Proposal: An Alternative to Super Strength

[Captain Citadel]

I'm a big fan of Super Strength thematically, but I'm not really happy with the way it works on paper because of how it was designed around maximizing Rage uptime. The set has subpar damage output without Rage active, and I really don't like the crash. I understand why the crash has to be there, but it would be nice to not be forced to use Rage. I know Street Justice is an option, but I don't care for the combo-based playstyle it has. So I'd like to propose an alternative.

Would it be feasible to create a sort of duplicate version of Super Strength (perhaps called Might) with Rage replaced by an ordinary Build Up power? The current Rage-based Super Strength has more of a Hulk-like theme to it, giving the user high damage output but repeatedly subjecting them to windows of virtually no damage. Instead of coming up with a new combo gimmick like Street Justice and a lot of the other newer powersets have, it could be given a more traditional secondary effect.

Since Super Strength doesn't have a combo system or a secondary effect, this new powerset could be given a -Res debuff effect similar to Sonic Blast attacks. I feel this would work well thematically. The idea being that characters with Might do not rely on a "berserker rage" to deal damage, but instead use their immense strength to shatter their opponent's defenses through precise, methodical blows. The difference between someone like the Hulk and someone with super strength that utilizes a more refined technique, like Superman. It would also bring an element of team support to the set that echoes the old Bruising mechanic, but Might would be available to more ATs, not Tanker-exclusive.

I'm not a game developer, so I don't know if this set would be easy to balance properly between the different melee ATs. I know people have been eager to see Super Strength proliferated to Scrappers, but Might could be a good alternative because it's built without the Rage mechanic. I'm just interested in having a set to play with that emulates Super Strength thematically while not requiring Rage to deal decent damage or relying on combo rotations like Street Justice, and I also miss the team support aspect of Bruising, so I thought it'd be neat to have a Smashing melee set with similar debuff properties to Sonic Blast.

Anyway, what do you all think?

[VileTerror]

I think we need to give this set a little MORE of a separate identity than just "Super Strength, but without Rage."

 

So, let's spitball a little here.  Maybe a Wrestling Set?  Once that Vectored Knock code gets developed, we could see stuff like a Suplex Power which throws an enemy over your character's head.  

 

Maybe a signature Power which is a One-Handed Grapple:  Toggle it to grab an enemy with your left hand, applying an extreme magnitude Hold, and dragging them around the battlefield with vectored Repel at -180 degrees.  But the trade-off is that any of your two-handed Powers get a debuff for the duration of the Toggle and you move at a slower speed.  

 

Additionally, having the Grapple Power active on a valid target also enables some other Powers!

Beat-Down Power:  Short cooldown punch which hits your Held Grapple victim mercilessly.

Toss:  Throws the victim toward your target (using Knockback), simultaneously casting an invisible projectile which causes Knockdown to any enemies along the projectile path, and does AoE Smashing Damage at point of impact.

Choke Out:  Self-Hold, but deal Extreme Damage Over Time to your victim.

[Captain Citadel]

7 minutes ago, VileTerror said:

I think we need to give this set a little MORE of a separate identity than just "Super Strength, but without Rage."

 

So, let's spitball a little here.  Maybe a Wrestling Set?  Once that Vectored Knock code gets developed, we could see stuff like a Suplex Power which throws an enemy over your character's head.  

 

Maybe a signature Power which is a One-Handed Grapple:  Toggle it to grab an enemy with your left hand, applying an extreme magnitude Hold, and dragging them around the battlefield with vectored Repel at -180 degrees.  But the trade-off is that any of your two-handed Powers get a debuff for the duration of the Toggle and you move at a slower speed.  

 

Additionally, having the Grapple Power active on a valid target also enables some other Powers!

Beat-Down Power:  Short cooldown punch which hits your Held Grapple victim mercilessly.

Toss:  Throws the victim toward your target (using Knockback), simultaneously casting an invisible projectile which causes Knockdown to any enemies along the projectile path, and does AoE Smashing Damage at point of impact.

Choke Out:  Self-Hold, but deal Extreme Damage Over Time to your victim.

All of that is a lot more work to implement, though. What I am proposing is distinct from Super Strength mechanically in that it's basically "Sonic Melee" but with similar animations to Super Strength. It could provide a thematic fantasy that is similar to Super Strength, but more easily proliferated to other ATs that have always wanted Super Strength but couldn't have it because of the Rage mechanic causing balance problems.

[VileTerror]

Alright, so . . . a Sonic Boom Melee Set?

I think one of those is kicking around somewhere.

 

Search-Fu:  ACTIVATE!

 . . . hmm.  Seems the idea has been suggested quite a few times, but no one has mapped one out yet.

 

WELL THEN!  Let's see . . . 

Short animation times, and I think we should be able to recycle a few existing animations for it.

Stuff like Handclap is a no-brainer, but we could also use the animation for Jab and throw a little expanding bubble at the point of impact.

Probably also have a pretty active AoE component to most of the attacks, even if it's just a minor AoE Knockdown or -Res Debuff.

There wouldn't be anything like Hurl, and I think that's a-okay.

Overall the damage would scale on the lower side, but being -Resistance it would clearly benefit from self-stacking on targets and bringing friends in to participate.

 

Does that sound more like what you were hoping for?

[Captain Citadel]

2 minutes ago, VileTerror said:

Alright, so . . . a Sonic Boom Melee Set?

I think one of those is kicking around somewhere.

 

Search-Fu:  ACTIVATE!

 . . . hmm.  Seems the idea has been suggested quite a few times, but no one has mapped one out yet.

 

WELL THEN!  Let's see . . . 

Short animation times, and I think we should be able to recycle a few existing animations for it.

Stuff like Handclap is a no-brainer, but we could also use the animation for Jab and throw a little expanding bubble at the point of impact.

Probably also have a pretty active AoE component to most of the attacks, even if it's just a minor AoE Knockdown or -Res Debuff.

There wouldn't be anything like Hurl, and I think that's a-okay.

Overall the damage would scale on the lower side, but being -Resistance it would clearly benefit from self-stacking on targets and bringing friends in to participate.

 

Does that sound more like what you were hoping for?

Aside from the specific Sonic-flavored theme of the powers, yes. My intent was to offer an alternative to Super Strength for players who want to smash things with a heavy melee set, but don't like how Rage works and might prefer a more support-oriented variant of Super Strength without the combo-based nature of Street Justice. As long as it has thematic similarities to Super Strength but doesn't have wonky animations like Kinetic Melee, I don't really care what it's called. Trading in the knockbacks for knockdowns is also fine with me.

Mostly it just seems like a rework to Super Strength won't fix the problems I have with it, and I don't want to propose removing Rage since some people like it the way it is now. So I thought it would be helpful to propose a variant of Super Strength that skews in a different direction from the Hulk-like nature of double-stacking Rage.

[biostem]

Well, you have Super Strength, then you have Street Justice.  The latter is supposed to be the "low-level" generic punching set.  Maybe what we need is a more Westernized take on martial arts - think a generic boxing set..

[Alchemystic]

11 minutes ago, biostem said:

Well, you have Super Strength, then you have Street Justice.  The latter is supposed to be the "low-level" generic punching set.  Maybe what we need is a more Westernized take on martial arts - think a generic boxing set..

Before Street Justice was made, Martial Arts received alternate animations for most of its powers to look a little more generic.

[biostem]

Just now, Tyrannical said:

Before Street Justice was made, Martial Arts received alternate animations for most of its powers to look a little more generic.

I am aware, thank you, but I find some of them a bit too flashy, still.

[Haijinx]

Just port SS to scrappers

[Calamity Cain]

I'm game for this. We already have Battle Axe, Broadsword and War Mace which aside from damage might as well be the same set. I know that's a bit of a relic of the game's early days but I wouldn't bat an eye if we got a less Hulk-like version of the set.

[Outrider_01]

Reduce the +damage like half, bump the damage on the attacks a bit to compensate for the reduction of Rsge, and toss the -defence/endurance crash.  The power is so punishing to use.

Edited March 8, 2020 by Outrider_01

[Andreah]

I have rage on my SS tanker, and I hate using it. Turning it into a build-up would be an improvement, as would various ideas for removing the crash. My favorite of those would be to eliminate the crash completely, but make the power not stack with itself at all.

 

But some of the other powers in SS need some work too. it ends up too dependent on its AoE hits, and the ST powers are just gap fillers. How would I address those? I'd make them all AoEs! Give the other power small AoE splash damage zones, and maybe chance for splash side-effects. (Then rebalance the total DPS of the set -- I think it's fine on the average, and does not need a buff).

[Gobbledygook]

8 hours ago, Outrider_01 said:

Reduce the +damage like half, bump the damage on the attacks a bit to compensate for the reduction of Rsge, and toss the -defence/endurance crash.  The power is so punishing to use.

 

On 3/7/2020 at 3:35 PM, Captain Citadel said:

Aside from the specific Sonic-flavored theme of the powers, yes. My intent was to offer an alternative to Super Strength for players who want to smash things with a heavy melee set, but don't like how Rage works and might prefer a more support-oriented variant of Super Strength without the combo-based nature of Street Justice. As long as it has thematic similarities to Super Strength but doesn't have wonky animations like Kinetic Melee, I don't really care what it's called. Trading in the knockbacks for knockdowns is also fine with me.

Mostly it just seems like a rework to Super Strength won't fix the problems I have with it, and I don't want to propose removing Rage since some people like it the way it is now. So I thought it would be helpful to propose a variant of Super Strength that skews in a different direction from the Hulk-like nature of double-stacking Rage.

 

 

What if we took both suggestions and combined them? Take the attacks from SS, increase the base damage to keep it in line with other sets. The attacks would apply some -res (not a numbers person, someone else figure it out). As far as Rage/Build Up (Moment Of Anger), make it half of what Rage is, no crash. Have alternate animations for the attacks, choosing from SS and SJ. 

[Galaxy Brain]

I was playing around with this last night to see what would need to realistically change for SS if we want the same / similar current performance but with a nerfed Rage.

 

Using the standard damage formula (seen below), we would realistically have to bump up the Recharge of the SS abilities to get more output:

 

For a baseline, lets look at current Tanker SS (via Mid's) with 80% Rage

 

 

 

This is with a single stack of 80% Rage. With no damage enhancement, it is a very significant boost. With 3 Damage IO's (around 99% enhancement), that relative boost is halved, though still very good. I also included the damage scale for these powers, though I know the Foot Stomp scale is not accurate, which is why it is in blue/italic. I blame the time change and me being sleepy, but this is more for tracking the relative change when we apply the new formula lol.

 

Speaking of, lets see what we would need for Recharge Times to match a Rage at 40% damage boost:

 

 

In order to get to just about the same damage performance with 1/2 rage values, we would need to slow down the Recharge of SS attacks by about 30% (1.33x multiplier is more accurate to near 1:1 ratio, but 30% is cleaner). This results in about a 22% base damage increase per power.... which coincidentally is just about what Bruising gave 🤔

 

Let's assume for a sec that we apply a 20% "Bruising" debuff on SS attacks, non-stacking, just as long as you hit your targets + the normal base damage and recharge times:

 

 

So, at a glance it seems that halving Rage's buffs but adding in a -20% Res "Bruising" effect would let you match current values. Well, a bit less at base but a bit more when enhanced. 

 

Neat.

 

[Replacement]

I'm with @Calamity Cain on this. It was apparent that in the early days, they needed the illusion of choice to pad out their content, but later in the life of the game, they became too obsessed with only adding sets with new gameplay gimmicks, and it has cost us a lot of low-hanging fruit (like crossbows).

 

I say mostly duplicate powers with name changes, remove Rage, but I would also look to replace one of either hurl boulder, hand clap, or foot stomp with something that better sells the set as "strong but strategic." I also like the idea of Bruising making a return here. Especially if it's subject to AT modifiers and Tankers' is better than everyone else.

 

Also, it's just funny to me that Rage is the terror of a Scrapper port in a world where Soul Drain exists.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Replacement

[Galaxy Brain]

2 minutes ago, Replacement said:

Also, it's just funny to me that Rage is the terror of a Scrapper port in a world where Soul Drain exists.

The difference here is that Dark Melee does not have KO Blow and Footstomp

[Replacement]

2 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

The difference here is that Dark Melee does not have KO Blow and Footstomp

Still funny, Brain!

[Gobbledygook]

Thanks for the rundown on the numbers @Galaxy Brain, that's exactly what I was thinking. Not sure if it was what the OP was looking for though.

Question, in your running of the numbers, did you completely remove a +Dmg +ToHit power? I may have just missed it in the explanation.

[Galaxy Brain]

16 minutes ago, Gobbledygook said:

Thanks for the rundown on the numbers @Galaxy Brain, that's exactly what I was thinking. Not sure if it was what the OP was looking for though.

Question, in your running of the numbers, did you completely remove a +Dmg +ToHit power? I may have just missed it in the explanation.

I didn't, I just theoretically nerfed Rage to be 1/2 it's current power (80% damage -> 40% damage), and then looked at what adjustments would need to happen to make SS perform essentially the same with that nerf. Of course, such a nerf would probably also get rid of the crash I'd imagine to balance it out 😉

 

The options then would be to increase the recharge of the SS attacks by about 30% in order to roughly match the current damage output per hit with the 1/2 rage, or to apply "Bruising" which conveniently matches the old Tanker amount of -20% res when you hit with an SS attack. Or something in between!

[MunkiLord]

On 3/7/2020 at 2:01 PM, VileTerror said:

So, let's spitball a little here.  Maybe a Wrestling Set?  Once that Vectored Knock code gets developed, we could see stuff like a Suplex Power which throws an enemy over your character's head.

I like this, BUT! Any wrestling set must have either(or both) the Randy Savage Elbow Drop or Shawn Michaels Super Kick.

 

edit: The taunt/confront could be the DX crotch chop, but I don't really care about that. 

Edited March 9, 2020 by MunkiLord

[Gobbledygook]

14 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I didn't, I just theoretically nerfed Rage to be 1/2 it's current power (80% damage -> 40% damage), and then looked at what adjustments would need to happen to make SS perform essentially the same with that nerf. Of course, such a nerf would probably also get rid of the crash I'd imagine to balance it out 😉

 

The options then would be to increase the recharge of the SS attacks by about 30% in order to roughly match the current damage output per hit with the 1/2 rage, or to apply "Bruising" which conveniently matches the old Tanker amount of -20% res when you hit with an SS attack. Or something in between!

 

Thanks for the clarification. I know I've said it before, but I'm just not really a numbers guy. The formulas in Nursing school was the hardest part for me.

DAMNED NUMBERS!!!!

[Captain Citadel]

Thanks for crunching the numbers, @Galaxy Brain. Hopefully the Homecoming team reads your post, it's very informative.

Assuming major changes can't be made directly to Super Strength because they'd alienate players who enjoy the current Rage-stacking meta, it would be great if this data could be used to draw up an alternative powerset for players like myself that would prefer a more consistent version of Super Strength. If Rage was replaced by a normal Build Up-style power, could the "Bruising" effect of this theoretical powerset be raised further?

[Galaxy Brain]

9 minutes ago, Captain Citadel said:

Thanks for crunching the numbers, @Galaxy Brain. Hopefully the Homecoming team reads your post, it's very informative.

Assuming major changes can't be made directly to Super Strength because they'd alienate players who enjoy the current Rage-stacking meta, it would be great if this data could be used to draw up an alternative powerset for players like myself that would prefer a more consistent version of Super Strength. If Rage was replaced by a normal Build Up-style power, could the "Bruising" effect of this theoretical powerset be raised further?

I don't see why not!

 

In fact, if Rage were axed to 1/2 values but was still allowed to stack and had no crash, + Bruising I think it could actually be in an awesome spot...

 

Maybe add AoE "Better Bruising" to Hand Clap for more utility?

[Captain Citadel]

5 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I don't see why not!

 

In fact, if Rage were axed to 1/2 values but was still allowed to stack and had no crash, + Bruising I think it could actually be in an awesome spot...

 

Maybe add AoE "Better Bruising" to Hand Clap for more utility?

Honestly I'd just like the option to get rid of Rage. One of my problems with Super Strength right now is that SS is balanced around having basically perma-Rage, and I'd rather it be optional like Build Up is for all the other sets. In its current form it's more like Dominator's inherent clicky power, but there's no crash when Domination wears off and you don't need to use up a power slot in your build to take it. I'd rather have my baseline damage baked into my powers. I've already got Hasten set to auto-cast, so it's a bit annoying to have to keep clicking Rage just to get "normal" damage values. This is why I like Build Up, because if I don't want to take it, I'm not harshly penalized because Build Up isn't intended to be on all the time.