Replacement

I know this isn't what your post is about, but I would also love to see a few new inspiration types. The P2W means you could easily start with them disabled and let people opt in. a) Something for Support and Control roles. +debuff effect, probably just a Power Build Up in Inspiration form. Could make the numbers reasonably small and also include your point #4, here. So make your secondary effects stronger while weakening theirs. b) Celerity. +Recharge and +Move Speed.

Please let me know if I'm missing something, but if you're just looking for a key that toggles between fly and hover, you can do this without invoking file overwrites: /bind e "powexecname hover$$powexecname fly" Note the entirely encapsulating quotes. I've found this to be the most reliable method of "AND"ing up multiple commands. Note that I also intentionally avoid powexectoggleon. Why the "simple" approach works The game requires an "action" to activate (to my knowledge) every toggle. It does not require an "action" to detoggle. How to test if things can fire off concurrently: try to perform a click action during an attack animation. If you try to activate Hover while in the middle of a Flurry animation, it will queue instead If you try to deactivate Hover while in the middle of Flurry, it will happily do so. As long as your 2 powers follow this behavior (all toggles, to my knowledge), the simple toggle bind will work, with lower chance for error (lag used to trip up my wsad Sprint binds, which were reading from file). My most common version of this: /bind shift+space "powexecname combat jumping$$powexecname Super Jump"

Typically #2, even though I'm right-handed. Some of my characters try to use the same elevator as others. Very efficient. Some of my toons want a little air and click on whichever elevator isn't occupied. ALL toons attempt to use the same elevator as any masterminds I'm on the team with, because it's funny to go full Clown-Car.

Where would we be without Detective J.J. Bitenbinder? Street Smarts!

So there are about 3 million design flaws with Stone Armor, but let's talk about 2 of them specifically: The capstone is exclusive to the rest of the set 8 powers kinda suck To the first point - I really do not like the design dynamic of "respec later on into something awesome." And I really really don't like "ignore my cool costume and swap out my character model." To the second point - lots of armor sets have t9 powers that are super meh, just because they're "overkill." Why is it that when we talk Stone Armor, suddenly the other 8 powers are expected to bow down in service of the one? Doesn't really make sense to count it against the set's power budget differently than other sets are treated. Honestly, this is the biggest set where I would break the cottage rule. I'd combine some armors to make way for an included teleport (earth glide). Granite is its own conversation - it shouldn't be designed around a respec, and a set shouldn't be just one power.

I suddenly find myself wishing martial arts had even more alt animations. This got me thinking of a martial artist with several duplicate outfits, where only the animations change - could be fun. Representing changing stances over the course of fights. Maybe if I come up with a build that uses Fighting tree as well...

I do want to clarify (as was pointed out to me recently to my great disappointment), the issue with Shield Brutes is specific to Shield Charge: Brutes have a low damage multiplier, offset by their high +damage cap of (iirc) 750%. But when you use Shield Charge, it summons a pet with a duplicate of all your buffs (including Fury) and it deals the damage for you. So what's the problem? Pets have a damage cap of 400% (again, iirc). Now granted, if you're running around solo, I have a feeling 400's about where you'd be at with Fury, AaO, and Enhancements, and it's probably no great loss. But in an "ideal" situation (pocket kin), a Brute deals [moderate number]*4 and a Scrapper deals [slightly larger number]*4.

Even the doggies! The doggies!

I've always hated this. Especially since i16.

I like this but I would suggest binding it on slower recharging/situational powers. Something more likely to fire off every minute or so, so each form at least gets some time in the sun. I'm still very proud of my Wizard character that casts a transmutation on himself to turn into a ninja and ninja run places. Sadly, his actual mechanical build became unplayably boring for me. For people discussing a Macro oriented approach: if your goal is more "mode switch" then there are some opportunities to do this with macros. For example, I've been wanting to build a Jekyll/Hide-esque Dominator that uses a macro to change trays between tactical and beat-down mode. So change active tray +costume change.

It seems to me a solution is to make your Call for Backup a t8 that creates the short-lived pets, and then make a t9 attack that is a decent attack on its own but intentionally underwhelming compared to other t9s. And then you tie it together. Performing the t9 while backup is out causes "X awesome extra effect." Say it's called Full Offensive, it would mean they'd take your queue to unleash a Full Auto burst in time with you. Or maybe they just Taunt whenever you activate your t9. So on and so forth. Sadly, this set would require animation work no matter what. :/

This is more or less what I was coming here to say. I'm glad to see you're thinking about the implementation side of it. I was thinking maybe it would be too intensive to add to every toon (and so it could be a granted, does-not-stack-with-self buff provided as part of super speed), but I had forgotten about Grounded as an "always watching" example to use. +1, the lack of Coyote Time is absolutely why Super Speed is frustrating for me.

All of this is ridiculous and doesn't do a damn thing to justify jump enhancements not affecting Hurdle. But I don't care because your global handle is ridiculously awesome. GREAT NEWS, EVERYONE! It is affecting jump height, and i just needed a bigger enhancement. This means it's only a text bug, as the text only stats the jump speed, but that's obviously a much lower-priority change. /thread, everyone!

Isn't that what taking Super Jump, Fly or Teleport solves? Isn't that the point of those powers - to get places you couldn't get to before faster? Ninja run/beast run are supposed to be better than sprint (they are) and less than a travel power (so they should stay)... So my ninjutsu character, running Ninja Run and the /ninjutsu move speed power in tandem, thematically -- you're saying this character should have to toggle that off for a "real" travel power to get over these things, and that's what the balance of this game hinges on? I'd honestly be happier if Ninja/Beast Run were slot-able pool powers, but that's not the universe we live in, so there is no reason to oppose this outside of required man-hours. After turning away from a mission on the other side of one of those Steel Canyon walls specifically to buy a beefy Enhancement for Hurdle and coming back, found I wasn't jumping any higher. Looked at the Enhancement again and realized it specifically says "increases jump speed by x%" and nothing about height.

Until very recently, I actually assumed Jump enhancements would improve Jump height and Jump speed. So now that I know that's not the case I submit: UNLESS IT'S A HUGE MANPOWER SINK, it would be a fantastic QoL buff to have any Jump Enhancements also add a portion of their value to Jump Height. Any ninjas running around Steel Canyon are familiar with the walls they can almost leap up to, and then have to give up and find a long way around. In a world with Fly, I promise this will not break anything.

Those of us with the "CoH IO Sets" section of our mental encyclopedias torn out salute you. Super good baseline info; helps expectations with un-Doms too.

I would definitely add leadership values and minor party support to my mental list of supported buffs. I've thought a billion times about how often the guy leading the charge is also calling the shots and how meh that is in CoH. Captain America is a tanker, in my eyes, and his leadership numbers should be awesome. I'd set them to Controller levels, personally.

Why are you even posting in this thread? I suppose you make a good argument for nerfing Brute but I don't think that's what you've been trying to convey. I don't think a defeatist attitude helps anything, and I don't think this thread has anything to offer you.

So a more encompassing title for my "Category A" above would probably be optimization appeal. Let me pause and be clear here: this is a spot where people want to respond with a high-horse answer about doing what's fun. But when "fun" feels miserable because you feel like the weak link, that's far more damaging to your "fun." The intent is simple: keep tanker the same, on a gameplay loop level, but bring them in line with other melee on the optimization level. @Redlynne - I'm not particularly opposed to it, but I think that sounds like it could make distortions on how other class/combinations are perceived. It's subtle and little. I'm just saying... There's good reason to tread lightly, and that means you're asking a volunteer developer to make changes to about 165 powers that they may need to come back through and adjust again, or back out entirely.

In my estimation, there are two (2) things players mean when they say something is fun/boring: a) They are speaking about the sense of being proficient; powerful. This is what leads people to FotM builds and the reason the highest performing classes in MMOs always tend to have the highest popularity -- the correlation is real. b) The gameplay loop. This is a really neat little term to sum "all the things about the play experience for this class/character/build." This can be broad, like "keep hitting things to keep fury up, duh" to very specific nuances like "Street Justice combo points vs Dual blades combo system." I believe you and @Leogunner are looking at a category B -- you are unsatisfied with the loop and its expectations. Profit is very happy with it, and a lot of us simply don't want to shake the boat. So keep this in mind. If I am correct on my read, keep in mind there is a fundamental incompatibility between how you want to treat Tanker and how others do. I mean, don't get me wrong.. I still like my "spend a fury" idea (gain a stack of gauntlet every time you're attacked, spend all of them every time you attack for bonus damage, so you sit there and build strength), but the more radical ideas just aren't safe.

Btw, Profit, in glad you posted this. I hope we're showing some capacity to get over our emotions and see your perspective. I'm honestly not sure. It feels like a rabbit hole of sorts. I'm quite opposed to retooling it to be smaller numbers that stack. That would distort play, including relative usefulness of other ATs (e.g. Sonic blasters). It would probably be ok on all attacks, but it would need watched and would represent a lot of work (adding the bruising line to every single tanker secondary attack, one by one). It's weird.

Numbers vat-grown in a lab, and not reflective of any particular power. Using the base melee modifier multiplied by max damage bonus, you get the following comparison when at +damage cap: For every 5.8125 points of damage the brute does, the tanker will have done 3.2 and a scrapper would deal 5.625 (not counting crits). This tells me an increase to tanker's max damage would definitely be ok, but understand the razor's edge you walk with that suggestion. If you try to make it more than a Brute (clear incentive structure: "I get more out of party buff to damage), you run the risk of catching up to Scrapper... And that would be bad. Ideas in this thread I really like: -increase to damage cap just for QoL. Getting that number up to at least 4.5 would be fantastic. -increasing taunt mag. Someone asked what the point was: my understanding is it works as a hate multiplier, so it means you can hold hate longer against an AV that is somehow invalidating most of your aggro generation (-recharge comes to mind). -Resistance to debuffs. This is a really really cool idea. It feels like right around the time Brutes start solving their survivability problems is around when bad guys start really piling on the debuff cocktails, so this would be a really subtle way of helping a tanker keep their crown. -Removing the accuracy check from gauntlet.

The strong slow aura is the martial answer to other sets getting +recharge. Do those powers offer anything else? The formula appears to be +Recovery +Regen OR +Absorb *Unique benefit.

I see I should have, back on page 1, really clarified that I meant "Punch and Kick and nothing else" Because I understand their value. It's so 2004 to have to purchase an intentionally-bad power in order to get to the decent stuff, just because it's a pool that everyone can grab. If Punch and Kick didn't seem good for a scrapper (with their insane melee multiplier), how good can they possibly be on the other ATs? I see the spiffy additional effects, but they're hodgepodge, with no single effect strong enough to realistically have an effect. There, that's my setup. I'm open to having my mind changed. But I'd be even more open to seeing Kick get its damage, recharge, and additional effects doubled.

I like the idea of building an NPC and using something like the Kheldian system to spawn them. As for a sidekick: I wonder if the old code still exists that indents a player SK's name under their mentor. Basic rule: including sidekicks themselves, a party can only have 4-5 members. So at 4 max, for example, 3 players can call one SK (total - not each). 2 members means they could each call theirs. No 16-man shenanigans; not even 4+4 parties. This would be a pretty good spot to be since this is when your party has all the basics covered. This would honestly be the greatest investment in "post-live" content. But first, we'll need to have a serious talk about AE farms in a world with Justin.