Failsight

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But if you can stack enough mag to get partway there, the av loses access to some of his powers.

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Or, by adding stackable -rech to Controllers/Dom...ah, I give up. No one listens to me.

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However, I think tanks got short-changed on their inherent. Vigilance, Containment, Criticals and Defiance are all useful when soloing. Gauntlet is useless when soloing.

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Wait, something's wrong here....

Probably not. They probably would've included that in Posi's screenshots if it was possible. It's still...technically possible, but considering that this "power customisation" will be tied to the character creator (where else would it go?), then I fully expect one tint for the entire set. With a lot of sets left out, too.

Still, might be nice to make my Fire/Ice Blaster have green fire and white(r) ice, so I'm happy it's coming. I'm just pragmatic regarding results.

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it's fairly self contained and modular.

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Depends on what level of customisation. Changing colours is far, far different than say, replacing Spines' bananas with, say, metal spikes (i.e. changing models), especially when considering "hit" special effects.

I fully expect to see a whole lot of people disappointed when detailed information on I16 comes out. Pinkish purple Fire Control is way different than, say, replacing Hurl's chunk-o-concrete with a Yugo.

Reflecting damage power runs into a small issue when:

1) considering ranged attacks (how far can a bullet bounce off Ms. Tanker and hurt the shooter?)

2) considering defence vs. resistance.

Credit for trying, though. And please don't take away Gauntlet (it's far more important to the AT than most people think). Just add to it.

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The funny thing is, the faster you kill the faster you loose damage. You may find eventually sticking to old fashioned AoE damage (that is not buffed at all, just as it always was) may be a better strategy.

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You may want to read my very basic proposal again.

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Then what's the point of it? It'd provide not a whole lot of benefit over time and be a considerable amount of work. That is, assuming you'd actually want to put forward this idea as an actual suggestion and this isn't all pie-in-the-sky theory-work (which is fine and dandy, but I tend to try and weigh dev's benefit-to-cost as well as I can).

Speaking of pie-in-the-sky, if Stalkers didn't already have something like this already, another fun idea would be to have a long non-rechargeable inherent power that, for an extremely short duration (like 2 seconds short) adds a small debuff and (maybe) fear against all enemies in a radius around the target. The biggest mechanical problem with that would probably be limiting it to ST attacks only.

Honestly, in the end, I really want to have nothing to do with directly raising or lowering Tanker damage directly. That just sounds like too troublesome a kettle of fish when considering Scrapper/Tanker balance.

The obvious best solution would to have had only one melee AT that could change stances, but the chance for that is...5 years past.

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That'd be fine if it doesn't make much of a load on the servers. Still wouldn't be enough for some people who apparently insist on doing enough damage to solo an AV on any Tanker combo, though honestly they don't count as sensible, and are thus disqualified from grown-up talk .

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Properly balanced it won't be the key to soloing AVs, however, it will help in AV fights if implemented close to what i noted because the count wold be weighted on the foes surrounding you.

An AV would, off course, yield a much higher value than a boss.

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Is a damage boost even necessary on a team, though?


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Still don't really find a need for this though, as it's generally quite easy to solo anything short of an AV as is. That is, unless as part of this change, Tanker base damage was actually dropped such that a buff with 3 minions in range would bring them back to roughly where they are now. That'd allow for high peaks but lower valleys. It'd also make things suck in the lower levels and probably feel slower levelling into the 20s.

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Here are the real reasons I see for a tanker buff:

<ul type="square">[*]In teams, a second tank is redundant and usually undesirable, taken only because the first tank sucks, because nothing else was available while forming the team, or it was a buddy. Damage offensive even if stuck to single target makes the tanker a bit more desirable.[*]Although the tanker does not dies often he soloes slower than scrappers due to lower endurance efficiency. Tankers pay ~50% more end for their attacks than scrappers making them not only kill slower but also use much more endurance. This is not counting the tanker is forced to use his toggles for longer burning even more end if they want to "leverage" their survivability.[*]Going Rogue will bring Masterminds over, and players may realize that masterminds (yes masterminds, not brutes) are a better alternative to tanks in 90% of the game content. (Defenders face a similar threat with Corruptors, and despite arguments to the contrary I honestly can't see such a level of obsoletevity threat to any other AT in any side) [*]Supposedly the devs are trying to make dominators more popular, if popularity is indeed a goal then tankers need a hand too, as they are at the bottom of the hero side popularity barrel, and it's likely the last two points are the reasons. [/list]
Rewarding the tanker that surrounds himself with dangerous foes with more ST damage would help leverage survivability in a meaningful way.


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It would also increase survivability, especially considering the existing amount of ST and AoE mitigation available to Tankers.

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Giving tankers more ST damage would make multiple tankers work better while together.

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Under less threat, since they're being defeated faster, so the boost may be short-lived and less noticeable. Especially considering the usage of AoEs in those circumstances.

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The "i can solo well" argument does not go far because, well, I was able to solo my Dominators and look what they doing to them now. Other than defenders (perhaps personal play-style) I have never had issues soloing any AT, yet most ATs have been tweaked in one way or another.

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I don't think the "I can/can't solo well" argument was even the premise of the Dom changes. It seems to be a change in order to give Doms more team purpose, especially in situations where control is more or less mitigated (AVs).

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In other words, a change that would be fun and exciting in the higher levels, where your survivability is good enough to handle large numbers of foes, but something that, due to balancing reasons, would make the low levels more painful than they are now.

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A damage boost that rewards you for any foe in range would be a buff at any level of play.

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Only assuming that Tanker damage mods aren't re-balanced to keep them from being OP. Without a change, it seems more than easy enough to womp that tough boss in seconds and then AoE the numerous minions to smithereens--such a situation, honestly, seems to make me believe that "number of enemies" isn't as good of a gauge as perhaps level of enemy * rank with quickly diminishing returns.

All-in-all though, I don't think a damage increase is really warranted. I'd prefer something that straight out does something for the team the Tanker is protecting. I do not see soloing as a problem that Tankers have.

That'd be fine if it doesn't make much of a load on the servers. Still wouldn't be enough for some people who apparently insist on doing enough damage to solo an AV on any Tanker combo, though honestly they don't count as sensible, and are thus disqualified from grown-up talk .

Still don't really find a need for this though, as it's generally quite easy to solo anything short of an AV as is. That is, unless as part of this change, Tanker base damage was actually dropped such that a buff with 3 minions in range would bring them back to roughly where they are now. That'd allow for high peaks but lower valleys. It'd also make things suck in the lower levels and probably feel slower levelling into the 20s.

In other words, a change that would be fun and exciting in the higher levels, where your survivability is good enough to handle large numbers of foes, but something that, due to balancing reasons, would make the low levels more painful than they are now.

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I completely understand Ultimo's concept. Speaking for myself and a handful of others, I drew and wrote my own comic books with original characters who had a variety of powers long before City of Heroes came out. Some of them may have used blast typed powers but were also resilient (as a reference: Silver Surfer type character). In some rare cases, you can't fully create a concept character using the power selections and 99 times out of 100, for good reason.

This is why I love MA; it finally allows me to make almost all of the characters I created in my youth. I wish that I could play AS them but for now it has to be good enough that I fight along side them or against them.

Again, I wish that there was a game similar to CoH where issues of balance didn't exist where I could play an energy blast/inv blaster or a mind control/martial arts scrapper but since the mmorpg side of the game takes precedence over unlimited creativity I just rely on imagination which is fine.

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The Freedom Force games were pretty good at letting you build a superhero as you liked. It was mostly single-player with a multi-player mode, but it honestly wasn't all that balanced, and there were ways to sneak in some utterly devastating powers for cheap.

It's because of those games that I respect the careful balancing act that the devs on an MMO like this have to do. Even when I miss being that powerful.

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From what we've tried, with him running AAO and attacking he could pull aggro off of me(only one at the time mind you). Even though I was taunting and attacking his greater output of dmg was keeping aggro on him. It could be different if I slotted taunt in AAO and more taunt in taunt. I just may have to try that out tommorow.

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Depends on how many enemies you had on you, and whether or not they all fit into your taunt aura. The taunt value on Taunt (the power) is so high that I've yet to see anyone pull a Taunted enemy off of a Tanker. Obviously, if Taunt hit its target cap and the one not hit gets hit and the Tanker hasn't done anything else to them, it's very easy to pull an enemy away.

Things like this really require demo records and close analysis of said demos and their combat logs to surmise what's going on.

For CoV, I would probably suggest either a Brute or MM to start off with. MMs require a lot less micromanaging than they used to. I currently have a low-level Necro/Pain where all I do is go and attack and my pets on the default def/follow (i.e. Bodyguard) take the hit for me and hit back. Pain also comes in handy on a team, where you can sit back and play healer or run into the fight without getting immediately clobbered as you wish. I also have a Merc/Storm that's pretty awesome, too.

Brutes are generally like Scrappers, but many red-side players treat them as mini-Tankers and expect them to take and hold aggro for teams. That means they get considerable play both teamed and solo, as well as having good (to extremely good) damage. Dominators...well, personally, I'm waiting for I15's Dom changes to hit before rolling another one.

Blue side I find a bit harder. Scrappers are easy for me, especially compared to Blasters, but that's not the case for everyone. Controllers and Tankers, though often requested for teams, are a bit slow to get off the ground, and can have a wide range of very good to very poor damage depending on power combinations.

In short, if you want to feel loved on a team, get an AT that has a buff/debuff set. However, most of those don't have great damage. That's where power combinations really factor in. Ill/Rad Controllers for instance are simply amazing, and aren't bad from early on, all things considered, but a combination like...Ice/TA for example would take a lot more work.

Combos that I've enjoyed:
Red-side:
SS/WP Brute
Merc/Storm MM
*/Pain MM (Pain is simply fun for MMs)

Blue-side:
Kat/Regen Scrapper
MA/WP Scrapper
Inv/SS Tanker
SD/SS Tanker (very much!)
Ill/Storm (though a bit of a slow starter, later becomes an engine of chaos)

Much like the devs, just because people don't comment on it doesn't mean people haven't looked at it. They just have nothing to say about it. That includes myself.

Inv:
-Pros: solid mix for survivability, +ToHit helps a (very little) bit offensively, Unstoppable when gotten used to is literally unstoppable, DP + Hasten = win.
-Cons: no psi protection. Others will say that Inv has bad end usage, but that's patently false--Tough and Weave aren't part of the set and aren't really necessary if you don't want them.

WP:
-Pros: also a solid mix for survivability, with both QR and Stamina, can easily afford Tough and Weave, which makes it really tough.
-Cons: weakest Tanker taunt aura, practically every power except the self-rez are necessary (SoW is a maybe, but when tanking the big stuff, or against massive -def debuffs, comes in handy).

Also consider Axe and Mace for good mixes for ST and AoE damage. Stone is also great, especially coupled with WP and its extra endurance.

A WP/Dark is practically unkillable, but lacks enough AoE to keep some more...zealous teammates from pulling aggro off of you.

Lots of options in total. Hope you find something you enjoy. Ultimately, that's all that's important.

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This might mean that weapon customization could come to Spines; they've stated in the past that the problem was that while the Spines themselves could have been customized like the other weapons sets, the ranged attacks came under powers and wouldn't have matched.

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Still a different issue, though. At best, it seems we might be able to recolour the spines to...silver, black, whatever. We'll still have bananas growing out of our body, just different coloured bananas (rotten bananas?).

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I don't know, some sort of -mez protection in a power or two might result in something like that.


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Well, the issue is that mez powers are technically -mez protection powers. They're just not strong enough to break through the ridiculous levels of PtoD.

I'm not sure whether unresistable mezzes are implementable in this game, other than doing a "give x% chance to do additional 1000mag mez" or something like that.

Again, I'd be happy if Controller and (especially) Dominator controls had a crit-like (i.e. low-scale on minions, lts, even bosses but high-scale on EBs and up) -rech with high stackability. That way you get the effect of the EB+ "struggling" against your mez while still being able to do stuff, obviously "failing" occasionally when PtoD drops.

tl;dr

Whatever power will hit the most enemies over time.

Basically what you're asking for is for Scrappers to be melee AoE, low-to-moderate defence where they are currently melee mostly ST, moderate defence in order to make Tankers melee ST, high defence where they are currently somewhat AoE, high defence.

Of course, making them ST would mean Tankers lose a lot in aggro management. But you don't care about that, do you?

To be fair, J_B's suggestion was a clickable burst boost to damage that was equivalent to (slightly less than) a 25% damage increase over time.

Other than tweaking it to make it dev balanced, there still is the issue that it overall doesn't seem to be warranted for any reason but to add flavour and fun. Without Tankers falling behind in purpose or play, especially on teams, there's little to no reason for a major system upgrade such as would be required in adding a new (or re-used) mechanic to the AT as a whole.

If it's possible to make all mezzes (for Doms and Controllers only) have a proportional -rech (something like how crits for Scrappers work) to them such that it's minimal-to-non-existent for bosses and below to stackably potent for EBs and up, then I think I'd consider the issue resolved. Keep the PtoD the way it is if this can be done, and at least there will be reason to be applying those mezzes all the time. It still allows AVs etc. to be dangerous while providing for some efficacy of these ATs primaries.

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Well, Tal, Fail, I invite you two to have a discussion with Fernandes and ask about his thoughts on soloing AVs and if players should be allowed/able to.

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First off, please point me to where Fernandes states, "I have solo'd AVs with more than one distinct combo of every AT in this game." Especially without Nukes or Shivans.

Second, I at least haven't said that players shouldn't be allowed or able to, simply that it's a rarity in this game to be able to solo AVs regardless of AT. It is not a balancing point in this game. Devs do not consider, "this AT is underperforming in the soloing AV metric. We have to up their AV soloing ability." Nor is there any reason to, as AVs are not standard fare for soloing except at the highest difficulty level (and even then not always).

So again, this isn't an issue.

It's still not a problem. How many builds of anything can solo AVs? That Tankers even have any already puts them above a number of other ATs.

Although the MM summoning change of a little while back is a major plus to most MM players, especially new MM players, I can't help but miss the micromanagement of being able to individually upgrade your pets. It made for an interesting game within a game that I wish we could still do. Although I get along just fine these days, having respecced to match the changes, I have ended up playing my MMs less than ever, and even find the micromanagement of Kheldians to be more of a draw.

Not to say I think the entire game should be about micromanagement, but it was nice to have a few classes that let you do it. Now it's down to Kheldians. And it's just not the same (for me). Oh well.

But such a change (regarding stances) would still practically mean obsolescence for Scrappers (and for some Brutes). Why? Because you'd have Tankers who can tank and solo at much closer to Scrapper levels. There'd be no reason to actually have a Scrapper AT, or at the least, they'd run into the issue that you say Tankers run into now: lack of flavour.

As for the Tank-omination, I've previously stated that a reasonably balanced version of it could be feasible (and I believe a few others have said the same), but I (and others) have also said that such a change would need to justify the dev time warranted in making it happen as well as testing it, which it honestly doesn't. Not while there are Fire/* and Shield/* builds that rip through missions and climb the XP ladder faster than a fair number of Scrappers.

QR

It's been said before and it'll be said again: there's practically no reason for Tankers to get an offensive boost without changing their role on teams. Solo, Tankers are one of the strongest ATs, due to their great survivability and moderately good (better than most Defenders and a large number of Controllers') offence. On teams, they generally provide significantly more benefit than Scrappers do, and allow other ATs to work at a higher potential.

Also, there is enough variance in the set to account for a wide range of Tanker playstyles, from Granite taunt bots to Fire and Shield "Scrankers" that can outperform some Scrapper builds. Giving an overall damage boost is out of the question (and J_B says so, last I recall), but any other addition, without changing Tankers' main role, would be far more for flavour than efficacy.

And it seems evident from AT changes in the past that the devs require both interesting flavour and provable numbers, the latter of which is still at best dubious.

Tankers lack a whiz-bang gimmick, but adding one now means subtracting elsewhere. At (almost assuredly necessary) significant amounts, such adding here and subtracting there (for the sake of game balance) requires a team role change, as well as solo re-balance. I simply don't think the devs believe Tankers warrant that kind of attention when there's a list a mile long of things that are far, far more problematic than Tankers' lack of "viscerality."

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It is after all a super hero game based off Marvel and DC that much is obvious.

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Didn't catch this line before, but this is so very problematic that I had to bring it up. There's no reason to say that it's based off Marvel or DC universes. There's actually more evidence to say that it's based off the Champions universe than Marvel or DC specifically. Just because the game allows you to build "tough guys" doesn't mean it's based on certain highly recognisable tough guys in certain highly recognisable IPs that are not being used for this game due to legal reasons.

Saying this game is based off Marvel and DC is very much like comparing apples and oranges on the sole basis of both being fruit. All you're pointing out is the "fact" that CoX is a game about superheroes, and that Marvel and DC universes are also about superheroes. Tropes cross that genre boundary, but thinking that should dictate game design decisions when the IP is completely separate is...well...to be nice, "not so obvious."