BrandX

Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba

It has already been stated that the reason of "just because" is an idiotic reason for anything. It shows a lack of actual reasoning and should therefore be discarded as irrelevant and meaningless.

No, FA and DA's mitigation levels are low enough that having more holes in their mitigation is not in any way balanced.

I can understand your opinion that having other mitigation areas increased might be more beneficial than closing the KB hole.

The advice to not play a set because we don't like it is a waste of the time it took you to type it and has absolutely nothing to do with AT powerset balance.

Originally Posted by Cyber_naut

So KM 'might' do better single target dmg with 'sufficiently high recharge' and 'good use of power siphon'? But a set like claws is faster, better on end, has better mitigation (single target -dam isn't as valuable as any aoe mitigation) and 'blows KM away on AOE' (which is generally more valuable in an mmo, outside of fringe gamers who solo av's all day...). Hard to believe so many people criticized this gem, lol.

Originally Posted by je_saist

massive aoe damage and massive defense?

spines / super reflexes scrapper
spines / shield scrapper

That's about it.

No "Range" archtype is going to give you meaningful Defense Debuff Resistance. What that means is that all it's going to take is one -def attack, and you won't have any defense. So if you want to dish out the aoe damage and shrug off the attacks, start looking at the scrappers.

Originally Posted by Umbral

You don't need as much mitigation when you're killing things in half the time that other ATs are (and have a tool for massive frontloading of damage so that even fewer enemies are present to attack you after your initial assault). +Dam is itself a survival tool because it shortens the time frame that you're actually exposed to damage. That's honestly why SD still has awesome performance in SOs (and why the "lower mitigation" argument is a complete and utter lie).

Originally Posted by SevereCalamity

I see no reason why SR should have KB protection as opposed to DA or FA. Conceptually, FA and DA should be more sturdy because of their "armor" status. If anything SR shouldn't have KB protection if you're just going by concept. I imagine someone light and quick on their feet as an SR, so if you're unable to dodge the attack, you should get knocked around.

Actually, that also makes a great point in game. Defense based sets are built around avoiding the status effects to begin with, making status protection even less important to them than resistance base sets who are almost always going to be struck.

The point is, even bringing in concept and disregarding balance, there is no reason why FA and DA shouldn't have some sort of KB protection.

Originally Posted by Quinch

Protip: Typing in /getglobalname (insert character name here) will tell you their global name.

Originally Posted by Jay-D

The overwhelming herds of catgirls bothers me a bit, to be honest. I guess you'll find them on all servers, but Virtue just seems to attract them to a greater degree..

Originally Posted by StratoNexus

First, its 2 armor sets that do not have KB protection. Pretty much everyone else in the game lacks it (Khelds get it in Dwarf, I am unsure how VEATs fare here). Rather than think of it as only two sets that lack KB protection, I generally think that there are X number of sets where I can get KB protection without dipping into pools or IOs and that X is a minority of my choices.

Just because is not the reason sets lack KB. There does not need to be a game balance reason to implement a design. Sometimes the concept is more important (or else why even have blasters at all ). Balance must certainly be considered, because if the concept and design implementation fall out of a good range, then it is likely you will have issues.

However, I can see your point. It might be pretty stupid that Shields, Willpower, Regen, Electric, and Energy get KB protection (although I like the way Electric's KB protection was implemented and it seems to work concept-wise). It may even be a bit silly for Ice and Invuln, although I see a strong case with those two sets. SR, Ninjitsu, and Stone have a pretty solid reasoning for KB protection.

Originally Posted by Another_Fan

Actually what is being said repeatedly in this thread is that SR is worthless because of SD. Matter of fact the title "In the Age of IO's, is SR obsolete?" is a pointed way of trying to say just that and badly disguising it as a question. Here's a better question "In the Age of Scrappers that can layer defense and resistance on top of each other have a self heal and outdamage almost all blaster combination's are blasters obsolete ?". See both of those aren't questions so much as manifestos.

Anyway the unasked or possibly disregarded part of this is just how much effort does it take to make SD surpass SR, how does SR compare at comparable levels of expense ? As I said way back in this thread SD's greatest power is the power to absorb nearly limitless amounts of INF. But back to your comparisons re recharge and the ability to spam siphon life fast unless you are in a situation where you have little to no risk of death the ability to trade damage for survivability is pretty important.

Originally Posted by sprintstnyc

The reason KB doesn't do direct damage is a design feature. It made sets that did knockback much, much more powerful than those that didn't. Way back (I mean way, way back, in the original beta or alpha) it did do damage based on if the recipient hit something or fell.

Balancing stuff kind of sucks. You'll never make everybody happy.

Originally Posted by Deacon_NA

I think it comes down to how you value the Shields. Slotted out, the Defender will add 31% +Def to a team, 23% of that is of the "go run off and solo cysts" variety (meaning ally shields). The Corr gives 23% and 17% respectively. That's a very real difference.

While it's tempting to say the Cold Dom set is about equal across Corrs and Defs (Trollers too) because the two sexiest powers are identical (Heat Loss and Sleet) so roll a Corr, the standard Defender buff/debuff advantages do apply to all the other powers.

Still, for me it comes down to the Shields when I need higher performance (SG wants to do super speed ITF/LGTF kinda thing) so I opt for my Cold/Ice over my Dark/Cold for those.

Also note that your DP attack's debuffs will be greater for the Def.

Having said all that, my post is merely to offer a differing viewpoint in a thread that had a lot of pro-Corr support and little for the Def and I just wanted to offer support for Def. The reality is that either will perform very well and if you (the OP) have any preference for one over the other, for whatever reason (Corruptor comes first alphabetically for example) then by all means go with your preference.

Originally Posted by Tangler

I'd like to make an ice dom for when GR hits, but I'm torn between either going corr or def.

Normally this is a straight-cut issue of buffage > defender and moar damage > corr, but cold dom is an oddity in that its -res debuff is equal for both corrs and defenders.

So really for me, that just leaves the only important difference to be in their ice shields.

I'm also likely going to pair cold with DP if that helps.

*correction: that should be "cold dom". :s

Originally Posted by Ehina

A question about Scrapper vs Brute Kinetic Melee :

Reading the feedback thread I understood that :
- Power Siphon is a 20 sec self buff that allows you to stack +%dam buffs using Kinetic Melee attacks. It has a 2 min base recharge.
- Scoring a critical on the tier 9 attack (scrapper or stalker) insta recharges Power Siphon. However there is no similar effect for Brutes (or tankers).

It makes me think that we'll get much more of Kinetic Melee on a scrapper than on a brute : a scrapper benefits more from the +%dam buffs of Power Siphon than a brute, and furthermore will have regularly a chance to insta recharge Power Siphon.

Is that correct ? Has there been some end-game calculations on the main ST dps chains of KM on a scrapper vs a brute with mid-high recharge ?

I want to start a hero brute with GR, but I'd also like to try Kinetic Melee. Both at the same time would be cool, but I'd really like to be sure first if a IOed KM brute is a viable choice compared to a KM scrapper or not.

Thanks

Originally Posted by Minotaur

Slacker before the last round of XP boosting, exemped XP, the XP slider changes and before AE existed, my SG took a team from 1-50 doing normal content between Friday evening and Sunday night of a double XP weekend, about 40 hours play Fun but exhausting. We just basically ran TFs, it would be soooo much easier now as you wouldn't lose the XP we lost at the end of some of the TFs.

I don't play him often, but will never delete him as that weekend is a very fond memory. I was basically the tank on a kat/fire scrapper.

Originally Posted by Umbral

Scaled +def would be a horrible idea, especially if we're talking about IOing prospects since the primary problem with */SR is the fact that +def is already so easy to get ahold of. It's also completely counter to the entire idea behind the scaling resistances, which were meant to soften the blows as you get lower on health, because, unlike almost every other set out there, SR can't rely on its mitigation mechanisms to perform in the short term.

Honestly, the best solution isn't to find some magical way to buff SR. SR is fine as is (if not a bit too strong thanks to virtual immunity to defense debuffs). What needs to be done is bringing SD down to sane levels of performance. Simply removing the ability to enhance the DDR in Active Defense with HOs would go a long ways toward doing that (though that would require Castle actually deciding that his new sets shouldn't blow everything else out of the water).

Originally Posted by Bad_Dog

Same here. I play on a 32" monitor and a high resolution. I occasionally have to do circles with the mouse to figure out where it is, a bit annoying in the middle of battle.