Adron

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But the Tsoo have been established as Hmong, and not Japanese, even though they are wearing ninja-like clothes and wield ninja-like weapons.

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I suppose there are Japanese fanboys among the Hmong, just like in whitebread America. How many Caucasian heroes are there currently running around with katanas? Hm?

It's not any weirder than an African-American from Iowa going into a Mexican restaurant in Canada and ordering Columbian coffee.

.... And I'm legally empowered to say "whitebread," what with me being of proper multi-continental American mutt ancestry. Nyah!

Hey, remember this thread?

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As promised, I've been looking into the issues facing Tankers; I thought I'd explain the direction we're going. As we analyed it, Tankers have three very valid concerns (aside from the issues with specific power sets):

1. Without Provoke, they are not a real Tanker. Those people who enjoy the MMP role of "meat shield" have trouble holding aggro properly.
2. The Tanker's defense stats can be matched by a properly slotted Scrapper - but the Tanker can not approach the Scrapper in damage.
3. The Tanker doesn't "feel" like a comic book Tanker should. And frankly, this one really, really bothered me. Because our game is a comic book MMP.

So - here's the solution we're going to try internally. We went through a ton of possible solutions, and we weighed each one against how well they answered the three points above as well as how long it would take to get done.

1. Tankers will get a "provoke" like AOE effect on their melee attacks. The more a Tanker lands his blows, the more and more mobs he'll attract. The bonus here is that it's not exactly like Provoke (it's not ranged) - but it makes a lot of sense. Some huge monstrosity is bashing the heads of a villain group - they're going to get more and more concerned about taking him/her out....

2. As a Tanker lands more and more blows, he'll start doing more and more damage. The longer the fight, the more powerful the Tanker becomes. I can't say that the Tanker will do as much damage as a Scrapper - but it'll certainly be more than he does now. This ability really gets to the core of a comic book Tanker. He's extremely powerful - but at the start of a fight, he holds himself back some. As the battle progresses, he lets loose....I prefer this system to a power because this way it's inherent. It's simply the nature of the Archetype. And it also sets the Tanker apart from the Scrapper's criticals.


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I'm here to report that tankers are feeling much better now, thanks.

The flat damage increase (rather than the time-scaling one States mentioned above) seems to be going well, as does the inherent AoE taunt built into attacks.

I haven't run the numbers, but I understand that tankers now potentially have 80% of the DPS of scrappers (while scrappers have 80% of the defense of tankers? yes/no?).

I have an Ice/Ice tanker who's basically a defense-laden tauntbot, and he does hold aggro very very well. Meatshield mission accomplished there.

I have an Inv/Ene tanker who's my damage tanker ("scranker?" "tapper?") and he does very well soloing. That objective is accomplished to my satisfaction as well.

One of our SG members is a Fir/Fir tanker and he's basically playing him like a scrapper; rightly so. He's one heck of an aggro magnet, but he can drop things as well.

Another SG member is Inv/Str, and he too is now much more appropriately destructive. He also isn't near as terrified of status effects as he used to be, now that his state protection allows him to be mobile.

Regarding PvP -- since it's becoming a reality now -- I presume that the tanker inherent-AoE-taunt thingy doesn't function against other players?

It's a pity that the Captain Americas out there still outdamage the Hulks, but eh. I suppose we'll have to always suffer the ramifications of "incorrectly" designated ATs.

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If only there were in-game voice tracks.

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Localization would have become a LOT more expensive.

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I'm unclear on the term "localization." From context, I'm guessing that has to do with different language versions?

If only there were in-game voice tracks.

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I remember MacAllen's monstrously beastly posts on things like Customer Service and stuff...

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Gawd. That guy.

His snottiness as an official Cryptic rep almost made me leave the game before beta even came out. In a weird way, I'm glad that he's immortalized in the strat guide; now I can flip to page 154 whenever I want to see him being snippy, frozen in time.

Hey, remember when the strat guide was a goldmine of valuable data?

Outstanding.

My question: Are the arena maps just holodeck-style instanced missions, like the outdoor instances? If so, will there be destructible (or otherwise interact-able) terrain?

Oh, and here's my shameless plug requesting Dynamic Content.

I have two GUI-related requests:

1) A little "lock toolbar" checkbox would be great. When I use the mouse to activate powers rapidly, sometimes they register "click and drag" rather than just "click." This results in my toolbar scrambling itself during particularly frantic click-fests. Even worse, sometimes when I click on the #1 slot I'm slightly off and end up cycling to the second toolbar (due to the placement of the cycling arrows).

2) Numbering teammates is great, and eliminates a few precious wet-CPU cycles (i.e.: thinkin'). Could we also have the team list's "state effect" icons list off to the left when the team list is on the right side of the screen? Other windows are nice enough to "reflect" vertically, but the team list doesn't reflect horizontally right now.

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With the addition of SG bases have a bank where SG Members can deposit Enhancements and Influence for other members in there SG to use.

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Archiving enhancements is perhaps the most significant thing supergroup members can do for each other.

Right now the current method consists either of muling (i.e.: creating a character which has no other purpose than inventory space) or holding onto the things yourself, taking up valuable space.

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No problem. From here on every single thing I mention is just a rough guess.

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Ya know, I guessed he'd say that.

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None of the previous issues have offered one big new feature, why would we think that would be the case with I4?

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Let me correct myself then. I hope that Arenas aren't the only thing in Issue 4 that matters.

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Echo that.

Bless you for your intellectual maturity, and that of the development team.

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One of the trickinesses of having a largely "loot free" game is trying to make rewards interesting for such things - obviously if characters are motivated largely by XP+influence as the major rewards it makes things a bit tougher for the designers - many players tend to go and do whatever the easiest source of XP is and ignore most everything else. And we like the lack of loot, generally.

But I know Jack & co are thinking on the issue, in any case.

-jg

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If only we had other kinds of rewards than just XP, Influence, and Enhancements....

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Aggro control is hardly the only thing a Tanker is useful for. Many Tankers' melee attacks have some potent secondary effects (knockdown, disorient, slow) which can cause problems for their enemies.

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Enemy hovers. Tank becomes useless.
Enemy kites tank. Tank becomes useless.
Enemy mezzes tank. Tank becomes useless.
Enemy is another tank. Everyone falls asleep waiting for the combat resolution.

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And a Tanker's damage output, while not as high as a Scrapper or Blaster, is not something you want to be receiving in the face either - and it will be very difficult to stop them.

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You say that like tanker damage is a threat to anyone's existence. I'd ask you what you were smoking, but I'm sure the punny answer would be related to fire tankers.

Check the sig and hope the devs can compensate in a non-hackney fashion.

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I haven't read every page in this thread yet, so I apologize if some points were made before. I am a bit perplexed about these concerns over Elec's secondary effect. Am I missing something, or do any of the other blaster primaries have really earth shattering secondary effects?

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The key thig that most of the posters (and I agree, to a lesser extent) are commenting on is that elec's end drain is only effective if it drops a foe below the activation cost of a given power. With villans' low end cost powers and quick regeneration, and the weak drain from most of elec's primary attacks, the secondary effect does not in -any- way apply, unless you are using one of the heavy draining attacks (specificly, Short Circuit).

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Typos aside, I applaud how well-put and in-depth that lengthy post is, Crenson.

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Full Endurance Recovery times without any toggles powers on
Without Stamina: Empty to full 60 seconds.
With Stamina 4 sockets: Empty to full 43 seconds
With Stamina 6 sockets: Empty to full 41 seconds

(60 - 41) / 60 = 32%

Sorry. 32% is no where near your 75%.

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I'm assuming, here, but it's possible the math used was:

41 / 60 = 68%

.... So as to represent the fraction of normal recharge time.

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What about the other secondary effects? I think fire has a relatively minor ACC debuff.

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Fire's secondary is a fire DoT. It's simply additional damage, and many moons ago a dev declared that Fire is in fact the highest-damaging blaster type.

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Elec gets knockback, which admittedly is quite handy while soloing, but sucks when grouping with melee types.

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Energy gets knockback, which I suspect you meant there. Agreed that it annoys the melee guys.

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AR, I can't recall what that even gets.

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It sort of varies with the specific attack, but to generalize it's safe to say that AR offers defense debuffs.

Now, if a villain were considered defeated when EITHER health or endurance bar was at zero.... THEN we'd have something.

Knock him out with damage or knock him out with fatigue; dead or alive, the bad guy is coming quietly.

100k Freedom Influence says it'll never happen. Takers?

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However, I think that every electric attack should do noticable end drain and have a chance to halt end recovery for a few seconds.

As it is, its a complete waste to slot end reduction in the vast majority of electric powers. I think your average electric power should drain between 10-15 endurance -- that'd make slotting worthwhile, if you chose that strategy.

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Knockback for energy blasters is noticeable, and produces a tangible effect. The DoT from fire is, as well, very noticeable. Ice's holds & slows are very noticeable. Yadda yadda.

The endurance drain of electricity is SO MINOR as to not be noticeable. This is a secondary effect that is ineffectual until you pick up Short Circuit (available as soon as level 8). Short Circuit is a PBAoE, which equates to "high risk usage" for a blaster, and is therefore not an easy power to manage.

Even then, the impact upon a mob is relatively minor; mobs do not use endurance for Flight, for instance. Heroes are constantly burning through endurance because we always face multiple foes; villains are part of groups, and therefore the demands on their individual endurance pools is very low. Blasting away 5-10 points of a community mob's endurance is not going to get you anywhere.

I picked up Thunderous Blast at 32 and Power Sink at 35 (a logical progression, as TB is such a massive drain on your endurance, as well as your targets'). I can keep minions perma-drained and the occasional boss, provided I have a controller handy to lock them down before I jump in. If I try to do the SC+PS combo (followed up by a TB or Ball Lightning, depending on recharge times) while solo, I get wailed upon. Particularly if the baddies have a hold/sleep/disorient guy in their numbers. It's no fun taking a nap in the middle of death, as any tanker can tell you.

Besides, if I have a controller handy, then why am I -- the blaster -- on crowd control duty? :P

The only.... the ONLY.... secondary effect I care about with electricity is the "convulsion" stun that mobs sometimes receive when I zap them. It doesn't last as long as what Ice gets, but I'd be thrilled to be able to slot enhancements that increase the duration of that thing.

I've tried to entertain the argument before that "Hey, as an electricity blaster, I get TWO secondaries! The drain and the hold!"

Then I'm reminded that half of that list doesn't do much, and the other half doesn't last long. Useless + Mediocre != Good.

I'm sorry, devs, but the difference between playing an electricity blaster and any other blaster is very noticeable; in the bad way.

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P.S. Feedback from any who have tried this TF since the most recent patch, starting fresh or not and whether this is working for you currently or not will be very helpful. Thank you again.

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I just checked and I'm still unable to talk to Ms Liberty to continue my existing Manticore, even after this morning's patch. Like others, I'm very close to leveling and would rather avoid having to start over.

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Same here. I just got a markedly rapid response from my /petition today (Friday), suggesting that I should still sit tight while the issue is worked on.

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Did you restart the Task Force with this new patch or were you still on a pre-patch version of the mission? In order to get the "fix" you have to have a fresh version of the mission. Meaning you have to quit the Task Force and start over again.

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On Freedom, we started the TF after Issue 2 and we've been stuck on the Ms. Liberty part for two weeks. The petition response was effectively "wait for the patch."

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One step of the Manticore TF requires you to talk to Ms Liberty, she will not respond to any team member with anything but the regular level up/exp to next level text and only gives the "Away I go!" and "Choose a Title" options for all group members. Every team member made sure to talk to Ms Liberty, We also went to every zone open to levels 30-36 to see if there was another Ms Liberty that clicking the mission text would give us a waypoint to but there was no waypoint in any zone, which reminds me. After arriving in Atlas Park and clicking on the mission text ("Talk to Ms Liberty") it did not set a waypoint on Ms Liberty which may be causing some of the problems.

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Just to add some constructive noise to the thread's original purpose: I, too, am stuck at the exact same spot on Freedom.

I await the TC patch to go live, because getting a TF together on the TC is kinda hard now that the Issue 2 population has migrated back to the live servers.

If a "properly-slotted" scrapper can attain tanker defenses, then I see no reason that a "properly-slotted" tanker can't reach scrapper damage capacity. That's wholesome yin-yang game balance right there.

The two ATs still have their roles defined by their inherent special abilities: scrappers crit things (primarily high-ranking things) and tankers aggro things.

I'd even be comfortable with letting a tanker with his maximum damage buff have more raw damage than a scrapper, since in theory ramping damage that high would be very situational. Scrappers, on the other hand, always have that chance to crit for double damage.

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1. Tankers will get a "provoke" like AOE effect on their melee attacks. The more a Tanker lands his blows, the more and more mobs he'll attract. The bonus here is that it's not exactly like Provoke (it's not ranged) - but it makes a lot of sense. Some huge monstrosity is bashing the heads of a villain group - they're going to get more and more concerned about taking him/her out....

2. As a Tanker lands more and more blows, he'll start doing more and more damage. The longer the fight, the more powerful the Tanker becomes. I can't say that the Tanker will do as much damage as a Scrapper - but it'll certainly be more than he does now. This ability really gets to the core of a comic book Tanker. He's extremely powerful - but at the start of a fight, he holds himself back some. As the battle progresses, he lets loose....I prefer this system to a power because this way it's inherent. It's simply the nature of the Archetype. And it also sets the Tanker apart from the Scrapper's criticals.

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YES.

Egad, man, I was even going to PM you to suggest something exactly like #2. Complete with game mechanics reasons (i.e.: the more protracted the fight, the more a tanker is needed) and the genre reasons (brick heroes don't use their full whammy on every single thug).

This may even work out for PvP later, as the risk of just leaving the tank alone (since he's so hard to kill and so little of a threat) in the beginning is now something to consider. Well done.

The concepts are great! I look forward to seeing the way the numbers work out.

Fears: Will accuracy enhancements become more important to tankers than damage enhancements? Will mezzing become even more rude to tankers, since it denies them their precious damage inertia?