Please revert the Rage change.

[Sylvar Panda]

I usually don't take the buff from my tanker melee sets. Build Up was also so short that I'd only get one rotation if I was lucky, and Rage always had that drop to mitigate at the end. Instead, I just carry Red and Yellow "skittles".

 

If they were to make a change, I like to see a more normalized buff effect. Like 30 sec duration for 20% Acc/to hit buff and 40% dmg buff, with a 3 min recharge/cool down for all AT's (including blasters etc.). But, I also realize this would remove some of the "flavor" of the different attack sets.  So, somebody will be unhappy no matter what is done or not done.

 

Me? I'm just happy as a cat in a meat-house just to be playing CoH at all.

[ironjoe]

I had multiple tanks on live. My first was an Invuln/Super Strength tank and my last was a Shield Defense/Super Strength tank. I remade my SD/SS tank on Homecoming and all I can say is that I skipped rage here. The  -Def made it so it the penalties outweighed the benefits. I still play the character out of love for the concept and set but the nerf from the experience on live is felt. There seem to be many good ideas out there for rebalancing it and I am hopeful the devs on Homecoming will consider that and give an experience closer to live with the powerset. 

[Sniktch]

Some things to point out regarding 'how it was on Live':

 

The damage-crash skip fix was intended to fix the def debuff crash skip at the same time.  It didn't, because CoX code is Jenga in a mined, exploded string factory.  Why didn't they fix it again?  Because it would have taken a hefty rewrite of multiple sections of the powers code, which is what SCoRE did during the dark years - and Castle could never get the greenlight from NCSoft/Paragon suits for a calendar quarter with no new content, just fixes for old problems, for understandable if lamentable reasons.  SCoRE could, because they weren't beholden to bottom-line financial concerns.  So SCoRE did, and now we're here.

 

Even so, perma-Rage was never intended to be the norm - the devs balanced around SOs, did not assume Hasten was always included, and did not assume 80-90% global recharge buff was somehow the norm.  Rage, on SOs, goes 'perma' at 4 +3 SOs - but the last one only gets you 3.5 seconds reduction in the recharge time, bringing it from 121.7 to 118.2.  Even maxing out on 50 Common IOs only drops the recharge to 110 seconds; the last 3 get you a net of 10 seconds.  You have to slam into the ED cap like a Titan V to get there, and one sneeze of -Rech and you fall off that wagon.

 

Of course, LOTG, Hasten, purple/ATO +10% recharge bonuses all blow that up - but they weren't used as baseline assumptions for good reasons.  Not everyone wants Hasten, for a variety of reasons.  Purples and ATOs were extremely scarce on Live.  LOTG was an easy 8 digits of Inf. which was a significant investment for anyone but megagrinders.  Homecoming changed a lot of this, and now the folks who back then either could afford the crazy slotting we now can consider 'normal' or couldn't resist burning a pool for yellow hands want their bug back - 99% of the time, it's to be paired with Shield for even more +damage/tohit/AoE spam, and a Def debuff impairs their survivability.

 

IT'S SUPPOSED TO!

 

That is the tradeoff you make for Rage's massive boost - a brief but noticable vulnerability and an enforced 'timeout' from spamming that huge damage boost.  Super Strength isn't a 'top-tier' set, but it's also not 'weak'; part of this is because the original 6 Tank sets were a spectrum of damage vs. control, with Energy Melee at the damage end and Ice Melee at the control end; Mace, Axe, Stone, and Super Strength were various shades of tradeoff between the two; generally speaking, Axe and pre-rework Mace were the next steps inward from EM and Ice respectively, and SS and Stone the two 'middle-ground' sets; they're very similar as a previous poster noted, with Stone slightly more control-capable and SS slightly more damage-capable.  SS is still very good soft control, especially if you actually use Handclap - whether via immobilize or -KB IO or simply smart positioning - on a semi-regular basis.  Combine Handclap's stun, knock, and taunt with regular taunting and/or Jab/Punch spam, and you've got your 'filler' for the damage crash that lets you keep aggro, keep enemies off-kilter, keep influencing the fight.  Stomp, Haymaker, KO Blow, Punch when the crash is over for more control, more damage - it's not a 'suck' set, no matter how you try to paint it.  It's just not Titan Weapons - which is a damn good thing, because Titan Weapons is fucking broken.

 

And a note on "I don'wanna use Insps every two minutes!" - if you're not getting your tray completely refilled on a regular basis just from kill-drops, you're doing something wrong.  The devs set the droprate on Inspirations high; they wanted them to be USED, not hoarded.  It doesn't take much - one small purple negates over half the def-crash.

 

Now, do I think the mitigation crash should be armor-agnostic?  Hell yes - but every single time anything of the sort gets suggested, the response is shrieks of "just take it out!" instead.  -Resist instead, a split of Def and Resist, whatever makes it armor-neutral, fine - but an 80% damage buff that last two minutes and can be functionally stacked four times in extreme circumstances needs a goddamn heavy balancer.  That's not even factoring in the ToHit buff.

[DeformedBrit]

I've benched my SD & SS character until it gets fixed. Completely ruins the flow, better off going with stone melee, the only thing that was good about SS was Rage, Footstomp and Knockout blow. Now there's only 2 good powers in this heavily resisted set and the set feels useless without rage.

Rage needs changing, plenty of good compromises in this thread. Losing half of your defence every minute is bad design regardless of how "good" rage is. The guy above saying about balancing around SO's is a joke, they have not been relevant for a long time even before the closure of the game and shouldn't be used when defending the way powers should work. At the end of the day this is a casual super hero MMO. The point is to be powerful, my blasters can tank tank alpha hits as well as a tank these days for god's sake. There's no harm in making a set fun again (probably the most iconic set thematically speaking) and have it be powerful. Otherwise it will go the way of regeneration and become obsolete.

Edited August 6, 2019 by DeformedBrit

[Kimuji]

IO sets + Incarnate + Rage's def debuff still means more defense left than the old Rage crash without -def in the pre IO era.

 

I guess Pre-IO players were super elite gamers if they managed to play this game without all these now "essential" crutches.

 

Quote

At the end of the day this is a casual super hero MMO. The point is to be powerful, my blasters can tank tank alpha hits as well as a tank these days for god's sake. There's no harm in making a set fun again and have it be powerful. Otherwise it will go the way of regeneration and become obsolete.

That's everything that is going wrong with this game in a nutshell. No, Blasters were never meant to laugh at alphas. And no it's not because it's a super hero themed game that you are supposed to steamroll everything. And SS isn't obsolete, res based armors don't really care about the -def crash, even Invuln isn't affected that much.

Even with the crash SS is still very popular, just to put things into perspective compare how many Super Strength and Energy Melee Brute/Tankers you meet in game. No SS isn't in a bad place.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Kimuji

[DeformedBrit]

6 minutes ago, Kimuji said:

IO sets + Incarnate + Rage's def debuff still means more defense left than the old Rage crash without -def in the pre IO era.

 

I guess Pre-IO players were super elite gamers if they managed to play this game without all these now "essential" crutches.

 

That's everything that is going wrong with this game in a nutshell. No, Blasters were never meant to laugh at alphas. And no it's not because it's a super hero themed game that you are supposed to steamroll everything. And SS isn't obsolete, res based armors don't really care about the -def crash, even Invuln isn't affected that much.

Pre IO era is irrelevant, that's not the game anymore. The game has changed, you can't balance around obsolete content, you need to balance around current content. The current content is IO's and set bonuses. Maybe it made everything too powerful, I don't disagree but it gave build customisation a lot more depth, when it used to just be slot two accuracy, damage, end reducs/recharge on a power.
 

In current high end content, having your defence dropped by half every minute is a big deal. It's stupid. What other power in a set screws you over so much so frequently to the point rage does? 

[Kimuji]

My point was: the game was WAY harder and people were still having fun.
 

Quote

What other power in a set screws you over so much so frequently to the point rage does? 

And what other power set gives you a permanent +80% damage/+20 to hit buff that you can easily stack with itself? Like Sniktch said, an execptional buff must come with an exceptional cost.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Kimuji

[DeformedBrit]

7 minutes ago, Kimuji said:

My point was: the game was WAY harder and people were still having fun.
 

And what other power set gives you a permanent +80% damage/+20 to hit buff that you can easily stack with itself? Like Sniktch said, an execptional buff must come with an exceptional cost.

I honestly don't think it was "way harder" it was just different. Back in the days of unlimited aggro and fire tankers burning everything to a crisp lol. I'm still having fun just not with SS, which is a shame because it's a very iconic set of the super hero genre. For sure Rage is a powerful buff, but it's a set limited to tankers and brutes.

Other set's don't need it as their kits tend to be balanced outside of their buffs. Though for an example claws is very strong with follow up, you easily meet that bonus with a duration of 10 seconds and recharge can be reduced to 3 and a half seconds. No -defence or damage reduction and end drain there...

[Kimuji]

It was harder because the content hasn't changed much (it has changed it quantity but not in difficulty), while character stats have gone sky high. There was no such thing as capping all your res or all your defenses. Even less so on a Scrapper or a Brute. Blasters were complete glass canons, Tankers were not immortal. Sets had holes, they were incomplete it was fully intentional. And yet the game was fun. CoH took liberties with the trinity but it did not threw away AT complementarities.

Characters are so tough now that the only solution the devs found to increase difficulty in the Incarnate Trials is to add irresistible damage for the boss fights (which hurts Tankers just as much as the other ATs).

I completely disagree with your Blaster's example, this is exactly why you see threads like "Addressing the Tanker Brute Connundrum". Sure that's funny for you as a Blaster to tank everything, now do you think things are just as funny from the Tanker or even the Brute's perspective when they deal half your damage while their taunts and CC are completely useless because everyone survives regardless.

Don't get me wrong I like what IOs brought to the game in terms of diversity but it also had negative side effect by allowing players to plug all the weaknesses that were intentionally introduced in all sets for the sake of encouraging team play. It has changed mentalities. Some people can't deal with weaknessess anymore, they just expect to play a character without any flaw and able to solo everything. This is a very short sighted definition of 'fun'.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Kimuji

[ShardWarrior]

4 minutes ago, Kimuji said:

Some people can't deal with weaknessess anymore, they just expect to play a character without any flaw and able to solo everything. This is a very short sighted definition of 'fun'.

I don't disagree, however not everyone shares the same view on what "fun" is. 

[justicebeliever]

3 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

I don't disagree, however not everyone shares the same view on what "fun" is. 

Maybe not consciously...however subconsciously, people are wired to enjoy and be engaged in challenges...It's actually partly why this thread goes on forever, people are challenged to convince others that their logic is the most flawless...It's also a big reason why many MMORPG's fail - they become too boring and lack new challenges...

[ShardWarrior]

Some are yes, not all.

[justicebeliever]

6 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Some are yes, not all.

"Some"????

[ShardWarrior]

Not really looking to derail the thread.  All I'm saying is that not everyone thinks the same way or has the same interests and will just leave it at that.

[justicebeliever]

I'll risk a little derailing, just to say there has been loads of research on gamification and it's impacts on the human brain in the last 20 years.  It's still being developed, but it's no longer purely anecdotal, how the vast majority of humans approach gaming (also, given how prevalent video games are, it's pretty easy to get large data samples)...Challenges are absolutely critical to engaging people in life, games, education, etc....There is also the need to feel competent...no one likes a challenge they can't possibly do well at....And people also love competition...Again, many of these are subconscious, meaning that you don't think you like those things, but in reality, you still react to them the same as many people who do...

 

My only point is, is that in gaming, the challenge and then the ability to meet that challenge first or best, is what draws us into video games.  Exactly how much fun one has along the way will of course vary, and the theme, setting, characterization, story line, etc will greatly influence the level of fun the game has...

 

But many people still play Solitaire on their phones/computer, and get a little dopamine thrill from it, and there is no theme, setting, characterization, or story line...with Spider Solitaire, most people play the 2 suits version, specifically because it's still a challenge, and yet, it's one that most can master...

[Kimuji]

By shortsighted I meant that in a multiplayer game some forms of fun are detrimental to the spirit of cooperation. There are some forms of fun that are acheived at the expense of other players. Those are IMO counter productive. If you kill the challenge ATs become irrelevant and the only "interesting" ones are those that kill stuff the fastest. Do people really find those IP radio Council farms fun? Where support is useless, debuffs useless, tanks useless and the only ones feeling relevant are the heavy nukers?
I just did one a few minutes ago, and the Def was complaining that no body cared about her buffs and the team wasn't grouping to get them. Well, no one cared because no one needed them. Just like my Tanker was completely uselss as well. The irony is that the Def was the leader, and kept chosing council missions, maybe picking Arachnos, Carnies or Malta might have made everyone a bit more interested in playing together and wait for buffs.

Now regarding SS' specific case, I have a Fire/SS Tanker and a Rad/SS Tanker. And I'm not having any issues whatsoever. Would things be different with a Super Reflexes Tanker? Yeah I'd have to be a lot more careful with the use of Rage. Does it make sthings a bit harder with Willpower? It does but it's still manageable. Just like Fiery Aura/Titan Weapons isn't optimal because all the click powers interfere with momentum (while WP/TW works wonders). Some set combinations are more compatible than others and it's not specific to Super Strength. I also have an Energy Melee/Dark Armor Brute, if you really want to talk about an underperforming set (and I'm not talking about Dark Armor).

It's not that keeping the -def is absolutely essential to the game for me but the fact that it has been blown out of proportion and described as game breaking is telling. It hasn't made SS unplayable, it hasn't made SS a subpar set, it is still a top pick for Tankers (only second to the op Titan Weapons for damage).

Edited August 6, 2019 by Kimuji

[ShardWarrior]

24 minutes ago, justicebeliever said:

I'll risk a little derailing, just to say there has been loads of research on gamification and it's impacts on the human brain in the last 20 years.  It's still being developed, but it's no longer purely anecdotal, how the vast majority of humans approach gaming (also, given how prevalent video games are, it's pretty easy to get large data samples)...Challenges are absolutely critical to engaging people in life, games, education, etc....There is also the need to feel competent...no one likes a challenge they can't possibly do well at....And people also love competition...Again, many of these are subconscious, meaning that you don't think you like those things, but in reality, you still react to them the same as many people who do...

 

My only point is, is that in gaming, the challenge and then the ability to meet that challenge first or best, is what draws us into video games.  Exactly how much fun one has along the way will of course vary, and the theme, setting, characterization, story line, etc will greatly influence the level of fun the game has...

 

But many people still play Solitaire on their phones/computer, and get a little dopamine thrill from it, and there is no theme, setting, characterization, or story line...with Spider Solitaire, most people play the 2 suits version, specifically because it's still a challenge, and yet, it's one that most can master...

I never disagreed with this in the least.  I completely agree with all of it.  All I said was that there are some people who don't fit into the "typical" mold.  I know quite a few of them myself - they are not looking for great challenges - they just want to log in and pound baddies for a few to relax.  That's what they find fun and I don't begrudge them that.

 

[justicebeliever]

Just now, ShardWarrior said:

I never disagreed with this in the least.  I completely agree with all of it.  All I said was that there are some people who don't fit into the "typical" mold.  I know quite a few of them myself - they are not looking for great challenges - they just want to log in and pound baddies for a few to relax.  That's what they find fun and I don't begrudge them that.

 

And I can't disagree with that in the slightest either... 😄

[Kimuji]

4 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

I never disagreed with this in the least.  I completely agree with all of it.  All I said was that there are some people who don't fit into the "typical" mold.  I know quite a few of them myself - they are not looking for great challenges - they just want to log in and pound baddies for a few to relax.  That's what they find fun and I don't begrudge them that.

 

And it is still entirely possible in a world where SS has a -def crash.

[ShardWarrior]

12 minutes ago, Kimuji said:

Now regarding SS' specific case, I have a Fire/SS Tanker and a Rad/SS Tanker. And I'm not having any issues whatsoever. Would things be different with a Super Reflexes Tanker? Yeah I'd have to be a lot more careful with the use of Rage. I also have an Energy Melee/Dark Armor Brute, if you really want to talk about an underperforming set (and I'm not talking about Dark Armor).

Aren't you essentially making the point here?  SS/Fire is ok.  SS/SR not so much.   At least to me, it is the same thing as your example of EM/DA being and underperforming combo.  The -DEF crash hurts certain set combos far more than it will others.  Just my 2 inf, that is limiting my choice for what to build based on how I play.  Of course others feel different and may not mind the change - nothing wrong with that.  This is essentially a "I have a sandwich, so you can't be hungry" scenario from both angles.

[Kimuji]

Energy Melee is bad whatever the Defense set you choose.

And I mentioned that Titan Weapon isn't great with Fiery Aura and works much better with something like Willpower. It's the opposite with Super Strength, it works great with Fire and less so with WP. Why is it such a big deal for SS to be compatible with all defense sets while no one really cares that TW doesn't?

[DeformedBrit]

Clearly a lot of people think Rage isn't working or this wouldn't be 16 pages long. I don't know why you are adamantly against removing -defence when it comes with other penalties ANYWAY. At least the other penalties associated with rage effect all other defensive sets the same way. Slapping on a -def debuff "for the lols" doesn't make sense. Arguing to keep it put because you think it would be so "OP" otherwise is stupid. Literally no other power in the game can wreck your entire gameplay the way Rage does now. You can't do damage for 10 seconds and lose 20 endurance which you never know may result in your toggles dropping if you're unlucky. Isn't this enough of a penalty for a tanker and brute exclusive set?  We have  Illusion/Rads soloing GM's, Blasters capabale of soloing +4x8 farms, Stalkers constantly having their build up recharged and no longer needing stealth. Why are you drawing the line on Rage? Honestly to me it sounds like you'd be better off on a different server, maybe you should join a pre IO server?

Look, If you want a harder experience, play on higher difficulty settings, play only using SO's. Play using only brawl for all I care but don't claim having a defense debuff on a power makes the game more fun because it's annoying to deal with. Annoying doesn't translate to challenging and therefore fun. You have all the tools to make the game as difficult as you want it to be. Stop pissing on everyone's bonfire that just want a more fluid experience with a power that for the longest time, hasn't worked the way it's currently working regardless of intention or not.

Edited August 6, 2019 by DeformedBrit

[ShardWarrior]

25 minutes ago, Kimuji said:

Energy Melee is bad whatever the Defense set you choose.

And I mentioned that Titan Weapon isn't great with Fiery Aura and works much better with something like Willpower. It's the opposite with Super Strength, it works great with Fire and less so with WP. Why is it such a big deal for SS to be compatible with all defense sets while no one really cares that TW doesn't?

Again you are kind of making the point here. 

[Kimuji]

22 minutes ago, DeformedBrit said:

Clearly a lot of people think Rage isn't working or this wouldn't be 16 pages long.

Energy Melee which is in a MUCH worse state than SS is only 7 pages long. Pages don't mean anything. If this topic is 16 pages long it is because there's a debate, while truly broken sets aren't generating much discussion because everyone agree.

19 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Again you are kind of making the point here. 

I am making the point that all sets have their prefered combos. Why should SS be any different?

Edited August 6, 2019 by Kimuji

[ironjoe]

Inspiration management isn't a challenge, it's an inane task that makes the game less fun. A fun challenge on live was building the right set up with powers, enhancements , ecr. to unlock making rage great. I would just like to see it change in some way from the current nerf. Maybe that wasn't enough of a challenge for those that like inventory management as a game but for the rest of us it was.  If there needs to a be rebalance per previous suggestions, so be it but I just want the fun parts of it I had on live.