Kimuji

The -damage is literally the last part of the crash that should go away if we don't want to turn Super Strength into a soulless set with no real highlights and no counterparts. It's been there since day one, people have dealt with it when the game was much harder. CoH has never been easier than it is today, influence has never been easier to make, characters have never been so powerful and yet a 10s crash has become an insurmountable obstacle... My mind is completely blown. Sometimes I'd almost wish we'd go back to the post ED/pre IO era for a little while just to give the community the reality check it desperately needs: The game in its current state is easy as F*! Asking for a crash less Rage in that context... I'm speechless. Seriously anything more permissive than this would be another big step toward the trivialization of the game: I mean, Might would be the super duper user friendly alternative for Rage. And we'd have both so those who want the full Rage experience would get it and those who prefer a more tamed version of it would get it as well. Are there any other solutions out there that would satisfy more people at once?

Of course TW is an outliner, and yet you don't see many threads here to get it brought back to more reasonable levels. Or does the status of outliner protects you from any sort of adjustment? Just to be clear I'm not saying that we should open such a thread, I questionned the fact that to some SS seems to need an urgent fix to its alleged OPness while there's a much bigger elephant in the room. I used Titan Weapons as a mean to show that this OPness only surfaced as an excuse to get a free Rage.

Well look at the post just above and one might not need to answer that question if everyone is given the choice between the regular Rage and the suggested Rage alternative. Makes everyone happy... hopefully.

Alright given the last pages inputs that's what I'd be ok with: Add a new power to the Super Strength set, it would be called Might or whatever and couldn't be used in conjuction with Rage. Might's effect would be the following: - +20% to hit bonus for 120s - +80% damage buff for 120s - -25% endurance after 120s - -9900% to all damage for 10s after 120s - a base 4 minutes recharge time In short players would have the choice between the regular stackable Rage with the full crash (end/dmg/def) and Might an equivalent to a non stackable version of Rage with a smaller crash. Yes I kept some form of crash for Might, because a permanent +80% damage and 20% accuracy buff shouldn't be free. No one really complained about it before the def crash exploit was fixed, so there's no reason to remove it. And if the regular Rage is to keep the full crash there's no reason either that Might should be spared the 10s of reduced damage, that's only fair.

That would be preferable indeed.

If there is no exact answer to how much damage it means it's precisely because there are options to mitigate it. SS even provides some tools of its own to deal with it (like I said Hand Clap and Footstomp are good incoming damage mitigators).

You're not seeing the big picture. Have you read the "Addressing the Tanker/Brute conundrum" thread? You'll see plenty of suggestions to nerf Brutes tanking capabilities. Some want to reduce their damage resitance cap, some want to remove the taunt effect on their attacks. This is madness. People are already mad because they feel like Brutes are stealing the Tankers spot (which is nonesense because Brutes were meant to be tanks from the start). Now imagine adding another Tanking AT type on top of this. It's going to be a mess of epic proportions. This is something I could get behind. I'd even think that you might toss a taunt effect to some of the sentinel attacks. So, Assault Sets made available to sentinels, a taunt effect on a few selected attacks and I'd leave it at that. Sentinel would get a new flavor, a bit more purpose in a team and we save us the headache of having to balance Tankers and Brutes with a new tanking AT.

And let's not forget that SS provides its own tools to help countering the defense crash: Hand Clap and Footstomp. And like Snickerdoodle said, there are inspirations and incarnates powers. Ageless can counted the end crash, but Barrier can counter the def crash, and so do the melee hybrids. You also have Rune of Protection... There are options. Well, how about the amount that comes with the current Rage crash? Of course SS is sooo OP. So much that everyone is rolling SS at the expense of all other melee sets. We should absolutely nerf it, it's not like there are higher damage sets like Titan Weapons around with virtually no penalty. 🙄 I mean SS isn't even the most popular set for farmers, and these guys only swear by sheer damage (they're all Spines and Rad melee). SS is not top tier either for Pylons. Just how many of you asking for a SS nerf have opened a thread to ask a Titan Weapons nerf? None, yeah that's what I thought. Suddenly SS had become OP just because some people don't want to deal with the crash. So yeah let's brand SS as an OP set to hide the fact that the true goal is to get Rage for free. The fact that the thread is somewhat torn between "SS is OP" and "SS is trash" only reinforce the fact that the set is exactly where it should be.

Nooooo that was not to be taken seriously. 😭

Balance isn't backward thinking. There's a reason why Sentinels never were an official AT, they don't really have a spot in a team's synergy. If you increase their damage they'll make Blasters obsolete, if you increase they defenses they become bad tanks (poor aggro and crowd control management). But they're now so they're gonna stay, we're not going to erase players' characters. But what we can do however is not double down on this and make another AT based on the same flawed principle. A niche that is not, and never really was, needed.

That's exactly what I wanted to avoid. By begging for a removal of Rage's crash we're getting a Rage nerf. Double Rage was a thing since Day 1 and we might lose it now because boohoo10s crash is too much to handle. Good going peeps, good going and thanks for nothing... That change wouldn't even make much sense. If we're making Rage permanent for free and without a crash we might as well remove Rage entirely and include the damage and accuracy bonus directy into SS attacks or make it a passive power. No... that's completely ruinning the power's design and spirit here. I haven't changed my mind, just don't touch Rage or SS it will only make it worse.

SR doesn't fear Rage's crash that much because its defenses are so high that you can still maintain yourself close to the soft cap during the crash. Ice is hit harder but Ice is also a set that needs a revision as it has become a bit obsolete compared to newer or revised defense sets. Which leaves Energy Aura and Shield. Shield/SS is OP so, it's not a problem that needs fixing IMO. So, we have Energy Aura, that's one set alright, I think we can live with that. And it's not like you are forced to perma double Rage either. You wanted to show that SS even without Rage wasn't that bad, did you change your mind? As for armor-agnosticism, the funny part is that the arguably two best sets to pair Super Strength with are also among the worse to pair with Titan Weapons. Fiery Aura and Radiation Armor are very reliant on their click powers (Healing Flames, Burn, Consume, Ground Zero, Particule Shielding, Radiation Therapy) and these make the use of Titan Weapons very cluncky because it interferes with the Momentum mechanic. So should we also make Titan Weapons more armor-agnostic as well? And that armor-agnostic argument is quite selective actually, because not all armors are made equal against the endurance crash. It's a lot tougher on a set like Dark Armor due to its already heavy endurance consumption, so should we remove the endurance crash for the sake of equality between armors?

I've got a profound aversion to anything looking like a ranged Tank. We had those in CO and it was nothing short of a mistake. Sturdy ranged characters are a game design abomination (yeah I also dislike Sentinels as a concept for the same reason), armors are for those who fight at melee range, you're taking risks you get an armor you attack from afar you don't get one. You are completely downplaying the advantage of attacking from range, especially if you're flying. Hover + attacking from a distance + armor is exceptionally good. Setting that balance issue aside, how do you herd mobs from range? I can answer that question fairly easily from what I've experienced on CO: you don't. So as a tank you're not even very good at your job at controlling crowds. On CO ranged tanks were popular because they were safer... from the tank's perspective (especially for PVP for obvious reason: you have to reach them first and they're super sturdy. Very balanced indeed). But from the team's perspective? Much worse than a melee tank because mobs were all over the place, cone AoE were coming from any angles... Now if we're going into the specifics, a 85% res cap is way too much if you're throwing an absorb shield on top of it, it would make them significantly better than Brutes which would be awful from a game balance perspective. Yeah we're all back to the same problem: sturdy ranged characters are a game balance abomination.

Regarding SS without Rage vs SM, the page 15 comparison sets aside an important aspect: DPA. Seismic Smash for instance isn't just a tiny bit better than Knockout Blow, it's way better thanks to a very short animation time for such a heavy single target attack. If we don't factor in DPA then Energy Melee would appear like an amazing single target set, which it is clearly not. Now is SS superior to SM damage wise? With Rage I'd say so indeed. Much better AoE and stronger single target damage thanks to Rage. Which is fine because you're paying for it: an end/def/dmg crash at the end of Rage. Actually we shouldn't even argue on the SS vs SM comparison because apparently we agree on the conclusion: SS is fine as it is and Rage doesn't need to be made painless (because asking for the removal of the def debuff is basically this) to make it relevant and competitive.

Knock Up/Down/Back and stuns make total sense on a set called Super Strength and are perfectly in the spirit of a Hulk Smash set. And who said that Superman was stupid? That's exaclty why I don't want any "fix" for SS and Rage. Because like you said an overhaul of the set would most likely result in an overall nerf. So we leave it as it is with Rage's full crash (dmg/end/def), it is an acceptable trade off for what Rage brings in terms of DPS.

Rage is virtually perma with 3 SOs, because you don't want to pop Rage right when it crashes or you're wasting 10s of Rage. So you have 10 additional seconds after the end of Rage before having to refresh it. If one wants to argue that SS wasn't balanced around a perma Rage up time, well that's open to speculation but it seems pretty obvious to me that SS was balanced around a much higher damage bonus up time than the sets based on Build Up. And let's not talk about the pre-ED era, it was a stupid era lol. But when you say that SS isn't 'trash', you mean SS with Rage right? Because without it it's pretty bad and worse than Stone Melee (except for AoEs, Stone's AoE capabilies are rather weak). However SS with Rage, even with the damage/end/def crash is far from trash indeed.

Rage with 3 recharge SOs is very close to perma. And Hasten has always been there. Sure ou couldn't perma Hasten before IOs but it still allowed you to double stack Rage regularly. But to be clear when I said " I think it is better left untouched ", I meant leaving Rage the way it is now.

Yeah SS without Rage is worse than EM (maybe not for AoE though), which is something. lol IMO Rage without crash but reduced damage is worse than a crash with full damage. And that's one of the reason why I don't want Rage to be touched, because most of these compromise solutions would actually result in a nerfed SS instead of making it better. And removing the crash would make it ridiculous (SD/SS tankers were absurd, constantly hitting the damage cap without any real downside). So yeah, I think it is better left untouched. I don't want it to become either trash or OP.

A potential damage increase isn't really an improvement if it isn't practical. And that's the current EM in a nutshell, good raw damage but impractical. That Power Up mechanic really feels in the same vein, impractical. Build Up is at the very bottom of the complains list, it shouldn't be at the center of the set's overhaul. And most people here aren't even asking for a full overhaul, just a fix to the massive nerfs EM went through. EM isn't obsolete like some other sets (Ice Armor, Stone Armor...) it doesn't need to be "modernized", it was broken by nerfs and needs to be fixed. I'm not a huge fan of PvP myself but EM before the nerfs was the iconic melee PvP set and I would find it kind of sad if we'd turn it into the worst possible PvP set for Brutes and Tankers. That's part of the set's identity. If we could avoid breaking that too, it would be nice. As for ET's animation I made two suggestions on this page: the obvious one, i.e ET's old animation, or Sweeping Cross/Cross Punch's animation if giving ET its old animation back scares everyone (which I wouldn't really understand, there are much worse offenders in the game).

Build Up is 90s, having Power up at 120s hardly seems balanced but there's worse: that new mechanic means that EM will be very slow at building damage. While all other sets can buff their damage instantly EM will have to activate Power Up then wait for it to recharge before getting any. With normal IOs it means that you're not getting any bonuses before 1minute after your activated Power Up the first time. It will also make optimizing your damage burst a nightmare, because not only you have to deal with the delay, the recharge and the stacking but mobs don't come in a constant stream, then don't come to you when you want them to. There are movement phases between groups that will completely mess up your timing because of that delay between power up's activation and the moment you actually get the damage buff. It will be completely desynchronized with the action while Build Up or equivalent powers allow you to get that boost when you need it. And you can forget PVP with this, if you can't control your burst you're useless. That's one reason why Brutes aren't popular at all for PVP, they don't have the opportunity to build their Fury so their damage is low most of the time. If you replace Build Up with Power Up you're just doubling the issue. So I'm not sold at all here. Why fixing what isn't broken? Let's keep it simple when it works. Why not for Total Focus. They recently made it faster for Dominators on the beta server while keeping the original animation though (which I like). Why not simply use that faster animation for other ATs? I don't really understand why it's limited to Dominators. It's not like a faster TF would be OP on the other ATs... EM is horribly slow and underperforming on all ATs. Seismic Smash is not a good choice for Energy Transfer, it's the same animation as Bone Smasher. We don't really want two powers from a same set sharing the same animation. Why not. It is probably an unpopular opinion but I'm against any new proliferation of power sets. Mistakes have been made by passing sets from ATs to another. Sets were locked to specific ATs for 2 reasons: balance and theme. And I'm even more against it if we have to limit a set's potential just because it would be OP on Scrappers. That's a bad reason with a simple solution: don't give it to Scrappers. Keep it exclusive to Stalkers, Brutes and Tankers. We're killing all sense of flavor between ATs by making all sets available to everyone.

You are not reading, I explained why the buffing/debuffing deference between Defenders and Corruptors doesn't matter once everyone is fully slotted with IOs. I didn't say it doesn't exist, I said it doesn't matter once we reach the end game. Just like the difference between Tankers and Brutes regarding defenses doesn't really matter in practice once you're fully geared. And just like Tankers, Defenders can't use IOs to match the damage output of a Corruptor. So yes the Defender/Corruptor and Tankers/Brutes situations are very similar. At this point I suspect that the reason why some Tankers players are more frustrated than Defenders players is that buff/heals/debuffs can be stacked while aggro can't be shared. You've got the aggro or somebody else has it but you can't both have it. It means that in a team Tankers compete with other Tankers, it's not simply an issue with Brutes. Hell even Brutes compete for aggro between themselves. While support ATs don't compete with one another, they work together. It's not entirely true though, tanks can cooperate, but in many cases one will absolutely want to be the MAIN tank. It's just that when a Tanker and a Brute are in the same team some Tankers will feel like they're more legitimate than the Brute... Which is more an ego issue than anything else. But now if we're talking of situations when as a Tanker player I felt useless, it rarely involves another Tanker or a Brute being in the team. On this I agree with Leogunner, when a team has enough CC and massive DPS you will feel completely useless both as a Tanker AND as a Brute. Yes even Brutes will feel useless if mobs are permanently kept under control by Domi/Trollers and nuked from afar in mere seconds by Blasters and Corruptors.

Brutes have always been able to do it almost as well as Tankers, the only difference between Tankers and Brutes regarding aggro management since day one is Gauntlet, that's all. Brutes were noticeably squishier than Tankers, and they still are at early and mid game. What changed everything is the IO system. This is the culprit not the taunt capablities of Brutes, it's the stupid amount of bonuses you can squeeze out the IO system. So because IOs are broken we're gonna break some ATs in order to fix it? No it's just adding one more entry to the list of broken things in the game. And this just for what? For a few players who can't suffer the presence of other competent tanks outiside their own Tanker. Just like Defenders have to deal with the existence of Corruptors, Tankers have to tolerate the presence of Brutes on a similar role. No there is no big difference between the Tanker/Brute "connundrum" and the Defender/Corruptor situation, yes Defenders have higher bonuses but does it matter that much when you reach end game when everybody has accumulated tons of + def/res/recovery/recharge bonuses through IOs? No it doesn't, Defenders buffs/debuffs/heals become overkill just like the Tankers defenses become overkill and allows Brutes to catch up. Just like Tankers Defender have a clear edge until end game. Same story. You're just limiting players options. And it's not going to make Tankers more appealing, because let's not kid ourselves for a lot of people the main reason to make a Tanker is to feel immortal not to be the team protector the AT is supposed to be. Tanking is a playstyle, I've seen Brutes actually trying to protect the team and some Tankers not giving a shit when a purple boss start murdering the back liners. And I'm ready to bet that a lot of these Brutes players are also Tankers players. Even when tanking is your thing you can appreciate a bit a variety, that's what Brutes and Tankers are for. I as for one appreciate to be able to stop rerolling Tankers again and again and still do some good taking with another AT. Again there are many suggestions on this thread let's not lie and pretend that altering the purpose of Brutes by making them barely better than Scrappers for aggro management beats them all...

I didn't jump to conclusions you only mentioned T1 and T2 keeping the taunt now. Though it is barely better if you're still removing it from aoes. On the contrary the fact that you are rejecting all other options shows that I put the finger on right spot. You're more interested in nerfing Brutes into mediocre tanks (barely better then Scrappers in that role: they have a single target Taunt power and a taunt aura) than finding ways to make Tankers more appealing. Nerfing Brutes tanking abilities will not make Tankers more played. And given how many times I've seen arguements about Defenders vs Corruptors vs Controllers vs MMs, Sentinel vs Blasters, Dominators vs Controllers I maintain that making ATs side-agnostic had an effect that goes way beyond than just Brutes and Tankers.

You're turning Brutes into Scrappers that's what it is. And Scappers don't need another variation, we have Stalkers for that. You are just about making Tankers the only tanks in the game. That's very "make the Tanker feel better about themself" to me, so no it's not psychosomatic indeed it's the futile satisfcation of being the only AT to properly fill that role. I'm a Tanker player, I have twice as many Tankers as I have Brutes. I like tanking so much that most of my Brutes end up being built like I would build a Tanker. I like that we've got different options regarding that role, you're just asking to remove diversity and flavors to the game.

If we're going that way we have to rebalance the entire game because Brutes and Tankers are not the only ATs affected by this, all ATs are. 🙄 Like I said you don't make Tankers better by making Brutes less appealing that's a terrible idea. We're not going to change ATs roles. Tank is one of the Brutes attributes if you remove it from them they lose their purpose as an AT. Seriously there are a lot of suggestions on this thread that don't require nerfing other ATs, it's not like destroying Brutes special spot in the game is the only option... "All that would do is make the Tanker feel better about themself", these are your own words and yet this is exactly what you're recommending. Making Tankers feel better about themselves as the only tanks in the game by removing tanking tools from other ATs...