Skulker

I was there, met Blue Steel and Back Alley Brawler, and got my VIP pass.

I entered the code into my account at PlayNC.com, but when I go to the tailor in-game I can't find the PPD Hard Suit. Is there something else I need to do to activate it?

Yeah, didn't mean you. :-)

Internal balance amongst the Tanker sets is farther out of whack than ever in Issue 5. This is just one example of how bad it really is.

At least with Issue 4 three of the Tanker sets were reasonably well balanced (Ice being the red-headed step-child). In Issue 5 I'd be hard pressed to compare any two Tanker sets and call them reasonably well balanced.

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For those looking to see the differences, I posted them here.

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Thanks, Circeus, this is great information.

The only thing that's making my jaw hit the floor, though, is that people are actually surprised by these results.

Ice was the worst Tanker set to start with. And it got nerfed hard. So yeah, even though Invulnerability also got nerfed hard it should come as no surprise that Ice is still worse.

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Two words:

Kill Skuls.

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kill skuls schwag!

Somebody had to do it! LOL... I'm so there. Coffee mug here I come!

WILL KILL SKULS FOR FOOD!

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That's my feeling, too. Sometimes I don't know anything more definite than "we're going to address it sometime..." There's ALOT of people working on City of Heroes, and sometimes I post just keep the forum readers in the loop. Maybe the person responsible for the tweak/change isn't around when I'm typing - or maybe we haven't set up a meeting yet for a final decision. No great conspiracy or anything - I just like telling you guys what I know.

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And this is why Cryptic is, and is going to continue to be, successful. I would much rather hear constant updates even if things change from update to update. "Hey, we tried X, and it's not working well so we're going to have to think of something else." That's far, far better than "... <chirp> ..." which is what customers hear from most game studios.

You da man, Statesman!

w00t! Thanks Statesman!

Now this sounds cool!

The obvious question is this: what constitutes one fight? In other words, when or how does this inherent build up (both the Provoke and damage effects) reset?

A secondary question follows: fights are pretty short as it is right now... is something going to be done to increase the duration of fights so that these new Tanker powers actually mean something?

Really cool concepts, though! I can't wait to see how you guys plan to implement them!

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If you read the suggestion for Handclap you will notice it says "decrease recharge time to 12s". With 6 slots in recharge timers that puts it down to 4 second recharge. Or 3 slots recharge and Hasten.

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Yeah, I saw that, but somehow didn't let it sink in.

The combined changes to Hand Clap are pretty big... that's a huge ask to the devs. But hey, I'd love it if they'd do it!

The problem is that Hand Clap's current recharge is 30 seconds... that's essentially useless as a Provoke alternative. Provoke's current 10 seconds is very nearly useless (at least to me) so from my point of view this would be a non-change to Hand Clap. You'd be adding a capability to the power that I would ignore when making a decision to take/not take the power.

By far my biggest problem with my Tanker is managing/holding aggro. I do it just fine against evens, +1s, and generally against +2s. Against +3s and higher, which is what you need to fight if you're in a group, I start having serious problems. Against +5s I'm basically worthless as crowd control and become a simple "first salvo absorption" shield. Granted, that's generally sufficient, but it sure doesn't feel like a very "super" contribution to the group.

Adding a once-every-30-seconds provoke-like ability to Hand Clap doesn't change that at all. We need an improved Provoke - meaning we need something closer to the old Provoke back in some way.

It's possible we just need to have the magnitude or duration of Provoke increased... do that and I might consider using it again.

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What if Hand Clap was changed so that it worked the same way as Provoke? A targetted sonic blast basically?

My goal/hope is to incorporate 'Provoke' into the Tanker secondary lines in a fashion appropriate to the theme of that Tanker line. So Hand Clap would be like Provoke in every way that Provoke is like Provoke, but also continue to act similarly to how it has as Hand Clap.

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Would you keep Taunt in the Tanker secondaries in that case?

If so, then I'd say this would be a great idea. Tankers would have improved versions of Challenge (Taunt) and Provoke (Hand Clap) that would allow them to do their job better than anyone else. It'd even give me a reason to take Hand Clap.

Mind you, it would need to be better than Provoke at doing Provoke's job, and that's going to be difficult when you're essentially adding it to an existing power.

Provoke currently has 3 major deficiencies: its recharge is too slow, its duration is insignificant vs the kinds of enemies we need it against, and the AI changes made it so that it frequently doesn't help anyway because the enemies just continue doing whatever they were doing before they were provoked.

If you're going to add it to Hand Clap, it needs:

1) Mag 4+ taunt. If it hits, it absolutely overrides whatever the enemy was doing. It should do more than just put the Tanker at the top of the hate list - it should actually encourage the enemy to attack the Tank. Currently, if an enemy is not in "attack" mode for some reason, Provoke doesn't affect it (or does so only rarely).

2) Dramatically increased duration. I say this based on the assumption that the recharge of Hand Clap is not going to be dramatically decreased, which means that the provoke-like effect that is being added needs to be increased so that there's a remote possibility of slotting to allow for duration overlap.

Remember, we're not boss killers - that's the Scrapper's job. So you cannot factor the built-in Tanker attack taunt into the "duration" of Provoke or Provoke-like powers. If we're supposed to be melee-range crowd control, we need to be able to control crowds.

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The more I think about it the more it just makes sense:

Make Hand Clap have an equal taunt to Provoke and replace Taunt with Hand Clap in the Tanker secondary (so it can be taken early).

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As long as people realize that this suggestion in no way obviates the "need" that some people see for Provoke. Provoke's one real advantage is that it is a ranged AoE taunt. Hand Clap will never replace that.

Doing this would be a nice bonus for all those non-Invulnerability tankers who have Super Strength as their secondary, though. (Both of them! ) Because Inv/SS simply doesn't need it - Invincibility is all the PBAoE taunt an Inv/SS tank will ever need.

/sign

Not 100% perfect from my point of view, but dramatically better than where we're sitting right now. Therefore, a very positive change and a compromise that I'd be happy to accept in order to get something that is better than what we have now.