ZemX

You're going to get your axe kicked with puns like that.

I guess I'll eat some crow. I didn't know the base damage nerf had been revoked at the last minute. And SS may, in fact, be one of the least affected sets. Are you clearing at +4/x8 or much less than that? With the base damage nerf for PBAoEs revoked, the only change you'd see for SS is the slight reduction to Build Up and the over-cap nerf when you hit more than 10 with Foot Stomp. The cone change is a non-issue for SS. And if you don't regularly hit more than 10 with FS, you won't notice much difference at all. If you're not regularly hitting more than 10 with FS, then Ground Zero isn't going to be much affected either since it just went from 22.5ft radius down to 15ft and from 30 targets (lol!) down to 16. Rad Infection is heavily nerfed for proc rates, I think, by the adaptive refresh change. But again, that only affects damage if you proc-bombed it heavily for damage.

I'm curious as well since it seems like that whole "we added this new power to be mutually exclusive with (insert old power name here)" thing was specifically done to avoid violating the cottage rule.

btw, agree with this 100%. The excerpt from design notes below now seem at odds with this very point (emphasis mine): We can't now "easily" or, for a lot of cones, ever hit 10 targets due to nixing the arc increase. Some are generous by default, like ones in Staff and TW. Others, not so much. I'll have to try and see what I can do with Guarded Spin and a nice big group of shoulder-to-shoulder baddies. My guess is 6 or 7 tops now. And that's one of the larger cones @ 9ft by 90 degrees. Arc of Destruction in TW is probably up there as well with 10ft @ 120degrees default.

Wow... I didn't catch that. Some good news, at least. Guess you gotta follow it every day until release.

You expected negative because it WAS negative. The patch did exactly what it was intended to do and which plenty of people felt was long past due: It nerfed Tanker AoE damage output. The only way you can't be noticing a drop in performance is if you literally were not using ANY AoEs before. Even Foot Stomp and powers like it whose radii didn't change in this patch (and hence didn't get base damage nerfed) still get hit by over-cap reduction when they hit more than 10, for PBAoEs, and more than 5 for Cones. And cones lost the arc width buff so it should be a good deal harder to even hit more than 5 targets. Being "more active" doesn't surmount the damage nerfs. Unless by this you mean you weren't even trying to do well before and now you are because, okay, in that case maybe you are seeing what you are seeing. But don't expect anyone who was doing their best before to be thanking anyone for this massive damage nerf. Necessary? Fair? Hadda be done? Sure. But "more fun"? Come the hell on, dude. This nerf doesn't call for clever tactics. It just makes things slower. That's what it's supposed to do and it does it.

This is bait.

Not OP. since they haven't removed it from Dark Armor. But I wouldn't be surprised if they think it's not thematic or useful for a Tanker. And I have to say, I'd rather have the +maxHP/resists than a stealth toggle. Besides, any well-built Tanker already has TankerStealth(tm) which is exactly like any other stealth except everyone can see you as you run past them like this--->😁🖕

Yes. No. No. The first one was the intended purpose of the standard damage formula for powers. They just didn't understand that animation time should be part of the formula. Hence we have wildly different performance across sets with the biggest factor being the advantage fast animating sets have vs. slow animating sets. A few spot fixes have been done by HC devs to reduce some animation times for certain powers, but presumably just doing a tweak to the formula to incorporate animation time is... scary. It would touch every power in the game. But the concept behind it is fairness: If your big hitter 20 second recharge attack animates in 1 second and mine animates in 2 seconds, they simply shouldn't do the same damage. No to the second question because this is where variety SHOULD be. The composition of the powers in the sets should differ. It's really neat to have quirky shit like Axe Cyclone in one set and fairly standard just-hurts stuff in others like Foot Stomp. Having one set be more ST focused than another is fine. Some people dig that even if min/maxers will always tell you AoE is king. No to the last because... see previous answer. I think things are already varied enough by composition and workings of the powers to be interesting without needing to be foundationally unfair like we have now with balance having been largely decided by the art department when, for example, they made Sky Splitter a power you can activate and then go have a sandwich before it lands while something like Freezing Touch is "blink and you'll miss it" fast but still hits about as hard.

Well, I don't know the history... but I do know you won't see anything until you're below 60% health. Assuming you have all three defense passives (Agile, Lucky, and Dodge) then you should see +9% to resistances when you are at 50% health. And it goes up another 9% for every 10% health you lose from there. So +45% res(all) at 10% health.

I'm not disagreeing that Axe is a good choice, but that's not just because it's being nerfed less this go around. It's also because it was top tier before the changes. If Kinetic Melee were being nerfed less than other sets, hypothetically, that wouldn't make it a good recommendation. It was underperforming before. It might be underperforming still. What matters is where the sets end up when the smoke clears. Super Strength is in question. Yes, Foot Stomp didn't get nerfed for damage. But Rage did and since min/max testing that put SS in top tier probably relied on double-stack Rage, the nerf to damage buff scale hits SS harder than any other set. What it does to its position in the rankings is yet to be seen.

I don't think this is the case. Foot Stomp is an exception. It has always violated the standard damage formula and, so far, they haven't nerfed it to be in line with the other Tanker PBAoEs that are now 15ft. Axe Cyclone is relatively recent but it DOES obey the standard damage formula, it looks like. It does a lot less damage than Foot Stomp and is only slightly faster on recharge. I don't know of any other 15ft PBAoEs that don't already do standard damage for a 15ft radius AoE, though I can't say I've scanned the whole list. It's worth noting that Foot Stomp's extra damage goes for Brutes too. So it's been the case for some time that Brute 15ft Foot Stomp has done the same damage as other 10ft PBAoEs Brutes have access to in other sets. It hasn't been a hot button issue because Super Strength is otherwise seen as underperforming without things like Rage and too-good Foot Stomp. Now, double-stack Rage has always been a controversy, it seems. For Tanks at least, this is getting a bit of a nerf with the reduction to damage buff scale.

Pfft... defense is for people who can be hurt. To be serious though, double pulls of Longbow are especially dangerous to my fave Rad Armor tankers *because* of having no defense or defense debuff resistance. Not because of their -res but because of their mezzes. Enough of those popping off at once AND hitting me (see: no defense) means they can stack enough to break mez protection, even on a tanker. This is a great advantage high defense toons have because a lot of those mezzes miss. The -res is mostly no big deal if you have 100% smash resist. But the radiation-using Wardens have Enervating Field, which is tagged as not resistible. That means even with 100+% res, you can be debuffed by it. If they are +4/+5 to you, it's bad. Very bad. You can lose 40ish percent resistance from just one of them. Same goes for the radiation using Paragon Protectors in Crey missions (e.g. Manticore TF). There isn't much I run from in this game, but those guys scare me. If I get toggled by one of their Enervating Fields, I run away to drop it.

The part I really noticed is how ranged cones are getting nerfed into the ground. So now they get neither the arc width from Gauntlet (since that's going away) NOR the range/radius extension melee cones are getting in the beta BUT they are still getting diminished returns nerfing their damage. *pours one out for Frost*

Heh.. not actually but it's very difficult to follow, to be sure. There's another weird tag on the first effect that says "fallback - only used if no other affects apply". In other words, the two effects really are mutually exclusive. One applies to "raid" mobs (which I think it like AVs and maybe incarnate stuff?) and the other is everything else and the whole point of all that acrobatics was to make it so the piddly mag 2 sleep side-effect was auto-hit on some enemies but not on others. Wild. It's sort of funny though that it's possible to get so complicated with the powers coding that the game literally can't decipher it back into human-readable form. And like I said, Staff powers are even more complicated looking than that. Maybe look at it sometime you have a stiff drink at the ready.

The damage you're showing for Frozen Aura is also incorrect for a similar reason. It's actually half of what's showing both on Live and on Brainstorm. In other words, on Live it matches Foot Stomp's damage. On Brainstorm, currently, it is doing less damage than Foot Stomp. Basically there are some weird conditionals around some of the effects in the powers data and in-game window doesn't understand them so, in the case of FA, it's double-counting damage, essentially. It's a similar story, but worse, for Staff Powers which have even more conditional stuff for effects based on current level of "perfection" stacks. Live data here: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=tanker_melee.ice_melee.frozen_aura&at=tanker

Both Hand Clap and Foot Stomp are 15ft radius on Live already, hence they are not getting bigger. So damage on FS is not changing (or hasn't yet judging by what's on Brainstorm now) and proc rates for both don't change either, though that's because they were ALREADY worse than 10ft Tanker PBAoEs embiggened by Gauntlet in other powersets. The only damage nerf for FS and for procs in both powers is the diminished returns for hitting over 10 targets, same as everything else.

Well the one good bit of news for SS fans is that Foot Stomp is only getting hit by the diminished returns nerf, not having its base damage also reduced like all other Tanker AoEs. It's base damage has always violated the standard damage formula. It has a 15ft radius but does damage equivalent to a 10ft radius PBAoE, for all ATs that have it. Hand Clap has also not been nerfed! So that's TWO pieces of good news, actually! ... Right?

Seems reasonable. Will stay tuned I guess. I think you've already said this in the feedback thread, and I agree, they should do one or the other, but not both when considering Diminished Returns AND per-target damage reduction. Foot Stomp essentially got this treatment, in fact, since it is only being impacted (compared to Live) by the diminished returns. It has always suffered worse proc rates as a natural 15ft radius power and its damage hasn't been nerfed per-target, again, because its radius wasn't changed. I suppose that's something at least for SS fans to hold on to as they remember Rage. 🥺

It is not a byproduct. It is a choice. The area factor is included in the original design formulas for powers balance. It is not calculated at run-time. They had the choice to increase radius without nerfing damage and DECIDED to nerf the damage... then not mention it in the feedback thread. I'm not especially happy about that, I have to say.

Go neutronium or go home.

It would need a costume that manages to pack a good four or five rip-offs into a single costume. Maybe a claws/regen brute, cigar, huge, spiky hair, green skin, purple cape with mystic insignia, big iron rocket boots, blue and red spandex pajamas... hmm....

You know I get a bit of a chuckle out of this as it reminds me of a long ago time, perhaps shortly after dinosaurs roamed the earth, when I got a college internship at a tech company and one of the first things I was handed was a book... of acronyms they use in the business. Maybe we need one a' those? 😜

The stigma isn't about experienced players PLing up a new alt. It's about new players sitting a door, not learning the game, then attempting afterwards to play on teams without even the knowledge of how to get from one zone to another. Playing SOME of the normal leveling up is a good tutorial for the game, after which if you wanna PL... knock yourself out. That's not any kind of rule. That's just good advice.

Looks good to me. Focused Accuracy is key to avoid being toHit debuffed. I haven't loaded the build but I see a couple pairs of Winters in there so Slow Resist is probably good. Debuff resist is so important when you lack defense. I tend to lean less on procs. My RT has a couple Preventive Medicine to boost heal/recharge and then the rest are procs, including of course the Theft of Essense. My GZ is where I put two Avalanche for recharge and knockdown (and slow resist set bonus) and then the rest procs. That means I give up some damage for utility so that just depends on taste. I lean more towards team tanking than soloing or I'd probably do differently. But no, this build looks like it'll be a lot of fun. Teleport is my new favorite travel. Always used to be leaping from the old days but once I went tanker and started getting hit by everything, I got tired of being -jump debuffed by webs or blocked going through doorways when there are mobs I needed to grab aggro, so... teleport. I use just the travel version Teleport, even in doors. It's not as zippy as CT obviously, but it's nice long range. I can bamf into the next group to lather them up before the team gets there.