Captain Citadel

Was this you, agreeing with me that most powers are outperforming Super Strength, when factoring in DPA alongside base damage numbers? For any powersets that are close enough to be about even, like Dual Blades, they’ll pull ahead after you factor in the 10 seconds of zero damage that accompanies the Rage crash. Super Strength is not completely underperforming compared to literally every power in every set in the game, but it is behind more than half of them, and further punished by the Rage crash. And again, I know you’re advocating for the removal of the crash and the stack, but something very similar to that proposal was already rejected. A lot of people try to double-stack with capped recharge in their builds, I don’t think eliminating it is going to fly. Not any more than the elimination of proc-bombing. I think Unleashed Might is the best we can hope for, unless the HC devs really are bold enough to fully rework Super Strength with a Build Up power instead.

A lot of builds are opting for global recharge, not slotting recharge specifically into Rage itself. Except it is, because those powers have vastly shorter duration and are balanced accordingly by having higher base damage in their respective powersets. You lose a lot less of your potential damage by not taking those buff abilities, versus not taking Rage. And as we discussed earlier, some of the sets that outperform Super Strength are already doing it without taking their buff power, even when compared to Super Strength with perma-Rage applied. The overall impact of those other powersets’ equivalent to Rage is smaller, so the penalty for not taking them is far less severe.

People also wanted the option of stacking it, so while you are correct that shifting around the debuff effects was part of the problem, completely removing the option of stacking invites its own problems. This is why Unleashed Might was better, because it bypasses the whole debate over stacking versus not stacking by letting the players who don’t want to stack it simply replace it with a toggle. UM also did something to address another problem with Super Strength, by adding additional damage buffs to the set itself alongside its other effects. There’s a number of situations where a pool attack can outperform a set attack, and this is why Super Strength as a whole is being worked on, it’s not just Rage alone. I just think Rage is at the core of a lot of these problems, because it’s weighted a lot more heavily than any other similar damage buffs thanks to the ability to perma it and stack it. Removing the ability to stack it is only a partial fix. The set as a whole is suffering from how pervasive Rage is, not taking it means your damage will always be substantially lower than any other Tanker/Brute melee sets.

Alright. So your solution is “remove the crash and prevent stacking.” The solution that was already tried was “don’t crash if you don’t stack.” So it’s been tried without stacking, right? It didn’t work and was scrapped. Unleashed Might was better than what you’re proposing, just not good enough I guess, since both solutions have subsequently been scrapped.

I didn’t touch on it because while I was reading and replying, someone else already showed you the patch notes from 2019 when the HC devs previously tried and failed to solve it with your proposed solution.

“your data point isn’t universally applicable across every single power and powerset, just most of them, therefore Super Strength is fine and you have no point. Also look at the duration on Rage and ignore the crash.” You’re not debating in good faith. Also, Unleashed Might was the result of “don’t crash if you don’t double-stack” not working. It eliminates micromanagement from that previous attempt at a solution.

Damage Per Action. The damage when you click the power is only part of the equation (but even then, look at the charts further back in this thread, a lot of the raw numbers on SS are already lower). It’s comparing the difference in raw base damage, combined with the difference in length of animation time, which is pretty much your “attack speed” in this game.

I just gave you the damn data, we were just talking about how DPA affects damage output. Now you’re saying I have nothing to back it up. Again.

That’s not the point. People keep fixating on the fact that you can perma and even extensively double-stack Rage, but ignore what happens if you don’t take it at all, compared to not taking the corresponding buff in other melee sets. So much of SS’s damage is tied up in Rage. If you want comparable damage output to other sets, you have no choice but to take it and at minimum perma it, meaning you have to deal with the irritation of the crash.

The comparative DPA varies from set to set but remember, one thing all of these sets have in common is that they don't have a Rage crash. So for any set where SS is a little behind before applying Rage and Build Up, the other powerset surges even further ahead and then doesn't have a crash. So it's got a higher floor and a higher peak. SS has more of a high plateau than a peak, but that plateau is often at or below the floor of the other set anyway, and then it craters during the ten seconds of effectively zero damage.

@Erratic1 already covered this in the Patch Notes thread. I thought the raw damage numbers being lower was bad enough, but I forgot to account for animation times. Super Strength already has slightly lower base damage, but it gets far worse once you factor in the low DPA. As you can see, Battle Axe already outperforms Super Strength substantially, with perma-Rage up and Build Up turned off. Adding Build Up just makes it worse, and of course only Rage has a crash, so Battle Axe can keep on trucking with a damage profile that not only peaks higher but remains smoother overall, and still remains higher than Rage-buffed Super Strength when Build Up wears off.

I'm kind of in the middle. I don't obsess over the numbers, I'm bad at math. But I do care about balance, and I notice how bad Super Strength feels to play without Rage compared to playing other Tanker sets without Build Up. I don't think every set in the game should be mechanically identical but I do think Rage creates a severe lack of parity between SS and other melee sets.

I think maybe one of the reasons people were so ready to just jump to Unleashed Might and forget about it (myself included!) is because it seems unlikely Rage will ever get deleted, so the best we can hope for is a slightly weaker version of it that has no crash. I firmly believe the only way to truly fix Super Strength is to reduce the overwhelming impact Rage has on its entire damage profile, and even if that means Super Strength still has a power in it called Rage, people who don’t want it to change will consider that to be equivalent to killing it.

For someone who is “trying to stay out of the Rage debate” you really seem to be putting a lot of effort into convincing people that Super Strength has no design flaws whatsoever, simply because you don’t notice them. You don’t care about the numbers, so we shouldn’t either? We do care about the numbers, that’s why people were upset that these changes didn’t go live, even with the actual Rage adjustments omitted and simply adding Unleashed Might for everyone to use or not use in the meantime. If your experience with Super Strength is completely unaffected one way or the other because you don’t care to notice the difference, why even post here? You don’t seem to have any opinion beyond “nobody should have an opinion because it doesn’t matter.”

Damage on a Tanker with Super Strength, without Rage, is going to be substantially lower than damage on a Tanker with any other melee set and no Build Up. This is the problem. Most of the damage profile of Super Strength is tied up in Rage. Build Up does not have the same uptime even if you cap your recharge rate, so the damage floor for a set not using Build Up is already above Super Strength without Rage. I don't know how I can make it any clearer. This is bad design.