ZemX

Zathras can never have anything nice.

Is it though? I mean this is the superhero genre. If the world ain't burning... they don't need US to save it! It's like when you invite a healer to your team and then nobody gets hurt. You almost feel kind of bad for them, right? No? Just me? Okay.

Picking the wrong metric is not, in fact, better than picking no metric. But also, I haven't said nothing. I mean, I can imagine it feels that way since you've just consistently ignored every logical argument I've made, which is why this is the last time I'm bothering with you in this thread. What I've said, last time... is that popularity is the best metric. It's the best because it's the sum total of ALL opinions about a powerset. It therefore includes everything that might matter from numerical performance to aesthetic appeal. It includes how EVERYBODY feels about the Rage crash compared to the Rage bonus. Not just how you feel about it. It's better than your opinion and it's better than my opinion. And no offense to Ston at all, yes it is also better than just arbitrarily averaging, with equal weight, two other arbitrarily chosen metrics. And my metric says SS is in very good shape. But by all means, keep trying to get one of the best melee powersets in the game buffed up even more. Good freakin' luck, too.

That's not taunting. That's hitting something first. If you are the first to hit something, you are automatically at the top of its shit list and are thus receiving at least one (1) "thank you" from each mob in return. And believe me, in this dept. Blasters have got nothing on Controllers. Most Controllers (and Doms) have a 30ft radius AoE attack on an 8 second timer that can hit 16 targets known as an AoE Immobilize. These guys can piss off everything in a whole room before my Tanker even has a chance to THINK about taunting a few of them. I've seen Controllers on PuGs kill themselves repeatedly before finally realizing that maybe they should.. you know.. wait a few seconds before whipping that out?

Sorry but... so are you. You think because you found some numbers you like that it's not subjective? Who decided Ston's test is the definitive measure of which set is better or worse overall? He measures downing a Pylon and then averages it with clearing Trapdoor. Why are these two measurements averaged equally? Are they equally important? Oh yeah... subjective choice again. The only thing Ston's test can definitively tell you is which sets are best at.... Ston's test. You might think these tests are representative of how the sets perform against every other type of content in the game... or you might not. That's what makes it an opinion. Does Ston's test measure useful secondary effects that contribute to survivability rather than just raw damage output? Maybe? Control effects? Nope. Hell, even something you mentioned: Stances for Staff. Not only can't it measure these things, some of them, like Stance's "utility" can't be easily quantified. How about anything that might make these better in a team? MA is fantastic according to Ston's test, but it only has one AoE and it's smaller than some other AoEs. On a Tanker that contributes less to aggro management. The more you can hit, the easier it is to manage threat for a team. Ston's tests can't even measure that because he's soloing. Tanking is meaningless when you're soloing. They are useful, but you're making the mistake of thinking they are definitive. That this is what should determine precisely where a set sits in the pecking order of good and bad powersets. Even saying that Ston's test is the yard-stick by which all should be measured is... subjective. It's an opinion. Not everyone has to agree that downing a Pylon and clearing Trapdoor are the definitive measure of good and bad. NONE of the powersets in this game have ever been balanced by this metric. Why should SS get this treatment when nothing else has? That last question is hilarious btw. If there were ever an overhaul of the base design formula for damage that finally took into account the impact of animation times, SS would get such a buff from that that Rage would HAVE to be nerfed... like... a lot. The only reason Rage is allowed to be as good as it is is because SS is otherwise a terribly badly balanced set in the other direction.

This. I don't even have a lot of characters but I still run into ones I haven't respecced from changes that happened long ago. Like the one that changed the levels at which powers are available? I still have old characters with key powers slotted later in the build than they need to be now. If I ever pull one of these out and dust them off to play, I'll consider respeccing then. I do have some Stalkers I will finally respec into Placate now that's it's gone through several patches from worthless to decent to, in my opinion, not skippable any longer.

I can't really fairly comment on Elec Armor, not having played it at all. On paper, it does not look to do much that Rad Armor doesn't unless I am missing something. Some people do not like the visual FX of Rad Armor and I tend to try to minimize them myself by coloring armor effects on the dark end of the "bright radiation" palette. But otherwise yes, haven't worked up a concept for Elec Armor that I haven't felt worked better on Rad Armor. Elec Armor is Resists + Heal. Rad is Resists + Heal + Absorb. So while Elec Armor may have slightly higher starting resists, I don't feel it outweighs Rad having that wonderful absorb shield. It's sort of like Rad has two self-heals if you want to think of the absorb shield that way. You don't even really need to heavily slot the heal power, Rad Therapy. I slot 2 from the Preventive Medicine set (heal and heal/recharge I think), then the +end proc, then three more damage procs. So it kind of does a lot of things. I could see slotting it more heavily for recharge and heal on an endgame build where I wanted to focus on ultimate survival though. But it is damned tough even without that. Ground Zero is a large radius (22.5ft on a Tanker) AoE that is kind of strange. It hits both allies and enemies. Minor heal and heal-over-time to allies. Damage and DoT enemies. But the exciting parts are: (1) It can hit a total of up to 30 allies+enemies and (2) It can slot a bunch of damage procs turning it into another nuke for you. Long base recharge means the procs all have a very good chance to fire every time. I should probably make myself play Elec Armor sometime just to see what I maybe am missing, if anything.

To note: Rad Armor also has endurance drain protection and added recovery built-in. You can also proc +end into the heal it has for additional endurance recovery. Endurance is basically never an issue and it means less reliance on extra slots in Health/Stamina and/or pool picks like Conserve Power or Physical Perfection. I've more or less not played Electric Armor yet because I'm not sure it does anything much/at-all better than Rad if I am going with a primarily resist based armor set. You probably can't go wrong either way but I made the "mistake" of going Rad Armor first.

Whether it's good enough or even the idea that other melee sets are better are BOTH opinions, not facts. This is why you felt the need to invent the idea that players are being misled. You needed to explain why the majority opinion is wrong and your opinion is right. You don't need to do that. You can express that YOU personally think the penalties outweigh the benefits. But it's going to remain an inconvenient fact for SS complainers that they are effectively crying into their champagne compared to most, if not almost all, other melee powersets that don't have something like Double Stacked Rage to make up for the DPA mistakes the original Live devs made.

Er... it says -22.5% resistance to all damage in the detail. You may be confusing it with Soul Mastery's Darkest Night, which does indeed debuff Damage strength on the enemy.

The end game is boring but powerleveling... isn't? I had always assumed people farmed 50s so they could engage in the endgame. I cannot imagine farm-sitting my way to 50 only to put that toon on the shelf and start another. Why not just play Progress Quest?

This is an opinion, and one that depends on what you consider "rapid" which might not be the same as what I consider rapid. I see plenty of people leveling on radio teams still even after that Page 7 update. I really can't imagine why people need to level any faster than 2XP on a PI radio team already provides, but if they do, and want to do it AFK even, they can do so in AE. So no, don't really see any need for more powerleveling options than already exist. And I don't see a whole lot of concern other than your post here, that it's a big problem right now either. If one doesn't enjoy playing their way to 50, why NOT sit in an AE farm? If one does enjoy playing... then what's their hurry getting to 50? If you don't have as much time as someone else, you won't end up with an MANY 50s as someone else, but so what? This is kind of like when I see people complain they don't have the time to play big open world single-player games. They say they "don't have the time" for THAT much content. "So what are you doing after this game?" I'll ask. "Oh... playing another game!" 🤣 Not surprising. I've seen that too. Not everyone pays attention to updates. Self-correcting problem though...

Right. I was just commenting about why it "goes blue" at 92.5 if you are using something else like Siphon Speed.

Super Speed actually increases run speed AND the run speed cap now. So if you're not using SS you will cap at 92.5. If you are, you will cap around 120ish somewhere.

So... what you're both saying is that my being too lazy to pay any attention at all to my hits and misses while playing... has finally paid off?

I feel like I'm missing (haha) something important here. What's frustrating about the Streakbreaker forcing a hit?

They misread. Thought you meant "immoral" tanker.

I heard warning bells too. You're gonna show up to that and find out it's 7 level 1s sitting the door and you've just been given the star. "You have the mission right? Plz set +4x8!"

I really think it's both aesthetics (for those that like them) AND performance. One or the other alone would not have sent it to the top of played powersets for Tankers. People do play powersets just for funsies... but not in those numbers. I should know. I have a Staff Tanker. It's fun but if we're both in a race to clear Trapdoor... uh... don't wait up for me. 🤪 And I make sure to tell people that if they're asking me about it. Cause I get a lot of comments on PuGs about how much fun it looks like I'm having Stick Tanking. But I can rattle off all the rapid fire Tanker-wide AoEs that set has and while it looks fun and impressive all Mr. Double Raging Footstomp needs to do is wade into the same pack and put his one foot down to catch up and then pass me. The funny thing about its performance is that SS's otherwise poor performance without Rage is the only thing that has probably saved Rage from a more comprehensive nerf. SS's attacks suffer both from being smashing damage AND from having generally poor DPA. Add to that a whole AoE attack that does no base damage. SS would be down there with Staff and Kinetic Melee probably save only for the glory that is Double-Rage's uptime. It's really saying something about how bad the attacks in SS are when an average +133% damage over the full minute only puts SS in league with the top powersets instead of shooting well over their heads.

Clearly the answer is.... FOUR MORE TANKERS! Get crackin! 🤪

Shield Benefits more directly from Martial Arts' Storm Kick +def. It has the Defense Debuff Resistance to protect that extra defense too. You could try to bulk up DEF from nothing with Rad Armor but I've not found it very reliable and hence don't bother with it myself. That's not to say MA can't go with RadA. RadA does add a couple procc-able AOEs that could certainly help make up for MA's lack there. I have a Rad/Katana and a Rad/Staff Tanker and neither really benefits much from those sets' +def attacks either. Still works. Fiery Melee is going to go well with either. You'll have ridiculous AoE with Rad/Fire but Shield/Fire can be nice too and there's a good selection of shield customizations that can look pretty good next to a fire sword.

I hate to break it to you, but not only did you fail to explain how I wasn't being called an idiot, you pretty much doubled down with another personal attack. Don't think so? Read what you wrote. Is the subject of this sentence game mechanics? Oops! No, it isn't! It's people. You're making a judgement about people here, not about mechanics. You were saying, to paraphrase, "I'm not saying you're an idiot. The rest of us are just willing admit the set is weak." So... we also know it's weak but we're just not willing to admit it like you are? That's the problem? Get it now? If that wasn't what you intended to mean, I am sorry to say that is in fact what you wrote. And ParagonKid is saying much the same thing by implying the popularity of SS can be chalked up largely to people being misled. Saying someone is being misled, while attempting to blame someone else for doing the misleading, is still insulting the person being misled. They can't think for themselves the way you can. They are just mindlessly following. I mean, it's not like I'm gravely insulted or anything, but when someone levels a personal attack during an argument, I like to point it out because it usually is the sign of a weak argument. If you had a really solid argument to counter points about how well SS seems to perform in testing and how popular it is to boot with a VERY large portion of the playerbase, you'd probably have gone with that instead. Didn't say it was. I said it was the combination of all metrics players care about. Why do you think powers are balanced? I mean, what's the reason it's done? It might make some kind of logical sense that powers should be more or less equivalent in effectiveness... but why? What's the actual reason we do it? The powers themselves don't care, right? So who is it for? Oh.. right... us! Presumably, we balance powers so that when a players looks at their available choices, they will see all the choices before them as potentially viable choices. Right? And performance isn't the only reason people pick powers. There can be other factors. But performance is a BIG reason. I'd say it's the top reason most of the time. But yeah, you might pick out a power here or there that's flown under the radar. It happens. Lots of people sleep on Focused Accuracy's -toHit debuff protection, for example. But in any case, popularity is WHY powers are balanced. Which by the way is me walking back something I said earlier just a bit. I said all powersets having roughly the same performance was the ideal. It isn't now I've given it a bit more thought. They should be balanced by popularity. If they are all equally popular with the players then THAT is the ideal. What else should be? It also neatly answers ParagonKid's point about Staff Stances balancing the set's poor damage output. I disagree but the proof is in the popularity pudding. Do ALL players on average agree with me or with Kid there about how much value Stances provide? It's not something we can easily quantify with some quick forum theorycrafting. It involves peoples' value judgements. Popularity is the sum of all players' value judgements. It's actually a pretty good metric.

LOL, so now I'm just not "willing to acknowledge" that you're right? Give it a rest okay? This is not the non-insult you may have thought it was. Here's a wild notion: I just don't agree that you're right. Weird huh? What am I thinking? I see SS performing among the top tier sets in Ston's Trapdoor trial AND I see its massive popularity among the playerbase and I think these are related but nooooo... you guys who see the truth know that this is all just "misinformation" or "unwillingness to acknowledge the mechanical weaknesses" or maybe roleplaying or something. Anything but the simple explanation, I guess, right? Come on now. Do you see how ridiculous this is? For the record, I am NOT saying SS is literally the min-max best thing out there. And it doesn't have to be. Someone might drill into all this and see that another set does x% better by some metric and has no crash to deal with and therefore... well therefore what? It's not like we've got all the melee powersets exactly balanced now do we? There's quite a range of performance because frankly the original Live devs made a hash of the balance formulas not understanding the impacts of things like animation times and damage types. Then they compounded the problem with IOs and Incarnates and oh my! Balance is now practically an impossible task. So by what metric should we balance? Many may scoff at this notion, but I think popularity is the best metric we have. Nothing else takes everything I just mentioned into account but... well... everybody. Any of us can come up with some forum theorycraft to justify our opinion that X powerset needs Y buff/nerf but we're all just picking cherries aren't we? If you look at the playerbase as a whole you are looking at the collective assessment of all powersets by all metrics players care about all smushed into one number... the number of people playing that powerset. When nobody is playing Super Strength anymore... let's give it a look. Until then, there are far more neglected sets in need of love. SS is really in a fine place. Not because I say so, but because MOST of us say so.

Unless I am on a fast moving team, my thinking on AS from Hide is essentially, "What's my hurry?" Far as I am concerned, AS from Hide isn't slow. It's instant. What time matters to me but in-combat time? If enemies aren't attacking me, the clock essentially hasn't started yet. It starts the instant that AS lands. Someone else who is measuring themselves by how quickly they clear a whole map may have a different view, but this is how I look at it. If I am either solo or far enough ahead of my team that I have time to set up and fire off AS from Hide? Yes, I'll do it.

Except it doesn't always. I quite like several of the local brews in my area which I've drunk far more of than I've ever had Bud Light.