Replacement

I feel like i should be offended at this, lol (I'm not).

Yeah, I don't want to get too off-topic in the tanker thread, but you can mostly see the minds of the original designers, where higher caps went to ATs that either a) were supposed to deal a lot of damabe or b) had a way to skew damage caps in their favor (e.g. Containment damage is a separate number, so it would be separately subject to the cap). It feels to me Khelds were kinda forgotten... a lot. If I had to hazard a guess: they couldn't figure out (or afford the time) to give khelds caps based on form, and they were very afraid of an 85% resist blasty-blast.

I'm frankly amazed at how many people here seemed to have, right out the gate, built their "main." I still haven't. My brother got into the closed beta. We didn't know anything about MMOs, except we had seen Everquest and Asheron's Call boxes in the stores. But we had been following CoH development for literal years at that point. We tooled through the character creator together, and we made some nordic tanker with ice armor and no shirt on. We both ran around as him some and beat up guys. Then my brother made a different character and I mostly just watched him play. I remember people in the zone cheering him on for immediately, like in Hour One of the beta going live, figuring out how to walk on powerlines, and exploiting building lips for vertical leaps in a way I'm sure we all still do. But we didn't have the money for a sub. Years later, we would get another roommate (my bro was also my roomy through college) who played, and I'd make a character on his account to mess around. That was enough for my brother and I to get a sub for a while, and then I would finally make a character that I felt like was "mine" but I still was sharing the account with my brother -- Dark melee/Super Reflexes Scrapper. I mostly just remember solo-grinding the hell out of Faultline for so long, the zone changed. Eventually, I'd get my own sub. I built a billion other characters and the only one I remember with any regularity was my sonic/en blaster, but I never stuck with a single toon long enough to get above the 30s.

I don't know that it at all reflects what @oedipus_tex is after at this point, but an interesting way to make a really robust set without a lot of mechanics for the player to keep track of: Each attack consists of damage type 1 and 2. Say, negative and cold. 1 granted toggle changes type #1, a 2nd granted toggle changes type #2. Simple, end-free toggles that serve as two separate binary switches. Net result: 4 damage profiles but only 2 toggles to juggle. I would go a step further and have the toggles be granted by several powers each; not a dedicated Build Up replacement. e.g. T1 and T3 give "mindwrack" toggle to swap to psy damage, and T2, T4, and T5 powers all give "caustic touch" to gain toxic damage. Gaining multiples wouldn't help or hurt -- it's just multiple opportunities to grab the same free toggle to be a bit more build-tolerant.

Cry.... me a river? "RIP Brutes" and lamenting about your farm toon is really grasping at things to be unhappy about. Brutes will be fine. They'll be more than fine. They will still be over 6 times as popular as Stalkers.

Another factor is level shifts. The damage boost is intended to offset the damage of Bruising vs even-level enemies (where you would gain the full benefit of the 20% resist debuff).* Against higher level enemies (like most of the game, where you're fighting +3/+4), the damage buffs on Pineapple will outperform Bruising, since your fists aren't subject to the purple patch. However, when you're above your enemy's level (such as a level 50 AV when you're 50+2), Bruising is actually more effective. But suffice to say, this use case (single target vs lower-level enemy) isn't the target use case for these changes. *Yeah yeah yeah, we know your party misses out on Bruising. Remember this is offset by the fact that their effects now benefit you more. Sonic blasters, Forge, SB, etc etc etc. These are now more worth using for your party because they're multiplying your damage contribution instead of your wet noodle.

Having a primary damage type like negative energy or cold, and then a shifting secondary damage type, could actually be part of the appeal. E.g. t1 is negative and toxic, t2 is negative and fire. t3 is negative and psychic, etc. Alternatively, a Swap Ammo mechanic. It feels like it would be in-theme with having a touch that no one can resist (even if it takes you a minute to find the right one), plus it would be helpful for creating, say, a cleric-type character reliant on assorted touch "spells."

I don't want to get too lost in the weeds of comparing to CO. Like I said in the OP, CO's failures are only proof that CO failed at it. Those guys stuck to some really bad base assumptions through multiple game designs, so it's not at all a surprise to me that they couldn't ever crack free-form. As @Snarky says, there's a pretty big difference with video games. It's not like tabletops or fiction, where a character more focused on certain RP elements might still feel very powerful. But I'm just not convinced it's mutually-exclusive. This is why I like my +range example. There's a huge difference, thematically and gameplay-wise, between a blaster practically in the melee, and the one who relies on staying far out at range. Also, I kind of feel like Accuracy is a tax. We obviously didn't feel that way back then... still in the grips of 3rd edition D&D, but accuracy as a stat definitely created a "this tall to ride" scenario with enhancements that really detracted from other interesting things they could've been using those mod slots for.

AE farms a 2nd time.

While true, my understanding is enterbasefrompasscode won't last forever. It's "here" enough that we shouldn't expect the rug pulled on us... but not enough to start doing power design around.

Yeah, that came off harsher than I intended. 😕 I'm hoping down the road, we can revisit some of those numbers (in particular, I would really like it if Earth Mastery's -defense was stronger than what a Brute's would do), but I think certain things need worked on first. Iirc, your build that was outdoing a Brute was Titan weapon? If so, then a nerf to tanker version of TW in the same patch that they up the -res for example. The important thing to me is, we're making progress. It may not feel great yet, but killing our reliance on Bruising is intended to be the first step to making a tanker feel good to play. Sometimes you gotta reset to zero. As I've been mentioning in the most recent thread, it currently sucks for ST-heavy sets to a degree I'm just not satisfied with. I'm still on board, because there's an implicit promisethis sets the stage for those sets to get their own improvements.

I have mentioned several times in those threads that I appreciated your invaluable data; you made a great case and dissented without belittling. But you have also proven that no answer short of "you're right. We'll do things exactly your way" will satisfy you. To wit, @Chronicler J, if you like playing a Supportive tanker, note the buffs to secondary effects. Yes, this means different power picks, but "armor/melee but actually here to Support" doesn't sound like it should be part of the AT anyway. Indeed, Paragon Studios agreed for 6 years.

Just in case anyone is curious, my flawed memory of those design logs says the way Origin was supposed to work was to measure your character on 3 axes: * Number of power selections * Number of power pools (what we would now consider primary/secondary) * Power strength, I think meaning number of enhancement slots As an example, Magic would have fewest pools (probably only 1, but we'll never know), but have several power picks from that pool, and a lot of slots. This would be ideal for, say, eye of agamotto giving you several powerful abilities all tied to Time. Meanwhile Tech would have lots of powers and no/very high limits on number of pools to choose from, but very few enhancements. Cool, but I can see where this could fail in-game, making you feel like a toddler army. Natural, iirc, was the opposite of tech. Again, I have a good memory, but this was literally close to 20 years ago. I'd still love to find those posts.

...was to customize powers. At least, that's how Emmert would talk in his blogs during development. I remember being wow'd when reading about the idea that "every power is completely customizable, so you can choose if your character has abilities that are long-ranged, can be used frequently, or just hit really hard but are otherwise limited." But once the game came out, it became apparent that it was a system for progression, not for customization. And then IOs ... Happened. Understand, at this point in the development logs, there were no ATs, and Origin was more similar to an AT. People try to say CO is proof that going AT-less is just a bad idea, but I just think it's proof that the same people failed at the idea twice. I still think these are neat and attainable ideas. ... But I digress. I like to think about how it could have been different: Imagine if instead of grabbing a +30% damage mod, you were slotting your broadsword attacks with +30% damage as fire (and perhaps added particle fx) to sell your fantasy. Imagine if Blasts had a base range of like 20' and +range enhancements were huge, like +100% each (critical reader: ED would either be tuned differently or not needed in this universe). As a comics example, this is like Psylocke vs other telekinetics. Imagine more attacks having small aoes, and needing a separate Area+ enhancement Barely related, but imagine if armor powers were interesting enough on their own to actually justify more than 3 slots (sans IO benefits) This ship has long-since sailed so this is in General and not Suggestions. And don't get me wrong, I'm happy with what we have and eternally grateful to Homecoming for reviving it. But I'm curious if others would have liked this. What ways would you have totally wrecked enhancements to make the game different? Please just don't say "remove ED" or, if you insist, add more to what you would do in its place. We already have enough material for an ED-less fan-fic universe.

There's some logic in here I don't agree with. For starters, long range requires 3 powers. You are desperately avoiding this. Next: buffing it doesn't weaken the other Travels. Don't get me wrong, I understand the idea of abilities being powercrept "over.". But this simply isn't that. Mystic Flight is an example of potentially powercreeping over Flight and Teleportation*, but it takes a lot of superjump buffs to, for example, impinge on Flight. Short version: buffing a wasted pick isn't unfair to the powers who've had the spotlight for 15 years. Finally, pointing out that I don't have to take the power is... What do you really think that proves? This feels to me the same as when one person points out something broken in their government and instead of wanting to fix it, the opposition says "if you don't like it, just leave." It's a fallacy at best. To be clear, though, I will continue to shout from the rooftops that I think the entire TP pool needs redone, and any full rework would logically address my concerns of mostly-wasted power picks. *I actually agree about slotting TP. I wish it had its own good, dedicated IOs to make this a worthwhile cost to my character. But ideally, this is how it should set itself above Translocation.

I can't even maintain my own social media presence... Let alone one for all my alter egos... This would actually be a pretty fantastic marketing stunt though.

I just want to toss out there that we all mostly disagree with the OP's direction (even they admit they aren't sold, so no reason to hold this against them)... I think there's some broad agreement with their stance that power pools could use some updates. To me, it's pretty simple: no intentionally useless power picks. This was really endemic to game design of the era, where the idea that anyone could grab these powers was greatly overvalued. Starting point is simple: make Kick far stronger, with something like triple its current recharge. Boxing could also get some adjustments, but should largely remain unchanged. Intent: one power is for folks looking for attack filler (melee controllers futzing with Containment), while the other is for folks who mostly have their attack chain fleshed out, and could maybe save on a different attack if this one were worth using. Then give Flurry a full evaluation. I can't see any changes to this power making it worse for anyone. Those are my starting points. I'd like to see more done, like Zepp's TP Overhaul, but these 2 starting points of flurry and Kick should help a lot of builds while proving to the community that responsible PP buffs don't cause issues.

This still wouldn't make LRTP worth the number of powers spent. So... Yes. Also, as we've discussed before on topics like this, I would be all for only allowing neighborhood porting once you have 1-2 exploration badges for the zone (not all of them).

Sorry, that was supposed to be me saying I liked your proposal @Goblin Queen, and just briefly clarifying on it to make sure it was what I thought it was saying. Like Delivered to show I mean business. 🙂 The big thing is, I wouldn't want to see functionality removed from the current build. I tend to like costumes for my characters' assorted eras (like early career, post-rikti capture, undercover redside, etc) and I would hate to lose the ability to match my clones to them all. -- Also, I wish we could change out our 15 second costume lock for "3 changes per minute" or something. So we could spike a wee bit of stress with 2 rapid changes, but have to "cool off" longer.

I would only be in favor of this if it were an option to assign a costume slot. I like the idea of the duplicates in power customization saying, for example, "Mirror Slot 1" and "Phantom Mirror Slot 1" in addition to the ones currently there on Beta. And yeah, i have a feeling/hope this will lead to a similar rollout to other pets and minions.

It's almost unfair how easy it is for Zepp to summon me for Likes.

Pie in the sky time: Base damage .8, Gauntlet is a free toggle, added to your tray on creation like Domination. When enabled, attacks hit a 2nd time at .15 scale in an aoe. When disabled, attacks Bruise through a global proc. Yep, I know, I'll keep wishing. But remember CP, you can always say "I'm working on something like this" and we'll all assume it was your idea, and I'd be like... good idea.

Kind of an edge case (at least it would be edge it it weren't so damn popular) but the DFB Vahz badge definitely gets in the way of giving Tankers any sort of splash mechanism that they couldn't choose to disable.

This is curious. I tend to have the same view, but I am finding my own biases kick in at 17-22 (which is why I'm still absolutely a proponent of allowing Shops to sell SO enhancements starting at 20 instead of 25). My knee-jerk is to say "those are the levels that don't even matter" but a lot of folks (e.g. those who think a character "counts" until it's 50 -- even if they PL'd it there in 2 hours) would say this same thing about my play speed. I think a compromising position is the Controller benchmark. Controllers are ludicrously ineffectual (solo) at low levels. If a Tanker can at least keep up with them until the tanker buffs begin to sing, I feel like that is sufficient. EDIT: I haven't soloed a Controller since pre-Snap, and it's possible I had only done it with weak combos. Feel free to submit your own benchmarks.

That's the killing question, huh? Not on Kinetic melee... I've been enjoying melee cones like Jacob's Ladder that I would normally strongly consider skipping. I'm no expert on "average" expectations for aoe, but it feels to me like kinetic and energy melee aren't set up to benefit. I liked staff. The damage isn't great but I enjoyed the GIANT cone from Wall of Force (I can imagine this power becoming a good Tanker pick for ST-heavy sets). Yeah, it's a bit hard to follow what's changed and what all is affected. For cones, for example, I've taken to doing some manual testing just to ensure if they're applying or not ("this thing says 90 degrees, so it should be 180" - those results can be eyeballed). BUT, it's for the best. No use wasting all of our volunteer dev time on documenting things not likely to go live (poor CP has already trashed like 90% of his work, it feels like).