Bill Z Bubba

1: Depends on the content and diff, doesn't it? If we're all running +0/x1 and aren't lacking a functional brain and opposable thumbs, we're all unkillable. Fighting level 54 AVs, tanks rapidly become the only unkillable entities. 2: Unwarranted by the standard of archetype balance within the game. If it only takes me a few minutes longer to wipe out a map/hard target and I have zero % chance of defeat, vs maybe taking out the map/target a few minutes faster with a vastly higher chance of defeat, seems like balance has been tossed out the window. 3: Again, bad in a balance way. We're playing City of Tanks now as someone else noted in another thread. It's not bad for those of us that say, fark it, I'm runnin tanks, but it is bad for anyone that thinks some level of balance should exist between and amongst archetypes and powersets within those archetypes.

The damage buff/aoe buff was completely unwarranted considering their vast mitigation. Of course people enjoy being unkillable while also being able to defeat everything.

CoT slam us with tohit debuffs. Weapon sets often have higher base accuracy but you'll still need to find a constant source of tohit buffs to couple with them. Kinda means tactics in the build as early as possible regardless of AT. They also enjoy their defense debuffs, so you're going to either want control to shut em up or high DDR to ignore em. High DDR does NOT exist in the early game for any defense based mitigation so you might want to lean into a resist based or control based mitigation set. Seems like a dom pushing high recharge with assault and tactics might be the way to go. While domination is up, you're also immune to the succubi confuse.

Yup. Scrapper forum. Ya can't miss it.

Arcane bolt on a controller often does 3x damage. And since they have pets, hitting them with spirit ward and enflame greatly increases their base abilities. You'd think power pools shouldn't be so ridiculously one-sided for some ATs but there it is. You'd have to nerf hasten. A power far too many of us abuse heavily, myself definitely included. I don't see the devs doing that. Regardless, I, of course, agree with you that more power creep is absolutely a bad thing. Tank buffs proved that beyond any doubt.

Then I should have to hover before I can learn to fly. The travel power modification to lvl 4... didn't that happen on the SSPS after the shutdown by those that obviously didn't give a shit about game balance? It should be rolled back. Edit: And for the OP, /jranger. I'm sick to death of the power creep. It's time for some wholesale nerfage. Edit2: And, no, not another global defense nerf for fuck's sake.

When we're all ridiculously OP already compared to the PvE environment? I'm gonna go with yes.

Had to do a followup (no pun intended) on this. Took BZB tank into the same AE mish, found Battle Maiden, stuck followup on auto with its +resist tank AT IO, and he was 100% immortal. The LOWEST she got him was around 40% health. No incarnates, hell, not even PB was in use so she was knocking him down regularly, but he was NEVER in any danger of defeat. On the other hand, when I got bored proving his immortality, I set hasten back on auto, hit hybrid assault radial, dropped my carnie radial lore pets and went to town. Still took 12 minutes to take her down. Using insps to stay alive, BZB scrap would have killed her much faster. I guess I do need to build that nrg/shield scrapper and brute after all. Regardless, does SR need a buff? Nope.

And on the Bio side, if you want max damage output, ya go bio. My claws/bio kill times are ferocious. My nrg/bio/soul kill speed is ludicrous.

Now now, Arcane, a +4 Battle Maiden was able to kill my main claws/sr scrapper when I was refusing to use inspirations. Let's see now... lvl 54 AV, only really +3 since I have alpha slotted, 5% chance to hit becomes (5*1.3*1.5) 9.75% chance to hit. Noope, her sword has a 1.2 base accuracy, so 11.7% chance to hit for (checks CoD) 1823 pts of damage with Disembowel. Hack does 1526, Slash 930 and Slice 1144. Bill sits at 2033 HP. Let's say I was around 30% health when she got lucky and double tapped my face with Disembowel and Hack. Would have had around 66% SL resist at 610 HP. (No, tough NEVER helps SR!!! (rolls eyes heavily.)) (1823+1526)*.34 = 1139 damage against 610 HP... yup, that's death. Course, all I had to do was eat a green or back up out of melee range for a few, but c'mon, a level 54 AV was able to kill me! OBVIOUSLY, SR needs a buff. In case it isn't obvious, /sarcasmoff.

You're not wrong but I'd rather be right than liked. 🙂

Looked at it again. I think a direct port of my build to a brute would be a nogo. Being over 8 pts from the softcap on range and aoe will hurt. Edit: Of course, this is solo. On teams you won't notice the loss on the mitigation side but regardless of AT, you will notice all the corpse blasting from Nrg's long animations. Edit 2: On the other hand.... darkest night's tohit debuffs... hrmm. Brute values: Tank values:

And then hit the gate right there to IP where Family and Tsoo are ready to be taken out as you head to and down the bridge.

Getting a powerset to its caps is a good thing for that powerset and should be a player's goal for that build. What an amazing insight. Edit: I mean, REALLY... NONE of us figured this out back in the pre-ED/GDN days with our permalude builds. Right?

I will never enjoy masterminds but reading things like this makes me jealous of those that get it goin in cool ways.

It's the same thing. Yes, different entities have different resistances (my main claws/sr scrapper takes 20 mins to take down Praetor Duncan and 3 mins to take down Mother Mayhem,) but hard targets are hard targets. That's why pylon tests are good. They give you a baseline to work from for all hard targets. More info: @Eva Destruction AE arc Praetorian Invasion. 16 AVs with a 2hour (I think) timer. Run it at +4/x1, take out the one or two peons with the AV, then go to town. Battle Maiden is a problem for my main. If she gets lucky and lands disembowel and head-splitter, I'm usually dead. She hits MUCH harder than BAB. Ranged characters will have zero issues against her, of course.

You liked the regen the most even though it was 1.5mins slower than the db/nrg?

Yes, HB, it's a FANTASTIC bit of CC. I use it often on all my dark users.

Don't you kinkshame! 🙂 I haven't ERPed since the BBS days. And I'm reminded that I'm an old. Thanks, me.

Well if that's all it takes, I'll save that post for next time.

There was another option: rework the set so that it was neither over or underpowered and then the AT mods for Tank, Brute, Scrapper would have functioned correctly with identical base values. Alas, that was not the choice they wanted.

Several times but have at it knowing that there's even better builds out there. Edit: change rebirth radial to ageless core.

In a thread about regen, where some consensus had been met regarding helping regen out with debuff resistance for regen and recharge, we end up again having to read the nerf defense spew when said proposal would do nothing but leave tanks, arguably the most OP AT in the game at this point, and brutes untouched while everyone else in the game at the old softcap to anything gets hit 100% more often than they were to anything they were softcapped against. It's a good thing that no one in control of this game agrees with this idiocy. Are there balance problems in this game? Oh hell yes, tons of them. The fact that my shield/nrg tank has the same pylon time as my claws/sr scrapper and can solo a max diff no temps no insps no faceplants ITF in HALF the time is fucking ludicrous. It's horrifically broken. The performance disparity between powersets within archetypes is just as awful, an example provided in this very thread. And what's BJ's fix? Nerf everyone but tanks and brutes. Cuz that'll magically fix everything. As for everyone being overpowered because some folks can run at max diff with some power combo from every AT, let's remember that the difficulty settings in this game were changed AFTER the invention system was added, and they were changed because way too many people found +3/x1 or +2/x2 (where the old diff system capped out while solo) to be WAAAY too easy. I remember this because I wasn't playing when it happened. I got a ping on steam that said, "Yo, brutes got claws and new diff settings let you do +4/x8 while solo." Damn right I came back for that. So don't try to tell us that the devs didn't have soloing at max diff in mind even back then. And THEN they added incarnate powers which for some ATs and powerset combos, even trivialized max diff. Again, I'm looking at my shield/nrg tank here. Sure, my sr/claws tank is unkillable but DAMN he's slow in comparison. Point is, this has been the plan all along and those folks stating otherwise are nothing short of wrong. All the melee armors should perform equally within some reasonable ballpark of mitigation within an archetype. Same goes for the attack sets. Buff the ST side? Great, as long as their AoE output is as far below the midline as the ST is above it. Armors too far above the midline need to be nerfed. Armors too far below it need to be buffed. Again, same goes for the attack sets. This works for all the archetypes. Kheldians on the whole performing too far behind the other ATs? Buff 'em. Tanks too OP now? Nerf 'em. That's how you balance the game. Nerfing everyone but tanks and brutes will not get us anywhere closer to a balanced game. Quite the contrary.

Yup, the guy agreeing with you states SR underperforms and this means we should nerf SR to fix it. The brilliance shown by the two of you truly is awe-inspiring.

Yes, we do. And we also know that resistance automatically resists resistance debuffs and defense doesn't. The devs know and knew this as well. So you just arbitrarily chose to round up to the nearest whole number for EATs but rounded up by 2.5 for everyone else out of the goodness of your heart while not actually caring that those values don't correlate to the basis of your argument that 90% resist = 45% defense and then expect the rest of us to hop on board at nothing more than your say so. I suspect everyone else got the sarcasm in my post but I'll apologize for leaving off the /sarcasmoff tag. You are correct that the discussion of lowering the defense softcap is a waste of time and yet you continue to bring it up every chance you get.