SablePhoenix

And you do, is that it? You who seem unable to discern the difference between a statement of fact and a personal opinion? It's very easy to confirm what the majority of Superstrength tankers want; simply read this thread.

They're employing the time-tested "ignore them until they stop bugging us" method, apparently.

As bad as Rage is now, it looks like we're stuck with it.

Well, since the thread hasn't been locked yet, this is obviously still open for discussion, although you wouldn't guess it. I have to say I'm massively disappointed by the response, or lack of one rather, given to this issue, despite the heavily negative response of the majority of superstrength tankers. Between stripping the knockback out of the set back in Issue 2 and the current incarnation of Rage, the fun has been pretty thoroughly sucked out of the powerset. Once my subscription expires I'm shelving my invul/superstrength tank permanently. I plan on coming back to the game when circumstances allow, but it won't be to play that character.

Statesman:

Thank you for replying, I appreciate it.

I never mentioned the "perma" powers of MoG and Elude, I knew such a change was coming ever since Unstoppable was changed. I feel that Unstoppable is largely useless now and that these other two powers will be as well (situational, yes, but they're designed so that if you can use them safely they're overkill and you'd have survived without them anyway, whereas if you need them they can't be used safely), but ultimately that's all beside the point and I'm not terribly concerned over them.

Since everyone is concentrating on Superspeed and Superleap, let's concentrate on those. You say there were significant PvE issues with these powers, yet have not explained what they were. I am baffled by this. What issues were there with these powers that had not been issues during the past year?

Focusing on Superspeed: there is only one advantage I can think of to using it in combat in PvE, and that is increased survivability. It does nothing to help damage output; in fact, damage per second decreases if Superspeed is used to make long sweeping runs through a group of enemies, letting off a single attack here and there rather than an entire attack chain. Obviously the stealth buff was not the issue because that would have been removed rather than adding an accuracy penalty. So the only thing I can see that was a significant issue was that Superspeed used in combat makes a character too hard to kill. Since the enemies always queue attacks and fire them off as soon as a player is in range, the advantage here is not terribly significant either. However, if that's the reasoning, exactly how hard to kill is too hard? If that's the reasoning, some defensive powers like Instant Healing or Unyielding need some serious consideration, because they make you ridiculously difficult to kill, far more than Superspeed. And that's just speaking for the melee classes; what about the poor blasters who are required to eke every possible sliver of advantage out of every power they have in order to truimph in your average engagement? Does Superspeed suddenly make them too hard to kill? Just how easily should they go down, exactly?

However, more important than all this, in my mind, is the fact that if I want to play a comic-style super-speeder like the Flash (and I do, I have one), I no longer can.

Superleap is even more baffling. I can't think of anyone who actually uses Superleap in combat on a consistent basis. However, when the you're fighting groups of Sky Raiders in Terra Volta, or even if you're inside a mission and there's an enemy posted on the girders at the top of the warehouse or the top of a rack of shelves sniping away (and snipers don't move, remember, so ducking out of line of sight will not make them come to you), and you're a tank without those nifty ranged attacks, it becomes invaluable. Other than those situations I can think of no reason Superleap should even be USED in combat. What possible issue could have cropped up within a year that were so significant this change was needed? I don't even see the real issues in PvP; it lets people with Superleap reach that guy hoversniping them to death. Why is that bad? Where are the significant issues?

I cannot believe the change to the travel powers was made due to anything other than PvP considerations. If there was some clearly disproportionate Everyone knew how they worked in PvE, everyone was happy with how they worked in PvE, nobody was complaining, and people still create heroes with Fly and Teleport. Such a state of affairs has existed for a year. Where are the significant issues? Despite what you've said, the fact remains that there have been many more changes of greater significance to many more powers after the creation of the arena than before the creation of the arena, and the logical conclusion is that these significant issues have come to light because of their use in PvP, not because of their year-long previous use as PvE-only powers. From what I can see of the reaction to this latest wave of changes, this is not making the player base happy.

I'd just like to point out in my original post, I used the word "changes", not the word "nerf", at least not till the end where I tried to inject a little Star Wars related humor with the "nerf-herding" crack.

The reason the explosion happened is because players are getting sick of the changes. All changes, nerfs or not. There is no stability and everyone has to keep re-evaluating their builds every time a patch is released. It becomes tiring and frustrating when the things you knew about how your powers worked are in constant flux.

Also, it's much better to fix a problem by adding something rather than taking something away. So superjump and superspeed were too good compare to fly (I don't think that was the reason for the change -- notice Teleport doesn't come into the discussion at all -- but for the sake of argument...)? Then rather than take something away from the player for using them instead of fly, give the player something if they use fly. Remove the accuracy penalty on Fly, and the powers are balanced again.

At this point, though, giving or taking doesn't matter. The players are tired of changes and just want the powers to be left alone.

As for PvP not being the reason behind the PvE changes. Be honest. Look at the huge list of changes in I4. It's bigger than any list of changes previously for any patch or previous issue. Do you really, honestly think that all those changes would have been made if the Arena had not?

We were promised PVP would not affect PVE, back when PVP was announced.

We were promised this.

It was a promise that I knew would be broken, but I still don't understand why.

There are those of us, there are in fact a large number of us, who don't care about PVP and don't plan to set foot in the arena once it goes live. It is IMMENSELY frustrating to have so many powers so radically altered in such a short time when nothing of the sort would have happened had the Arena not been created. I liked my PVE the way it was. Unless you're a Defender, most of the changes are not going to make PVE better, they are in fact going to make it less fun.

Change and balance all you want for PVP, I don't care. Just keep the changes out of my PVE game, as was promised. I'm really becoming sick of it, and so it seems are many other players. A word of warning; the limit of tolerance is close to being reached by the community on the boards. The general explosion over the latest patch notes holds this feeling. Too much more and you're going to lose players in large numbers. I know that's been threatened before, but I'm not threatening, I'm just taking the temperature of the community and making an observation.

At any rate, and speaking only for myself, my account is not set to renew when it expires next month and after this latest round of nerf-herding I certainly don't plan to change that situation.

Well then I will continue to do so.

The penalty on Rage is because, theoretically, it is a situational power. Rage is indeed a situational power; it's useful in any and every situation... but that's beside the point. Does the penalty do what it's supposed to? If it's supposed to limit the use of Rage, then no, it does not. People still run Rage constantly. People still stack Rage, even. People simply 'power through' the ten-second ADHD syndrome, interminable as it seems in combat. The benefits of Rage are great, and the penalty, while annoying and often dangerous, does nothing to alter that. Thus the penalty to Rage fails in what it is ostensibly supposed to do, and only succeeds instead in frustrating the player and, often, his teammates.

I fail to see the logic behind this.

So is this issue just being ignored now? Just change it and let us deal with it, even though so many tankers do NOT like the change?

And your point is?

Invul is better than Fire only if you're looking at how much damage the tank can take. If you're looking at how much the tank can dish out however, Fire far surpasses Invul. They do different things; this doesn't make one necessarily superior to the other. Both serve the function of a primary powerset, which is to protect the tanker, and they both do it well, as any Fire tanker can attest to. They just do it in different ways.

All of which has nothing to do with the current incarnation of Rage.

The current incarnation of Rage isn't fun, that's all it comes down to.

Which gets back to the "tanks aren't supposed to do damage" mentality.

What then do you say to Fire, or Energy, or Axe, or Stone? Why is Superstrength forced to be inferior to these sets?

That 10 seconds is plenty of time for the blaster to peel aggro of the two Freak Tanks off you and end up faceplanted. I have experienced it firsthand. Rage is not fine the way it is.

At the very least this ADHD syndrome needs to be removed from Rage for the sake of teams. The penalty is completely out of synch with the power and the AT. It does nothing to put the tanker in danger. I'm still just as invulnerable when Rage crashes as I am when it's not crashing; I'm not going to die in ten seconds because I can't throw a punch. The team, however, suddenly becomes seriously threatened. No other power has a penalty which endangers the entire team. The penalty needs to be one that endangers the tanker and not the team, instead of the other way around.

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It does indeed seem like they're leaving Rage as it is.

In which case my level 50 is going to be shelved. I tried running missions in tandem with a close friend tonight. It was nothing but mounting frustration, whacking the buttons over and over through that 10 seconds that seems more like 30, till I got fed up and quit after two missions.

The penalty is totally inconsistent with the powerset, both in concept and in power level, as well as being anathema to the very concept of tankers and most importantly being nothing but a source of frustration to the player. And with the Invul/Superstrength combo being the most popular character concept for obvious reasons, this is something that should be avoided at all costs.

Either it changes or I retire my tank, which means my interest in the game drops sharply and I shortly afterwards cancel my subscription. This isn't a threat, they couldn't care less about one subscriber out of their tens of thousands, simply a statement of fact. Invul/SS is the only powerset combo that has kept my interest to level 50, and if that has now been reduced to an exercise if frustration there's not much reason for me to stick around.

It's really sad that the set was crippled in this fashion when there wasn't anything wrong with it to begin with. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" does not apply here, apparently.

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Unfortunately, it looks like the Developers did not feel that it was working as intended. It could have had to do with Tankers doing awesome damage while basically being immune to everything but psi.

But that could just be me.

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Rage has nothing to do with immunity. That comes from your primary set. As far as awesome damage, look no farther than Burn (which is just disgusting), or the Energy Melee secondary, or the Fiery Melee secondary. They'll outclass Superstrength any day. They are unequivocally superior in the damage department and have never gotten a power-breaking nerf like Rage did. Damage output is not a valid reason for such an egregious and frankly stupid penalty.

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If you want to point fingers Sable, I'd suggest to start with all of the SS tankers that run Rage double-stacked; they were doing it to avoid the total end drain that came with Rage 2.0, as well as to increase their damage and accuracy even more. By doing this, they skew the numbers the devs get from their data-mining; because they see that many SS tankers use Rage in this manner, they figure it works.

This is a fight I've already given up as being a non-issue. They're not going to budge on it, which is why HC is slowly becoming an alt as I work other characters up to replace her.

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I'm not pointing fingers anywhere. I ran stacked Rage throughout my 40s, even before Rage 2.0; it's not that hard to figure out how to do, I did it without reading any guides or any assistance on "uber" builds. If that really was the problem, then the solution is not the current penalty but instead increase the recharge so that it cannot be stacked.

The issue may be dead but until a red name says so I'm not going to treat it as such. If it is, that means my character is dead too, which I'm going to fight to prevent.

It does indeed seem like they're leaving Rage as it is.

In which case my level 50 is going to be shelved. I tried running missions in tandem with a close friend tonight. It was nothing but mounting frustration, whacking the buttons over and over through that 10 seconds that seems more like 30, till I got fed up and quit after two missions.

The penalty is totally inconsistent with the powerset, both in concept and in power level, as well as being anathema to the very concept of tankers and most importantly being nothing but a source of frustration to the player. And with the Invul/Superstrength combo being the most popular character concept for obvious reasons, this is something that should be avoided at all costs.

Either it changes or I retire my tank, which means my interest in the game drops sharply and I shortly afterwards cancel my subscription. This isn't a threat, they couldn't care less about one subscriber out of their tens of thousands, simply a statement of fact. Invul/SS is the only powerset combo that has kept my interest to level 50, and if that has now been reduced to an exercise if frustration there's not much reason for me to stick around.

It's really sad that the set was crippled in this fashion when there wasn't anything wrong with it to begin with. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" does not apply here, apparently.

I agree with you, Lycanus, on nearly all points.

It comes down to the type of penalty, then. The penalty is not fitting for the power. There is no other power in the game that forces you into inaction. And ten seconds of inaction means ten seconds where you're not having fun. As a game designer this is the one thing you should do your absolute best to avoid, even for 10 seconds; the player of your game not having fun.

Give a penalty to Rage by all means, I've never said it shouldn't have one. Just make sure that I, the player, can still have fun while the penalty hits.

The resist debuff is the best idea I've heard yet. Like getting hit with a few Council sonic cannons. The recharge reduction would also be acceptable, or at least more acceptable than what we have now.

As far as allowing Taunt during this 10 second downtime, I repeat: not all of us have Taunt, and that is only a partial solution that forces us back into the Tauntbot role that I3 was supposed to help us avoid. The ADHD penalty needs to be completely removed.

Hey, can we at leats get a red name to comment here? At least post a "It'll never change" or something. Anything. Is anyone even hearing this or are we just wasting our collective breath?

Except that our aggro-keeping ability is directly dependent upon our damage output, which besides the mere amount of damage dealt is also dependent upon hitting accurately to deal that damage. Debuff the damage and accuracy and you'll still have people peeling off the tank, unless of course they are reduced to a tauntbot role, which I REPEAT, Issue 3 was supposed to allow us to bypass.

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Um... no. That's even worse than what we have now.

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Well, alright.

Considering what might be imagined the exhausting nature of Rage, perhaps it should be effective to severely weaken, disorient, and and enhance the accuracy of enemy attacks on the character... sorta like is said in the rulebook. However, if the Stun effect is toned down, so should the power of Rage.

The total power of a Super Strength Tanker should be commeasurate with that of other Tank secondary powers. If Rage doesn't have a fear effect coupled with it, it might. If Rage does not have the effect of adding to normally occuring disorient, knockback, stun powers used by the enRaged Tank, it might. These additions plus the extra damage would justify a more stringent effect upon the Tank.

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I don't know what you're trying to say here. Rage has no fear effect and does not enhance the secondary effects of the powerset. Rage actually DOES make the Superstrength powerset commensurate with the other tanker secondaries.

The endurance hit and a defense debuff (much more than we have now) is plenty of a penalty for Rage. The current penalty is far out of proportion with the power's advantages, and is most importantly not fun to deal with.

Um... no. That's even worse than what we have now.

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In fact Rage brings superstrength up to par with the other sets since it's substandard otherwise.

[/ QUOTE ]How is SS substandard?

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It's purely smashing, the most resisted damage type in the game, and its attacks other than Knockout Blow (which recharges very slowly) are very low damage. Even Haymaker isn't anything spectacular.

It keeps coming back to fun factor. The ACTUAL damage dealt is, after a point, immaterial. Standing around unable to deal damage (or do anything else really) is the problem. It's frustrating and detrimental to the gaming experience. And, since the set even when using Rage is by no means the highest damage set, on top of being the most widely resisted damage type, it is not overpowered. This makes the penalty nothing short of capricious and inane. It's far too severe for the power or the set as a whole.

To summarize: Rage incurs a penalty which is out of proportion to the benefit of the power, is frustrating, and is detrimental to the fun of the game. Because this is a GAME, which is meant to be fun, this penalty has no place in the power and needs to be removed.

Mace and Ice are widely regarded as needing serious love. The reason I didn't use them is because they need to be brought up to the effectiveness of the other sets. But even there, they still do not have to deal with forced downtime.

The serious gap between good tanker sets and poor tanker sets is a separate issue, one that does need to be fixed, but which isn't a part of this discussion.

As far as Knockout Blow goes... what's your point? I think it would be great if every tanker set had an attack that was as powerful. That still does nothing to mitigate the low damage of other powers in the set or the fact that we cannot use it, or any other attack, for ten seconds when Rage dies.

Any other tank can deal damage continuously, even mace and ice. They are not forced to stop. No other power from any other set, for any archetype, forces the player to stand and do nothing for ten seconds. This is frankly unfair.

Rage does not make superstrength overpowered compared to other tanker sets (except ice and mace which are agreed to be underpowered by the entire tanker community and probably the game community in general). In fact Rage brings superstrength up to par with the other sets since it's substandard otherwise. Having the ADHD debuff when Rage drops is nothing short of capricious.

And most importantly. It is NOT fun.

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Through my career most of the tanks I've teamed with have been of the invul/superstrength variety. In the past week, though, I've teamed with some other variants -- invul/energy, fire/ice, fire/fire, and fire/energy I think covers all of them. I have watched them closely to see how the sets work (especially since I have ten seconds out of every 100 or so that I can't do anything else).

Rage as it currently exists is flat out unfair.

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So have you experienced these other sets by playing them or is this just anecdotal evidence?

For a long time, I believed what was said on the boards. SS uses overly high endurance. It is balanced for damage based on the idea of rage constantly running. Look at the numbers!

...then I played my tanks.

My anecdotal evidence and experience says that SS is a good set. I'm guessing that you have more here than you posted, but I'll stick with what I'm seeing. And what I'm seeing is that you're saying that the SS secondary is weak when compared to other secondaries and a highly damaging primary. That just doesn't seem to make sense. Have you tried Fire/SS? On the not fire side, so what if Energy does more damage? Have you compared endurance used, recharge times, and when certain powers come into play?

What I've seen doesn't appear to paint SS as a low damage, high end set. I think Rage is unfair. Not in the weak way though. I'm surprised there is a near permanent version of Build Up on a set that isn't gimp.


*Note my opinions keep shifting as new info is inputted. This view is a result from a bit of comparing different sets and views of them. Liable to change quickly

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My point is not about how relatively "good" a set is or not compared to other sets. You can't tell me that, even with Rage, superstrength can equal the destructive power of other sets like fire (primary or secondary) or energy. It can't, I know this for a fact. You know what? I don't particularly care that they're higher damage sets. What I do care about is that they get to deal their damage uninterrupted, while we have a forced ten second downtime every ninety to one-hundred twenty seconds where we can't do damage at all (or, incidentally, anything else). The logic (or lack of it) behind this escapes me. Yes, it is unfair. A higher-damage set is allowed to deal that higher damage uninterrupted, while strengthers are not.

I don't care if other sets have higher damage, it's the way it's dealt that bothers me. I don't understand why I'm punished for using my set to its full potential, when other more effective sets aren't.

The most important point, however, the one which it always keeps coming back to, is that it's not fun.

Which once again forces us into a tauntbot role that Issue 3 was supposed to allow us to avoid.

Going in circles here. Just allowing Taunt to work is not acceptable. Everything should work.

Through my career most of the tanks I've teamed with have been of the invul/superstrength variety. In the past week, though, I've teamed with some other variants -- invul/energy, fire/ice, fire/fire, and fire/energy I think covers all of them. I have watched them closely to see how the sets work (especially since I have ten seconds out of every 100 or so that I can't do anything else).

Rage as it currently exists is flat out unfair.

These other tanks can deliver constant streams of damage, uninterrupted, do more of it and do it faster than superstrength. And to make matters worse we get a forced interruption of our damage with Rage?

Rage barely brings the Superstrength set close to Energy tankers' damage. It doesn't begin to bring the Superstrength set close to fire tankers' damage. It about equals axe, from what I've seen.

This was pretty much the final straw for me. Unless Rage is changed to something that makes SENSE, I will never team with my tank again (which means I will barely play her).

I don't begrudge the other tanker sets their damage. I think it's great. But standing there inacapacitated as another tank stands beside me and mows things down twice as fast as I could hope to even without the Rage downtime is frustrating, and worse, it's horribly, monstrously unfair. It feels like I'm being told I'm doing something wrong for trying to do as much damage as possible with my powerset.

There is no logic behind this. Why is Superstrength being punished?

We all hate it.

Rage isn't overpowered, either. In no way is Superstrength overpowered, and in no way does Rage make it so.

I don't think it needs a damage debuff. I think the Endurance hit and the defense debuff are just right. In fact, heck, I'd take a bigger defense debuff, like 20-25%, for ten seconds. The ADD syndrome is too severe however, and more importantly...

IT IS NOT FUN.

I know I sound like a broken record but I'm going to keep hitting this till it's changed or I get fed up and abandon the character, which isn't going to be much longer at this rate. It's a game and it's supposed to be fun.