Erratic1

Your words: I really hate when people think they have some special insight into me and know my motives ala, "....shows me you only just picked out certain things I said for the sake of argument." Unless you're a telepath, can logically eliminate any other motive beyond a person's response, or the person says, "Here is what I am thinking" it is incredbly insulting and poor form to ascribe motive. Notice, I am not here saying, "You're trying to weasel out of your words" because that would be insulting. Instead I quote what you wrote, which I responded to, which has one salient point--"Give SS a damage modifier equal to one stack of rage, than make it a smashing version of fiery embrace. Put a small minus resist proc on the first 3 SS attacks to make them special and call it a day. Or anything else. I dunno anymore." You did not object in your response to my questioning the reasonableness of this until just this post I am responding to but you are going to insinuate some malign motive on my part now? I could quibble on some of the foundational parts of your desire but that's immaterial to the desire, but I have no particular desire for or attachment to the crash. I am quite willing to see Rage changed. It would seem to me the most straightforward thing to do would be something ala Bio--when you're in Rage there are associated penalties. But do note Bio's Offensive stance is only a 30% boost to damage in exchange for a 7.5% resistance penalty. It seems to me that what the developers were trying to emulate with the Crash was a certain green skin, "ME SMASH!!!" character who will not be mentioned by name who grows tired once his rage wears off--the endurance crash--and logic'ed to themselves that while ragining you would not care if you were hit so there is the defensive penalty. But thematic and playability/enjoyability are two different things, especially as on top of that they put out set which needs to use Rage or underperform. By contrast Bio does not underperform if you do not use Offensive stance, Rad Melee does not underperform if you do not use the Contaminated mechanism. While I am not advocating the following because its early and I have not had time to think it through, I could see an argument for adjusting SS attack values up to equivalent with other sets, so if you do not choose to use Rage you will not underperform. We already have powers which come with a limited number of uses in a period of time before they go on full cooldown and otherwise cycle back to their ground state if those subsequent uses do not occur (e.g. Combat Teleport). Leave Rage as a click power but allow for it to be clicked a second time during its duration. One click gets you a 30-40% (rough numbers) damage boost in exchange for a 10% hit to Defense while the power is active. A second click during the power's active duration raises your damage bonus to 80%, tacks on another 10% hit to Defense and instead of crashing your doubles your endurance costs. There is no crash. If you get low on endurance and have no way to gain more (Inv/SS) then your option is to lower your expenditure by not attacking as often (which emulates being weak and worn out). If you have some method of regaining endurance (Elec/SS) then you just don't care too much. Ohh wait a minute...can the penalty be tailored to hit Regen sets in regeneration, Resist sets in resistance, and Defense sets in defense values, and hybrid sets a little bit in all three? Would have to leave that to a developer to answer. If so, go with that, otherwise what I said before. Well, its a statement of goals. Not much to say and I have to run to get things done just now.

Just like Super Strength's gimmick is Rage and given its duration I think on the whole it is a superior gimmick even with a crash. Also I did not ignore a blessed thing. I chose not to respond to something because it was not worth arguing. If you want to ignore me, that is fine. I accept that some people find disagreement at any level draining. But I am probably going to respond to posts unless I feel the other person is a miserable jerk--something I have no reason to think of you. People disagree.

The point was what the enemies resist and what other sets also face Smashing resistance. They have the suggested all the time on +80% damage?

Mass Levitate is indeed fun. Have it on my Rad/Psi.

Ahh, you said more. I was looking at it in terms of raw difference.

Why would I try to show you a mechanical equivalent with another set when the mechanic is the thing meant to make the set stand apart from other sets? I can only imagine Tankers asking for swapping Jab and Punch since the other AT which has Super Strength can forego Jab and Punch. But guess what...not wanting the first power in an powerset is universal for Tankers because it is the weakest. So that is not a desire which only exist in regards to Super Strength. If Rage moved you to the damage cap the comparison with Granite might be more sound. Rage does not do so or even remotely come close. Heck, double stacked Rage does not come close. As noted, permanently on, penalty-less Rage would have every SS power doing more damage the Stone. How do you justify that? Please show me where I have argued for a Rage crash. Go ahead...I'll wait. . . . *whistles while he waits* . . . Can't find it, eh? That is because what I did was (a) correct your notion that Rage only brings SS up to where Stone is (it goes not, it goes past that) and (b) questioned, based on the fact that SS with Rage up deals more damage than Stone (and by implication most if not all other sets) if you really thought Rage without penalty was going to fly.

If you are able to play where you are always at damage cap (though I may have done the math wrong since it seems to me the cap difference is 25%) then more power to you. Because the most commonly dealt damage type is Smash/Lethal and so that is where people first focus on getting maxed on. The demon may be quite willing to throw a fireball at range but once you're up in his face he'll be hitting you and since you're a melee, you're probably going to be getting up in his face. The only brute builds I can see shortchanging S/L resistance are positional defense based ones.

Smashing Resistance does not mean you do not do any damage or even that much less damage on the whole. Apparently the highest smashing resistances values (excluding AVs, Elite Bosses, Giant Monsters) are 35-40% but only on, "Council werewolves, Circle of Thorns Ghosts, and non-stone Devouring Earth. (1)" Moreover, across encounters Smashing is not the most commonly encountered...or the second or third most encountered--those being Lethal, Toxic, and Psionic. So Battle Axe, Broad Sword, Claws, Dual Blades, Katana, Savage Melee, and Spines come up against their nemesis resistance more frequently. Moreover Martial Arts, Staff, and Stone Melee, Street Justice, and War Mace are also Smashing Sets. Do they get to have an always on damage boost of some value to make up for where Super Strength would be? (1) http://www.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/comments/c9yaot/general_enemy_average_damage_resistance_numbers/

By framing your answer to, "What AT?" in either/or terms you miss out on the answer, "What not both/all?" I am not going to say I have not seen some impressive Tankers. There is a Bio/Staff tanker I bumped into a few weeks ago who is plain amazing at laying out damage and melts through a group every bit as fast as anything one might imagine. But that is the rarity in terms of what I have seen. Yes, plenty of Tankers do solid damage, but amazing is a beast which is rare. How rare is impressive damage on Brutes? Likewise, there have long been survivable scrappers. My original scrapper in Live, back in the first month of release, was DM/Inv. But what DM/Inv was known for back in the day was just how survivable it was. Specifically how survivable it was in comparison to what you could otherwise being playing as a scrapper. Such is not a selling point if on the whole the AT enjoys comparable survivability across its builds and no Brute powerset combination lacks the resources to be extremely survivable. So the question to me is if you ever, in your deliberations on what AT to make your concept, ever ask, "Which AT gives me survivability and damage?" And having asked that question, how it is that the answer, "...usually isn't [Brute]"?

Yes, you're supposed to use Rage. Nobody said you were not supposed to do so. Seismic is single target, Foot Stomp is AoE...the do not compare to either other. That is why in what you quoted I compared Foot Stomp, an area attack to Tremor, an area attack. That leaves Seismic Smash to be compared to Knockout Blow--both single target attacks. And no, SS is not garbage...SS not using Rage at all may arguably be so but again, YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO USE RAGE. I do not recall any attempt on my part to suggest archaic changes to SS. I am pretty sure my preceding posts I suggested back dooring the Fury mechanic from Brutes via Rage. What I did question was the notion that SS should have an all the time, permanently turned on +80% to damage. And at no point here have you said anything which suggests that would be somehow balanced with other damage sets.

The only Super Strength attack which is brought up to equality by adding 80% damage would be Jab moving up to match Stone Fist. Foot Stomp before Rage outclasses Tremor. For every other attack Super Strength has, adding 80% damage takes it considerably past the matching attack from Stone Melee. Moreover, Rage's damage bonus is not confined to Super Strength attacks, so damaging abilities from one's primary (in the case of Tankers, secondary for Brutes), power pool, and epic/patron sets are boosted--and those abilities were never behind on the Super Strength character because they'd taken Super Strength, is all pure gain. But yeah, the To-Hit is really nice and really shines when you go from whiffing to reliably hitting. It pisses me off to no end when Knockout Blow misses.

Ebonblaze, my Fire/Dark controller:

While their strength was comparable in the 70s, Cage has be upped to be at 50 tons currently. Of course in the comics strength varies as needed by the storyteller and raw strength does not necessarily win as Spider-Man has shown he can take down Juggernaut and strengthwise Spider-Man does not come remotely close.

Don't own a copy of it, but by the magic of Google I can confirm Spidey's strength was Incredible. So too Armadillo. By comparison Loki was Amazing. So similar scaling there.

With the Power Cosmic, Aunt May could punch the Hulk into orbit. Spider-Man is 25 ton on the Marvel strength scale. That puts him ahead of the average Eternal (15 tons) and on par with Man-Beast and Armadillo and slightly behind Loki (30 tons).

If SS just plain comes with a +80% damage bonus, always on, baked in, no effort required.... ,,,you really think that is going to fly?

Ninjitsu backdoors the crit from stealth mechanism of Stalkers to Scrappers. Perhaps backdooring a toned-down version of Fury via Super Strength would not be horrible a horrible thing for Tankers.

1 stack no debuff, 2 stack debuff vs debuff regardless....its a clear gain. Why would anyone complain about that?

Another vote for either Scrapper or Stalker since at various times the various characters have approached situations from either standpoint. Arguably that suggests StJ/Nin if you go scrapper for the, "I'm taking you out but not revealing I'm here" angle if you go Scrapper so you can emulate the sneaky, non-revealed attack. Stalker could go with either StJ/Nin or StJ/SR and just walk into combat for those straight up, "I'm here to hurt you all" moments. But maybe having a StJ/Nin scrapper has biased me some.

KB->KD strikes me as a missing ingredient.

Well clearly that did not work. I literally had to go to City of Data to confirm there being a Def and Eng hit because on my Brute I never noticed. But this thread has had repeated people going on and on about how they cannot use Rage because it threatens their very existence. Whose scere'd? 😛

It may be more worthwhile to figure out the builds where the Rage crash is going to least impact you. As I noted, on my SS/Bio brute the only part of it I notice is the damage hit. But I run him in Efficient stance so he's basically never low in endurance and so the hit isn't dangerous. Likewise Bio has layered defenses so the Defense hit is inconsequential since there is regen, absorption, and resistance to fall back on. I have never played Willpower but I imagine it might be a good candidate for minimizing the Rage crash. So too Invulnerability if you could build to having enough endurance to never be low.

I have a SS/Bio Brute and for 10s I don't do any damage when the crash hits. Other than that I don't notice it.

Per City of Data: -20% Base Defense for 10s after 120s (self only) for 10s after 120s -25% Endurance after 120s (self only) after 120s -9990% Damage (All) Strength for 10s after 120s (self only) for 10s after 120s