Umbral

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The "borrowing ahead" argument posed to me by Arcanaville as the fundamental balance factor that normalized this lack of variable assessment never quite sat well with me.

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Then you're probably the sort of player that doesn't sit around for several minutes waiting for everything to recharge so that you can achieve another burst of peak performance. Like almost every scrapper in existence, I'd say.

Yes, we can achieve higher peak performance by clicking on Dull Pain, Instant Healing and Moment of Glory at the same time. But anything in the game that needs that sort of peak performance is still going to be around 15 seconds later, and we're going to be sad little Regenners that we didn't pace ourselves better.

I'll agree with Arcanaville that we can save up survivability rather than being constantly at our average. But I'd say that doesn't matter much in practice, because the only enemies tough enough fight with that strategy are going to live long enough for that strategy to backfire.

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This is precisely the reason why I don't really trust the counterargument posed by Arcanaville, especially since 99.99% of the time, even when I'm doing normal content, I didn't die because I didn't have the powers recharged or that I delayed using them until the point that they would be optimally effective. It is almost always because the effect of the power was delayed by attack animation time and the native delay in the power itself (I'm looking at you Dull Pain!).

The other point about animation time costs that aren't addressed are the damage losses that are incurred by using a normally offensive resource for defensive purposes. DA/Parry already do this simply by giving the power a defensive benefit for either the decreased damage (Parry) or the increased animation time (DA). Personally, I feel that none of the */Regen powers really gain anything over the other sets by using animation time. They're using up animation time that none of the other sets do (and it's actually a rather large amount if you're using them as often as possible) and getting nothing substantive in return. It's a cost that is payed but nothing is gained for it except for the vague ability to frontload survivability (which runs rather counter to the actual long term survivability of the set).

Edit:
Here are the animation time numbers for Regen assuming the powers are used as often as possible (re: maximum survivability) with normal SO slotting (re: balance perspective):

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.

Only one of the PPs actually uses MoG (Energy Blaster). The others will use Elude (Spines) or Unstoppable (Claws).

Check out these Paragonwiki entries for the various other powers.

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Reconstruction is 0.73 animation - call it every 30 seconds
Dull pain the same but every 180 seconds or so

Yes animation time is a factor, but it isn't really a large portion of the overall time

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It's a substantially larger portion of time than you give it credit for, especially considering the animation time required by other sets.

(and the times are .924, .924, 1.32, and 2.772 secs, in Arcanatime actuality)

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The only change that will need to occur after I-16 goes live is the addition of the brute evasion taunt aura to scrapper SR.

[/ QUOTE ] This. I want it so bad. I'm tired of little [censored] tankers taking my aggro when I know I can handle it better them then.

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First of all, it's "then them"... second of all it's than, not then

[/ QUOTE ] I blame the alcohol

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I blame the head trauma from repeated Scrappering.

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Ah ok thanks Umbral!


What about attack chains? I know BS doesn't have good DPS, but what is the highest you can get with /Fire?

I'm guessing Hack-Slash-Disembowel-HS?

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Are you asking from a PvP burst damage perspective or a PvE constant damage perspective?

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So recharge and damage bonuses in even amounts?

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Recharge and damage bonuses aren't directly contradictory. Just try to get as much of both as possible either defering to +dam if you want a little extra burst or +rech if you want a little extra survivability and a little less downtime.

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Interesting, so I shouldn't slot for damage bonuses, but for recharge instead to get Healing Flames and FE up faster?

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Recharge will increase your survivability and increase the rate that you can access your burst damage capabilities. It won't really do anything for your burst damage, which is probably what you're building for, because you're probably not going to be reusing many attacks with a burst damage string. For optimal burst damage, your best bet is going to be +dam simply because it's the only real way to increase your burst damage (well, that and damage procs, but I'm assuming you're already packing at least a couple of those).

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Well you keeping it in theme you could still go like chance for disorient or smashing damage. I would say energy but you already got that .

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Chance for +recharge (10% chance) might not be out of line, but set already does have a 6.25 recharge bonus. What the heck, I'll throw it in as an alternate possibility in the origional post.

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If it's unique, I think you'd be better served by making it a "set bonus" IO like the LotG +rech and 3% +def IOs. Something like 15% +recharge might not be too bad without completely imbalancing everything.

As to the 6 slot bonus, my recommendation would be to make it a 2.5% +def (melee/ranged/AoE) and 1.25% +def(s/l/f/c/n/e) just like the Gaussian's, otherwise I can see the set being used more for the unique/proc than for the actual set bonuses.

Scrappers have a 400% +dam cap. You'll be getting roughly +95% from slotting and up to +200% from your build ups. That leaves 105% that you would need to make up in order to maximize your damage. If you actually slot for it, I'm rather confident that you could close the gap to within a few points, but I doubt you could fully close it.

Something to keep in mind is that +dam is completely linear. The first 25% +dam that you got will add exactly as much damage as the last 25% +dam you got.

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So even activation time won't change? AND there won't be any gaps between the power activations that we used to have for some powers?

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That's what we've been led to believe by BABs, and I'm reasonably sure we can trust him especially since he and Castle were rather vehement about the power/color customization having no effect upon game mechanics other than cosmetics.

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My take is this: regen has to do a lot more work and waste time on clicks

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This is always something that has grated on my nerves. */Regen is the only set that has to expend large portions of a resource normally untouched by defensive sets (animation time) and doesn't receive any real, tangible benefit for using that additional resource. The balance equations don't have anything for animation time (though hopefully they will soon; c'mon Castle!), but it's still a cost that should be factored in since it is a resource expenditure, especially since it's more powerful that most others simply because it's not modifiable. Regen is balanced around considerations for largely toggle based sets that have defenses active at all times which inflates Regen's comparative performance simply because it ignores delays in click use thanks to the normal use of animation time (attacking) as well as lag. The "borrowing ahead" argument posed to me by Arcanaville as the fundamental balance factor that normalized this lack of variable assessment never quite sat well with me.

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/Regen needs to be nerfed for Scrappers
buffed for Stalkers
and given to Defenders as a new primary

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Unless this is concerning PvP, I'm really curious from where in your [censored] you're pulling that first one. The second one, I'd say could simply stand to have the stalker hp cap increased (to 1.75 times base or 2108.4). The third one is pretty much already true considering Empathy.

If it were a unique 6th slot, you'd be able to get away with a fancier 6 piece bonus like the Gaussian's 6 piece.

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The thing is how customizable will MA really be?

Is it going to be as simple as going from the old Storm Kick animation...or is it going to allow you to change attacks like eagles talon into a cone. Because honestly MA's animations isn't what made me not like the set...it was the endurance used to damage done that really sucked about MA. Eagles claw (use to not sure now) cost just about as much as headsplitter without the benefit of a cone.

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BABs (and Castle iirc) have all stated that the customizations will do nothing to the game numbers of the powers. The animations will simply be a cosmetic change.

There's a difficulty aside from Unyielding?

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Stalkers deserve better. For being the squishiest melee, they deserve the right to do high damage. At this point there's basically nothing that could be done to make them do enough AoE damage, considering everything is missing an AoE. They do deserve to at least be able to do more damage than a Scrapper in a solo situation, though, considering they're easier to kill.

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I'd argue the degree of difference implied by the "squishiest" moniker if only because Placate is crazy powerful and the AS mez capabilities, especially within the confines of solo play.

The biggest problem I see is that there isn't really an in game reward for Stalkers that actually play "Stalker-ish". The game is based around killing everything in order to advance, which doesn't really suit the "I'll avoid conflict until I can kill you when no one notices" play style that would more adequately suit Stalkers.

Either way, I've always felt that Stalkers, like other very ST oriented characters, have a very solid place in AV killing groups. My DM/Regen ST Scrap is almost always given preferential invitation compared to more AoE oriented characters like Spines/* Scraps. AoE matters for a lot, but ST still has its place (although it's place occurs significantly less often than the places that AoE excels).

The reason that blueside has more TFs than redside has SFs is quite simple: it's been around for more than 2 years longer and, for that period of time, all development was done for blueside. Since CoV came out, there has been very little development exclusive to villains simply because the dev team is trying to remain as side neutral as possible (re: both sides get roughly the same amount of attention). Unless the devs took a rather significant amount of time (re: 1 year at least) ignoring blueside and developing exclusively for redside, the amount of content will always be predisposed towards heroes. Of course, quantity doesn't really equate to quality, which is why you're pretty much guaranteed to never see some TFs run simply because they're not very fun and/or interesting.

On a side note, more than 20% of the merits that you list as heroes having available are from a single TF: Dr. Quaterfield with it's 111 merits and 5 hour duration of doom. I wouldn't even approach giving villains anything like the Dr. Q TF. I may not like redside, but I don't want them dead.

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Please don't take this the wrong way, but have you played a stalker on a team before? Have you done a SF on one?

Stalkers are incredibly squishy (LOLz ElA) and compared to brutes do not offer the consistent AoE damage potential sought after on teams. They do incredible burst damage, but stalkers come in dead last when people recruit for SFs for a reason.

Hide and assassin strike is deliciously fun, but on a steam-rolling team, you quickly discover that by the time you're hidden, the team just finished that mob - hence why stalkers on more intense teams tend to play as scrappers.

I agree, single target strikes on a hard target are absolutely sick on a stalker. However, that's their one trick. After that strike and placated strike, their damage is sub-brute. They work for burst damage. Once that drops off, their sustained DPS isn't very impressive.

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That's more an issue about AoE damage being so much better/more important while teaming than ST damage than any fundamental flaw of Stalkers, plus there's the whole issue of Brutes being completely overpowered when they're buffed to the gills (because having the potential to be stupidly resistant while doing top tier damage is different enough from having to actually balance around it, right?). My main is a very ST centric character (Dark Melee anyone?) so I'm able to empathize there (plus, DM is very heavy on large amounts of damage over an extended period of time rather than in a short burst so that's even more of an issue), though I don't presume to know about Stalker squishiness within the same context.

Personally, I've found that Stalkers, from a sheer number and design perspective, seem reasonably well balanced: they've got the best damage potential (assuming all sets are balanced to make scalar a viable tool for comparison), a decent bit of control capability, but have lower overall survivability that is generally reliant on a series of AT specific tools (Hide and Placate).

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They have 1.00 scale damage. Scrappers have 1.125. Tanks have 0.8. Brutes have 0.75 but get Fury for up to +200%. All melee ATs outside of Scrappers have +80% for BU and the 80% modifier for other similar powers. Scrappers get +100%. Their damage buffs are higher. Meaning a Scrapper does more base damage and gets higher damage buffs. Damage potential:

Scrapper/Brute (huge debate here, but let's say they tie)
Stalker
Tank

Stalkers have a low balance of base damage vs damage cap. Brutes are 850% with 0.75. Scrappers are 500% with 1.125. They don't lose to Tanks, at least. Damage cap:

Brute (850 * 0.8 = 637.5)
Scrapper (500 * 1.125 = 562.5)
Stalker (500 * 1.00 = 500)
Tank (400 * 0.8 = 320)

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Excellent job completely ignoring the Stalker inherent here btw. Simply incredible since it serves to make your point actually seem to be true. Too bad it's not.

Looking at average solo play, Stalker's don't particularly win out simply because they've only got a crit rate of 10% (well, they would if you discounted attacking from stealth). This gives them a functional scalar of 1.10 + a little extra versus a Scrapper's 1.21 (1.125 * 1.075). That's not actually all that bad, considering Scrappers are probably the single best soloing AT in the game (or at least are routinely shown to be).

Looking at maximized team play, Stalkers are, by far, the biggest winners around. (10 + 7 * 3) = 31% crit rate not including control crits from stealth and placate is a huge boon for Stalkers. Stalkers get put up to a (1*(1+4)* 1.31) = 6.55 functional scalar. Scrappers are only (1.125*(1+4)*1.1) = 6.1875 functional scalar, assuming that they're only targeting lieutenants or higher. Brutes get (.75*(1+7.5)) = 6.375, and Blasters get (1.125 * (1+4)) = 5.625. Less importantly than any of the previously mentioned, Tankers get (.8 * (1+3)) = 3.2.

This puts Stalkers a fair deal above everyone else in the maximum damage department (of course, this uses scalars rather than actual capability which assumes the same values across all powers and the same attack strings and slottings).

Ignoring an inherent that is so fundamental to an AT's performance as a Stalker's is simply foolhardy. You might as well ignore Containment when comparing Controller damage to all of the other ATs.

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Most scrapper attacks have a mag 3 taunt component (Tank is mag 4) so you taunt stuff by hitting it.

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I'm not aware of any scrapper attack with these properties. You just generate hate by attacking, the more damage and the more often it's reapplied the better, but it's not a taunt effect. On my DB/WP, I could get a blaster friend to steal aggro on something I'm attacking quite easily simply by outdamaging me.

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I should say threat level three as opposed to genuine taunt. Blasters are threat level one. How this interaction works, I'm genuinely not sure, but I tend not to have problems with blasters ripping agro when I'm actively hitting something. Occasionally, sure... (ed: I mean on my SR, not my invuln... invuln's taunt aura is ridic-strong)

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If you've got questions about aggro/threat and how they work in CoX, check out this.

Something to remember is that Taunt is viewed as a mez effect. All that the mag of it does is determine which targets it can effect and which it can't. A mag 3 Taunt (such as */wp's and other Scrapper taunt auras) will only affect lts and lower without any additional mags thrown in. A mag 4 Taunt (all tank taunt auras and gauntlet effects) will affect pretty much anything though (not sure about AVs though I don't believe that their taunt protection is any higher than a boss's).

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A key /regen benefit that hasn't been mentioned... fast track to damage badges! Folks are maxing and capping their defenses and resistances... not me! I eat damage for breakfast! And then I ask for more! More! MORE! And who's laughing when I hit Immortal and everyone else is struggling up the hill toward a mere Invulnerable? Me! (Umm... not that I have an Immortal toon yet... but it sounds good).

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The funny thing about the damage badges is that any damage that you take that doesn't bring you below your base max hp doesn't count. This pretty much means that Dull Pain is a rather large inhibitor for getting the damage badges. Least, that's how it was last I checked. It might have gotten fixed.

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The +regen dominance issue is pretty much a non-point: */WP wins; RttC is simple better than Integration and Instant Healing combined.

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Bovine feces. If you want to consider the downtime of IH, then you also got to consider non-saturated stats of RttC, and that can fluctuate any number of times while idle, running from mob to mob, or in the middle of a spawn. Numerically, Regen beats out WP when it comes to having the highest +regen rate. There's really no way to deny that.

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Interestingly enough, I did. I specifically mentioned that, in order to equal the average +regen of a */regen Scrapper, it only takes 6.49 targets. Any number of targets above that, and you've got better average +regen than a */regen Scrapper. RttC saturates at 10 targets, and I never even brought that value up.

The other problem you're bringing up is that you're specifically referencing peak +regen without referencing "normal mode" +regen at all. Without IH, which is not a normally activated power for most */regens, */wp beats out */regen hands down simply because, if there is more than 1 target in RttC, RttC is bigger than Integration. With IH, of course */regen is going to win out simply because it's functionally the "tier 9" equivalent for */regen. You might as well argue that */SR doesn't need IOs in order to softcap because it has Elude available to it. You have to consider IH from an averaged perspective. When it's averaged in, even assuming that it sees optimal use and doesn't get eaten by downtime, */regen manages worse +regen than */wp if the */wp can manage to get 7 or more targets in RttC (which isn't anywhere near a difficult prospect).

Plus, there's no such thing as "+regen rate". There is "regen rate", which can either be read as the speed at which you receive the 5% health ticks or the average rate at which you recover your hit points, and "+regen" which is simply the modifier for your base regeneration.

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There's no reason why this time cannot be calculated on the fly, as well. We all know the recharge of our powers alters dynamically based on recharge speed buffs and debuffs, and the icon swell reflects this. I don't believe anyone would be thrown off if he saw his power would recharge in two minutes, walked into a Wide Area Web Grenade and suddenly saw it would recharge in four.

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Eh, to me, it would be more useful simply to see the percent of recharge time left over. Combining both approaches would work since they're not really mutually exclusive.

I think the best overall suggestion would be to make it a UI addition that you have to option in to. You could choose to turn numbers on/off and then choose between growth and spin/pie chart for the visual cue.

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Do these things do unresistable damage or something?

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The eyeballs are all ridiculously accurate which means that you're defense buffs aren't really going to be doing much and they deal energy damage, which */Dark resists about as well as the Ban Pan zombies resist fire.

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Well the build for Speed Force manages a regeneration total of 800% (80 hp/sec) at all times (barring debuffs) and hits 1646% (165 hp/sec) when IH is available which is 90 out of every 192 seconds (or 46.8% of the time).

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This is always something to keep in mind. You can't make RttC and HPT more effective than they already are. There are no set bonuses or powers that increase their effectiveness. IH, Dull Pain, MoG and Reconstruction all get substantial benefits from +recharge that actually increase their fundamental effectiveness (though they diminish rather quickly once you get to ~200% +recharge for a power). Of course, this is easily countered by */regen's lack of native damage mitigation to stack with IO set bonuses which actually have a much greater effect on functional regeneration and survivability than a couple extra hp/sec.