Umbral

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This is not ignorance, this is a VALID question

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It's ignorance because you're ignoring the fundamental difference between buff and debuff balancing: buffs are static values that don't change with levels.

The reason that RI is so strong is quite simple: it's a debuff. Try using RI against an AV and getting a bigger benefit from it. Try using it on a higher level enemy and getting that same benefit. Buffs are smaller simply because they're static values. Where it matters, debuffs can only get smaller. Sure, they get bigger when you're fighting a -2 enemy, but do you really think that you're going to need to use that debuff to kill an enemy that's already at that disadvantage? Debuffs have always been numerically advantaged because of this (and other) reasons.

Are you now seeing why we're repeatedly calling you ignorant? You're missing one of the biggest factors in power balance and effectiveness that the devs (and pretty much everyone else) readily pay attention to.

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Some people have valid points for their side... Like Umbral,
Your Candor and dismissive comments indicate that you have nothing to offer, but certainly enjoy demeaning a valid argument.

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I'm curious as to how you continually believe that you're argument is still valid. That's the crux of the disagreement. You believe that the ability for a defender to buff himself wouldn't completely throw the entire balance system of the game off simply because an FF fender would be able to get higher levels of defense than a defense focused Scrapper, Tanker, Stalker, or Brute, especially since they'd also be able to do so while granting massive amounts of support to their allies.

The flaw in your argument is that there is something wrong with defenders being able to contribute more to their allies than to themselves. That's their fundamental role. They're not particularly powerful themselves, but they act to make everyone else more powerful. They're support. Being able to support yourself to the same degree that it's possible to support one's compatriots is simply asking for a complete and total review of all support sets that have any ally only buffs simply because it would require them to be rebalanced to be less effective to account for the ability to be used on oneself.

A FF fender is quite possibly the worst solo toon in the game. This is fine by me. Someone has to be worst. What balances this out is that a single FF fender in common IOs (re: no sets) can perma-softcap everyone in his group for a pittance of animation time. That's quite possibly the best survivability support you can get from a single toon. 90% mitigation for everyone. It's also ignoring the fact that you're bringing ~16% +def(all) to yourself along with a suite of mez protections that also affect you. What's more, that's only factoring in 3 of the 9 powers in the set.

Asking for Defenders to be better at supporting themselves when they're already incredibly good at it and almost all get a not-insignificant ability to support themselves anyway is a pointless argument from a balance perspective. Defenders are perfectly serviceable where they are at for what you are asking. Ignoring what they've already got (the worst of which is actually quite good) simply to make your argument seem more valid just makes you look exactly as Talen described you: ignorant.

The only change that I can see as actually having any pretense of applicability would be to increase Defender damage through whichever mechanism you chose, as long as it doesn't make Sonic Blast even better than it already is. The fact that Sonic Blast is so strong for Defenders is probably the biggest obstacle/argument with simply increasing the Defender ranged damage scalar outright (.70 would be fine by me).

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As an example: If it were unbalanced for say, a FF defender to be able to buff himself for solo play with Deflection, Insulation AND Dispersion. WHY then is it somehow balanced that he can do JUST THAT to 7 other people in a team.

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Simple: it's balanced by the fact that you're doing it to other people. Personal buffs in CoX are universally weaker than AoE buffs, which are universally weaker than ST granted buffs. It's part of the game design. If any character were suddenly allowed to target themselves with their ST granted buffs, there wouldn't be a point to grouping. It's a mechanic put in place to encourage group play. If you're playing support, you're better at supporting others than you are at supporting yourself.

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I'm glad thats just opinion, it would suck if it were fact.

15 second god mode vs a 2 minute god mode?.....it pretty much speaks for itself. You're just looking for an argument aren't you?.

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I'm not looking for an argument. I'm looking correct an obvious fallacy, though I wasn't aware that only duration was being paid attention to nor was I that 30% +res(s/l) and 15% +res(all but s/l) can be construed as a "god mode". At most, SoW is a decent partially up survivability buff. Like Practiced Brawler without enhancements.

Simply comparing duration against Moment of Glory is going to be a horribly one sided argument because it ignore's MoG's single greatest attribute: virtual unkillability. While MoG is up, you're so far past softcapped that it's comical, and you're kissing the res cap. You're pretty much the definition of peak survivability for a Scrapper (and pretty close for a Tank too). Willpower simply gets a little bit of extra resistance to add on to its moderate resistances.

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MoG is much better than Strength of Will.

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False. Are you serious?, you do know that MoG lasts a total of 15 seconds...yes you do get a default total of 70% defense to all damage, but its for 15 seconds. SoW lasts for 2 minutes. and stacks with the resistances already at hand. I'm guessing you never played a WP or have no idea how strong SoW is. Is it skippable? yes, isn't every power?. Of course there have been plenty of people who have skipped Unstoppable, this doesn't make them smart for doing so.

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I've got a */regen and a */wp, both at 50. I can tell you with absolute certainty that MoG is better than SoW.

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The question is NOT whether they should solo like gods, but whether they should solo BETTER than they currently can ?

My answer is absolutely YES.
If your answer is the opposite then you and will just have to disagree. No hard feelings for me.

But dont think I am gonna post my ideas AGAIN just to be made fun of and called a newb.

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The real question that most people that disagree with changes as a whole to the AT/game structure ask in response (and are never actually addressed simply because the question renders your point largely moot) is whether the changes that would make some of the defender primaries (strangely enough, those that excel at teaming) more effective at soloing would imbalance everything else within the complex workings of the game.

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Maybe if we were using I8 rules, and no IO's existed, WP definitely. But since IO's, its been easy to softcap defense therefore making Regen the winner. WP has the regen rate, but lacks the big heals. On the other hand Strength of Will beats MoG by a long shot. And of course the mitigation.

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Considering how much has to be sacrificed by either secondary in order to achieve the softcap (and it not even possible, iirc, without DA or Parry), I'm not sure you actually know what you're talking about, plus, MoG is much better than Strength of Will.

SoW is 120 sec duration with a hefty end crash, 18.75% +res(s/l), 9.375% +res(all but s/l), an unimprovable 40% uptime, 30% +recov, and a bunch of largely redundant mez protection. MoG is pretty much capped resist and defense to all but psi, a similar degree of largely redundant mez protection, 100% +recov, and 240 sec recharge on a 15 sec duration (6.25% uptime, that can be taken, with IOs, up to 20+% uptime).

SoW might have better uptime, but in every other facet, MoG wins handily. There's a reason a lot of */wps skip SoW while no */regen in his right mind would think of skipping MoG (nor do I think anyone that had it available would skip it). It's quite easily one of the best Scrapper tier 9s out there.

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Shockwave and Focus aren't powers that are going to generate near-equivalent performance to an entire secondary.

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I teamed with Iakona on Test with their Claws/Regen. People underestimate what can be done with Shockwave and Focus. Vastly.

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Having actually watched what Shockwave and Focus for a while large amount of time and, I hope, having an accurate view of how the game interacts with the numbers, I'm pretty sure I'm not downplaying its/their effectiveness. They're excellent powers, but not the equal of DA/Parry in how much survivability they contribute.

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796% or 7.96%?

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796% regen or 696% +regen or 1.99% max health every second.

The interesting thing to mention is that, after a certain point (I'm too lazy to math it atm), it's less efficient to add more regen than it is to add more +hp. Where IO sets and */wp is concerned, +hp is almost always going to be better simply because you've already got a large amount of +regen to operate off of and a comparatively smaller amount of +hp.

My general rule (until I does the math specifically) is that after about 400-500% +regen, I stick to +hp.

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Claws could probably get away with calling Focus and Shockwave "defensive crutches" because of the knockdown and knockback respective though I don't think anyone actually uses them as such.

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You'd be wrong.

EDIT: At least in my particular case, of course.

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Bill doesn't use Shockwave as a crutch. Bill uses it like a gold-plated stair lift with a mini bar and an iPod dock.

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Gotta make up for that lack of aidself somehow.

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This was my point. Shockwave and Focus aren't powers that are going to generate near-equivalent performance to an entire secondary. They provide some mitigation, but not enough to actually say "using this power will make you 90% harder to kill!". DA/Parry would fulfill this description for non-defense intensive powersets/builds, Siphon Life would fulfill this for defense saturated powersets/builds, and there aren't any more that really act in this manner. I wouldn't call any of them a crutch, since none of the builds would be bad without them, but they're more appropriately described as very powerful survivability multipliers.

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@ Santorican: Quick question on Stamina and Quick Recovery: You have a double and triple slotted. The only mod that works is EndMod, the recharge and Acc are wasted.

Wouldn't better slotting for both powers be EndMod, EndMod/Rch, Proc?

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Considering the three piece set bonus is a mostly redundant +hp bonus (cuz you're */regen), you're best bet is to go PS: Proc, PS: EndMod, Common EndMod. For Stamina, if it's being slotted less, start removing from the right (so that 2 slots would be PS: Proc and PS: EndMod).

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Umbral brings up something I forgot. When is /regen ever good without mitigation from the primary?

How do you even make it good if you don't have a super crutch like parry or divine avalanche?

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Super crutch?

Would you call DM's Siphon a super crutch? The current super-scrapper playing DM/SD would not be able to survive without the constant use of SL in their attack chains. What about Follow Up from Claws? Blinding Feint from Dual Blades? Can we even go so far as calling the Invincibility power from Invulnerability it's crutch?

The primaries have different aspects about them. Why does a tool to get additional defense = super crutch, especially when you have to sacrifice a good portion of DPS for it?

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Logic's a little off on Claws and DB.

If Parry is Broadsword's crutch, then SiphonLife is Dark's, and Shockwave is Claws'.

FU and BF are the buildups of the set.

Beyond that, I'm in agreement with you. DA/Parry are a HUGE benefit. But so are all the other utility powers and secondary effects from every other primary.

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It depends on your secondary if you're primaries "support" power is going to be hyper-synergistic with it.

Siphon Life is only going to add a boatload of survivability to secondaries that don't have much in the way of damage recovery, which is why */SR, */SD, and */Invuln love synergizing with DM.

DA/Parry is only going to add a boatload of survivability when you're not already softcapped or near enough already. */SR, */SD, and */Invuln all do quite well without it because they've simply got enough native +def that it's pointless to sacrifice their offense for a bit more defense.

The "defensive crutches" for the other primaries are less obvious and less likely to be seen as "crutches" at all. Claws could probably get away with calling Focus and Shockwave "defensive crutches" because of the knockdown and knockback respective though I don't think anyone actually uses them as such. Dual Blades definitely has the Weaken and Sweep combos, though Weaken is just bad honestly making Sweep the only truly effective "defensive crutch". MA and Spines are both equally hard to find a real defensive power that still has synergy with offensive capabilities.

The entire point is that the powers are only "crutches" when applied to specific powersets. Siphon Life is incredible for some sets simply because it gives them an additional 21 hp/sec, nearly quintupling base regen and tripling regen with slotted Health, while ignoring heal slotting. DA/Parry are incredible for powersets and builds without gobs of defense because it can, nearly out of the box, provide softcapped defense to melee and lethal. That's 90% mitigation where most of the sets that benefit significantly would only have 40-50% without huge sacrifices.

The point I was trying to make was that sometimes it's the primary that Werner capitalized less on his */regen skills and moreso on his katana/* skills on that character. It made him quite effective, and I'm not going to downplay what he's done, but it's thanks to a very powerful skill that he was able to leverage very well more than the ability to leverage the uptimes and downtimes of all of his */regen powers.

I've had several instances of "AFK, roommate on fire". I've never quite figured out how his clothes have been able to spontaneously combust, but we're both pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that he runs the university organic chemistry lab and, even though he's incredibly safe about it, he still gets residue on his clothes (especially his noxious labcoat). He's yet to be injured by his flaming outerwear, but it's always an interesting thing to have to explain to people when I have to leave a TF for a couple minutes to bat out the flames.

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Werner makes /Regen awesome.

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I am deeply insulted.

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Unless you are being facetious, Umbral, you have my most sincere apologies for any offense I may have caused as to do so was not my intent. Perhaps I missed something important that I should be made aware of to avoid this great travesty in the future?

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Werner hasn't really played his */regen in a while last I recall him saying and, even then, I think it was the general consensus that a significant portion of his capacity to survive in the situations he survived on Werner were do more significantly to Divine Avalanche than to any specific mastery of */regen, which is actually specifically mentioned that he played down by not stacking +rech to optimize the click powers.

Of course, I don't want to say that either of us is more skilled than the other (Werner is actually one of the few people on the forums I actually work to avoid insulting), but I was more irked about being ignored about a set that I've been crunching numbers for since I first started playing and done challenges that most people thought couldn't be accomplished with a */regen at all (I'm pretty sure I was the first non-sword */regen to complete the RWZ challenge and I know I was the only one for a long time).

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Werner makes /Regen awesome.

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I am deeply insulted.

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How much better does the fighter have to be at melee than the ranger? If, like you said, he's going to slaughter the ranger in melee combat it means that he's substantially better. So melee enemies have to exist at the fighter's challenge level. How do you give the ranger a chance in melee against enemies who can pose a threat to a fighter while keeping the ranger's melee abilities substantially below the fighters?

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The difference between the ranger and the fighter are moreso in that the ranger is the more dangerous and maneuverable fighter, and the enemy is intended to know this, but the fighter's purpose is to specifically act as the equalizer saying, "You can either attack me even though I pose a lesser but harder to hurt threat and let the ranger do his higher damage thing or you can attack the ranger and give me the opportunity to hurt you in new and interesting ways that will make you regret hurting my friend". The concept is that, while the fighter is harder to hit and will deal less damage than the ranger in a vacuum, making the ranger the much favored target not only because he's easier to hit, more dangerous, and squishier, the fighter's presence serves to make that normally obvious choice less obvious by making the obvious choice riskier.

It's the difference between having the choice of a 50% chance to hit against the guy that deals 5 damage and a 75% chance to hit against the guy that deals 10 damage and the the choice between having a 50% chance against the guy that deals 5 damage and a 75% chance to hit against the guy that deals 10 damage but will allow the guy that deals 5 damage to hurt you. In one of those scenarios, the choice is obvious simply because the guy that's harder to hit is simultaneously less dangerous. In the other, it's more vague.

It's also important to remember that the role of the fighter and the ranger operate synergistically: the fighter gets to deal more damage than he would otherwise because there is an opportunity to get free attacks and the ranged gets to be safer because he's not the target of preference any more. In a vacuum, the ranger would be dealing more damage than the fighter but be squishier. Within the team context, while the ranger will still deal more damage than the fighter and the fighter is still going to be harder to kill, they're both going to be doing better than they would have otherwise.

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The point, I suppose, is to make melee DANGEROUS unless you're specifically engaged in it, which would in turn lock people in melee like it really should be. The click-n-kill system that transforms melee combat from a lockdown duel into a battle resembling an artillery duel between two battleships, only they're smaller and 5 feet apart. Trading blows is NOT melee combat, and as long as that's all we have for melee, then we will never be rid of tauntbot tanks.

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Well, personally, I've always seen the taunt issue less as an issue concerning a flawed design of the game and more the fundamental flaw in generating an AI that can appropriately gauge and choose between the various risk factors and determine whether the risk is worth it (which is required when you're setting up the taunt mechanics that I described wherein you're never forced to attack the tank; it's just a potentially painful choice not to) without making it a simple binary "if-then-else" option wherein the AI always picked the more numerically superior option which might as well simply be the taunt mechanic we've got.

As a regular GM to a group of players that love the D&D defender marking system and regularly build their characters around exploiting that mechanism as much as possible, you've got to allow the characters that have a mechanism as such to actually use it, even when it's the safest thing for the target to do, if only because players like beating on their enemies and that's the fundamental "I get to beat on you in special ways!" mechanic the player uses for the "tank" role. A binary AI can't really do this, which is why I've regularly toyed with the idea of algorithmically set up random act tables that modify the chance of specific discrete actions based on the situation at hand and what actions were taken place previously. If it's been a while since the AI has taken a risk, it would make sense for the AI to have a greater chance of taking one, especially if the potential payout is impressively large. If it's taken more than a couple risks and they haven't panned out, it should be less likely to take a risk. Of course, the biggest problem I can imagine with it is the number of processing cycles that would need to be devoted to regularly updating the AI, which is why the only time I've actually generated a system as such was for a turn based poker game that wanted to have a more interesting and versatile AI (which was simply generating a zero-sum system for the various actions based on chance of generating a "good" hand, the comparative bet levels of any active players, and previous actions and then randomly choosing between 0 and 99 to determine which action from the list took place) and didn't really need to worry about cycles because it was only for a small time system.

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Recon: .924 seconds every 31.7 secs ((60/1.95)+.924); 1.75 secs every minute
Dull Pain: .924 seconds every 185.5 secs ((360/1.95)+.924); .3 secs every minute
Instant Healing: 1.32 seconds every 334.65 secs ((650/1.95)+1.32); .24 secs every minute
MoG: 2.772 seconds every 125.8 seconds ((240/1.95)+2.772); 1.32 seconds every minute

Total: 3.61 seconds every minute = 6.01% of animation time used up by */Regen click powers.

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Shouldn't it actually be far worse than that normally? Consider that you are not always fighting but that those abilities are often recharging when not fighting.

An actual fight might last long enough that you use several powers twice only to have the fight end right after that. Plus I think including parry as an animation cost is not unfair either considering regen needs it more.

If you wanted to get even more picky you could count in lag and weird stuff like when you have to de-queue an attack at the wrong time and queue up a heal only to miss a server tick.

So in practice I feel like regen eats significant animation time that should be spent on optimal attack chains.

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The entire point of the numbers I posted were to say that, even under the optimal conditions assumed by the survivability analysis calculations, */regen has to burn 6% of total animation time for defensive purposes. Now, the information that it lacks, honestly, is the comparative information that would actually demonstrate that, while */regen pays roughly the same in endurance (cuz 3 of those clickies cost 10.4 end to activate!), achieves roughly the same level of survivability, and is virtually equal/balanced in all other domains of comparison, it still pays more where animation time is concerned.

All of it honestly ties in with my rather long term crusade to get the devs to actually start incorporating animation time (preferably Arcanatime) into their balance calculations (which, if I'm reading Castle right, they're working on it for attacks at least). It's an issue that was never really addressed by the game at large simply because the game eschewed hard number crunching and concrete analysis until recently, and it's kind of hard to incorporate variables that existed but were considered so unimportant as to be ignored from a balance perspective. It's fundamentally the same as realizing two years after having the game around that costume color actually had a tangible effect upon how effective your character was and then trying to bring that additional variable in line (this is a hypothetical).

The bigger problem where factoring animation times in that makes it even harder is that */regen is the only defensive powerset that uses animation time in a defensive manner to such an extent. Every other set is based around having, at most, a single oft-clicked power. Of course, all of this completely ignores the differences between how */regen operates using a completely different survivability mechanism than every other set out there (damage recovery in preference to damage mitigation), making it even harder to actually balance thoroughly, especially considering the effects of bringing in outside mitigation and damage recovery capabilities and how they interact with the levels native to any specific powerset and the levels of those sources in every other powerset for balance purposes.

Mmmm.... Delicious game balancey talk make Umbral happy...

The question of whether you'll need Stamina on top of QR depends heavily upon what kind of build you're running with. If you plan on running rather toggle heavy (*/WP + Fighting + Leaping + FA), then yes, you're going to want to snag Stamina. If, however, you're planning on frankenslotting your attacks as you level and slot decently for end redux whenever you start running at the top tier, then, no, you won't need it.

If you want a clue on what to slot, the it's pretty simple:
QR before Stamina. Proc before End Mod. If you're diving around in less than level 50 common IOs (or equivalent), then you're going to want more than 2 slots for End Mod, otherwise 1 for the proc and 2 for the End Mod should be good.

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There is no "trinity" in this game.

There is however people who have never been out of Atlas Park versus people who have.

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The "trinity" still exists insofar as the fundamental roles of the group are concerned: damage, tank, and support. The roles are blurred significantly, if only because the game wasn't designed with the specific need for any of the non-damage roles, but they still exist. If they didn't, we wouldn't have ATs that specialize in support (Defenders, Controllers, Corrupters, Masterminds) or that have ingrained superior aggro mechanics (Tankers, Brutes).

The big issue with this is that it's difficult to actually remove the trinity from the gaming environment, though the more important question would be how to incorporate the trinity in a manner that is logical while being suitably entertaining.

Having recently finished another session of my D&D campaign, I'm rather fond of suggesting the 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons model. Defenders (the nominal "tanks") don't actually force attacks to come towards them. Rather, they simply generate rather impressive consequences for not attacking them. If you are marked (re: taunted) by the Paladin, you're going to get hit with some radiant (re: "holy") damage that you simply can't avoid be you're breaking the little duel he called on you. If you are marked by the Fighter, he'll get to take a free swing at your face because he's focusing on you and you left yourself open by attacking his friend. If you are marked by the Warden (re: nature powered Paladin), the earth itself will get pissed off and either hold you down or crack you upside the head. If you are marked by the Swordmage (re: self explanatory), you just activated a contingent magical effect that is going to make you wish you hadn't done that.

The entire point of these mechanics are to allow the ability to attack other targets but to make attacking them less appetizing. It makes more than a bit of sense too. Do you really want to attack the old dude in a dress with a stick in hand that mutters strange words and hits you with fire, especially if he's got a friend who'd covered in metal and is prepared to test you for sharpened steel allergies if you spare one second within his reach not paying full attention to him? Maybe if you can get out of the old man's friend's reach, but, if not, it'd probably be smart to try to kill the tin can man first unless you're feeling lucky.

There's also the entire debate of addressing the traditional "healer" role in the trinity as opposed to declaring it "support" or some other function neutral term and whether it should be completely function neutral as long as it serves to make everyone else function better, but that's a completely different diatribe.

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Okay, I'll try to pay more attention. Maybe I'm just missing it. I had assumed that it would be like incinerate in fiery melee, and the crit would come at the beginning of the power. Does it not say "Critical" when you get one? I thought that would be hard to miss.

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It's hard to notice among the blur of numbers. I generally notice because that guy that was only at half life (and I expecting to have to get with a quick MG) fell over dead when he shouldn't have. Of course, this assumes that there are no other sources of damage that could possibly contribute 300 damage in the time it takes you to finish with your blurring hands.

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The devs NEVER originally intended to have the AE for lvl 54 BOSS FARMS LFM 30+ NO SIDEKICKS.

They always said from the get go it is NOT FOR FARMING. Since so many people ABUSE this. Then WHY not bank the exp. DO IT.

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The issue that you're ignoring is that the devs always intended for AE to be a completely viable alternate leveling path (not that I agree with this).

The problem with AE doesn't exist nor has it ever existed insofar as it has made fewer players play the rest of the game. The problem with AE is that the experience is so readily available and easy to access that it's significantly easier and faster than the rest of the game.

The intent was to provide an alternate player generated leveling path that would provide players that were tired of running the same story arcs and missions over and over again while simultaneously allowing players the ability to have yet another fancy new toy to play around with. The reason that the intent turned into the problem is because AE was a combination of allowing players to customize enemies (and thusly customize challenges to suit their strengths), play with anyone regardless of level (and thusly avoid the nominal mentoring road bump), have a centralized mission entrance (and thusly avoid travel downtime) and receive the same level of rewards as would be achieved through normal gameplay (and thusly make them level significantly faster).

The solution, as I've always seen it, rather than trying to make AE a second form of patrol xp or level required mechanism, is to simply lower the level of reward that everything in AE awards. Experience should have been granted according to the optimal design (meaning that players minimize all risk and attempt to maximize all rewards through any means available) and then a slight penalty should have been further assigned in order to encourage normal gameplay. The ability to play consistently new missions would be a significant enough draw to alleviate any tendency to avoid it, especially among the non-power gamer/farmer group, while the lower leveling speed associated with AE would keep it from being overrun by farmers that then, thanks to automatic sidekicking, would funnel new players into it as quickly as possible to maximize their own personal rewards.

The fact that AE was designed as an equivalent leveling path is the problem, not to mention that the "balance" that was intended to counteract customized foes (lack of mission completion xp reward) has never been that big of a deal where experience acquisition is concerned. The secondary problems were functionally removing any bar to grouping across exceedingly large level gaps and opening access to all zones, which simply served to exacerbate the fundamental problem of AE simply being a better leveling path thanks to all of the traits that obviously made AE excellent for farming without any real counter to them.

You know what I want in the Natural booster? A rechargeable version of the Rock. What's more natural than picking up a rock and throwing it at somebody?

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Shouldn't the MM be in charge of the agro moreso than the Brute? I was under the impression that the MM is the redside analogue to the Tank.

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This was the design concept way back in the beginning, but, thanks to the pseudo-gauntlet given to brutes along with their taunt auras, the aggro management role is pretty solidly within the confines of the Brute AT. MMs can still absorb alphas reasonably well, but absording alpha takes about as much aggro capability as walking into a room without stealth on.

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Short answer? Because it is NOT all about the numbers, and it never will be.

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What do you mean it's not all about the numbers? My calculations proved without a doubt that numbers mean everything, and I even had Werner and Arcanaville check them!