Rebuilding rage.

[FUBARczar]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

Yeah.  How defense works.  Hell the entire to hit/ to miss system is borked.

If we should ignore Rage, then why are you commenting on it?  go start a post about the hit or miss system.

[Haijinx]

3 minutes ago, FUBARczar said:

If we should ignore Rage, then why are you commenting on it?  go start a post about the hit or miss system.

I don't think we should ignore it.  I just think its more a "one of many" type problems. 

[Naraka]

1 hour ago, FUBARczar said:

no you selectively quote while not looking at the entire post and argue against things that were not said with the meaning in which you selectively frame them.

I didn't have to selectively quote.  I quoted your whole post and my point was still relevant TO THAT *WHOLE* POST.

 

I'm sorry that my clarification didn't help you.

[FUBARczar]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

I don't think we should ignore it.  I just think its more a "one of many" type problems. 

I don't think anyone is saying that there aren't also other concerns, but the thread is titled "Rebuilding rage."

[Haijinx]

5 minutes ago, FUBARczar said:

I don't think anyone is saying that there aren't also other concerns, but the thread is titled "Rebuilding rage."

 

Ahh I see the problem. I meant only to give a worse example than the Rage crash problem.

 

I did not mean to say Rage should be ignored. 

 

The confusion is my fault.  

 

 

[Naraka]

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

Yeah.  How defense works.  Hell the entire to hit/ to miss system is borked.

 

I could be reaching here since I started playing the game after the release of CoV, but I feel that +ToHit was supposed to be a highly valuable stat for doing damage, just as important as +dmg when they were designing the system.  But because defense was tied to it and eventually got reworked a lot over time, the link between ToHit and damage was less important up until the end of live where everyone is running around with 95% Hit chance most of the time.

 

Excluding the current meta and looking at a hypothetical circumstance where the game still has 2 effective variables for damage output (that is, +ToHit and +dmg having similar weight of importance), which offensive sets would look more enticing?  And could having such a circumstance (outside of circumstances like support buffs and stacked Tactics) provide more varied ways to balance sets rather than the all or nothing +dmg and low ani-time/rech?

 

tl;dr: if ToHit were more valuable, maybe we'd be looking at Rage differently.

[Snarky]

"Duck Season"

[Vanden]

32 minutes ago, Naraka said:

tl;dr: if ToHit were more valuable, maybe we'd be looking at Rage differently.

 

I think ToHit is plenty valuable. Say you're fighting +3s and get hit with a -30% ToHit debuff; suddenly that 100% accuracy enhancement you've got that put you at 95% chance to hit is putting you at only 36%.

[Naraka]

1 hour ago, Vanden said:

 

I think ToHit is plenty valuable. Say you're fighting +3s and get hit with a -30% ToHit debuff; suddenly that 100% accuracy enhancement you've got that put you at 95% chance to hit is putting you at only 36%.

 

Alternatively, you just target the foe with the -ToHit debuff first before they can use it.

 

But I'm talking about circumstances outside of buffs/debuffs and just speaking on the hypothetical of ToHit being as valuable or nearly as valuable as +dmg.  To point out how it isn't, ToHit really won't do much outside of countering -ToHit once you can hit 95% of the time which can be common against +3s while +dmg will continue being valuable to counter -dmg as well as up to an AT's damage cap OR until you can one-shot foes with weaker attacks.

 

Imagine a system where everyone could critical hit and not just SoA/Stalkers/Scrappers (those ATs would just get enhanced crits or something) and ToHit affected that rate?  That's closer to what I'm talking about having closer to equal weight between +ToHit and +dmg.  Not exactly but moreso a hypothetical to make my point.

[DrInfernus]

2 hours ago, Vanden said:

 

It's incredible how people can fixate on the negative. With Rage you have Build Up 90% of the time. It's literally Build Up! There's nothing more Super Strength than having a massive damage buff all the time. If that means a trivial amount of time spent doing no damage for game balance reasons, that's something I'm absolutely fine with.

So would you call it a positive of War Mace if you could only use it 90% of the time? Or if an archer couldn’t use archery for 10% of the time, would that be a positive for the set? An empath who could heal 90% of the time… ‘positive’? 
 

A damage buff is literally the entirety of super strength. That’s what the ‘super’ part is. That’s the ability. Fire blasts are available to fire blasters 100% of the time. Martial Arts are available to martial artists 100% of the time. Archery is available to archers 100% of the time. Why the hell should super strength being available to super strength characters 90% of the time be seen as anything other than a negative? 

[Vanden]

6 minutes ago, DrInfernus said:

So would you call it a positive of War Mace if you could only use it 90% of the time? Or if an archer couldn’t use archery for 10% of the time, would that be a positive for the set? An empath who could heal 90% of the time… ‘positive’? 

 

If the rest of the set was designed around it, and the 90% of uptime was spent at a higher baseline level than normal, yes. Absolutely.

[Snarky]

2 minutes ago, Vanden said:

 

If the rest of the set was designed around it, and the 90% of uptime was spent at a higher baseline level than normal, yes. Absolutely.

i think all powersets should only be available 90% time.  Should make incarnate trials more challenging.

[Vanden]

Just now, Snarky said:

i think all powersets should only be available 90% time.  Should make incarnate trials more challenging.

 

I’d prefer variety among the power sets.

[Haijinx]

4 minutes ago, Vanden said:

 

If the rest of the set was designed around it, and the 90% of uptime was spent at a higher baseline level than normal, yes. Absolutely.

Its closer to 93.5%  though 

[Vanden]

2 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Its closer to 93.5%  though 

Ah, so like a spherical cow, then.

[Snarky]

4 minutes ago, Vanden said:

 

I’d prefer variety among the power sets.

sure, lets give some 80% 83% 85% uptime.  good thinking.

[Naraka]

24 minutes ago, DrInfernus said:

So would you call it a positive of War Mace if you could only use it 90% of the time? Or if an archer couldn’t use archery for 10% of the time, would that be a positive for the set? An empath who could heal 90% of the time… ‘positive’? 
 

A damage buff is literally the entirety of super strength. That’s what the ‘super’ part is. That’s the ability. Fire blasts are available to fire blasters 100% of the time. Martial Arts are available to martial artists 100% of the time. Archery is available to archers 100% of the time. Why the hell should super strength being available to super strength characters 90% of the time be seen as anything other than a negative? 

 

Does War Mace, Archery, Fire Blast or Martial Arts have Rage or an equivalent damage buff?

[Naraka]

8 minutes ago, Snarky said:

sure, lets give some 80% 83% 85% uptime.  good thinking.

 

There were some at some point.  Inferno, Black Star, Blizzard, Thunderous Blast, etc.  There are still others like Power Surge, Unstoppable, Elude, Overload, etc.

[Haijinx]

20 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Ah, so like a spherical cow, then.

Im voting green

[siolfir]

2 hours ago, Haijinx said:

I must play that other COH where Crushing Uppercut and KOB are actually really good powers.  

 

 

To reiterate my argument, I didn't say they were bad powers, I said that they were underperforming. The difference is that both powers - while offering the highest DPA in their respective sets - do not follow the design formulas, doing so in a manner which penalizes the player. You mentioned extended range. This is ignored in the formulas, which only care about range when it comes to cones to determine the AoE size. You mentioned secondary effects, which are also supposed to be ignored.

 

They aren't alone, either: a lot of powersets, usually from early sets, vary from the design formulas either in positive aspects (most old DoTs got an extra 10% damage over what the formula stated they should, and Shadow Maul got extra damage beyond that and a melee cone) or negative aspects (Whirling <pick a weapon>, Whirling Hands was this way until it was adjusted as part of the EM revamp, or Knockout Blow's extra-long recharge which got inherited by Crushing Uppercut, which does even less base damage). Long story short, they made design formulas and then decided to ignore them, but based on those formulas Knockout Blow and Crushing Uppercut don't perform as well as they should, regardless of their actual performance.

 

And outside of that, I will say that I haven't played Street Justice since live (I played one then to the mid-30s and also played it while it was in beta), but only a small part of that my distaste of how Crushing Uppercut was the only power in the set that was balanced according to the possibility of the combo level it could achieve - mostly it's because I'm "meh" on the animations. I also have a level 50 SS/Bio Brute that I usually just don't use Rage on unless I'm having trouble hitting things because even though I'd get better performance with it, the crash annoys me to the point where most of the time I would rather just not use it than have a timeout period for doing so. Thus, rebalancing Super Strength to be less dependent on Rage is something that I certainly wouldn't mind happening.

Edited June 20, 2021 by siolfir
", doing so "

[KelvinKole]

I think they should just rename Super strength as Rage Melee. Leave everything else alone. 
 

Then create a new set called Super Strength, with all the same attacks but with properly balanced base damage and a traditional build up. 

[DrInfernus]

33 minutes ago, Naraka said:

 

Does War Mace, Archery, Fire Blast or Martial Arts have Rage or an equivalent damage buff?

No, but you’re missing the point. Super Strength IS the power, just like Fire Blast IS the power or Martial Arts IS the power. You’re literally supposed to be able to hit harder than everyone else all the time, otherwise it’d just be strength, not super strength. 
 

So why shouldn’t you be able to use the set’s power all of the time? Why should we be happy with 90%? Could understand if you just lost the buff for 10% of the time, but make you literally unable to bruise a peach for 10% of the time? When you’re meant to have super strength? Come on…

[arcane]

2 minutes ago, DrInfernus said:

So why shouldn’t you be able to use the set’s power all of the time? Why should we be happy with 90%? Could understand if you just lost the buff for 10% of the time, but make you literally unable to bruise a peach for 10% of the time? When you’re meant to have super strength? Come on…

Because your attacks are better than everyone else’s the rest of the time? It’s called a tradeoff.

 

Angels now has me convinced I need a more proccy SS toon. I have other characters that use Vigor and mostly procs, but not my SS tanker. But Rage’s ToHit and proc abuse sounds like a great match.

Edited June 20, 2021 by arcane

[Haijinx]

I had 2 SS on live that lived to 50+ with builds, etc a WP/SS tanker made on the day WP came out and a SS/Fire brute.  Contrary to legend the damage crash existed there as well.  They played pretty well. 

 

I have a SR/SS tanker on homecoming as well.  I had intended to make a decent recharge build with 65% defense so I could ignore the def crash.  But after a couple of vet levels I got distracted by a fire blaster.

 

I have 2 incarnate SJ characters a scrapper and a stalker.  Both have crushing uppercut.  I tried without it but the result is just pitiful.  Crushing uppercut is critical to that set.  

 

KOB and CU aren't really underperformers per se, just they have added utility (two controls) which is rare.   You can even take advantage of the hold part by using a sup winter hold proc in them.  To stack holds.

[arcane]

6 minutes ago, DrInfernus said:

You’re literally supposed to be able to hit harder than everyone else all the time, otherwise it’d just be strength, not super strength. 

This sentence doesn’t seem like it’s coming from someone who’s in touch with the concept of game balance, sorry. They tried implementing this exact philosophy on Titan Weapons, but it created an imbalance that had to be nerfed. Not going to happen.