Focused Feedback: Rage

[csr]

19 hours ago, DMW45 said:

Generally only by a few seconds, from what I can gather from pines with my current build

Regarding Rage stacking:  I have two SS Tankers, one stacks for 48 seconds, the other for 46.  And that's without any +Rech from the team.

 

On a side note:  Some here seem to think they're adding a crash.  The crash is already there right now.  What they added was a way to avoid it.

Edited September 11, 2019 by csr
Clarifying what the OP was talking about

[Captain Citadel]

Yes, a way to avoid it that is very clunky and does not feel good to play. On top of that, the crash penalties themselves don't make much sense, and are not balanced with the lack of penalty other sets have for using similar buffs. The crash should be reworked or removed.

[Vanden]

14 minutes ago, Captain Citadel said:

Yes, a way to avoid it that is very clunky and does not feel good to play. On top of that, the crash penalties themselves don't make much sense, and are not balanced with the lack of penalty other sets have for using similar buffs. The crash should be reworked or removed.

What other set gives you a buff on par with permanent, stackable Build Up?

[Captain Fabulous]

12 minutes ago, Vanden said:

What other set gives you a buff on par with permanent, stackable Build Up?

No, the correct question would be "why should SS users be penalized for using a power that's necessary to put them on-par with other sets?"

Powers should not have penalties. It's always been a poor design choice.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Captain Fabulous

[Captain Citadel]

11 minutes ago, Vanden said:

What other set gives you a buff on par with permanent, stackable Build Up?

Other sets don't need Build Up to be as strong as Rage is, because sets like TW and StJ are inherently stronger. I feel it's disingenuous to debate the strength of Build Up vs. Rage when Super Strength is already subpar next to the other melee damage sets.

[tellania]

1 minute ago, Captain Fabulous said:

No, the correct question would be "why should SS users be penalized for using a power that's necessary to put them on-par with other sets?"

Powers should not have penalties. It's always been a poor design choice.

We can be happy they added damage to KO blow, before it was only a very low damage (or was there damage?) hold?

 

Its nickname used to be Pooper-Strength.

 

All I know, air superiority > punch (pool power does same damage, but has knockdown and -fly!).   I agree, poor design choices.

 

[Kimuji]

6 minutes ago, Captain Citadel said:

Other sets don't need Build Up to be as strong as Rage is, because sets like TW and StJ are inherently stronger. I feel it's disingenuous to debate the strength of Build Up vs. Rage when Super Strength is already subpar next to the other melee damage sets.

Rage is just as necessary as Build Up. Yes if you remove Build Up and Rage StJ will pull ahead, if you add Rage SS WILL take the lead and if add Build Up StJ should be slightly pulling ahead again. But it is just as disingenuous to compare SS without Rage to StJ with Build Up.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Kimuji

[Captain Citadel]

1 minute ago, Kimuji said:

Rage is just as necessary as Build Up. Yes if you remove build up and rage StJ will pull ahead, if you add Rage SS takes the lead and if add Build Up StJ should be slightly pulling ahead again. But it is just as disingenuous to compare SS without Rage to StJ with Build Up.

That's my point. StJ and other sets are significantly better than SS when you compare them with their buffs up, and yet Build Up is not perma like Rage often is. SS needs Rage up to be even remotely competitive, and yet it's still saddled with heavy penalties when it wears off.

[MunkiLord]

25 minutes ago, Vanden said:

What other set gives you a buff on par with permanent, stackable Build Up?

Dark Melee. But you need a TON of recharge and a lot of enemies. Even then I think it caps lower than Rage. But that's the closest I can come up with.

[Vanden]

17 minutes ago, Captain Citadel said:

Other sets don't need Build Up to be as strong as Rage is, because sets like TW and StJ are inherently stronger. I feel it's disingenuous to debate the strength of Build Up vs. Rage when Super Strength is already subpar next to the other melee damage sets.

This has already been proven to be untrue. SS attacks follow the same damage formula as every other power in the game, with the exception of Foot Stomp, which breaks the rules to be better than the formula would allow.

20 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

No, the correct question would be "why should SS users be penalized for using a power that's necessary to put them on-par with other sets?"

Powers should not have penalties. It's always been a poor design choice.

Super Strength users are not being penalized with this change unless they stack it. Without this change, they get the crash no matter what. This is a buff, people need to stop railing against it like it's a nerf.

[tellania]

1 minute ago, Vanden said:

This has already been proven to be untrue. SS attacks follow the same damage formula as every other power in the game, with the exception of Foot Stomp, which breaks the rules to be better than the formula would allow.

Super Strength users are not being penalized with this change unless they stack it. Without this change, they get the crash no matter what. This is a buff, people need to stop railing against it like it's a nerf.

Agree. Not a nerf, it is a buff.

[Captain Citadel]

1 minute ago, Vanden said:

Super Strength users are not being penalized with this change unless they stack it. Without this change, they get the crash no matter what. This is a buff, people need to stop railing against it like it's a nerf.

It's not a buff, it's just a very clunky and inconvenient way to avoid a crash that goes against conventional wisdom regarding recharge. No other perma powers have a crash like Rage does. It does not feel good to have a crash on Rage. Avoiding the crash only by not stacking it just begs the question why it isn't being made into a toggle.

[Vanden]

Just now, Captain Citadel said:

It's not a buff, it's just a very clunky and inconvenient way to avoid a crash that goes against conventional wisdom regarding recharge. No other perma powers have a crash like Rage does. It does not feel good to have a crash on Rage. Avoiding the crash only by not stacking it just begs the question why it isn't being made into a toggle.

How is being able to skip a previously unskippable crash not a buff? If you're just arguing against a crash in general, maybe you should've contributed to the long Rage thread in the suggestion forum rather than wait for a change to be tested.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Vanden

[Captain Citadel]

1 minute ago, Vanden said:

How is being able to skip a previously unskippable crash not a buff? If you're just arguing against a crash in general, maybe you should've contributed to the long Rage thread in the suggestion forum rather than wait for a change to be tested.

So now my feedback doesn't count because I didn't post it early enough? It's not like it was advertised in-game that the dev team was seeking feedback on Rage. Announcements were not clearly made until these changes were pushed to the beta server.

[Vanden]

Just now, Captain Citadel said:

So now my feedback doesn't count because I didn't post it early enough? It's not like it was advertised in-game that the dev team was seeking feedback on Rage. Announcements were not clearly made until these changes were pushed to the beta server.

Your feedback is for a change that isn't being tested.

[tellania]

I like to look at it this way:

THANK YOU DEV's for looking into this matter, which we all believe is not fair/holding up.

 

The fact we have this forum, for this issue, AND they are still evaluating it speaks volumes.

 

[Captain Fabulous]

10 minutes ago, Vanden said:

This has already been proven to be untrue. SS attacks follow the same damage formula as every other power in the game, with the exception of Foot Stomp, which breaks the rules to be better than the formula would allow.

Super Strength users are not being penalized with this change unless they stack it. Without this change, they get the crash no matter what. This is a buff, people need to stop railing against it like it's a nerf.

It's a buff only for sub-optimal use of a power that's inherently designed to stack with little-to-no effort, which makes no logical sense.

SS suffers badly compared to most other sets due to critters' high resistance to smashing damage and an inconsistent mix of status effects. There's a reason why Rage exists in the first place. Because the devs deemed it necessary for the set. This has been stated repeatedly by them and proven by players many times over the years, and frankly I'm a bit baffled by your intransigence.

[Vanden]

5 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

It's a buff only for sub-optimal use of a power that's inherently designed to stack with little-to-no effort, which makes no logical sense.

SS suffers badly compared to most other sets due to critters' high resistance to smashing damage and an inconsistent mix of status effects. There's a reason why Rage exists in the first place. Because the devs deemed it necessary for the set. This has been stated repeatedly by them and proven by players many times over the years, and frankly I'm a bit baffled by your intransigence.

There's no shortage of other sets that are entirely Smashing/Lethal that don't need a permanent Build Up to be competitive. The only thing about Super Strength that's weaker than those sets is that Punch and Jab do less damage than equivalent powers from those sets, because they recharge faster.

 

I'm going to admit that I don't disagree that overlapping Rages for just a few seconds isn't good enough to justify such a harsh penalty when you're getting virtually no advantage over the player that doesn't overlap at all and gets no crash, but double-stacked Rage is too powerful in the hands of characters built to have it as long as possible for it to have no downside.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Vanden

[tellania]

2 minutes ago, Vanden said:

There's no shortage of other sets that are entirely Smashing/Lethal that don't need a permanent Build Up to be competitive. The only thing about Super Strength that's weaker than those sets is that Punch and Jab do less damage than equivalent powers from those sets, because they recharge faster.

Actually, the problem with SS, there are only 2 decent attacks (haymaker, and ko blow).    a VERY late blooming footstomp is good, but compared to axe, or stone, or most others: they  have MORE high performing attacks.

 

 

[Magpie Mouse]

12 hours ago, Magpie Mouse said:

Just make it not stack, you cowards. It's what you want.

 

[Captain Fabulous]

9 minutes ago, Vanden said:

There's no shortage of other sets that are entirely Smashing/Lethal that don't need a permanent Build Up to be competitive. The only thing about Super Strength that's weaker than those sets is that Punch and Jab do less damage than equivalent powers from those sets, because they recharge faster.

 

I'm going to admit that I don't disagree that overlapping Rages for just a few seconds isn't good enough to justify such a harsh penalty when you're getting virtually no advantage over the player that doesn't overlap at all and gets no crash, but double-stacked Rage is too powerful in the hands of characters built to have it as long as possible for it to have no downside.

I doubt you'll find few people that actually play SS that agree with this (and the data doesn't support it), but hey man, believe whatever makes you feel warm and squishy inside. No point in arguing with you.

[Riverdusk]

1 hour ago, Captain Citadel said:

Thank you. It's completely against the concept of Super Strength for it to be "used up" when the Rage crash hits, and it's also completely against 15 years' worth of build planning wisdom to punish players for being able to perma things. We going to start imposing harsh penalties on perma-Hasten and perma/stacking Domination next?

SS builds need Rage to be even remotely competitive with other Smashing melee sets like Street Justice or Titan Weapons. Removing even just the damage debuff portion of the crash is not going to destroy game balance, it's going to make SS a better-performing set.

Well, that has already sort of happened with the PPM changes.  People regularly plan builds now trying to avoid slotting recharge reduction in their powers.  I agree it is weird, but that ship has probably sailed as well.

 

As to the other, Titan Weapons has been shown to be somewhat out of whack compared to every other melee set in single target (and it also happens to have some great AoE on top of it). So, I don't think comparing it to TW is particularly fair, as every set "kinda sucks" compared to TW.   Good showing on that can be seen here: 

 

Tables are scrapper based, but same ratios are going to generally apply.  Unfortunately SS isn't shown.  Would love to see actual numbers on how it ranks instead of everyone just saying "SS is horrible without double stacked rage" or even single stacked, without any numbers to back it up.

 

Main problem I see in SS is the first two powers (jab and punch) are such low recharge and low damage, they have a very low ceiling.  Personally I would like to see jab and punch have their recharge increased to 3 seconds and 6 seconds with the appropriate damage increase.  It'd help their DPA and the set's damage overall without a major change in its feel.

 

As to rage, not being able to stack rage, but also no penalty seems fair to me.

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, Vanden said:

This has already been proven to be untrue. SS attacks follow the same damage formula as every other power in the game, with the exception of Foot Stomp, which breaks the rules to be better than the formula would allow.

Super Strength users are not being penalized with this change unless they stack it. Without this change, they get the crash no matter what. This is a buff, people need to stop railing against it like it's a nerf.

Some want the "crashless" rage back when Double Stacked.  (Def debuff)

 

Others want the crashless rage back And they want the -dmg gone.

 

This is literally a debate that goes back over a decade.   Lol.  

 

 

 

 

[Haijinx]

Street Justice doesn't get foot stomp.

 

It also doesn't get a full damage build up outside of stalkers.  

[Haijinx]

37 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

I doubt you'll find few people that actually play SS that agree with this (and the data doesn't support it), but hey man, believe whatever makes you feel warm and squishy inside. No point in arguing with you.

The data does support it though. 

 

Only punch and jab are underpowered compared to other old school tanker sets, and its literally because they are fast recharging attacks.

 

SS trades a ST attack for hurl, which is bad.  But so does Stone.

 

Rage is why SS never got looked at for DPA, its why they never fixed jab and punch.  

 

Double rage just made it even less likely.

 

And yeah ive played SS tankers and brutes both before and now.  Without rage the set is pretty meh.   

 

Double stacked rage with footstomp and KOB is awesome though, which is of course why everyone is clinging onto Double rage so hard.