Redlynne

"Hamidon NEEDS to be HELD." Sounds like a bumper sticker campaign ...

So you completely misunderstood? The new T1 power picks don't change your powers until you respec. Breaking the Cottage Rule in this way is going to play merry havoc with build planners and builds posted in the forums. Do. Not. Want.

Like so ... Tanker 1 can add up to 5 stacks of the Bruising debuff. Tanker 2 can add up to 5 MORE stacks of the Bruising debuff (up to a total of 10). Tanker 3 can add up to 5 MORE stacks of the Bruising debuff (up to a total of 15). ... Make sense now?

No, there is not. You take ANY Crab Powers ... ANY ... and that character will forever wear the Crab Backpack, even if you respec. Don't want the backpack ... then you will have to NEVER take any Crab powers ... only Bane and Wolf Spider powers. Working as intentionally designed. Why? Because alternate builds are a "thing" ... and you can have a Huntsman Crab build (that doesn't use the backpack at all) in one build, while having a second alternate build that DOES use the backpack attack powers. There is NO WAY under the game engine to have the backpack exist as a costume part for one build but not the other. It's just a limitation of the game engine.

I'm going to challenge this notion head on, mainly because I think it's erroneous in the context of Bruising. So ... here's what I propose. In the Nature Affinity powerset, there's an effect added to every power called Bloom. Some powers add +1 Bloom (Regrowth, for example), others add more ... up to +5 Bloom (Overgrowth). Basically, all the Bloom effect does is apply Healing Resistance DEBUFF to Allies(!) which then increases the throughput of Heals while under Bloom ... and obviously, Bloom can be stacked, making healing of Bloom affected allies more effective. Take that known already working example and apply it to Tankers. Change the name from Bloom to Bruising (for what ought to be obvious reasons). Make it apply to Foes hit by Tanker secondary attacks (but not primary attacks). Make Bruising apply a Resist (All) debuff that is 50/50 resistable and unresistable. Let Bruising stack, just like Bloom can stack, on Foes ... but there would be a max limit just like with Bloom, per $Target. Ideally speaking you'd want this max Bruising limit to function as a max stack per Tanker on each $Target, rather than as a max stack from ALL Tankers per $Target. After that, it's just a matter of deciding how big to let the Bruising debuff be per stack and what the duration ought to be (can use base Gauntlet Taunt duration as a guideline here if necessary). I'm thinking no more than -2/-2 resistable and unresistable ought to suffice and just do it up as a sort of "anti-Bloom" type of Tanker debuff that they do with their secondary attack powers. How's that idea grab ya, @Captain Powerhouse?

So ... a Scrapper with a Taunt aura ... Well ... if you're going to enforce it from a game mechanical perspective where there is simply NO POINT AT ALL (or even opportunity) to "stack" what a Tanker can "do" in a combat situation, you're reduced to a tautology of ... You Only Need One Tanker Because You Only Need One Tanker ... due to the fact that the game mechanics by design mandate that you can only USE one Tanker at a time effectively. If you can't "stack" what a Tanker brings to the mix, then it literally is a One And Done™ type of Archetype. I dunno about you, but that sounds like a suboptimal design decision to me. ... HOW ... exactly? If there's any Archetype that deserves a boost to Leadership pool throughput, it's Masterminds ... not Tankers. VERY well said. That is exactly the concept I was angling for. The resistance debuff functions like a flanking maneuver that ENABLES increased throughput from any source, not just the Tanker themselves. They basically make everyone on the team/league BETTER at delivering the beatdowns, relative to what they'd be doing in the absence of the Tanker (or Tankers, plural, preferably). I've always felt that the Melee Defender notion was functionally the wrong framing for how Tankers ought to be understood ... because they're not melee buff/debuff monsters. No, the better mental/conceptual framework is to think of Tankers as being Melee CONTROLLERS instead ... because their Taunt is a CONTROL function, not a buff/debuff function. Tankers are functionally "controllers" who just so happen to be "limited" to melee range (mostly) for doing their thing. They MANIPULATE what their Foes are allowed/going to do, by altering the "decision process" of what the AI controlling the NPCs permitted to choose. That's very different from a buff/debuff focus for the conceptual foundation of what it means to be a Tanker. Put simply, Taunt is more like a Mez effect ... and is kind of like a "poor man's Confuse" in the way that a Sleep is a "poor man's Hold" if you don't mind the mixing of the metaphors. Confuse powers make the Foes attack each other, while Taunt makes the Foes attack YOU (and only you!) exclusively in order to redirect aggro onto yourself. And it's that "control" function of Taunt that is the bedrock cornerstone foundation that ought to be what a Tanker starts from and "IS" for thinking about the Archetype. Now, granted, there are some Tanker powersets (primary and/or secondary) which lean more into the Control/Mez side of things, while others lean more into the Buff/Debuff side of things ... but at their core, what Tankers are supposed to be are Melee Controllers who can "take a lickin' and keep on pounding" (as it were). First they draw the aggro, then they survive the aggro that they draw. Everything else flows from that basic core competency assumption. Brutes are Scranker (meaning Scrapper/Tanker) hybrids, and they really need to keep that particular niche role space to themselves. Because of that, I'm of the opinion that a direct comparison between Scrapper vs Brute and also Tanker vs Brute is not quite as useful as it might at first appear, if all you're doing to making damage output the ONLY parameter that matters to the evaluation while pointedly ignoring pretty much everything else (in the pursuit of "purity" in Max Deeps?).

After(wind)burner.

I've proposed exactly this solution at other times in other threads, including a variant of this for Group Fly so as to get everyone to "fly in formation, until you want to break from formation" (so to speak). My 2 INF on this topic though is that Mystic Flight basically "solved" this problem ... since Fly ENABLES Teleport (although you can't put enhancements into the Teleport sub-power). 2 stones, 1 bird.

I'm honestly a more of a mind to think that this (and a lot of the other changes being tested/contemplated) are something of a mistake. Here's my reasoning. While the net effect of this type of a change (less resistance debuffing exchanged for more raw damage production) can effectively be made throughput neutral in a solo context, the simple fact of the matter is that in a group context there's going to be a net nerf as a result of this kind of a change. I say that simply because everyone in a team/league gains the benefit of the Bruising debuff, in effect making everyone "hit harder" on whatever the Tanker has successfully inflicted Bruising upon. In other words, Bruising is a "force multiplier" in a group context, rather than being a more "selfish" design point where only the Tanker is gaining the benefit. So, on balance, I'm honestly thinking that this kind of change falls more on into the mistake bucket than into the yay bucket. In fact ... If you were to invert the thinking behind it ... What if ... Instead of having Bruising being something that's done ONLY by the T1 attack, and being something that can't be stacked onto a $Target ... what if the Dev team were able to leverage how Gauntlet works to make the resistance debuffing something that happens as a result of ALL Tanker Secondary attack powers, but not as a result of Tanker Primary powers, so as to keep the resistance debuffing "corralled" into just the Secondary powersets for Tankers (only, not Brutes, since Brutes have Fury instead). Rig it such that the Taunt AoE of Gauntlet also carries a resistance debuff effect in addition to the Taunt ... AND ... that the "amount" of the resistance debuffing would be keyed to correlate to the Taunt duration of the secondary power (so enhancing the Taunt duration enhances the "strength" of the resistance debuff during that duration). Very basic idea here being something like (just for the sake of illustrating the concept) ... every 5s of Taunt duration delivered via Gauntlet also applies a -1 Resist (All) debuff for the duration of that Taunt delivered via Gauntlet (so 15s duration equals -3 Resist (All) debuffing). You then add a Effect does not stack from same caster modifier onto each of the attack powers, so as to make each use of each power essentially overwrite themselves (but not each other!) for the purposes of how this would work. The net result of such a change would be that using the fewest number of secondary attack powers in the shortest animation time span would not necessarily deliver the greatest amount of resistance debuffing, since using fewer attack powers in a faster rotation would produce a lower yield of debuff stacking. Additionally, there would be a reason/return on investment to add Taunt duration to secondary attack powers so as to increase/improve the yield of resistance debuffing that could be produced. And even furthermore, this whole thing would be orchestrated in such a way that you don't wind up with Tankers stepping on each other's toes in a situation where only ONE Bruising debuff can be on a $Target at a time and all of the others are wasted. The main problem with Bruising, as implemented by Paragon Studios, is that it's done via Grant Power: Bruising ... meaning that the $Target casts the effect onto themselves and that there can only be ONE Bruising debuff (self) cast at any one time on any $Target. This then enforces the idea that any Tankers beyond the first are "wasted" since they can't stack the Bruising debuff deeper than "once" between any 2+ Tankers in a group fighting the same $Target. Change things the way I'm describing here and you make multiple Tankers per team a "viable" option, but you also open up a wealth of diversity of possible build choices ... not only in terms of what powers you pick (beyond the required T1 from your Tanker secondary) but also in terms of how (and what) you slot into those powers (and why). You'd also be implementing something that would function a bit like an "anti-Fury" for Tankers in the sense that the more they use Gauntlet to draw aggro upon themselves (via Taunt), the less the affected $Targets are able to "resist" incoming damaging attacks from any sources because their focus on the Tanker is (in effect) increasing their vulnerability to being damaged due to their necessary focus of attention, to the exclusion of all else, onto the Tanker. And the more the Tanker "pounds away" with a wider variety of attacks (so as to not become TOO predictable from moment to moment) the greater this vulnerability effect becomes via Gauntlet. The very narrowing of focus onto the Tanker (what we Players call aggro) works against the $Targets affected by Gauntlet, lowering their survivability via resistance debuffing.

You mean ... slot Taunt enhancement into a Taunt Aura power?

We make every pretense of competency around here ... ^_~

Corruption (80 ft): 1.23s cast / 4s base recharge Lash (20 ft): 1.8s cast / 8s base recharge Crack Whip (30 ft): 2.33s cast / 15s base recharge Corruption recharges during: Lash animation: 4 / 1.8 = +122.3% recharge enhancement Crack Whip animation: 4 / 2.33 = +71.7% recharge enhancement Lash + Crack Whip animations: 4 / (1.8+2.33) = -3.2% recharge debuffing Lash recharges during: Corruption animation: 8 / 1.23 = +550.5% recharge enhancement (good luck!) Crack Whip animation: 8 / 2.33 = +243.4% recharge enhancement (um... maybe?) Corruption + Crack Whip animation: 8 / (1.8+2.33) = +93.7% recharge enhancement Crack Whip recharges during: Corruption animation: 15 / 1.23 = +1119.6% (yeah right!) Lash animation: 15 / 1.8 = +733.4% (who are you kidding?) Corruption + Lash animations = 15 / (1.23+1.8) = +395.1% recharge enhancement Short Answer ... not with just 2 powers, no. You can't do a 121212 or a 131313 or even a 232323 seamless attack rotation. You just need too much recharge to close the gap(s). Even with 3 powers, you can't do a seamless 123123123 rotation. Even with +100% recharge enhancement on the slots themselves in Crack Whip and with +70% from Hasten, you'd still need to scrounge an extra +225% recharge from SOMEWHERE to close the gap(s) on the rotation. However ... if you're willing to slightly modify that attack cycle, you can get it into a repeatable place with relative ease. You'd want to be doing a 121312131213 attack cycle so as to make it seamless with a reasonable/rational/possible amount of total recharge. Corruption recharges during: Lash animation: 4 / 1.8 = +122.3% recharge enhancement Lash recharges during: Corruption + Crack Whip + Corruption animation: 8 / (1.8+2.33+1.88) = +34.9% recharge enhancement Crack Whip recharges during: Corruption + Lash + Corruption animations = 15 / (1.23+1.8+1.23) = +252.2% recharge enhancement 252.2 - 70 (Hasten) - 75.2 (Annihilation Dam/Rech. Acc/Dam/Rech, Acc/Dam/End/Rech, Proc @ Level 27 and Force Feedback Proc and Superior Frozen Blast Rech/Immobilize) = 107% recharge reduction remaining Note: boosting the Annihilation set to Level 50 in this configuration would only net an increase of +13.6 recharge reduction ... which is not nothing, but may not be ideal for an Exemplar friendly build. So basically, I'd want to do THIS to achieve a 121312131213 seamless attack chain rotation ... You'd just need to come up with another +101% recharge enhancement (equivalency) from global set bonuses and so on in order to make it work. Chrono Shift would certainly help in this regard, but you wouldn't get THAT much more help out of */Nature aside from just set bonuses. You'd also wind up needing to make sure you pick your pool powers WISELY in order to maximize your recharge muling potential in order to get that much recharge into the build. Or you could just rely on Force Feedback procs to let you "muddle through" the necessary recharge gap(s) ...

That's what spousal overunits are for ... according to the Owner's Manual ...

I always love it when people are directly handed the answer ... and they just drop it on the floor as if no answer was provided to them.

You want THIS instead.

If at first you don't succeed ... there's always Ouroboros ...

If you're that gung-ho about the idea, you can download the server software and host your own server and call it Justice ...

This is excellent advice for all ATs and all builds. We make every pretense of competency around here ... ^_~

Try soloing the Shadow Shard Task Forces if you need more of a challenge. Even with Incarnate orders of power magnitude, the Rularuu are still a potent threat to almost everyone.

Please tell me that the next revision will contain a .net 2.0 version build that we poor Mac users can make use of in a file replacement fashion, rather than needing to make a completely new clean install ... I'm still stuck using 2.6.0.1 because that was the last .net 2.0 released version.

You may have an outdated combination of Island Rum and Client installed. Rescue any "personal files" (like chat, window, keybinds settings as well as actual individual keybind files) and save them elsewhere so you don't lose them when you take the next step(s). DELETE your Island Rum installation AND your CoH client ... completely. Download and install a fresh copy of Island Rum. Use Island Rum to download a fresh copy of the CoH client. Put your rescued files "back" in their respective locations in the clean loaded installation (spoiler alert, the file structure may look different/updated after the clean load). Patch game client to completion and relaunch. The above worked for me.

You want the PPM Formulas post to help find your answers and guide your expectations. Spoiler alert ... math will be involved/required.