Focused Feedback: Tank Updates for October 1st, 2019

[William Valence]

 

The target cap increase is still a lot, a lot of power. If you see on the live servers that Tanks are spending less time in each level range, and/or passing level ranges with less XP; is reverting the target caps something that is possible?

[csr]

2 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Foot Stomp will hit 16 targets. That’s not nothing. And the reduction on radius makes global procs and PPM stronger.

It's just unfortunate that the set doesn't see any real buff until level 38.  Given that below 28, it's a pretty weak set with only four damaging powers, of which one is utter garbage, that's a bit disappointing.  You can't even meet the rule-of-thumb for a complete ST attack chain without either using the now even more execrable Jab-sans-Bruising or dipping into a power pool.

[Leogunner]

52 minutes ago, csr said:

It's just unfortunate that the set doesn't see any real buff until level 38.  

Didn't the crash on Rage get removed if you don't double stack it? Sounds like a buff to me. 

[summers]

My SS/Fire Brute is now double nerfed by the Tanker changes! Was this really necessary...?

Edited October 2, 2019 by summers

[Zenex]

Very few times in play do I hit damage cap on my brute, basically with the combination of a kin and build up or more than one kin so the brute nerf will only be felt then. At most I can get around 350ish for damage boost by my self and that's only for 5 seconds at a time, but despite this the nerf really does rub me the wrong way quite a lot. 

 

I mean one of the most satisfying moments I have is when I see myself at cap, and with this nerf it feels like brutes are being punished so tanks can feel better metaphorically. I mean if i'm not mistaken Brutes and Tankers shared the same base damage while brutes had the base defense level of a scrapper. As a Tanker I don't mind and like the idea of boosting base tanker damage a bit, increasing the damage cap along with increasing AoE limits but as a Brute why am I being nerfed at all in a Tanker update?

Edited October 2, 2019 by Zenex
Grammer

[Auroxis]

Updated damage chart:

 

For fury, it'll be:

0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%

 

For enhancement+damage buffs, it'll be:

0%,100%, 200%, 300%, 400%, 450%, 500%, 600%

 

Calculation will be:

(0.95*(1+enh))/(0.75*(1+enh+fury)). 

 

Comparison with before (550% and 775%):

 

	0%	25%	50%	75%	100%
0%	1.27	0.84	0.63	0.5	0.42
100%	1.27	1.01	0.84	0.72	0.63
200%	1.27	1.09	0.95	0.84	0.76
300%	1.27	1.13	1.01	0.92	0.84
400%	1.27	1.15	1.06	0.97	0.9
450%	1.27	1.17	1.07	1	0.93
500%	1.16	1.07	1	0.93	0.9
600%	0.99	0.93	0.9	0.9	0.9

And after (500% and 700%):

 

	0%	25%	50%	75%	100%
0%	1.27	0.84	0.63	0.5	0.42
100%	1.27	1.01	0.84	0.72	0.63
200%	1.27	1.09	0.95	0.84	0.76
300%	1.27	1.13	1.01	0.92	0.84
400%	1.27	1.15	1.06	0.97	0.9
450%	1.27	1.06	0.97	0.9	0.9
500%	1.06	0.97	0.9	0.9	0.9
600%	0.9	0.9	0.9	0.9	0.9

 

 

Do you guys think the Tanker's advantage in the 300% and 400% areas is problematic considering the AoE and resilience advantage? Would you take a damage modifier reduction from 0.95 to 0.9, if it meant getting the Radius buffs back to +100% or getting Bruising back?

Edited October 2, 2019 by Auroxis

[Myrmidon]

10 hours ago, bigdawg145 said:

I disagree with lowering the tank and brute damage caps. This feasibly cripples them when Damage us related to taunt.  My argument is that tanks n brutes wont be able to pull aggro off death bunnies and damage bears. UNLESS you up the base aggro on tanks and brutes and on their damage... well we will see alot of team wipes.. 

 

If you actually believe what you just wrote, then maybe neither of these Archetypes are for you.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Myrmidon

[Myrmidon]

4 hours ago, Auroxis said:

Would you take a damage modifier reduction from 0.95 to 0.9, if it meant getting the Radius buffs back to +100%?

 

Most definitely this.

[Captain Powerhouse]

5 hours ago, Auroxis said:

Do you guys think the Tanker's advantage in the 300% and 400% areas is problematic considering the AoE and resilience advantage? Would you take a damage modifier reduction from 0.95 to 0.9, if it meant getting the Radius buffs back to +100% or getting Bruising back?

 

Don't think it is problematic, also the main reason to lower the -radius was toned down mostly because +100% of making taunt auras and other cc abilities way too good.

[Eiko-chan]

12 hours ago, metacore said:

I assume the "Damage Cap Lowered to 5.0" means 500%.
I get that in terms of coding it may be written as 5.0 and not 500% but in the previous Topic it was written as % and all the CoH wiki websites use % (https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Limits😞

Archetype	Maximum Damage
Brute	775%
Blaster, Corruptor, Scrapper, Stalker	210% at level 1 500% at level 21+
all others	200% at level 1 400% at level 21+

500% is 5.0. They are literally the same thing. 500 parts per hundred = 500/100 = 5, the same way 75 parts per hundred = 75/100 = 0.75.

[Profit]

I can't believe I'm going to say this.

 

I'm 100% against lowering brute damage caps. 

[Foxfyre]

25 minutes ago, Profit said:

I can't believe I'm going to say this.

 

I'm 100% against lowering brute damage caps. 

Unless you have a pocket kin, you're never going to reliably hit those caps anyway. 

Does it suck?  Yes.

Are 99% of players going to notice the difference?  Probably not.

[kenlon]

36 minutes ago, Profit said:

I can't believe I'm going to say this.

 

I'm 100% against lowering brute damage caps. 

I suspect this is due to some of the posting in the last feedback thread comparing scrapper/blaster damage with brutes, not because of anything directly related to tankers. It just happened to be brought to light by these changes. @Captain Powerhouse, can you confirm/deny?

[kenlon]

11 hours ago, summers said:

My SS/Fire Brute is now double nerfed by the Tanker changes! Was this really necessary...?

Not really fair to characterize the Rage stacking stuff as "tanker changes", they are quite independent. 

[Haijinx]

I doubt changing the caps will matter much.

 

That said, why bother lowering the Brute cap, when it won't matter much?

[csr]

13 hours ago, Leogunner said:

Didn't the crash on Rage get removed if you don't double stack it? Sounds like a buff to me. 

It's a buff, but it's not a major buff when it's only affecting Jab, Punch, Haymaker and KO Blow - the last of which has a 25s base recharge.  SS goes from being horrible at 27, to mediocre at 28.

 

IMO, Jab really needs it's secondary effect (Stun) buffed to make up for the atrocious DPA.  As is, it's worse than Boxing.  No power you are forced to take should be worse than a pool power that does the same thing with no precursor other than being level 4.

[Replacement]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

I doubt changing the caps will matter much.

 

That said, why bother lowering the Brute cap, when it won't matter much?

I don't think this is constructive to dwell on.  Everyone was so sure the damage caps mattered in the previous thread, so this is the response.  

 

In general, I caution against using an argument of "this won't impact anything, so don't spend time fixing it."  It feels, to me, like the same mindset as "my candy wrapper, particularly, isn't why the world is covered in trash" when you litter.  If it's not where it should be, I think we should encourage changing it as opportunity allows.

 

--

Real quick aside, I want to point out two sides of thought to the Live (775) cap for Brutes

Side A: Lower base damage numbers means each percentage point of +damage % matters less.  So even full fury (200%) + 500% (expected base for a damage dealer job) = 700.  It's instead set to 775 to compensate for those diminished increases.

 

Side B:  This set the scales for Brutes to keep pace with Blasters, while also having the 2nd-best survival in the game -- and remember, the whole point of Tanker Love is that Tankers' survivability isn't meaningfully better than Brutes.  This is the definition of Tank Mage.  The damage calculations of Ye Olde Threade did more to show just how far out-of-line a damage-capped Brute is than to say anything definitive about where Tankers should stand.

--

 

Ok, testing!  (I'm trying really hard to remember this thread has feedback in the title and I'm dismayed there are more people in this thread than logged onto Pineapple)

 

Previous test build: I had built an Elec/SS tanker, played him at 20 w/out any enhancements to see just how much I hate my life. It went remarkably well.  I think naked Blasters perform a bit better (Sustain power is stronk).

I then leveled him to 28 and gave him basic level 30 IOs, played a few maps.  Trade-offs compared to my experience soloing blasters in this range: Obviously safer and slower, but in general, I'd say it felt like the same amount of effort.  

I was also using this character to test out Force of Will and - guys - I really do think Wall of Force is giving me a 180° cone.  It's awesome.

October 1 build: I logged on and played some missions again, more level 28 radio missions.  This is all +0/x1 normal stuff, btw.

Result: I absolutely miss the endurance, but it's not breaking my back.  I'm running a single level 30 +Recovery IO in Stamina. 

On Live, I would absolutely have 2-3 +Recovery IOs at this level on just about any character I play (exceptions for some builds of all 3 Blast ATs -- probably Controllers too but I don't play Controllers).

 

Ok, so that's a lot of words, but here's my tl;dr on live vs current build:

On Live, a Tanker's only hope for soloing is to herd and slog.  It's slow and for a lot of your career, it's hard on endurance.

On Pineapple, the kill speed is good enough that I can simply combine a few packs here and there.  In general, I nodded off less and felt more like I could flow throw small packs, letting 2-3 mingle here and there, and still do ok.  

But, I definitely now need Endurance again.   I'll up him to 30 soon and give him another +Recovery and a Performance Shifter soon, see how it feels then.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Replacement

[Replacement]

21 hours ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Fixed a bug introduced in a previous patch where Kinetic Attack had the T1 and T2 inverted, something that generated invalid characters.

You uh... you sure about that, buddy?

@Captain Powerhouse:

 

I don't think this change made the code push 🥶

Edited October 2, 2019 by Replacement

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, Replacement said:

I don't think this is constructive to dwell on.  Everyone was so sure the damage caps mattered in the previous thread, so this is the response.  

 

In general, I caution against using an argument of "this won't impact anything, so don't spend time fixing it."  It feels, to me, like the same mindset as "my candy wrapper, particularly, isn't why the world is covered in trash" when you litter.  If it's not where it should be, I think we should encourage changing it as opportunity allows.

 

--

Real quick aside, I want to point out two sides of thought to the Live (775) cap for Brutes

Side A: Lower base damage numbers means each percentage point of +damage % matters less.  So even full fury (200%) + 500% (expected base for a damage dealer job) = 700.  It's instead set to 775 to compensate for those diminished increases.

 

Side B:  This set the scales for Brutes to keep pace with Blasters, while also having the 2nd-best survival in the game -- and remember, the whole point of Tanker Love is that Tankers' survivability isn't meaningfully better than Brutes.  This is the definition of Tank Mage.  The damage calculations of Ye Olde Threade did more to show just how far out-of-line a damage-capped Brute is than to say anything definitive about where Tankers should stand.

--

 

Ok, testing!  (I'm trying really hard to remember this thread has feedback in the title and I'm dismayed there are more people in this thread than logged onto Pineapple)

 

Previous test build: I had built an Elec/SS tanker, played him at 20 w/out any enhancements to see just how much I hate my life. It went remarkably well.  I think naked Blasters perform a bit better (Sustain power is stronk).

I then leveled him to 28 and gave him basic level 30 IOs, played a few maps.  Trade-offs compared to my experience soloing blasters in this range: Obviously safer and slower, but in general, I'd say it felt like the same amount of effort.  

I was also using this character to test out Force of Will and - guys - I really do think Wall of Force is giving me a 180° cone.  It's awesome.

October 1 build: I logged on and played some missions again, more level 28 radio missions.  This is all +0/x1 normal stuff, btw.

Result: I absolutely miss the endurance, but it's not breaking my back.  I'm running a single level 30 +Recovery IO in Stamina. 

On Live, I would absolutely have 2-3 +Recovery IOs at this level on just about any character I play (exceptions for some builds of all 3 Blast ATs -- probably Controllers too but I don't play Controllers).

 

Ok, so that's a lot of words, but here's my tl;dr on live vs current build:

On Live, a Tanker's only hope for soloing is to herd and slog.  It's slow and for a lot of your career, it's hard on endurance.

On Pineapple, the kill speed is good enough that I can simply combine a few packs here and there.  In general, I nodded off less and felt more like I could flow throw small packs, letting 2-3 mingle here and there, and still do ok.  

But, I definitely now need Endurance again.   I'll up him to 30 soon and give him another +Recovery and a Performance Shifter soon, see how it feels then.

Some will see the Brute dmg cap reduction from 775 to 700 as a big nerf.

 

But as many have said most won't notice in actual play.  

 

Since perception is what usually dictates subjective responses ....  the nerf is a nerf is a nerf.

 

People will see Tanks buffed, Brutes nerfed.  

 

Whether or not its constructive to dwell on or not, It won't go over well.  

 

 

[Leogunner]

59 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

People will see Tanks buffed, Brutes nerfed.  

Okay.

 

Isn't that beneficial since Brute is likely over represented and Tankers universally perceived as low offense?

[Vanden]

Brutes should be grateful to get out of the spotlight with only a small reduction to their damage cap.

[Haijinx]

10 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

Okay.

 

Isn't that beneficial since Brute is likely over represented and Tankers universally perceived as low offense?

The actual change will almost make no difference in actual gameplay.

 

People annoyed by the nerf will be unable to see that. 

 

They will only see a 75% max dmg reduction. 

[Haijinx]

13 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Brutes should be grateful to get out of the spotlight with only a small reduction to their damage cap.

Don't think this sort of sentiment ever works in MMOs , and definitely not in COH.

 

 

[Leogunner]

1 minute ago, Haijinx said:

The actual change will almost make no difference in actual gameplay.

 

People annoyed by the nerf will be unable to see that. 

 

They will only see a 75% max dmg reduction. 

Yes, I realize that.

 

I'm saying this perception would, at worst, make such players roll their next melee into a Tanker or something non-Brute instead of another Brute.

[Haijinx]

Just now, Leogunner said:

Yes, I realize that.

 

I'm saying this perception would, at worst, make such players roll their next melee into a Tanker or something non-Brute instead of another Brute.

Guess we will see.