WumpusRat

I'd love to see that, actually. Give it a small targeted AOE, especially given the animation for it.

Tanker damage is ... ehh, okay-ish. At least IMO. It's certainly not great, and it does feel a bit annoying at times to have to hit a minion 4-5 times to drop it, when my Brutes were dropping them in 2 swings with the same sets/powers. It feels much the same way Defenders do to me. "I could do this so much better as a different AT..." But at least Defenders have a definitive advantage over other ATs that have the same powersets, in that you can't close the gap in the power of buffs/debuffs, since those don't have a fixed upper limit, while resists hit a hard cap that both Tankers and Brutes can hit easily. The main problem, at least to me, is that back when the two sides were separate, there wasn't an issue with Tankers competing directly with Brutes. But now that you can play either AT on either side, you end up directly comparing them, since they fill the same general role. And there really isn't anything a Tanker can say "I do this better than a Brute". Giving them some minor team buffs (because let's face it, they'd have to be pretty minor otherwise you start stepping on the toes of Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers, and Masterminds) wouldn't really make people think "We need a Tanker". It's kind of the same boat the Sentinel is in. They don't really do anything better than anyone else, so there's no reason for people to really WANT them around vs another AT that brings more to the table. And yes, 20:1 was hyperbole for the sake of effect. But if you look at the actual number of 50th levels of each (since a lot of people give up on characters at low/mid levels and never play them again, which makes counting them for "actual population" a bit off), Brutes outnumber Tankers about 5-6:1. Even if you remove ALL spine/fire Brutes from the equation, it's still 2:1. The other problem is that in order to really make Tankers and Brutes separate and distinct, you'd have to change some core parts of each AT. And at this point in the game, there's no way that's going to happen. So fiddling with damage numbers to bring Tankers up a bit and make them a more viable pick when it comes to "Brute or Tanker?" is the simplest solution. But that's my two cents.

The problem that I see with this is that you'd be pushing Tankers more and more into a "you're only useful if you're grouped" AT. Even the original devs realized that having a team-only inherent (such as the Defender 'Vigilance') wasn't the best way to go. One could argue that Stalkers and Scrappers are very similar to what they're doing with Tankers and Brutes. Yet I don't see anyone lobbying to delete one of them and just merge the two together. Having Tankers be better at something than Brutes is needed. Because right now there really isn't anything you'd WANT a Tanker for over a Brute. Brutes have the same resist caps and vastly superior damage. There's a reason that Brutes outnumber Tankers like 20:1.

Hm. Okay, so as to not derail the thread, gonna send you a PM to ask more questions, cause this is confusing me. 🙂

This math kind of puzzles me, to be honest. It seems like a lot more moving parts than are necessary. Maybe I'm just not 'getting it' or something, but based on the modifiers and such, it kind of works out in my head like this: Hypothetical attack with base damage of 100 70% Fury = +140% damage bonus Slotting = +95% damage bonus (let's say) Rage = +80% damage bonus For a total of +315% damage bonus. So 315 total damage Brute melee multiple is .75, so the the final damage would be 315 * .75 = 236 Is that math right? If so, then that would mean the tanker (with the same attack) would be: Rage = +80% damage bonus Slotting = +95% damage bonus For a total of +175% damage bonus So 175 total damage Tank melee multiple is (currently) .8, so the final damage output would be 140 With the new .9 multiple, it would be 157 If that's accurate, the brute is doing WAY more than 27% more damage.

My take on the whole brute vs tanker thing, as someone who plays both a lot, is about like this: What is the reason to choose a tanker over a brute, on Homecoming? Because right now, brutes do pretty much everything a tanker can do, AND have much higher damage output. Sure, it takes them a little bit longer to reach the defense/resist caps that a tanker can, primarily because of the higher base values for the tanker and getting their defensive powers earlier, but when you get to 50th level and start getting all IO'd out, the difference is meaningless. The damage difference, however, is still there. And still very, very apparent. Hence why 90% of farm characters are brutes. This change feels like it will make the choice more of a flavor one, rather than "pick this because it's objectively better". Tankers will now be "the aoe meleer", having larger radius and cones, and the ability to hit more targets. While brutes will still deal more damage, and having the same defensive goalposts. There will likely be power combos that people will argue "but tankers are better at this combo than brutes!", and they'll be right. But isn't it better to have MORE options, rather than one AT being objectively worse than another even though they perform the same task? Imagine if corruptors could hit the same buff/debuff goalposts that defenders could. But their damage numbers weren't changed. Why would ANYONE play a defender, at that point, other than simply because they liked the inherent, or wanted some powers earlier?

It's also a problem with CoX's rng. It has a very bad habit of being "streaky", especially with generating excessive amounts of very high numbers. That's why they had to implement the streakbreaker in the first place, because we kept pointing out how often, even with 95% to hit, you'd get strings of 4, 5, 6, or more misses in a row. Even now, I can certainly notice strings of misses (or pseudo-misses, due to streakbreaker) with 95% to hit. Miss, streakbreaker, miss, streakbreaker, miss, streakbreaker, miss, etc. And it happens even more often at around 75-80% to hit, where I'll quite often miss multiple swings in a row, the streakbreaker will kick in, and I'll go back to missing some more. The odds of that happening so often are extremely small. But it happens regularly. Another thing I've noticed is that the rng for MOBS seems to function quite differently than it does for players. I've done some combat testing where, if mobs have about a 20-25% chance to hit me, they'll still land blows fairly regularly. On the other hand, if I'm debuffed to the point of only having 20-25% to hit, I'll land MAYBE one in ten swings. Consistently. And if I'm somehow dropped down to a 5-10% to hit, I MIGHT land one blow in fifty. If I'm lucky.

I had gone into edit mode to move a few things around, and the game in its infinite wisdom decided "Nah, you want to grab this salvage rack over here, and move it randomly somewhere in the base! Oh, and for your convenience I'm also disabling Ctrl-Z, lolololololololol!" So now one of my salvage racks has vanished into the ether, the game won't let me delete it because it has salvage in it, and I can't find it anywhere in the base. Anyone know any way I can find where the hell the game decided to move it to? <edit> Okay, I managed to correct the problem. Since I was building on top of the actual base area, when the game grabbed and flung it, it moved it down INTO the base, even though it was set to have the room fully filled in. It just phased the object into the solid wall. I hollowed out the room and saw it, so managed to move it back up into position again. So if this happens to someone else, this could be a solution to fix it.

I haven't gotten a SS character up into incarnate levels yet myself, though my current tanker is almost there. Honestly I have no idea if incarnate abilities will even do damage while you're rage-crashed, since the debuff is like -9990% damage. So for 10 seconds you basically do zero damage once you crash. Judgement nukes might not suffer from that though. I'd have to test it out on pineapple and see. Like I said, personally I think they should just do away with double stacking, and eliminate the crash all together. Make it function like a lot of the clicky status protection stuff. Doesn't take a lot to make it perma, and you could just set-and-forget.

There are plenty of ways to get recharge outside of IO sets. Hasten, speed boost, chrono shift, temp powers, etc. Willpower's T9 was set at a shorter cooldown than some, and isn't affected by +recharge (or -recharge, either, I believe), just to make it different. I doubt they did it because of IO sets. The main point was saying "just use an incarnate ability while you're rage-crashed" seems a bit silly to say given that you can get rage at well below incarnate level.

To be fair, if the game is meant to be balanced around SO's without taking into account IOs and other things, it shouldn't be balanced around the use of incarnate abilities either.

Rage is also the power that brings Super Strength up to parity with the rest of the sets. Without Rage, Super Strength does less damage (both DPS and DPA) than any other set. It has fewer attacks, longer animations, and lower base damage. Personally, I'd say just make it not stack and get rid of the crash. Done.

The problem is that if you make it a toggle like that, you're essentially giving necromancy a permanent version of gang war. Imagine a necro who also had group buffs for his pets with no real cooldown, like from thermal, sonic, cold, force field, etc. Those little temporary zombies become extremely durable, as well as gaining all the benefits of the various set IO auras. The more you kill, the faster you kill, and it feeds on itself. A necro would turn into a giant army of zombies flying through missions destroying everything in their path. You could just leave it at +0/8, and the moment you started the ball rolling, it wouldn't stop. It would be amusing to test it, but I have a feeling it would be quite overpowered.

I don't mind the animation of it, but yeah, I was looking forward to it specifically to drop Jab off my SS tankers as well. It's just a garbage power in general, especially with bruising gone.

This seems absurdly powerful to me, to be honest. Like, far too powerful.

The zombies and grave knights are primarily melee pets, so they'll attempt to stick to melee. Sometimes the grave knights will glitch out and just spam ranged attacks though, which is annoying, because it severely reduces their dps. The lich is a purely ranged combatant, who will use dark blast, torrent, life drain (they all have that with full upgrades), fearsome stare, and petrifying gaze. He's primarily a debuffer/cc'er rather than a damage dealer, though is damage isn't completely useless. I have a necro/nature that I was playing around with on pineapple, and it works pretty well. You have to stay mobile and jump around using your cone heal quite a bit, but between that, the aoe healing toggle, life drains from the pets and the nature hold-aura, the pets become incredibly durable. I was running against +2/8 council and got a double pull, and managed to get through it with only losing 2 zombies.

Ninjas aren't pure melee though, which was his question. The jounin and genin both have quite a few ranged attacks. And the Oni is mostly ranged.

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/carrot-pizza-with-fontina-and-red-onion-56389448 Note, I'm not endorsing it. Just saying it's out there. :)

I'd almost like to see opportunity work similarly to a "ranged fury" mechanic, divorcing it from the binary all-or-nothing that it's at presently, as well as tying it so tightly to the tier-1/2 blasts. Perhaps on less of a granular scale, and more of a plateau system. 0-20 opportunity: no bonus 21-40 opportunity: +damage, minor heal/end recovery 41-60 opportunity: +damage, bonus -res, minor heal/end recovery 61-80 opportunity: +damage, bonus -res, minor heal/end recovery, +accuracy 81+ opportunity: bonuses now become group-wide I'm not going to put out any actual numbers for the various bonuses, since that could be jiggered with to find a good balance point. But it would allow for sentinels to be more flexible with their opportunity when solo, and allow them to provide a useful buff for their team as well, giving people a reason to say "oh good, we have a sentinel."

I don't think there's an alternate for hurl. I mean, I'd love to grab a car and chuck it at someone, but eh! Plus it's a fairly long animation for a moderate-damage power. The reason I use boxing is to have a cheap attack that's always ready to go, and can finish off low-health mobs without burning a bigger attack. Boxing is basically a higher-damage version of jab, and has a better chance to stun. Especially since taking kick and cross punch increase the damage by 30%. So it's a decent filler attack, at least imo. Without hurl, there's only 4 single-target attacks in SS, and since I skipped jab, that only leaves 3. I'm debating moving the slots over to kick, but I like the faster animation that boxing has. So I'm not sure. And yeah, I really like how cross punch feels with the rest of the SS moves. You just haul back and punch a bunch of guys in an arc, which feels very super strength-y to me. Especially since it can knock them down, or occasionally send them flying. Definitely adds some much-needed aoe to my kit.

I use boxing on my SS/Will brute. I have it 4-slotted with kinetic combat for the smash/lethal defense bonus, and to boost cross punch's damage, since I don't like the hurl animation, so I went with cross punch instead. Two aoes is better than one.

I hope not. If you want all the fun little toys, you have to make sacrifices somewhere. You shouldn't be able to just have everything. Granting more powers, or more slots for vet levels would punish players who don't exclusively focus on one character. More options are just that, more options. Vet levels are a nice little bonus for continuing to play one character. What you're suggesting would change the actual "leveling process" from 1-50 to 1-XXX, since people would almost be forced to level up to whatever arbitrary vet level stopped giving slots and powers. You already have people complaining things aren't difficult enough. And this is just asking for characters to have even MORE power, and trivialize the content even further.

So why not make a clone of it? You could have Walk, which works the way it does now, and Combat Walk which just doesn't turn off powers. Because really, it WOULD be pretty fun to just slowly walk around blasting things. Or as a mastermind, walking through a massive firefight while your minions are killing stuff.

I'm pretty sure you can get 50th level versions of the lowbie sets on pineapple. I'll have to double-check when I'm home tonight to see if the values are the same as other 50th level sets, but I'm 99% sure that I've given myself like 50th level version of sets like steadfast protection, kinetic combat, etc.

I have boxing on my SS/Will brute 4-slotted with kinetic combat for the 3.75% smash/lethal def. Generally I use it as a filler attack to pop something that's at a sliver, rather than burning a longer cooldown/animation attack on them. And it does occasionally stun minions and lt's, which is nice. I'm not sure the whole point of the "fatigued" debuff is as it doesn't really seem to do anything (if you take cross punch).