Day_Dreamer

I've been teaming with a small team (me, Scrapper, Blaster). I've been running Rage virtually nonstop (non-perma, and non-auto, but I would usually start it at the start of fights and when it was available during a fight). We were on Heroic, but I was one level below the others at the end.

The drop is annoying, but manageable. The most annoying part is the only clue you really get that the crash is started is that your punches don't go when you hit the keys. Sure, the golden glow vanishes, but that's not very visible thru Invuln's light-show. It badly needs to let you know when the crash begins, maybe with a sound effect?

Not attacking for 10 seconds is a non-issue to me. It recovers some End (right after the drop) and gives me time to take stock of the situation.

I did lose aggro a few times, but never from a whole pack; usually it was just one guy. Firing Taunt just before the drop seemed to mitigate that almost completely, but I can't quite get the timing right yet. I do tend to get caught up in the action. Nobody died. Nobody came close as a result of the Rage drop; closest that we came to was the stealthed Ice Blaster moving into melee to drop an ice patch and getting tagged by an AoE disorient.

I commented often that I'd missed using Rage. It makes the game a lot more fun for me. An important litmus test right there, IMHO. It definitely feels a lot more super-strong with it than without.

Another important caveat is what happens when I'm in a huge team, but I wouldn't use Rage 1.0 there either, and Rage 3.0 seems like it could be used, at least sparingly, if not frequently as well.

If my concerns about Invincibility's def bonus can be put to rest, I think we can work with this. I still think it would make sense to retain Auravoke during the drop though.

The difference is that Invincibility's def is based on the mobs around you, which in theory affects them. You can see this if you're fighting one of those CoT demons that has Invincibility -- standing next to them you get an Invincibility status icon that indicates a "foe +acc, +def buff".

It sounds very possible that the Rage drop would also disable that effect (especially since it disables the taunt), meaning that Invincibility loses a lot of its effectiveness during the drop. It also seems doubtful this was intentional.

Rage 3.0 is a big improvement on Rage 2.0, so I'm all for it going to Live and replacing it if more changes are in the pipeline. I might actually use it now.

Still, it would be nice to have a comment from the devs on this issue. I do personally think Tankers have been improved since Statesman started his "crusade" just before I3, but the road has been bumpy and the community's a little jumpy.

I wouldn't panic just yet. It sucks totally, I agree, but I think he got caught in the logisitics. I imagine they have to merge patches from Test to Live wholesale, and any chances to Test (even database changes to power effects) have to go through an approval process so they're not instantaneous.

I figure the gutted form of Rage went live mostly because it was bundled with some long-suffering fixes (see: Stone Armor, Dark Armor) and there was no time for the approval process to fix it back. They may also not want to fix it back until they have an alternate solution.

Said alternate solution needs to come ASAP tho. Seems like a lot of SS Tankers (esp. the Inv/SS kind) are understandably very nervous now...

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1.) I believe if they thought the SS set was somehow lacking due to it's middle-of-the-road damage output amongst other tanker secondaries that they would have changed it. They've had plenty of opportunity, especially since I3 where all tank powers got a boost. They could've just given it to SS, or made SS's bigger. But they didn't.

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It's unwise to speculate about the dev's intentions based on what they DIDN'T do. For one thing it's happened on occasion that they don't know EVERYTHING about every power set in the game. For another, CoH is a large-scale development project with limited development and testing resources. They just don't have the ability to do everything they would want to do when they want to do it.

It is my closely held belief that the devs want to have a good game balance between the various sets of any given Archetype (not necessarily in the form of damage, but it is the primary consideration of a damage set). That's because that's good game design and they're good game designers.

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2.) If Rage was, by design, meant (as a gift from Geko) to somehow "balance out" the damage of SS, he sure went really out of his way to do it (btw, does anyone have the link where he actually states this? I wasn't able to find it).

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I got the impression Rage was intended as a temporary boost and players found out you could perma it. (It may have been the intent from the start that you could perma click powers.) Then, when Superstrength was adjusted in I2, they adjusted following what was there, which meant they adjusted with perma-Rage in mind.

I'm speculating here, but again, it's the issue that they've adjusted Superstrength in the past compared to what it was at the beginning of the game. Or to make another example: if they wanted KO blow to do lots of damage, they'd have done so from the start, right?

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3.) In a recent post by Statesman he said that by using mez protection powers to prevent being disoriented when Rage wore off (thereby not suffering the penalty), one had an unfair advantage over others who did not have those mez protection powers, and this was going to also be fixed.

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He said that there was an "unfair advantadge", yes. I'm given to question how unfair it is given how unlikely it is a level 28 Tanker will *not* have some sort of disorient protection. Nevertheless, what he did not say was this:

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not only do the devs fully intend to have us use Rage in the manner in which they intended (non-perma, situational only),

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He said this:

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they're going to make sure that EVERYONE who uses it suffers it's penalty.

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Which, I can agree with. It's good for game balance and he's a good designer. I do disagree that Unyielding (and the like) negates the penalty, and I disagree that using disorient protection with Rage is some sort of closely held hardcore-gamer secret. But finding a different penalty that leaves the power usable (balance) and makes it work with any of the primary sets is a good idea.

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And I will disagree with you that SS attack power is at a "sub-par damage level" or that the damage is "poor".

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That's been amply demonstrated, given equivalent slotting. Which makes the enhancement argument totally irrelevant. People are putting damage enhancers in their attacks (often six) and they're still doing inferior damage to other secondaries.

Toggle dropping and total end drain definitely isn't the answer; that is far too much, and it will relegate the power to the trash bin. By the very nature of their role, Tankers (and their teams!) simply cannot afford to be left defenseless. The goal may be to make the power situational, but I cannot think of any realistic scenario I would want to use Rage in the state it is on test.

The stun was okay, it did introduce an element of risk, but it was often easily mitigated; when it wasn't though the effects could be dire, as toggle drop frequently means a trip to the hospital for a team Tanker unless his temmates are quick to react.

An hasten-like penalty to endurance at the end of the cycle could not be as easily avoided as the stun, but the impact would be much less. There would be a chance of toggle drop if the end penalty brought the Tanker's endurance to 0, but at least a cautious Tanker could be careful to keep the end drop from leaving him defenseless. All in all, the cost of using Rage would be more consistent, not as easily avoidable, but much less likely to inflict catastrophe.

A penalty to defense throughout the use of Rage (which could then conceivably become a toggle, though it could just as likely stay a click) would be very characterful (berserk offense at the expense of defense) and introduce an element of strategy in the power's use, though a defense penalty may be too easy to mitigate in many circumstances for some Tanker primaries.

Whatever you do, keep in mind that if Rage has to become situational, SuperStrength still has to be balanced with the other Tanker secondaries who replace Rage with Buildup which has a much lesser duration but also far more usable. The general feeling is that currently Super Strength + perma-Rage is comparable (though inferior) to a set like Energy Melee, including its Buildup. If Rage becomes something that is used only occasionally, Super Strength may need to be buffed up so it can keep up.

Hello, two quick questions for my first post as a n00b.

1) Is the "comic booky" upgrade to Tanker damage still in the cards?

2) Does that mean I'll be able to combine flight with the Invulnerability powerset without serious aggravation once I get there?