BrandX

Originally Posted by Gitch

I was just reading a forum post on kb in the blaster forums and it made me wonder if there were any plans to expand Null the gull's powers to include turning kb into kd. Has anyone heard of this, would it be possible? I was thinking he could apply a mag reduction to all kb powers untill under the .67 lvl.

thanks,

Gitch

Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane

The game doesn't force this enough. Scrappers and Brutes have way more survivability than they need and are over protected while on a team due to buffs and what not. Solo or on teams, they experience little downside for having less survivability than a Tanker, and as long as Tankers are forced to trade significant damage for increased survivability they don't need, I say that's a problem.

People have said in the past all that means is that we need harder content. This line of thinking is bogus. We got "harder content" and all it did was make the double standard more prominent. Tin Mage and Apex are harder. The I-trials are harder.

But...
Battle Maiden's sword bombs will surely kill a Tanker as quick as a Scrapper or Brute. Angry Boobcat will easily tear up all three, but all three can be buffed and healed to stand up to her. Tankers still deal mediocre damage in both situations.

The Keyes pulse doesn't hit Tankers for significantly less, and most of the other special mechanics on this trial circumvent the superior survivability numbers Tankers get, essentially treating all the melee ATs equally, but Tankers still deal the least damage the whole time despite this.

The bottom line: Brute and Scrapper survivability is way up in all content thanks to the Incarnate system and I don't see a suitable reciprocated increase in Tanker damage, thanks to among other factors, a crappy damage cap. The "harder content" doesn't favor Tanker survivability over any other melee AT's survivability very much at all; if it's gonna kill a Scrapper or Brute, it'll kill a Tanker, and it wont kill any of the three when they're buried in team buffs. Yet the whole time, Tankers still have to suffer significantly inferior standing damage and caps to pay for more out-of-the-box survivability that seems less and less relevant when everyone's got Barrier Destiny these days.



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Originally Posted by Leo_G

It's a given that they'll remove Ice Patch...and that makes me want to cry

If they decide to spice up Ice Melee (because it probably needs it for the other melees), I'd imagine them either buffing Greater Ice Sword or replacing it with Ice Slash or Ice Sword Circle.

My personal wish is removing both GIS and Frozen Fists, shifting up Frost 1 slot, moving up Freezing Touch sooner and stick in Ice Sword Circle (in place of GIS) and creating a new single target attack with either moderate damage + some control or just good damage. Throw an ice javelin, icy version of stone spears, snowflake saw blade...a lot of cool things one can do with ice that they just didn't do >_>

So that above + Ice patch for Brutes/Scraps and Ice Patch>Assassin's Chill for Stalkers.

Maybe for the Ice Epic Pool, they can stick Ice Patch in there for Stalkers. I don't think there's a rule that says Scrap and Stalk pools have to be identical...in fact, they're not

Originally Posted by Edana

I am aware that the heal was only added to Energy Drain 3 years before they want to remove it. I am also aware of how easy it is to fit 10 foes inside its radius, especially in the incarnate trials. The point still stands that the power is currently a heal and in some cases this scaling heal was the primary reason for rolling a character with this set.

It is unlikely in the extreme that the passive resistances are going to be buffed to the point that you will be taking a third less damage than before, and there is no resistance to psi damage, which to this point is mitigated almost purely through the available healing. Energize provides lower burst healing ability and less healing over any longer period of time in the situations a brute is designed to be in. I am not 'screaming' anything yet, I am however calling a nerf a nerf.

I have no doubt that this is not intended as a nerf, but it is first violating the core of the "cottage rule" in completely removing a core ability from a power and then only returning a fraction of that ability in another power that is not available until 7 levels later and that currently there is no reason to take at all. By all means turn conserve power into something worth taking; but to do so by removing a key mechanic from the set is neither following the guidelines that have been emphasised as the reasoning many more borderline powers cannot be redeveloped, nor an improvement to the set as a whole.

Originally Posted by Mallerick

I think you're seeing the time you play as "average" when it is, in my view, power playing. I don't know of anyone (personally) that can commit to the kind of time you're saying is "average".

The ways of getting much of the "good stuff" in the game is available to the average player (saving for the Incarnate-y stuff, of course), but the time investment is very, very large. Power players can get this stuff easy, average players will take a longer time.

All that said, I can't wait to pull my old DM/EA Brute out of the mothballs and tune her up!

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

It is there for Males, but it's only very slight. The Legacy Broadsword is only slightly larger than the Painted Broadsword, and Rularuu's Bane is significantly larger. The disparity is reverse for Huge models, actually. The Legacy Broadsword actually looks small in comparison to the oversized weapons Huge use, which are actually oversized even in comparison to their body size.

In essence, Legacy weapons are the same size for all models, and as such serve as a nice measuring stick by which to see how much a model's weapons are shrunken or oversized. The Legacy Broadsword for women, furthermore, is what I'll be measuring Titanic Weapons by. We'll see how that goes.

Originally Posted by Samothrake

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing.
Mostly it's 'this could be interesting.'
I won't say I'm 'looking forward to it,' because that's not quite true. But I am willing to give the stories a chance.
My sticking points are the loss of character growth that I see, admittedly from the outside. A few examples from my perspective

Barbara Gordon, as others have pointed out, has outgrown the role and need to be Batgirl. Now, she’s back under the cowl, and there’s no sign of the Batgirl that we just started to read two years ago, let alone the Batgirl we saw before that. Could the stories about Barb and why she went back to swinging around Gotham be interesting? Sure. And I want to know why, if as they say, she was shot and crippled by Joker, and had a run as Oracle, why she decided to go back as Batgirl.

Blue Beetle. Another character I really like. He’s see quite a bit of growth in the short time he’s been around. Started High School and even graduated. Had some interesting adventures before and after. And yet they are throwing him back into High School as a student. Well, I’m sure some interesting stories can be told there. But aren’t we gonna get some repeats? Those of us who followed his series are probably going to have a sense of ‘haven’t we been here before?’

Firestorm looks to be Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch. Interesting. That’s who the character is right now. Ok, I can live with that. The whole part where they are supposed to be ‘classmates’ has me scratching my head though. I really don’t see them going back to High School. And we have Blue Beetle for High School Superhero stories. The Ronnie that we knew is several years past college, and Jason had just started. So to have them ‘classmates’ means that Ronnie seems to have regressed several years. But again, I am willing to see how this is presented and where it goes before I take up arms.

In many ways a total reboot of everything would have been easier, but they are too scared of losing long time readers. Still, as I said, I am willing to see where it goes.
DC knows they are taking a tremendous gamble here, but we their fickle readers and their writers have pushed them into a corner. For them it’s grow or die time.

Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man

You know what, you're right... I forgot, it only detoggles powers that do an enemy debuff, like Willpower's Rise to the Challenge. My bad. I was just coming back to correct that after thinking about it for a bit.

Originally Posted by Cowman

What I'd like is an end to the reality altering mega-events. What I'd like is an improvement in the books without the cheap gimmicks. What I'd LIKE is for people to stop winging about how confusing the continuity is.


I started collecting X-Men comics in the mid to late eighties. I missed out on a couple of the really famous stories and had no idea of the background of a lot of the charactes.

Never bothered me.


I branched out into other Marvel books mainly based on the cover of the comic or the look of the character. I had even less knowledge about them than I did the X-Men.

Never bothered me.


I got into DC comics MUCH later; starting mainly with Batman and eventually switching over to Batgirl/Cassandra Cain. I'd never read 'No Man's Land' or 'The Killing Joke' or much of anything else.

Never bothered me.


In other words, this convoluted history that is supposedly poison to new readers was a complete non-issue for me. Most of the stories didn't require any detailed knowledge of the history.

But people are always crying about how the continuity is "impenetrable"; so we get DC surgically altering their history with the precision of a jackhammer. All for an almost non-existent problem and a sound-bite.

Throwing out chunks of your history isn't going to magically fix your comic book sales.

Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man

For starters, Energy Drain didn't originally have a heal component... it was added in Issue 13, over three years after the set debuted, as a way to balance the underperforming set. Now, a little less than three years after that, they feel the need to balance it further as they proliferate it to new ATs, and they've chosen to move that heal to a different power.

As you mentioned, Energy Drain currently heals 30% (unenhanced) in an "optimal" setting. That means while you're getting punched to paste by 10 enemies all at once before you can even activate it. But it's also completely contextual; if there's no one around you, then it won't heal you in the least.

Now, with Energize, you can heal yourself a guaranteed 25% minimum every 2 minutes, whether you've got 20 dudes surrounding you or zero, AND the new recharge bonus in the taunt aura will shorten that in situations where it's needed more often. Couple that with the fact that the passive +Resistance powers are getting buffed, and you'll find yourself needing that heal less often to boot.

Now, as for your observation that the taunt aura is being placed in the wrong power... well, I can't really say I argue with you there. (Don't toggles with Taunt Auras get dropped automatically when you're mezzed? So... if you get mezzed, won't you need to restart the toggle whose primary purpose is to keep you from getting mezzed in the first place? ) But it's still just a few days after the announcement; the developers very likely have a way to make it work in mind. If it still seems broken once we actually get a chance to play with it, then by all means, scream "Nerf!" all you like.

Originally Posted by Jibikao

Illusion Control does not need any new animation at all. Some ATs only get one new set like Stalker and controller. They are just existing sets (although Stalker's Ice Armor has one new power, maybe not new animation)

They can easily give Dominator Illusion Control, which is an existing set. They can come up another assault later. :P

So the argument that "animation team is booked" does not stand, at least not in Illusion control. I just think it's bad business that you call it "Proliferation 3rd" when one of the core ATs (Dominator) doesn't even get anything. I am not angry or anything but I can see why some Dom fans are not happy about it when Blaster is getting two new sets. Yes, I consider Dark Blast a new set because they actually need to make two new powers (one aoe knockback and one hold), make an Aim and whatever new powers in /Dark secondary. It's like why is Blaster getting all that attention?


As for "goodies" for Dominator, well, I consider Dark/Dark a "goodie" as well and it's "free". By the time they design something new for Dominator, it may be a "Cash Item". It will certainly be a "goodie" for them. The funny thing is I'll pay for Illusion Control just because I can't stand Controller.

Originally Posted by starphoenix

The Original Series and Voyager had instances where they transported off the crew of Klingon ships. So at least 200 people. Might be more instances in the novels, but mass teleportation is too dangerous unless absolutely necessary.

Originally Posted by DarkCurrent

Look if blasters getting Dark Manipulation (a NEW set) doesn't piss you off and make you want to protest, I don't know what will.

It was stated that blasters got DMan because it was full of 'low hanging fruit' Okay, then tell me an dark assault set for doms isn't low hanging fruit as well. All the powers for such a set are in game TODAY. The set could be released TOMORROW.

But NO we're supposed to wait until AFTER I21 for something really cool. When the hell is that??? Next year?

That's too long. I want it now. At the latest, I want it when everyone else gets their new/proliferated sets.

Like I said in my OP. I'm a VIP now. A PAYING customer. And I've been one for 7 yrs. I want my new/proliferated set now, not next year and I have every right to demand it and launch this protest.

Some of you sound happy to be treated like second-class citizens. You're satisfied with promises of soon (TM). Try that argument at your next Xmas celebration.

"Don't be upset that you didn't get anything this year. I promise I'm going to get you something really cool next year, Donny the Dominator. Yes, I know that all your brothers and sisters got presents. But hey, your Blaster brother is SO much easier to shop for than you. You understand, don't you?"

Originally Posted by Zikar

This is Marvel though, they claim that the Hulk never once killed an innocent bystander in all of his rampages (and only killed like, one or two villains).

Originally Posted by Lightfoot

I'm sorry that someone pointing out the ridiculousness of "They changed it, now it sucks and it is Ruined Forever" throws you into a murderous rage.

If modifications to the character's history such as Batman no longer being a vigilante killer or Hal Jordan being an alcoholic or the plethora of revisions that Wonder Woman, Donna Troy, Power Girl or Hawkman have been through are acceptable, why is this such a travesty? DC is finally doing this with a unified plan and all of the writers on board, things that were sorely lacking after Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Originally Posted by Auroxis

Surely it wouldn't be far-fetched to believe devs had both fury generation and tanking in mind when they gave brutes their aggro.

Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus

If you have a taunt and a taunt aura you are designed to hold aggro for whatever reasons. Getting fury is a bonus.

I know you want to tell me that MMs were originally the "tankers" of CoV - but that obviously went nowhere.

Brutes have been holding aggro since their inception, redside teams have been calling on Brutes to hold aggro since their inception.

I see no reason why that has to suddenly change now.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

There's a little trick to height, and that's to ignore the ruler almost completely. "Average" height is the middle of the height slider, which puts you at somewhere between 6'6'' and 7'' on the ruler on a Male model. That's where most Paragon City Civilians are, that's where Hellions and Skulls are, and basically any NPC which uses a custom one-piece model defaults to middle slider. If you make a Female character, then her middle slider will be a good foot lower than where the middle Male slider is, because as we all know, women are always shorter than men