Bill Z Bubba

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HEY!!!!

Where is the TANKER LOVE????????

We should have this power built into our passives as well. Especially the INV tanker. Then there would be a reason to take the passives and even slot them!

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Tell ya what, when the Devs strip Invul of dull pain, leave the base dam-res where it's at now, AND strip all defense from Invincibilty, THEN, and ONLY then, can you come into this thread and cry for more goodies with Invul.

Many SR users have been screaming for more types of damage mitigation like Invul, DA and Regen have, since Issue 1. We're finally getting some. It'll turn out to be useless just like defiance, but at least they're doing SOMETHING now.

Yea, the dam-res should be a static so that we can slot for it. If you take all three passives, and slot them all, it all stacks. This defiance like ability is crap, even though it's better than nothing.

I just want to know when the hell SR is getting these "fixes" on test. I'm tired of waiting. As I jsut figured out in another thread, it was the capped debt that torked me all out of shape in the shard this weekend, it was that I couldn't stay on my feet long enough to kill anything and be useful to my team.

Fix SR to where I can take out 10 observers before they can off me, and I'll be happy. Throwing one shockwave after the tank has taunted the mob and getting obliterated for your effort is no way for a scrapper to go through a mission.

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What makes anyone think they'll be able to enhance this? None of the other powers that are dependent on current Health (self or team) are enhanceable as far as I know...

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Since no answer has come to Statesman regarding slotting either:

They know it's not slottable but don't want to tell us yet;
It's being debated behind the scenes;

Either way, I never got the idea that it was slottable from the dev comments about it. I was HOPING it was, but then it would be on all the time and, universe forbid, that the SR set actually be useful again.

I honestly don't care about theme anymore. Rolling with a punch IS damage resistance. Dodging the blow completely IS defense.

The ONLY thing I truly care about is getting SR's time to die against a mob of +2s to be equal to the other secondaries when ignoring the scrapper's primary and ancillary pools.

When that happens, regardless of how it happens, I'll be ok.

Yes, that goes the same for Ice Armor.

Until there is intra AT equality, this game is broken.

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I find it shocking and offensive that Jack Emmert has time to post about this but does not have time to address the issue of ED which is obviously the most pressing thing on the playerbase colective mind now. Way to through up some more smokescreen, Mr. Emmert. Now care to explain how ED is going to improve our gameplay?

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Hey bub, some of us have been waiting for SR help since issue farking ONE. This thread is about SR getting a buff. Leave it at that. There's a thread for special-ED, go post there.

Back to the topic at hand....

Thanks, Statesman. Another good step in the right direction.

However, questions:
Why would I get BETTER at rolling with a punch the more I get my face smashed in? Shouldn't the dam-res start high? (I understand that this doesn't quite work with game mechanics, so let's move on.)

Why not just make it a standard base that doesn't change? Even having the passives 5% positional defense and 5% dam-res to all but psi/toxic would allow us to slot the passives. Currently, slotting them is all but useless because:
a: we only get 1% defense per SO
b: once ED goes live, after 3 SOs there's NO REASON at all to slot them.

But that won't work because with all three passives 3slotted for dam-res we'd end up with 24% dam-res to all but psi/toxic.

Actually, for the toggles that would be pretty good. Supposedly like an extra 12% def. Which still wouldn't let us floor even level minions.

Yea, it'll be nice to slow down the incoming damage... a little... but it's doubtful it will stop the 1shot/2shot issue that we deal with, it won't cover the loss of the 3slots of health as some of us 6slot health for a poor man's Regen, we still haven't dealt with tohit buffs and high accuracy negating SR....

What else we got?

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With Enhancement Diversification comes a benefit for ALL City of Heroes powers.

Every power, across the board, is getting a 13.33% reduction in its Endurance cost.

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Cool. Now it won't cost as much for SR to only be missed half the time by even level minions.

And missed 5% of the time in PvP. But hey, at least folks in PvP won't be hitting me for as much damage 95% of the time.

It'll probably only take them 4 hits to kill me versus 2.

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This means that every Defense buff WILL stack to some degree with a player’s defenses, regardless of his power set.


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To some degree? Could you please quantify this a bit? Will pool power defenses provide more defense to positional defense than type? Will defender buffs provide more defense to type than positional? Will they all provide equal amounts of defense? And, to what types will they now provide defense?

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Will weave add the same amount of defense to all ATs and in equal amounts for type and position?

Will the leadership powers still be varied by AT in the buffs they offer?

Do you honestly believe that SR having a MAX of 30% (With Enh Divers) defense to melee and range is viable when SR has no other forms of damage mitigation? Or am I supposed to carry around a pocket defender at all times since their bubbles will now stack? Wasn't I supposed to be able to solo?

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So the only types of attacks the power pool powers don't help with re aoe-psionic types. All other Aoe, and psionic attacks are covered as well...

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Not quite: If I'm SR, the power pools help me against everything except ranged aoes and large pbaoes. In this case, I do get some extra psi-defense.

If I'm Ice, then the power pools help me against all typed of incoming attacks except psi.

Which rather explains why mog is now typed -psi.

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But are the defense bonuses still SURPRESSED when attacking which really makes them, well, useless defense bonues unless on is just standing around minding their own business and is just a bit too close to some flaming behemouth mob.

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Yea, well, the whole suppression issue is stupid no matter how we look at it.

Ok, so up to 16. Still doable. And still should be done.

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Tough Hide

Deflection Shield
Insulation Shield

Wet Ice
Glacial Armor

Rock Armor
Crystal Armor
Mineral Armor

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Just 8 powers... out of ALL the powers in CoH..... just EIGHT are Typed Defense?

Thanks Codeslinger.

8 powers. More powers were changed, ATs fundmentally on some levels, with I-5 than a paltry 8 powers. Hell, Ice Armor would WELCOME damage resistance.

Let's say power A now offers base 12.5% Typed Defense to smashing/lethal.

We can change it to 12.5% melee and leave it as that. What's the problem? Well, any melee fire punches can now be defended against, and that goes against what was planned for the power. Why? Isn't my ice sheath deflecting the blow? If the fist can't get to me, why should the flames?

Goes against your plan? So what? I never planned on my invulnerable tank depending on Defense. I never planned on my SR scrapper getting hit by everyone in the Arena.

If you don't want power A to offer defense(lowercase d) of any kind to fire and energy, then change it to damage resistance and type it.

If you think that power B SHOULD provide defense(lowercase d) to energy and negative energy, but nothing else, same thing, make it dam-res and leave it at that.

If, however, you're ok with power A providing Defense to melee, then let it. And make power B provide Defense to ranged.

If that completely goes against your view of the powerset, turn it into dam-res.

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Things are getting more and more complicated instead of the other way around....

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My thoughts exactly. What ever happened to uninformed decisions?

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Wellll, Statesman did say that all the power descriptions would be changed. I'm guessing soon on that.

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And your assuming that they won't do that. But it can and WILL take time to do. So stop acting like its an easy change that they can just flip a couple of switches and be done with.

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Back down, LiquidX. I've already stated I know full well the work involved and the time consumed.

Yes, I'm making the assumption based on past action by the dev team.

And, no, overall rebalancing would not be hard... ToHit buffs negate defense regardless if it being typed or postitional, so nuking typed defense would make no difference in the arena.

What other balancing do you see needing to be done if typed defense is turned into positional?

Nice. Thanks for the work, Catwhoorg

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Don't feel bad if it's difficult - this gets confusing real quick, which is one real downside to this system - I happen to agree with Arcana. Defense (if specific numbers are not going to be provided for us) should be intuitive. I should know, without doing any math, that turning on hover will help my defense (as long as the tohit floor hasn't been reached). At this point, we don't know that (at least not intuitively).


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Excellent observation. Why not either A: put some hard numbers in a fairly easy chart form from the Devs to the players. OR B: simplify the system so it is intuitive. I would think that not having to check def against a certain type of dmg in the programming code would just be one less process.

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But... but... reducing the number of calculations done by the server would reduce processor use and thus server side lag.

Oh wait... that would be a good thing.

Here's why this won't happen... as much as it should:

There WOULD have to be massive power changes to the sets that are based on typed defense. Thus more free respecs. Oh wait, the code for free respecs is working pretty well... nevermind.

Let's fix this, devs. FIX it, not patch it. Change the power order to SR to make it more fair in the early levels. Dodge before Agile, Evasion before Lucky.

Give Ice Tanker dual positional defense AND typed damage resistance. Reduce Invul's dependance on Invincible and buff their dam-res.

Take another sweep an the blaster secondaries. There's still time to get rid of typed defense in CoV.....

There's still time to make this right.

Folks, let's nip something in the bud here:

There is absolutely NO point for us to be fighting amongst ourselves on this issue. There is absolutely NO point to be insulting to one another.

In America we've already let the democrats and reublicans set the populace at each other's throats, when THEY are the true enemies of the nation. We shouldn't let the same happen here.

We have a broke-[censored] convoluted combat system that needs an overhaul before CoV goes live.

Someone stated earlier that if we were to make all defense positional, then Ice, Stone and SR would all be the same set. They'd be more similar, yes, but quite frankly the only difference between many sets is animations anyway if you really get down to it.

In my opinion, getting rid of typed defense is the best and most logical solution.

Would it take a lot of work? Yes. Would that work be well worth it for everyone in the end? HELL YES.

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Here's a suggestion:

Make all +DEF powers linked to ATTACK TYPE only

Make all +RES powers linked to DAMAGE TYPE only

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Exactly what I proposed prior to Statesman saying that changes to the defense system would be too hard and break too many things.

Read his post as, no way, man, we're using typed defense in CoV as well, we're not going back now. Too many power changes.

Doesn't really matter that it WOULD simplify the combat system, and that it WOULD make a helluva lot more sense than having damage resistance be ONLY typed while defense is typed, or positional, or both.

Yea... fark a bunch of logic. Fix things for now with a bandaid. It's just a flesh wound after all.


(But your arm's off! No it isn't.)

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I just hate getting my buffs nerfed, while trying to buff the nerf that in turn nerfs my buff. Why buff my nerfs?, because they nerf'd my buffs. So buff this nerfs! I5 is the biggest nerf buffer since the buffing of nerfs. Ask the people that got buffed by the nerfs. Damn nerf buffers!

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I'm so confused.


Ok, on topic. Here's what I love about I-5:

When I do team, still a rarity as I hate waiting on people, no longer do I have to wait for the tank to herd.

I love that. Mob to mob action makes the game more fun. If tanks don't feel like this gives them enough time to grab the mob's agro, tough, work harder.

Not like mobs are lasting a long time these days.

Good points from both Flaming1 and Tuft_.

I didn't take alt-ism into account. I only have 5 characters... all on Pinnacle. I might still have one on Virtue.

That's it. I build a new character... play it up to around 10th... if it's not making me jump for joy, I delete it.

I've probably deleted 30-40 characters.

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8% of the player base has a level 50
A smaller proportion has multiple 50's

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Ya know.... I remember when this number came out. I didn't buy it then, and I still don't buy it.

It only took me 4 months to get Bill to 50. Without powerleveling. (Mind you for the most of that four months I was on an extended vacation so I played 12 hours a day)

Celmor got to 50 in like 6 months. Maybe less.. can't remember when I-3 came out. Again, no powerleveling beyond less than a level. (Had to find out what was so wonderful about wolf-herding. Bored me to tears.)

If I can get 2 50s in under a year, working now 40 hrs a week, with a son and wife, taking care of dogs, only getting long game time runs when everyone's crashed or I take a day off....

I just find it impossible to believe that only 8% of the playerbase has a 50.

Just doesn't jive with logic.

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As for changing the way defense works...eek. That's not really an option. There's simply too many things that would break...It's just not do-able.

As for why only S/L? Because in these powers, that simply made sense - and because of the prevalence of S/L damage throughout the game.

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Ok. Now we're getting somewhere. CAN'T change defense. Thank you for coming out and saying that. Now I can give up on that and hit other options:

Can we give the defense based sets a higher defense floor than other sets? say, 5% per power? So if I have all 6 defense giving powers from SR, my defense floor can NEVER go below 35%?

Or put a ceiling on ToHit buffs? Lower base accuracy for PvP to 50%?

Add regen to quickness, give Ice some damage resistance?

Statesman, there are lots of possibilities. You coming out and telling us what CAN'T be done is actually a great thing. So what about the rest of these options to fix the broken defense system that forces SR, FFers and Ice to be inferior to their counterparts?

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Can we go just ONE issue without me having to respec my scrapper?


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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Bill needs another respec... forgot to take followup.

Ok. First, why only S/L?

Second, if someone punches my ice tank with a dual-typed attack, say, energy-smashing damage, is hover going to help to its full defense bonus? Half? Greater defense still applies?

Statesman,
Although I greatly appreciate the step in the right direction, it's time to dump typed defense. It makes perfect sense for damage resistance to be typed, and it makes good sense for defense to be positional.

Lose the typed defense, adjust the game accordingly. It simplifies our understanding, it simplifies the combat system, it introduces a further level of fairness.

So where do we stand with ToHit buffs negating defense? And where do we stand with defense not scaling to the level of enemies as damage resistance does?

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Is this a bug or by design?
When switching to Dwarf from Swift is still in effect for about 5 seconds. It takes about 3 seconds to switch forms so one ends up with about 2 seconds if increased run speed as a Dwarf.

When switching from Nova/Dwarf form back to Human form Swift takes about 5 seconds to kick in.

I can’t tell if Health and Stamina behave this way also.

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Pretty sure this is by design. This way our powers slide into effect, rather than being a sharp on/off. My brain tells me I remember a redname post about it, but my brain has been known to lie to me.