PoptartsNinja

While they're at it, they could give it an alternate animation of spraypainting the player character's teeth silver. We already have spraycans and I'd bet one of the texting emojis or maybe even the newspaper salesman shout and arm swing would get pretty close...

And I understand that you don't like being told how to play. Which is why, not once in this thread, have I ever used the words "forced," "have to," "required," "required to," "must" or any other synonym of the same in relation to whether or not you voluntarily choose to select Rage during a level up. I also understand that words and definitions are important. Which is why, when people use words like "must" or "have to" and very often "all" and "everyone" they're speaking in hyperbole. An obvious and intentional exaggeration that isn't meant to be taken literally. Hyperboles and other figures of speech are common, and I'm sorry that over-using the word must seems to be as much of a pet peeve for you that people saying "begs the question" when they really mean "raises the question" annoys me. I get it. I do. The problem is that arguing semantics distracts from the actual point. In this case, the point is that Super Strength's design has been crippled by a power that is pretending to be the set's crutch. The set wouldn't need Rage to prop it up 'in emergencies' if it didn't have Rage propping it up. It could get some actual love, and I'm very glad the developers have chosen to pay attention to it and try to polish it into something that will be better than it currently is.

Rudra, you know as well as I do that no one is forced to take anything beyond a T1/T2 of their primary and their secondary. No one is literally held at gunpoint and forced to take Rage, but: and this is the big but? You are intentionally arguing in bad faith. And I'm only giving you the time of day because I believe you are genuinely a good person with valuable insights and I don't believe you're the sort of person who argues in bad faith on purpose. I totally understand that you like Super Strength, and that's ok! My favorite powerset has always been Forcefield, and I liked it even back when it was genuinely bad and offered almost nothing of value to most teams. I still think Forcefield is still saddled with two of what may very well be the worst powers in the game and it's still my favorite set in spite of that. I really miss Force Bubble. It was a much better power than anyone ever gave it credit for, it just had an extremely high skill floor (with a commissurately high skill ceiling that made it fun to use). Whether Super Strength is your favorite set or not, the goal isn't to make the set worse. Because the only way it could be is if it dealt psi damage. Knockout Blow is in such a poor state at Rage x0 that the only heavy-hitters it beats in terms of DPS are One Thousand Cuts (against a single target only) and 0 to 1 combo Crushing Uppercut (which is mostly a condemnation of the state of Street Justice's combo system), and while Footstomp is a legitimately good attack and there are a fair number of individual powers it outperforms, the only full powersets Super Strength as a whole outperforms as an AoE damage powerset are Stone Melee and Psi Melee. Tremor is notoriously dire (it was 15ft before anyone else was but didn't get a damage increase when other tanker AoEs got pushed up to 15ft) and Psi Melee is so heavily penalized for doing Psi damage that it is genuinely just the worst melee powerset. But I'm not asking you to take my word for it, so here you go: Here are the base values (no enhancements, just pure base DPS) of Super Strength's two best attacks. The ones everyone loves. And then compare them to where they wind up with 1x or 2x Rage. I'll let you draw any conclusions you want from those numbers.

Rudra: True or False To your knowledge of the game's numbers, are Super Strength's base damage numbers lower than those of most other melee damage sets?

Now. I was talking back at launch when Family topped out around level 35. Forgot about the Tsoo, though, Ancestor spirits did persist up to level 40. I also remember them being the lowest target priority of everything in the faction (back then it was definitely a game of "dogpile the Sorcerer").

Current Super Strength does cover one base really well: Its values suck, so they can give it to mid-tier enemy groups without those groups being too strong. But it's really kinda telling that the classic mobs with Super Strength get phased out in the mid 30s for mobs with War Mace, which was perceived (incorrectly) as the worst melee set at launch and that the set didn't reappear in the endgame (Statesman and Tyrant notwithstanding, not to mention Black Scorpion who barely counts). IIRC Statesman and Tyrant didn't even have Zeus's lightning back when they were introduced, they had to give them a second energy-damage version of Footstomp to make them somewhat dangerous. Did you know Black Scorpion is the only one of the OG Super Strength AVs who had/has Rage? It's +20% ToHit / +15% damage for 30 seconds on a 60 second recharge.

Finally, a use for Detention Bubble. (Just in case anyone can't tell: this wasn't a serious response)

Good for you! My favorite power in the game was Force Bubble. Force Bubble was legitimately too strong and was replaced with a less fun but much more practical power that gave Forcefield something it legitimately needed (a source of DDR). We'd never have gotten the ZTF train mission if Force Bubble still existed. Imagine just turning on a 40 foot radius bubble and instantly killing everything that wasn't an AV just by walking forward in a straight line. Rage is exactly the same sort of problem-tier power.

The game has outgrown rest, and I'm so glad it has. The original design was: Fight a spawn or two, spend a minute resting. Fight a spawn or two, spend a minute resting. Endlessly. It was a mind-numbing way to keep people subscribed for just a little longer, to inflate play times at the expense of actual enjoyable game design. The Fight-Fight-Rest gameplay loop was the reason why I quit the first time, way back during I0 or I1 (I forget), and came back a few issues later when Health and Stamina were made universal.

And that is an even bigger problem than it appears. The poor base scaling Rage requires in order to not be stupidly broken makes team buffs worth less on a Super Strength character than other powersets. To toss out the hypothetical max fulcrum shift/damage cap/max fury/etc: Super Strength's values are so low that being at the damage cap just benefits every other powerset more than Super Strength. I understand not wanting Rage to change because it makes proc bombs easier, but the whole set is just stuck in a vicious circle: Rage enables proc-bombing, so that's what "everyone" (doing harder content) does to try to make Super Strength viable. Super Strength requires both rage and procs to achieve basic functionality The set wouldn't need to proc bomb as hard (especially in harder content) if it had better scaling Rage's very nature will always prevent the set from ever getting better base scales (Go back to #1)

I can understand why people are frustrated and a bit depressed about this one. Even if you do plan on re-touching Super Strength for Page 3, you showed people two things they were really interested in (Armor T9 changes and a Super Strength rework), and both got pulled. One of which was pulled with a very spitefully worded: "At least at this point there are no plans to revisit them in the future." I'm still hopeful wasn't actually intended to be spiteful, but it's easy to misread a text's tone and for me, that is how it came accross. What's clear to me from the current situation is: Interest in seeing Super Strength reworked is very high. I'm glad that one's not going away. People are passionate about it because they want Super Strength to be good, feel good to play, and to keep the core of its identity. It really feels like Unleashed Might and the Handclap change really fit, so people are genuinely upset to see them go (however temporarily). I think the powers team is capable of delivering on a Super Strength rework, so I can be patient. People really do want to see the Armor T9s improved. They just: Don't want the Armor T9s to be homogenized because different powersets need different tools Maybe want to see Armor T9 changes trickled out one or two sets at a time so that we can focus our testing time on a set or two instead of all being handled at once in a way that makes it difficult for anyone to test every change to see how it actually works Would appreciate a bit more dev / power team feedback about what their vision is for each armor set's T9. Having a bit more insight into the design intent would help us provide useful suggestions to how to achieve developer goals without losing the powerset's flavor; or at least would allow us to better explain why we felt a change wasn't meeting the rework goals and offer suggestions for alternatives that did. The Electric Armor changes went over really well, because Electric Armor has never needed a 'panic button' style power. It's a very durable set, so turning Electric Armor's T9 into a shorter-duration utility tool suited the set's needs pretty perfectly. But just because that design worked for Electric Armor doesn't mean that same design works for other powersets. For example: Ninjutsu already has a good utility toolset, has inherently worse DDR values than Super Reflexes, and it doesn't have the added durability that Super Reflexes' scaling armor provides. Ninjutsu probably really does want a long-duration panic button in some form. It could absolutely use a panic button that's better suited to its actual strengths, but over-capping Ninjutsu's defense values is genuinely useful because it isn't basically immune to -def the way Super Reflexes is. I'm glad Super Strength's rework is still on the table, if a bit sad it won't be a (slightly post) Christmas present (that's fine, my birthday's in the spring so it can be a birthday present instead 😄 ). I really hope you reconsider "not touching" the Armor T9s. People feel strongly about them because most of them really do need an overhaul. Crashes feel awful and aren't good game design, T9 self-rezzes are generally bad, and some sets really do need something that lasts longer than 30 seconds.

Put me in the column of people who were really interested in seeing Unleashed Might. "Rage" as a concept is better represented by Brute fury anyway. Just give Super Strength the full overhaul it's needed since Issue 1, and make sure it has a consistent design intent. We've already got best-in-show single target and DPS sets, and people like Super Strength currently because of its AoE toolkit. So as long as Super Strength keeps a strong AoE toolkit I think people will still probably be ok with it. ... And let Hurl pull from a random selection of objects, like rocks, cars, lamp posts, crates, villain group ragdolls (if you can figure out a way to get it to 'see' the primary villain group of whatever mission you're in), and etc. Showing the set some genuine love and care by giving it something fun (even if it's only aesthetic) will help lessen the sting of loosing its crutch (especially, to maintain the analogy, if you actually rehab the set enough that it can run again).

/macro ATT "powexec_toggle_on attune" solves Sonic's biggest problem: accidentally detoggling Attune and/or needing to constantly watch your power bar to make sure you didn't bump it on accident. Just click the macro as part of your standard rotation. If attune's on, the button does nothing and won't interfere with the rest of your rotation; if attune isn't on, the macro will activate attune. It basically works like a normal power that way.

People are allowed to run their teams any way they want, whether that be tankers only, level 55 newbies welcome, no kheldians, or LF1M healer only. Looks like that team filled up almost instantly, so there would probably have been takers if you started your own team. I totally get not wanting to, though. Leading teams can be a lot of pressure, and all it takes is a bad experience or two to sour you on a player, a playstyle, an AT, or even leading teams at all.

You're right, I should have prefaced that with "it's my belief that," fixed. The devs are very stingy with telling us their intent behind some changes, so it could be punitive. I'm just of the opinion that that particular change isn't intended to be. Being a toggle, Unleashed Might could still use handclap as a mitigation tool (by turning off Unleashed Might) or a damaging tool; but Rage doesn't have that option. I personally believe that's why Rage doesn't get the changed version, but unless a dev steps in and tells us their actual intent we're left with wild speculations. It's one of the reasons I do think the current patch notes are often unfortunately inadequate. I'd love to see the reasoning or intent behind certain changes, so if something doesn't work we can help find solutions that will still work towards the devs' goals rather than counter to them. Edit: That's what I was told when I suggested it be turned into a timed toggle. Since the timed toggles can't stack magnitude, it would remove Detention Field's "use case." That's why I suspect there's a similar logic at play here. Whether I personally agree with that logic or not.