Steampunkette

These changes WERE the Middle Ground. This is the second time the HC Devs have tried to make serious improvements to Super Strength and the second time a small, but loud, group of people have screamed and moaned about any perceived negative aspect to the set. Now it'll be another 3-5 months before we get to see just how much further along towards one side of the "Middle Ground" before they throw it back at the HC Dev team AGAIN and demand it be better.

Please please please reconsider cutting Unleashed Might. I was looking forward to it -so hard-...

Yyyyyyup. I wanted Unleashed Might so bad I made SS characters for it, specifically. Thanks for ruining things, folks.

Very accurate... but also because they're not softcapped the defense and resistance debuffs aren't increasing their damage taken by nearly as huge a margin... And also it's a lot more damage. Like it won't be 700% more damage than they're already getting hit with, but the extra damage they will take is going to be impactful. Of course it's also ALREADY that way, so it's not a huge deal.

Is it? Okay. So it's a 700% Increase. My brain is not great right now. It's late (for me) and I took my Progesterone which makes me a sleepy baby.

To clarify: If you have 90% Resistance you're only taking 10% of the damage that has a chance to land. Otherwise you're taking 5% of all incoming damage. Because even with Resistance and 0 Defense buffs, 50% of incoming attacks miss (modified by level differences, ToHit Mods, and Defense Buffs). So with 90% Resistance and 45% Defense you're taking 1% of all incoming damage that rolls above a 50 on the ToHit check. Anything that rolled lower than that wasn't going to hit you, anyway.

You did, yeah. 800% is correct. So instead of taking 1% of all incoming damage that has a chance to hit, they'll take 9% of all incoming damage that has a chance to hit.

I would -love- to know you're math on that.

For the defense or resist they cap, here or there, they'll face the same 260% increased damage for that specific damage type as any Defense character with that type softcapped or Resist character with that type hardcapped. It's only if they cap Resistance -and- Defense to a given damage type that them being "Hybrid" matters. Because then they're taking 260% increase on Defense and 260% increase on Resist. But at that point they're going from taking 1% of incoming damage to taking 6.2% of incoming damage. So. Y'know... lots more damage but still a drop in the bucket.

Hybrid sets kinda sorta don't exist for the purposes of this stuff? Bio Armor and Willpower are the "Hybrid" sets that have Defense and Resistance. But they also specifically don't overlap too much on their defenses and resistances. They're both S/L Resist, Energy/Element Defense. With Bio getting Toxic Resist and Willpower getting Psionic Resist. Unless their enemies are hitting them with every damage type (hint, they won't be), they'll be -less- affected by the debuff than a Defense or Resistance character since they actually rely, mostly, on Regeneration and Self-Healing. Meanwhile Regen, with no defense or resistance to speak of, is in the same boat.

This is the one question you asked me, so it's the one I'll tackle: Yeah, sure. Because it requires a very specific set of circumstances to take that position. Specifically you have to have some Fulcrum Shift stacking or other massive external damage bonuses to make that happen. 'Cause there's no way you're ever going to attain that value, otherwise. And between Fury, Enhancements, and Rage, the guy who didn't take UM is going to be much closer to that damage cap. And also hit way more often thanks to the 40/80 ToHit bonus, which isn't taken account in the napkin math you quoted.

Who can say? Personally I think that'd be an excellent improvement to the AT, which desperately needs a lot of improvements... Sentinels have shown, pretty conclusively, that having ranged attacks and armor doesn't instantly make a character OP.

Make it easier to get decent defensive values for a tanking archetype without delving into IO Set Bonuses, mostly. Particularly with the change to Rage and the rescinded Tier 9 changes it was a pretty solid buff idea. Without the t9 changes it's still a pretty nice positive improvement without being significantly unbalancing.

They're only killing it for the people who are whining about the 20% resistance debuff. Rage is about to be -way- better for a Defense Build than it's ever been! I've been playing an SS/SR Brute for a couple months, now, on live, and it's been hellish whenever the crash hits. But with the Rage Change? She'll survive way better in those situations rather than collapsing like a flan in the oven. It'll still hurt... but 140% -less-. Not the devs' fault that some people are going to whinge and moan 'cause they've specifically built SS characters exclusively around Resistance defense sets in order to essentially ignore the defensive crash for 20 years. Some folks are going to whine and kick and scream. Nothing can be done to prevent that. But given the choice? I'd rather see this Tage change and the addition of UM as an alternative, rather than Rage just get cut. Three times more build variety.

Nah. Most equitable option is removing Rage from the game and putting Unleashed Might in it's place. There you go. Problem entirely solved.

I don't mean "Resistance to Resistance Debuffs" I mean the bundled debuff resistances they get like Recovery debuff resistance in Murky Cloud and ToHit and Regen debuff resistance in Obscure Sustenance. Different sets have different quantities, and different debuff resistances, sure. (Mostly ToHit, Regen, and Slow). But Defense sets do not get those. Resistance characters are hit by those debuffs more often since they don't rely on dodging it to avoid the penalty, so they get resistance to keep from being debuffed directly to Hell. Defense characters just don't get those resistances 'cause they're dodging the attack and instead get hit with the full value when it manages to roll that golden 95% or higher. A Resistance Tanker who takes a -20% Res (All Damage) still has their set's built in ToHit, Regen, Slow, Etc resistances to rely on. A Defense Tanker does not and instead gets hit with those debuffs full force in the face. Defense sets are still taking the shorter end of the stick on the Rage Crash than Resistance sets are.

You're right. It -isn't- equitable. Defense users have it worse. Sure, Resistance characters are going to take more damage from the -20% resistance to all types. But they'll still have all their Debuff Resistance that Defense Characters don't get because Defense avoids getting debuffed. But both defense and resistance characters at the cap will be taking the same amount of damage increase: 260%. That is, on its face, far more equitable. You could niggle over details like Typed versus Positional Defenses, or hem and haw over which sets get hit harder by which groups because of some specific hole or another made worse... but ultimately Resistance sets still retain their debuff resistance and defense sets don't have it at all. So even if it's not a perfect balance, it's definitely vastly more equitable than it is, currently, where Resistance sets basically ignore the survival impact of the crash and Defense sets are crippled by it unless they overcap by 20% to all positions, all types, or some specific combination of the two. As far as your "Clear cut" option, it just takes away the drawbacks of the power. I flanderized your position, certainly, but your suggestion was removing the crash. Which would result in the power being nerfed into the ground because that crash, that drawback, is being used as a balancing lever by the dev team. How reasonable and equitable you want to imagine your position is? Irrelevant. It would result in a major nerf. As far as convincing you of literally anything: You're not going to be convinced. I could pull out all the math in the world and walk you through it, or someone else could, and you'll still say stuff like "What does overperforming in damage as a Tanker even mean?". The question contains the answer. As far as Brutes and UM vs Rage: Assuming a base damage of 100 on an attack: Due to Scalar the Brute deals 75 damage. With capped Fury they're at 200% putting that up to 225 damage. With Rage that's another 80% bringing us to 285. Doublestacked you're now up to 345. Don't forget to add another 75 or so damage for Enhancements and we're now at a comfortable 420. Blaze it. On the other hand, we have Unleashed Might. So that 75 damage is pushed up by an additional 30% thanks to the second hit of damage UM adds on. So 22.5 more damage puts us at 97.5 as our new "Baseline". Why? Because Fury and other +Dam mods affect both portions of damage. So 97.5 gets increased by 200% from Fury bringing us to 292.5. And then Unrelenting Might is another 20% damage so that's a further 19.5 damage for 312. Toss on the enhancement value for another 97.5 and you're up to 409.5 Huh. That's weird. 409.5 is -lower- than 420. Granted, it's a LOT closer than you might immediately expect when looking at the 80% vs 20% of the Rage and UM direct buffs... but still! Brutes actually get GREAT use out of Unrelenting Might while maxed out on Fury! (certainly more than Tankers do) And it is basically always the "Right Choice" for a Brute since you can maintain permanent uptime with no negative effects as long as you're also managing your endurance costs. It's an expensive toggle. But at the -cap-... UM breaks free. 780 to Rage's 600. The real big difference between the two is how hard it is to get to the 700% damage cap. Rage will push you there, faster, off a lower initial damage value. UM won't help you get there, much at all, but provides a larger value to be modified. And that's separate from any other considerations of proc-slotting which apply to both builds pretty well equally and can largely be ignored for comparison purposes.

"Rather than make the debuff result in 260% more damage to both Defense and Resistance users at the soft and hard cap, or 400% more damage for Defense users and 20% more damage for Resistance users, we should just get rid of the debuff that has long been considered the balancing point for this power!" ... that's definitely a take. If the crash went away, you'd definitely see a major nerf to Rage's output more in line with Unleashed Might's overall value.

Storm/Nin. Took -one- sword power. Spend all my time spamming Storm Blast powers to try and proc as much lightning as possible. It's -great- for long range devastation! She is -not- a blapper!

I mostly solo at high end at +1/x8... Regardless of AT. So the blaster DEFINITELY feels more like Artillery, to me, when I wipe out groups with massive AoEs. It's nice!

1.1 to 10 targets compared to 1.125 to 16. Blasters can hit the entire group at once, harder, than the Sentinel can. Sure their snipe hits harder than the Sentinel's snipe-replacement (even in quick mode!) and so do all their other attacks. But... But the Sentinel can pick a target to wreck through their inherent debuff. And on a team, with any coordination, the output is multiplicative on that -one- target. Blaster can wipe out the group with Cones, Targeted AoEs, etc, way faster than a Sentinel can. But against a sufficiently hard target, with a team to work with, the Sentinel puts out more single-target than the Blaster does through the additional damage Vulnerability provides to them, and the group.

Would be a shame! I'd -love- a Super Strength Stalker with UM... But you're right. Gotta have the ability to recharge Build Up...

Definitely weaker, even without doublestacking Rage. But I think the goal is to have UM available for porting SS over to Scrappers/Stalkers in place of Rage.

While I wouldn't -mind- a minimum FX option... You can already downcolor it to be only about as obtrusive as the Energy Glow from Energy Aura. Just use the three color columns on the left side of the palette, here, and it's not that bad. Here it is in the game world.

Sentinels are to Blasters what Stalkers are to Scrappers. Single-target killers. Yes. A Blaster can pop Build Up and Aim to jump closer to the damage cap with their 1.125 scalar to dish out amazing damage, briefly, and typically used in an AoE Nuke situation. But on a team the Build Up advantage dissipates when everyone's sitting at the damage cap because of well timed Fulcrum Shifts. But a Sentinel drops Vulnerability, then Aim, then lays waste to the person they've targeted while also boosting the damage output of their team on that one target until they're a grease stain on the floor. Not only do they get a 1.1 damage scalar, and the same 500% cap, but they make their target take even more damage. This functions while at the cap, unlike Build Up. AoE Vulnerability is going to be a nice change for overall output in cleave situations, don't get me wrong. And crits will be a final step in bringing Sentinels in line with overall output (It's why it's 40% chance and 40% value at cap for a 16% increase over and above the 500% damage cap). But Sentinels will always be about putting one target down with prejudice! This update is all about making them great at small area cleaving, too. The only change I'm still hoping to see is the IO proc to be increased to 15 vulnerability 3.5 times per minute.