MAKE ENDURACE A NON ISSUE

[Shin Magmus]

   Maelwys's post shows builds that are nearly identical to the leveling build I'm running on my new alt.  It's a Stone/Ice Brute and, at lv22, I can slot a bunch of attuned stuff including both the procs in Stamina and all the Heal set uniques except for Numina's which has a minimum level of 27.  My attacks don't have Endredux in them even though I know it's effective, because I don't need it and I loaded them up with dmg procs instead.  Generic spots still use lv25 SO's cus I don't like to replace them with generic IOs until lv30s: slottable at lv27.  That's the first level where they are stronger than SO's instead of weaker.  What you're seeing is a visual representation of how and why we don't have Endurance issues. 

[Uun]

8 hours ago, Azari said:

Meanwhile I’m playing an Axe/Invuln scrapper that’s borderline unplayable without fully +5 slotting everything, using psi mastery, incarnates, and accolades. 🤣 

Not sure what you mean by unplayable, but you're doing something wrong. You should be able to have a very playable build without any of those. Invul only has 3 toggles and 4 of its powers are autos that use no endurance.

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, Uun said:

Not sure what you mean by unplayable, but you're doing something wrong. You should be able to have a very playable build without any of those. Invul only has 3 toggles and 4 of its powers are autos that use no endurance.

To be fair; Axe is extremely endurance hungry.

Its attacks all have a very high Base Endurance cost plus a fairly low Cast Time; so if/when you get sufficiently high recharge buffs to cycle them all back to back the resulting drain on your blue bar can have you gasping pretty quickly if you haven't factored that in and adjusted your build to accommodate it. Sure; most of the old hands won't even blink at this and will just intrinsically tweak their characters to cope; or will pick powerset combinations that make it a non-factor in the first place... but I can definitely picture some less experienced players getting caught out.

I have an Axe/FA Brute (so 3x toggles, plus Fighting Pool and CJ) who has a decent amount of EndRed slotting in their attacks (Gash and Swoop have ~70%; the others have between 15% and 41%) and both Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection plus all the usual passive accolades and various IOs and set bonuses; giving them a recovery surplus of about +2.53 End/Sec (before Procs and Consume). They can still comfortably blow through most of their blue bar between Consume cycles; and whenever they're fighting a Single Target and Consume gets an unlucky "miss" things can occasionally get a bit dicey. They're one of the few toons I have which intentionally keeps more than one Big Blue Insp in their tray.

So whilst I'm a big fan of Axe's high performance ceiling... I'd be rather unlikely to recommend combining it with a powerset like Invulnerability which doesn't get any +Recovery boosts or Endurance Recovery clickies (at least without relying on Ageless). However Willpower (with Quick Recovery) is another matter entirely.
 

Edited Monday at 04:10 PM by Maelwys

[Uun]

8 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

To be fair; Axe is extremely endurance hungry.

Good point. My Axe is /Bio and I still find myself shifting to Efficient pretty often.

[srmalloy]

16 hours ago, baster said:

You never played WoW ??? WooiWoo you must be last of maybe 3 gamer humans left alive that haven't yet play WoW at some point. 

Neither have I, although I've played both Aion and Tabula Rasa before becoming heavily disenchanted with the 'group or go nowhere' playstyle of both, and having a target painted on my back for gankers in Aion, then SWTOR and ESO before the CoH rogue servers went public, at which point my play time in both dropped to near zero.

[Forager]

8 hours ago, Ultimo said:

Granted, there were lots of clockwork draining endurance, but I've been told in other threads they don't actually drain enough endurance to be noticeable....

 

Somebody lied to you.

[Maelwys]

24 minutes ago, Forager said:

Somebody lied to you.

 

AFAIK regular Clockwork drain between 1 and 3.75 endurance per ranged blast (before Purple Patch) and we're talking about a Shield Defense toon with a presumably decent chunk of Ranged Defense. So I'm guessing the plinking isn't the problem.

[baster]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

Neither have I, although I've played both Aion and Tabula Rasa before becoming heavily disenchanted with the 'group or go nowhere' playstyle of both, and having a target painted on my back for gankers in Aion, then SWTOR and ESO before the CoH rogue servers went public, at which point my play time in both dropped to near zero.

I think i barly just tried TR and Aion but i can tell you WoW is much much better. I mean dont take my ward for it. Even now decades after its release still between 100 milion and 130milion people activly play WoW.  And many hundreds of mions did over the decades since its release. Thst should give you an idea of how good and addictive thst game was and still is. Problem is its a massive consistent time sink like no other.

[Ultimo]

  

5 hours ago, Maelwys said:

I'm guessing it looks something like this?





Whenever it could look more like this:



With Parry to fall back on I really wouldn't recommend getting Weave (particularly at lower levels) as softcapping your Melee Defense is trivial. Whilst stacking S/L resistance (Tough and True Grit/Deflection) is definitely worthwhile... IMO that's a "later on in the build" thing when you have more Enhancement slots and the Might of Tanker ATO and the two +Res Globals. At low-levels my focus would be on melee defense plus regeneration/healing procs; and making sure my (few!) attacks hit reasonably hard.

Shield is also a very easy framework for 5x LotG +rechs; and you can fit them in early (as shown above) so your attacks and Active Defense could all be benefiting from almost a SO's worth of global +Rech with minimal investment.

But the main thing will be just getting Health and Stamina + your attacks all slotted properly. The rest can fall into place later.

The first build you showed is similar, but there are some differences.  All the attacks have 4 slots, 1 endurance reduction, 1 accuracy and 2 damage.  I have been considering whether Weave is worthwhile to take, but I hadn't quite decided yet.  Parry helps, but it's just for Melee Defense, and Weave helps with everything.  As a Tanker, I built him around his defenses, trying to boost them as much as possible.  Defense took priority over Resistance, as not getting hit helps prevent things like endurance drains, slows and the like.

 

The character is not one I play often, so I haven't invested a lot of inf in him.  No IOs, and no sets.

 

1 hour ago, Forager said:

 

Somebody lied to you.

I once posted a thread asking if the secondary effects of NPC powers had been increased, things like Clockwork endurance drains, Ice slows and so forth.  The usual wagon circlers gathered and told me in no uncertain terms that I was wrong, and that the effects I was seeing were my imagination.

[tidge]

20 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

 I once posted a thread asking if the secondary effects of NPC powers had been increased, things like Clockwork endurance drains, Ice slows and so forth.  The usual wagon circlers gathered and told me in no uncertain terms that I was wrong, and that the effects I was seeing were my imagination.

 

This thread?

 

 

[Forager]

8 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

The usual wagon circlers gathered and told me in no uncertain terms that I was wrong, and that the effects I was seeing were my imagination.

 

People are unimaginative and tend to overvalue their own personal experiences. When they dismiss another perspective out of hand, it usually means they have a very limited understanding of the subject being discussed.

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, baster said:

I mean dont take my ward for it. Even now decades after its release still between 100 milion and 130milion people activly play WoW.  And many hundreds of mions did over the decades since its release. Thst should give you an idea of how good and addictive thst game was and still is.

Ahh. The "jump on the bandwagon appeal" fallacy. For which I keep the following Bloom County strip:

Just because something is popular does not make it better, or even good. WoW is the MMO that fossilized the "holy trinity" of archetypes and "you are what you wear" gear structure that so many other MMOs have slavishly repeated in the hope of becoming the "WoW killer", along with other dubious decisions that have been repeated again and again by other MMOs trying to steal some of WoW's customer base.

[Ultimo]

37 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

This thread?

 

 

Ya, that's the one, I believe.

[AerialAssault]

So, throwing out the idea of completely overhauling the Endurance system because let's face it, that'll never happen (I don't doubt you HC Devs, I just know the limits), this thread does bring up some interesting points.

 

Firstly, and this is something us veterans and old heads often forget, is that the new player/returning player experience for City of Heroes is obtuse and sometimes downright labyrinthian. We may not like to do so, but it's worth listening to what these people have to say and see how we can help these people.

 

Now, while the 'obvious' thing might be to simply ask in-game for help, I feel that the game itself should and could do more. For example, what if the Trainers were able to give out some advice, paraphrased from some of the advice given here? So, there would be a dialogue option for 'I need help!', which branches into several other dialogue options for common questions that new/returning players might have, such as, 'I keep running out of Endurance!'. 

 

I am a big supporter of 'Help players help themselves'. I'm not a fan of making big, sweeping changes to the game because some people can't or won't learn to work with the game's mechanics. I guarantee, the feeling of 'Getting It' when it comes to the Enhancement Puzzle is really good, the game really opens up when it clicks, and if we were to start say, removing Endurance because of some people's skill issues, I feel that the game would start to lose more of it's identity which separates it from other MMOs, and the reason myself and others are even here is because CoX is so unlike other MMOs, even if you ignore the character customization aspect. Let's .. not throw that away.

[Ultimo]

6 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Ahh. The "jump on the bandwagon appeal" fallacy. For which I keep the following Bloom County strip:

Just because something is popular does not make it better, or even good. WoW is the MMO that fossilized the "holy trinity" of archetypes and "you are what you wear" gear structure that so many other MMOs have slavishly repeated in the hope of becoming the "WoW killer", along with other dubious decisions that have been repeated again and again by other MMOs trying to steal some of WoW's customer base.

There's an interesting thing, and I know we're drifting off topic here, but is it an appeal to the bandwagon?  I mean, if there's a lot of people playing it, doesn't that suggest there is some quality in it?  I mean, if it was a bad game, wouldn't there be fewer players?  Certainly the retention of so many subscribers suggests the addictiveness?

[Maelwys]

6 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

Ya, that's the one, I believe.

Ahh yes. The one where your level 17 Brute was apparently getting their blue bar drained from 100% to zero in a single salvo, by three "Cog" minions on a rooftop.
(Cog minions possessing exactly one attack that can drain endurance, at a whopping -1 endurance per shot).

 
 

[Ultimo]

5 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Ahh yes. The one where your level 17 Brute was apparently getting their blue bar drained from 100% to zero in a single salvo, by three "Cog" minions on a rooftop.
(Cog minions possessing exactly one attack that can drain endurance, at a whopping -1 endurance per shot).

 
 

I'm not trying to restart that particular argument, considering how antagonistic it was at times.  I only reported what happened.

 

Same thing with my example in this thread.  The Shield/Broadsword guy WAS forever out of endurance.  If you're going to tell me the Clockwork guys weren't contributing to that problem, then it must be a problem with the endurance system in general.

[Seed22]

21 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

There's an interesting thing, and I know we're drifting off topic here, but is it an appeal to the bandwagon?  I mean, if there's a lot of people playing it, doesn't that suggest there is some quality in it?  I mean, if it was a bad game, wouldn't there be fewer players?  Certainly the retention of so many subscribers suggests the addictiveness?

I get the idea but I counter the bandwagon fallacy with, well im not a psych person, but perhaps theres a fallacy for envy almost? But thats kinda the best way to describe it. Like the kid who was ostracized lamenting the popular kids or the one person who doesnt enjoy a certain activity in a group who isnt included when said group enjoys doing the activity hating it.

 

I know, not even close to a great example, but it’s the best I have. Yes WoW is more popular and that may not always translate to everything being better than CoH but having played it, it is better at least imo from a gameplay perspective. There are more things to do in WoW, there is more of a puzzle to figuring characters out across specs instead of CoH where you slot the same IOs across the same power types to minmax, and of course the endgame is more pronounced. Some would say better, some find it worse, but objectively there is more to WoW than CoH in content to engage with and content variety.

 

 

I think WoW is hated in part for the infamous endgame toxicity which I can understand. But ofc thats not all groups, and tbh I’m very skeptical of the stories that have been recited here on the forums in the past. I find some exaggerated, as sometimes to this community telling someone to bring Barrier to 4 star is considered elitist and toxic so I kind of wonder what REALLY happened in that WoW raid group ya know? 

Edited Monday at 07:25 PM by Seed22

[Maelwys]

3 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

The Shield/Broadsword guy WAS forever out of endurance.  If you're going to tell me the Clockwork guys weren't contributing to that problem, then it must be a problem with the endurance system in general.

Oh I'm sure all those -1 endurance drains every ~6 seconds (-0.167 end/sec) were contributing.
I'm just not so sure that they (or "the Endurance System in General") were the primary issue.

A /Shield would be dodging at least three quarters of those blasts and just 3 enhancements (a Panacea, a Miracle and a Performance Shifter) can grant >0.875 end/sec.

Choosing not to use all the tools available to you is an option, certainly, but if/when you subsequently start struggling there aren't that many directions to start pointing fingers.

[Maelwys]

24 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

I kind of wonder what REALLY happened in that WoW raid group ya know? 

It was faked, sadly.

(but hey; at least I have chicken...) 🐔 🍽️

[El D]

34 minutes ago, AerialAssault said:

Now, while the 'obvious' thing might be to simply ask in-game for help, I feel that the game itself should and could do more. For example, what if the Trainers were able to give out some advice, paraphrased from some of the advice given here? So, there would be a dialogue option for 'I need help!', which branches into several other dialogue options for common questions that new/returning players might have, such as, 'I keep running out of Endurance!'. 

 

This is a really good point. The Shining Stars/Hearts of Darkness arcs do a lot to intro the game's mechanics both new and old but they're also easily skipped by doing other starting arcs, joining trials, or the ever present AE farms. Using zone trainers for something like this is a good idea, but I'd go a step further and also have it be a constantly accessible 'assistance hotline' in the players' contacts. Perhaps a Hero Corps thing, to restore a bit of the function the Field Analysts used to have. That way if there's a specific problem during a mission or something, new players can readily look up a solution or how a particular mechanic works. Bonus points if it can detect possible issues with a character's slotted enhancements or chosen powers based on what problem they select. 'My powers keep missing!' -> 'You have not slotted any Accuracy boosting enhancements in X, Y, and Z' or something to that effect. That'd probably be a lot more intensive to set up than just a static string of suggested solutions though.

[baster]

7 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Ahh. The "jump on the bandwagon appeal" fallacy. For which I keep the following Bloom County strip:

Just because something is popular does not make it better, or even good. WoW is the MMO that fossilized the "holy trinity" of archetypes and "you are what you wear" gear structure that so many other MMOs have slavishly repeated in the hope of becoming the "WoW killer", along with other dubious decisions that have been repeated again and again by other MMOs trying to steal some of WoW's customer base.

Yes, no doubt, however it still is a very good game for what is it and the sheer ammount of well balanced content it offers including sone of the best pvp that any game in any ganra would be hard pressed to offer, not to mention you can find people to do content with 24/7.

Great game still if you have enormous ammount of frer time on your hands.

[Scarlet Shocker]

On 6/27/2025 at 3:01 PM, baster said:

I like to hear from a log of NEW and ir Returning players mostly here rather them a poop loads of have it vets to share their perspective on the endurance issue.

 

Translation: "I want to hear from inexperienced players whose confirmation bias might match my own because they haven't yet learned how to manage endurance issues and this will give undue weight to my position."

 

Endurance is a part of the game and has been for over 20 years. It is designed to place a limit on what players can do in any given moment.

 

Almost all games have two components that require player management. Usually one is Health, and the other is Energy/Heat/Endurance/Stamina etc etc. Our game is no different and requires some level of skill and input from the player to achieve that.

 

I get that some people just want to moronically mash buttons in killkillkill mode but that's not what this game is all about so ultimately

 

/jranger

[tidge]

15 hours ago, AerialAssault said:

So, throwing out the idea of completely overhauling the Endurance system because let's face it, that'll never happen (I don't doubt you HC Devs, I just know the limits), this thread does bring up some interesting points.

 

Firstly, and this is something us veterans and old heads often forget, is that the new player/returning player experience for City of Heroes is obtuse and sometimes downright labyrinthian. We may not like to do so, but it's worth listening to what these people have to say and see how we can help these people.

 

This argument only goes so far: once a player knows enough to come to the forums to propose a specific and radical change to the game, I have to believe that they were capable of first asking for advice. There certainly are participants who are peculiarly stubborn about not taking some advice.

 

Internal to the game: Some of the basics are explained, some are not. For example, the blue side tutorial explains "ToHit" but not damage. From memory: Endurance isn't really explained (nor is Health), but enhancements and inspirations are (and these are things that can be clicked/hovered over.

 

[Skyhawke]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

 

This argument only goes so far: once a player knows enough to come to the forums to propose a specific and radical change to the game, I have to believe that they were capable of first asking for advice. There certainly are participants who are peculiarly stubborn about not taking some advice.

 

Internal to the game: Some of the basics are explained, some are not. For example, the blue side tutorial explains "ToHit" but not damage. From memory: Endurance isn't really explained (nor is Health), but enhancements and inspirations are (and these are things that can be clicked/hovered over.

 

 

I agree with this and I'll add that even when us vets were noobs, we had the manual that came with the game that explained the basics so you had at least an idea of what to do when you started. Now, new or returning players get plopped into tutorials that are okay, but not great at explaining things. Bonus points for all the people that say "I don't need no tutorial" and plop into Atlas with clue zero how to actually play the game. Perhaps an updated version of the manual that covers the basics like health and endurance regen, slotting, enemy powers that can affect the player, etc? Maybe hosted on the site with it pinned in the guides section and a link in the ingame options menu that opens a browser to it?

 

As for gutting endurance because it makes the game hard?

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 12:15 PM by Skyhawke