marcussmythe

While weve wandered away from the question of 'how tough is tough enough', at the same time, I think this returns us to it (in a way) - the whole concept of 'tough enough' for me grew out of playing and finding the characters were tough enough LOONG Before the sets came in.. so maybe I could do something else with the sets? Now, it wont make my Tank a scrapper in damage or a defender in utility or a controller in CC or (insert AT here), but it gives me a lot more room to chase other things that might be more useful and more fun than simply transitioning from 'tough enough to survive if I play the game and use the tools I have' to 'tough enough to survive forever while asleep at the keyboard'. The later, while nice in its way... I wonder if the opportunity cost we pay, automatically, is actually a little too high.

That thread lead to my own SR Tank (though I went DM, MA and STJ are close behind). And the 'meta-how-does-timing-attacks-work' and 'can-I-reapply the proc/effect' informed some odd choices on my current EM tank - abandoning Total Focus for Energy Punch, and running Bonesmasher-Energy Punch-Barrage-Energy Punch as my basic cycle, with Energy Transfer going in twice on each buildup and otherwise wherever it will fit. So, thank you for that work. You and Sir Myshkin are major impacts on what Im playing and how Im building these days.

My DA/TW also manages endurance pretty decently, but that took a lot of build tweaking and willingness to turn off unneeded toggles. Not for everyone. I agree that tanking team TFs would devalue CC - I find that large teams, if one is not careful, collapse almost all playstyles into 'herd it up and nuke it down' - and in that context, any tank that focuses on doing anything other than being an indestructible lump of aggro sink, maybe with a tiny bit of side AOE to add to the carnage, is not maximally efficient. As an aside... can anyone think of any powers in tank primaries or epics that are just lovely wonderful gamechanges that suffer from overly long cooldowns? Im looking at the Force Feedback +Rchg proc and Battleaxe and wondering if there is anything to be found there....

TW will still be the highest damage set on each AT by about the same ratio. Assuming you took your melee offense set to do damage, this makes it the best choice. If you arent concerned with damage, TW is at best an OK choice - it has an okay defense buff and some knockdown, which is nice. But if you arent concerned about damage, you arent talking about TW.

Alone, the DA toggles impact only minions. But minions are a lot of damage in a big spawn, and having them all some mix of afraid and drunk makes my life easier in the 30s solo. At 50 on a steamroll team, it wont matter.. but at 50 on a steamroll team, what matters? Also, at 30, I find the End and HP drain from those toggles pretty manageable on my Savage Melee Tank. Perhaps I should lay aside Savage, though, and troll the Tank Secondaries for even more CC... Remind me to holler when/if I see 50 and slide in all the CC Procs and CC Incarnates and CC Pools that will hold still, and see where we are then.

And in a perfect world, we should look at those pools. Fighting, Leadership, Speed, Leaping or Flight. Pick 3-4 seems to be a handy default. And I wish it were otherwise. However.. 1.) I can change my power pool choices without rerolling/totally replacing the character. 2.) Power Pool impacts, while potentially large, are not on the scale of 'Regen vs Bioarmor' or 'Axe vs Titan Weapons' 3.) Buffing SOME of the extra gold plating off the gold-platedest things in the game will probably annoy a LOT less people than radically changing peoples Hasten (Caveat to above - At this point in CoH, Id also be comfortable with replacing Hasten in the Speed Pool with $somethingelse, and giving everyone a 'Hasten' autopower that provides +RCHG, scaling from 0 at lvl 1 to current hasten values at lvl 50)

A thought I've been kicking around in the back of my head: 1.) IO's give survival, more than anything. (This is part of the reason tanking felt kinda meh to me. IOs give sooo much survival that most everyone can be 'tough enough') 2.) Tanks have enough toughness to survive almost anything, even with just SOs, even at lvl 30. Tanks are already mostly 'tough enough' at those levels with SOs. 3.) Some endgame mobs exist that completely trivialize our ability to be 'tough enough'. But they rarely do so by beating us down straight through our defenses. 4.) Certain incarnate powers do CRAZY things to survival ability. Barrier and Melee leap to mind, but resist and defense focused Alpha slots can help a lot, too. 5.) Defeat is the best debuff, and CC works just as well on Seers and Carnies as it does on Council and CoT. Despite 1-5 above, I always find myself choosing full IO sets, odd powers, sacrificing the fun gubbins, to try to build something thats 90% resist/45% defense/lots of extra HP and Regen, and utterly ignoring the ability of my other powers or incarnates or what-you-will to make them survivable. What if I, instead, took... idk, a Dark Armor set, and leaned into the CC? Don't try to burn the slots for max resist and softcap defense (which Dark Armor can do!) but instead go for fear or disorient or both, slide in more CC from a primary (though I may stay savage for funs) or through pools (when was the last time I took presence pool!) or through incarnates (just to see them used!), layer on procs to make my PBAOE self heal a PBAOE self healing nuke (we always want more nukes)... What if I take Invuln - which doesnt have as many side gubbins to offer as other sets, but is infamously survivable at the SOs level, because resist+saturated invicinbility - and accept that level of toughness as enough, at least for most days and most content? Lets say - grab energy melee. Old set, but hopefully in line for a buff, and the huge AOE Disorient of Whirling Hands is its own mitigation. The Mu Epic layers on even MORE AOE for endgame x8ing, and we can afford it cause were tough -enough-. And ET is still a decent single target boss buster. With the freedom to chase procs, and odd powers.. heck, lets grab Assault and Adrenalin boost, and layer on every incarnate damage source known to man. We are STILL +4/x8 against anything but Seers and Carnies, cause Invuln - and hey, lets use that Mu AOE Root as an opener and some geometry to break up the spawn and then my disorients to cut incoming psychic misery further and hey if ALL OF THAT FAILS or if today I am tanking Lord Recluse or BATF or W/e, well, we can switch incarnates pretty casually. What if I take Fire, infamous as the 'squishy, high damage' tank - and run a survival IO build to push that squishy up to 'tough enough for any reasonable fact pattern' (with incarnate layering for those times I have to do the Real Tough Tanking) - or run a proc/fun IO and fun pool powers build, leaning into the headroom vs Brute/Scrapper cousins given by larger base values to go get 'other stuff', and plan on still being tough enough? At the end of the day, can I still be *tough enough* while having burn? Can I be *tough enough* with incarnates and IOs to handle TF Tanking (while still having burn)? Can I lean into damage increasing tricks and fun toys for my solo experience, while still being tough enough for solo life (and still, yannnowwww... having burn)? ((More broadly - Im starting to fall in love with having 3 builds. Maybe 'Solo/Maximum Offense' on the outline above, 'Survival/Max Defense' on the classic set-bonus chasing approach, in case incarnates and teammates arent enough, and finally a 'How do I live my best life in the Caverns of Transcendance and Rule of 3' exemplar build build))

Exactly. I want to play melee without going, constantly 'yannow, this is great, but it would be so much better if I had just gone Bio/Rad/Titan/Whatever'. Other things dont have to be exactly as good as... thats impossible. But close enough that you can go 'well, X would be nice to have right now, but I chose Y, lets see how I can make Y work for me!'

What he said. Radiation gives slightly less damage out than Bio (and so is less of a target for maximizing output), but OTOH, Radiation is a solid contender for second toughest tank set in the game (barring Granite), while handing out damage, AOE, healing, Absorb, Endurance, Recharge, etc. like they are candy. Radiation is at least as overtuned as Bioarmor, its just somewhat more subtle about it. Further, as a resist set (I wont say pure, because of all the other candy), Radiation is partiularly attractive to a tank, or brute, and less so to a scrapper, due to the lower resist cap.

TW Tanks exist (I have one!), and can be a great path to 'maximum damage while maintaining maximum survival at endgame'. But the lowered Tank damage makes the already painful leveling for TW (compared to other melee sets) even MORE painful, and the long animation locks of TW detract from the tanker's need to adjust to situations, pull aggro off friends, hit the 'dont die' button because taking fire from everywhere, and keep things off of friends. Finally, you go TW to do all the damage at endgame. You dont go tank to do all the damage. And you can make a Brute, or even a Scrapper, 'tough enough' for +4/x8 anything, or to survival and survive soloing the hardest TFs in the game. If your target is over performance (and you rolled TW, didntcha?) then you are probably clever enough to realize that any survival past 'it cant kill me before I kill it' is wasted (at least in solo content - on teams, the extra tanker survival and aggro control and now target caps gives other value), and so... you don't roll a tank with Titan Weapons. On the previous comments about nerfs v. buffs, two thoughts: 1.) If you have 10 sets, 1-2 supergood, 1-2 superbad, and the rest in the middle - it is a far more efficient use of resources (and resources are ALWAYS finite!) to bring 1-2 up, 1-2 down, and leave the rest as they are, than try to bring 8-9 up, likely miss the mark with a few, and have to start another round. 2.) What does it matter if something is too good! PvE game! - Certainly, players can play anything they want, and the existence of a TW/Bio Scrapper does not prevent an Energy Melee/Regen Brute from happening. However, we are human, and when you run off on a team feeling utterly useless/second rate with NO WAY TO FIX THAT (other than a reroll!) simply because your chose the wrong powersets - well, that is not a good time. In a way, 'too good' things are worse than 'too bad' things. A set that is 'too bad' is a sad thing, but it only costs us one set as being as being a mathematically good choice (I ignore here aesthetically good choices - Pet-less MMs exist, because of aesthetics, not math). A set that is 'too good' costs us, arguably, EVERY OTHER SET as a mathematically good choice. We want cheese. If there are 10 routes to the cheese, good. If there are 2 routes that dont get to the cheese anytime soon, thats a little bad, you lose two routes. If there is one route to the cheese that is far better than the others, you lose all the others, and thats even worse.

As a TW user with an incarnate IOed murdergoddess at 50 and a struggling 30 making me question why I wanted to level this set again, just for a -second- lvl 50 murdergoddess who cant exemplar for anything... Any change would IMHO smooth the set out. If we can make 1-40 (I find TW starts to really sing around 40 and is pretty miserable before that) more playable, and 50 with all the toys less extreme, that would be ideal. The set should probably still get some return on being so micro-intensive compared to other sets, but ‘best by miles single target, pehnomenal AOE, -Res, -Def for proccing, +Def for survival, KD for survival and MORE procs’ is probably a bit too much ROI. If total damage out comes down, DPE should improve, as well. Some of the over-performance endgame and misery before comes from ‘paying for’ incredible DPA with hideous DPE... and by endgame, we have the tools to make that cost trivial, while still reaping the rewards. Side note - anyone tried TW on SOs, no Incarnates? Im guessing its pretty in par with other sets there... limited RCHG and END would make the set a lot more interesting, choice wise. Observation: does it seem like many ‘late release’ sets are balanced around SO performance, and at the same time, carefully crafted to get really good returns from IOs?

Honestly, I think the feedback quality is generally high, generally fair, and far kinder to the sort of player who asks ‘whats good?’ than simply pretended things are not what they are. If someone really wants to heal fast, and thinks that means regen, you can suggest that they at least -look- at Regen 2.0 (WP) and Regen 3.5 (Bio), while noting that depsite being strictly worse, original regen is still quite playable. Similarly for Energy Melee - sure, you could do glowy fist-punch 1.0, but with Kinetic Melee, StJ (with a glow aura on your hands in combat) and Radiation Melee around, have you considered your better options (while noting that EM can still be fun and rewarding). Battle Axe? Can I sell you a Sword (maybe two!) or a Mace instead? (I honestly don't recommend TW, not without lots of warnings) I see the proper solution to people saying sets are terrible as positive action to make them not terrible, rather than to let some poor person invest massive time and energy only to realize that their uniformed choice has undermined that time and effort. If you are fairly warned and choose to embrace the suck, well, thats a valid choice, and I tip my hat.

Upon a time, there was a bug with Paragon Transit where you would exit the train into someone elses mission. For a while, after badges but before flashback, that bug and some really magical levels of luck was the only way to get the contaminated badge (you had to -repeatedly- error into some new characters outbreak door mission) So while misclick is always more likely, its certainly possible that similar buts may be hitting OPs supergroup.

If you made rate just another buildup, the set would need help elsewhere. SS needs the buff from rage to make up for otherwise low base damage in its attacks.

Bio on a Tank feels quite similar to Bio on a Brute. I noticed offensive adaptation a bit more, likely due to the Tanks higher damage scalar and Fury’s tendency to drown out other damage buffs. Similarly on Defensive - it seems it gives me a little more value than it does on a brute, likely because a Tanker is easy to get close to certain target numbers - that Defensive Adaptation will then put me over. Bio vs Elec - very apples and oranges. Elec can resist cap most things fairly casually, so will hold up better under endgame debuff storms (Of my melee characters, Bio is the most prone to cascade collapse - which is fair, given its power). Bio has, of course, an outsized damage buff (I recall when testing it last summer, it seems offensive adaptation is doing two different things - both buffing the damage of the attack directly by a %, AND applying an independent damage packet. I wonder if they were testing two different things and then left both in) but also a massive regen, espc with the T9 in a crowd. The large tank HP pool is super good on a regen heavy set, and the CC from Ice will likely further help with this. Should be great fun. Enjoy.

I always hear that ‘X would be overpowered if ported to scrappers’. I am not convinced. War Mace is not overpowered on Scrappers, nor on Tanks, and maintains the same basic ratio of damage out on both characters. Same for Fire Melee or Claws or... (etc.) The only large difference between tank and scrapper versions of these sets (other than the AT based damage scalar, and the Scrappers Crits) is the part where things like Buildup give a larger dambuff on a scrapper than on a tank (IIRC, 100% vs 80%) The only place I see us getting into trouble is if we increase the value of the Rage buff when we port over to scrappers - given that SS is balanced against other tank sets on the assumption that Rage gives a certain % value, raising that % in translation might throw it out of whack with the other scrapper sets. Id start it off at its current, tank, value on any port over, and adjust from there (a vv small increase might be called for, as other sets benefit from greater +Dam on their buildups or similar effects) On the other hand - Titan Weapon exists, so... why worry? Its unlikely to be any nastier than that...

Yeup. Id be fine at the release version (release animation, damage, and self damage) or at the current animation, with the current self damage flipped over into additional energy damage out. I recall hearing, but cannot cite all these years later, that at one point Staff was listing the damage that ET did as justification for its animation time - but was including the self damage in the quoted total damage. This seems ridiculous, but should not surprise, given that they cited pre-purple-patch movies showing performance against + lots mobs as proof of Regenerations need to be adjusted - AFTER the purple patch went live.

Fair enough. Set performance for a normal player playing with SOs or Generic IOs at +0/x1 who may not be entirely clear on why ‘procs’ are a thing will have basically nothing in common with set performance in the hands of the ‘I can give up 1/10th second on the recharge on Attack B, as it still recharges in time for my DPS Rotation, to switch from an Acc/Dam/Rchg to an Acc/Dam which gives me 2% more damage, a net gain, and I switch in these t4 incarnates against this villain group and oh, move the proc from there to there so its buff lines up with your better DPA attack (for values of DPA when you get the crit bonus and it only applies to the next attack’ crowd. Your form of analysis is likely more cogent to the vast majority of play, and the play experience/fun of the first type of player described is no less valuable or important than that of the second.

Fire Melee may well be weak compared to other -fire- sets. It remains in the top 3 of -melee- sets for raw DPS, slightly behind Savage and comically behind Titan Weapons (as are all things that deal damage). Now, I will grant you that Fire Melee lacks meaningful secondary effects, dealing only damage, and that the two superior damage sets, Savage and TW, possess secondary effects that add value (Savage for Endredux and Recharge, and TW for being an amazing mish-mash of Knock, -DEF, and -Res that almost seems custom created to slot in whatever procs most benefit you). Additionally, Mace sits right behind Fire Melee, only with decent secondary effects, none of its damage tied up in DOTs, and doing smashing instead of lethal. WM is probably my choice for a #2 set - but that goes to how one evaluates survival mechanisms. Katana and Staff rate rather further down on damage, but have other benefits (I agree as to Staff's strength, due to its many tools. I find Katana a bit underwhelming, personally - but I typically find lethal damage sets a bit underwhelming, due to the very common nature of Lethal resist - but thats very much a YMMV) More broadly, and in response to Naraka: Titan has some issues going out of set, but little need, IMHO. Sets like Energy Melee CAN go out of set - but often need to, to cover vast, gaping holes in their capability. Certainly Energy Melee can make better use of pool attacks than does Titan Weapons.. but Energy Melee will spend pool selections and power selections for the joy of -still- being mediocre by comparison. Of course, it gets the ability to progress the debt badge with its primary attack, so I suppose that sort of power must be paid for. More broadly, though, I agree - some sets give you free power choices, because they do their business in a few powers (I love Dark Melee for this. Buildup, Self Heal, 2 other single target attacks, and an AOE - and everything else is optional - so even if its total damage out is not the best, its utility and flexibility is unparalleled)

Galaxy Brain does touch on an interesting point - how do you balance 'no thought' sets vs 'active management' sets? Should there be a payoff for having to keep track of weird mechanics and line up cooldowns, or is that just a feature of a set? As they've added mechanical complexity to offense sets, they have at the same time often added more 'oomph' - though I don't know if this is by plan, or simply a matter of 'newer sets get more complex mechanics because we've learned how to do them, and newer sets get more power because we've changed the design balance point of the game since the early days, and also maybe cashshop lol'. Assuming good intentions (and it is always best to do so), lets presume that the design intent was to make some sets capable of higher performance at a higher 'workload' - two of the current top performers, Bioarmor and Titan Weapons, are to my mind prime examples of responding very well to micromanagement, and paying that back in very high performance - extreme outlier performance when used together. But do we want to buff things like Dark Melee by giving them more power, at the expense of more cognitive load? Whats the right balance point? What of players who TOOK sets because they were easy to drive? ((Note, this is aside from the issue that some sets are both very easy to use and very, very powerful - right under TW lies the likes of Fire Melee and Warmace, both powerhouse sets that perform quite well if you simply hit the keyboard with your face, repeatedly... and they lie far ABOVE other sets that require all sorts of mechanics, or even require their mechanics be ignored because they are so bad, to get performance that is still mathematically inferior - Dual Blades, Kinetic Melee... and the basic issue of power creep is still there...))

-looks around- Hunh. I missed this. Ive got a DM coming up, Ill hope this works out for her. Between this and EM, its a hopeful future for my characters

I have to echo Frostweaver RE: Build Flexibility. If Im trying to get a Brute up to what I consider ‘basic tank performance’ (which for me is gonna be softcap+solid resists, or resist cap plus solid DEF, or... you get the idea) I find my brute build is wearing a striaghtjacket. Tough+Weave, CJ or Hover, Maneuvers, almost every single time. Thats three pools, we probably know whats in number 4. On my tanks, I can probably drop at least one of the above, and have more power choices to boot. This opens up a fourth pool for fun and flavor, or for things like Adrenal Boost for more damage and recharge, or the Presence Pool to play CC games with Dark Armor, or... Also gives me more space to play with epic pools, more slots free for rounding out things, a bit more flexibility in incarnates, yadda. YMMV, of course.

I'm actually finding it somewhat disheartening, once I run the numbers. Id expected the combination of the tank damage buff, and the ability to pursue offense with procs, to close the gap more than it does. To the OP: For what its worth, this Tank-Player-Since-Release is doing Mids plans and considering rerolling Tankers as Brutes, even after the buffs. Make of that what you will. Edit: On reconsideration, and running the numbers a bit more - I think it may be less grim than it first appears. At a 'no external/temporary buffs', Brutes look very good, due to their very large internal buff. At 'maximum external/temporary buffs', IE Dambuff Cap, Brutes also look very good - because of their higher buff cap. But most game play doesnt exist in those conditions. Youve probably got SOME reds buffing your damage - and they help the tanker more. The tanker has a higher mod on Assault, and more build room (at the same survival) to take things like Assault and Adrenal Boost (or w/e). And the temporary buffs (Gaussians Procced Buildup, or what you will) are going to have a larger impact on the tank - and provide their increased value on demand (such as smashing down a boss), again closing the EFFECTIVE gap. So, for general 'playing the game', solo or in loose teams, the Tank probably closes much of the gap (though probably not all of it), and will have more hit points, given the same defensive powerset - and having more hit points is a powerful form of mitigation, itself.

My initial results seem to indicate that if you lean it FAR in the Tanks Favor (Superstrength/Shield sort of setup), and measure damage ONLY during things like buildup cycles, and include things like musculature... The tank does NEARLY as much damage as the Brute, and the brute is about as tough as the tank (not quite - brute still has lower HP, on similar def/res) If you back away from damage buffs, the brute pulls further and further ahead. So, my impression is for general play, the Brute will remain, despite the buff, a superior choice. The only reason to chose a Tanker over a Brute, mechanically, at endgame, seems to be larger target caps, and better aggro management. If you find Brute AOE Target Caps and Aggro Management sufficient, there is no reason to play a tanker, mechancially at endgame. Before endgame, or outside of mechanical preferences, the tanks ability to get their survival powers sooner will have value in low level/exemplar play, and some players will always prefer the steadiness of the tanks greater HP pool, and/or the lack of a need to pursue rage.

A tanker can be tougher than a Brute can, and its AOEs may be somewhat more effective (target caps) now, but (as I am exploring in another thread) - the Brute is tougher than the Tank is damaging, by which I mean that a brute built for survival will be about as tough as a tank built for damage... while doing more damage. Thus, I believe that the Brute will remain a better farmer.