Blue_Mourning

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That said; these days we do seem to be dealing with a Kinder-Gentler Johnny.
Have you been replaced by a Nemisis Automaton?

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Just proving wrong the people who said attitude matters. Since turning the dial down I've gotten less results in anything I campaign for.


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Correlation does not equal Causation. If you're out to prove something, do it right.

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I disagree, because you're missing the point.

Champions allowed you to make two completely different characters that were equally effective, but in different ways.

12d6 damage was 12d6 damage, regardless of whether it was a super strong punch or an energy blast. You could make a character with high defenses, or high DCV, and have them be equally well protected.

Sure, a GM was required to prevent some aberrations, but the point I was making remains valid.

If everyone is the same, there's balance. That's the point of my long post about how I would have designed the game. Everyone is the same. The powers are all the same. The difference comes from concept and style (eg. animations, etc.).

That's why I say that everyone could be a Tankmage, and the game could still work. Of course, I don't believe a complete, rounded character has to be defined as a Tankmage.

(I remember making a Champions character for a laugh, who had the power to make other people intangble, 0 endurance, continuing, no concious control. The effect was that you make the Juggernaut intangible, and he can rage to his heart's content; he can't do any damage because he's not solid. Then you leave him that way. The GM nixed him, of course.)

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I believe that last part of your statement proved Talen's point.

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This isn't to trick you into saying so, but would a 0.9 mod fly with you? Despite what you said, I still consider my proposal way more tame than that.


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Actually, it would.

I would be a little concerned about how that played with blaster/tanker balance, and I'm not exactly Arcanaville or Starsman, but I would tentatively say yes. I think it would help a lot of lower level tank damage issues, and not change the higher levels quite as much.

But I might be wrong about everything :P.

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I think most of your problem is based more around the fact that tanker secondary sets tend to be ordered in a way that your hardest hitters don't come before 35 with meaningful offensive slotting not coming until later. Honestly, that's the only thing I would like to see changed, but even that , I don't think, is that big a deal.

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It's not. I have several 50s of varying combos and all with varied builds generated on Test. Even the 50's with fully slotted attacks, in many cases heavily IOed out, don't perform offensively to a point I would call them heavy hitters compared to similar quality Brutes or Scrappers.

Even if they flipped Tanker primary and secondaries in terms of picking order and left the actual stats of the powers the same, the end result would be the same.


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See that's the issue I think I and other people have with your proposals. You *want* to be as hard hitting as a scrapper or a brute and you want to be able to do it without outside help.

Scrappers, even with help, will never be as tough as a tanker, because of the caps, because of HP caps, and because they have lower defense modifiers. I play scrappers, I play a few of them, and they're tough. But they're not tanker tough. The fact that scrappers "everywhere" are soloing AV's tend to get lost in the fact that most people who try it die. A lot. The fact that everyone on the forums claim to be able to do the RWZ challenge ignores the fact that I'm betting that most players in this game who try it probably die a lot. You don't notice their defeats because they don't brag about them. The same things, in fact, that they're bragging about, can be trivial for a tanker built the same way, or at least similarly. I'm less impressed by a dark/shield tank soloing an AV. Why? First off, they have a load more HP. Secondly they're easier to self defense cap with IO's than a shield scrapper. Thirdly they're going to get more out of Aid Self if they have it.

Mostly you wave it off and say that it doesn't matter. Scrappers are tough, yes. Scrappers on the forums tend to be a bit tougher. Fine. Well built tanks laugh at most of the situations my soft capped SR scrapper boasts about being able to survive.

But you don't notice these things. Instead you simply say "Scrappers have survivability that's 'good enough'. Good enough for what? Good enough to tank an ITF without buffs? Probably not. Good enough to tank the majority of the STF? On a pug? Probably not, not unless they're very very good.

You're complaining about what a tanker can't do because you're looking at the other forums and saying "Well they can!" Yet the first thing I noticed going from scrapper to tank was, even at low levels, was times when I would faceplant on my scrappers I wasn't even a little bit worried on my tank. That's on a stoner before granite, and for the majority of that character's leveling career, the damage was 'good enough' to get me through the rough spots.

But I don't think that concerns you. And I think that's where the majority of my problems with your balance concerns bother other people.

Mind you I am not against changing tankers if it can be shown that there's a problem. But I have never felt like anyhting but a powerhitter on my tankers once the powersets matured.

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I wouldn't be surprised to see the Tanker damage cap raised eventually.

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Raising the cap accomplishes nothing.

It would bring Tankers into closer pairity with Brutes, but it wouldn't make them more interesting or fun to play, wouldn't help with Tanker role or concept, nor fix any Tanker problems.

Neither does lowering Brute survivability caps. That doesn't make anyone happier either.

There's also been talk of increasing Tanker damage from the 0.8 multiplier to a 0.9 multiplier. Arcanna even suggesed I push for that as it was more likely, which is true even if her tongue was firmly in cheek when saying so. Even that wont help with making Tankers heavy hitters, in my opinion and still doesn't elevate Tanker offense from plain vanilla to something more intersting and unique. In fact, such a move is in my opinion, WAY more unbalanced than anything I ever suggested, and that includes my inherent proposal.



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You were asking for, over time, a 24% increase in damage (I know you're concerned primarily with burst, but against single hard targets you should be more concerned with damage over time). A 24% increase of a .8 modifier brings you to a .992 modifier over time. So asking for a .9 base modifier causes, over time, the tanker to do less damage over a period of time. Of course a .9 modifier comes with other benefits that yours does not, specifically that all damage boosts would be more beneficial and damage enhancements would be more beneficial.

I think most of your problem is based more around the fact that tanker secondary sets tend to be ordered in a way that your hardest hitters don't come before 35 with meaningful offensive slotting not coming until later. Honestly, that's the only thing I would like to see changed, but even that , I don't think, is that big a deal.

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And I just explained to Blue_Mourning how Tankers could occasionally appoach Brute damage and not make anyone obsolete.


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Actually you still haven't actaully answered the question I asked.

And you didn't "show me" that it would be balanced. You just said it would be. You didn't prove it. There's a major difference.

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You stated in that thread that it would be the equivalent over time of 1 red inspiration on at all times. 1 red inspiration = 25% damage bonus. With 3 enemies in range, I'm getting a 26.5% damage bonus on my shield tanker. Do you feel that shield tankers do the damage that you would want tankers to do?


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Actually, I said it was slightly less than one small red inspiration, which is what the average worked out to.

But for the sake of this exchange, let's say it would equal exactly one small red inspiration, a 25% damage bonus.

So, one red inspiration on all the time. Let's say the devs deemed that an acceptable increase for Tankers.

25% buff @ 100% of the time.

So, if that's acceptable, what about:

50% buff @ 50% of the time?

That's double the buff but half the duration.
It still averages out the same in the end.

What about:

125% buff @ 20% of the time?

Again, still averageing out to 25%

Which is close to what I had proposed for Gauntlet 2.0. Actually, I had proposed a 120% buff @ 20% of the time, which only averages out to 24%, slightly less than a red inspiration, as I had said.

This would put Tanker damage at near peak Brute levels for a short time, allowing them to be heavy hitters at least some of the time.

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With 3 enemies in range, I'm getting a 26.5% damage bonus on my shield tanker.

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Are you? Mid's is telling me you only get a 16.5 damage buff with 3 foes feeding AAO on a Tanker. I don't think the View Totals window takes into account AT multipliers, if that's where you're looking.



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So I can assume that shield tankers are roughly what you would want out of baseline tankers in terms of long term performance?

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Please find a new name for your proposal. Smackdown, Overpower, Bulldoze. Anything but Tank-omination, it isn't very descriptive as it could be misconstrued as some form of ESP for tankers and it's far too silly to say.

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But the point is you remembered it because of the silly nickname. The actual proposal I dubbed Gauntlet 2.0, IIRC.



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I have a question about your Gauntlet 2.0 or whatever you wanted to call it. You stated in that thread that it would be the equivalent over time of 1 red inspiration on at all times. 1 red inspiration = 25% damage bonus. With 3 enemies in range, I'm getting a 26.5% damage bonus on my shield tanker. Do you feel that shield tankers do the damage that you would want tankers to do?

Please note, I'm not asking you whether or not you like shield defense as a powerset, nor am I asking you to choose shield if you want to do damage. I'm just trying to figure out precisely where you would want tankers balance point to lie because, frankly, I haven't been able to figure that out yet. I don't think I'm alone in that.

I think people tend to attack your ideas because you have never indicated where you would expect the balance point for tankers to lie, and when they attack your ideas you tend to get belligerent and then the threads just turn into a feeding frenzy that becomes a self perpetuating machine of doom.

So do shield tankers do enough damage for you to say "I like tankers there"?

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Maybe Tankers should get their bottle too. You know, for doing the job nobody wants to.

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Except D3 Defenders... and Tankerminds... and some Scrappers... and some Controllers... and many Brutes... and dwarf form Kheldians...

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And most don't do it nearly as well....

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And since AV's are meant to be team content anyway, the fact that only some combos can and many can't should be telling.


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See, I spent all morning trying to explain this to someone who felt soloing AVs was their privilage for picking the "right" combos and AT and that changing AVs in anyway was taking something away he was entitled to, and giving myself a headache in the process.


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My only point was baseline balancing shouldn't be soloing AV's.

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It's still not a problem. How many builds of anything can solo AVs? That Tankers even have any already puts them above a number of other ATs.

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Well, Tal, Fail, I invite you two to have a discussion with Fernandes and ask about his thoughts on soloing AVs and if players should be allowed/able to.

I'll be happy to just watch, thanks.

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They shouldn't be able to.

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Just Tankers shouldn't be able to?



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Right now, most AT's as a whole can't. Some controllers can - most don't have the damage/survivability -; some scrappers can - some combo's don't enough end management tools/survivability against a single strong target [DA/FA I'm looking at you] and the ones that do need heavy IO slotting - ; Some tankers can - some don't have the damage, some don't have the end management - ; Some defenders can - although most don't have the damage output and most don't have the survivability - ; I would imagine some khelds can, but I have no idea.

All of this is, of course, assuming not temp powers, because with a shivan/nukes all bets are off.

And since AV's are meant to be team content anyway, the fact that only some combos can and many can't should be telling.

What that's telling some is that everyone should be able to solo AV's (huh?) what that's telling others is that the ones that can are probably Single target outlier sets.

YMMV and I don't give a [censored].

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The point is, subjective and qualitative rationale were the stated reasons for Dom changes.

You saying "no, ignore that, don't even bring that up" doesn't dismiss that.

If subjective qualities such as "feel" are good enough motivation to make changes to one AT, they should be good enough motivation to re-examine another.

And for Rao's sake, try to use some capital letters. Make an effort at least to demonstrate you earned a pass from elementary school.


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I...actually agree with Johnny, the world will end .

Subjective is not a filthy word. This whole entire forum is subjective - we're talking about tankers in a tanker forum. Can you back up subjective opinion with fact? Sometimes. Sometimes you can't - and sometimes just because you can't back up your opinions or ideas with objective facts doesn't mean that you can't incite change or invite intelligent discussion (intelligent discussion on the internets....I know). The facts are objective. You bringing it up isn't. Also at least one person on this thread needs to look up the definition of the word "Fact".

As for this entire debate the majority of my issue is this: those suggesting that tanker damage increase, and some of those suggesting (and I don't think Ultimo is one of those people for the record) to add range attacks to tanker secondary sets is that they're claiming to be completely objective and have objective facts to support themselves and then don't provide any. Some will say it's not about numbers, it's about presentation. Others have said that the damage tankers put out is fine but the presentation is off. Both sides are saying their objective and both sides evidence appears to be a collection of youtube videos and wikipedia articles. Not that those don't provide clues to what the medium should be representing, but you have to be aware that the medium will not represent your character directly and some amount of imagination must be used.

I would love to have offense/defense stances in this game. I'm silent about it because I don't see a need for it in my playstyle. I actually found Johnny's suggestion for tank domination interesting, but ultimately disagreed with it because I disagreed with some of his reasoning.

Most interestingly, the Knockback that the characters in comics and clips engage in doesn't work well with the melee mechanics in this game and if it were implemented there would be hellfire and brimstone on these forums. Seriously. How often do people ask for the KB hole to be closed in DA or FA (and actually just for the record I would like to see KB resistence added to those sets, but I have no numbers to back myself up)? The two powersets that most closely show the knockback mechanic in the comics are occasionally maligned for htat reason. What I would really like to see if Knockback protection kept in the mez protection toggles, most or all of the KB resistence gone. Granite for instance...some AV's and Nemesis units can knock me back in granite, but that's about it. And I like that mechanic very well.

Also, just for the record Lacrymosa? You can call me pretentious or you can call me friend, but you can't call me both. As for you posting facts, well, I'll believe that when I see it.

I think people should stop using the word objective.

Seriously.

It doesn't exist.

Just acknowledge that what you're saying is always subjective and try to back it up with provable facts. That's what people aren't doing in this debate, pretty much on either side.

Now all the cosmetic stuff is something different. Most of that can't be debated with provable facts because it's just what people want. Proving that a majority of people want it is difficult at best. The best thing you CAN do is propose it, hope a dev sees it, and agrees with you.

Personally, I can say that I don't want property damage on the level that is shown in the clips of Captain Marvel vs. Superman because, quite frankly, it seems to me to be the antithesis of being heroic. I'm not against big epic battles. But causing that much damage to stop superman from investigating a bomb that you think isn't a bomb is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Just....meh.

Anyway, a great deal of the other stuff is RPing. There already is screenshake, there already are cracks in the ground. Hell, one of my scrappers is an SS scrapper who happens to be weilding an unbreakable broadsword. My stone tank happens to be super strong (in another incarnation she is a fire/SS tank...her powers are a bit weird) but wields an axe.

To play this game you almost have to ignore some of the mechanics to get your character across. Because you can have a character concept as a God or a Demi-God, but then you can also play a normal guy who happens to be well trained. How do you balance that in the game? You can't. You just have to provide the powersets and hope people have a good enough imagination to make it fit.

The mechanics aren't perfect; but I don't know how you would change it, and I don't think that the ones proposed here, in this thread and in others, are the way to go if a direction is at all necessary.

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I just noticed my previous numeric comparison had a minor error: It is comparing base + Tough + Weave. Both sets had it, though: Fire and Stone.

The difference is a bit more pronounced on both directions without Tough and Weave, meaning Stone looks even more superior in the alpha and Fire even more superior in sustainability, but neither by a huge margin. Here is the corrected relationship chart:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Alpha Tolerance Regeneration (sustainability)
0.23 0.57 (0.41) 0.14
0.23 0.57 (0.41) 0.14
(0.57) (0.32) (0.92) (0.85)
0.25 0.98 (0.47) 0.02
0.07 0.46 (0.50) (0.04)
0.07 0.46 (0.50) (0.04)
(1.00) 0.82 (0.68) (0.10)
99.99 99.99 1.12 3.10
</pre><hr />

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In terms of balance, wouldn't this argument point towards FA getting buffed instead of stone though? An FA should probably have a better survivability than a stoner outside of granite in most areas, or at least in my mind they should (and my mind is a weird place).

To tell you the truth, though I know what the numbers respresent, I'm not entirely sure what the numbers are actually based on, probably because I missed that class....but still; I think it makes the vast majority of people reading this thread unsure as to what, exactly, your numbers mean.

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Yeah, I do think Tanks need Taunt. Was I unclear on that? No.

Did I say anywhere that I thought Kins should bypass having SB? No.

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No, elsewhere you got bent out of shape because someone considered Kins lazy if they weren't putting SB out all the time. Now you're calling Tanks bad players if they don't take and use taunt. You're insight is incredibly enlightening, you should post about it in the Tanker forums. I'm sure you'll find no complaints and well reasoned arguments against the idea. You'd certainly prove me wrong if everyone agreed.


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Ha. Yeah. That's funny.

You know when I start yelling "Taunt tanker, Taunt!"?

Its when I've had enough of the Tank saying repeatedly, "sb me!", "heal me!", whatever "ME".

The Tank not only isn't concerned about why they might not be getting the SB, heal, whatever as quickly as they want it....the Tank is saying "...me".
I've never seen a tank yell out "sb the group". It is always about the tank getting what they want.

That's when I yell, "Taunt tanker, taunt".

And, btw, that's for the benefit of the whole team and not just my character...unlike the tank who is only looking out for themselves.

...oh, and remember what this thread is about? Grant Cover!
And my point was that it was very useful to a team, and the stance has been "well, other powers are more useful to me."
Surprise, surprise!

Tanker-tude is real.
Do you really need to keep proving it in your replies?

PS. I never said a tank was "lazy". A Tanker - posting in multiple forums - was insulting Kins. More Tanker-tude.

It makes me ashamed to play a Tank. Fortunately, when I play a tank, I leave the -tude behind and work with the team.

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Uhm....sorry to say you're wrong here, but you're wrong. Okay, I'm not that sorry. I've seen AT's of ALL types say "SB me". Even controllers. Even defenders. It's not a tanker problem. It's an across the board problem.

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(QR)

Here are issues I think exist with Stone:

Out of granite, the set performs at best at the same level as the baseline Fiery Armor build (no pools) only trading the Fire superiority for Psi superiority, Psi being less common type than Fire.

To do this, Stone requires 7 powers, 8 if you want the taunt aura. Each power uses a minimum of 3 slots, Earth Embrace uses 6. Thats 7 powers+24 slots.

Fiery Aura uses 4 powers to do so, and 3 slots them all for exception of Healing Flames, that it six slots. This is, mind you, if he wants to cover cold to it's max, if he neglects cold he uses 3 powers. I also can have the taunt aura.

So fire armor gets, tops, 4 powers and 15 slots to do the same mitigation as stone out of granite, plus it gets all those cool tools like endurance drain, Fiery Embrace, bonus damage aura and Burn.... OK ignore burn.

The point? Stone out of granite performance is sub par at best without any single bonuses and requires insane amount of effort to build without any true rewards. On the other hand, it suffers additional penalties that prevent it from running hover or combat jump for additional defense, plus a horrendous mobility penalty that includes the forced de-toggling of status protection to actually do any non-tp movement.

And then Granite.... Granite who's people complaints are not it's penalties but on the other hand how easy it is to get over most if not all the penalties without having to sacrifice survivability.

Whoever says that set has no issues in face of people noting them is the child trying to talk to adults, either that or he just has vested interests and is afraid of stone being reviewed as it would, as a minimum, mean measures set so that Granite's penalties can't be worked around.

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The problem that I see with this argument isn't so much that the armor doesn't have issues. I think there are a few. I would like to see some of the penalties outside of granite reduced, specifically the run speed in rooted reduced at least by half. And despite the fact that you reduce me down to a child talking to an adult (and you wondered why people take offense at your suggestions....) I actually don't have that much of a problem with SOME of Granite's penalties being insurmountable...note that I say some.

Here's the issue. WP tankers can get pretty close to Stone survivability with NONE of the issues of a stoner. Invulns can too, even outside of their t9's, especially when it comes to smashing/lethal damage, with again, none of the penalties. With IO's. SO if these armors can get pretty close to a Granite tanker's survivability while having none of the issues a Granite tanker has (specifically mobility/recharge issues, the cosmetic ones are really neither here nor there) then the reverse should be at least a little bit true. A granite tanker shoudl be able to build to surmount some percentage of their issues.

In addition, the level of commitment to IO's that a granite tanker has to go to is somewhat....understated on these boards. It's not a trivial amount. I'm not saying it shouldn't be balanced, but I am saying that not every stoner goes around with 65%+ recharge 30%+ runspeed and 70%+ damage (and I'm pretty sure that last part's impossible). It's especially non-trivial to build from at least 1 - 49. At 50 you really have nothing better to do, but you're still spending 200 million + to get a build on the level of "eliminates all penalties".

Then there's the "A kin eliminates the penalties of a granite tanker". Boo freaking hoo. An FF defender/controller eliminates almost all survivability problems on a FA tanker. Does that mean that FA tankers are the tankers with the least problems and the most viability? Ha! People tend to forget about things when making that argument.

I'm willing to have it be "a little bit harder" in granite to surmount the issues, but I think anyone who argues that they should be completely insurmountable in the face of how awesome granite is is an child talking to an adult.

Yes, I have a vested interest in the status quo. I've put almost 2 years and probably over a billion influence into my stoner now with all the build changes and all the SO's and IO's and respecs and what not. But you have a vested interest in changing it because you don't enjoy the set. Because powers 1 - 8 aren't what you like to see in a set. I frankly reject that mode of thinking. The set is fairly balanced. It's just you don't particularly like the way it's balanced.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm so full of it and so blinded by the fact that I really do enjoy my character (even outside of granite) that I'm an idiot and an immature gamer.

Also, for the record, I'm not completely against granite's numbers being taken down somewhat. I wouldn't mind if it were something like 17% Def/40% resistance, as long as you lowered the penalties assocated with rooted and raised some of the other powers to make them more viable outside of granite. But the numbers on that would be very carefully tweaked.

I have a stone/axe that I really like, but it took a lot of IOing...I would suggest a stone/fire or a stone/SS if you don't like the look or the flow of a Stone/BA

Unless perma doms have a different icon next to their names than regular doms do there's no way to judge how the general public views the teaming capabilities of perma doms.

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Of all things that would be the biggest one on my list. I run a teen female stone tank, she is very small and with very small proportions, every time I turn on the armor the thing is taller than her.

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If someone's biggest issue with stone armor is the cosmetics of it and not the actual numbers, and they're arguing for a numeric shift, I don't think they have very good ground to stand on for a numeric shift. Especially when they haven't really given too much support for said shift to begin with.

It's not that I think that someone getting pissed off about a ruined character concept should be a reason NOT to change something, just that the change in the size, which for the most part i'm for, is essentially based around character concept sooooo...bleh.

Probably not possible until power customization but it owuld be nice if you could scale it and choose the color yourself.

Well, I don't mind, but I guarantee you that someone in this game finds it epic and would curse you forever if it changed.

The team buff makes this an interesting addition, but I don't see keeping 40% defense to Psi while tacking on a team buff.

I don't know why I'm so against this other than I put a lot into the stoner I currently have and I really like the set. I'm usually not against most ideas on the basis of change, but I just can't imagine playing a stoner and then getting angry because you realize there were drawbacks. Most people complain about Stone for 2 reasons - 1 it's so powerful but 2 "there's so many debuffs".

And as I said, I really like the set as is, so I mgiht be a little biased. But I just don't see these changes as necessary. Most of the end issues on a stoner is coming from Mudpots, so you would have to lower it's end concerns a lot before I would consider running all the toggles at once, as well as mudpots. Even with Mudpots at 1. whatever you said earlier that would still be a lot to run and spam attacks faster without having a recovery tool.

I have to say, unless something very interesting happened to the set below granite, and I don't mean simply a numerical shift so that the earlier armors are "more viable", I mean some really nice utilities, I probably would retire my main for quite a while. As it is now the stone set before granite is fairly straight forward. There's no bells or whistles like burn, invinicibility, AAO, RttC or EA for creating interesting situations, or self buffing. It's simply straight forward defense with a little bit of regen, and some resists in the F/C area. If all you did was make granite a toggle like the jump pack is, and bumped up the earlier parts of the set then the set would be....

Really really boring. Even if you bumped up the armors to soft cap status it would still be powerful but very very boring.

The only way I could see myself playing this set after a change like that is if Granite raisedyour defensive capabilities for 120 seconds or whatever you said, and the rest of your set increased offensive capability in some way, either and end management power, or a damage buff power, or something anything to make the set interesting.

If the set is going to have no utility like it does now it better have something like granite. But I doubt those were the concerns you were talking about.

What precisely would the buffs to the others parts of the set be? Because if it's not the toughest mother [censored] out there then you gotta give it something. Even invlun these days has some bells and whistles in the form of invincibility, Unstoppable, and the buffs tot he passives. What you propose is not only a nerf, but worse than that, it's a boring nerf.

It's also a nerf to playstyle and a slap in the face to everyone who put in the time to play a stoner up. And I'm just about betting that the buff to the earlier parts of the set don't include utilities, and don't include anything other than a numerical buff that makes it easier to softcap.

Am I right?

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Well, there you go. Have at it folks. Pick it apart, dissect it. Tell me I'm out in left field or not. But in the end I want to ask you, how would you change Stone Armor if you could?

[/ QUOTE ]I'd make the model for granite actually scale properly. And then I'd leave it alone.

I find myself direly amused by people who make Stone Armor characters, get them to a high level range, then decide they don't want what they knew they were getting into.

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It's because they see what other people are able to accomplish and they think it's actual Godmode without any drawbacks. Until they play it. It's fairly well balanced. If I were to do anything I would probably think about removing some of the defense debuff resistance, and maybe reducing some of it's res or def down a little. But I really wouldn't want to see it completely neutered. As I said before, I like the mechanics of it.

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First of all, I really like having the option of running in with Granite and not being on top of your offensive game, or running in without and cutting loose (well, as much as a stoner can cut loose...) As it is, it plays nothing like any other armor set. As suggested it's a lot more homogenous, and I wouldn't enjoy that. I can't talk for anyone else but I would imagine a lot of other people feel the same way.

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I love when people use the "homogeneous" statement when anyone hints at any type of balancing. There is nothing in any set like I just described. Stone would still not play like any other set with these suggestions. If all you mean is "granite would be nerfed", well, that's another story all together.

Stone is one of those few sets out there (like Psychic Assault) that force players to go through hell to achieve an uber status thanks to one single power. That is plainly wrong. The set should not torture players until they get Granite, and granite should not make the rest of the set obsolete.

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it would be a drastic difference in playstyle though, and one that would very much not enjoy. Actually I would be better with a numerical nerf of granite since I do feel that, having played one, it's over kill in all but one situation, and that one's on the STF.

That being said, I agree with you. But having a toggle tier 9, even if it's less than it is currently, (say at Brute numbers) with the rest of the set bumped up to compensate I wouldn't mind. But I like having a tier 9 that changes a playstyle. And I have to say, a stoner with tank numbers from 1 - 30 really didn't feel as bad as most people are saying, and that's when I was still an MMO noob.
So yes, while I might have been saying "yeah, it makes it more homogenous" you can put me in a box with all the other noobs and ignore me and that's fine. But you completely misunderstand my argument.

You're changing the MECHANICS of the power with your argument and I am against that particular brand of nerf. That's why I say having another tier 9 that has a time crash (granted without the end/health crash) would annoy me to the point where the mechanics of my character are changed. And I wouldn't like that.