arcane

I just want to say for the warm fuzzies that, whenever I was looking for an Empathy to keep my petty scrapper herding Dreck as well as a tanker, I didn’t discriminate between controllers and defenders. Unfortunately this can’t be much help to Lum as the story involves someone looking for an Empathy.

Well it seemed like the word of the entire community until now, but I guess you’re right that we could’ve hallucinated it. You’re free to start a poll if you need the proof. I can check your poll questions for validity if you like as there were a number of scenarios you’d need to capture to do it right. I don’t care to do it myself because I already remember not only encountering it almost daily but also finding that others were broadly aware of the phenomenon as well.

Back when I was a teenager, I somehow lacked the foresight to document every instance of looking for a healer, asking if someone was a healer, being asked if I was a healer, being on a team that was looking for a healer, etc. I don't know how I could've been so stupid to have missed the opportunity to have conducted a rigorous statistical analysis. Kids do stupid stuff. I guess we'll never know if the healer buzz was real or just a dream.

Considering I saw this all the time, heard about it from others all the time, etc... I gotta say this looks like textbook gaslighting here. Acting like no one ever had an unrealistic expectation of getting heals specifically out of general support is gaslighting, yes. This post reads about as if it's saying "Can you provide any evidence that Assault Rifle is considered a subpar set? Only peer-reviewed dissertations though - this is serious business." Actually, a better example would be something that the entire culture has long acknowledged existed. Like demanding data sets to prove that taxi bots were a thing. Jesus christ are we really implying "r u a heal0r" was fake news? (Sorry I keep editing this bad boy)

And you put bids in to verify this wasn’t the standard host of never addressed display glitches? If so, probably just a spike about to go down again.

I was stating a fact in response to reading someone’s post that expressed skepticism about Scrappers being tough enough to farm. I did not say that farming was my reason for opposing taunt auras. I would happily take advantage of the superior farmer if things turned out that way, but hopefully they don’t for farming-unrelated balance reasons. Anyway it’s a moot point because Scrapper Fiery Aura is never getting a taunt aura. So the only actual reality to consider is whether or not to strip away the already existing Scrapper taunt auras. My vote is yes.

Ok but each AT needs to have ways in which they are better than others in all scenarios. Every single other AT has pros/cons across the board. Guess you’d have a little extra HP. Great. Anyway glad your points all basically demonstrate Scrappers having taunt auras would disrupt balance. Thanks for the unacknowledged agreement.

Straw man. I don’t care about the impact on farms one bit and literally already said so.

The argument is literally invalid because it only gives an incentive towards bruting to a handful of sets..

No. I would prefer Scrappers just not get taunt auras as the best solution. Just saying if they DO get them, Brutes then have to get something. And no farming is not my concern. Just AT balance.

I would rather have Scrappers get zero taunt auras. But if all Scrappers were given taunt auras, I can absolutely guarantee you they would become superior to Brutes for active farming (not for AFK farming - Brutes would remain ideal there). I already skip Healing Flames on my Brutes because they’re invincible in fire farms. But if you’re actively farming and either picking up Healing Flames or using a couple Respites now and then? 75% fire resistance is absolutely plenty for surviving a swarm of baddies in a fire farm. We know that for a fact because I already have 3 “squishy” AT builds set up with fire shield and capped fire defense, and they can do the meteor map or whatever at zero risk too. So literally the only reason /Fire Scrappers aren’t already meta for active farming is the lack of a taunt aura. If it DID happen, I’d be making the switch in a heartbeat. But yeah, no need for that to happen. TBH you can make any AT with access to Fire Shield capable of surviving endless roaming fire damage spawns at +4x8.

That is not enough. Because what does it do for Ice Armor, Energy Aura, or Graniteless Stone Armor? Basically zero. That’s not a good answer.

I was definitely not trying to find a good “Fat bastard left a floater!” GIF so don’t ask.

Psychic would also synergize well. World of Confusion synergizes with Venomous Gas, and Dominate helps your single target damage. Though the synergy is even greater on a controller where you can do things like 3 PBAoE toggles (Adding Conductive Aura/Hot Feet/Arctic Air) and mez protection. My Poison/Dark has procs in both Venomous Gas and World of Confusion constantly adding extra damage and -res in melee while I’m scrapping.

Agree with adding all the debuff resistances. Think IH and MoG are fine. The debuff resistances would be welcome, but regen seems pretty good overall. Most of its critics tend to boil down to not liking click power defenses as opposed to real problems the set has even when played well. I could be convinced to wiggle on IH moreso than MoG, which is already one of the best T9’s in the game.

I don’t believe the developers made it possible to complete all content with *any* composition imaginable, no. That’s why I’m bringing up extreme examples that sound like they have some vulnerabilities.

Yes. I am merely arguing that team composition, while flexible, was not always “any 8 imaginable and go”. Roles mattered, even if there were workarounds like using support to make tanks of squishies.

Ok well I agree most with the guy that said there is no “hard trinity” but there was once a “soft trinity” in which team composition was relevant to success. Can we agree with that?

Would probably need to be Dominators since Blasters have been buffed like crazy. Dominators have been buffed out of perma-dom too but oh well. Let’s say LRSF, 8 dominators, only SO’s, no incarnates, no temp powers, no emailing inspirations or purchasing t3’s. Shouldn’t need any of that if the spirit of this narrative is correct.

That’s why I didn’t say 8 defenders, controllers, or corruptors. I asked about blasters and dominators primarily because they are the examples I am actually skeptical of. All possible groupings of 8 must be successful for this “roles don’t matter” narrative to have been entirely true. Obviously 8 support was always fine because they make everyone tankmages. But that alone doesn’t support your position that roles never mattered.

Hmm, well they have a 13-year old video still that I made once. But yeah maybe we’ll never really know.

Can you please link me to a video where 8 SO’d Dominators or Stalkers have completed the LRSF when it first came out, or something similar that would offer evidence supporting your version of the story. Or maybe 8 SO’d Blasters herding Monster Island. There are tons of CoH youtube videos, I’m sure there’s just mountains of evidence if my memory is incorrect. (Apologies if my skepticism is too obvious I mean no personal offense <3)

I don’t think his concern is about PvE SR. Which does indeed need zero help.

Yes, this is accurate. At one point people were building in like 48 points of KB protection (that’s a buttload of procs). Though at a certain point, if you’re expecting people to have that protection, you wouldn’t bring a bubbler or whatever. In most settings though, ~15 pts seems adequate, and people just accept that it’s not worth it to make so many build sacrifices to resist Force Bolt. If you could Power Boost it though, in organized team arena, yeah, the target is dead meat. Anyway, they removed this for a reason, so we need to discuss whatever that reason is first.

It doesn’t use them any more than PvE does? So not sure what your point is. Does “dice roll PvE” appeal to you still though? Very confusing point. Every big MMO has some RNG going on but there’s hardly anything special there in our PvP. And it’s hardly consequential compared to skill/reflexes/build.