Captain Citadel

So what exactly are we allowed to change about SS then, Vanden? With Bruising gone, Jab is now a complete waste of a slot that we're forced to take on Tankers, and Rage is a pain in the neck to run perma-single-stacked, but SS as a set only gets competitive damage when you run it with double-stacked Rage. So in order to maximize uptime on double-stacked Rage, we have to take Hasten. As @Demon Shellreported, that requires taking a huge endurance drain, averaging -35 endurance per minute.without even counting the drain from toggles or an attack chain. And even with the awesome power of double-stacked Rage, we then have to put up with 10 seconds of being de-powered and only being able to fire off Judgment if we want to deal any appreciable damage. Some part of the most holy and sacrosanct "cottage rule" will have to be bent or broken to fix the problems Super Strength has. There's no other way around it. SS is completely shackled to Rage, so Rage has to change in some way so that the rest of the set can be reworked to be more competitive with newer damage powersets.

Another thing you're forgetting is that without Rage, the numbers for SS don't really equal the numbers for sets that only have Build Up. The powerset was balanced around having Rage up nearly all the time at one stack. Build Up is a very bursty power, so the sets that include it are designed to account for the fact that Build Up is not up all the time, and therefore not an essential part of their damage output. This is the problem that I think needs to be addressed. I don't think IO sets were ever accounted for when the devs looked at Super Strength balancing back in the day. The power was not likely meant to be perma-double-stacked or even triple-stacked. It becomes imbalanced at those levels but not so much before that double-stacking threshold. That's why I personally think Super Strength needs a rework, not just to improve the functionality of its attacks, but to change the way Rage is balanced. Of course, suggesting that anything be changed from the way it was on Live will invariably bring the "cottage rule" people out of the woodwork. But I really like Shadowsleuth's ideas for improving the attacks in SS. Giving Haymaker a cone and putting a debuff on Hand Clap are great suggestions. Though IIRC Hand Clap already has a stun, so maybe the magnitude could just be increased to make it a more useful form of CC? I still think removing Bruising was a mistake and that Tankers should just inherently apply a -Res debuff to all their attacks, but that's just me. Also, while this seems like it might be more of an oversight than an actual rework component, it would be nice if Hurl followed the same rules as other "ground attacks" like Foot Stomp or Mighty Judgment. Both of those powers work while a flying power is toggled on, as long as you're at ground level. Hurl doesn't though, and it's a pain to turn off Hover (a thematic defense toggle for many builds) just to use my only ranged attack.

Fair enough. My point about Cross Punch still stands. I was saying Super Strength is not getting as much benefit out of the Tanker changes to AoE powers, because it only has one damaging AoE and no cones or other area attacks like several other Tanker secondaries do. Telling people "just take Cross Punch" is not a great solution when most people aren't going further than 3 powers into the Fighting power pool.

It's balancing the entire set around double and triple stacking that's causing so much of the grief over these proposed changes, though. It was already a mistake to build the set around Rage when so many other sets get by without a constant buff power to account for. Build Up is optional for so many builds because you can't have 100% uptime on it, but because you can have perma-Rage and stack it, the entire set has to be balanced around the assumption that it will be built for perma at the very least. It'd be like if Hasten was part of a powerset instead of a pool power, you'd be expected to take it and build around it. No other damage sets are built with something like Rage that needs to be up all the time to have parity with other sets.

Cross Punch is a pool power, and a fairly deep one at that. Not many people are going to build with it. Also, you're going to compare Rage to Fury when Brutes with Fury can take Rage in SS? And 2x Rage at that? Double Rage is not worth the damage crash, and it's rather disingenuous to call Tankers and Brutes "even" by comparing 2x Rage on a Tanker to a Brute that doesn't have it, seeing as how SS Brutes are fairly common, and the only reason it's not the most popular set is because Spines/Fire farmers exist.

Do you play Super Strength? Because the AoE changes are far less impressive for that set, and honestly I'm tired of Super Strength feeling very not super. After these tanker/brute changes are finalized, I think SS needs a rework of some kind. We've got a whole thread for Rage but it's just the tip of the iceberg, as far as I'm concerned.

Submitted mine. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the Bloody Rainbow Fire Farm. Would get a kick out of seeing my character in one of your farms. Though if you've run out of room in the Fire farm, my character would work well for the Smashing/Lethal farm since he uses Super Strength. Thanks for all your hard work in making the mindless task of farming more entertaining and convenient!

Bruising could be improved. Proliferate it to the entire Tanker secondary pool instead of just the T1 attack. Increase the amount of the damage resistance debuff it applies. Increase the emphasis on Tankers being a support-oriented tank rather than a selfish one that only focuses on raw damage. Instead you'd rather have Tankers be "less worse Brutes" than they already are, and call it a day? The proposed changes are not enough to make Tankers a worthwhile choice over Brutes when picking a character for yourself or when picking team members. Pumping the numbers on the proposed changes wouldn't fix the problem either, it would just flip the positions.

I think we've only exhausted the topic because a vocal minority is shouting down some really good ideas (like proliferating Bruising to Tanker secondaries entirely instead of trading it in for a selfish flat damage increase) and it's become clear that the AT is just getting band-aids instead of quality fixes. The AoE damage buffs are the only thing I'm really happy about, as an Invuln/SS Tanker main. The Rage changes over in the other thread are depressing because (IMO) they are the wrong kind of fixes. Tankers as an AT were designed in a vacuum where Brutes didn't exist. I think it's a mistake to just increase Tanker damage to create more parity between Tankers and Brutes, because at the end of the day Brutes are still equally good tanks and still have greater overall damage output. I think more emphasis on Tankers' support capability and team synergy should have been made. Removing Bruising was a mistake. I think an opportunity has been missed to make Tankers the "support tank" and Brutes the "selfish tank." This would give a solid answer to the question of which AT to pick and why, instead of the default answer still being "pick a Brute, they do more damage." Increasing the effect of Leadership buffs is the wrong kind of fix also. You have to actually take them all to make your Tanker better at support. This does not increase Tankers' support capabilities out of the box, like Bruising proliferation would. It's not a bad idea, but I think if I had to pick between Leadership buffs and Bruising buffs, I'd take Bruising. All in all I think the proposed changes are not strictly bad, but they are not as good as they could be. Hence my disappointment, and I'm guessing I am not alone in feeling this way.

I've already removed Rage from my build, the damage buffs are enough to make the set perform okay-ish in AoE-heavy fights. I just hate that we're not getting any changes on how it functions apart from removing the crash under specific micro-managed use of the power to achieve perma-single-stack. It's liberating to not be shackled to such a poorly designed power anymore. Now if they could just correct the oversight of Hurl not working while a flight power is toggled, even if the character is at ground height...that'd be great.

Those are disingenuous arguments and you know it. Pets and Masterminds are far more integral to each other than Rage is to Super Strength. Momentum in Titan Weapons is not a separate power that has to be micro-managed, it's a built-in mechanic. Build Momentum itself has far more in common with Build Up, but outside of that, Momentum is more like a proc.

Because a lot of people have good ideas for how it could work a lot better than it currently does. You seem to hold the mentality that change is bad on principle. To quote Shuri, "just because something works, does not mean it cannot be improved."

So because it has Rage, we can never make changes to the functionality of that power beyond the single-stack crash removal? Perma-double-stacking it or even triple-stacking it is not intended behavior. Stack junkies are currently holding the entire set hostage because they cannot accept the possibility of improving the power by changing it. The "cottage rule" does not apply to everything. If it did, we'd still be on Issue 1.

The sets with Build Up don't need to (and can't anyway) perma it to be competitive with SS, though. SS needs perma single-stack Rage just to be on an even footing. That's why it begs the question of why it shouldn't be reworked. Removing the crash for a single stack is a good start, but when the power needs to be at one stack with 100% uptime just to maintain parity, it suggests the existing design for Rage needs improvement because it feels very awkward to use. But no, keep simplifying my gripes down to laziness instead of offering compromises to the current stacking system.

When SS needs one stack of Rage up all the time to compete with every other set that has Build Up, it begs the question why the set is designed in such a way that Rage needs to be up all the time, and then spawns questions like "why not make Rage a toggle?" and other such things that have become staples of this thread.

I doubt many people were giving up 10 enhancement slots just to do that at the expense of basically everything else in their build. Possible? Yes. Practical and widely used? No. I certainly never remember it happening, and I played Invuln/SS back then, from launch to around the time F2P happened.

Scrappers aren't meant to hold aggro, though. Like Stalkers, the stated purpose of the AT is melee DPS.

It was not designed from the start to be stackable though. We know that much. It was impossible to achieve that level of recharge before the advent of IO sets. And if memory serves, it was Castle who imposed the crash penalty on it. Castle was not exactly a genius. That's the dev that made sweeping PvP changes which gave all ATs relatively similar mitigation and damage output, which the PvP community hated.

And as I've said before, in light of this, I would be willing to give up Rage stacking. The window of dealing next to zero damage feels terrible and I really want that part gone. Just removing the crash for a single stack and effectively slapping a penalty only on the people who currently have high recharge in their builds and liked to auto-cast the power for the sake of convenience (because they cannot currently avoid the crash) doesn't feel good to play either. Given that SS as a set has a lot of really lackluster powers in it beyond Foot Stomp and Knockout Blow, I find it unlikely that I'm the only one using the set who stacked global recharge purely for the benefit of those select powers. I'd happily accept some pretty hefty reworks to how Rage works if it made the power more convenient to use without leaving it held hostage to those players who are unable to accept that allowing the power to stack (and therefore forcing some kind of penalty to be imposed on it when other perma-capable powers neither have nor need such a penalty) might be a bad idea.

Knockout Blow is amazing, and also some people just really like the animations. It's difficult to use Martial Arts or Street Justice to capture the feel of a character with archetypal superhuman strength.

If it was viable to take Rage out of my build and still deal respectable damage, I would. I think it's a huge problem that the set is balanced around having at least one stack of Rage up most of the time. I'd rather it be replaced with Build Up and then not have to take it. You can build a Tanker or Brute to have high enough defense/resists to eat the mitigation debuff, but you can't eat the 10 seconds of -999% damage. All you can do is pop Judgment and then stand around being weak as a kitten for the remaining 8 seconds.

I don't see why people want to stack it. I want to auto-cast it and not crash, but I only stack it right now because I can't avoid the crash anyway, as it stands on the live servers. If it was a choice between being able to stack, and not having the damage crash, I'd choose the latter in a heartbeat. I guess because I play a Tanker with SS and not a Brute? I like this, I think it's thematic with the idea of building up a character's level of rage in combat. It ebbs and flows as the heat of battle grows and fades. But for Brutes it might be too much like having a second Fury meter. I've stated previously in this thread that ideally I'd like to just have the damage crash removed and let people stack Rage as high as their defenses can handle, but I really hate the damage crash enough that I'd be willing to accept Rage not stacking and turning into a toggle. I have tolerated the mitigation debuff up till now because my SS character is a Tanker and can easily achieve Incarnate-level 65% defense, meaning I can generally eat the mitigation debuff almost entirely on my own and can usually count on backup from my SG's party buffs. Even the -10% resistance half of the revised form of the debuff is manageable. I just think doing next to zero damage for 10 seconds is antithetical to the entire premise of Super Strength as a powerset and would really like to see that debuff removed. The fact that SS does such poor damage to begin with that the set needs Rage just to keep up with other sets (when they all have Build Up instead) seems like a pretty solid point in favor of removing Rage and replacing it with Build Up anyway. Just fiddle with the numbers to bring SS back in line with other sets.

No. Sorry, but this is missing the point of the tank changes and the changes being made to Rage. The defensive debuff portion of the Rage crash is manageable for any Incarnate-level Tankers or Brutes that are built for defense, it's the -999% damage debuff that cannot be mitigated in any meaningful way.

I really think we need to rework Bruising rather than get rid of it. Make it the defining characteristic between Tankers and Brutes. By all means, reduce the vast gulf between Tankers and Brutes as far as DPS, but in exchange for doing slightly less damage on a Tanker, use Bruising to emphasize their team support capabilities. Trade slightly less individual damage for greater team damage, use Bruising as a flanking debuff.

Putting in an option to remove the effect of recharge buffs from other players isn't going to fix my build. But changing the functionality of Rage to offer less potent buffs on a permanent duration would be a nice compromise. If double-stacking is so bad, then don't let Rage stack. The thing I hate about Rage currently is the damage debuff.