Focused Feedback: Rage

[Vanden]

2 minutes ago, Auroxis said:

That sounds too positive I think? The point is to remind the player he should refresh Rage (without the need to look for orange circles around red icons during hectic fights).

Well it's supposed to sound positive. Your character used their Rage to improve their fighting without it having any negative impact on them.

[Auroxis]

Just now, Vanden said:

Well it's supposed to sound positive. Your character used their Rage to improve their fighting without it having any negative impact on them.

The effect of losing the damage buff is negative, while not gaining the crash is a positive. Which is why I went for "Rage Diminished" since it sounded neutral to me. Arguing for the wording is fairly premature though since I don't know if CP thinks adding the reminder is important enough.

 

From playing around with Rage on Pineapple, do you think the reminder (let's assume they go with a positive one) is a worthwhile addition?

[Vanden]

11 minutes ago, Auroxis said:

The effect of losing the damage buff is negative, while not gaining the crash is a positive.

The moment it's safe to use Rage again is supposed to be a few seconds before you lose the damage buff, though.

11 minutes ago, Auroxis said:

From playing around with Rage on Pineapple, do you think the reminder (let's assume they go with a positive one) is a worthwhile addition?

I do think it could be a good idea.

 

Edited September 30, 2019 by Vanden

[Megajoule]

"Rage fading" is a good, neutral version, I think.

[Vindicator]

1 hour ago, Megajoule said:

"Rage fading" is a good, neutral version, I think.

If there has to be anything at all, this would be good.  An option to hide any and all text would also be nice.

[Golden Azrael]

Is the Rage icon blinking not a decent indicator?  (Yeah, I know it can be easy to miss when you're suffering scrapper lock half way through a battle.  I had that with Elude on my SR/SJ tank and dropped it on the respect.)

 

I like the 'SNIPE!' when a good snipe hit comes off the blaster's sniper canon.

 

Perhaps a 'RAGE ON!' (RAGE HARD!) or merely 'RAGE!' when you press teh button.  With red 'spider sense tingling' lines emitting from your alt's head at the start of rage.  And maybe these start blinking above your head when it's about to drop?  That way, it's directly on your alt at the start and end of rage?

 

Can't miss it then.

 

As for the penalties.  For the 1st stack non.  Because the Rage is focused.  But it's very 'hard' to keep angry and focused for al long time and any 2nd stack should reflect that.  But it doesn't have to be the -def, -dam-, -end and -everything bar running away collapse that it is now.  For the 1st double stack I would have the end penalty because using that angry energy might drain you, then any third stack?  Because you're tired and drained of end?  You are thrashing about wildly and your accuracy suffers.  That makes more sense to me.  You get tired then you get less accurate over each stack.  Maybe by the 3rd stack your res/def suffers 'a bit...' -10% or 20% because you're not thinking straight and you don't keep your guard up.  It would make sense on a third stack that the penalties would be greater then the 2nd stack.  Just follow some kind of logic or role play thought behind the effects.

 

When you're fresh in battle?  No penalty.  Then?  You begin to lose focus.  Then you begin to lose your discipline.  1.  2.  3.  No penalty.  Then end.  Then Acc/-res/-def.  But not cripplingly so.  But enough to balance the benefit of 3 stacks with a  penalty.  Nothing in life is free so they say.  There's always a price to pay.

 

Azrael.

 

PS.  And I'd also like to re-iterate my thoughts on non-superstrength tanks getting their BU buff replaced by a single stack Rage.  It's not fair that SS tanks get Rage for a whole two minutes with a chasm higher of benefits vs BU for a piddling 15 sec.  It's too large a disparity.  That's why Tanks aren't being played.  Not enough 'teh dmg.'

 

Easy to fix.  Give ALL non-SS tanks a single stack of Rage.  That lifts Ice, Stone and Energy Melee out of the mediocrity they're in.  Fun to play.  But the ability to affect battle by 'Punching someone in the face' (props to Cap Powerhouse for that one....) needs to be brought to parity with their taunting and taking damage capacity.  Someone that can take that kind of punishment should be able to hit harder.  

 

SS tanks get to double and triple stack (with penalties for each additional stack) their unique power.  But other tanks have access to a version of this 'Rage' power.  Eg.  Ice 'SHARD FURY' gives a boost to your damage for 2 mins with intense cold and slow debuff.  Stone 'MAGMA FURY' give you access to 2 mins of a whole can of Whoop Az where you hit like a mountain and disorient them them into the next century.  Energy 'NOVA WRATH' unlooses a torrent of explosive force into each and every attack disorienting...knocking down, up and across the space time continuum.  So you get a damage component and a bit of 'something' else debuff to each set.  Dark Melee, 'Shadow of Darkness' clouds you're enemies minds for 2 mins, and every punch drains significant end but the damage is punishing, not only can't they hit but you hit them so hard their senses recoil into the fabric of reality itself.

 

See folks?  It's not so 'hard.'  It's the will to make changes and take Tanks to the next level on their own terms.  Brutes are rage builders.  That's their mechanic, we understand that.  Tanks are piston like slow but hard hitters.  So when they do hit you they hit hard.  The current state of affairs is because the brute came along and out designed tanks in terms of damage whilst retaining most of their survivability.  And, like blasters, this was allowed to drag on for far too long on live.

 

Solution?  Tanks get a flat and sustained boost for 2 mins.  That's clear.  Brutes can be faster, they can be more single target, they can have a higher theoretical damage cap.  Eg. Hulks.  Throw out Build Up.  That's better for long range hitters like Blasters.  Tanks are at the heart of battle so SS's Rage makes a whole lot of sense to affect the battle for longer.  eg.  2 mins.  I'm just arguing that other tanks have access to that and the sitting duck to replace is build up which doesn't make a whole lot of difference to my Stone Tanker, my Ice Tanker.  Meh dmg currently and bu doesn't help 'that much.'  Having a single stack version of Rage would be transformative.  THEN you'd see people flock to tanks in droves.  Limiting the damage/to hit bonus to just SS tanks is and always has been 'odd' to me.  Let SS keep multiple stacks (With 'some' penalties for successive stacks...) but let other tanks have their own version of it.  It gives people an excuse to dust off their tanks and play them again.  it would be nice to have something in the ball park of a titans tank or a ss tank.  The basic changes to tanks are welcome but overdue.  Nothing revolutionary in any of them.  They just make sense for the AT.  But Changing BU for a single stack of Rage.   Then I'm going to play my Stone, En or Ice tank a whole load more.  (Ice melee could do with a look at, whilst you're at it...it's....really poor.  Needs better damage on Ice melee and maybe put some extreme cold dam on that 'bigger Ice Sword' which is meh.  And Energy melee?  Mediocre.  Needs to be faster on Energy Transfer and make some AoE splash on that.)

 

But tanks are more AoE based.  They have a lower theoretical limit?  But they still hit very hard, especially on multiple targets because their anger is more focused and disciplined.  They're not on the irrational level of eg.  The Hulk.  They're more the superman or 'The Thing' types.  They hit hard standard, they can dish it and take it out the box with (see the much improved basic damage, taunt, higher theoretical damage cap and the radiating AoE damage....and can last the distance because their modus operandi is not sustained a builder of anger all the time.)  But they still are missing that 'cutting loose' or 'IT'S CLOBBERING' TIME!!!' mechanic.  And it there in front of our noses with SS's Rage.  And I see Rage and Fury as different things.  We may argue they are both irrational types of anger.  But I'd argue that Fury is the Hulk's 'Don't get within miles of him...you aint going to reason with that....he's just wrecked a city.'  vs Superman's lost it because something hurt Lois Lane and opened a can of anger on someone.  Or when the Thing loses it vs the Yancy Street Kids or the Torch for eating his cornflakes.

 

Sermon over.

Edited October 1, 2019 by Golden Azrael

[Captain Powerhouse]

The current weakened message is there only for testing timing issues. It will be gone on the final version if any of this goes through.

[Auroxis]

1 hour ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

The current weakened message is there only for testing timing issues. It will be gone on the final version if any of this goes through.

I quite like it, though I understand why some players wouldn't and adding an option to hide it might be more trouble than it's worth.

Edited October 1, 2019 by Auroxis

[Myrmidon]

15 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

The current weakened message is there only for testing timing issues. It will be gone on the final version if any of this goes through.

 

Was this removed with the last patch?

[Captain Powerhouse]

Not that I remember 

Edited October 2, 2019 by Captain Powerhouse

[Best Hope]

Hello city of heroes, I just found out this game was back last week and I am soooooo excited.  Before the game came down I had 16 different toons, and at least one of everything, but mainly tanks, brutes, and scrappers.  Most of them were io’ed out to their max potential, incarnated, etc.  I feel that rage and super strength power set before the games shut down didn’t have anything majorly wrong with it for a few reasons.  

1.  Super strength with double stacked rage without defense crash was a little better performing than some other sets but not by a significant margin.  To make up for this the set was endurance hungry, and this was on a willpower that was io’ed out to its max.  Also with using rage more often or at least enough to prevent the defense Debuff, the set did have more down time.  

2.  Super strength only has a few good powers in it.  Jab is a normal weak attack like all first attacks you take for its resistance Debuff if you are on a tank.  Punch is also weak, haymaker is nothing special and just fills in your rotation.  Hand clap and hurl are usually skipped in pve because they are not that good.  The only powers that stand out are knockout blow, foot stomp- it’s only multiple attack power, and rage.  If rage is nerfed the entire set would be seriously be under performing.  

3.  In my opinion, the main focus of this game should be about having fun!  A nerfed or crashing rage would not be fun to play.  On of the toons that I am bringing back is a ss/wp tank and have had to pop many inspirations to prevent face planting when rage crashes.  In many cases if the tank goes down, the rest of the team goes down too, and that is no fun.  

4. I do not see the majority of the tanks or brutes in homecoming being played as super strength.  This tells me 2 things, the set as is, is not overpowered that everyone plays with only that set.  And second people are playing with different sets because they are choosing ones they find to be fun to play, which is what we all should be doing.  

 

So personally I think rage should not be nerfed at all and actually allow for double stacking to prevent the Debuff defense again.  Super strength set is too weak without utilizing rage.   It makes it fun to play without making it overpowered, while as in offset is more down time and being an endurance hog.  This will keep myself playing this as one of my characters that I am bringing back.  

I don’t know what the capabilities of the new devs are, but new game content is where the direction should be going.  Along with making the experience be mind blowing awesome, not nerfing into oblivion.  That is what will keep this game going strong.  Just my two cents.  Can’t wait to see you guys out there.  

[nihilii]

35 minutes ago, Best Hope said:

4. I do not see the majority of the tanks or brutes in homecoming being played as super strength.

Super Strength is the third most popular Brute primary, and the most popular Tanker secondary. On Tankers, Super Strength is picked more than any other two secondaries put together, including the second most popular and the third most popular together.

 

 

[Best Hope]

Could some of that be thematic though?  Who doesn’t love playing as their favorite character ie superman, hulk, thing, juggernaut, colossus,etc?  That is why I picked super-strength to begin with.  

[golstat2003]

14 minutes ago, Best Hope said:

Could some of that be thematic though?  Who doesn’t love playing as their favorite character ie superman, hulk, thing, juggernaut, colossus,etc?  That is why I picked super-strength to begin with.  

Possibly. And possibly meaning that more players care about that than about absolute performance. Which wouldn’t be surprising since the live dev team of old mentioned more than once that most folks aren’t really forum visiting players who care mostly about performance. To them Super Strength’s performance is just fine, as long as it’s fun. Which one could surmise from the gathered stats above, most players in fact DO find Super Strength fun. For many fun does NOT always mean perfectly balanced performance.

[Myrmidon]

1 hour ago, golstat2003 said:

Possibly. And possibly meaning that more players care about that than about absolute performance. Which wouldn’t be surprising since the live dev team of old mentioned more than once that most folks aren’t really forum visiting players who care mostly about performance. To them Super Strength’s performance is just fine, as long as it’s fun. Which one could surmise from the gathered stats above, most players in fact DO find Super Strength fun. For many fun does NOT always mean perfectly balanced performance.

 I agree. Even with our (slightly) diminished population compared to live, It’s been my experience that this holds true here as well.

[Megajoule]

My Inv/SS tank (currently shelved for other reasons) does not have Rage, for reasons explained earlier in this thread.  While I was aware that his damage was generally low, I simply chalked this up to "being a tank."  It wasn't until I started reading the forums that I became aware just how badly the set suffers (compared to the performance of others) and is imbalanced around a single power.

[Cooltastic]

I had another thought on what to do with Rage. Since nobody took my previous post seriously. -_-

 

But anyway, what if...

 

We completely redo Rage. Let's make a toggle that can be turned on, and then once on can be raised or lowered by stack counts. Basically while on, you are given 2 additional abilities that allow you to give additional stacks of Rage and another that removes stacks of Rage. A pop up tray can be used(removed by Null if you wish) or you can manually place the extra abilities where ever you like.

 

Now that's it a toggle there are no more crashes, there is no cost to activate, and there is also no cost to maintain this toggle(you'll see why in a sec.)

 

When Rage is toggle'd on you are given +5% To-hit/ +20% dam and all your other abilities cost 20% more endurance to use.

These numbers continue to stack to whatever amount you want to set your rage at up to a max of 10 stacks of Rage.

At 10 stacks we would see +50% To-hit/ +200% dam and all of your other abilities would cost 200% more. 

Example: Taking Knockout Blow or Foot Stomp at base end cost of 18.5. With 10 stacks of Rage those abilities would now cost 55.5 endurance to use in order to do significantly more damage. With IO's and end reduction using more stacks becomes a lot more manageable. But still impacts offers a significant impact to play. You could probably get these 2 attacks down to around 5 end cost, but if you want to use Max Rage they'd end up costing 15 instead with the increased recharge times you'll also most likely have that is going to tire you out quite rapidly. Of course these proposed numbers are just what came to mind, they can obviously be find tuned a bit if need be.

 

This New Rage would give more choice to the Super Strength player. Say you're going up against some end sappers, your going to want to take them out as quickly as possible before they can sap you dry. Turn up your rage so you can do some good burst damage to them, then lower it back down to finish off the group. Or drop your rage down to 1 and hold out longer holding aggro while your team takes out the sappers. The choice is the players.

 

This would make the set a hell of a lot more interesting to play imo. And it turns Rage into a completely balanced ability.

[MunkiLord]

I see a lot of people concerned about timing Rage as close to perfect so they avoid the crash, but in my eyes I don't see it as a significant burden. Sure if you don't want Rage to fall for even a second it matters, but there is no harm if someone lets a single stack drop for a few seconds. I don't get why it's such a big deal to some.

[WumpusRat]

1 hour ago, Eiko-chan said:

(Edit: I should add that I don't think there's any other powerset that has to deal with power management like this. Build Up/Aim/etc can just be used whenever it's up, Haste doesn't self-stack, etc. Having to time re-use to avoid a stack and crash is unique to the new Rage and isn't really the right feel for CoX.)

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.

[nihilii]

1 hour ago, Eiko-chan said:

I'm seriously considering re-rolling my SS Tanker if these changes go live.

I don't understand why would anyone reroll a tanker they currently have based on these changes.

Rage on Live: use it and you get a crash 100% of the time.
Rage on Test: use it, and if you pay attention, you don't get a crash. But you could play exactly as on Live, and crash as often (and now the crash is lessened).

What am I missing here?

[nihilii]

4 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

No, on live if your Rage overlaps, you get no crash. I can have Rage on auto-cast and never have a crash.

This hasn't been true for a long long time. Even on the NCSoft servers, Rage was changed to apply its -10000% damage debuff crash no matter if you stack it. On Homecoming, the defense debuff is also unavoidable.

If you're fine now, you simply haven't noticed your crashes and you should be even fine-r after the patch.

(Or you've found a very lucky bug.)

[Vanden]

5 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

No, on live if your Rage overlaps, you get no crash. I can have Rage on auto-cast and never have a crash.

Sounds like you don’t pay much attention when you use Rage.

[Leogunner]

1 minute ago, Vanden said:

Sounds like you don’t pay much attention when you use Rage.

So does it crash if they overlap on live? And what is in the crash? Can you avoid the - def part? 

[Leogunner]

Just now, Ignicity said:

This nerf shouldn't be trivialized, just because *you* can't get to the current brute damage cap consistently. 

 

I've already resigned myself to the fact that this will go live, and have already begun leveling and slotting contingencies that will most likely get nerfed within the next 6 months. Staying ahead of the curve since i4.

Not trivializing. 

 

All in saying is, maybe you had it too good and you should at least accept that a Blaster has to build a lot more strictly to get close to a standard farming Brute. 

 

That is to say, you can still do what you already do, you just might be missing a few numbers at the cap. And you should be so lucky that the meta changes so you have something to work toward rather than stagnating and getting bored as the curve evens out to a straight line. 

[Haijinx]

6 hours ago, Auroxis said:

That's due to the damage scale, before bringing target cap into the equation.

Thanks. 

 

I thought a little bit about this but then it occurred to me that balancing around double rage is dumb.