I play many toons. I've tried them all with the exception of a Stone Tank and an Illusion controller. I just couldn't come up with a concept for either of those types. I have built toons for solo play and for team play. Four nights a week I played with my friends in teams. The other 3 nights I mostly solo as pickup teams tend to result in massive amounts of debt. Because of the proposed changes, many of my friends have quit and I am forced to play solo more often. But apparently solo play is "wrong" and any toon that shows an ability to solo gets nerf'd.
Fire Tanks are weaker than other tanks, with maybe the exception of the seldom played Ice Tank. In order to match the abilities of other tanks, fire tanks must take the fighting pool to get tough and weave. Because there is no knockback protection built into their primary powers, they are forced into the leaping pool and must take acrobatics. Because all their powers are toggles, they have to take the fitness pool to get stamina. This means 9 pool powers just to match the ability of some of the other tanks. If the fire tank is going to survive in combat and tank for a full team, all those pool powers must be taken before even considering secondary powers for offense. The weakness built into the fire tank was offset by the burn power. They couldn't survive the amount of punishment other tanks could, but they could actually contribute to defeating the mobs.
Now swings the mighty nerf bat, again. It was bad enough when the fear factor was added in I4, now they make it worse in I5. But apparently that wasn't enough. The recharge time was horribly increased and the amount of damage it could do was reduced. The fear factor alone severely reduced the damage possible as everything runs out of the burn patch. I couldn't understand why all three of these nerfs were applied. Then I heard that people were actually stacking burn, getting as many as 3 burn patches going at the same time. 3 burn patches at once would slaughter virtually everything except AVs. Now I could finally understand the nerf, but not the way it was implemented. Controller pets were not functioning "as intended" (multiples at the same time). They were changed so that if pets were cast again before the previous set expired, the old pets would simply vanish as the new pets appeared. Why wasn't the same approach taken with Burn? If a tank tries to drop a second burn before the first finishes, simply make the first disappear. That already happens with the Devouring Earth when they drop their eminators. If the DE moves to a new location out of range of the previously dropped eminator, they tend to drop it again and the original disappears. Simply snag a copy of that code and apply it to burn. And if the burn damage must be decreased, then reduce it, but don't include the fear factor which prevents most of the damage from occuring. If the fear must be left in, then I think the damage should actually be increased as the villians run out of it so quickly they only take a few tics before fleeing. As it stands now, burn takes so long to recharge it can't be used for immobilization protection anymore. Anyone that has fought Earth Thorn Casters know how fast they stack their stone prison and stone cages. Without Burn, I'll have to skip the entire Circle of Thorns story arcs. Wait, the Crey have those pistols that immobilize as well, guess I'll have to skip the Crey story arcs too. Hopefully there aren't many other groups with immobilization as I enjoy doing the missions. Without a burn that can recharge fast enough to give me immobilization protection, I'm stuck, unable to hold agro for the team. I won't be able to solo either, so I guess I park even more toons that have been made unplayable.
One of the things I enjoyed with City of Heroes was the ability to make a unique look for my hero. The other thing was being able to pick my powers and not simply be given the next power in the set. Unfortunately that often meant a toon that wasn't truly playable as they couldn't survive solo or in teams. Thanks to the respec missions, some toons were brought back to life. But now, with all these I5 nerfs, everyone is being forced into cookie cutter builds. There will be little if any difference between toons as there will be only one build that can survive. Now my fire tank will be forced to take hasten. I don't like the glowing fists, but without hasten my chances at being immobilized are greatly increased. Because I need hasten now, I can no longer take Rise of the Phoenix as I just don't have space for it in my build. So much for the "Phoenix" concept I created when I designed Tiny Phoenix (currently level 40 Fire Tank). Up until now, I never understood why players wanted to power level. I think I finally understand it. If you don't power level, you won't make it to 50 before your toon gets nerf'd to the point of being unplayable.
I actually feel bad for the developers. They appear to have lost focus on what this game is all about. The players want to be super heroes, not super zeroes. What appears to be happening is they see the game being played differently from what they expected. They notice the power levelers out there and say "That ain't right!" Then they proceed to nerf what those players are doing so they can't do it any more. That doesn't stop it though. The power levelers simply find a new way to move fast through the levels. And thus begins the vicious cycle of nerfs. I ran into this myself as a content developer for a Neverwinter Nights persistent world. We had a great module and most of the players loved it. Some players however cared about nothing other than reaching the maximum level as fast as possible. When we attempted to apply any form of nerf, those power levelers simply found a new way to level up. Whatever we did to nerf the few bad players, the good players that enjoyed the game suffered. We spent so much time nerfing the "bad" players we didn't have time for making new content. We eventually lost our "good" players to other servers that were making new content. The lesson was learned to late and we eventually shut down our Neverwinter Nights server due to lack of players. While I don't see City of Heroes shutting down anytime soon, it is strange to see the same type of thing happening in what was once an excellent MMO.
