SpittingTrashcan

I'm just going to read "we need" as "I want".

More APP/EPPs would be fine, provided they're well-designed. Not necessarily these, though. I'm kind of confused by the choice of villain epics - you only have two of the four seconds represented, for one thing. Where are Wretch and Barracuda? Also, why create masteries for the Arachnos soldier types when we already have VEATs? What would be in Wolf Spider Mastery, for instance, that a Wolf Spider can't already get?

I think you could probably get a fair number of people behind "more epic powerset choices" as a general idea, but these specific suggestions seem more like your personal wishlist than something you could get a lot of people behind. The only thing I can really see a consensus on is weapon epics, and that mainly because people want to have weapons to customize.

Of course, if you just wanted to publish a wish list, there's nothing more to be said.

I wonder if this thread wouldn't have been better titled: Kill AE Farming Forever And Get Rid of Stupid Rating System.

I just don't have the knack for controversy, it seems.

Tying into what I said before, I think it's worth noting that faster soloing is safer soloing. Solo speed is determined almost entirely by DPS, and high DPS also means being able to get rid of threatening enemies faster - that is, before they manage to degrade or circumvent your defenses.

I really doubt that the controller/defender differential has anything to do with their perceived value on teams, whether they are played well or poorly. Experienced players know that support powers speed up a team remarkably, and don't really need AoE control to survive. New players look for a tank and a healer.

What makes defenders unpleasant for me, at least, is the combination of low damage and low mitigation when soloing. Tankers are no shining stars in the damage department, but at least they can survive their long fights. Controllers can be pretty poor on damage depending on choice of powersets, but the combination of control and support makes even the very slowest controller combos safe as houses. Blasters have worse mitigation, but with their high and guaranteed damage output they have a good chance of shortening the fight to the point where their HP outlasts their opponents'.

But for defenders, especially in the 41-50 range, you end up fighting a lot of enemies who circumvent debuffs and/or throw a lot of mez. And the longer a fight drags on with one of these enemies, the more likely it is that they'll get lucky, cut through my protections, and leave me vulnerable. I can't even begin to express how much I hate this. It's basically why I never play my Rad/Rad def unless I'm specifically asked to by a friend - and this is supposed to be one of the more solo-friendly combos.

1. Mission Randomization

Premise:
- AE farm missions have a risk/reward ratio problematically inconsistent with the remainder of the game.
- The principal source of this difference is the ability to tailor the enemies fought, available only in AE.
- It should be possible to level from 1 to 50 in the AE at a risk/reward ratio consistent with the remainder of the game.

Suggestion:
When using AE, present two options for mission selection:
Custom: Select any arc to play for reduced rewards.
Certified: Choose a vetted non-farm arc to play for full rewards.
Random: Choose one from three random arcs to play within certain parameters for full rewards.
Parameters would include length, level range, tags, and presence/absence of custom enemies. Parameters would not include specific enemy types.
Arc menu is fixed until zone or one of the three arcs is run (like radio/newspaper missions).

Benefits:
- Farming missions selected by hand grant reduced rewards compensating for the improved risk/reward ratio
- Random missions fighting a range of enemies leads to an average risk/reward ratio more closely resembling the rest of the game
- A growing pool of vetted non-farm arcs still allows a choice in missions

Issues:
- Newly published arcs created for specific audiences are penalized automatically
- Random missions may be bad - rating system may influence selection?

2. Recommendation Engine

Premise:
- AE rating system does not serve players
- Popularity contest
- Tied to reward system, highly gameable
- Highly rated arcs are overplayed; new arcs remain unplayed
- People are different and have different tastes; AE rating only reflects majority opinion

Suggestion:
- Scrap average rating
- Build recommendation table: N by N correspondence matrix between all AE missions
- Track ratings per player: when player 1 rates arc A and arc B highly, average into correspondence weight between A and B
- Offer recommendations based on table: if arcs A and B have high correspondence, when player 2 rates A highly, recommend B

Benefits:
- Removes popularity contest, quid-pro-quo
- Ratings customized to player preference

Issues:
- May have difficulty reconciling with ticket reward system for AE authorship; then again, most AE authors do not seem to be in it for the tickets
- Difficult to implement

I don't like where this is headed...

It occurs to me that it would be nice if Intangibility enhancements actually did something, say, for instance, increasing the duration of Intangibility on powers that have an Intangibility effect. Then Dim Shift could have 1/2 of its current Intangibility duration, and people who really wanted a long Intangibility could slot it back up to its current performance.

Quite right. I think this has come up before, I should have known better.

However, there is still a way to implement a "condenser" power. When multiple targets are teleported to a single destination, as with Assemble The Team, the result is a pile of entities which quickly spread out into a dense crowd. Suppose Dim Shift did the following:

1. All affected enemies are phased for 5 to 10 seconds.
2. All affected enemies are set to 100% transparency and capped stealth, thus "disappearing from the plane". A graphical effect is placed where the central target was indicating the "rupture in space".
3. After the phase duration, all affected enemies are teleported to the location of the targeted enemy, knocked down, and affected by random status effects.

An excellent fight opener that leaves enemies condensed in one spot indicated by the "space rupture" graphic. Place location-based effects on the rupture and rub hands together, cackling evilly...

Perhaps too much conceptual overlap with Wormhole, though.

It would be helpful if you posted your complete build, and also if you went into more detail about the circumstances under which you die.

I had a previous suggestion that made Gauntlet into a mode switch: one mode for aggro attraction, another that increased DPE either through end reduction or damage buff but switched off the taunt effect. Too complicated, apparently.

A simpler version would just give Tankers a damage buff when sufficiently far from allies. Just off the top of my head: +50%, -7% per ally within 40 feet. Conceptually: the Tanker can only safely use his full power when no allies are in harm's way. Mechanically: Helps soloing, especially at low levels when DPE is bad; gives the second tank something to do - run off and start rampaging elsewhere, using the superior survivability to gather and soften spawns before the rest of the team arrives.

Of course, this also makes Tanks the only AT directly penalized for teaming. And people tend to overvalue personal performance while undervaluing team performance, not realizing (or not caring) that sacrificing 10% of your own DPS to increase team DPS by considerably more is a net win.

I use my extensive knowledge of game mechanics to pursue goals orthogonal to performance. My general approach is to take a character that is good at X, and make it the best it could possibly be at X without compromising overall performance too much to be enjoyable.

With regard to Fury: Yes, using mez tools does reduce fury gain. On the other hand, being dead reduces your DPS to zero, and being drained of end does likewise. I'm in favor of staying alive and functional.

With regard to Defense: The amount of defense buffs available in IO sets is quite high, and if you slot specifically for high defense values you can get to respectable levels. I don't have Mids available at the moment, and I generally don't build for defense in any case - perhaps someone else can help you there. However, when you consider that Weave and Maneuvers offer (off the top of my head, numbers not guaranteed accurate) about 3% defense each on a Brute, and your average IO set bonus to defense is at least half that... you may as well skip them unless you're nearly softcapped already.

Personally, I love the mez tools in DA, and don't care for building for defense, but I'm sure you'll find plenty who would argue otherwise.

1. Unless you're putting together IO sets to boost your defense, I would suggest dropping Weave and Maneuvers. The defense bonus is marginal and the end cost is high, and unless you have a lot of defense already the additional def from Weave and Maneuvers isn't going to do much for you.

2. Dark Regeneration is an excellent heal, but heavy on end cost. If you don't have it enhanced to at least 85% endurance reduction, I'd consider that a priority.

3. Likewise, Death Shroud, like all damage auras, is excellent DPS over time, but costly on endurance. It should also be slotted to at least 85% endredux.

4. Consider picking up Oppressive Gloom. The end cost is trivial, and the HP cost is also trivial (4 HP per target, every 2 seconds, on my L50 EM/DA with 2K HP), so you can get away with putting just one or two acc in it. Stunning all minions within the radius is a considerable degree of mitigation.

5. If you want to get fancy, consider dropping Soul Mastery for Mu Mastery, grabbing Electric Fences and Ball Lightning, and picking up Lightning Clap. Throw Fences for the immob and -KB, step in with Oppressive Gloom to hit everything nearby with a mag 2 stun, and then use Lightning Clap to stack another mag 2 stun. This is enough to stun LTs and Bosses. Then AoE at will.

Dark Armor is somewhat mediocre if you build it like Fire Armor, just taking the heal, damage aura, and resist toggles. The real advantage of the set, IMO, is in the dirty tricks.

Fulmens: I agree with the general thrust of your argument but don't quite follow your math. The last 5% defense to the softcap halves incoming damage, from 10% to 5%. Isn't the first 25% that does the same, from 50% to 25%? By 40% defense, you've gone from 50% to 10%, a full fivefold decrease...

In case anyone is wondering, it also doesn't proc once per affected target per ten seconds in Invincibility, nor in Tactics. More's the pity.

The thing is, removing the aggro cap doesn't actually make tanks more desirable. It doesn't make them superior to Brutes in holding aggro in 95% of situations, and in order to take advantage of it you'd have to go out of your way to aggro multiple spawns, thus gathering more enemies than can effectively be AoE'd anyway and slowing the team down. And it doesn't do anything to address the damage differential which you point at as the drawback of Tanks on teams.

The two obvious approaches to this problem would be 1. to bring Tanker damage up to parity with Brutes and Scrappers, which would then obviate Brutes and Scrappers (why take the AT with the same damage and lower mitigation multipliers?)... or 2. to bring Scrapper and Brute aggro caps down to below the AoE cap, thus making Tankers the only AT capable of singlehandedly handling aggro for a full team. Neither of these look very attractive, but they're both more relevant to the problems you cite than the meaningless gesture of raising the aggro cap.

The time when I realize I should leave well enough alone is when I start to sound to myself like this guy.

/Elec has been good to me and to others; with Energize, it will be even better. Happy bruting to all.

Neither wrong enough to be shouted down, nor right enough to be supported. Toss in dustbin; start over from the top.

Since it seems the thing to do these days...

1. Premise
The three largest problems with the Tanker AT are:
- DPE. Tankers have the lowest DPE of all melee ATs. This makes the levels before Stamina and SOs unpleasant, especially solo.
- Stacking. The unique contribution of a Tanker to most teams is superior enemy aggro and position control. Tankers are so good at this job that a second Tanker is superfluous, and best replaced by a different AT. Certain techniques make a second Tanker useful, but even if the second is, a third will not be.
- Lack of fine-grained aggro control. This is a less frequently encountered problem and deserves some explanation. Occasionally, a Tank will not want to gather aggro. When a Tank is playing alongside another character with superior survivability, occasionally he will not wish to take aggro on an enemy, but just attack it. However, Gauntlet does not turn off, and if the other character cannot gather aggro or the Tank deals too much damage, the Tank will get aggro.

These are the premises on which this suggestion is based. If you don't agree, then of course this suggestion will not fix Tankers for you.

2. Suggestion
Alter Gauntlet to make it function, at the player's discretion, in one of two mutually exclusive ways.
Aggro mode - As current Gauntlet.
Attack mode - Gauntlet generates no additional threat. Instead, for each enemy affected by Gauntlet, the Tanker gains a buff that increases its DPE. This can be an endurance cost reduction or a damage increase. It can be a fast-expiring buff effect (as Defiance) or it can generate points toward a critical mode (as Domination).

3. Benefits
Solo - Tanker switches to Attack Mode and benefits from improved DPE.
Teamed, Main Tank - Tanker switches to Aggro Mode and functions as normal.
Teamed, Off Tank - Tanker switches to Attack Mode and attacks with improved efficiency without interfering with aggro.

4. Issues
Coding - Turning the Gauntlet effect on Tanker attacks into a conditional effect seems likely to be nontrivial.
Complexity - Making Gauntlet into a multifunction power means one more thing players will have to learn about the AT. Forgetting to toggle it to the appropriate setting for the situation might have unpleasant consequences.
Player Behavior - Incentivizing Tanks to abandon their aggro control role for increased damage will probably lead to arguments as to the "proper role" of a tanker on a team - consider the divided opinions on "WP Scrankers" and multiply several times.