Devs, Super Reflexes in need of an update....

[Bill Z Bubba]

27 minutes ago, Naraka said:

That's not how proliferation works. You don't port it to the ATs that have the effects you want then import their unique effects that aren't for your AT.

 

But it's fine to ADD effects that don't exist at all. Ignoring that some powersets ported didn't have taunt auras so they just got slapped on willy-nilly. Ya know what? Don't give scrappers that lack taunt auras the taunt auras. Fine. Just unass the bullshit recently added that's now causing everything to run away on a whim.

 

One or the other. Fix what was broken recently, or fix what was wrong in the first place. It's bullshit for some scrappers to have a taunt aura while others don't and also blows your whole "unique effects that aren't for your AT" line out of the water.

[Naraka]

8 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

It's bullshit for some scrappers to have a taunt aura while others don't and also blows your whole "unique effects that aren't for your AT" line out of the water.

 

You know why some Scrapper auras taunt while others don't. Don't pretend it's arbitrary.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, Naraka said:

You know why some Scrapper auras taunt while others don't. Don't pretend it's arbitrary.

 

Irrelevant now. Don't pretend otherwise.

[Naraka]

Just now, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Irrelevant now. Don't pretend otherwise.

No, you're trying to insult my intelligence as if now it's required to create an entire post explaining why some Scrapper auras taunt. You know why it happens so pretending it's somehow irrelevant now is disingenuous and pointless to the statement I made. This is just derailing the whole thread just because you want to withhold relevant knowledge.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Yes, I know fully well why some scrapper armors lacked a taunt aura back before redside existed. Back before Bio, Shield and Rad armors existed. So I stand by my statement: It's Fucking Irrelevant Now.

[Naraka]

4 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Yes, I know fully well why some scrapper armors lacked a taunt aura back before redside existed. Back before Bio, Shield and Rad armors existed and lack them now. So I stand by my statement: It's Fucking Irrelevant Now.

 

Fixed.

 

So why not replace Confront with a teleport attack and make the Fighting pool inherent and increase the amount of auto cast powers to 24? Or just allow everyone to pick and choose what pools, powers, inherent and effects every player can on any AT? I mean, since the game isn't retail, those limitations are fucking irrelevant now.

 

I honestly don't have an argument about the AI tho. I really never cared that much about fleeing foes. If that is a problem, then address that.

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 minutes ago, Naraka said:

Back before Bio, Shield and Rad armors existed and lack them now.

 

Really? CoD says you're quite wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

[Rudra]

I did not know any scrapper sets included a taunt aura. Guess I need to start playing rad, bio, or shield. (Also, I just checked in game. It is not just City of Data that says they still taunt. Those powers in City of, under detailed info, says they taunt too. So saying they lack those taunts now is incorrect.)

 

Also, that has nothing to do with replacing Confront with combat teleport. If you're going to argue over that dead horse, please do it there.

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 minutes ago, Rudra said:

I did not know any scrapper sets included a taunt aura.

 

The majority of them do.

[Rudra]

I typically stick to brutes. Thank you for letting me know.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Checking. I might be wrong. Yup, I was wrong. 6 of 14 have taunt auras unless I'm missing something.

 

 

[aethereal]

Scrapper armor sets with taunt auras:

 

Bio (Evolving Armor)

Invul (Invincibility)

Rad (Beta Decay)

Shield (Against All Odds)

Willpower (Rise to the Challenge, smaller duration than the others)

 

Pretty sure there are 5, not 6, but maybe @Bill Z Bubba can clarify what he thinks the 6th is, possible I missed somthing.  I just triple-checked in CoD, but there's no way to search as far as I can tell and maybe a taunt is hiding in some power I didn't think to check.

 

All Brute and Tanker armors have taunt auras (there remain people who don't know this.  Also, Willpower's taunt isn't really weak on Tanker/Brute anymore).  No stalker or sentinel armors have them.

 

Scrapper Dark, Stone, and Ice have mez or slow auras that arguably help against runners without being taunts.

 

I am personally not particularly invested in Scrapper armor sets having taunts, but it's obviously something that people feel strongly about in both directions.  I wonder if a synthesis viewpoint might be for all Scrappers sets to get weak taunt auras like Willpower's, or for Scrapper sets to get slow/mez auras but not taunt auras, or for scrappers to get PBAoE powers that taunt but which aren't toggles (like maybe Energy Drain could have a taunt effect, but you don't get the effortless taunting that Brutes/Tanks get).  Replace Confront with a not-perma-out-of-the-box ten-target PBAoE taunt?

Edited June 5, 2022 by aethereal

[Rudra]

Aren't brutes capped at 5? Scrappers have no business taunting more than a brute. (Though I am still annoyed that brutes taunt less than tanks.)

 

Edit: My reasoning hearkens back to pre-proliferation of ATs. Since brutes filled the tanker role red side before any non-EAT was playable on either side from character start, and the scrapper role being what it is, it should not be able to simultaneously taunt more than either tankers or brutes. So if tankers cap at 10 and brutes at 5, then scrappers should not be higher than brutes in the taunt department.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Rudra

[aethereal]

23 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Aren't brutes capped at 5? Scrappers have no business taunting more than a brute. (Though I am still annoyed that brutes taunt less than tanks.)

 

Edit: My reasoning hearkens back to pre-proliferation of ATs. Since brutes filled the tanker role red side before any non-EAT was playable on either side from character start, and the scrapper role being what it is, it should not be able to simultaneously taunt more than either tankers or brutes. So if tankers cap at 10 and brutes at 5, then scrappers should not be higher than brutes in the taunt department.

 

As far as I'm aware, Brute taunt auras have target cap 10 as usual.

 

Both Brute and Tanker Taunt actual power has a 5 target cap.  It would be weird, admittedly, for a Confront replacement to target more than Taunt does, but hear me out:  in this world, scrappers would get no taunt aura, and hypothetical 10-cap Confront would be non-perma out of the box (while Taunt is way, way, way more than perma out of the box), and it would be PBAoE rather than targeted.  So in this scenario, I think that Confront would be more comparable to the (10-target) taunt auras that Brutes and Tankers get rather than the (5 target) Taunt that they get.  You'd use it when enemies started running to pull them back so that you could kill them before the taunt wore off.

 

Note also that Brute and Tankers both get punch-taunt effects.

 

The concept I'm trying to get at is, instead of having some scrapper armors having Really Good Taunts and everyone else has no/really pathetic (Confront-only) taunts, try to normalize Scrappers to "way less taunt than Brutes and Tankers, but still something."

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, aethereal said:

Pretty sure there are 5, not 6, but maybe @Bill Z Bubba can clarify what he thinks the 6th is, possible I missed somthing. 

 

Nrg Aura with Entropic Aura.

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Nrg Aura with Entropic Aura.

You're right.  That also has a redirect to the brute inherent, seems sketchy.

[Stormwalker]

5 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

As far as I'm aware, Brute taunt auras have target cap 10 as usual.

 

Both Brute and Tanker Taunt actual power has a 5 target cap.  It would be weird, admittedly, for a Confront replacement to target more than Taunt does, but hear me out:  in this world, scrappers would get no taunt aura, and hypothetical 10-cap Confront would be non-perma out of the box (while Taunt is way, way, way more than perma out of the box), and it would be PBAoE rather than targeted.  So in this scenario, I think that Confront would be more comparable to the (10-target) taunt auras that Brutes and Tankers get rather than the (5 target) Taunt that they get.  You'd use it when enemies started running to pull them back so that you could kill them before the taunt wore off.

 

Note also that Brute and Tankers both get punch-taunt effects.

 

The concept I'm trying to get at is, instead of having some scrapper armors having Really Good Taunts and everyone else has no/really pathetic (Confront-only) taunts, try to normalize Scrappers to "way less taunt than Brutes and Tankers, but still something."

 

I have no interest in taking Confront.  I'm not trying to do the tank's job.   The only reason I want a taunt aura is because the flee code is completely out of whack right now.  IEither give me a taunt aura on all my secondaries, or better yet, fix the flee code so I don't need a taunt aura to solo effectively.

[arcane]

1 hour ago, Stormwalker said:

 

fix the flee code so I don't need a taunt aura to solo effectively.

This. 

[Naraka]

On 6/4/2022 at 10:17 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Really? CoD says you're quite wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That was a misread. I didn't say Bio, Rad and Shield lacked taunt auras, I was talking about the ones that currently lack them still do (i.e. the 1st sentence you wrote: "Yes, I know fully well why some scrapper armors lacked a taunt aura back before redside existed")

 

And sets were introduced after redside that also didn't have taunt auras. (Hello there Electric Armor!! *GASP!* Oh my! When did you get here Stone Armor?)

 

Stop playing dumb.  It's exceptionally tiresome.

 

[EDIT] And just to state it plainly as fucking possible. YOU know why some auras taunt for Scrapper and YOU know why others don't. It's not fucking rocket science WHY they were made to taunt for Brute and Tanker. While the issues you have on running mobs may be bullshit, your obfuscation of the point why there is a difference in tanking for Scrappers and others is just as bullshit. Fucking stop it.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Naraka

[Bill Z Bubba]

47 minutes ago, Naraka said:

[EDIT] And just to state it plainly as fucking possible. YOU know why some auras taunt for Scrapper and YOU know why others don't. It's not fucking rocket science WHY they were made to taunt for Brute and Tanker. While the issues you have on running mobs may be bullshit, your obfuscation of the point why there is a difference in tanking for Scrappers and others is just as bullshit. Fucking stop it.

 

There is no obfuscation. Scrappers that have taunt auras, as the argument goes, have them because they "rely on the taunt aura to function."

Invincibility "needs" to keep enemies close for +defense.

Against All Odds "needs" enemies close for the +damage.

Entropic Aura "needs" enemies close for the +recharge.

etc, etc, etc.

 

And also complete horseshit and YOU know it which is why YOU keep playing the idiot and projecting that onto anyone that doesn't agree.

 

If the scrappers that have the taunt auras now suddenly lost them they'd also get to deal with runners and then wouldn't NEED the extra mitigation now would they?

 

Either remove scrapper taunt auras completely from all scrappers, or give all scrappers taunt auras. Leaving it as is is unfair, unnecessary garbage. So take your tone and your vapid little insults and shove 'em.

[Blackjoy]

On 6/4/2022 at 5:27 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

OP and I had a long discussion. He watched me faceplant against +4 IDF a couple times and slaughter a bunch of them as well. I wasn't allowed to use incarnate powers and in my defense, BZB scrap is designed for Barrier usage. We discussed the Rad armor scrapper that managed it. We discussed fair testing. There's, of course, common ground in our views. We both see the leveling process as a bit unfair for SR. Thus the need for the power order change. We both agree that the newer sets are OP AF compared to the older sets. We agreed that even giving SR the Master Brawler treatment from Sentinels would be a good thing. I'm sure he'll add his takes on the events later.

Great to connect with Bill in-game

 

My take is that nothing we did together and nothing that happened proves or disproves my position.  It's hard to normalize data as scrappers level up.  It's almost impossible for individuals to do it at lvl 50.   Builds will dominate outcomes, far more than secondaries.   What Incarnates someone has as passives can dramatically affect performance and outcomes.  

 

For me, I am basing my OP on the observation I've made and my own attempts to normalize the data (which obviously no human an do perfectly in these types of settings).   My observations tell me that SR, in and of itself, underperforms.  By how much?  I can't say.   But I can't prove that.  Only the devs can prove or disprove that by running the numbers and using ANOVA or actually running simulations that only rely on the secondary.  

 

Underlying this entire thread is a question I cannot answer: What is the baseline for scrappers?   What should be the metric?   Is it fair or good enough if all Scrappers can reach the low mark and then we just don't care what the high mark is?  One thing that it seems all reputable posters agree, is that SR suffers, comparatively below 35.  I suspect that truly fixing that might require more than just swapping Evasion and those changes might be sufficient to fix QoL issues as well.

 

What I will argue on an engineering level is that there are two glaring deficiencies:

 

1) SR needs more mitigation mechanics other than just +DEF and some scaling +RES.   The more types of mitigation a set has, the more robust it is.  I am pretty certain there is no other set with as few mechanics as SR.

 

2) SR lacks synergy with itself.   Many of the other sets (I haven't researched it heavily), seem to have powers whose whole is greater than the sum.   To put it another way, there are non-linear benefits within the set.  Other than DDR, which is arguably required for SR to function, it has none.  No power benefits any other power.

 

Devs, please run the numbers.

 

EDIT: One thing Bill and I definitely agree on....I would rather see all the over-performing sets brought down at the high end, rather  than SR made better.  But nerfs have rarely been popular.    The fact that so anyone can solo ITF at 4x8, imo, is broken.  But I'm not trying to fix that.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Blackjoy

[Blackjoy]

15 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

If the scrappers that have the taunt auras now suddenly lost them they'd also get to deal with runners and then wouldn't NEED the extra mitigation now would they?

While I don't care about runners or Taunt auras for scrappers, I have to agree with Bill on this point.   It is a flawed argument that any scrapper needs a Taunt aura for their mitigation to work.  As Bill correctly points out, if the at mob is running, then it is not attacking and it's impact on the scapper can be discounted (ignoring its taking a few pot shots on the way back).

 

The question is why is there a Taunt aura?  I can think of three reasons:

 

1.  The basic design philosophy that if you are constantly debuffing an enemy, or deriving some benefit from its presence, the game wants those enemies to attack you.  The only way to enable that is to code a Taunt flag onto those PBAoE powers.   I do find it really annoying that the game doesn't provide PCs with the same auto-knowledge on who is toggle debuffing them.

 

2.  It was an intended design goal to allow some Scrapper sets to pseudo tank via Taunt auras.  As is obvious, AT's on the Hero side (much less true on the villain side) were designed to overlap.  The idea was that no AT was required and that AT's can fill in.   Controllers overlap Defenders.  Defenders overlap Blasters.  Blasters overlap Scrappers (Depending on secondary).   Scrappers overlap Tanks.  And Tanks overlap Controllers.    By giving some Scrapper AT's a Taunt Aura, they could perform light tanking duties.  This is also evident via the inclusion of Confront on almost (is it all?) all Scrapper primaries.

 

3.  The devs simply did no want to change the code on Tanker abilities.   IT's easier to have all identical powers work the same mechanics and you just apply a global modifier to the AT.    Now, this could be a bogus reason if there are some identical powers that do have different mechanics, but I haven't researched it.

 

In any event,  I am not arguing for any fixes of this nature, but I am not going to stop others from discussing it.   

 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

10 minutes ago, Blackjoy said:

Devs, please run the numbers.

 

Question is ... can they?

 

And what numbers precisely? Amount of damage taken? What % of it was PLed and thus damage taken will be near zero? Or teamed with an empath?

 

Go off of debt badges? What about badgers and their desire to faceplant often? How will that affect the data?

 

Total time to 50? How does that work? Solo to 50 will be vastly slower than farming 8-man team TFs all the way up. Soloing with SOs to 50 will be vastly different than slapping in IOs as soon as you can.

 

I don't know what the OG devs used as their actual baseline for powerset performance. There's so much in the code that makes absolutely no sense that I was never able to work it out. I don't think they knew nor do I think any of the rest of us do.

 

We can't even really go off of things like least played powersets. Back in the big data dump, sr/claws was at the absolute bottom of tanks played and having one I'm still dumbfounded by that fact. Even the seemingly universally despised regen isn't universally despised. There's several posters here that absolutely love it and swear its performance is on par with the other sets.

 

I absolutely get the desire for hard data but unless we narrow down specifically what we need and why, we're grasping at straws.

[arcane]

All I know is, when I’m getting some grief for dying and/or not paying the best attention, and I need to load up a character that I can be positive won’t die on the next TF, even afk… I load up an SR tanker 🙂 

 

I mean I guess I know other things too, like take opinions with a grain of salt when the person opining is telling you what pool powers you’re allowed to use.

Edited June 6, 2022 by arcane

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 minutes ago, arcane said:

I load up an SR tanker 🙂 

 

But we're talking about SR on Scrappers!

 

As with every other armor, give it to a tank and its some crazy OP.