jack_nomind

Assuming that would extend easily to 34 or 51 is kind of the core assumption here. How is it you make it? Again -- there's no target cap changes being suggested, and aggro is FIFO. How is a tanker hitting 34 targets more easily than anyone else is? Every Controller primary except Gravity, Ice, and Illusion, who rely on their pets for supplemental control, has at least one AoE "strong" (manages aggro/prevents attacks) control with a potential uptime of 200% or better. Darkness: Heart of Darkness (stun) and Shadow Field (hold) Earth: Volcanic Gasses (hold) and Stalagmites (stun) Electric: Synaptic Overload (confuse). Also Static Field, which is a sleep, but attached to an effect that periodically recasts it. Fire: Flashfire (stun) Mind: Terrify (terror), Mass Confusion (confuse) Plant: Seeds of Confusion (confuse) Many of these take pretty high levels of recharge to achieve 200% -- which was my point about "difficult" vs "impossible." The pet-control sets are a little different, but even those still can manage it. You mean currently? ...I'm not sure what you're getting at. Under current rules, the new attack bumps old entries off the aggro list quickly. With a revised cap, it still doesn't seem to change anything. Nor does it for our purposes matter whether or not the tanker is preventing attacks to themself with active mitigation, which is the difference between 5 KD'd targets in their aggro list and 5 standing targets in their aggro list. ...I don't think I'm understanding what you mean to say here, just tossing out responses to what I might guess was your intent. I'm proposing an aggro change in conjunction with several other Tanker changes, earlier in this thread. (But again, none of them get at AoE caps.) I totally agree that they need more than just a higher aggro cap; that merely brings them to effect parity with support ATs in aggro management. Being more than "nearly as good a tank as a Controller" takes a step or two further.

The thing is, the Controller already can mez 30 mobs at once. And, sure, Radiant Infection can't hit 34 targets, but Freezing Rain or Tar Patch can -- your example is specific to a type of behavior that wouldn't change, just like Blazing Aura wouldn't. Your point about difficulty is taken; it is difficult to mez 30 mobs at a time. So wouldn't "difficult" be a more appropriate position for Tankers holding aggro against 30 targets, rather than "impossible"?

Shhh! Don't let Philotic Knight hear you! Uh, that being said -- I like the idea of a purchasable skip. How do we balance it against the range of merit rewards? Anything that I can think of that disincentivizes cheesing seems... expensive. The rough average for merits per door is a little south of 5, but there are some outliers even there, without working out exactly which arcs are already super-fast but with one random defeat-all or AV that gunks them up. I expect that even at 10 merits per skip, it's going to be efficient for someone.

Hey, this thread has gone on a lot longer than I expec

You don't, against critters. (You do in PvP.)

Yes. Weave, probably (but you could get around that). Tough, no. They'd help with the -rech, after a fashion. They're not exactly boss-killers to begin with in the damage department, though; they'll help with maintaining aggro but probably aren't enough on their own. Oh heck yes, basically all SA builds are. This is one of the many SA problems every build has to solve somehow. Comic relief, sure. But it has a base cooldown of 2 minutes already; and you're probably full up on pools with Fighting, Leadership, Teleport, and Speed. You might be able to drop Leadership or even Fighting for it... it's still going to be a "once in a while" power. You can make an interesting Brute build this way, but I have a lot of trouble imagining a good Brute build around Granite. So FWIW I haven't ever played a Stone Brute, or a Stone Tanker since i...10? ish? I'm doing this by the numbers for the most part. I can tell you what your challenges are but your subjective experience is going to vary.

With respect to GM Widower, that's not accurate. Aggro limits are currently global. They're also "currently" at 17 (more or less). Changing it globally might (probably would be) simpler. Changing it for one archetype -- or for that matter, only for Huge bodies, or only for characters with the string "pe" in their names -- is still reasonably possible. But if we were to go back to the alternative utility ideas back in the other thread I wouldn't exactly be heartbroken...

I was referring to the +dmg aspect, but I didn't make that explicit. I think most of the recommended sets are going to be pretty close to equivalent at furrification at max/optimal. I'd have to find the Fury specific mechanics to be sure, but most optimal attack chains are very roughly comparable in attacks delivered/first 10s.

OP's Invuln build is quite good on endurance. I think it might still drain a bit on full speed, but it's got a lot to recommend it overall.

Sentinel was (per Positron's post-shutdown comments) in alpha testing as the "Striker." The sets (ranged/armor) were the same, but I couldn't tell you how much anything may have changed from Striker -> Sentinel.

yeah; y'all gonna livestream this for the peanut gallery?

In terms of sets that have low (relative to other Scrapper sets) damage and little utility, it would be: Broadsword, Battle Axe, and probably Electric Melee. In terms of sets that are good, but have some kind of problem that can make them difficult to work with: Dual Blades (end-guzzling, weird rotations), Psionic Melee (not all mobs resist Psi but the ones that do often resist it very hard), Kinetic Melee (really needs Siphon to be competitive, functionally can't perma it so weird rotations), and Savage Melee (mostly just needs more testing, and I'm lazy). Every set, to some extent, has something you have to do or give up for it to work. Dark Melee for example is an amazing ST-damage set and helps your survivability but offers vanishingly little AoE damage. TW is as far as I can tell the highest damage primary in ST or AoE by a good margin, but guzzles endurance and needs lots of +rech to really hit that performance peak. Staff and Spines offer great utility and pretty good AoE, but aren't really the tops for damage. Etc.

Resist sets are better on Brute, but this should work on either since you can build DA softcap with a parry relatively easily... Tentatively I'd say go Staff/Dark on Brutes, Staff/SR on Scrappers. That's off-the-cuff, though. Can't back it up with numbers, just an intuition.

I still don't love it; I'd rather have a melee/support Marshal without all the extra clicking. But if you get something running, sign me up for testing. I can't deny that this is at least interesting.

And I have clearly failed in that goal.

Well there's the thread.

(Meta/OT) The other discussion kind of fell apart; you aren't wrong that it was a bit buried, because I wasn't originally going to respond to the last comment in it (which was a response to me) and no one else was likely to, either. I was... disappointed... to see the first post to this thread for that reason, and resurrected the old post in the hopes we could contain that specific bickering to there.

Warrants a separate response. I realize I'm uh, diving in above my pay grade at the moment, but -- The loop that determines the aggro cap is currently global, but it doesn't have to be. I don't know what the efficiency cost of another conditional would be in that mess, but I do know it's not in "impossible" territory.

It's a bit off-topic, but after you suggested you don't make judgey comments I wanted to take a look and see if I was perhaps confusing you with another person, or reading a bit too much into your comments in this thread. And, well... I think those were all to different people. I'm not so sure the problem's me. So I'll try again. You ought take that time, as I mention concerning the subject of learning, because your earlier claim (that increasing the aggro cap simply can't be done without changing other factors as well) was false given the evidence (that the aggro cap was in fact different without those other factors being different). That's... not a strawman. That's really what we were discussing. I fully anticipate that your response is simply that you aren't wrong and I am. And that's what I meant about an impasse -- we're not talking about logic at this point, but about a feeling of personal investment in a position. I get that it's easy for these topics to derail in this way, and that you have a... ...particular style of approaching proposed changes... (although I did find a 'yes' vote in regards to dfb nerfing, so there's that) ...but I'd prefer if we could have a bit of a broader discussion than, uh... what was it we got to before? "Yuh-huh, nuh-uh?" In essence, anyway. So hey, this topic's dead. I'm sure we'll have lots of conversations in the future. Consider... considering? Not just with me, but in general. Dive in. (and uh hey, making a purely helpful post once in a while might not kill ya either, just go make some builds for newbs or research some code or w/e. Dig up old forum links. Anything. That was kind of a depressing half-hour looking at your comments.)

I thought I was going to /jranger this but you actually make a pretty good argument. On Live, there was a staff of paid GMs that could respond to these kinds of problems. We don't and aren't likely to have that here. I'm still gonna conditionally say it's a bad idea. The major issue is cheesing through mission chains for merits. I can't think of a particularly fair solution that doesn't penalize people who legitimately have a problem on, e.g., mission 9/12 of a chain but doesn't encourage people who want to bypass mission 1/2 on other ones. Any ideas?

Well, be that as it may, it might be helpful to consider at some point. I think we're kind of at an impasse otherwise.

Whole-heartedly agree that aggro limits, particularly for Tankers, should be upped by a factor of 2x to 3x. Eh... that's a position held just by some guy named SwitchFade, afaik. So did Devices.

There are two other ones available at levels 12 and 15, respectively. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Trial

Dark armor, easily. At low levels, DA benefits a great deal from Staff's endredux. At high levels with stable Endurance, it benefits a great deal from Form of the Body; which provides a combo-based damage buff to Death Shroud, an AoE -res, and a +res for self. Staff, meanwhile, loves the mez and damage auras; it's not the highest damage set natively and really wants to have a lot of people in its cones. To a lesser extent, Fiery Aura, SR, and Electric Armor; FA is a lot like Dark here but a bit more frantic. The endredux doesn't help Fire quite as much (although it lets you take Blazing Aura earlier), but the +res really helps FA down the road. SR meanwhile gets an early Parry out of the deal and a +recov/+regen proc, doesn't hate the +res, and offers a +rech which Staff very much wants to get its combos out faster. Electric Armor combines a bit of both.

Claws has great AoE on Brutes, but mediocre ST -- and it's a bit advanced to get it working. Like you point out elsewhere, it's also much better as a Scrapper set. I didn't list MA or DB for similar reasons.