Please revert the Rage change.

[MalphiteMeIRL]

The Defense crash was bypassable at one point in the game.  By the time Incarnates were live it had been fixed.  It MAY have been broken again by I24 things, or possibly earlier, but it WAS fixed.

 

It was never "fixed" on live. The only thing they had fixed early on was dodging the damage debuff (which was totally fair) and being able to avoid T9 armor crashes. They left the defense debuff avoidable. It was that way for years right up until the game shut down. They had tested it with the defense drop at one point on the PTR but it never made it live.

 

Seems like a majority of people who debate against rage are comparing it directly to build up without looking at the respective sets they are baked into.

[Impact]

Seems like a majority of people who debate against rage are comparing it directly to build up without looking at the respective sets they are baked into.

 

This, exactly.  The downside of Rage is that it's part of Super Strength, which would be by far the weakest of all melee sets without it running non-stop.  With it, SS is on the weak side of middling at best.  Those who argue in favor of turning Rage into Build Up should also argue in favor of massive buffs to the rest of SS's powers.  It cannot be examined in isolation.

[kelly Rocket]

Seems like a majority of people who debate against rage are comparing it directly to build up without looking at the respective sets they are baked into.

 

This, exactly.  The downside of Rage is that it's part of Super Strength, which would be by far the weakest of all melee sets without it running non-stop.  With it, SS is on the weak side of middling at best.  Those who argue in favor of turning Rage into Build Up should also argue in favor of massive buffs to the rest of SS's powers.  It cannot be examined in isolation.

 

I already did, several times :)

 

Increase the base damage of Punch and Jab.  The damage from Haymaker, Knockout Blow, and Haymaker is already decent, though I wouldn't turn away buffs for them too.  Change to Build Up and all of the problems mentioned in this thread about Rage go away forever.

At the cost of making SS just like the rest.

 

I don't feel that homogenizing mechanics is the solution to balance.

[Impact]

Seems like a majority of people who debate against rage are comparing it directly to build up without looking at the respective sets they are baked into.

 

This, exactly.  The downside of Rage is that it's part of Super Strength, which would be by far the weakest of all melee sets without it running non-stop.  With it, SS is on the weak side of middling at best.  Those who argue in favor of turning Rage into Build Up should also argue in favor of massive buffs to the rest of SS's powers.  It cannot be examined in isolation.

 

I already did, several times :)

 

Increase the base damage of Punch and Jab.  The damage from Haymaker, Knockout Blow, and Haymaker is already decent, though I wouldn't turn away buffs for them too.  Change to Build Up and all of the problems mentioned in this thread about Rage go away forever.

 

The Super Strength power set has serious problems, and boosting its two least-damaging powers (Punch and Jab) would not be nearly enough to compensate for the loss of its strongest, Rage.  SS doesn't excel at anything, really.  With just one AOE, even though it's a good one, it's not a set focused on taking out large groups of foes.  But it lacks the ST punch of sets like Broadsword, too.  Unlike most melee sets, it has a ranged attack, but Hurl's animation is ridiculously long and the power is routinely dropped from most attack chains or skipped altogether.  In fact, it's largely due to the presence of the basically useless Hurl power that SS is sub-par at both ST and AOE.  If Hurl was replaced with a T8 that was good at either, the set would be considerably better than it is.

 

I feel like I have to repeat myself here.  If you turn Rage into yet another Build Up, the entire set will have to be reworked significantly in order to make it merely average.

[Vanden]

I feel like I have to repeat myself here.  If you turn Rage into yet another Build Up, the entire set will have to be reworked significantly in order to make it merely average.

 

No need.  You're just overthinking it.  Reread what I posted and you might understand :)

 

You seriously think making the two weakest powers in the set a little stronger is enough to compensate for losing perma-Build Up?

[HelenCarnate]

I feel like I have to repeat myself here.  If you turn Rage into yet another Build Up, the entire set will have to be reworked significantly in order to make it merely average.

 

No need.  You're just overthinking it.  Reread what I posted and you might understand :)

 

You seriously think making the two weakest powers in the set a little stronger is enough to compensate for losing perma-Build Up?

 

It would not need significant changes.  It would need 1 power change and an animation change.  Granted some may call that significant but probably not as much work as people think.  Drop Jab, replace it with 12 second recharge 95 damage (brute) attack.  Speed up animation on punch to be like Energy punch.  That would put it on par with other s/l sets out there and above IMHO due to footstomp being awesome.

[Jon]

Started to read this thread but there's a lot of hostility that I don't really feel like engaging in. I'll just throw out a couple ideas:

 

What if the -def was changed into something that was still noticeable but not nearly as dangerous? Like instead of getting hit with -def you got hit with a big -recharge debuff for a short duration. I'm sure other stats might work, like maybe -tohit or something. It would still convey the idea of being crashing after using Rage without being such a massive problem.

 

I agree with the sentiment that a character with the power of Super Strength should not have a power that penalizes damage, even temporarily. It makes no sense, conceptually.

[Vanden]

I feel like I have to repeat myself here.  If you turn Rage into yet another Build Up, the entire set will have to be reworked significantly in order to make it merely average.

 

No need.  You're just overthinking it.  Reread what I posted and you might understand :)

 

You seriously think making the two weakest powers in the set a little stronger is enough to compensate for losing perma-Build Up?

 

It would not need significant changes.  It would need 1 power change and an animation change.  Granted some may call that significant but probably not as much work as people think.  Drop Jab, replace it with 12 second recharge 95 damage (brute) attack.  Speed up animation on punch to be like Energy punch.  That would put it on par with other s/l sets out there and above IMHO due to footstomp being awesome.

 

Oh my God, you're, you're so underestimating what losing Rage would do to the set. Every power in the set is balanced around the expectation that it'll have at least 80% damage boost at all times. How strong are you expecting this one new move to be, to make up for losing all that damage in every other power?

[Impact]

I feel like I have to repeat myself here.  If you turn Rage into yet another Build Up, the entire set will have to be reworked significantly in order to make it merely average.

 

No need.  You're just overthinking it.  Reread what I posted and you might understand :)

 

You seriously think making the two weakest powers in the set a little stronger is enough to compensate for losing perma-Build Up?

 

It would not need significant changes.  It would need 1 power change and an animation change.  Granted some may call that significant but probably not as much work as people think.  Drop Jab, replace it with 12 second recharge 95 damage (brute) attack.  Speed up animation on punch to be like Energy punch.  That would put it on par with other s/l sets out there and above IMHO due to footstomp being awesome.

 

Hardly sufficient.  You propose removing the strongest power in the set and replacing it with a generic variant.  And to compensate, you advocate improving the two weakest.  That's nowhere near enough.  As is, with perma-Rage running, SS is middling at best.  Why make it worse?  If it's because you're jealous of Rage being the best Build Up power out there (which it is), that compensates for the set's other glaring weaknesses enough to make it tolerable as a whole. 

[Vindicator]

You simply increase the base damage of the other powers, run sims of varying combat lengths, and adjust the base damage accordingly until it's on par with the other powersets.  No one wants to gimp anything; quite the contrary  ;)

[_NOPE_]

You make it sound so easy! Why didn't anyone think of that already???

[MalphiteMeIRL]

At the cost of making SS just like the rest.

 

I don't feel that homogenizing mechanics is the solution to balance.

 

Well said, I was just about to mention that.

 

It would also be a lot of effort just to make something significantly more generic.

 

Mechanically I'd love to see more powers that were not build up. Rage, Soul Drain and to a lesser extent Build Momentum are very interesting in comparison to BU. But things like that would be a tremendous amount of work to keep balanced since the respective sets are designed around their version of BU or vanilla BU.

[HelenCarnate]

I feel like I have to repeat myself here.  If you turn Rage into yet another Build Up, the entire set will have to be reworked significantly in order to make it merely average.

 

No need.  You're just overthinking it.  Reread what I posted and you might understand :)

 

You seriously think making the two weakest powers in the set a little stronger is enough to compensate for losing perma-Build Up?

 

It would not need significant changes.  It would need 1 power change and an animation change.  Granted some may call that significant but probably not as much work as people think.  Drop Jab, replace it with 12 second recharge 95 damage (brute) attack.  Speed up animation on punch to be like Energy punch.  That would put it on par with other s/l sets out there and above IMHO due to footstomp being awesome.

 

Oh my God, you're, you're so underestimating what losing Rage would do to the set. Every power in the set is balanced around the expectation that it'll have at least 80% damage boost at all times. How strong are you expecting this one new move to be, to make up for losing all that damage in every other power?

 

Full disclosure.  My preference would be to just drop the -defense from rage but I am not about to lie and say SS has always been fully balanced around rage always being on. There are 2 attacks that are balanced around rage.  Yes I just said that, 2. An argument can be made for a 3rd and I will get to all of them.  Start off with the tier 1. No other set has anything like the craptastic power that is Jab. There are only a few uses for this power.  At low levels as something to do while everything else including brawl is on cooldown, this is a good attack to use.  At higher levels this only becomes slightly useful when rage is going.  At lvl 50 this makes a good mule for set bonuses for purple stuns for extra recharge, however with the AT enhancement sets having that 10% bonus as well, jab becomes even less useful.  This power should be dropped entirely and all the other tiers moved up so Punch is tier 1.

 

Now lets look at the tier 2 attack. Look at the other sets with a 4 second recharge attack and they all do the same damage including Super Strength.  I am not counting Titan Weapons as its 4 second attack is even lower damage but has +defense build in.  In animation time from fastest to slowest you have 1. Stone Fist & Energy Punch at about 1 second. 2. Punch (SS) just under 1.5 seconds 3. Beheader, Slash & Bash just over 1.5 seconds.  This is the other attack balanced around rage.  It takes longer to animate than the other punch sets that do the same damage so without rage it ends up being slightly better than the weapon sets.  What I proposed is to bring it in line with the other punch sets and have this attack also about 1 second.

 

Moving on to tier 3.  Look at other 8 second recharge single target attacks and you will find they again all do the same damage including Super Strength with 2 exceptions that do more.  Titan Weapons because that attack takes forever to animate and Fire because its secondary effect is more damage. Animation time fastest to slowest we have 1. Chop just under 1.6 (Arcanatime), 2. Pulverize, Haymaker (SS), Cremate & Bonesmaher at just over 1.7 seconds, 3. Heavy Mallet at 1.8 and 4. Crushing Blow at over 2.2 seconds.  Having rage on all the time would mean that this power is better than the other sets instead of being equal.

 

Tier 4 Avoid this like the clap.

 

Tier 5 KO Blow.  There is an argument to be made about this one having a longer recharge due to rage.  It does the same damage as Total Focus, Concentrated Strike and Seismic Smash but takes 5 seconds more to recharge.  However, it also has a much longer range, 13 feet for a melee attack.  If you really want to balance this power because you believe it was only made that way due to rage, you would have to drop the recharge down to 20 seconds and decrease the range to 7 feet to be in line with the other powers with the same recharge and damage.  I would not expect to see one change made without the other.

 

Moving on past Taunt and Rage to tier 8 Hurl.  This one is an 8 second recharge ranged attack doing 68.4 damage (brute).  Only a few sets have ranged attacks.  Hurl Boulder is exactly the same in every way.  Impale gets the same base damage and the same animation time.  In addition it gets extra toxic damage but also half the range. Kin gets a slightly faster animation but also half the range. Claws gets Focus but that is also half the range and lower damage but like the rest of the set it animates faster.  Pretty balanced without rage.

 

Last we have Footstomp.  Don't even pretend that this one is based around being equal with rage.

 

So like I said before all that you would need to change is 1 power and 1 animation to bring it in line.  You could also tweak KO Blow as well.  Some would be ok with it, others would not like the drop in the range.  Personally I like the range but it does not make sense for someone to be able to punch someone from 13 feet away so I would be for making the change.

 

So what to do with that left over power slot opened up by Jab?  The sets that have their tier 1 and 2 attacks on 4 and 8 second timers also have a 12 second attack so that is what I suggested but it could be anything.  Even 6 seconds like Barrage to give the set more flow or 16 seconds like Clobber for more HULK SMASH action.  What I would like to see is an attack that would truly make the set unique because without rage and with the other changes it is basically Stone Melee with a better AoE attack and slower Seismic Smash.  Something like a gut punch that could cause internal bleeding dot or -resist or a lunging punch aka Superman Punch with stun but the easier route would be to use an already existing animation like Stun from energy melee. 

 

Changing these things would be fairly easy outside of creating a new animation and that is all it would take to bring the set in line while getting rid of rage and swapping for BU.  But just because you can do something does not mean you should.  All I was doing is pointing out how it could be done without a rework of every power.  Again, I would prefer to just drop the -defense, but at least I can at least admit rage is OP outside of the crash and a ton of fun when it is up and even more fun when you have high recharge and footstomp is popping off every 5 seconds.

[Neogumbercules]

My thoughts are simple. Sorry. The actual developers of this game left SS alone for years, not because they didn't get around to "fixing" but because they knew that the set was fun the way it was and a lot of players enjoyed it. "Balance" does not always trump fun or playability or other, immutable values that can't be punched into a spreadsheet and argued about in forum math pvp.

 

Furthermore, changing sets that are considered "too strong" (I'm avoiding the term nerf here because the rage thing is being considered a bug fix) will only result in that set being abandoned by players who will all flock to the next best farmer. Evidence, go to AE in Atlas Park and tell me how many Spines/Fire Brutes you see.

 

IMO you put SS back to the way it was and leave it at that. This is a completely unnecessary change. You don't need to rebalance the whole powerset. Just undo the rage change and that's it.

 

Some changes this team has been working on are positive changes to sets that long needed the update (devices) but this is definitely not one of them.

 

I wanted to add here that although my memory is fuzzy at this point, I do not remember that the devs actively balanced/nerfed/buffed the game around the behavior of the the 1% farmers except in extreme circumstances or exploits (herding whole maps pre-aggro cap) and even if they had to, they never just fucked over the playability of the whole powerset, nor flat nerfed somemthing without bringing it up somewhere else. They never touched Fire/Kin controllers, SS/Fire Brutes, etc... Because they knew that was only a small subset of the player base and it wouldn't be fair to other players to have their sets nerfed because they were good farmers.

 

This is one of the reasons why this change to Rage feels so arbitrary and overdone.

[Sirion]

I'm pretty surprised at how this discussion has gone. Do that many people really think Super Strength was slam dunk, #1, the absolute best damage powerset during live City of Heroes?

By that much? It seems to be implied that this is well understood. I also don't think you can ever look at single powers in this game and call them "overpowered" - almost every set has a signature ability or two that in a vacuum is "overpowered".

 

In my opinion, the best move is to simply to try to get SS back to the state it was in live. Simply removing the defense portion of the debuff has one real effect: it makes super strength stronger at lower levels until Rage has enough cooldown to be stacked, at which point it's exactly the same. Also, you still want to do that even without it being required to get rid of the defense debuff anyway.

 

Even if the general view is that Super Strength is a bit too strong with an un-nerfed Rage, I don't think adding this huge downside is the answer. A lot of people's enjoyment of this game comes from the nostalgia of playing their old characters again, and this change is something that very strongly takes that away from some people. It can be made to work okay, a lot of things can, but this change is something that is a huge negative for some people and I think that sort of methodology is something that should be avoided. If anything, changes should be made to empower other things to match.

 

Alternatively, minor de-tuning of Rage will feel much less debilitating to old players and won't take away as much from them, even if numbers are slightly smaller - not to mention it's a much easier change to make.

[Erratic1]

There has been argument that having an all the time damage buff of 80% needs to be balanced against melee sets having short duration boost.

 

I will ignore that it is not all the time unless you build for it, but instead ask what Shield defense pays for its situational buff of the same amount via Against All Odds. True, AAO bonus fluctuates depending on the number of  nearby enemies so perma-Rage would be better when facing a solo Boss or AV. Even so, AAO is far better than Build Up in any situation where you have a crowd--situations Tankers and Brutes tend to be in.

 

If AAO does not need a penalty then the point of comparison is not Build Up but AAO, and whatever penalty there is should be in line with (and preferably reflective of) the qualitative differences in situations where Rage is better than AAO.

 

As example (not arguing this as a solution, just trying to give a sense of scale) since Super Strength mostly consists of single target attacks--something people arguing for the need of a penalty seem not to consider--how about the bonus damage gets divided by the number of targets be affected by a power? So Jab, Punch, Harmaker, et al would still get the full bonus. Foot Stomp and other area powers would still do bonus damage to each target but the bonus would drop--hit 5 targets and they each take 16% bonus damage.

[Impact]

I'm pretty surprised at how this discussion has gone. Do that many people really think Super Strength was slam dunk, #1, the absolute best damage powerset during live City of Heroes?

 

Yeah, it's a VERY weird discussion. When people on Reddit, these forums, or in help chat ask for the strongest melee builds, do the responses contain Super Strength?  Not at all.  Spines/Fire, Electric/Shield, whatever/whatever--but not SS.  Where are the nerf calls for the sets that create the most effective melee builds in the game?  But instead of looking at the over-performers, a number of posters in this thread want to take an already mediocre set and make it weaker.   

[Paradox Fate]

I'm pretty surprised at how this discussion has gone. Do that many people really think Super Strength was slam dunk, #1, the absolute best damage powerset during live City of Heroes?

 

Yeah, it's a VERY weird discussion. When people on Reddit, these forums, or in help chat ask for the strongest melee builds, do the responses contain Super Strength?  Not all.  Spines/Fire, Electric/Shield, whatever/whatever--but not SS.  Where are the nerf calls for the sets that create the most effective melee builds in the game?  But instead of looking at the over-performers, a number of posters in this thread want to take an already mediocre set and make it weaker. 

 

That depends on which AT the powersets take.

Without a doubt that Spine/Fire is a Brute favored (farm-)set, while Electric/Shield gives Scrappers the most benefit in terms of burst.

 

While the latter is something that is accepted, the former is that Brutes are able to completely replace the tankers after a certain level and outperform them vastly due to Fury.

But that's another issue for a different thread.

[Impact]

I'm pretty surprised at how this discussion has gone. Do that many people really think Super Strength was slam dunk, #1, the absolute best damage powerset during live City of Heroes?

 

Yeah, it's a VERY weird discussion. When people on Reddit, these forums, or in help chat ask for the strongest melee builds, do the responses contain Super Strength?  Not at all.  Spines/Fire, Electric/Shield, whatever/whatever--but not SS.  Where are the nerf calls for the sets that create the most effective melee builds in the game?  But instead of looking at the over-performers, a number of posters in this thread want to take an already mediocre set and make it weaker. 

 

That depends on which AT the powersets take.

Without a doubt that Spine/Fire is a Brute favored (farm-)set, while Electric/Shield gives Scrappers the most benefit in terms of burst.

 

Regardless of AT, no one is pushing SS/anything or anything/SS as the best, most overpowered, FoTM melee set.  If nerfs have to happen, target the top performers, not the middle or bottom of the pack.  Or (my preference), leave the top performers alone and buff the sets that are lagging, which includes SS.  Reverting the Rage change like the OP suggested would be a start.

[HelenCarnate]

It all depends on the definition of strongest.  AoE farming with a brute with a low budget go spines. But if you have a high budget and build for tons of recharge SS/Fire is best by a long margin.

[MalphiteMeIRL]

It all depends on the definition of strongest.  AoE farming with a brute with a low budget go spines. But if you have a high budget and build for tons of recharge SS/Fire is best by a long margin.

 

The sets are meant to be balanced around SO enhancements, on live it was always that way from my understanding.

[HelenCarnate]

It all depends on the definition of strongest.  AoE farming with a brute with a low budget go spines. But if you have a high budget and build for tons of recharge SS/Fire is best by a long margin.

 

The sets are meant to be balanced around SO enhancements, on live it was always that way from my understanding.

 

And?  I was responding to those that said SS never gets mentioned as the strongest and I just showed that it can be the strongest in certain cases.  I never said it should be changed.  I made suggestions on how to balance if it is required to remove Rage but also made it clear I would much rather just see them remove the defense debuff from the rage crash.

[JusticeEagle]

It all depends on the definition of strongest.  AoE farming with a brute with a low budget go spines. But if you have a high budget and build for tons of recharge SS/Fire is best by a long margin.

 

The sets are meant to be balanced around SO enhancements, on live it was always that way from my understanding.

 

And?  I was responding to those that said SS never gets mentioned as the strongest and I just showed that it can be the strongest in certain cases.  I never said it should be changed.  I made suggestions on how to balance if it is required to remove Rage but also made it clear I would much rather just see them remove the defense debuff from the rage crash.

 

Not really. Even fully IOed out, with perma-rage available, SS is really going to still be a middle of the pack set, especially when you remember how much S/L resistance there is in high-level content.

[Neogumbercules]

SS/Fire was only every especially awesomly good in very tailored farmable maps and specific AE content. In most normal gameplay it was decent, not amazing. That's exactly why the real devs never did anything about the Rage crash. Again I think this change was really just a solution in search of a problem.

[HelenCarnate]

SS/Fire was only every especially awesomly good in very tailored farmable maps and specific AE content. In most normal gameplay it was decent, not amazing. That's exactly why the real devs never did anything about the Rage crash. Again I think this change was really just a solution in search of a problem.

 

Exactly correct.  If you wanted a super fast farmer that can clear a map tailor made to do as little damage as possible to you while throwing mobs at you right and left, SS/Fire with perma double rage and around 45% uptime on FE was the way to go.  Without massive recharge that combo is just decent and spines/fire does better on a much lower budget. Now if you want something that can tackle most content out there with various damage types and debuffs, that is a whole different story.  My SS/Fire farms me money and IOs for the financing of my altiholism and that is what it is good for.  I would have to make significant changes to be able to have that character in a high level TF without decent support on the team as well.