Cyber_naut

Sounds like great news and congrats on the promotions guys. Only thing I'm worried about is this new launcher thing from what I'm reading about it. How bout backing up the new talkative and open thing, and discussing that with us a bit?

How bout stuffing the rest of the alpha slot boosts into some of the gifts?

Castle completely ruined pvp by literally making it a completely different game. The changes didn't draw in any significant number of new pvp participants, and it drove away a signifigant number of pvp enthusiasts. It was really a very bad design move.

That's not to say the old pvp didn't need tweaks and fixes. The biggest problem with pvp is the huge disparity between mellee players and ranged players. You can also see this diparity in pve where the devs always make sure npc enemies have some nasty ranged attacks for players who fight from range.

The correct answer for that problem was to close the gap between melee and range somehow, which would have meant buffing melee or nerfing ranged. And the argument I often hear to justify the disparity that basically is 'you shouldn't bring a knife to a gunfight' doesn't fly because this isn't a conventional fighting game, we're dealing with superheroes. Using that flawed logic, you're basically saying you shouldn't bring superman to fight the wasp because wasp has more ranged attacks.

I would have increased the range of melee attacks so they worked similar to how shield charge works, were melee would target someone, click their attack, and they would teleport or lunge at the target and deliver damage. Ranged attacks would still have the advantage of greater range, but the disparity would not be so great as to make melee players laughingstocks in pvp.

I think concentrated strike was an attempt to do the same thing, except instead of increasing range, they wanted to see what buffing melee attacks dmg to extreme numbers would do. I guess the mindset would be that since its so much harder to land melee attacks, they should do significantly more damage.

Ultimately, the core problem is that the redesigned pvp is a complete mess. They should revert pvp to function exactly as the game functions in pve, then make tweaks from there. With castle gone, maybe one of the new guys will look into it and make sane alterations to a part of the game that could be very fun and a huge asset to this game.

@Cyber-naut SS/WP brute with fly and some range.

What is it about rad's that makes them superior to colds vs GMs?

I've got this "-project coh" on mine and i'm still getting the multiple patches.

I noticed the same thing curve, and I've got lots of SS level 50's, though I'm not aware of any recent changes to the rage crash. The bottom line is, rage will hit you with a nasty -25 end loss when it crashes, and it can't really be mitigated like power end use can with slotting - when rage crashes you lose 25 end. Add a hasten crash hitting at about the same time, and it feels worse. Spamming a fast recharging footstomp too? Feels even worse. Picked up some aoe's in the epic/patron powers? More end pain.

The only way you can really deal with it is to slot your powers for as much end reduction as you can, and skip hasten if you can. My SS toons LOVE the alpha slot because of the end reduction boost - it makes a HUGE difference for my SS toons. My SS/WP brute can now spam a fast recharging footstomp and mu aoes at will and never have any end issues, unless I run into some kind of end drainers.

Again, the bottom line is SS is an end hungry set, and in a different way from other sets. It hits you with a -25 end shot every time rage crashes, and the faster rage crashes, the more often you're going to get hit with it. And unlike other sets, the hit comes all at once, so if you're low on end when it hits, or comes in conjunction with another crash like hasten or an end drain attack, you could end up toggle dropped, which is almost certain death if you're a typical brute who likes to hang out in the middle of a fight surrounded by enemies. And again, unlike other sets where the end usage can be mitigated a lot over time by slotting attacks for end reduction, the end loss from the rage crash can not be directly mitigated by slotting.

I still love SS as a set, mostly for thematic reasons and the booming feel, but imo, the rage crash is excessive for a power that simply allows SS to do damage on par with competing sets. The ten seconds of impotence every crash is enough of a penalty for the power, when the only benefit of the power is an admittedly great to hit bonus that allows you a bit more flexibility in power slotting - because again, even with the more flexible power slotting, SS is still only doing damage on par with competing sets, yet is still saddled with a nasty and unique endurance issue and an extremely annoying dmg dealing penalty whenever rage crashes. And that's ingoring the ridiculous overkill of a defense penalty, which is luckily removed when rage is stacked.

I'm locked out too after a patch, tried to restart game and am now currently downloading another patch...