Replacement

So one thing worth noting is that with all of your base damage numbers going up, you don't actually need to be at damage CAP to see a benefit. As a simple example ignoring enhancements and such, if something gave you +50% damage buff on Live, an attack for 80 damage would shift to 120 (+40 improvement). On Pineapple, that would be a 95 base, so with the damage boost, it would go to 142.5 (47.5 improvement). You're going to get better numbers, but yeah, it's nothing groundbreaking. From my own messing about, I feel the complete lack of something for the ST sets is the most valid criticism of this test build. But perhaps if we can start here with better aoe, we can buff the tanker versions of the ST sets individually. That was a bit tongue-in-cheeck, but only barely. Events according to me (which is filtered through poor memory, and (il)logical leaps): One of the early Pineapple builds had much higher Tanker base damage cap, and in our rush to make a tanker that deals 90% as much damage as a Brute, we finally realized that version of Tanker had theoretical damage up there near Blasters. That didn't sit right to have a Tanker potentially keeping up with your blaster, so down it went. But by the transitive property... Brutes deal blaster damage while tanking Tanker damage. It's just not ok.

This is mostly EM. If all of the following are true... You're strongly single target You use your tier 1 regardless of server You're solo ... You will likely not notice a difference. Things that should make the changes noticeable, though I don't mean night-and-day: Partying with someone who offers recharge or damage buffs Using a lot of aoe, including offensive toggles Running leadership (and some sort of performance parser. I cannot imagine noticing the difference on this with the naked eye)

I'm super effing thrilled about this character copy tool. Does someone know the name/link to that thing that tracks XP? I think someone made a widget meant to look like the CoH UI thing that tracks how much experience you're earning, anyway? Now that I can make perfect character copies, I'd like to run some tests in both environments and I think an XP tracker might be a good way to go.

This is cool and I 100% agree with your perspective, but... That just means we should be changing how we're phrasing the contention. The issue isn't truly "it's impossible to program" as much as "the developers have made it clear it is not in the cards right now" which has been the prevailing Captain Powerhouse stance in previous tanker threads, and I believe Leandro even posted which lines of code to check out to see the difficulty ourselves at some point (I think that was the aggro cap he did that on, anyway). As for the standard code rant: I think it's douchey, mean, and overdone. But the important part of it is hammering in that "nothing is an easy fix." When people come to these forums and attack you guys for not fixing something they feel should be the utmost priority and is "a simple fix," they deserve to get knocked down a peg, and that is when the standard code rant is just A-OK by me.

As much as I wish for a conversation on allowing missions to suck while AE is literally several entire magnitudes stronger, resulting in a desire to PL characters to 50 in a game where "alting is the end game" and then trying to slow-grind other characters, getting frustrated at how slow it is until PLing them... That place really isn't here. That's a content imbalance; not a gameplay one.

Also, mez would be far less frustrating if offensive toggles suppressed instead of dropping. A lot of those are on classes without mez protection and it's just meaninglessly frustrating

I like the idea of #5, probably scaling with level. I really think the mez stuff is pretty bad game design, but I'm also apprehensive about writing it off. It's mentally filed under "charming flaws" for me, as it's unique to CoH and a cornerstone that much of the rest of the game is "balanced" around. If it were easy to implement (it's not), I would set up mez magnitudes to decay over time, with the decay speeding up with resistance. That would make more of a gradient to this kitschy mez system we have, and create some design space for certain ATs and armor sets to have varying degrees of different protection thresholds where they notice things. As opposed to simple holes.

That bolded one is weird, but I guess it explains Chilling Embrace, though not Icicles. I'm... starting to confuse myself on this and I'm going to go lay down. No matter which side of consistency we fall on, I'm happy with end result: some normalized taunt values, including Rise to the Challenge, and thanks for the correction on the Taunt sets.

Appreciated. I don't understand this part, though: Is there a reason these are having the taunt fixed in their current power entries instead of removed and replaced with the new Gauntlet? A simple "we didn't get around to it" is fine. I'm just wondering if there's something weird about these powers that they have to be handled differently.

I'm unclear on the how and why of the taunt aura changes. I understand pulling taunt out of ice auras because Gauntlet can do the talking but that raises 2 questions: Why are the other mentioned auras getting different treatment? Doesn't this mean the ice auras will lose the ability to slot taunt sets? I have a feeling I'm missing something fundamental about the designs of these powers or maybe the sets overall (normalising how many taunt sets a given primary can provide? Were already set up with unenhancable taunt?)

I want to emphasize that the point of the Fury changes are not to increase Fury generation as much as increase its consistency. With these changes, you should have fury build at more or less the same rate regardless of party role, animation speed, or party size. And as a QoL benefit, be able to chill a little more between spawns (my personal brute stumbling block).

Lowered from previous build, @Super Atom. Basically, there were crappy things about Fury that didn't make sense to fix when they are already the dominant AT. Since we're trying to give Tankers a party slot, it was a good time to smooth out fury. Looks the previous build overshot this some and went from qol to buff. Please test numbers if you have a lot of brute experience and let us know how it feels compared to Live.

Yes. Build Up, etc

@Super Atom please read prior threads about why this minor nerf is necessary. If you really believe players won't hit this cap, then you won't have a problem with the new value. Meanwhile, the alternative is giving Blasters a 90% damage resist cap (and probably a boost to the strength of their epic armors too).

Bruising was cool in theory but doesn't match up to what any Tankers provide in comics, and it doesn't scale vs higher level enemies. So far in these threads we have found that it only matters when single target, vs targets whose level difference is small (e.g. +2 incarnate shift against a +1 AV). In all other scenarios, the baked-in damage bonus should outperform (once +damage is unnerfed). The big "up in the air" case is how much damage your (heavily resisted) Bruising supplies the rest of your party, vs how much more damage are they getting out of the fact that their buffs now meaningfully affect you. If your character concept relies on supporting your allies, the buffs to Leadership (if they survive...) are for you. Your new AT-level identity is better taunt, higher target caps, and larger aoes. Being a frightful presence on the battlefield that cannot be ignored. This is more in-line with the fiction anyway.

Wikis have been wrong before, and it wasn't written with access to source code, so I just assumed CP was right. Either way, it works out the same: things will limit the effectiveness of the -range, and upping Taunt to -100% doesn't necessarily make everything camp on your toes as much as make sure they're reliably closer to you than they would be at -75%.

Basically, an option to have all dialogue thrown into the contact screen also go to a chat window. If it would be too hard to get Contact name as the speaker, then simply "Contact:" or "Mission:" would work. That would also be nice for mid-mission dialogue windows. Reasons: #1: Because I want to spam through dialogue and start auto-flying to the mission while I read. Just a nice QOL so I can actually pay attention to plot without slowing teammates down. #2: So allies can get a better idea of what's going on in TFs. #3: Those windows I accidentally missed, like when I click on a contact to "turn in" the previous mission but my inertia carries me past them. Whatever blurb they had said is now lost forever. Would be great if it instead just went to my chat window. Ideally, there would be a way to enable it to see party leader text in addition to your own, or to opt out of the feature altogether, but even if it was "stuck" on, that would be fine if it were classified NPC dialogue.

This topic is interesting to me, because I've 180'd on it since Live. I bought the rationale on live (I guess we're calling it pre-Snap now), where they cited bad interplay with Domination, but insinuated that went further into gameplay expectations. That would include weird damage and survival curves and such. But now? Especially in light of the PA customization on Beta? In a world where Empathy has been ported to MM with no changes, and we can make spines/fire brutes? Yeah I just don't think any of that matters now. It should get a pass on the beta server first, and that's a big thing I feel people forget is the reality: we'll try it, tweak it, launch it.

While mechanically solid, I'm not sure I'd really welcome this unless it had some seriously nature-y VFX. As a concept, it just doesn't sell anything -- "I'm resisting damage with my nature-ness?" It would always boil down to "what's your nature-ness providing?" which in turn boils down to Willpower, Regen, Invulnerability, SR, etc etc. So basically, because it doesn't fill a "how" concept, it instead would need to fill a theme. Another +1 for the Insect control set, btw. That's top-notch.

I feel the solution is to zoom out a bit; take a less granular view. Stuff like Enhanced Senses or some sort of Tracker power make sense as tier 1s; sixth sense type stuff can come as a tier 2. This is why I suggested before combining it into a broader pool like Primal -- if you can choose just the 1-2 powers that suits you, all the better. Enhanced Senses could be Batman's detective vision (Arkham games), Daredevil's general awareness, and even Wolverine's smell -- it's all up to you about how important the power is to your character. No reason to part that out into 20% of your power picks.

I saw some mention of Controllers being top-performers -- How are they really performing in common content these days? I don't play Controllers so I'm more curious than informed. My understanding was "fire/kin is OP, everything else is just playing their Secondary in anything 50+." I'm sure there are other good combos, but I'm still left with the sense that if you're running "rote" content, you're rotating Judgement nukes and the AVs don't care about your holds. /shocked. I am usually on the other side of issues from you, but I seriously think I just about agree with you here. I think this game needs mostly nerfs, but there are certain situations where I think buffs are warranted more for enjoyment than for power (Stone Armor, Energy Melee, Stone Armor, and Stone Armor being the big ones). Of course, you'll see me proposing buffs anyway entirely because "please nerf these 7 sets and these 6 entire ATs" is just not the hill I'll be dying on, today. ---- Consideration for aoe holds: Want to dampen the impact of IOs? Consider adding an unenhanceable portion to the recharge of these powers. For example: Base recharge of 60 seconds +unenhanceable/resistable +100% recharge penalty. This gives it a 2-minute base, but even maxed recharge will only lower it to 72 seconds. (insert your own best-judgement numbers here) Alternatively (definitely NOT in addition to): a bump up of the Mag of these powers would good. If they were something ridiculous like Mag 6, they would feel like the "Nukes" of controls, capable of even locking down a boss in a click. This can really only make sense for Controller versions of the powers, though.

Luckily, people who do this are self-defeating; no one will read the bios. No harm done. Going to echo @FDR's Think Tank about costume slots. I envision a section similar to the set bonuses that adjusts with the current outfit (or failing that, the current build).

Thanks, that explains quite a bit. I guess this means i should care more about taunt's Recharge.

There is nothing wrong with people being offended when you tell them they, personally, need constant affirmation. Here's the kicker: you and @jubakumbi are happy to tell Solarverse what they feel, and what they are after, and yet you reject the notion of him calling shots in a party. I can't be the only person who sees this as hypocrisy.

Not accusatory or belittling in the least. /s Can I try? "I'm not calling you a dick, I'm just saying you have an obvious and constant need to appear as one." Stop outright attacking people and then pretending they're being unreasonable for defending themselves. Its a stupid look. EDIT: I don't feel like I was blunt enough. You literally just said "I'm not attacking you" and went on to attack his character in the very same sentence. If you cannot understand why this is not ok, I think you should consider talking to someone who does have the degree this thread asked for.