Dersk

edit: I just re-read what I typed out and realize I said a whole lot of nothing. So, I'll save space.

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[As for the rest of your "What isn't supposed to be discussed" portion of your post, you lost me there. Care to clarify?

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I was referring to your statement "not meant to be a discussion on the merits/ills of farms and farming". I responded to Alt_oholic's sig anyway

About the "Usually only the Tankers and well built Scrappers survive", I find that 1 purple inspiration at a time is enough to keep even my limpest tankers afloat for longer periods of time that should be needed while they stand around the objects with regeneration buffs. If my 19 dark/dark tanker could handle it, it would be a very sad sight to see who couldn't. (edit: when discussing something other than all bosses)



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About what wasn't supposed to be discussed:

I find more can be learned from the game, both from a player's and designer's perspective, from those types of missions than simply who the "bad" people are. If there are powersets, maps, or opponents that provide unreasonable benefits that jeapordize whatever balance is supposed to exist, I'm sure the most productive approach would be pointing out adjustments to those problems, not whine and moan at people for using what's given. I don't go piss on WoW forums telling them how boring and repetitive I find their form of entertainment.

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No, I don't have to pay 3M now and I don't, but I do have to pay 250K instead of the 20K I used to have to pay to beat the flipper's price.

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The spreadsheet I used is out of date, because it was in the days of 4M pangean soils instead of the 1M they are now (both at buy it nao prices)

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So, evil flippers are responsible for one item changing price, but not another? Changes in sources, set bonuses, available powersets, and players learning more about IOs and the market aren't the reasons you can't find an enhancement for less than crafting cost, but flippers are?

I have a character filled with steadfast KB protection IOs that he can't move (old bids that got filled 2nd week of mission architect) because their value is about 1/5th what it was in i12. I have another that's made 400million in the past month doing nothing but crafting and selling doctored wounds IOs. There comes a point where the market changes, and whether or not it's a bad thing isn't solely determined by how much more you have to pay for a particular item.

+4 spawn of rikit that includes 3 bosses, generally without temps or inspirations.

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Can we get an example of this? Or let us know exactly what Sets will have the Color options?

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Soon.

ok

Blazing aura > whirling mace > anything that isn't AE.

There are plenty of brutes that care for only single-target attacks, so feel free to consider my recommendation to be in the minority.

You don't consider powers like hurl, hurl boulder, breath of fire, or combustion long animations, but whirling hands and ET are?

ok

400 million: EvilRyu

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Except the last thing Tankers need more of, or could even use more of, is survivability.

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I thought only your granite tankers were survivable enough to tank AVs without specific (de)buff assistance, and even unstoppable wasn't enough because it didn't last long enough to finish the fight.

SUPERMAN DOESN'T SPEND 20 SECONDS DEFEATING BOSSES! I CAN SPEEDREAD!

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It's not what you've been saying, but rather how you have said it

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His opinions of tankers have been so overly negative that it's hard not to take them as being factually incorrect, even though he tends to avoid anything that can actually be proven or disproven. I.e., tankers being aggro monkeys, punching bags, dummies, or decoys; rage sucks, and is worse now than before the only-affecting-self change; devs being "outright anti-Tankers"; etc. But, when he makes statements like willpower being outright better than invulnerability at S/L damage, and people call him on it with numbers, he won't acknowledge it, or will find some petty reason to dismiss everyone's understanding but his own.

RAIN OF TOMATOES!

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Actually, how much would people pay for the right to choose the name that Smurphy would go by under the new forum system?

-Johnny

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What exactly did you think the first post was asking?

You should be charged a fee for skewing the income distribution so far as to promote further inequality. You may even need to perform a little bit of community service for your actions.

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The general problem that you are having with this is that you don't need a whole lot of defense for most of the content; thus, having more than one tanker is generally not a huge benefit (or, more than one FF defender, for that matter, another defensively oriented type of character).

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About this, I do find forcefield defenders to have similar problems as tankers, from my point of view, except for something worthy of a footnote like those that take sonic or radiation blasts. However, there is such massive differences in peak power between different powersets, that the problem isn't so much of defenders as a whole, and more a problem of particular powersets. At least, any problems with defenders is rather unspecific since a ff/energy defender can hardly be considered to have any of the same problems as a rad/sonic regardless of any changes that can ever be made that are AT specific.

Tankers, however, don't have an analogue to rad/sonic defenders, so I'm more comfortable with making claims that tanker issues are more AT specific.

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Just to be clear, that blaster soloed the ITF with an expensive IO build, Shivans, lots of inspirations, and lots of stealthing. Buff and debuff stacking had pretty much nothing to do with that

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I don't distinguish IO set bonuses from "buffs" when discussing defensive stacking issues, though I suppose I didn't clearly state that this time. I realize temp powers and inspirations were instrumental in the example I parenthetically noted, but it is also one of the most extreme examples of survivability boosts that trivialize the game. I suppose a better example would be particular defenders soloing giant monsters without temps.

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What you can't expect is to have everything buffed to the same level of brokenness. Buff/debuff stacking is not a valid benchmark of where the game should be.

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I wasn't advocating that, and have actually directly argued against posters advocating making that problem more prolific. The solution to the problem is not to introduce the problem into every area of the game

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Just so I'm sure we're on the same page, the 'problem' here that needs 'fixing' is 'I don't like and cannot spell Gauntlet'?

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The problem is the way buffs and debuffs stack in this game promotes inneffective defenses at low levels that provide negligible benefits to solo or team play, and yet also providing obviously overpowered defensive capabilities by even the weakest of characters by 50 (grats to the blaster that soloed the ITF). The ability to trivialize content with certain powers or powersets, even sometimes accidentally, while retaining damage or damage-multiplicative capabilities well beyond what is available to tankers creates a situation where tankers themselves are obviously suboptimal by anyone that understands how the game works compared to several, or even all, alternatives.

But, not every team is mix/max'd

For the common idiot that can't take advantage of such builds, they are using attacks that have one damage enhancement and no endredux, then run out of endurance before being able to solo a single boss at the end of a mission. They die to a full team spawn's initial attack. Or, if they survive, they collect an entire team's worth in defense debuffs, endurance drain, tohit debuffs, slows, and anything else that gets thrown around in addition to the damage, producing a play experience that is often very frustrating as their character is effectively unable to accomplish anything under such circumstances... aside from using taunt and a taunt aura... if such powers are available and have been chosen.

Then, they look at the benign little icon in the corner of the screen. Gauntlet. A fascinating inherent that explains a taunt radius on some powers so small it won't even cover the tanker himself/herself, let alone provide any taunting on something beyond the range of taunt auras or a real AE-attack. And that'd be fine and all if, in addition to the often incredibly small taunt raidii, players could see if and when it actually worked, like absolutely every other inherent in the game, even if they have to resort to the combat attributes menu. How it is, the common player won't know to look at power details to see that jab only covers about 3ft for its inherent taunt radius. They'll use the power and see nothing happening that can be explained by gauntlet while the gray words "critical" and "containment" float above their head.

As entertaining or capable as tankers can be for anyone that can figure out a percent sign, no one wants to be the guy chosen "because no one else was looking" or to be the debuff sponge so the scrapper, who can sometimes take damage just as well, actually does something to further the mission.

All of these complains are appropriately answered by the OP. [edit: I know someone won't read that as sarcasm]

Though, I think any chance for getting a useful boost to tankers, as opposed to trivial changes akin to upping passive resists by 2.5% damage res, are squashed by the repeated and ceasless hounding of certain posters that a) don't like how the game works at its core with respect to the environment, opponents, and other players and b) cannot stand that someone else does "more damage" than his pet AT. If brutes didn't exist, I'd fully expect a lot more positive changes to tankers not because of some perverse masochistic attitude towards tankers or favortism towards brutes among the developers, but because too many people see brutes and are fixated upon brute damage, rather than any mechanical or content obstructions to superior tanker defenses being a legitimate benefit to teams and a balancing factor to ATs as a whole.

But now I'm rambling, so I'll go to bed.

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Cages and Stalagmites are horrendous as far as obscuring-the-screen graphics go

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Stalagmites is one of the most innocuous control powers with respect to graphics.

People should be spayed and neutered for using stone cages when in remotely tight quarters (anything with a roof).

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Tanker primaries have powers that taunt, so using your reasoning their inherent already buffs their primary.

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It's unreasonable to use gauntlet as the justification of the taunt effects in powers like invincibility and blazing aura when brutes, who you'll notice don't have gauntlet, have the same taunt effect (with different AT modifiers) on their version of the same power, and those taunt effects predated the inherent concept as a whole and gauntlet specifically, and the description of gauntlet specifically states "Each time the tanker attacks", and it effecting the "target, and those around him", neither of which apply to any of the tanker powers available in the primaries that taunt.

As well, historically, when tankers got the meaningles grey icon named "gauntlet", that technically doesn't do anything, tanker single-target attacks from their secondary only (not pools or epics) received an AE taunt effect in addition to the taunt effect on the target hit; the taunt-what-you-hit portion being shared by brutes, as well.

So, no, using his reasoning Gauntlet does not buff the tanker primaries, because by no logical explanation (historically with respect to power changes, comparatively to brutes and scrappers, intentionally according to the power description, or technically according to actual effects of specific powers) does gauntlet "buff" tanker "primaries".

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I was also thinking could it be the "Boss" farms? Or farms in general? IDK...

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I suggest jumping into a few large spawns in rikti warzone around your level to get a better feel of your abilities in normal content. Ice armor is an incredibly fun set, and I've never experienced the feeling that it's lacking compared to any other tanker sets outside of fighting several hard-hitting enemies at once... like several higher level bosses.

While I think ice armor performs quite well in most any group or solo situation, you have mentioned one of the absolute worst situations to judge the performance of ice armor. (Another being an eden trial).

The mission architect is a very interesting and powerful weapon that's been thrown into the hands of children. Someone's going to die.

Being in the habit of using quicksand on everything everywhere everytime myself, considering stalagmites as ghetto or using salt crystals for extra defense debuff doesn't strike me as the mark of a "maverick", but rather someone that's just eccentric.

Using salt crystals for solo saftey as well as -def for teams, regarding stalagmites as inneffective without immobilization, and even mentioning default accuracy on earth powers all strike me as possibly reasonable (even if unpalatable) if Electronite isn't using quicksand, and I think quicksand is more subject to personal preference than even the sleep. If quickand is in use, then it all deserves a bolded WTF.

And, to be clear, brute handclap does allow him to pick up clockwork bosses and rip them in two, whether they be level 20 or 50. That clearly shows tankers need more damage.