Alabaster12
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Apologies to all. Trolls get under my skin, which I suppose is the entire point of them. I fail at ignoring trolls.Originally Posted by _Starbird_
guys you should get a girl once ^^
Anyway let's restart the discussion plz someone
Anyone another idea to make gauntlet evolve in some way ?
On to what you were talking about. I would like to see gauntlet address a couple of issues.
1. End problems. Maybe based on the number of allies you have in your team, or number of enemies, or number of toggles you are running? I don't know something to that effect. This one seems pretty easy to do, and adding it to gauntlet seems the best way to handle it. More enemies effected by gauntlet, less end used... something like that.
2. Stacking. This one is a lot harder to deal with. Its difficult to handle stacking without defaulting to the simple add damage which I'm against. If a reverse body guard mode is out of the question, perhaps increasing debuffs as suggested earlier in this thread would be a nice change of pace. The same technique for delivering them could be available for the end reduction, allies, enemies, toggles... something to that effect. -
Quote:No. He would be a non super strength tanker. Able to absorb damage and protect a team, but not looking to take out bosses. A scrapper is a primary damage dealer, a scrapper is not responsible for absorbing damage and protecting the team.Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Then he'd be a Scrapper.
No I didn't. I asked for examples that were not */SS, the star implies anything that is not Super Strength. You gave me none. This is where your argument completely and totally falls apart. There are 8 other secondaries available to tankers and they are the extreme minority in comics as you just admitted. Comic "tankers" are incarnates capable of drawing on multiple primaries and secondaries. Molten Man is a Inv/Fire Armor/Super Strong/Fire Melee/Fire Blast Incarnate, not a tanker. As you just admitted virtually all of the tough heroes in comics are super strong, so why are you trying to change the entire AT based on this concept?Quote:Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Have you ever considered the majority of tough heroes in comics are also super strong?
You asked for tank examples that weren't the classic INV/SS. I gave you some.
I could say the same to you. You are unwilling to listen to anything OTHER than this concept because you don't want to. In fact you have blatantly put down Starsman in this very thread because it wasn't the same as your ideas, I at least discussed it with him. I didn't agree in the end, but there was a discussion, not a "Well this idea doesn't work at all, put more thought into it and come back to me when your worthy" as you did. There are definitely people more pleasant to converse with, and I would bet the large majority of the people on this forum would agree with me on that one since they don't even entertain you by talking to you at all. I suppose I can stop talking to you now and you can be completely ignored. Enjoy talking to yourself again.Quote:Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Now, I'm done trying to rationalize and sell this concept to you because you don't want to be sold on it. If you're not going to agree with the concept in the OP no matter what, you're not worth my time and frankly there are more pleasant people to converse with. -
Quote:You derailed this thread to the point where no one is actually talking about Starsmans actual point anymore and now you have the audacity to get mad when I was simply making a point by saying what I WOULD agree with if you HAD said it. I very much respect Starsman's opinion which was why I responded the way I did to him originally, and I think we actually had a decent conversation about it. As far as what I did... it's kind of like pulling a single sentence out of context and responding only to that in a reply isn't it? I seem to know someone who does that frequently so that he can ignore other points that people make.Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Please don't do that. It's both childish and confusing for anyone who's trying to follow the conversation. It's easy for anyone to be misrepresented when you alter their opinion and don't include the original text. In a gag thread, its one thing. In a discussion thread, it's another. If you can't at least respect my opinions, respect Starsman. It's his thread.
You still haven't addressed conceptually why you believe that my DA/DM tanker is required to be a heavy hitter to bosses. What if conceptually the character is great at taking down minions. Which is where the problem lies. You want to take a single idea and put it across the entire AT for concept reasons when your concept reasons really only lie with SS and a few minor examples that you were able to find, and the majority of those examples are not even able to be built in CoH, and are still SS characters. They might have additional powers like fire, but in the end they are all super strong.
You seem to be implying that just because a character is careful with their powers in order not to hurt those around them that this means they are a tanker? Well how about havoc? I certainly wouldn't make him a tanker, but if that's your only justification I guess he is. There are hundreds of super heroes that have powers that are difficult if not impossible to control and they hold back all the time in order to prevent them hurting others. That is an particularly weak argument, even from you. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Secondly, if the players have a problem with the concept of Super Strength, but Castle thinks it's fine, that doesn't mean he shouldn't do anything. Ultimately the game and AT should be made of us to express our concepts, not the devs'.
That being said, many Super Strength players are happy with the Super Strength concept and execution as is. That doesn't change the fact that many think they could use something. The important consideration to make is anything the devs do to Super Strength, can't take anything away from the players who enjoy them as is. That's always been my mantra. I don't agree with how Super Strength is currently, but I understand that people like them as is and respect their right not to have that yanked out from under them at this point. It just wouldn't be fair.
It's also not fair for the devs to ignore the people pointing out Super Strength doesn't reasonably live up to their comic cousins.
Fixed that for you.
I could almost see your point if this was what you had actually said. Well... I certainly wouldn't care as much. Making an entire AT a "heavy hitter" based on a concept that is really only applied to a single powerset is what I disagree with so vehemently. I don't even agree with that concept, but at least I can see the comparison. How you are finding my DA/DM tanker in comics and thinking that they can only be a heavy hitter is where you lose me completely. The same applies for everything that isn't */SS -
This implication that comic "big guys" are heavy hitters is wrong. More often than not what they are is environment smashers/users. They can take a beating beyond anyone else, and usually end up smashing through buildings, lifting giant heavy objects to prevent the people in them from dying, etc.
This is not possible in an MMO first.
Second, this isn't how CoH works. Tankers in CoH are not all SS contrary to what everyone who wants a "heroic heavy hitter" believes. Please explain to me how a dark melee tank needs to have giant big hits for everything it does, or how those would necessarily be any "heavier" than anyone else with dark melee. The same can be said for virtually any other tanker secondary outside of SS. Swinging a police baton doesn't necessarily imply "heavy hitter" to me, and neither does fire/ice melee. Because the toon can absorb more damage that somehow means the damage should be bigger and more powerful?
This is the underlying problem. Everyone who wants a heavy hitter, seems to want SS to be it's own AT and who cares about the rest of them. You want SS to feel more iconic, petition to have SS actually do more damage, or have longer animation times with bigger damage numbers, or whatever else it is you seem to want, and leave everyone else who plays tankers that are not obsessed with SS being Superman. -
Quote:I wasn't trying to deny that it was an IO'd out character, I just thought that was what we were talking about. I suspect that an SO'd WP isn't anywhere close to the king of survivability that everyone is talking about here.Originally Posted by dave_p
Alabaster12:
You seem to stress that you're a Stone/Fire that doesn't run out of end. My Stony never does either, but I suspect both our tanks are rather well IOed out. I just wanted to point out that Fire Melee has the highest DPE of all the tanker secondaries. In fact, Fire anything generally has more end efficient attacks, because of the extra damage it does.
If that's not what was being discussed my mistake, just thought that was an assumption everyone here had. -
Quote:Have you seriously consider why that might be?Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
That's the most he's said on the subject in 3 years that I've seen.
And that's considering Starsman is fairly well respected.
Hmmm... what as been the constant throughout all of this subject in 3 years that might drive someone like a dev away. Some kind of troll maybe? -
Quote:IO'd. I thought I had said that earlier, but yes this build has taken me a long time to perfect, and is about as good as I think I can make a stoner.Originally Posted by Failsight
Just for clarification, is this an IO'd out build or a vanilla build?
I thought thats what we were talking about as decided what "End Game" meant. -
Quote:That was meant for the section where I cover what I run with granite, not what I run without Granite. When I don't have granite on I run rooted.Originally Posted by Failsight
I imagine that while you're in Granite with all those toggles on, you're not doing much more than standing there and hitting Taunt and the occasional AoE?
I also imagine that you're not literally running around with Rooted off 99% of the time, considering you kind of need it on when fighting outside of Granite.
As far as what I do with those toggles on, I can run a full attack chain and never run out of end.
As a stone/fire.
My attacks include: Scorch, Combustion, FSC, Incinerate, and Melt Armor and Fireball from the Pyre pool. I use them all. -
Quote:For my ultimate survivability mode I run:Originally Posted by Heraclea
No, willpower lacks endurance drain resistance. I can't imagine a stone tanker running the fighting pool on top of Granite, myself; seems like gilding the lily.
Granite
Weave
Maneuvers
Rooted
(Stone Skin)
(Mud Pots)
I really only have Maneuvers for a place to slot an LoTG and a GoTA, but I usually run it and weave to get over the defense softcap to all without having to worry about set bonuses for defense and that seemed like a worthy tradeoff to me since I don't worry about endurance at all.
I toggle off Rooted for 99% of the content in the game.
EDIT:
Oh and solo/small groups I just run:
Rock Armor
Tough
Weave
Maneuvers
Rooted
(Stone Skin)
(Mud Pots)
and possibly Minerals if there is psi involved. -
OK. Here is an AE mission that I tested (I didn't publish it since I was just looking to test it). All at the highest levels possible within AE. I was completely alone with no outside buffs or temp powers.
It had everything from the final mission of the LRSF. I tried to make it on a small map so that I could actually fight them all at the same time, but it wasn't possible when I made the test. The most I could get where 3-4 of them at at time before they ran back.
If memory serves this was how they grouped up most of the time (a few times I got an extra but I can't remember how it lined up, and I never died in any combo):
States
BaBs
Manticore
Citadel
Positron
Synapse
Numina
Sister Psyche
I can't remember where Ms Liberty was. I might not even have remembered to add her.
Not only did I survive these, I was able to afk on most of them. The only moderate challenge group was Numina/Sister Psyche since they were psi. I tried this a couple of ways. The first was just staying in granite and putting EE on auto. They couldn't kill me. The second was swapping out of granite putting minerals on and they couldn't kill me there either.
The other groups were a joke where I didn't have to do anything but sit there and they couldn't even move my health bar.
I'd challenge a WP to try the same thing and report back their results. Pure survivability there is nothing tougher than a well built stone tank. Someone might be able to equal that level of survivability, but I can't imagine any tougher easy to setup survivability challenge. -
Quote:Oh how rich.Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
We talk about ideas like this all the time in the Tanker forum. We talk and talk and debate and deal with trolls and talk and debate and nothing ever happens and no progress is ever made because a red name never comes in and validates the discussion or says "yeah, we'll think about this".
It's massively frustrating for all parties involved and the fact it's gone on as long as it has (even before Jack promised Tankers Fury and even after they got a damage scale increase instead) is a joke at this point.
You do not talk and debate in the tanker forum, you put down, you derail, and you incite. You are the reason that this debate has gone absolutely no where, and why when anyone actually brings up a legitimate change topic it turns into the biggest joke that no dev would ever consider. The only time a red poster has actively engaged you was when BaBs called you out on your foolishness about something you implied he said which he did not.
I find it so ironic that you put yourself in both sides of the forum. In the tanker forum when everyone calls you out on your stupidity you claim that everyone in the rest of the forums clearly agree's with you. It's obvious you are now doing exactly the same outside of the tanker forum claiming everyone in the tanker forum agree's with you. How funny, and sad at the same time. It's quite obvious hardly anyone agree's with you.
The moment you leave your crusade and this game to go play your superman and complain about how some other game won't let you be an invulnerable Juggernaut capable of 1 shotting anything can't come soon enough, because then people who actually have good ideas can have a chance to be heard and discussion can occur without your ranting, raving, and babbling nonsense. -
Quote:I still fail to see how that is any different than any other primary/secondary combo. I've seen more inv/ss bad players than probably any other AT in the game by at least 2 x 1, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's an easy set for new players, it just means it's a popular choice for new players to the game since it's fairly iconic and that in general new players don't know how to build within this game since they are in fact... new.Originally Posted by Kruunch
Most Stone Tankers I've grouped with have either been very mediocre or very bad. After talking to them a bit (especially the ones who are very bad) it becomes clear they either asked on these boards or in-game what the toughest Tanker was and almost every reply was "Stone" so they go make a Stoner up and as soon as they hit L32, they think they're a "tank". In most cases I end up out tanking them on my Scrapper (Spines / Fire no less).
Good tanking is so much more then sitting in a pile of mobs and being able to survive. -
Quote:Care to qualify that? Seems a bit... contradictory in that your saying that its for people who don't know how to tank but then also if someone doesn't have advanced knowledge that they are a pain to deal with. That sounds like just about every single AT combo in the game. My experience is in fact exactly the opposite. A good stone tank makes up for teammates who don't know how to play their AT, but it wasn't at all harder per say than any of the other tanks that I've tried.Originally Posted by Kruunch
Granite Tankers are for people who don't know how to tank (think of it as a Tanker with training wheels). It's also awful to play because of the penalties and many times, awful to group with if the Stoner hasn't taken steps to mitigate those penalties.
My advise to the OP. Don't worry about it. Pick whichever one you like because in the "end game" it won't really matter.
If you're insistent on which one is the "toughest" then the answer is simple. A stone tank is by far the toughest a character can get in this game. It's not even a question since even with IO's it's impossible to be as tough as a well built stone tank. You quite frankly will be invincible.
The issue is that it very much so is playing the game in a bubble which is quite simply irrelevant. There are very few circumstances in the game that require the level of toughness that a stone tank gives you, and virtually all of the other tanks are good enough to complete the same level of content.
In my experience the only think my stone tank provides that my other tanks do not, is more flexibility in the remainder of the group. I find that I'm able to fill the rest of the team up with offensive slots instead of worrying about defense since I can go quite easily absorbing all damage unassisted. That isn't to say that a stone tank is the only tank capable of not worrying about defensive help, but it certainly has to worry about it the least. -
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I think, as an exercise, readers should point out at least 1/2 a dozen reasons why this last test is incredibly invalid.
I realize Alabaster12 admitted it was anecdotal at best but... yeesh. This isn't even in apples and oranges territory, more like apples and banks or something.
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I would say we should do the same with J_B's tests and proof but well... he's never actually provided any.
I understand there are a ton of holes in the test, which was why there were so many caveats. The bottom line for me is, that my IO'd out tank can out damage my SO'd scrapper which to me only says the following:
<ul type="square">[*] It is easier to increase survivability than damage.[/list]This statement which J_B makes frequently is both far too broad and in the only test I've performed completely and totally false. -
You know.... I'm not even sure I accept one of your main points... being that the survivability curve is easier to overcome.
I should preface this by saying I completely realize this is anecdotal and I'm not that big into data collection, and this test was just to see for myself, so I'm not particularly interested in continuing on, or collecting videos or spreadsheets or anything like that.
To see for myself, I took 2 of my 50's.
1. Completely and totally IO'd out 50 stone/fire/pyre tank. This char pretty much has everything I could want... maxed out LoTG's, Numina's, Miracles... the works. I've probably spent around 2 billion on this toon.
2. Completely and totally normal and boring 50 kitana/regen scrapper. Nothing special. Normal SO build.
I put both of these chars up against some lvl 52 custom bosses in the AE.
Come to find out. My IO'd tanker actually survived and did damage far better than my normal SO'd scrapper. My SO'd scrapper had a hard enough time just surviving with a large chunk of the custom types. My stone tanker (who is probably one of the least optimal primaries you could imagine for such a test) managed to kill off all the bosses no problem. Not only that but it was actually pretty fun, and none of them were slow kills at all. The scrapper was a chore and had all kinds of survivability problems. I didn't actually even finish the map most of the times since it was too much of a headache.
I don't have the AT's built to try the reverse, but I would be willing to bet that if the reverse were tested and I tried the survivability test, that my tank in SO's would survive just as well as my scrapper in IO's. Obviously an IO'd out scrapper would do more damage than I do, but thats not the point of the test. The point is that in IO's I could do more damage than an SO'd scrapper, and in SO's I could survive just as well as an IO'd scrapper.
Maybe I'm just not building the scrapper in SO's well (since I'm really not a big scrapper fan) but I can't imagine I'm that far off knowing generically how to build a char in this game (sorry I'm not a mids person). I tried a fairly wide variety of types and the tests pretty much came out the same way.
So basically J_B my experience and tests (compared to your providing no data or tests at all) show that you are wrong. -
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Soloability-wise, in other games the extra survivability of the tanking classes is an asset solo. In CoH, it's largely wasted and redundant. I'll bet if you trimmed 15%-20% of survivability off of Tankers, they'd likely solo just about as well. What holds back Tankers solo is damage. Scrappers and Brutes have less survivability than Tankers out of the box, yet they solo better. Their survivability is lower, but it doesn't slow their soloing the way Tanker damage slows theirs.
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Wow... you really are causing all this gigantic stink for years and years over soloabillity? You think Tankers are TOO good in teams (better than any other MMO at least) and pay for it in soloability and that is why you have been on this crusade? What a colossal waste of time for something that is as simple as looking at the fact that this game is not built or balanced around solo play.
End of discussion. You've wasted years of your life over the fact that you don't know that MMO's and online games in general are not built around solo play... hence why they are online. Go play some Freedom Force single player and you'll get exactly what you want and call it a day.
Wow.... just wow. -
You can build for a reasonable amount of psi damage. If memory serves I have something around 20 def 20 resist on my stone/fire in my last build while in granite.
In the end I did end up taking minerals in my last respec, but that was only because I wanted to have another place to put another LoTG and didn't really need buildup anymore. Then again, my build is totally different since I built mine to not be reliant at all on a kin.
Since you have a kin available (I'm assuming most of the time) some of your choices make a since, however I would still recommend 3 slotting swift. If just for the instances where it wears off and you don't have it back up and running right away it would be useful.
You also seem to be a bit attack heavy, but that's probably more personal flavor. As an example, I currently have scorch, combustion, fsc, and incinerate... and the pyre pool melt armor, and fireball... and thats it. I never worry about not having either a ST or AoE attack available when needed.
If I had room for one more attack it would definitely be GFS but while it would be nice to have in some cases, I find I don't really miss another ST attack all that much.
Lastly I wouldn't skip out on Rock Armor. In smaller groups it's really not worth running granite since you are just slowing everything down and don't need the survivability. Rock Armor is good enough for anything up to really 3-4 players (depending on difficulty). If you have a dedicated group that you're just going to play up the entire time that might work, but it really does seem a bit inflexible. -
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Now, this does not mean I think this thread is suddenly fail, but alternative ways of thought may be needed.
For the time being, I'm pushing back to the drawing board and try to craft a more specific proposal for the issues (separate proposals for the team and solo issues.)
This is not me giving up, this is me changing approach, as my goal is not getting tankers more damage but to improve tanker stack-ability in teams and make solo play a bit more fair.
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And IMO this is what separates you from J_B and why I was trying to respond in kind. I somewhat agree with your issue list (moreso about stacking than end... pre-20 end is an issue on almost all AT's in my experience, so I'm not sure I agree with that one as much) but didn't agree with your solution to it.
Bravo, on continuing to work towards a more widely acceptable solution and not just getting into a sulk and continuing to spam the forums about it (like J_B does). I look forward to seeing your updates and new ideas.
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What astounds me is that every time Johnny rears his head, everyone falls into his trap and destroys the thread for him. When will the world learn that he's probably just another Twixt building up "research" for a paper or something at our expense.
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I tried to call him on the fact that all he does is derail threads to his view and then uses it as evidence that everyone keeps complaining about it because these threads just keep popping up.
Actually... no... these threads don't keep popping up. No matter what someone offers as a suggestion to change tankers, he decides to move it towards his vision of them and the original idea is lost in the aftermath. That isn't everyone agreeing with him, that is him being a nuisance.
Big shocker, he decides not to address this particular issue.
I genuinely wish the mods would do something about him, since it seems like no one can actually have a discussion about anything to do with tanker changes without him turning it into the exact same troll-fest. -
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Thing is, scrappers aren't "as survivable" as tanks. Can they be made to survive situations that tanks could? Absolutely, but they won't have the same survivability as a tank just as tanks putting out the amount of damage needed to defeat the same enemy as a scrapper doesn't make them as damaging as scrappers.
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I was saying just what Mr. J_B said. Not what I agree with. I agree with you completely. Not that he would ever respond to it, but nontheless you are 100% right. -
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We don't need Tankers doing much more damage on teams than they do because Scrappers are already hard up for a role on teams. More ST damage on Tankers is less obtrusive to Scrappers in a team situation and will only really come into play with an AV. Many teams already have a Tanker along to tank the AV, so I don't see it as stealing a Scrapper's spot at that point.
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Which is it? Are Tankers worthless because a scrapper can be just as survivable, or are they needed on teams.
Your contradictions of yourself show no bounds. -
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The point is, there a good number of people who find Tankers conceptually lacking due to their damage output and a number of problems Tankers have that are a result of their lower damage and current implementation.
The devs could make Tankers more faithful to the lore counterparts and to their comic counterparts, make them more fun to a greater number of people, fix some of their other issues to boot and still have them work within the boundries of game balance.
So why shouldn't they?
.
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They shouldn't because you're comparisons are invalid. You're supposition about what the "player base wants" are invalid, and you have never made a single case for it other than the fact that it is something you want. -
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So why aren't Scrappers being survivable enough to solo content intended for Teams with Tankers like AVs and hazard sized spawns treading on "Tanker territory"?
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Do you actually re-read anything you write and not laugh hysterically?
Does the fact that blasters can nuke an entire spawn tread on defenders? I mean... blaster primaries are basically defender secondaries, doesn't that mean defenders are useless?
Tankers are a team support AT, as are Defenders. Comparing them to solo ability is beyond foolish, but I guess I should have expected that by now from you.
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My response is that melee damage isn't the exclusive domain of Scrappers, just as survivability isn't Tankers'. Scrappers should get used to sharing "their terriroty" and complaint-wise have no leg to stand on as long as they can stand up to foes they were not intended to be able to and polish them off faster than the guys who were.
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Funny you don't seem to get it:
Tankers... primary bonus is survivability and they do it better than anything in this game, they have some melee damage but it is still nothing compared to Scrappers.
Scrappers... primary role is melee damage, and they do it better than anything (blueside) in this game, they also have some survivability, but it is still nothing compared to Tankers.
Does that make it at all clear to you? (rhetorical I know, there is no way this concept would ever make sense to someone as troll-ish as you). -
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Statesman? 'Nuff said.
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By "'Nuff said" do you mean "Doesn't count"? Because Statesman is not a tanker. He's an Incarnate... as in "living incarnation of a god".
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Incarnate is an Origin, not an AT.
He's a Tanker.
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^^^This
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Regardless of whether it is his origin or not, the fact that he is an Incarnate by definition makes him more powerful than any player is capable of being, and therefore doesn't count on the list to show "real" tankers in the lore.
The whole idea of "real" tankers in lore is bogus anyway since comparing player made characters to lore is ridiculous since they can have powers that not only are outside of their power sets but have powers and buffs that are not available to anything else in the game.
In short, I have no idea what anyone is getting at with this line of thinking...