DummyBump

So... status quo for the Cryptic Dev team, eh?

Still, always good to hear updates though.

I like it so far...

Yup. I remember soloing <32 with my Grav/kin controller. Talk about tedium. The worse occurred right after Issue 2. She was lvl 30, and I was attempting to get her cape mission done solo. The +1 bug, the chief soldier 2x sword damage bug, and the fact that it seemed to be spawning groups for 2 people (how is a non-pet controller supposed to get by 2 +2 bosses?) caused for an extremely frustrating night.

I shudder to have to go through that again without singularities providing targets for them to shoot at and with the boss changes. They have since fixed the stunning minions and most of the other bugs. I do not know if she would be facing 2 bosses at points in there now while soloing it. I don't know if they fixed the boss spawning problems like that.

And I probably wouldn't really mind it much at all, as long as they allow mission difficulty to go *down* one step from Hard Boiled. I'd like my Grav/kin controller to at least be able to do a few missions without help once in a while, though she teams most of the time anyways. As it is, I'd like the conning system to be consistent such that white minion (even level) ~= white leutenant (-1) ~= white boss (-2 or if they want, -3 or -4).

And just another thing to ponder, I was in a group (My lvl 37 Grav/kin controller, a lvl 37 Dark/Elec defender, a lvl 37 BS/SR scrapper, and a lvl 34 Inv/Axe tank), when we decided on a lark to take on 4 level 44 minions. We had less trouble defeating those +7 to +10 minions than we did taking down 3 even con bosses. Hell, we had less deaths and less close calls defeating the +7 minions (0 deaths) than when we were jumped by a group of lvl 34 council with 3 bosses (My controller and the defender were killed almost instantly in the fight).

It's not that I disagree of making the Bosses more difficult, but their increase seems a little too much. I had thought that Elite Bosses were supposed to be the level above bosses that almost required teaming, and bosses were supposed to be very tough to solo.

Everything else about Issue 3, I like very much, otherwise.

Well, if they wish to keep the bosses where they are at, they really should change the color con system. My controller was killed in a single volley by 3 blue-conned bosses. At range. No warning, nothing. Just flying through FF, then dead. This cannot be right. They were level 34, and my controller was lvl 37. If they were blue minions (lvl 36), or blue leutenants (lvl 35), she's have little problems with them. A -1 leutenant was about equivalent to a even con minion. That felt true. Before I3, A -2 boss did feel equivalent to an even con minion.

If anything, after I3 those -3 bosses should be conning orange or red, if they want to have the color con system more accurately show the bosses' power compared to you.

Just think of where that leaves even-level bosses...

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As a side note, yes British food is bad but what exactly IS American food?

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Well, there isn't really any such thing as "American food", mainly because American styles is actually a mix of every other culture out there. Of course, we do have real bacon.. , on the flip side, ya'll have real football... (Yes, an American that dispises American football. I'm a hockey guy myself...). Cajun, Creole, and TexMex food could be considered American food, but even they have influences outside the U.S..

And the word "Yanks" has a interesting meaning depending on who you ask. According to the rest of the world, every American is a "Yankee". According to the people in South Louisiana, everybody in North Louisiana and further north is a Yank, everyone to the east is a redneck (except for Florida), and the people to the west are hicks. According to the rest of the south, everybody in the NE U.S. is a Yank. According to the New England states (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, etc), a Yankee is from New York City and is the worst scum in the world...

Add: Ooh! I forgot about Buffalo wings. Wonderful stuff! Atleast some good stuff that came out of Yankee territory...

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I get all that plus Cajun, Irish, Russian, and probably some others I've not stumbled over yet

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Cajun? How bland is it up there in the Washington State area?

I know I couldn't live without gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, boudin, boiled crawfish, and raw oyster on the half shell.

Now I'm hungry again, and it's after lunch... grr...


Oh... on topic... Yay for "Freedom" badge. Good save by the devs...

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Gang,
I'm holding off on touching Super Strength until we tackle a somewhat greater issue with Tankers - namely that they lack that "comic book feel." Specifically, you'd like to see Super Strength be something somewhat, well, "Hulk-ish." But currently, Super Strength is a poor cousin to Scrapper powers - which seems somewhat out of place. Don't worry - what we're looking at as a fix for ALL Tankers addresses this issue.

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/sigh.

Well guys, consider this news the nail in the coffin. Been great talking with many of you, and I wish you all the very best.

5 weeks, lord knows how many posts and suggestions, and he thinks we all want to be the Hulk.... I give up.

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Don't give up on this. He never said that "he thinks we all want to be the Hulk". He's only acknowledging that people want Super Strength to be, as he said, "Hulk-ish". Not that Super Strength would output the damage of the Hulk. But at least feel powerful, you know, that "comic book feel". And he only mentioned Super Strength in this respect.

As many people have said, CoH Tanks feel furthest from their comic book representatives than any archetypes, and this seems to be more of an admission of that from Statesman himself. I would consider that a small victory, myself.

Really, we shouldn't put words in the dev's mouth. It's bad enough we're doing this to each other.

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I'd like to ask a very simple question:

Do you (the developers) feel that with the changes to Elude, that Super Reflexes is now balanced with the other Scrapper secondaries?

I'd like to pitch in my own ideas very briefly on the subject.

1. Super Reflexes is the only secondary that has no form of self heal. Yet, it is the secondary that needs it the most. Since Super Reflexes relies on defense over resistance, a SR scrapper will only be hit so often, but when he is hit it hurts a lot. I can go for quite some time with Elude on in between hits, though even with Tough, when i do get hit it is usually a very notable chunk of my lifebar. Few bosses hit me for less than half of my life. Unless i load myself down with Respites, my lifebar remains in its staggered state until the next lucky blow lands.

2. There are a large number of power pool abilities that raise the heroes defense. While only Tough raises the heroes resistance, and only to lethal and smashing. This means that a resistance based scrapper can get very high resist, and decent defense, while an SR scrapper can only get high defense. (not to mention that there are defense Inspirations, yet no resistance inspirations)

3. Being the only secondary to rely primarily on Defense, SR is extremely weak to enemies with Accuracy buffs. If a group of nemesis use Vengance, it basically overrides everything you have to defend yourself.

4. For being able to tolerate the least amount of damage of all the secondaries, Super Reflex scrappers are given nothing to compensate. They have no additional utility. The entire secondary is purely devoted to raising the scrappers defense, which is an inherently flawed method, for the reasons above.

5. A well slotted Elude completely negates the purpose of the entire rest of the SR line. Once you have Elude, and you have it slotted with recharge and defense, every other SR power becomes useless.

Just my 2 cents,
*crosses his fingers and prays that the devs don't think they've fixed SR already, and forgotten about it*

Satori


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There shouldn't be separate caps on defense and resistance, it should be a cap on the combination of both. For example, if you max the caps on both (95% defense and 90% resistance) against a single even-level mob, let's run through the following senario:

A single mob attacks you 100 times for 100 damage.

95 will miss outright, so 5 will hit for 500 damage total.

Of that 500 damage, 450 will be resisted. So you will take 50 damage out of a possible 10,000 damage, giving you a rate of 99.5% total damage mitigation! And as others have pointed out, there's no way for SR to get any damage resistance other than Tough. So they hit the defense cap, and that's it. They would face an average of 500 damage in this senario.

I propose a formula that would keep the 95% defense cap for heros that hit the 90% resistance cap, but allow a higher defense cap for heros that didn't to allow for 99.5% damage mitigation! This would allow SR to hit 99.5% defense IF they have 0% mitigation!

So:

R = current resistance (after resistance cap)
M = damage mitigation cap = .995
D = calculated defense cap.

Assuming that:

M = 1 - (1 - R)(1 - D)

Then:

-M = (1 - R)(1 - D) - 1

1 - M = (1 - R)(1 - D)

(1 - M) / (1 - R) = 1 - D

(1 - M) / (1 - R) - 1 = -D

1 - (1 - M) / (1 - R) = D

D = 1 - (1 - M) / (1 - R)

Therefore (since M = .995):

D = 1 - (1 - .995) / (1 - R)

The final formula is the following:

D = 1 - .005 / (1 - R)

That's it. Plug in any number between 0.00 and 0.90 for R and you will the calculated defense cap for D. Hell, if 99.5% damage mitigation is too high, choose another number for M, such as 95%, if you wish. You will still limit Defense to 95% for heros with 0% mitigation, but for those at the resistant cap of 90%, you will see:

D = 1 - (1 - .95) / (1 - .90)

D = 1 - (.05) / (.10)

D = 1 - (.50)

D = .50

As you can see, 50% defense cap seems rather low, but it will match the damage mitigation cap of the hero that has no damage resistance avaiable!. So, on second thought, 95% damage mitigation may be too low. So I would say keep it at 99.5% damage mitigation.