Starsman

First of all, I do agree with the general concept, but in your post I see no answer to the question: "Why should toggles still be toggles" if they cost no endurance?

You mention that they can be de-toggled by enemies. But currently, the only way for that to happen is by forcing you out of endurance. There used to be toggle dropping powers in PvP and the player base hated them. Few of those powers somehow leaked into critters and it was a huge uproar.

Unless you add a new mechanic, why would an endurance free toggle, that can't be turned off by Holds, exist as a toggle and not as a passive? So you can punish people that forget to turn them off the first time they train or after resurrecting?

Another concern, one I am not sure has been measured in any way: the first time I played a blaster years ago, after exclusively playing melee characters, I found I was able to deal more damage (at least at lower levels) not due to actual damage capabilities of the AT but because my entire endurance pool was focused towards damage.

Melee AT toggle's endurance burden also serves as an offensive limiter. Removing this endurance cost may in unexpected ways boost all melee damage by removing said burden. I think you said this yourself: "everyone has endurance problems", even the most happy players are actually limited by endurance at one point or another.

So two questions:
Why should toggles not then simply be turned to passives.
How would you address or justify the sudden offensive endurance budget Melee ATs would get?

Side question:
I agree pools should still cost endurance. I would argue all taunt/debuff/stealth and damage toggles should also cost endurance.
But what about Epic powers for ATs like blasters? Should a Blaster's Ancillary Shield cost endurance? What about their new sustenance toggles? How would they be justified to cost no end while the click sustenance powers cost endurance?

This is pure speculation, but I think power customization stalled after the launch of the original feature, for anything but new powers that is.

Originally there were concerns about GUI work needed to accomodate powers, but I figured the day I realized Incarnate abilities are customizable that this was no longer a roadblock.

Work seems to have been going strong on this and I am guessing for a while now. EATs may just not be ready for the i24 deadline, but I hope this is indeed ongoing and we may finally get these looked at by I24.5 or 25.

Would be cooler if Kheledians were able to use Pool powers while shifted.

I would hold on, though. If they are doing Pools and Epic pools, it's only natural epic ATs are next.

So, for benefit of those of us who have video sites blocked... what was the question and answer?

Should toggles cost no endurance, then why even have them as toggle at all, unless they offer some undesirable statistic like Stealth or self-debuffing?

(o.o)!

@$!%!$%! Yea!!!!!

I would guess it's more about "we either spend these months enabling Epic AT customizaton, that will benefit only players of those ATs, or Power Pool customization, that benefit every single player... ok lets start with pools"

You should also buy the game, I hear it's just as good.

I think he actually consiers the End Crash a feature...

This is just history, does not change the current state of the game, but your statement is wrong.

During CoV beta, the devs attempted to clear that no villain AT was designed to be "tanker" in the traditional sense. The only AT they intended to work as a meat shield of any sort was Masterminds, via pet tanking.

Brutes have a version of tanker Gauntlet for a very simple reason: they are literally a copy and paste from the tanker AT. Once they went through the powers they just removed the AoE aspects without removing taunting capabilities. They justified it by the fact that brutes needed some aggro to generate furry, but that they didn’t have "the survivability" to actually tank. The higher HP was intended to compensate also for the fact that brutes would need to take damage to deal damage. Brutes were intended to compare (not be equivalent) to scrappers.

During GR beta, the devs fiddled with Brutes to nerf them. They tweaked rage generation (I attempted to convince Castle to make the formula less dependent on Aggro but I take it time constraints prevented that.) Resist caps were lowered a notch to 85%, and something else got buffed up... base damage? Cant remember exactly. At the end it was considered the change was not giving the result they wanted and it didn’t go live.

I found recently the damage cap got lowered in the next issue (I quit the game a week before GR launch so didn’t keep up.)

Point is: Brutes becoming tanks was never intended, and their damage dealing capabilities also have been considered too high. The fact that the devs fiddled with the AT in between GR and the next issue shows it was always a concern.

The game is 8 year olds now, though. The AT has worked as is for years. Other than minor changes, anything would be too disruptive to the most played villain AT. I would not be shocked if today it was considered the second most played AT.

Today tankers are paying the price of that mistake. Masterminds never suffered it because they did some considerable damage output with their pets, on top of having a buffing secondary set that secured a role in teams.

I repeat: that wont happen. But it's expected for that line of thought to show up in this kind of conversation, simply because that is the root of the problem. You can rest assured, no matter what anyone suggests, Brutes wont be nerfed for Tanker's sake. (If they get nerfed it's due to internatl AT issues, I have not heard anything on that line though.)

I had a concept, it was the concept of a super hero with lots of powers that all sucked¡¡¡ But now the devs buffed everything and broke my concept¡ How dare they¡¡¡


He better, I talked to some high level dev about this and told him he better not give my blaster mez protection as that would break my concept¡

There were also less scrappers or brutes going to that thread and arguing about them.

Here is the way things either work:

Guy1 proposes nerf to AT-B.
No one replies to him, it gets forgotten.

Or B:

Guy1 proposes nerf to AT-B
AT-B player gets worked up and start nerf-herding name-calling or making WAI claims
Guy1 feels forced to repeat and elaborate his point.
AT-B player once more feels forced to rephrace his previous statement.
Cycle repeats to infinity, usually with more poeple joining in.

Riddle me this:

At one point Unyielding had a self -def debuff and invincibility granted more defense per target than it does now.

At further point, Unyielding's defense debuff was removed, but Invincibility's per-target defense was lowered for an equal amount.

The net result is the same as earlier, with some edge case changes in both directions, super-saturated and no enemies in range.

This is balancing. Would you say it was a buff or a nerf? It was one change. If balancing can only be buff or nerf, what was this?

Some are trying, but every time an individual or two brings up "maybe we should nerf that other AT" suddenly some posters jump into a flame war about it and then the entire thread becomes about nerfing brutes, entirely drowning all other options.


There is something you (and many others) need to understand:

Tankers are indeed not broken. They have no issues. Not directly. Their "issues" are two fold:
1) Quoting Johnny_butane: "tankers were designed for a game that no longer exists"
2) Brutes fill in the one role "reserved" to tankers, even character creation tells you Brutes are a tanking AT.

It is inevitable for comments to come up that suggest the "offending" Brutes be nerfed out of the role. It's too late for that, it wont happen, but the comments will come. And again: if you make a big deal about those comments, you make the comments a big deal.

Blasters didnt do much nerf-herding if any because they had no AT specifically step in thir role (other than all of them)

Lady, you gone too far!!!

You didnt specify recharge. A sonic defender can cap the resistances of most melee characters. A defender with Tactics can soft cap the defenses of many characters.

Even if I agree that its not relevant to the topic (much) bringing the topic up in any form is... well, perpetuating the discussion of said topic. If you post arguing against it, you perpetuate it.


I did.

This is a missconception. Saturated buffs, in all content, are an issue and usually possible for melee ATs with a single defender, add a second and things go highwire.

Mind you, it's not a tanker specific issue, and the fix would not fix tankers anyways.

Council has a lot of brawlers and gunners.

CoT has few pure brawlers, albeit not many and their blades, even if pure lethal at times, are also negative as far as defense goes so thats also not a special point.

The Tsoo, though, is very heavy on swords and melee.

Malta, Knives of Arthemis, Nemesis, Freakshow, these are very prominent enemy groups with heavy sue of smash or lethal attacks that Bio has no defenses against. Carnies also have a lot of Smash/Melee only attacks in the Strongmen, the others tend to have a mixture of energy in their weapons though.

It goes on and on.

I hope to build some form of database with this information at some point... lets see where i pull the time out off.

You may be selling it short.

There are a lot of lethal attacks in the game (swords and bullets are for the most part purely lethal, with few exceptions.)

In addition, there are likely to be many attacks that are pure smashing that will be covered by GS melee defense bonus.

To be fair, IOs have never expired. If they do make enhancements never expire, why use a lvl 25 IO over an SO that wont ever expire? Will the ++ system go away? Or will they just get rid of the TO/DO/SO system entirely and start selling common IOs in the stores instead? (This in my mind would be the ideal path.)

What I trully hate is that the special enhancements, like the Hydra enhancements, can expire at all. Those are too special to just expire. Always bothered me. A lot.

I also wish the non-common IOs, the sets, did not have a level and acted like Attuned ones do. I find the system currently encourages a very absurd behavior of slotting the lowest level possible enhancements you can get.

Not that exclusively, it also makes lower level buffs weaker than higher level ones. Those games tend to require you upgrade your abilities for newer versions every few levels. Not saying those games are the incarnation of balance, though.

I agree. Are not games like EverQuest2 and Waraft based off such arbitrary ratings? ratings that also need to grow as you grow because 200 may be twice as good as 100 at lvl 10, but may mean gimp gear at level 20?

Would allow for a "perpetual" growth where you can always add a few more points on top for the next levels and make enemies hit with a bit more damage and accuracy ratings.

I think the only mechanics in this game that can be used that way are +HP and linear Damage increases via 100% chance procs or base damage (the two things the IO system decided to be extremely stingy with!!!)

The idea, at least my version, is not to make a set weaker than it is now, but instead to make two sets stacking weaker.

So, a Time Manip that debuffs and buffs will do the same.

Two Time Manip together will be weaker than two Time Manip are today, though. The ToHit debuffs of each Time Manip would not add up, they would also follow the same formula I showed you for stacking on top of eachother.

Remember: the goal is not to make any set weaker than it is today, its to make grouped players the insane power multipliers they are today.


It sounds more like you imply Trick Arrow needs other debuffers to be any good, that would mean it has issues now, none created by a Diminished Return world.

That sounds again like a current problem that would not even be magnified by diminishing returns.

The way I proposed it, it would not hurt any set in isolation. Well... the healing bit may hurt Emapth slightly. If any defender set currently sucks without the help of a second defender, thats just a problem with the defender itself.

This would not benefit anyone and mainly "hurt" Defender/Melee combos (and various IO builds.)