William_Valence

HOLY CRAP!!! Your saying you can get merits from things other than the ITF?

/e Headasplodes

This makes me wan't to argue soooo much, you have no idea.

It could be, but (and it's my fault for not puting the phrase in proper context) it is more: MA could stay the same way it is now, but with the room it has for improvement, and the possibility for improvement without changing anything excluding performance, why not? Sorry, bit of a Durakken moment.

Not to harsh on the developers, but considering the history of needing to pester just to get significant intrest twards needed changes, I can't really see dev intrest as a stunning argument for keeping the status quo. Though player intrest is of course a very good argument, just one thats hard to really use with any kind of accuracy.

Not large changes, but large improvements to targeted areas. And while your post was targeted tward those seeking large changes, I felt it would be a good opportunity to add context to my viewpoint, and where my arguments were coming from.

My thought is, and this is not an accusation or directed comment, there are sets that need improvement first, (firey aura, trick arrow, EM ) but if it is possible to get a set that could use improvement, that attention, do it. Discussion never hurts, theres plenty of space on the forums for threads on each set and potential buffs, but should the opportunity come for a set to be improved, even if its not the dog your backing, my opinion is to go with it. Don't say "**** no! do this one first!!!". Get the buffs through, get enough opinions and voices in there to ensure they're done right, then start lobying for your set again.

If you were to ask what powerset I play, even if I didn't have one at the time, would answer Energy melee. It's my favorite, I like the look, I like the feel, and I like the playstyle. I care very little about MA, my biggest hope is that EM gets fixed, and I fear the day another set is improved at the expense of its relationship with EM in the balance equation.

When I see MA, however, I see a set that can be improved without changing It's position in line. From it's history and design, it is easy to see it was supposed to be midline damage and high secondary. Buffing it to where it was supposed to be is not only acceptable, but probably a good idea. I'm just sad it will probably happen before EM gets looked at. Though I can still hope every patch and release with have the magic changes I want.

Big whoop; fair enough, its probably true, but I would respond: "why not?". Powerset balance is an important part of a game, and why should a MA player have to know that most other scrapper primaries are either better in all situations or at least in most. Yes I can understand that it is still fun to play, but does the act of improving it's performance imply that what is fun about the set has to go?

I would like to point out that after castle made his comments, he was informed that the scenario was not a cross-section of normal DM performance but a highly structured and prepared senario showing the maximum possible level it could reach. A level that would not be attributible at all to general gameplay. Also it isn't that sky-high level of performance that MA is being compared to. Rather it is the average power level that anyone could expect to achieve when using the set.

I don't want to dynamite the mountain. Quite the opposite, I want to add a ski resort to one side. A nice improvement to the scenery, something that could entice newer people, improve whats already there, and not change what people currently enjoy about it. Of course you can't make everyone happy.

Wait, you mean like a weak secondary effect thats balanced as a strong secondary effect?

I have no idea, ask some of the other people who posed here, because they seemed kinda pissy after Arcanaville suggested that this was one of the big issues that needed changing, and a good metric to determine the level that the changes needed to be. So I think they must have some use for it.

Right, so 60% of your tohit (calculated after the enemy defense is taken out) is better than essentially +7.5 tohit? I can't remember, doesn't it stack too, and for the same duration as the -tohit from Dark Melee?

I'd say it's there to give broadsword/katana players a better chance to hit an enemy that has defense, than other powersets would have.

I got nothing on this one, someone else might, but I will say that it doesn't look like anything is lost for the added secondary effects. They might be weaker, but they are balanced as weaker effects.

It's not like there was someone earlier that was saying that a developer could make MA secondary effects immensely more usefull, condidering the strength of Dark's secondaries.

Aww man, too bad nobody suggested making the secondary effects stronger and more usefull as a way to fix MA.

I didn't miss the point, I just don't agree with it. Of course people wouldn't play scrappers only for control, but control is an interesty gamplay effect that is already in the balance equation for MA. So considering weak secondary effects that are balanced as strong secondary effects, upping AoE capacity slightly is reletively simple, and with MA already in the middle for single target damage, you can see that there is an opening for dramatic improvement. Overall damage is not this opening, however, and damage does not need to be upped by alot. Variety in playstyle options is what's needed, not whitewashing all the sets with damage paint.

Though if you think Moar dmg is whats needed, then what, make the scrapper primarys like the assault sets? I mean if a set not having the best damage makes it bad, that would mean they all need to be the same. All the same powers with the same stats and maybe different secondary effects? You could have about three templates. One single target, one AoE, and one mixed. But personally, I think that would be boring.

Secondary control and jack of all trades as a targeted playstyle works because there are already damage centric powersets. Not everyone plays the same, and some people might want a set with some control and options instead of a set like Fire that is all damge and hit as often as possible before you die and you might live.

But of course people all have the same playstyles, and discounting entire powers and effects is the best way to go about improving a game in the long run.

No, ugh, just no.

MA needs to be MA. MA is Ice melee with less control and more damage. What I mean is, MA is a control focused melee set that leans more tward the damage side of the scale. Thats where changes should be made. Look at Bill z's results are in thread, MA is high and in the middle for single target damage. If you made the control effects more useful, and increased the radius of Dragons tail to 10', and maybe made one of the powers a mini-cone, MA would be center of the field for all aspects. The jack of all trades set that it should have been.

Right, this works wonders for The Mission Architect "fixes" or imagine BoTZ changes monthly but to any enhancement for any reason and sometimes even powers.

Want to find out what it's like playing a game where you have no idea if a power will be the same next month? Play Guild wars. The only reason you won't rip your hair out is that it takes no time or effort to unlock the stuff that gets changed. Just a "10k run to LA" or just a power pack from the store if you PvP and don't want to wait the 5 RA fights it takes to unlock stuff.

Want to find out what it's like playing a game with no cottage house rule and it takes time to unlock stuff? Play SWG. There are less people on a planet in that game than stand around Cap's BM.

Slotting shouldn't be too bad, having 50% damage buff and 50% damage buff that suppresses for 80s after 10s is really interesting.

Have the suppression duration equal to ((80+10)/(1+rech%slotted))-10 should let you modify both the power recharge and the suppression duration at the same time.

I probably wasn't saying it right. I think I'll stop calling it reverse knockback. Lets say pull effect. A completly different effect that is applied against an enemy like knockback or knockup vs it's own resistance, but instead of causing motion away from the source or up into the air, it causes motion tward the source. It wouldn't be -knockback it would be +pull. High enough pull close enough to the target and you could pull them right past you.

A knockback physics effect may not have an angle or vector, but if it checks the location of the source of the effect and forces a move in relation to that location, my idea still has hope.

With pull, you wouldn't be saying knock the other way, you would be telling the physics engine to apply pull effect. The pull effect itself would be added to the engine, and when called up causes motion in the direction of the source similar to how knockback causes motion away from the source.

Now I could be oversimplifying things, or knockback could have been made over complicated and convoluted at the begining and it's too much trouble to fix, but I just don't understand how at the moment. Maybe I never will but whatever.

I try to be a good boy, but noooooo! Gotta go and change the rules on me. /e grumbles

Imma standard code rant myself here before I even start

Thunder Kick - mag 2 KUp

Cobra strike - remove stun, up damage to 79.8, -15% res 15s Does not stack with self

Crane Kick - Mag 4 KUp, 60% chance for Mag6 KB after a delay to make it look like a cool matrix-esque arc.

Crippling Axe Kick / -fly 1.6, runspd -40, jmpspd -40, -10% res 10s Does not stack with self

Dragon's Tail - Increase radius to 10ft

Eagle's Claw - Remove stun, add -10% res for 10s, increase crit chance to 20%, add a mag7 KUp delayed to the jump of the enemy part of the animation, and a reverse knockback delayed to the flip part of the animation. Make it look like you tossed the enemy with a suicide throw.

Now I haven't seen the code for the game so I don't know how knockback is coded, but I am curious as to why reverse knockback is not doable without engine reworking.

If you have programed an effect added to an enemy that overides control and forces animations and movement relative to two entities for one direction, why is it somehow more difficult for the other direction?

Yup, I was reading it wrong. When I saw 45% defense I was thinking 50% tohit - 5% def not 50% - softcap 45% defense. As for the health, I've been comparing scrapper/tanker/brute values lately and I completely ignored the health valued you had there and just put down the default. Sorry, working on muscle memory.

So I wanted to compare your sheet to what I have. I used Arcana's method of comparing percent health per second taken, with an equation of
DPS(in percent of health) = (.05 / (11.905/(1+(regen rate/100)))) / (.5-def) / (1-damdebuff)/ (1-res) / (1-(1/(1+hpbuff%)))

When something has different values at different times I can use weighted averages, but I Don't see a Dark/Fire having temporary hp or regen buffs, just set bonuses.

So when I put your stuff in my sheet, It said that you can survive 705.067296% of tanker Base health each second, Or 13212.405 DPS Thrown out, Or (13212.405*(0.5-0.45))*(1-0.692)*(1-(1/1.338242))= 51.427508 dps taken on average vs (((0.05/(11.905/2))+(0.351742/(17.3+1.17))))*100 = 2.74438% health restored per second, Or 1874.1 * .0274438 = 51.432426.

Increase both by the hpbuff% and you get 68.82245Damage vs 68.829032 restoration. Darn close to what you got above, but 13000+ is a good deal more than 4459.

I have no idea where I'm going wrong.

Mez is fairly ignorable, because if it works (Fear aside) it's 100% mitigation and if it doesn't it is 0% mitigation so you only have to compare senarios where mez does or doesn't work.

-rech,-dam,-tohit can be added to an equation fairly easily, but you just have to compensate for any debuff resist the enemy might have.

Dechs, The numbers on the sheet look off. If a Tanker Has 1874.1 health at 50, how can it take 4459 smashing damage per second when 4459 * .45 * (1-.692)= 618 damage per second recieved on average. 1874.1/618= dead in 3.03 seconds. Am I reading it wrong?

GL all and have fun

How big a part of the game should endurance be? If endurance costs are unbalanced, then there should be some kind of proof.

I'll see if I can help without math, my head hurts so I don't feel like doing any right now. Endurance is a limiter on the number of specific actions a character can make before needing to stop. You believe that characters should be able to make more actions before needing to quit. amirite?

The game allows a specific number of certain types of action, and thats where balance comes from. Additionally there are certain powers and enhancements that may be used to customize your character allowing it the ability to improve in the endurance efficiency department. You may also choose to customize your character to improve accuracy, damage, speed, or some other factor. Possibly even multiple factors.

Endurance use is manageable. The tools exist. The only issue is that, to emprove endurance management; these tooles must be used, Lessening the ability to customize in other areas. If you Increase the ammount of actions that may be made before stopping, you need to give something up. Damage, recharge, accuracy, or secondary effects; something. This is balance, some characters are better at some things than others.

If the devs reduced endurance cost globaly then they would need to reduce everything else to balance it out. If not, it would be too easy to skip slotting for endurance, as the devs did that for you permanantly with a supposed endurance reduction, and just slot for accuracy, damage, or recharge. This makes characters more powerful than intended, and the encounters become too easy.

An opinion can be wrong, but you were dogpiled not just because you were wrong, but because this is a rehash of the same old thing you decide to say every so often. Each time it's pages of people showing you your mistakes, at some points trying to help fix them, and you saying it should be different. Of course you don't know the details of how it should be different, and without doing any in depth analysis, your sure it won't break game balance. This annoys people and eventually they get impatient with you.

No, they offer you solutions as though you might want to fix your endurance issues.

Honestly, then do it. The devs don't need to waste time doing it for you, and risk screwing the game up. It's part of the game, play the game or don't, its that simple.

It's no different than building for damage. Pay attention to your slotting, and pick the most effective powers for your goals. Building for damage means slotting for damage, and taking high damage efficiency attacks and damage boosting powers. Building for endurance means slotting for endurance, taking high endurance efficiency powers, and picking endurance boosting powers.

If I can do it while refusing to slot until level 27, you can do it.

You don't seem to understand that not only is relief not neccesary, but likely bad for balance. If balance goes then either a redesign or rollback becomes needed. One is something that shouldn't happen, the other makes all the effort put into the tweaks pointless.

The game isn't perfect that's for sure, but time should be spent fixing actual issues. This would be a big waste of time, and is completly unneccesary.

Dont care about the first part of your post really, if the players were just forgeting the toggle or over-aggroing then as I said, fair enough.

Now I want to threadjack my own thread here.

The quoted part got me thinking, dangerous I know. My thought was, what would be an actual buff to gauntlet as opposed to just adding more stuff, were the stalker changes a new inherent added on or a buff to assassination?

Then I thought, what is the end goal of buffing gauntlet? All but probably one of ideas I've come up with have been spawned from a precieved problem. Either a problem I have percieved (correctly or incorrectly) or someone else has and I've heard them mention. Are there issues with the tanker AT that need addressing, or is it simply the desire to have an inherent that benefits the tanker itself? (which is completly fine by the way)

Finally I wondered, should gauntlet be considered an inherent? Taunt on hit is not unique to tankers. Brutes get the single-target version (digression: will brutes lose poke-voke when GR comes out, due to an AT villainside that can handle aggro?:end digression) and both brutes and scrappers get taunt auras.

This isn't comprable though to the various critical inherents, as all you need to do to taunt with a tanker or brute is attack or even just stand there. It just so happens that the tanker doesn't get any other bonus, because of the taunt. With criticals, the critical proc rates are variable and change by different methods making each unique.

My question now is, if the developers said "Gauntlet is gone, the taunt effect is going to be treated a just a part of the powers now, not an inherent." What would you want the new tanker inherent to be?

Me, I would want a 10% chance for a variable self heal/ self +end that increases for every enemy currently aggroed on the tank and possibly their rank. The First enemy would give a larger buff than subsequent ones. The size of heal/self end would depend on how often the proc tics.

GL all and have fun

Hopefully I'll hit both of your responses with one stone. This idea was born from the observations of my, newish warshade Moonshatter that I made a week and a half or so ago.

Skipping the sewer run and kheld arcs and moving to the level 16ish team I was on last weekend. We were doing the posi part two, and the vahz were obnoxious due to toxic damage, but the poor tank (either inv or will, I cant remember off the top of my head) we had was having a real hard time of it in orenbega.

I checked that he had the mez protection power, but I guess he may have been forgeting to use it, but every few spawns or so he would of course want to take the alpha. which would include a few holds.

Now I was busy using his astonishing death to set up a mire, so I cant say if he or other people on the team were aggroing another spawn, but he would get held then in moments would faceplant. I would try so hard to take some of the alpha with him as my inherent gave me some darn good resist, But taunt is just so effective. Since then however I've notice tanks getting ***** slapped by mez on the teams I've been on between Kheld arcs.

If my experience with this is, however, just an outlier and not that common, fair enough. I just noticed it while playing, and thats where I got the Idea. The timing being well past the level the mez protection power would be available.

Gl all and have fun

This is interesting, but with the survivability that tankers already have it may be stacking more on the wrong pile.

What if tankers had say three auras with different radii, say one 15' one 45' one 80'. Each gives a tiny recovery buff or endurance discount for each enemy in its radius.

It would allow tankers to use the their less efficient DPE attacks more often, allowing them attack more in the longer fights that await them. While also being able to use attacks more often in team situations thus keeping aggro better.

GL all and have fun

Huh I must have goofed when looking up the Thunder Strike stats, my bad. The only issue I saw was giving different effects/damage values different ranges withing the same power. If that is in fact possible the layered cone idea is an impressive one. I'm just not sure how do-able it is.

GL all and have fun

I have to agree with you on this Sam, I dont think it works the way Frosticus thinks it does, but I gaurantee there is still a radius check. Why? How else would you know that an enemies attributes need to be checked against rolls and power attribute values? I believe though, that it happens at the begining of the attack process which messes with the "layered cone" idea.

From what I understand, when an attack is initiated it checks range first. For single target attacks it is just to see if the attack can reach the target, but for cones, I believe it checks to see what enemies are in the cone therefore knowing which enemies to apply power effects.

In order to do what you want Frosticus, namely one attack with multiple ranges, you need to have the attack activate multiple powers. Thunderstrike does this by summoning a pseudo-pet in addition to the regular attack, but cones make it tricky. For this you would have to trigger multiple powers with their own arcs, accuracy checks, and damage values simultaneously. I'm not sure something like that is possible.

Of course that's all assumption based on what has been seen in the game, such as starting a cone attack against two enemies, having one run behind me and one stay put while still hitting both targets. Which leads me to believe the range, arc, and radius checks are the first step in the attack process.

GL all and have fun