SpittingTrashcan

Stars, there's something I think you may be forgetting. Radius is indeed a buffable attribute, and range enhancements do buff cone radius. However, melee cones and PBAoEs are specifically set to ignore range buffs and debuffs. This is for two reasons: first, without this protection from debuffs, it's possible to Hurricane or Taunt a melee character into being unable to reach an enemy with their PBAoE or cone attacks even in melee range; and second, without this exemption from buffs, it'd be possible to slot Dam/Range enhancements in, say, Foot Stomp, and significantly increase its killing zone.

Now, if you can figure out a way for Granite to debuff radius of melee cones and PBAoEs in a way that doesn't also allow the above scenarios, then it becomes a viable option - albeit one I don't much care for.

Here's my preferred realistic scenario:

- Granite continues to be a toggle that can be maintained indefinitely. This is my dealbreaker. As previously noted, there is no rule that a tier 9 power cannot run continuously, and there does not need to be any such rule.
- The benefits of Granite are significantly reduced, because Granite as it exists now breaks encounters, per Starsman's reasoning.
- The drawbacks to running Granite continually are made significantly stronger and less circumventable, but not to the point where there is never a circumstance where you would want to do it - otherwise, what's the point of even having the capability?
- The remainder of the set is improved so that Granite is not required for survivability in most ordinary circumstances.

I rather like the increasing recovery penalty, and it got me thinking. Suppose Granite is a non-exclusive toggle. Every activation period, Granite applies a small buff to resistance and defense, and a small debuff to recharge, damage, movement speed, and recovery. These buffs and debuffs last for somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 seconds, and they stack. So, when you activate Granite, you gradually become more and more tough until you reach a survivability peak, but you also become less and less capable of moving and attacking. (Incidentally, if you can think of a way to circumvent this, I'd be happy to replace it with something less circumventable. I am not trying to dodge a significant downside to the power.) At Granite's peak, you are a sluggish, nigh-immobile, nigh-indestructable mountain. Turn off the toggle, and you gradually (well, over the course of 15 or so seconds) decalcify back to your normal offensive and defensive capabilities.

It's a fairly out-there idea, but it appeals to me.

With respect to HoF/DC and locking: I surmise that the original design intent of the locking mechanism was to preserve an arc that has been recognized as excellent in some way, in exactly the form in which it was so recognized, in perpetuity. The problem is that this doesn't work. Changes are continually made to the MA that invalidate prior arcs, and if they're locked they can't be fixed, so what you end up with is a list of arcs that used to be good, don't work now, and can't be made to work ever again. That's really not serving the design intent.

That's why I offered an alternative: instead of preserving the arc, reward the author. I don't think it necessary or beneficial to preserve any given arc for perpetuity. (Think about some of the official arcs that date back to the early days of the game. Shudder briefly.) No arc, no matter how good it was in its heyday, will always be great - at the very least, they will require fixing and updating as the MA changes. But someone who creates a good arc is a valuable resource for the game, and should be encouraged to create more good arcs. Hence the reward of a free additional arc slot - it's nice, but not impossible to obtain any other way.

It's also worth noting that if the first suggestion is implemented, HoF requirements would also have to change. I would recommend that it be made considerably easier to attain, since getting HoF would not guarantee a top spot on the list in perpetuity anymore.

The badge, I can see being... problematic. I'm not even sure why I suggested the badge. Forget the badge.

Edited to add: I would most definitely not call these changes "cosmetic". Cosmetic is changing the colors of the buttons. These are usability improvements, and that's a very different animal.

I blame all weird power design choices on Geko.

As for the number I suggested, that's actually closer to the full participation floor: it's the level of mitigation WP has (on average) without taking any penalties whatsoever. I suggested WP mainly because it has a mitigation type spectrum that's comparable to Stone, although Stone has an edge in one-on-one fights because its mitigation does not vary with the number of enemies in aura range. Inv would also be a reasonable comparison, for the same reasons, but with the same drawback (and the additional drawback that its tier 9 is crashing and thus can't easily be averaged into the performance). Other tanker sets have too many points of difference for a one to one comparison to be anything approaching reasonable.

There's a separate issue to resolve about how much offense and defense can be traded before you hit the floor/ceiling for either, but for simplicity's sake I'm just trying to work out what the best allowed no-penalty indefinitely sustainable survivability is. Or rather, I'm suggesting that it be worked out; there are people more qualified to do the numerical analysis than I am, and the devs are among those people. I'd also trust numbers from Starsman, Arcanaville, or Frosticus, to name some names; anyone else and I'd want to see their work. :P

That is a perfectly reasonable argument that has absolutely nothing to do with risk reward metrics. Well done: you've identified the existence of the risk floor, the point at which the design dictates that you cannot be this safe and still be a participant in combat. Actually, you've identified two: the permanent risk floor (PFF) and the temporary risk floor (phase). Tier 9 powers such as Unstoppable and Power Surge indicate yet another risk floor: you can be this safe for a limited time and then you are required to be extremely vulnerable for some time. Elude is problematic here: apparently over-softcap defense is considered to require a penalty, except that it is now possible to achieve this indefinitely, without any penalty, in powersets that aren't even based on defense to start with, so, hm. But that's a side issue.

So let's suppose there's another risk floor out there: the sustained participation floor. We don't know what it is, yet, but we'll assume it's somewhat higher than PFF, which means it's probably somewhat higher than Granite as well. So, given that Granite is "too good", what I'd like to do is try to work out how good it can be and remain a toggle. Because, to repeat myself ad nauseum, I rather do like being able to turn on Granite and become as tough as the game will allow me to be and still participate in fights. I like that Stone Armor does not have a timer on its peak performance. That is a draw for me, and it would be the one thing I would most deeply regret seeing disappear.

A rough and ready estimate for the participation floor: calculate the indefinite survival line for SO WP without SoW up, and then the indefinite survival line for WP with SoW up. Multiply the former by two, the latter by three, add and divide by five. Let this be the survival line for Stone Armor. Work out the details accordingly.

I think Starsman might have the numbers handy.

I hear going villain gives you a goatee, but going hero cleans your teeth.

I agree with everything Starsman just said, with one caveat. If Granite Armor gives encounter designers conniptions, then Phantom Army must drive them completely around the bend. Admittedly, that does take at least two characters working together, or else a whole lot of build investment, to function indefinitely. I will say nothing of Repeat Offenders, since we're talking about how the presence of a single character can make or break an encounter, whereas RO just demonstrates what happens when you create an entire team specifically designed for team encounters.

I believe that in at least one mission, if you leave Fusionette behind and then go back to retrieve her, she'll say she was busy checking her enhancements.

Umbral, the point I'm trying to make is that high survivability per se is not that valuable. But let's take this out of philosophy land. You challenged me to find an SO build that can outsurvive Granite and I conceded that there is none. Now, if you want to continue using risk/reward as the balancing metric, then I challenge you to show me a scenario that leverages that survivability to obtain higher rewards than any other scenario that does not involve Stone Armor, whether alone or as part of a team.

You keep bringing up risk/reward ratio, but I really don't think that's the argument you actually want to make, when everything else you say points to the existence of a risk floor as a separate design rule: the idea that at a certain level of safety you should not be allowed to earn any rewards at all. And that is a concept that I will readily agree is part of the game - the developers have consistently acted against any repeatable cycle of activity that allows you to earn any rewards without being exposed to combat at some point. I think the argument you want to make is that being in combat with Granite Armor up is essentially equivalent to not being in combat at all. I don't happen to think that's actually true, and I also think that if it's true for Granite Armor then it's true for a number of other things as well, but it would be a more reasonable argument to pursue than risk/reward ratios.

In my opinion, one of the chief limits on the usefulness of the Mission Architect is the system for rating, sorting, and spotlighting arcs. If it were up to me (and I remind the reader that it is not), I would make three changes to the MA system.

First, I would ditch stars. The question you want the answer to when you ask a player to rate an arc is "did you like this?" "Three stars" is a very ambiguous answer to this question, and evaluating it depends on knowing what the player means by "three stars". A less ambiguous answer would be "Yes", "No", or "no opinion", and that's what the rating system should be built around. Also, people tend to just use stars as a proxy for "yes" or "no" anyway.

Second, I would make the default sort order for arcs a function of time since the arc was posted, time since the arc was last played, total number of plays, number of positive ratings, and number of negative ratings. Examples of these sort algorithms are available; the particulars should be tweaked to meet the needs of the MA. The goal is to keep good fresh content on the top of the list.

Finally, I would ditch DC/HoF as it currently functions. Any mechanism that requires that arcs be frozen against editing in a system that is frequently updated in a way that requires editing arcs to make them functional is simply not going to work. Instead, I would award authors a badge and a free arc slot for getting a certain number of positive ratings on an arc, but not lock the arc, and not stick it on top of the default listing forever. I would create a separate listing for DC and guest author arcs, and create an alternate sort order that lists arcs by highest net rating for a "best of all time" list.

Okay, so you're positing that Granite Armor is broken because it allows you to reduce your risk to near zero while still gaining rewards. There are two problems with that definition of broken.

First, I will agree and in fact have already outright stated as a given that Stone Armor provides the best mitigation on SOs (and IOs, for that matter) available to any AT that can take it. However, that does not make it the only set that can reduce risk to near zero in the great majority of commonly occurring scenarios, nor does it make it the set with the best risk/reward ratio under these scenarios. Basically, for most of the game, that extra survivability simply cannot be leveraged to any useful purpose, and you end up paying a cost in offense - and, once again, I need to point out that just because you can accrue benefits that offset that cost does not mean you're not paying it - for an advantage you don't need. A Stone Armor tank or brute is neither the most effective solo farmer on SOs (or IOs), nor is it the best force multiplier for teams.

The only place where I can see a Stone Armor character having an unfair advantage is in allowing a team with relatively little support to overcome certain high-value challenges by being able to absorb the damage from an extremely dangerous enemy without outside buffs. Or to put it more plainly, Stone Armor survives AVs. This is pretty much the only scenario I can think of where that extra survivability is actually leveraged to provide better than usual results. And even here, it's not an optimal choice - a team of heavily support oriented characters will destroy an encounter that a Stone Armor character will merely survive.

In short, if earning rewards while at near-zero risk is the problem with Granite Armor, then there are many, many far more egregious violators of that rule in the wild.

Now let me propose a metric under which Granite Armor might actually be considered broken. If you take as a design principle that there must be encounters such that the character bearing the brunt of the threat from the encounter must be at risk of death without support from allies, then Granite Armor has such a significantly lower need for outside support to survive incoming damage that once you've elevated the encounter threat level to the point where a Stone Armor character would need outside support merely to survive, any other character would need an unreasonable level of outside support to do the same. I would argue that the STF and the RSF come up to the verge of this point.

Well, I suppose I can take my comfort with the current state of Rooted as a glowing testimonial to my patience.

As for Granite: Do me a favor. Humor me. Talk to me like I'm stupid.

What, precisely, makes damage mitigation above a certain level broken?

Or in other words, what is the floor on risk? Because I am almost positive that it is not a Stone Armor character's risk/reward ratio that is out of proportion in the vast majority of situations. Outside of certain extreme encounters, I have several characters who will survive as well as a Stone Armor character and do significantly more damage. Is the fact that a Stone Armor character is rarely at risk of dying, in and of itself, unbalanced? The answer to this question has implications that go well beyond Stone Armor.

A tangent: I see the S&I forum as a place to have fellow players vet suggestions. If the idea passes without negative comment, then sending a PM to a dev is not a bad next step. In this case, Dr. Aeon would be the man to pester.

The power of a warshade is directly proportional to the number of enemies it fights. In this game, that's an enormous advantage most of the time.

Edit on further thought: Actually, it's better than directly proportional: the more enemies the warshade has to fight, the more enemies it will hit, and the harder it will hit each one. So Warshades actually scale up in damage output as a function of the square of the number of targets. And that's insane.

Of course, it's not necessarily easy to get this level of performance from the AT.

On a side note: regardless of how he feels about it, Castle probably doesn't have much time to spare on Stone Armor for the foreseeable future. Here are some other things he might be prioritizing:

- Going Rogue. Just... Going Rogue.
- Shield Charge is doing about twice as much damage as intended.
- The LGTF green mitos now have the hold resistance they were designed to have - which makes them virtually indestructible. This is causing some concern.

I expect that if he hasn't started working on Stone Armor already (which is not inconceivable), he probably won't get to it for a while yet.