Please revert the Rage change.

[Megajoule]

Would people accept a cashless Rage with a reduced bonus?  Or is this one of those "I want it ALL" situations?

[Black Zot]

2 hours ago, Megajoule said:

Would people accept a cashless Rage with a reduced bonus?  Or is this one of those "I want it ALL" situations?

 

The sticking point is that the entire Super Strength set is balanced around the assumption that players have Rage active basically at all times, often multi-stacked to negate the crash.  The raw numbers on SS attacks are almost universally garbage without Rage, especially since everybody and his dog is smash-resistant to some degree.  HC devs fixed the bug that allowed for the crash-skipping without changing the set's numbers otherwise, basically taking a mid-tier set down to trash-tier in one go.

 

(SS's reputation as a high-damage set comes entirely from one gimmick farming build that revolves around getting the recharge on the set's one genuinely strong power (Foot Stomp) down to "spammable", stacking Rage as high as it would go, and bolstering that with the buffs from Fire Armor.  With the Rage change, that build is now dead as disco.)

 

A lower-grade, no-crash Rage would still leave SS in a bad way, unless the set's baseline numbers get buffed significantly in the bargain.  So it's not a case of SS players wanting it all so much as wanting to be viable.

 

EDIT: Rage-dependency isn't even SS's only problem; knockback is pretty much the worst secondary effect you can saddle a melee set with.  For me to consider making a SS character would require removing the knockback (or at least making it knockDOWN), and fixing the set's borked numbers somehow.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Black Zot

[Megajoule]

Anecdata: my Rageless Inv/SS seems fine, is fun to play, but I expect that's as much a matter of me not delving deep into the numbers or pushing the envelope; if anything, I'm probably being carried a bit by my fully-IOd teammates.  That's me, the filthy casual (since 2004).

[Kimuji]

Yeah SS without Rage is worse than EM (maybe not for AoE though), which is something. lol
IMO Rage without crash but reduced damage is worse than a crash with full damage.

And that's one of the reason why I don't want Rage to be touched, because most of these compromise solutions would actually result in a nerfed SS instead of making it better. And removing the crash would make it ridiculous (SD/SS tankers were absurd, constantly hitting the damage cap without any real downside).
So yeah, I think it is better left untouched. I don't want it to become either trash or OP.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Kimuji

[Sniktch]

As has been demonstrated several times in this very thread, SS isn't 'trash'; it's on-par with Stone Melee, which is a set people aren't bitching ceaselessly about at all.  It's arguably on-par with mace if your benchmarks aren't just DPS/DPA, ahead of Ice on Brutes... but it's not Titan, so 'it sucks', and the folks howling for the brakes to be cut never seem to address comparisons that show it as being solid if not eye-popping, no matter how often they're raised. 

 

So to answer your question, Megajoule, the latter is the cynical and logical deduction.  Fortunately, the devs seem to have also drawn that conclusion, as others have noted; the last functional interaction with them regarding this 'problem' and I use the term loosely was basically a 'keep on topic' in early July.  Closing on 2 months of silence is, to my perception, a pretty hard "nope".

 

As to 'balanced around Rage all the time' - you ever Mids, Zot?  The original devs balanced around SOs and without factoring pools.  Actual 'perma' Rage takes 4 +3 SOs, and that's a gap time of 1.8 seconds  Max SO gap time is barely higher, and even going full 6 level 50 Recharge common IOs - which is explicitly outside the original balance math - only gets you 10 seconds of grace.  So can we bury that fucking bullshit yet, or is it gonna be the new 'weekly Rage thread' meme?

Edited August 20, 2019 by Sniktch
clarifying

[Kimuji]

Rage with 3 recharge SOs is very close to perma. And Hasten has always been there. Sure ou couldn't perma Hasten before IOs but it still allowed you to double stack Rage regularly.

But to be clear when I said " I think it is better left untouched ", I meant leaving Rage the way it is now.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Kimuji

[Sniktch]

Very close is not is, and the devs did not assume everyone took Hasten, or had purples/ATOs/LOTGs out the wazoo, or were playing Elec Armor.  They balanced in-set, on SOs.  Not Common IOs - because A: that's pushing folks into Inventions whether they want to be there or not, and B: after Freedom, all Invention system access was a subscription perk or a la carte purchase, so they HAD to balance 'not including Inventions', because some players flat-out could not access them.

 

Hasten is an entire kettle of worms, and has been since closed beta.  And pre-ED, you in fact COULD perma-hasten - with 6 Recharge SOs.  Didn't even have to be up-level, even was good enough.  You could also perma Unstoppable, Elude, MoG, and Instant Healing was a toggle.  This was also when Rage was a lot easier to perma - it got changed by ED, and that's when this particular shitstorm FIRST started blowing, Tankers flipping out cause they wanted easy perma-rage back.  This was also when it only had an END crash, nothing else.  So they whined and raged and frothed, got told there'd be a tradeoff for it, said fine - and got the first 'damage crash' added, which was Only Affecting Self.  Of course, this prompted an even bigger explosion of waaaah.  And on down the years it rolled.

 

The waaaah is still going, and to be blunt, I'm just a little tired of hearing it.

[Kimuji]

Rage is virtually perma with 3 SOs, because you don't want to pop Rage right when it crashes or you're wasting 10s of Rage. So you have 10 additional seconds after the end of Rage before having to refresh it.
If one wants to argue that SS wasn't balanced around a perma Rage up time, well that's open to speculation but it seems pretty obvious to me that SS was balanced around a much higher damage bonus up time than the sets based on Build Up.

And let's not talk about the pre-ED era, it was a stupid era lol.

But when you say that SS isn't 'trash', you mean SS with Rage right? Because without it it's pretty bad and worse than Stone Melee (except for AoEs, Stone's AoE capabilies are rather weak). However SS with Rage, even with the damage/end/def crash is far from trash indeed.

[Jeuraud]

5 hours ago, Black Zot said:

Rage-dependency isn't even SS's only problem; knockback is pretty much the worst secondary effect you can saddle a melee set with.  For me to consider making a SS character would require removing the knockback (or at least making it knockDOWN), and fixing the set's borked numbers somehow.

I just looked at SS's numbers in-game and I noticed all the knockback except Hurl was at .67, and Hurl is an 80ft Ranged attack that can knock down flyers. Something else I noticed in the set was a Knockup/Hold, a PBAoE Stun, and a PBAoE 80% Knockdown, in fact I noticed that all of the attacks have some type of CC in them. SS is a fricken Melee Control set, which I see as part of the problem. Control means forethought and finesse, while Super Strength makes me think Hulk Smash. Even Rage is a forethought and finesse power. I think the numbers are fine for a Control set, unfortunately this set is called Super Strength.

 

As for Rage, I've looked at the numbers, and see nothing to justify a +40/160 Buff that last longer then 10sec, let alone a +60/240 Buff, even with the 10sec Debuff (Really.... 20 pages for a 10sec Debuff.).  Asking for a Rage "Fix" is asking for this set to be looked at and tweaked in ways that many of you do not want it tweaked. If I cared about SS I would be presenting some numbers that supported my argument, or I would be shutting the fuck up.

[Kimuji]

9 minutes ago, Jeuraud said:

I just looked at SS's numbers in-game and I noticed all the knockback except Hurl was at .67, and Hurl is an 80ft Ranged attack that can knock down flyers. Something else I noticed in the set was a Knockup/Hold, a PBAoE Stun, and a PBAoE 80% Knockdown, in fact I noticed that all of the attacks have some type of CC in them. SS is a fricken Melee Control set, which I see as part of the problem. Control means forethought and finesse, while Super Strength makes me think Hulk Smash. Even Rage is a forethought and finesse power. I think the numbers are fine for a Control set, unfortunately this set is called Super Strength

Knock Up/Down/Back and stuns make total sense on a set called Super Strength and are perfectly in the spirit of a Hulk Smash set. And who said that Superman was stupid?

 

Quote

As for Rage, I've looked at the numbers, and see nothing to justify a +40/160 Buff that last longer then 10sec, let alone a +60/240 Buff, even with the 10sec Debuff (Really.... 20 pages for a 10sec Debuff.).  Asking for a Rage "Fix" is asking for this set to be looked at and tweaked in ways that many of you do not want it tweaked. If I cared about SS I would be presenting some numbers that supported my argument, or I would be shutting the fuck up.

That's exaclty why I don't want any "fix" for SS and Rage. Because like you said an overhaul of the set would most likely result in an overall nerf. So we leave it as it is with Rage's full crash (dmg/end/def), it is an acceptable trade off for what Rage brings in terms of DPS.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Kimuji

[Sniktch]

17 minutes ago, Kimuji said:

Rage is virtually perma with 3 SOs, because you don't want to pop Rage right when it crashes or you're wasting 10s of Rage. So you have 10 additional seconds after the end of Rage before having to refresh it.
If one wants to argue that SS wasn't balanced around a perma Rage up time, well that's open to speculation but it seems pretty obvious to me that SS was balanced around a much higher damage bonus up time than the sets based on Build Up.

And let's not talk about the pre-ED era, it was a stupid era lol.

But when you say that SS isn't 'trash', you mean SS with Rage right? Because without it it's pretty bad and worse than Stone Melee (except for AoEs, Stone's AoE capabilies are rather weak). However SS with Rage, even with the damage/end/def crash is far from trash indeed.

 

 

Page 15, last post.  Stone Melee vs. Super Strength.  Not going to do the Mids damage number comparison again; it's been done, and you're capable of doing it yourself if you wanna; would quote the post, but the forum software eats things if I try to change pages during a reply.

 

And regarding 'near-perma' being good enough:  The folks pissing and whining in this thread are doing so because of the old Live bug that made first all of the crashes, then just the Defense crash, 'skippable' by having it back on before it wore off, thus requiring actual perma, not 'near'.  That bug got fixed by SCoRE during the dark years, via a large-scale rewrite of the powers code - that's powers plural, not "just Rage"; they had to rebuild the block that handles power activations and falloffs at the very least, probably a lot more besides, as the reason Castle never fixed the def debuff dodge was NC/Paragon suits would not permit him AND THE WHOLE POWERS CODE TEAM to do nothing but that for 3 months, preferring instead they focused on making new shinies for release.  Note that would have been fix attempt #2 - the first try is the one that made the END and damage crashes unavoidable, but the Def one evaded it due to spaghetti code.

[Haijinx]

17 minutes ago, Jeuraud said:

I just looked at SS's numbers in-game and I noticed all the knockback except Hurl was at .67, and Hurl is an 80ft Ranged attack that can knock down flyers. Something else I noticed in the set was a Knockup/Hold, a PBAoE Stun, and a PBAoE 80% Knockdown, in fact I noticed that all of the attacks have some type of CC in them. SS is a fricken Melee Control set, which I see as part of the problem. Control means forethought and finesse, while Super Strength makes me think Hulk Smash. Even Rage is a forethought and finesse power. I think the numbers are fine for a Control set, unfortunately this set is called Super Strength.

 

As for Rage, I've looked at the numbers, and see nothing to justify a +40/160 Buff that last longer then 10sec, let alone a +60/240 Buff, even with the 10sec Debuff (Really.... 20 pages for a 10sec Debuff.).  Asking for a Rage "Fix" is asking for this set to be looked at and tweaked in ways that many of you do not want it tweaked. If I cared about SS I would be presenting some numbers that supported my argument, or I would be shutting the fuck up.

I generally agree but i think you overadded here.

 

1 stack of rage is a +20 to hit, +80 damage.

 

The two powers that are poor are jab and punch.  Basically because they recharge too fast.  

 

Thus punch looks more like a tier 1 power from many other sets.  And Jab is just pitiful.  

 

Thus you only really have 2 good ST attacks (can't really count hurl its too slow)

 

 

 

[Kimuji]

20 minutes ago, Sniktch said:

Page 15, last post.  Stone Melee vs. Super Strength.  Not going to do the Mids damage number comparison again; it's been done, and you're capable of doing it yourself if you wanna; would quote the post, but the forum software eats things if I try to change pages during a reply.

 

And regarding 'near-perma' being good enough:  The folks pissing and whining in this thread are doing so because of the old Live bug that made first all of the crashes, then just the Defense crash, 'skippable' by having it back on before it wore off, thus requiring actual perma, not 'near'.  That bug got fixed by SCoRE during the dark years, via a large-scale rewrite of the powers code - that's powers plural, not "just Rage"; they had to rebuild the block that handles power activations and falloffs at the very least, probably a lot more besides, as the reason Castle never fixed the def debuff dodge was NC/Paragon suits would not permit him AND THE WHOLE POWERS CODE TEAM to do nothing but that for 3 months, preferring instead they focused on making new shinies for release.  Note that would have been fix attempt #2 - the first try is the one that made the END and damage crashes unavoidable, but the Def one evaded it due to spaghetti code.

Regarding SS without Rage vs SM, the page 15 comparison sets aside an important aspect: DPA. Seismic Smash for instance isn't just a tiny bit better than Knockout Blow, it's way better thanks to a very short animation time for such a heavy single target attack. If we don't factor in DPA then Energy Melee would appear like an amazing single target set, which it is clearly not.

Now is SS superior to SM damage wise? With Rage I'd say so indeed. Much better AoE and stronger single target damage thanks to Rage. Which is fine because you're paying for it: an end/def/dmg crash at the end of Rage. Actually we shouldn't even argue on the SS vs SM comparison because apparently we agree on the conclusion: SS is fine as it is and Rage doesn't need to be made painless (because asking for the removal of the def debuff is basically this) to make it relevant and competitive.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Kimuji

[Sniktch]

Thing is, I DO think one thing needs to change - the mitigation debuff DOES need to be armor-agnostic.  As it sits, it's disproportionate on the sets that rely on Defense, with resist and healing sets not caring much.  Ice, Energy Aura, and SR don't necessarily deserve that sort of punchdown - Shield's a slightly different story, due to Against All Odds.  But thusfar, every attempt to get to that has run into a screaming wall of 'donwannitanymore!', thus my patience running a bit thin and leaving me a little snappy.  Apologies.

[Kimuji]

SR doesn't fear Rage's crash that much because its defenses are so high that you can still maintain yourself close to the soft cap during the crash. Ice is hit harder but Ice is also a set that needs a revision as it has become a bit obsolete compared to newer or revised defense sets. Which leaves Energy Aura and Shield. Shield/SS is OP so, it's not a problem that needs fixing IMO. So, we have Energy Aura, that's one set alright, I think we can live with that. And it's not like you are forced to perma double Rage either. You wanted to show that SS even without Rage wasn't that bad, did you change your mind?

As for armor-agnosticism, the funny part is that the arguably two best sets to pair Super Strength with are also among the worse to pair with Titan Weapons. Fiery Aura and Radiation Armor are very reliant on their click powers (Healing Flames, Burn, Consume, Ground Zero, Particule Shielding, Radiation Therapy) and these make the use of Titan Weapons very cluncky because it interferes with the Momentum mechanic. So should we also make Titan Weapons more armor-agnostic as well?
And that armor-agnostic argument is quite selective actually, because not all armors are made equal against the endurance crash. It's a lot tougher on a set like Dark Armor due to its already heavy endurance consumption, so should we remove the endurance crash for the sake of equality between armors?

Edited August 21, 2019 by Kimuji

[William Valence]

I'm curious, how much extra damage should a SS user take to balance the damage buff from rage?

 

This is an untargeted question, I'm mostly interested in opinions.

[Jeuraud]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

1 stack of rage is a +20 to hit, +80 damage.

and 2 stacks of Rage would be +40 to hit, +160 damage.

and 3 stacks of Rage would be +60 to hit, +240 damage.

 

Or are you telling me that Rage does not stack with itself, which would go against what I've been reading in this thread.

 

[Haijinx]

17 minutes ago, Jeuraud said:

and 2 stacks of Rage would be +40 to hit, +160 damage.

and 3 stacks of Rage would be +60 to hit, +240 damage.

 

Or are you telling me that Rage does not stack with itself, which would go against what I've been reading in this thread.

 

Oh no.  I had just read your response as being single and then double.  Misread I guess more likely.

I've never seen 3 stacks before even with a kin so maybe it didn't occur to me.  

 

Even a single stack is the best "build up" style power in the game.   

 

 

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, Kimuji said:

SR doesn't fear Rage's crash that much because its defenses are so high that you can still maintain yourself close to the soft cap during the crash. Ice is hit harder but Ice is also a set that needs a revision as it has become a bit obsolete compared to newer or revised defense sets. Which leaves Energy Aura and Shield. Shield/SS is OP so, it's not a problem that needs fixing IMO. So, we have Energy Aura, that's one set alright, I think we can live with that. And it's not like you are forced to perma double Rage either. You wanted to show that SS even without Rage wasn't that bad, did you change your mind?

As for armor-agnosticism, the funny part is that the arguably two best sets to pair Super Strength with are also among the worse to pair with Titan Weapons. Fiery Aura and Radiation Armor are very reliant on their click powers (Healing Flames, Burn, Consume, Ground Zero, Particule Shielding, Radiation Therapy) and these make the use of Titan Weapons very cluncky because it interferes with the Momentum mechanic. So should we also make Titan Weapons more armor-agnostic as well?
And that armor-agnostic argument is quite selective actually, because not all armors are made equal against the endurance crash. It's a lot tougher on a set like Dark Armor due to its already heavy endurance consumption, so should we remove the endurance crash for the sake of equality between armors?

Only SR tankers

 

SR brutes would definitely get hurt 

 

Tanks get Ice instead of Energy Aura but there are similarities.  

 

Also Stone gets hit.    

 

[DSorrow]

4 hours ago, Sniktch said:

Thing is, I DO think one thing needs to change - the mitigation debuff DOES need to be armor-agnostic.  As it sits, it's disproportionate on the sets that rely on Defense, with resist and healing sets not caring much.  Ice, Energy Aura, and SR don't necessarily deserve that sort of punchdown - Shield's a slightly different story, due to Against All Odds.

This I think is the only thing that should be fixed about Rage, which brings me back to my earlier suggestion: two mutually exclusive Rage picks, the current one and an alternative with -40% Res crash. Simple but not very elegant, however it would at least allow the player to choose a crash that doesn't essentially negate half their defensive set.

 

I think it's also worth noting that while the -Def heavily impacts current sets like Ice, EA and SR, it's also going to be an issue for any future Def based sets we might get.

[Captain Powerhouse]

Tossing this here for consideration, this MIGHT go to test in a future time, but wanted to hear some feedback before even going there:

 

Super Strength > Rage:

• Activating Rage while the buff is still up will no longer add a second stack, instead it will increase the duration of the current buff by an additional 120 seconds.
• Example: Use rage when there are 30 seconds left, rage it will now last for 150 seconds.
• No longer has a crash of any kind. No endurance crash, no defense crash, no -dmg crash, nothing. Letting rage expire and continue to attack without using it again would be it's own penalty.

[Sniktch]

10 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Tossing this here for consideration, this MIGHT go to test in a future time, but wanted to hear some feedback before even going there:

 

Super Strength > Rage:

• Activating Rage while the buff is still up will no longer add a second stack, instead it will increase the duration of the current buff by an additional 120 seconds.
• Example: Use rage when there are 30 seconds left, rage it will now last for 150 seconds.
• No longer has a crash of any kind. No endurance crash, no defense crash, no -dmg crash, nothing. Letting rage expire and continue to attack without using it again would be it's own penalty.

This would be the first 'refreshing' power in Cities, as far as I know.  Even removing stacking, however, you're tapdancing on a land mine by removing all negatives from the power.  Unless the upfront END cost is a hell of a lot higher, this is a pretty big break of the cottage rule.

 

This would also spawn a tsunami of "why can't we have it too?!?!"

Edited August 21, 2019 by Sniktch
Thought of something else

[DSorrow]

11 minutes ago, Captain Powerhouse said:

Tossing this here for consideration, this MIGHT go to test in a future time, but wanted to hear some feedback before even going there:

 

Super Strength > Rage:

• Activating Rage while the buff is still up will no longer add a second stack, instead it will increase the duration of the current buff by an additional 120 seconds.
• Example: Use rage when there are 30 seconds left, rage it will now last for 150 seconds.
• No longer has a crash of any kind. No endurance crash, no defense crash, no -dmg crash, nothing. Letting rage expire and continue to attack without using it again would be it's own penalty.

Sounds pretty good, although somewhat more powerful than I would've expected. Still, this version sounds much more fun than what we have now so I'd be happy to have these changes.

[Captain Powerhouse]

14 minutes ago, Sniktch said:

This would be the first 'refreshing' power in Cities, as far as I know.  Even removing stacking, however, you're tapdancing on a land mine by removing all negatives from the power.  Unless the upfront END cost is a hell of a lot higher, this is a pretty big break of the cottage rule.

I have number crunched SS countless times since launch. My opinion is the set is perfectly balanced with one constant Rage stack at all times, and the penalties are unnecessary if not because of the potential power of multiple stacks.

 

Things can, potentially, become problematic when epic pools and other secondary sets are taken into account. That is one of the many things that would be subject to testing and further analysis, but i wanted to get some thoughts before we got there.

 

I also don't consider it a cottage rule infraction. The power would continue to do what it does, in a form that is nearly the same. For most players, other than the removal of a negative, they can continue using the power the exact same way.

 

Cottage rule prevents me, for example, from turning the power into a different activation type (toggle) or deciding that the power tomorrow will become a recharge buff instead of a damage buff.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Captain Powerhouse

[Sniktch]

Even at launch, there was an END crash - to balance the power of a Build-Up lasting two minutes instead of ten seconds.  AFAIK, all Build-Ups have ~5 END cost.  So does Rage - but you have to cast it 1/12 as often for saturation.  Mathematically, you can't perma any Build-up, but even if you could, you'd be looking at 60 END vs. Build-Up's 5.  The original END crash was 25%, making the total cost of the power 30 assuming no +MaxEND buffs. 

 

How do you balance the cost of the power dropping to 1/6th of its current, while remaining the same buff with functionally a longer duration?