Samuel_Tow

Isn't 100 000 already considered expensive for Salvage? This recent exploit-induced inflation notwithstanding, that's the most expensive I've ever bought any piece of common salvage, and even then that was the "buy now" price.

This "attitude" isn't going anywhere. What you're seeing is simply the fact that many people don't feel weather "looked cool." I know I personally couldn't care less about weather, because I don't play City of Heroes for the environment. I play it for the characters. If I played for the environment, I'd have jumped ship years ago once I memorised every instance by heart.

Additions to the character editor: Yes please! Additions to the outdoor environment: Meh.

Now if only I'd said the same about a page before that

In general, I will agree with you, as that has always been my argument in the "Stamina" threads of the past. However, with Stamina free now, I must take the opposite side:

While it's true that almost no build ever actually "needs" Stamina, it's also true that practically EVERY build is better with Stamina than without it. "How much better" has always been the pertinent question when Stamina required at least three power picks, because one had to know if it was better enough to devote the power picks to it. Now that it's free, that question becomes obsolete. Everyone WILL have Stamina, and everyone's builds will be better, to different degrees.

Whether Stamina is necessary, "necessary" or unnecessary is no longer a relevant question, put it like that.

*sigh* Leo, Leo... Why do you embroil me in these tangents where I must continually re-explain the same problem? I can deal with endurance. I know how to deal with endurance. I'm prepared to deal with endurance. But -READ CAREFULLY- it takes time, and it takes opportunity. Yes, I can slot for endurance reduction. When I get the chance to. There is more on a build to slot for than endurance reduction. There are things like accuracy, damage, defences, recharge here and there. There are things to slot that I need to juggle with endurance slotting, and that means I cannot afford to slot for endurance right away, even when I get into SOs.

Yes, were my characters born at 50, I'd really never have endurance problems, because I'd have the slots to drop for reduction right away. But they're not. They're born at level 1 with two powers and no slots. WHEN these slots come about - which is in the 30s with large and frequent slot levels - I will slot them and be just fine. BEFORE I am able to slot for endurance, the game is not fun for a good few of my characters.

And, yes, you have a point. Ever since I heard we'll be getting Stamina for free, I assumed a stance of "couldn't be arsed" when it came to endurance management. Why would I bother over-slotting on endurance at the cost of my defence and offence when I could simply wait a few more days and just slot up Stamina when that came about? Why bother? I still can't find a reason for this. So, for the next few days, my newer builds will be... "Endurance-challenged," put it like this, as I opt to slot more damage, more health and more defence instead of more endurance reduction.

I really don't mind being "underestimated," as it were, but with how many times I've argued AGAINST needing Stamina, I'd honestly think you'd know me better than to assume this.

Then you and I disagree on a fundamental level. People who never "sugar coat" anything are unpleasant to deal with. I apologise if this sounds like an insult, but this is how I've always felt. The notion that it's OK to say something just because it's true, even if it's rude, crude or insulting, is not a notion I've ever subscribed to, or indeed a notion I've ever been tolerant of. If you walk into a public, social environment, you are burdened with the responsibility of being aware of your environment, which consists of the people around with. You can choose to embrace or ignore that responsibility, but that always, always reflects on what you are perceived as.

You may not care about what "image" you present to the public, but you still very much present an image to the public, it just ends up as one you may not necessarily be proud of.

I'm not trying to criticise you, Bad. All I'm saying is I don't try to preach to you these days, not because you're some kind of lost cause or some kind of evil person or any nonsense like that. We've just gone over that in the past, we've said our peace and I see no more reason to get on your case these days. No insult or dismissal intended.

If you want me to be perfectly honest, the post in question I found to be a little too confrontational and a little too dismissive, but it's really not something I'd call you out on. I mean, even I'm not THAT anal. Live and let live, as it were. I apologise if I offended you, or insinuated something unpleasant. That wasn't my intention.

And to give credit where credit is due, I appreciate the way you handled what could have been a fairly controversial post, so thank you for that.

I know it will never happen, but if I could buy common salvage off the rack, then I would dance upon a star. Seriously, this will make getting my next round of Common Inventions far, far, FAR more pleasant. Even if I had to pay a hundred large for each piece.

Actually, Shield Charge already reports that it teleports you, as it lists 1.00 Teleport on self. Granted, it's not exactly clear what that means, but at least it's listed. And you don't really need to list much more. Simply list the power's range as "AoE, 20ft range (16 targets max)" instead of "location" and append a "(5ft radius)" to the smaller-area damage component. Oh, and list the accuracy of the pseudo-pet in the Accuracy field, rather than the accuracy of the summon. This does nothing beyond fix two wrong values and add a small addition to one effect. It doesn't really make things any more complex, it just makes them correct.

I sincerely hope that real numbers can be tweaked by hand after they've been dumped directly from the powers.

I still prefer Detonator as the punchline of that joke

It's a little bit scary that the only place to find that info is in patch notes. Still, thank you kindly for the numbers, William. At least I'll know what I'm doing now, and I WILL remember that. 20 feet is a huge area, though. I can see why it was "tweaked."

When you said "health," I assumed base health. My bad.

While I agree with your general direction, I don't think that should be done by making Stalkers better at scrapping, but rather by making them better at hiding.

Certainly. That I can support. Personally, I'd like to see Assassin's Strike be made uninterruptible (so you can use it as part of your attack chain), but lowering its cost so it doesn't sting as much when it interrupts would be good, as well.

Well... To the example at hand, all it would take is if the power said:

51.51 points of Smashing damage (5 feet radius)
21.12 points of Smashing damage

I made the numbers up as they're not important, but that single appendix to the one one effect which doesn't conform to the full AoE range would answer my question without need for explanation or pop-up, just like the "when hidden" appendix does to Stalker Hidden criticals.

*edit*
I just picked up Shield Charge and went to look at its real numbers. I've been saying "large AoE" up until now because I honestly don't know HOW big the power's AoE is. I assumed Real Numbers had that listed and I just hadn't checked, but they in fact don't. The power is listed as:

If we wanted to pretend pseudo-pets don't exist, then this power's "Effect Area" would have an actual effect area listed. If I look at, say, whirling Axe, this has "AoE -- 8.00 ft. radius (10 targets max)" listed. So what IS the are of effect of Shield Charge? I do not know. Honestly. And real numbers will not tell me. I know WHY they won't tell me, but I know because I have detailed knowledge of the underlying structure. A new player would be left completely uninformed.

Granite Armour in particular and Stone Armour in general is probably the game's single biggest example of "balance by annoyance." Nothing among the drawbacks of Granite Armour is functionally meaningful as all of them are easy enough to mitigate. They are, however, ANNOYING. I'm not sure what the original intent behind the power was, but it seems to be along the lines of "This is a great power, but it'll be too unpleasant for people to use constantly." As a point of fact, that doesn't work and only serves to annoy.

Yeah, and there is that. Things like My Vestments and Pangean Soils used to go for a good two million a piece, and these days I can't seem to snag much more than 500 000. Of course, I'm not a patience seller, so I snag whatever is the highest going price right at that moment, but that's what that tends to be.

Commons, on the other hand, seem to consistently "sell now" for thousands and thousands. Easily over 25 000, but often more than 100 000 and beyond. Well, except for Ancient Bones. Screw Ancient Bones. No-one ever wants to buy that crap for more than 1000, the greedy SOBs!

True, true, there is that. However, there is the opposite effect. Hurdle give greater air control, meaning that while your jumps are wider, you have more control over your trajectory. Not by much, but it's there. There's also another benefit: Normal unenhanced jump is precisely as high as a specific type of shipping container (the one labelled "Shipping Container" in Mayhem missions) is tall from the ground. Because jump repeat (i.e. you jump again if you simply hold down the jump button) is always on by default and makes a great many things awkward if you turn it off, that means that you almost always jump OFF the container you just landed on if you try to climb one. With Hurdle giving a big of extra height, it should give more leeway to let go of the jump button before you re-jump when climbing one. And containers are common enough in warehouses and certain zones that this is relevant.

Again, I'm not dismissing the problem, just offering an alternate look at it.

I'm talking about using Sprint in combat without leaving it on constantly. Picture the following example: I strike an enemy with Crane Kick, and that enemy gets knocked back about 10-15 feet. Now, I COULD just jog over to that enemy, but I want to get there faster and hit the enemy before he gets up. So, as soon as the enemy get Crane Kicked, I queue up Sprint and hold down the forward button. I Sprint over to where the fallen enemy is, queue up an attack and deactivate Sprint while my attack is animating. I have, in this way, run the intervening 10-15 feet about twice as fast for no more than a couple of ticks from the power.

Now that my base run speed with no toggles running is fast enough to do this, however, I will simply not bother with Sprint in these situations, as my various characters with Swift or Quickness (or Lightning Reflexes) have been doing since time immemorial. It's one less fiddly key press and one less thing to worry about, as I DO goof up occasionally and leave Sprint running for the entire fight when I didn't mean to, causing my endurance to drain much faster than it should.

I think we'll just have to disagree on this point. Far be it from me to put build before concept, but I feel that, even at basic values now, our characters are beyond Olympic athletes. Our base run speed is 14mph, which is a flatout sprint as far as I know, and our Sprinting speed is, what? 25mph? That's close to the maximum speed allowed for vehicles allowed within city limits in my country. And our jump height is something like 8 feet base from a static stand. Yes, with Swift and Hurdle these will be greater, but they're already beyond human capacity.

And again - I wouldn't have it any other way even if I were designing a "natural human" character. That sort of exaggerated movement is simply a device to make the game non-irritating. If we wanted to be fair to realism, we'd have to force everyone to WALK most of the time and make even basic running and jumping drain endurance like in the Battlefield games. Yes, the new jump and run stats are higher, but that - to me - is just quality of life. It means I have to spend less time walking down empty hallways and less time walking around obstacles. This has nothing to do with wanting to do missions faster or get experience faster or anything of this nature. I, personally, simply do not enjoy dead air, which is what just running through a long cave with no enemies to fight constitutes.

I don't discount the concerns either in terms of gameplay or in terms of concept. I just feel it's better with Inherent Fitness than without it. Fitness is probably the ONE power pool that I've always hated, and not because of the so-called controversy around it. Fitness is an "invisible" set that just gives you stats. An entire set of passive powers. To me, passive powers are boring. I want to DO things, not BE things. Fitness is also the one set that has bugged me from a concept standpoint. It's phrased as a pretty literal interpretation of human physical fitness in a game which supports so many non-human characters. Now that everyone has it, maybe we can start justifying it as more than strong cardio.

Everyone already knows Bad Influence from years past, to the point where I could have quoted her name in the other post. It may seem inconsistent for me to pick on you and not her, but that's only because I've gone through this whole thing with her in the past, years and years ago, dating back to the early CoV days.

And, yes, I agree that "moderately abrasive" posts every now and then aren't that big of a deal, but they do build up, especially when it starts to feel like that's all you do. I know you don't, as I've had other discussions with you all over the 'net, but I'm starting to feel a bad tendency lately, as you seem all too willing to lay into people for very little provocation. This disregard is what I would look out for.

This is why I feel like you're skimming my posts. I already answered that question. I won't be a **** and quote myself, so let me re-iterate: I have the necessary tools to manage endurance. The cost of doing this without Stamina, while manageable, is not always pleasant. And there are certain characters that, because of a choice of primary and secondary, do not do well without Stamina. The Brute I quoted is a particular problem, as I pitted two powersets that have heavy endurance use - Shield Defence and Battle Axe - on an AT which has an inherently poor endurance efficiency unless you play at a constant pace, which I can't always pull off, what with distractions and unfocused playing and all.

This particular Axe/Shield Brute, like my Stone/Stone Brute, can very much be played without Stamina, but it's not a very fun experience. Were she not one of my favourite concepts and designs to date, I likely wouldn't bother. Yes, I very much do run out of endurance mid-fight if I don't have enough endurance to start with, aggro more than one spawn or even simply miss more than usual. This is fixable, but at this point, I'm not gonna' fix it. I will, instead, sit on my hands for the next three or four days, or however long that takes, and welcome Stamina when it comes.

"Can't" has nothing to do with it. "Don't wanna'" is pretty much the sum total of the argument here.

"lrn2ply" is an insult, pure and simple, pretty much as insulting as anything I could say that would get censored and deposit yet another stern warning from Moderator 05 in my inbox. That it doesn't get treated as such by the rules of conduct is simply a fact of it not being a profanity, but I've already been moderated for saying "go to hell," so there you go. It's insulting, pure and simple. That people will latch onto that one insult in your post and ignore the rest shouldn't really surprise you. It's the "I stopped reading after ****" phenomenon, and you just so happened to put that at the head of your post.

I'm not saying that no problem is ever the fault of a player and that no problem can be solved by helping the player learn to play better. The problem is that the way this argument is used, and indeed the way you used it, doesn't translate into "I can help you play better," as I think you may have meant it, but more as "You suck. Go to hell. Sucks to be you. Nyaa! I don't have your problems." This is nothing more than responding to a person's question or complaint with RTFM.

Call it a tangent if you will, but I want to say this. You proceed about your posts with an air of irreverence, throwing comments out there with an admitted indifference as to their consequences or recipients. Trust me - that doesn't work, and I know that from experience. You CAN very much be as blunt and direct as you have been, even more so, but you need to do so with some forethought towards the expected reaction and regard to the consequences. I've acted like a complete jerk in the past, there's no denying that, but I've always done that with the knowledge that this is what I'm doing and the expectation that this probably won't go over smoothly. You can't take such a devil may care attitude towards laying into people's posts, or you WILL become a pariah sooner or later. Mark my word on that.

That's weapon customization, though, a system we got quite a ways before power customization. What I meant to say was weapon sets don't get any options on the power customization screen, and the only way to have two weapon powersets is to pick Shield Defence and a weapon. Then there is literally NOTHING you can change in the power customization screen, hence why power customization the system does nothing for Shield + Weapon users. It does at least something for everybody else, however.

That said, once (if) we get pool and epic customization, that will give EVERY character something to customize, as you generally have 24 power picks but only 18 powerset powers. Hmm... Maybe not for Kheldians and Spiders, though.

Do you realise what you're suggesting here? If you raise Stalker hit points in any way, they become Scrapper hit points. If you raise Stalker damage, it pretty much becomes Scrapper damage. They already have Scrapper defensive numbers on top of that all, so what you're suggesting is to make Stalkers into Scrappers with a higher percent chance to score criticals which goes up even higher on a team and the ability to score hidden criticals.

I still maintain my opinion from before - Stalkers need to be improved, but not by making them more like Scrappers. If necessary, increase the size of their hidden and combat criticals up to 120% power damage or some such, or make their Hide harder to break or unbreakable by outside forces, make them rehide even faster, make them rehide on a kill or on a critical or what have you. If Stalkers are to be improved, they should be improved to be better at what they're designed around, not better at not using that mechanic.

Sure, I can go with that. So long as there's SOME way to know.

Just as a random example, I was talking about Shield Charge with a friend of mine today, who had somehow missed the change that came with I18. He asked me what the ranges had been changed to, and I had to sheepishly explain to him that I haven't the faintest idea. And I don't. I know one damage component is on the full AoE range as listed and one is on a smaller one. However, I don't know how much smaller the smaller AoE is, nor do I know which component applies to which range. I assume the larger component is on the smaller range, but again - I'm assuming. I don't have the power on that character yet to test it for myself, so I DO NOT KNOW.

However, to a casual observer looking at the real numbers without prior knowledge, he's see that Shield Charge is a large AoE and deals two damage components and have no reason but to believe that both damage components apply to the entire range. Hence, the numbers will lie to him, like they really shouldn't. I have nothing against hiding even more complicated numbers behind a toggle option, but I do insist that the numbers which are listed at least be clear and true.

Just as a side note, by the way, I have long since stopped agreeing with Jack's vision of real numbers and how they only confused people with needless complexity. Having a clear, unambiguous write-up of what your powers do and how they compare to each other has proven to be ESSENTIAL to making a decent character, at least to me. Granted, new people usually don't bother, but for the most part that's because new people don't yet have a concept of how good a character can be. I know I spent the entire first year of City of Heroes without status protection, believing it was worthless.

I've always believed in letting players know how the game works and what their controls do, but not really REQUIRING them to go through all the numbers. Real Numbers aren't even enabled by default, and Combat Attributes are even more hidden.

Pardon me if this sounds presumptuous, but isn't that what makes you fans? Furthermore, isn't it assumed that if you asked fans of a given something, they would universally like that something because they're fans?

All's I'm sayin' here is that, yes, there are plenty of people who feel that Stone Armour is fine as it is. I would, however, claim that there are plenty of people who feel that it isn't, but rarely join threads about it as they don't care about the set. The only reason I keep popping up in these is because I've already played the set as high as it will go and I'd like to see changes made so that particular character doesn't feel so... I don't want to say "broken" but doesn't feel so "awkward."

That actually is a valid point, and about the only one I'll honour, for a few reasons. Generally, I don't agree with "I run too fast" arguments, but when you consider that Swift really is a significant buff AND it will stack with, say, Quickness on characters that have that, this has the potential to create some... Interesting situations. I'm not sure how much I can see "I jump too high," but there is that, too.

Personally, if things pan out as I believe they'll pan out, I'll be using Sprint a LOT less. Right now, while I don't leave Sprint on in combat, I have a convenient bind with which I turn Sprint off for short bursts of half a second as I move between enemies to save time. Really not enough for more than a couple of ticks. If my basic run speed weren't so apparently slow, then maybe I wouldn't feel the need to do so.

Basically speaking, I understand the concerns with running too fast and jumping too high, but I believe Sprint, or rather not using Sprint, will solve most of those, in the context of meta-game gameplay. In the context of character concepts... I'll have to respectfully disagree with their implications. Yes, with Swift and Hurdle our characters will do things normal humans simply couldn't, but to me this is nothing more than creative license for the sake of making the game not frustrating to play. If our characters were limited to human-level jump height and run speed outside of travel powers, then the game would be a lot more boring.

Faster run I interpret as being necessary so that people don't lose patience running down a long empty hallway, and higher jump I interpret as the next best thing to grabbing ledges and pulling yourself up in a game which doesn't support that.

It takes more than one or two posts to come to that conclusion, Leo, and I've done what I can to get along with you in the past, with varying results. What I'm saying is that the way you present yourself and the way you treat other people builds up in people's memory. City of Heroes in general and the forums in particular constitute a community that is built on retention more than anything else, and people remember.

Just as a simple, non-loaded example, Friggin Tazer and Miss Kitty didn't earn their reputation in a day. They earned their reputation over the span of years. You are not a low-key poster. People remember you. Whether you choose to take responsibility for what people remember you for or not is up to you.

I quoted a paragraph and responded to it with a paragraph. A paragraph out of a three-paragraph post is hardly "half a post," especially when the entire bulk of the rest of the post discussed the topic Moo brought up. You chose to latch onto my tangent and... Well, behold the result. When I speak about responsibility, this is what I mean. Consider that had you not made an argument out of it, it would have likely dropped and remained unmentioned, instead of becoming what the thread is de-facto about. I take responsibility for the tangent, as I should have learned by now that no tangent is "off-topic" enough to be sure the thread won't become about it if someone turns it into a pet peeve. Today, you get to be that someone.

Two points:

1) I'm excited about getting Swift, Hurdle, Health and Stamina without having to spend power picks on it. When I'm excited about something, I talk about it. I know how powerful Stamina is. I've avoided it over the years for various reasons, but I've never denied its use. Now I'm getting to have the power without devoting the power picks. This will make many things far easier, and I don't have to give anything up to achieve it. If you can't see how that might make me excited, then maybe you need to get some perspective, instead.

[edit]I'm far more likely to admit something sucks if I have an alternative, so I'm far more willing to admit my old builds aren't very good now that they can be made better at no cost[/edit]

2) I already have better endurance management and tactics. I'm starting to get the feeling you're simply skimming my posts. I have better management and tactics, but they are not always enough, and often require solutions that I don't enjoy. One solution is Set Inventions, which I outright refuse to deal with. Another solution is simply attacking slower, which I've already used on one character. It's a really BAD solution. Another solution running fewer toggles, which I do on my Dark/Dark, but I WANT to run more toggles, hence the solution is unpleasant. Another solution still is to slot more endurance reduction, which I've done on my Kat/SR, but it constitites a good quarter of his entire build, making it an unpleasant solution.

I run the numbers, I find out what's costing me the most, what's the most efficient when and find out how to best minimize my costs. Sometimes that's enough, other times it's insufficient, but even when just that'll do it... I still WANT more. Yes, I don't specifically NEED Stamina on anything but one or two characters, as evidenced by the fact that in six years, I've only taken the power once. I still WANT Stamina, because it will allow me to use that as my endurance management solution and both loosen up my builds and loosen up my playstyle.

What you're arguing is in essence a rant against someone who's jubilant that he's getting a bonus at work. Yes, it's very much possible to live on less money, and many of us who aren't filthy rich survive just fine every day. That doesn't mean having more is bad, or that we shouldn't be excited about it. I don't need to prove anything to anyone, you least of all since you admit you don't care. The only two things I want to say are "I'm happy we're getting Stamina for free." and "If you feel this is ruining the game, I have to disagree." I really don't need you to tell me I'm doing it wrong when the actual in-game reality does not reflect this.

This is a problem I tend to have with other people's interpretation of in-game concepts, actually, and it's something that's gotten me verbally attacked on several occasions: We cannot and should not examine the basic character infrastructure as always assuming a HUMAN character. Yes, it seems to have been built with that assumption, but it doesn't mean we have to restrict ourselves to it, especially when enough meta-game mechanics can be explained in other ways.

You bring up a good point with hit points not representing what one might think. Physical health, spectral cohesion, shield strength, magical power and so on are perfectly valid interpretations of hit points. At their core, "hit points" are merely a representation of what it takes to incapacitate your character. What that incapacitation means and how it works, however, is not inherent in the concept itself. In fact, I don't think that represented medical health at all in the older P&P games from which the term originates, but I don't know enough to claim either way.

Oh, really? How about this, then?

Still don't think it's relevant that I brought up the "Endurance Management becomes meaningless" argument? I never said I disagreed with Moo on that particular aspect, at least I don't think I did, but he brought it up and I picked up on it.

And it's funny you're the one to bring up the "irrelevant" card, considering you decided to dedicate an entire post to what you claim was off-topic. I mean, sure, criticise me all you want, but let's not lose perspective here, please.

Do you honestly want me to elaborate here? 20% damage buff is what I get for being in combat for two seconds, being a Brute. Recovery buffs are good... Were I in any way aware of what a good attack chain was for Battle Axe. Maybe I'm so damn good I just instinctively knew, but mostly, I just fired off attacks as they seemed appropriate. Big attacks on healthy enemies, small attacks on damaged enemies, AoE attacks when I could clip more than three people.

Furthermore, this one particular Brute was just an example. I've played Battle Axe before and combined it with Willpower. I know how striking the endurance management difference is before and after Quick Recovery, and before and after I slot it. I've also taken Stamina, which turned a completely broken and laughably unpalyable Stone/Stone Brute, such that I would run out mid-way through EVERY spawn unless I paused for two seconds between every two attacks (I'm serious) into a character who plays perfectly well. He still runs out from time to time if I'm not careful, but I don't have to buffer my attacks with nothingness and I don't have to fear running out all the damn time.

I'm not an idiot. I know how to manage my endurance without Stamina. And I know exactly how far that goes and what that costs. I PREFER endurance management with Stamina, and it will solve many problems I have with not having enough slots early enough to solve certain problems, or not being able to run toggles I want to run, or not being able to use specific powers outside of special circumstances. I know the difference between Stamina and no Stamina. And it WILL fix the bulk of my endurance problems.

Yes. A single endurance reducer's worth. In every. Single. Power. Brutticus has seven attacks plus Build Up and four toggles plus Active Defence right at this time, which by my math comes up to 13 slots of nothing but Endurance reduction. That's 13 slots of endurance reduction ON TOP OF the 13 slots of endurance reduction I already have put into my powers. I don't have 13 slots to devote to that. Hell, I don't really know where I'll find the slots to put into Stamina and Health, and that's with many of my secondary powers still woefully under-slotted.

Please don't patronise me, Leo. I'm not an idiot. I'm not trying to weasel out the easy way. I know what I'm doing and I know what it takes to slot a character to work without Stamina. I've done it before. However, free Stamina makes doing this far, far, FAR easier, helping the characters I could never properly balance and giving those that never had endurance problems more slots to go around to different powers. To my 50 Stone/Stone Brute, it gives three new power picks, allowing me to turn him into a Stone/Stone/Earth Brute like I always wanted. To my Dark/Dark/Dark Scrapper, it gives the opportunity to use Cloak of Fear, were I so inclined. To my 50 Energy/Energy/Force Blaster, it gives the ability to use Repulsion Field, were I to find a use for it.

Stamina WILL solve my problems. You are free to doubt my sincerity and/or my intelligence. But you know what the good part is? I know you're wrong, and I19 is nothing but wonderful news for me. Poo-poo that all you want. It doesn't make my characters any less improved.

*edit*
Just as sidenote, you are technically right. You CAN meet and exceed the effects of Stamina with enough endurance reduction. The eponymous Samuel Tow, a Kat/SR/Body Scrapper, managed to run Focused Fighting, Focused Senses, Evasion, Combat Jumping, Focused Accuracy and Stealth, all at the same time, all permanently, all without Stamina back when Focused Accuracy had an absurd cost. And that's without Conserve Power. He achieve that by double-slotting every single one of his attacks for endurance, as well as double-slotting all of his toggles, including Combat Jumping. I'd have to look at his build, but off memory, that came up to about 20-30 slots for JUST that.

Yes, it solved his endurance problem. Yes, I'm proud of how I did it. I also know it's the equivalent of fixing a dent on your car by getting a new car. Yes, it's cool and yes, I'd be proud of it, but I can't really afford it pretty much at all these days.

The more you insult and bully people, the less credibility you have. You COULD post these things in a less confrontational manner, but you openly choose not to, and that tells, because this isn't the first time you've done this.

You bring up another good point - endurance drain. There is much a player can do to mitigate his own endurance management situation, but there really isn't very much at all a player, especially at some levels, can do to mitigate endurance drain, with the possible exception of breaking the endurance system so bad that everything that doesn't have endurance drain never sees his bar move. After all, not many sets have endurance drain protection.

One of the big problems right now is that the endurance... "Situation" is tiered. There are those who don't have Stamina, who are FAR worse off, and then ther are those who do have Stamina and have a much, much easier time, and far more raw potential. Then there are situations without significant endurance drain where moderate endurance management will do, and there are situations with... Well, Mu Mystics, for which endurance management without actual protection is largely ineffective.

You either have more endurance than you know what to do with, or you struggle for endurance all the time, and there is very little leeway in-between. And I say that as someone who's been on both ends of that duality.

*edit*
Ugh... Don't remind me. I have a 38 Dark/Dark Scrapper without Stamina, and playing him is... Not as much fun as it could be, put it like that. And that's with me completely ignoring Cloak of Fear in its entirety and almost never running Death Shroud. Suffice it to say that inherent Fitness will make rather a few of my characters a lot more fun to play.

I have a better example, though: Stone/Stone Brute without Stamina. Even I couldn't stomach that.

To be fair, that has never been my problem, personally. This happens either way with DOs at 12 and SOs at 22 even without Stamina, so the steps in difficulty don't bother me, personally. Yes, it sucks inanimate carbon rods when you're level 21, with yellow crappy DOs but the enemies have shifted into the harder 20-29 bracket, that much I will not contest. But that's kind of sort of part of the game.

What I have a bigger problem, and that's a general complaint overall, is how the game is designed to approach endurance management. You're designed to not have enough endurance to so much as run your own sets at their basic values. I'm not talking about super-fast attack chains, high levels of recharge, stupid power use or any of that. You are designed to not be able to sustain the powers the game more or less makes you take. Pick Stone Armour and that slaps you with about six toggles. Don't run them all at the same time? When Arachnos soldiers wield Smashing, Lethal, Energy, Fire, Psi and Toxic damage, plus a lot of status effects... How? How do I do that?

On the one hand, you have a system which gives you tools that it doesn't give you the resources to use. On the other hand, you have Stamina, the one, single, easiest solution to finding the resources to fund your powers. I've been stubborn and stupid enough to deny it for the past six years, but even I will admit to that.

What's happening now solves both problems almost entirely. With inherent Stamina, and slottable at that, you CAN, in fact, fund all of your powers' basic functionality. You can run your toggles without feeling like an idiot (and without having to run without protection from some of the stuff you're facing), you can use your powers and you can generally do fine. Now, if you want to be super-efficient, never stop at all, run even MORE toggles, such as the Fighting and Leadership ones and so forth, you need extra endurance management. Which is fine. That's how it should be.

I don't think endurance management is becoming any less a part of the game. I just feel that endurance management will no longer be the absolute bottleneck that it is now.

If I want to know how much damage Lightning Rod does, real numbers won't tell me. They give me damage components, but they don't tell me that they're separated by different ranges. If I want to know how much damage Thunder Strike does, real numbers will lie to me. It looks like it's an incredibly powerful AoE. In fact, it's a pretty good single-target attack with not all that great AoE damage. Worse on a Blaster, in fact, where more of the damage is single-target-only. If I want to know what damage Chain Induction does, the game will tell me something like 700+, because it counts all the jumps together. It looks like a lot, but it really isn't, because Nova doesn't tell you it does thousands and thousands of damage by adding up all 16 possible targets together. And it doesn't even tell you which damage component goes towards which part of the power. If I want to know how accurate Ignite is, real numbers will lie to me and tell me that it has double the normal accuracy. I will be asking for the accuracy of the FIRE, not the summon, but because the power pretends pseudo-pets don't exist, it will give you the accuracy of the summon.

Real numbers lie, and they don't lie infrequently. Phalanx Phighting still doesn't list all of its defence numbers, Detonator doesn't list anything useful at all, SR passive list "special" resistance percentages, Stalker out-of-combat criticals still list "special" chance to score a critical, Scrapper Head Splitter adds its critical damage portion in the average power damage where none of the other Broadsword powers do, creating an artificially inflated and false total damage number, powers like Transfusion and that one from Cold Domination still make no attempt to show that their buffs are per target. The list goes on.

If a new player tried to use Real Numbers and was unlucky enough to have a few of these powers that lie, then this player would be LOST, because the real numbers are not real. I have nothing against keeping the numbers simpler, if these numbers reflected the truth. When a power uses a pseudo-pet, then don't list the accuracy of the summon. List the accuracy of whatever the offensive power of that pet is. If you're listing for Trip Mine, then list the accuracy for the Trip Mine power as possessed by the pet itself. If you're listing for Burn, then don't list the accuracy of the summon, list the accuracy of the offensive power the Flames pet uses. It doesn't have to be more complicated. But it should be correct without HAVING to know the complicated mechanics so as to be able to predict what will be false.