Lady_of_Ysgard

I was on an ITF on Virtue a few weeks back and some ******* Dark Miasma user was spamming Incandescence and Howling Twilight to res people. This effectively meant that a Stone and I were effectively soloing the TF because everyone else was sticking around him for his heals while Stone had turned on the teleport prompt after the first time.

Me? I was getting pulled away from Cyst mobs, and consequentially pulling those cyst mobs to the group whenever I was yanked away by this dipshit, resulting in me clearing those mobs slower than I would have otherwise because I had to travel back to the cyst. It got so bad I actually had to turn the teleprompt on to save my sanity.

Part of me wanted to rant and scream at the dark user that he wouldn't need to spam the teleport so much if he actually focused on proper debuffing because then people wouldn't be dying as much.

Ghost Widow's mag 100 ST hold, SIGN ME UP!

Good for the fix to autohit 100% Knockdown, good for the devs for noting that this was a mistake fast and reacting in a reasonable way.

Even better for Fire/Dark controllers that can still leverage the overlap between Bonfire and Tar Patch for some slightly less effective stunts than before, but still very effective.

Normally, I do not reply before reading the entire thread so that I do not repeat something that has been stated earlier. I feel that I must in this case because I remember a data variable that many people seem to not know exists, or overlook it as an immutable value instead of a variable. This data point was brought to mind when people were discussing making tanks more able to control aggro than brutes as a point for establishing a bigger difference between melee archetypes.

This data variable can be seen in Mids, and varies from one AT to another as well as varying based upon certain powers that are in effect on the character.

Threat Level.

Very few powers directly modify this variable, but Invisibility is one of them as it applies -100% and is also the easiest to compare across various archetypes. Stealth and Hide do NOT alter this variable, nor does Cloaking Device. Controllers are the only AT to get a similar power via Superior Invisibility in Illusion.

The base Threat Level for Tankers and Brutes is 400%, meaning enemies see them both as equally threatening targets (assuming I am interpreting this correctly without being able to get a plain-speak version of the AI threat code, anyways) and they get an equal chance to draw the attention of all mobs. Scrapper base Threat Level is 300%, Stalker, Soldier, Widow, Warshade, Peacebringer, and Mastermind base is 200%. All unmentioned are 100%

Now, upthread there were people arguing over the feasibility of making tankers better at aggro management than Brutes. With one look at the Mids Advanced Totals window (Misc Buffs) I have found the simplest way to do this that could be imagined: Tankers are now 500% base threat level instead of 400%.

I have made Tankers 25% better than Brutes at aggro management with one variable being altered.

This concludes my thoughts on Tankers versus Brutes and their aggro management and redirection capabilities.

Now, I have an entirely imbalanced suggestion for the damage issue. Eliminate the tanker Damage Cap entirely, and instead institute diminishing returns on damage buffs applied to them so that in a team setting (not league) the maximum buff level attainable with an average team composition with buffs and debuffs as well as other damage AT's has them at 90% of the Brute damage cap under, say, double-stacked fulcrum shift with 16 targets from a Defender.

In a League setting, this could make a given tank more desirable than a given brute with otherwise identical builds and power picks because the tank can gain more benefit from multiple buffs than a Brute can....but only under outlier gameplay conditions found in Incarnate trials where they are sorely lacking in utility while keeping their basic group gameplay much the same, with a bit of a boost in basic functional capacity.

Now, obviously, this change would result in groups with 7 kinetics users and a single tank buffed to insane levels in practice rather than being a usable suggestion...but it is a conceptual alternative.

They CAN do it, they have the technology, it would just be horrifyingly unbalanced.

I'll be making an alternate version of a Bots/Poison mastermind I already have as a Water/Poison corr. Sanguine Sanction learned how to be more forceful with her blood and less dependent on artificial support from outside sources.

See, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. I only have one Stone Armor character, but she's a level 50 Stone/fire that I parked after the hassle of dealing with just getting her on enough teams to get her basic Spiritual Alpha. I have been fiddling with builds ENDLESSLY in mids to try and figure out the best ways to build for effectiveness both in and out of granite, but with the current bug that always displays run speed at 1.4mph it's a little hard to know what's useful to counteract the immense slows.

I consider my experience with Stone armor from playing it more valuable than my time trying to fix it. In the end, though, Stone is a relic that needs some serious polish.

The only way it will GET that polish is if there are some nerfs that come with reexamining the set. THIS WAS TOLD TO ME DURING THE ISSUE 21 BETA. I have no reason to believe that this stance has changed yet.

Yes, this topic again, as I am sure I am not the first to propose such a thing.

First, I want to say that this is NOT a proposal to nerf Stone Armor as the king of defensive sets in the game for pure solid survivability, this is a proposal of balanced changes to a powerset that has some long-standing issues and design flaws.

Second, my thoughts come from the point of view of someone that actually LIKE the set as a concept, but feels the execution is awful.

Now for some raw, unenhanced Tanker numbers from Mids.

Granite Armor gives +20% defense to all types except Psi. No positions.
Granite Armor gives +50% resist to all damage types except Psi. (0%)
Granite Armor gives magnitude 21.63 protection against Holds, Stuns, Sleeps, and Immobilization effects, as well as mag 10 Knockback and Repel protection.
Granite Armor ALSO applies a -30% damage debuff and a -65% recharge debuff as well as slowing walk/run speed. My version of Mids currently shows 1.4 mph runspeed no matter what I do on all AT's with any powerset, so there's a bug somewhere.

As the game is (supposedly) balanced around numbers attainable with SO's, granite can obtain as high as 31.2% defense and 78% resist to the aforementioned types using the standard 3 SO's to yellow ED effect. Changing these to level 50 NON-set IO's, these numbers become 31.7% and 79.2%. This is not a great jump in effectiveness due to ED demolishing the value from the third generic IO of each type.

Rock Armor, unenhanced, gives 16% S/L defense, 25% at ED-yellow with SO's, and 25.4% with level 50 GIO's. Again, minimal gain from changing SO's to GIO's

Brimstone Armor, unenhanced, gives 25% F/C RESIST, 39% with SO's, and 39.6% with GIO's.

Crystal Armor is the same as Rock Armor, except for E/N.

Minerals, the much-overlooked power from this set, gives a respectable 25% Psi DEFENSE with NO enhancements. The enhanced numbers are the same as brimstone. Minerals ALSO provides Magnitude 30 Confuse protection, 86.5% Confuse Resistance for anything that manages to SURPASS said protection, and 60% Perception Debuff protection. Confuse protection is NOT provided anywhere else in Stone Armor, not even in Rooted.

Stone Skin, the passive mostly used as +3% Defense IO mule slots, gives a paltry 15.6% S/L resist at the ED cap with SO's. 10% base. It's a passive, this is forgivable.

Earth's Embrace: It's a Dull Pain clone with +toxic resist. +40% HP, 20% Toxic resist unenhanced. Slotted for health, resist, AND recharge to maximize uptime (No hasten, yet) this becomes: 53.3% +HP and 28% toxic resist with a recharge time of 218 seconds, far shy of permanent.

Rooted, the Mez Protection power, gives Magnitude 12.98 protection against Hold, Sleep, Stun, and Immobilization effects, and mag 10 against Knockback and Repel. It also provides PToD-level Knockback and repel resistance, 10000% and 1000% respectively. In addition to being the Mez Protection power for Stone, this power also provides a base +100% regeneration.

Mud Pots is your standard Taunt Aura. It deals fire damage, has a Mag 4 taunt and slows non-flying critters by 40%...oh, and it has an unenhanceable Mag 2 Immobilize according to Mids that lasts 2.25 seconds.

Now, as everybody knows, Stone Armor is a toggle-heavy set. It's one distinct difference from other defensive sets is that Granite Armor is itself a toggle. It's also the only toggle-heavy set where the tier-9 power renders all but one other armor completely redundant by itself AND precludes access to said armor by forcibly detoggling all other armor powers when turned on. In the base game, without IO's and Sets, this is not a huge issue.

Stone Armor is also a set that hinders MOBILITY in the extreme...to the point of tedium and frustration since teleport is the only viable travel power in Rooted/Granite/Both since both powers severely debuff move speeds, and essentially disable jumping entirely, as well as DETOGGLING if any travel power or defensive power that is part of a travel pool is activated.

As most people reading this are likely well aware, most players that bother playing Stone Armor to level 32/38 end up immediately respeccing and removing every other armor power from their build that they can. This is because granite provides more and better survivability fresh out of the box than all of the other powers in the set combined do, with the one exception being that it provides for a psionic hole that Minerals used to cover, and a Confuse hole that most players don't realize they even have until they get hit with a Psionic-based confuse effect. This combined with the fact that granite cannot currently be used in conjunction with the other toggle armors in the set makes even having the other armors in your build counter-productive.

My proposal for a Stone Armor revamp so that it retains current top-tier functionality in survivability as well as retaining certain thematic weaknesses is this:

Allow granite to stack with the other four armors by making it so that the other armors are NEEDED for Granite to have its current level of effect. I would accomplish this by first turning Brimstone Armor into a +defense power and bringing Rock and Crystal Armors up to par with Brimstone and Minerals in their base +defense. This would turn Granite into a +resist power that serves to BUFF the defense powers by offering extra protection beyond what they do without entirely eclipsing them by itself in the form of resistance as something beyond their raw defense. Granite would retain the lack of anything for Psi, so psi attacks that slip past Minerals would still hit for full damage.

Furthermore, to compensate for the nerf to Granite Armor as a standalone power, allow it and Rooted to function with Super Speed so that there is at least ONE viable alternative to teleportation as a travel power.

Beyond THAT, make Rooted function like Grounded and remove the -jump from it. Keep the -Jump in Granite. Rooted now has a downside, it only functions when you are on the ground, but it allows you to JUMP with some risk attached in that while jumping you have no Mez protection. This allows for a second viable travel power outside of Granite Armor; Super Jump. The only travel power that Stone users would be effectively locked out of is Flight, and that's okay. Being locked out of one without detoggling your protection is better than being locked out of all BUT one.

People who want to take only one main power from a set should be penalized for it, not rewarded. With this restructuring of the abilities in Stone Armor, you would reward the people that do not respec out of everything BUT Granite, without coming down overly hard on the people that do such, since granite would retain the powerful resists and rooted would still have regeneration. Furthermore it would open up more OPTIONS for players that want to try Stone Armor but dislike how the set performs before granite, and dislike the constraints of granite as well.

After all that, let's take a look at the cosmetic side of things, shall we?

FIX GRANITE ARMOR! Make it able to be customized. At the very LEAST allow it to work with PATH auras.

Return it to the ancient Golgothan appearance if you must, as long as we can customize it and make our characters look SOMEWHAT unique. City of Heroes is the game KNOWN for customization. Granite Armor is the ONLY power in the game that imposes a restriction on this freedom to create outside of the Epic/Ancilliary pools and EAT's. It needs to change. It has needed to change since issue 16.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that Hybrid is the key to making non-granite Stone armor work properly, rather than having Stone be a set that is only taken for the tier 9.

I mean, outside of Granite, Stone armor has the best Psi defense in the standard game. People just throw that away because it doesn't work with Granite.

Time to investigate.

It's a fix in that it resolves the problem without requiring the character die. Unresponsive pets are useless, yes, but /releasepets is a 90% reliable method of regaining control of your minions...after resummoning and upgrading them.

Is it annoying? Yes, but it allows you to actually play the AT rather than come here to the boards and whine impotently about a problem the developers are aware of.

The reason it hasn't been fixed yet? It's hard to reproduce reliably since it happens at random! Bugs that are easy to reproduce can be fixed faster since the methods to force them to happen can be tested, bugs that strike at random are MUCH harder to fix because they are much harder to test.

Q: How to survive being sidekicked to L50?

A: Make sure there's a buff-capable AT on the team before accepting the invite.

No offense, but this build is all over the place and is WOEFULLY poor on basic IO bonus slotting.

Now, let me see what I can do here. You say that you're interested in tankability and team support with a desire to see big orange numbers, and you say you have a desire to be a low-ish-cost build...and yet you have severely underutilized the powers available to accomplish this.

700 million to a billion inf and 5-8 Alignment merits is all you're willing to spend? What about normal merits? Are you accounting for them in the alignment merits by rate of conversion?

Bah. Time to fiddle with what you have here, though your slotting is atrocious.

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...8DFE07268A2520

I kept most of your power selections, though I made improvements for the sake of synergy and common sense. With this build you are capped to ranged and can easily pop a purple to be capped to everything else.

Shatter Armor is rather...silly on a crab. You are an AoE death machine, leverage those AoE's. As such, I handed you another few AoE's and had to radically redesign your sub-par slotting.

There should be Incarnate data in this as well if you wish to see a decent plan for how you can softcap to all positions without Barrier. Arachnos Lore pets were given for chuckles since this build removes spiderlings. Ion and Reactive were no-brainers since you want Big Orange Numbers. Since there's an error in Mids right now that has killed the Destiny entries, assume Ageless Core for it in the submitted plan.

All in all, fights MAY take longer without the mini-spiders, but I find it unlikely since you have more direct-damage powers in this build.

My personal build is completely different, but Stygian Variolus is a complete monster that can practically solo one of the collection areas in a Lambda run.

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...90FF02267D08FD