Sorciere

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I do not miss the point. Brutes do trade off defense for more personal offense. Therefore, brutes do NOT act as the same force multiplier (defensively), simply because they have weaker defense.


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That weaker defense has not stopped them from filling the exact same team role as Tankers do. Weaker defense =/= weak defense, and Brutes are strong enough even without minimal support to tank for teams. They've been doing so in CoV since day 1.

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And they have also failed at that if their survivability was not high enough. You're using some very clever wording to dance around the fact that brutes ARE less survivable than tankers (assuming equal powersets). But clever wording does not change the fact that tankers have substantially higher health, regeneration, defense, and resistance and that this difference can matter.

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Well, the problem is that you don't like playing a primarily defensive character.

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No, the problem is for a Tanker, their defense doesn't benefit them, it benefits others, and at the expense of a Tanker's concept, ability to solo and for the people who think Tankers should have some teeth, fun.

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That is YOUR problem, not mine, nor that of a lot of other people who play tankers. That is YOUR idea of fun, not mine, nor that of a lot of other people who play tankers.

I like that my defense can benefit others. It's the whole point of playing a support-oriented character. It's a major selling point for me. That you do not like it is again your own personal problem.

In short, speak for yourself, do not claim to speak for others who do not share your ideas by pronouncing your personal preferences to be a universal truth.

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UN-luckily for you, perhaps, Going Rogue is only going result in me pushing harder and being louder about Tanker reform now that there's the direct and increased threat from Brutes.

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In short, you do not want a different balance between defense and offense that brutes could give you. You want better offense without sacrificing your superior defense. Having your cake and eating it, too, in other words.

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And you seem to miss the point that Brutes act as the same force multiplier, take hits for the team, do so with minimal support BUT unlike Tankers and the end of the day get to go solo with excellent speed and damage.

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I do not miss the point. Brutes do trade off defense for more personal offense. Therefore, brutes do NOT act as the same force multiplier (defensively), simply because they have weaker defense. You may claim that the difference is inconsequential for the content that you do, but you cannot honestly claim that brutes and tankers provide the same defense.

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Even if Brues were faceplanting each spawn, and they're not generally, they're still filling the role as aggro sponge, have been doing so for as long as CoV has been around, and unlike Tankers, they're not half-crippled offensively for the dubious privilege.

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Well, the problem is that you don't like playing a primarily defensive character. That, however, is your problem, not that of the developers. There are others who prefer the defense/offense trade-off that a tanker has over that of a brute. The world does not revolve around you, I'm afraid. The developers are well advised providing a variety of different ATs and powersets to cater to people with different playstyles instead of making tankers essentially the same as brutes, which would reduce the number of character options a player has.

Luckily for you, as soon as Going Rogue comes out, you will be able to play a brute blue-side (I am assuming that the only reason you currently don't play a scrapper instead of a tanker is that Super Strength isn't available as a scrapper primary). That should solve your problem, since you will be able to play exactly the type of character you want to play, right?

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As entertaining or capable as tankers can be for anyone that can figure out a percent sign, no one wants to be the guy chosen "because no one else was looking" or to be the debuff sponge so the scrapper, who can sometimes take damage just as well, actually does something to further the mission.

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The problem with that line of argument is (1) that there are actually people who enjoy the role of being in the thick of things and taking hits for the team, (2) that tankers ARE a force multiplier, both defensively and offensively.

As a tanker, you are a defensive force multiplier by redirecting attacks towards you so that they hit you (with your superior survivability), not your teammates.

Offensively, you work as a force multiplier by absorbing debuffs that then similarly won't hit your teammates who can then produce better damage output because they aren't encumbered by -recharge or -to-hit or -DMG.

The general problem that you are having with this is that you don't need a whole lot of defense for most of the content; thus, having more than one tanker is generally not a huge benefit (or, more than one FF defender, for that matter, another defensively oriented type of character). But that is not the same as claiming that a tanker doesn't actually do "something to further the mission".

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The problem is the way buffs and debuffs stack in this game promotes inneffective defenses at low levels that provide negligible benefits to solo or team play, and yet also providing obviously overpowered defensive capabilities by even the weakest of characters by 50 (grats to the blaster that soloed the ITF).

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Just to be clear, that blaster soloed the ITF with an expensive IO build, Shivans, lots of inspirations, and lots of stealthing. Buff and debuff stacking had pretty much nothing to do with that -- you don't really get buff and debuff stacking beyond the intended level while solo, especially when not playing a buffing/debuffing AT.

Castle already has said that (1) buff/debuff stacking is broken and (2) that he can't do much about it without breaking the game. What you can't expect is to have everything buffed to the same level of brokenness. Buff/debuff stacking is not a valid benchmark of where the game should be.

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Controller's primary controls and does some damage. Containment buffs the damage portion of that. Thus it buffs their primary.

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It also buffs the damage portion of their secondary, though. Inherent powers rarely can be that neatly compartmentalized. Insisting that inherent powers always and everywhere apply to the primary only (or even primarily) out of a sense of aesthetic purity is neat, but not necessarily very useful for an actual game. There's no "players rights bill" that states that inherent powers have to buff the primary; all you can reasonably expect is a game that aims to be both interesting and balanced.

More importantly, saying that a tanker inherent should ALSO buff the tanker primaries is not going to get you anywhere. To get a buff (that doesn't go along with a commensurate nerf elsewhere) you have to demonstrate first that tankers are underpowered and second that said buff fixes it. If tankers don't have problems, they don't need buffs, in their inherent or otherwise. You may be able to convince yourselves, but you won't be able to convince the developers, and they are the ones who have access to the CoH source code.

That is where a lot of this goes wrong. For example, a common complaint is that you only need one tanker on a team. Making taunt effects from Gauntlet stronger or tanker survivability stronger does not fix that -- if anything, it makes it worse. Tankers, to be blunt, are not underpowered. They are actually one of the more solid archetypes.

Thus, if you want something buffed in a way that makes tankers measurably more powerful, then there's a good chance that you have to pay for that with a nerf elsewhere, whether the buff is related to tankers' inherent power or not. That any individual power is weak does not exempt changes to it from balance considerations; if the AT as a whole is balanced right, then making a weak power stronger is still going to make the AT overall stronger than it should be.

What you would have to argue is either (1) that tankers in general are underpowered and need a buff and that the buff you propose fixes that (which then could be or could not be attached to an inherent change) or (2) propose a change that isn't a buff to the AT, but simply leads to more interesting and varied gameplay.

While I'm not too enamored of Gauntlet myself in general, I don't think that tankers do need a new inherent power.

Inherent powers were mostly just labels for a part of the unique aspects of each AT when they were introduced. Tankers do not only have the innate aggro generation from Gauntlet (and note that the high threat they cause to damage they hit is technically not a part of Gauntlet), they also have very high hit points (40% more than a scrapper, the closest AT hero-side), proportionately higher regeneration, and considerably higher coefficients than other ATs for defense and resistance. Presumably the only reason why tankers were given the label "can attract aggro naturally" on their inherent rather than "is extraordinarily tough" is because the devs liked the flavor of the first one better.

Now, personally I'd like to see threat management improved so that Gauntlet doesn't take a backseat to auras and Taunt (the power), but that's to make game play more interesting, not because I think tankers need a new or improved inherent power.

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I tested just this to see. I was on a SD/DM tanker and my friend was on a BS/SD scrapper. Neither of us had taunt slotted in AAO and we tried a few scenario's.

From what we've tried, with him running AAO and attacking he could pull aggro off of me(only one at the time mind you). Even though I was taunting and attacking his greater output of dmg was keeping aggro on him. It could be different if I slotted taunt in AAO and more taunt in taunt. I just may have to try that out tommorow.

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The simple problem here is that Against all Odds (along with Invincibility) is one of the two taunt auras with the longest taunt durations in the game (16.875 at level 50), tankers and scrappers alike, and that Dark Melee's Taunt power is (along with Dual Blade's) the shortest duration Taunt power in the game (30.75 seconds at level 50).

Consider now that your threat is roughly AT multiplier * remaining taunt duration * damage in this scenario (the AT multiplier is 4 for tankers and 3 for scrappers), and it doesn't take a shield defense scrapper a whole lot of damage to out-aggro you (taunt effects do some "virtual damage" of their own, but the amount is relatively small). If you go with match a strong taunt effect without damage against another strong taunt effect with damage, the latter will win.

And yes, I consider the taunt durations for Invulnerability/Shield Defense scrapper taunt auras to be poor design choices.

(Note that their may be additional issues with the threat from (some) Broadsword attacks, possibly the debuffs associated with them, but I haven't been able to verify that conclusively.)

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Basically the gist of it was if a taunt is the only effect being applied (a single taunt effect with no damage or repetition such as Taunt from range) while extreme amounts of damage are being applied to the target from another source, the taunt effect can be overridden.

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I know these posts -- I've read them often enough -- and I believe you are misreading them. It takes really obscene amounts of damage to override taunt effects (the multiplier that taunt effects give you is 1000 * remaining taunt duration) that cannot be generated in practice (except vs. Willpower tanks with ineffectively slotted RttC or vs. +5 or higher enemies). If you draw aggro from something that has a taunt effect on it from a tanker, then it's usually something else: additional threat multipliers from debuffs, funky AI behavior, a taunt effect of your own, the tanker being at range, or a combination of those.

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As for Gauntlet, is seems only to be a label for the tanks' taunt aspect in their secondary set. Pool power attacks don't taunt at all.

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While pool power attacks indeed do not have the Gauntlet "splash" aggro, they still carry a single target taunt effect with the standard duration (0.3*(level-5) seconds).

Brawl, on the other hand, doesn't have even that, but then tankers generally do not waste their endurance on Brawl.

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Why do they even let trial account users send email?

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Trial account users cannot send emails (or send tells, or use channels outside local, help, or team).

What you are likely seeing are messages from hacked accounts or from accounts registered with stolen credit cards.

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While this is my experience too, Castle disagrees with you.

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Where? This is an honest questions -- his past posts on this subject seem to pretty much agree with what I think.

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My fire/fire blaster, if I'm going all out with no regard for my own safety (is there any other way?) can and does pull agro off of anything but an Ice tank running both auras and taunting. If a tank doesn't have Taunt while my blaster is on the team, he is basically a really tough scrapper for all the agro he keeps off me. A stoner running Mud Pots can hold agro from me as well, mostly because they run so slowly they forget about me before they leave the aura.

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Eh, no. It doesn't happen this way. Especially not with a fire/fire blaster who has no particularly strong aggro generation. Contrary to some other MMORPGs, damage does not in and of itself generate particularly high threat, and there's little else that a fire/fire blaster does. If you want to generate high threat, you need taunt effects or (lacking that) debuffs to stack on top of damage. On top of that, blasters have the lowest AT threat modifier (x1 as opposed to the x4 a tanker has) and are frequently penalized further for being at range (excepting pure blappers).

What you may be seeing is mobs being chased out of the tanker's aggro aura by Rain of Fire and subsequently turning towards you once they forget about the taunt effect from the aura. Or maybe you are playing with Willpower tankers who didn't slot RttC properly.

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Also, if you go defender or corruptor, Dark has that cone of immob. The thing is, the duration and recharge on mass holds is pretty harsh, so you need the immob to fill in between holds if you're going to use a lot of knockback powers.

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Well, the problem with that is that Tenebrous Tentacles (the Dark Blast immobilize effect) does not actually prevent knockback. Of course, this is generally a good thing, because it keeps the knockdown from Freezing Rain fully effective. (And just to be clear, Storm/Dark is a pretty nifty powerset combination if played right.)

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There's also the issue of resistances.
The characters that are capable of soloing an AV tend to be, if not are exclusively, non-S/L oriented.

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That depends entirely on the AV.

Malaise, for example, has 50% resistance to psi and -20% resistance to lethal damage (and no other resistances). Black Swan has 50% negative energy resistance and -30% energy resistance (and, again, no other resistances).

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1) AVs should have mez protection, but not the PTOD. If a Tanker has 17.3 MAG of protection, then give Statesman that, but not more. If he hit Unstoppable then he gets another 17.3. Still makes him hella hard, but fairly so. If Sister Psyche is Mind/FF then she gets the 6-9 FF defenders get and no sleep protection.

2) Tame the AVs regen rate. Unless they're a regen type character, AVs should not have such a high regen rate, IMO. This serves only to require [X] amount of DPS or -regen to take them down. And if the AV is regen, they they should not have much if any resistance (except in MoG)

3) Tame AV damage. Fighting an AV should be like fighting an expert and strong player. AVs being able to do 1700 HP in one swing is silly.

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I do not think that any of these suggestions would lead to more interesting fights in the game.

Briefly, most PvE content in this and other MMORPGs is already stacked heavily in favor of the player characters. The players generally get to choose when and how to engage NPCs in battle; the mechanics are generally strongly biased in favor of player characters; even in the worst case, players get to try a mission again if defeated, while NPCs can't.

That there are a few select encounters, then, that turn this balance upside down in order to add a degree of challenge or even risk to the experience does not strike me as particularly problematic; the players get to "cheat" in 99% of the game because of biased mechanics; if game-mechanics shift that bias slightly away from the players towards the NPCs (noting that the vast majority of the time the players still will not lose), that is nothing that worries me.

Of course, the most important practical issue is that a lot of standard AVs are already pushovers for a team of eight. If you make them significantly weaker, you diminish the experience of what is intended to be a fight out of the ordinary.

If anything, my preference would be to shift the balance in the opposite direction in general. While I don't think too highly of the AV mechanics (they are workable solutions for what they are meant to do, but far from perfect), I'd be strongly in favor of pushing the upper end of the difficulty curve up more, and make difficult content more common. I would, however, also prefer smoother scaling of difficulty with team size and difficulty level, especially for AV-class opponents.

By the way, that also means that I do not have a problem with a situation where player characters stand little or no chance against signature characters on Invincible while solo.

On a more technical note, the AV regen rate -- which, as a percentage, is only 1.5 times that of a lieutenant or boss, and just seems high because of an AVs total hit points -- has probably a separate purpose from what you list: it prevents "hospital zerging" an AV that you can't otherwise handle (this is in lieu of an "encounter reset" that CoX doesn't have).

I've never had a conceptual problem with the EB->AV scaling mechanic. I basically consider it the NPC equivalent to players using a lot of inspirations in critical situations.

You're mixing up game mechanics with theme. Technically, an Ice/Ice blaster has two powersets, but in a comic you just wouldn't be able to tell what belongs to a primary and what belongs to a secondary powerset. The individual powers that such a character uses are just different manifestations of the same conceptual origin power (being able to freeze stuff).

From a narrative point of view, the distinction between the primary and secondary powerset only becomes apparent when they are actually thematically distinct, and not just because the game happens to have put them in different pools. Even an Invulnerability/Super Strength tanker (who does not have perfectly matching primary/secondary names) can just be in essence a preternaturally strong person who uses the excess muscle both defensively (bouncing bullets off your body) and offensively (beating stuff into pulp). The "powerset" thing is purely an artifact of the game mechanics, but not necessarily perceptible in any narrative relating to the character.

Talking about powersets as though they are reified entities in a fictional world leads to the same awkwardness as the awful fantasy books that actually pigeonhole each character into a class (where everybody is a mage, cleric, rogue, fighter, etc.). To an extent, even the CoH story is guilty of trying to reify game mechanical abstractions, and it is similarly painful to read.

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Let's compare buffs vs single target heals. In empathy, heal other will give back about 600 health - your average tank will have about 2000 health. Sonic's shields however will give you 40% damage resistance. So, if something hits you for 1000 damage, 400 of that bites the dust passively - every time it hits you.

An empath is capable of healing 900 (we'll say 900 assuming they are following you using their AOE heal and single target) every 6 seconds (activation time + recharge). So, if you're fighting one person, who wins? The empath.

However, since sonic buffs protect passively, if you're fighting a group which does 4000 damage per attack wave, 1600 of that is mitigated.

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I understand that this is a rant post, and not necessarily well thought out. However, you may want to consider that 4000-1600=2400 health lost is 400 more than the aforementioned average tank has and you're screwed either way?

In practice, of course, if you're dealing with seriously hard-hitting stuff (say, a, tower-buffed Lord Recluse), then you want to generally have both buffs AND heals. Buffs to make the tide of damage manageable, and heals to patch up what goes past the mitigation.

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Nobody gets defense vs Toxic damage type per se. I'm not sure if Vazh toxic attacks have a positional component.

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Well, the zombies/abominations have [Projectile Vomit] (ranged) and [Zombie Vomit] (AoE, 5 targets max, 5 ft. radius). The [Dart Gun] that reapers and mortificators use is oddly enough classified as ranged/lethal, even though it deals purely toxic damage.

The best single powerset to take against Vahzilok is, in my experience, Force Fields. 40% toxic resistance (unenhanceable) from Deflection Shield and 25% ranged/AoE defense (enhanceable) from Insulation Shield/Dispersion Bubble combine for some pretty darn nice mitigation.

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Most aura’s have a taunt effect that lasts for 11.25 seconds.

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The taunt duration of non-Willpower taunt auras is actually level-dependent. For Invulnerability and Shield Defense it's 0.375*(level-5) seconds (maximum 16.875 seconds at level 50), for all other taunt auras (except RttC) it's 0.3*(level-5) seconds (maximum 13.5 seconds).

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Willpowers taunt aura lasts for 1.25 seconds.

I think it is an oversight and will be fixed, so I am going to play one and build around the issue at current.

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It's not an oversight. Castle has confirmed that this is intentional. It is generally recommended enhancing it with 2-3 taunt duration enhancements.

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Since it taunts like every second that gives me very little overlap and really messes stuff up if I miss or purple patch kicks in. So I am going to slot it with 2 acc, 2 taunt, and 2 heal early.

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Accuracy enhancements are pointless for RttC -- it is an auto-hit aura. Unless you have specific set bonuses in mind, 3 heal enhancements and 2-3 taunt duration enhancements are recommended.

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That should make sure I hit all but one or two, and have enough duration to keep a +3 or maybe even +4 interested in me for a full cycle. Does that sound about right to you?

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That's what the general testing and experience has confirmed, more or less. Personally, I go for three taunt duration enhancements to keep things stable against +4s, but some consider it overkill.

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On top of that, I will cycle in “taunt” as often as possible to keep everybody loving me. It’s autohit right? So on the big +5 AV I should be able to keep his attention.

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Taunt has multiple purposes when you're a Willpower tanker. The main problem that you have is that mobs that are only tagged by your aura (but no other effect) tend to lose interest in you as soon as you move away from them. Taunt can therefore capture the attention of critters that are where you cannot currently move to without losing the aggro of the mobs next to you; conversely, it can also glue those mobs to you while you're moving elsewhere. On AV fights, it helps because taunt aura and gauntlet get hefty to-hit penalties and you cannot expect 100% taunt effect uptime on AVs without Taunt (it's a risk for other tankers, too, but much less than for Willpower). On some AV fights, it can also be prudent to stay out of melee range (this is regardless of your primary, though), and Taunt helps with that.

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Finally I will take fire as my secondary. Combustion is a power available at level 4 it has twice the radius of RTTC (15 feet) and has a normal taunt duration of 11.5 seconds. With only one or two recharge DO’s I should be able to get that to overlap ensuring I keep everybody interested in me.

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The taunt duration of Gauntlet effects is also level-dependent. It is NOT a constant 11.5 seconds, it is 0.3*(level-5) seconds, reduced by purple patch resistance. For example, at level 30 against +3 foes, it can only be expected to last 4.875 seconds.

For that matter, it's far from impossible to hold aggro without frequent AEs. Those help, but between your aura, Gauntlet (especially now that melee attacks have a 7' range), and Taunt (ideally enhanced for recharge) you can get pretty solid aggro, as long as you have a good memory for what foes you have tagged through what means.

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I’m going to have to work harder at holding Agro, but as a tank I am cool with that. It’s well rounded with defense/resistance and regen. The only real hole I see is fighting AV’s once the minions are down as you have no fodder to feed RTTC. How big of an issue will that be?

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Expect survivability issues primarily from burst damage, especially of the non-S/L/Psi kind. Of course, even relatively minimal buffing from team mates and/or inspirations can generally handle that.

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Final note - when first testing the mission (to make sure it was an adequate map/setup) and before I started recording my runs, the pet did pull aggro off my WP Tank. This honestly didn't surprise me - RttC sucks, and I've never been shy saying so. :P

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Yeah, RttC vs +2 enemies can get too weak without enhancements. Namely, it has only an effective duration of 1.0 after the purple patch resistance from +2s, with a 1.0 refresh rate, which is ... well, cutting it extremely close (I'm still speculating whether it happens because of threat decay, because a server tick is missed, or because server ticks, as Arcanaville measured them, are .132 seconds instead of the supposed .125 seconds). For the same reason, I like to slot three taunt enhancements instead of just two (technically, two and three even level SOs would mostly give you the same benefit against +4s, but the overlap is zero with two even level SOs and barely greater than zero with level 30+ common IOs).

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This was more pointed at Sorciere who has claimed to have done extensive tests of the agro mechanic as a Tanker, which would have to include knowing about how Gauntlet worked to be somewhat accurate in those conclusions.

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Huh? What on earth are you talking about? You now claim that I didn't know about Gauntlet requiring a to-hit check, when only a couple of pages ago I was the one pointing out that in my recollection it DID require a to-hit check.

Get your story straight.

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The impetus theory?...really?...I know that wasn't at the top of your head.

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It was simply an example of how an intuitive understanding how something works that sounded entirely reasonable on the face of it doesn't hold up once it's subjected to actual tests aimed at trying to falsify that theory.

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Because just like the impetus theory and every other scientic guess work, we need to SEE actual proof. Like I posted before, gamecam and or Fraps. Everyone is so particularly busy crunching numbers or linking wiki pages, yet no one offered to show, or to record actual evidence.

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Unfortunately, I don't have my old demorecords anymore. However, I did postulate a simple experiment that is easily reproducible; if taunt auras were insufficient to hold aggro over raw damage, then this experiment should be able to show that.

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If you were a *real* Tanker playing with a *real* group of people (not a controlled experimental setting (seriously?)) you would know that taunt auras by themselves do not hold agro well enough. You would also know that taunt auras *and* punchvoke will take care of 90% of your agro concerns, with another 9% being reserved for Taunt. The other 1% I'd put down to the actual skill of the player (that's how simplistic playing this game is ... especially at the higher levels).

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A few points here.

First, I'm not really sure where you are getting the idea that I'm not actually doing any "real" tanking, nor what you mean to prove by impugning my tanking ability (of which you know absolutely nothing). The reason why I'm interested in threat mechanics is precisely because I tank a lot, more than I play any other AT in this game.

Second, your statements above have nothing to do with the point I've raised -- in fact, I would mostly agree with the claims you make above (except that I'd shy away from making blanket statements based on made-up percentages, and don't generally hold Gauntlet in very high regard). But: the specific claim I made -- that raw damage generally cannot override the threat caused by a taunt aura -- you conspicuously failed to address while talking about completely unrelated points.

Third, there is a reason why I prefer controlled, reproducible experiments. Human perception and intuition is notoriously unreliable. For example, it favored the Impetus Theory over Newtonian mechanics. Unfortunately, while the Impetus Theory is more intuitive to humans, it also simply wrong.

That's why experiments need to be reproducible and why theories need to be falsifiable. Even in the context of MMORPG combat, this holds. In fact, even more so, since the human experience of simulated combat in a team environment is generally tainted by a skewed perception of time, distance, and other metrics, and is also incomplete in that you cannot be aware of all events. You see, in short, a subjectively edited version of the actual events that occur on the server.

The whole point is that if you want your claims to be testable, you must present them in a form that is testable. Detailing specific, precise theories that can be corroborated or refuted by testing (what you refer to as "experiments" in scare quotes) does exactly that.

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I think you need to retest then Herr Professor because you are way off base.

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It is Frau Professor, thank you very much (not that I actually have a tenure track position, of course).

The thing is, if you wish to assert that damage can out-aggro a taunt aura (which you claimed is possible), then you should be able to point out a controlled experiment that can validate this claim of yours. Right now, given that everybody but you thinks that aggro auras DO provide solid aggro vs. damage, you may want to take a step back and re-evaluate your assumptions.

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And a taunt aura radius versus the range of Taunt is hugely important as you will usually not be able to fit more then 6-7 mobs in the range of a taunt aura (which incidentally is not much broader then melee range).

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Absolutely. This doesn't say a thing about the strength of the taunt aura and how it matches up against damage, though; it's only important for how you can cover all critters in a spawn with taunt effects. (And for practical purposes, all tankers but Willpower can of course also employ movement to get aggro on more critters.)