I'm assuming it's fair to assume since I'm including the Perf Shifter proc for Phys Perf) I'm going to assume that Consume has 95% +rech slotting and roughly 115% global recharge (including Hasten) so that the recharge time is only ~58 seconds and the total cycle time is a nice round 60 seconds. With slotting any +recov (which is likely since you probably want to throw an Obliteration 6 piece in Consume rather than a 6 piece Perf Shifter or 6 piece Eff Adapter because the set bonuses are better) and only a single target around, you're going to get .33 end/sec (20 end/60 sec = .33 end/sec from the +end; .5 * 1.67 * 15 / 60 = .021 end/sec from the +rec; .95 * (.33 + .02) ). With one additional target, you're going to net twice that (.66 end/sec), and so on. The only time that Phys Perf will actually be better is if you don't slot Consume with any end mod and only have a single target around.

If you want to go AV soloing, slot Consume with some Perf Shifter and get more from that single target than you would have from Perf Shifter. If you want to simply not run out of end while you turn your enemies into some nice ash for the potted plants you thoughtfully spared while you rampaged through the office building, you'll be getting way more than Physical Perfection would ever provide.

TL: DR version
Consume is now better than Dark Consumption. Physical Perfection is worse than Quick Recovery. Dark Consumption has long been known to be better for your blue bar than Quick Recovery. QED: Consume is better than Physical Perfection.

You would have a problem getting rid of Physical Perfection? Why? Consume and Healing Flames pretty much make Physical Perfection completely redundant. I can see problems getting rid of Blazing Aura (though I'm not entirely sure why that's even close to being on the chopping block), but Physical Perfection is pretty easy to get rid of when you're using a set that already brings massive damage recovery and endurance assistance to bear.

I would hardly call that "quite a few", especially considering just how little effect the Taunt IO change actually had and how few powers were actually hit. Castle has pretty much come out to say that it would take a lot for him removes IO sets from powers: the Sprint/Hurdle issue was to prevent permanent stealthing and the Taunt set issue was one of removing the ability to slot taunt IO sets in taunt auras to prevent your from hitting yourself with damage procs with some taunt auras (and then applying the same restriction to all taunt auras to prevent one set from having unfair advantages over others). Those issues aren't anywhere close to the same as "well, I want to turn an ST control power into an AoE control power".

And yet the devs haven't done anything to reduce super high mag KB down to knockdown and have shown no inclination to. Enough people like the super high mag KB and the problems of creating an option that allows the players that currently like the power to not have the power completely ruined for them are big enough obstacle that the devs haven't done anything like this.

I'm curious why you're even going on this still especially since Force Bolt isn't an especially bad power within the set. If the devs had no problem with such large scale revisions to a power (changing IO sets, recharge, numerous other things), I'm pretty sure the devs would have simply scrapped substantially less useful and usable powers (like Detention Field) and replaced them with powers that are actually useful. Force Bolt isn't a useless power that is somehow in need of massive revision like the big problem powers of FF.

Knockback is .67 mag KB. With full KB slotting (~170%), you'll pull that up to 1.8 mag. At level 1, Force Bolt does mag 9. That has always been the problem with any "knockback or knockback based off of player choice" debate. Because of how enhancing works, if a power does knockback, you'll never enhance it to an appreciable level.

I can't remember any cases where the devs have actually removed the ability for a power to accept a certain IO category for a power that had already been released. They've added sets, but I can't remember a single case where the devs have removed and IO set category from a power. Care to share some of the "quite a few" that you apparently know of?

Well, every set has some kind of weakness pretty much built into it. Invuln's is psi of any kind. DA's is a endurance sustainability. SR's is non-positional psi. By providing SR with a power that allows it to completely circumvent that weakness is probably going to be broken since you're getting rid of the only thing the set really has to fear.

Anything that increases the base recharge would make it impossible to leave it unchanged in PvP. Of course, you're also dealing with interfering with the very reason that some people like it: it sends enemies flying crazy far and it can keep a boss down indefinitely because it recharges so quickly. There's also the issue of pseudo-cottage rule tweakery since the power uses the ranged single target IO sets and turning it into an AoE would force it to use the ranged AoE IO sets.

It's a more complex issue that you would think, and the devs have actually looked into the possibility of doing that several times. The problem is that toggles are simply automatically activated powers. Intangibility causes the OnlyAffectsSelf effect on the target, which simply stops the target being able to target to be the target of any power in the game except those used on itself (i.e. all those effects that don't have a target of Caster ignore the target and the target cannot use any power that doesn't have a target of Caster). When you render the target OnlyAffectsSelf, you essentially make it so that the target is then immune to the toggle itself by preventing it from being targeted by the power. If it were simple, I think the devs would already have done it.