SablePhoenix

My Kheld teams with a tank of the same level all the time who has no trouble keeping aggro off her; both are only 10 so he doesn't have Taunt yet. And the Tauntbot discussion has been hashed through multiple times on these boards, so let's not go into it again; Taunt is only ancillary to this whole discussion.

The point is that Rage as it exists isn't fun. Forced downtime isn't fun.

<star wars=gold leader> Stay on topic... stay on topic...!</star wars>

Autohits and taunting are all beside the point.

I'm NOT going to let this die. At higher levels Rage is critical to a superstrength tank to do his job properly. Currently it doesn't do that job properly. The current incarnation of Rage is not fun. It is annoying and frustrating to the player, both solo and in teams.

The inability to affect anything but yourself needs to be removed.

It's not about the damage of Rage. Well, it is, in a way, but only secondarily, at least for me.

Rage is simply not fun right now.

It has gotten to the point, after several more bad experiences with Rage in teams, that I have determined I'll only use my tanker for soloing from here on out, unless I'm teamed with other tanks and scrappers that I know don't need to depend upon my protection. This sucks. It goes against the whole philosophy of being a tank. But it's either that, or watch my teammates get slaughtered as I stand by helplessly.

I'm not a tauntbot. I refuse that role. I don't even have taunt. In order to keep aggro I am required to deliver a constant reliable stream of damage and (relatively) lots of it. I can't do that level of damage without Rage (both damage and accuracy buffs), and now, with the FORCED downtime of the power, I can't do it WITH Rage either. As such, whenever I get the urge for the crushing impacts of tankery goodness, I log in and comb Portal Corp's parking lot for a while solo, where I don't have to worry about the rest of my team dying because of the stupidity of the Rage penalty. This gets boring fast, however, and it's rapidly approaching the point where, even solo, the frustration of periodically sitting there whacking buttons ineffectually is steadily beginning to outweigh my urge for the crushing impacts of tankery goodness.

Rage needs to be made fun again by removing the enforced inability to effect anything but yourself, or Cryptic will have soon removed a paying customer from their game. This isn't meant as a threat, just a statement of fact. My tank was my favorite character. I've not enjoyed any character more than I did her, and I still don't. And if the changes to my tank are making me not enjoy playing her... what does that say about the rest of the game?

Balance is all well and good, but it should not come at the expense of fun. It's a game, which we play to have fun, not to deal with arbitrary penalties. And yes, it is completely arbitrary. Was Super Strength anywhere close to imbalanced? Even with Rage? Take a look at Fire tankers before you answer. Or any scrapper. The correct answer is no, it was not. And if Rage is made fun again and the ADD syndrome removed, it still will not be imbalanced.

In actuality the Fire Blast set is pretty poor. I've tested it and it can't even match Electric Blast on single target damage, and its special effect is just DOT, which sucks in CoH
because it's random and which thus makes it a very limited set.

And the end drain for both Invul and Boxing Strength -- er, Superstrength -- is indeed too high, especially considering the poor damage of Superstrength.

But that's not what this discussion's about, it's about Rage. Which is currently the game-killing power for the SS tank.

Rage IS NOT FUN. The forced downtime needs to go away.

[ QUOTE ]
Why have the Devs gone to such lengths to give SS Tanks a disadvantage that almost cannot be worked around?
To me that seems entirely counter to the concept of a "game" and the Defender in me objects to this more than the Tank.

[/ QUOTE ]

Jagged, you are a gentleman(woman?) and a scholar. Bravo.

Although I seriously hope you are wrong about this being a dead issue. If the ADD syndrome (great description by the way) is not removed from my tank soon, I'm seriously going to stop playing her. And if that happens, my interest in the game as a whole is not going to be far behind. She is the only character I've enjoyed playing enough to get to 50 with, and I enjoy her enough that I'm still playing after 50, but the frustration of three months of changes has built to a point that I am very nearly ready to quit over it.

Rage needs to be made fun again. In its current ADD incarnation, I will repeat, and maybe the dev team will wake up and take notice this time (yeah right):

It.

Is.

NOT.

Fun.

If it's not made fun again, very soon, it will become the camelspine-breaking straw for me. Not only for the character, but the entire game.

Not just Taunt. That does nothing for us who don't have Taunt, and forces us into the Tauntbot role which Issue 3 supposedly was going to help us avoid.

The entire 10 second downtime needs to be removed, period, in order to keep the power fun. Increase the defense penalty if you must, but remove the inability to affect anything but yourself entirely.

So I just tried Rage in a full 8 man team against level 53 Freaks.

I used Rage as normal, stacking it. Did decent damage (nothing to write home about, but enough to keep aggro on me), but was only breaking triple digits on two attacks.

You should have seen all the damage flying around though. Because of this, and this is a phenomenon I've noticed before, even with Invincibility going, numerous times the Tank Slicers and the LTs would peel off and go after the damage sources, but would be brought back by my punch-voke before they could get too far.

Then Rage went down, as it inevitably does. Two Tank Slicers on me held for a couple seconds, then turned and ran. I followed, trying to wave at them to notice me, helpless to do anything as they proceeded to each hit the blaster one time and plant him in the dirt.

After this I decided to screw it and run without Rage. This worked fine until all that damage flying around started scattering enemies. Then my own pitiful damage (between barely breaking 200 with KO Blow, down to 42 with Jab) was insufficient to pull the group back on me in its entirety, creating more danger for the team. Also, Rage is crucial for its accuracy bonus. I can't generate aggro if I can't hit, and oftentimes I find myself going into strings of misses relying only on Invincibility, especially against anything over +3. I NEED that accruracy buff on Rage in order to reliably generate aggro and do my job.

The problem was only solved when an Ice/Storm controller came aboard. How useless do I feel right now, do you think?

Supposedly Issue 3 was supposed to fix the "tauntbot" syndrome and allow us to do our jobs by actually DOING them rather than insulting the enemy's mother. Yet now I find I'm required more than ever to be a tauntbot simply to try and keep aggro while Rage drops. I'm not even sure it would, although testing by other tankers leads me to believe it would. That only makes this worse. We're supposedly no longer tauntbots, yet as Superstrength we are more than ever required to be so.

I keep returning to this point. RAGE IS NOT FUN. It's not fun solo because it's frustrating to be stuck jabbing buttons madly and ineffectually for what seems like much longer than 10 seconds, but it's not really fun either to avoid using Rage and do stupidly low damage. At the same time it's not fun to team because you'll know that whether you use Rage or not you're going to have trouble being a tank like you're supposed to be.

This needs to be changed and soon, or my tank will be going on the shelf with my blaster.

Saying Rage is situational is frankly bizarre given that it can very easily be made not only permanent but STACKABLE. How is that situational? If it were truly situational, it would look a lot more like Unstoppable. A much longer buff, and a much longer activation time. And like Unstoppable, it would never be used.

The period of enforced inactivity does not make Rage situational, it simply makes it a headache.

There is no other power in the game that FORCES you to remain totally inactive for a period of time. Sure, Phase Shift and Invisibility make you unable to affect anyone else, but if that becomes a problem you simply turn them off and go on your merry way attacking things. With Rage, you're stuck; you can't just turn it off. And that ten seconds starts feeling longer and more frustrating the more you play with it.

I will reiterate the most important point. The current Rage is not fun. All of a sudden realizing that you're in the middle of a melee doing nothing is not fun. Clicking madly on a button so that it'll activate as soon as you can act again is not fun. Standing there like a moron getting beat on the head, unable to respond, is not fun. All of that is at best boring and at worst frustrating, and from much gaming experience I can say for certain that a game that frustrates the player is not one that is going to be played for very long. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun, and anything that damages that fun needs to be changed.

It's looking like the fun factor is no longer important though, and Rage will not be fixed. In that case, at least give us SS tanks another free respec to replace the one we've been jacked out of with all these new changes, so we can ditch Rage and replace it with something that's actually fun to play with.

Here is the main problem with the new Rage. It has nothing to do with aggro or anything else.

It is, quite simply, not fun. It's not fun to stand there totally unable to act for ten seconds every two minutes.

This is a game. People play games in order to have fun. Anything that takes away from that fun does not belong in the game.

I don't think you will find ANY tank who says that the new Rage is fun. I sure don't think it is. But in order to avoid the un-fun part of Rage, I have to give up doing decent damage, which is also un-fun.

This was the problem with the original Rage. Getting chain-mezzed because it dropped and stunned you was not fun.

The same with the second version of Rage. Losing all your End, dropping your toggles, and being chain-mezzed was not fun.

While from the perspective of debt and experience the new Rage is far superior, it still is no better than the other two. Standing there like a moron while things pound on you, unable to respond, is not fun.

Once Rage is fixed so that it is fun, as anything in a game should be, the complaints will vanish.

As it is, if we want to have fun, we're penalized for it. The message given by all this is simple. "You're a tanker. You're not supposed to do damage."

"But we're superheroes!" you say in response. "We're supposed to bring the hurt to the badguys!"

"It doesn't matter, you have a role, that of meatshield, you're not supposed to do damage and we'll make sure that if you do you're penalized for it."



It's supposed to be a game... but how is this fun?

Since aggro from the punchvoke depends upon damage dealt, a 99% reduction in damage would prove just as disastrous as not affecting the enemy whatsoever.

Not every Superstrengther has the taunt of Invincibility to take up the slack, you realize. And there are other tankers (like me) who cannot stomach the unheroic tauntbot role and don't have Taunt to use for aggro backup. I refuse to take Taunt, I hate the very idea behind the power. We're supposed to be a threat because we make the enemies hurt, not because we make the enemies blush.

As has been said before, since the base damage of Superstrength is in reality Boxing Strength, Rage is NOT overpowered, but rather brings the the set on par (but only just) with the other sets like Energy, Fire, and Axe (in that order). I have no problem with a penalty to defense when it drops, it fits the idea behind the power. But anything else, especially if it can get you and, by extension, your team, killed -- anything like an Endurance drop or being unable to affect enemies for 10 seconds -- is unacceptable.

Before I3 my tank was my favorite character.

She still is, actually. She just isn't as much fun to play anymore, especially since every time I log in to her I'm worried what they might have changed now without me knowing about or being prepared for.

It's disheartening to have a character be on the rack for so long. It is gradually killing my interest in the game because, frankly, I'm finding it difficult to care any more.

Rage is not, repeat NOT overpowered. Rage only brings the set up to competitive level with other sets like Energy, Fire, and Axe. Until level 28 Superstrength is at best in the lower middle range of the tank secondary sets, with only Mace and Ice below it in terms of damage.

To "fix" Rage? Remove the endurance drain. Remove any other secondary effects. Give it a 20% defense debuff for 20 seconds, or something similar. That will fit with the theme of the power without making its penalty so severe that it's not used (like Unstoppable's).

This is one of the best things I've heard from the team in a long time. You guys rock. Way to go, States! My blaster may actually be playable again.

"This will all be mine!"

In other words, hand held out as if to grip a ball tightly, then slowly brought up beside the villian's face, clenching into a fist as he does so.

And before this is reiterated as a solution, no I don't think that raising perp HP at 30+ is the answer. It'll only make soloing harder for everyone, especially my poor blaster who's 34 now and has been in debt constantly since level 26.

>faints with joy<

That's so COOL! I love the love. Thank you, Statesman.

I do have a concern though. At level 30 and afterwards, most fights last 30 seconds if that. Especially when Tiger's running with the ATLAS TV crew, which uses tight, effecient tactics and pre-arranged strategies and can get some encounters down to fifteen seconds or less. Most of the time in this situation I charge in with Invincibility on, throw a Provoke, and land about three punches, and it's over. These changes are nice, but in the scenario above will not matter a hill of beans.