Starsman

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This is extremely sad to me. Rory has become my favorite companion ever... here is one for The Last Roman! *raises a glass for a toast*

I guess I just hope, if they decide to go this way they make it final. As much as I liked Rose I got sick of her constant returns.

I figure, the details were tossed there for people that may know about the diminishing return in +HP and may think -HP has the same diminishing behavior.

If all you want is to make that one power better, I guess it may be better handled by avoiding stacking.

I would hate to see the debuff capped at 10% just due to this. Despite it's stacking power, non percentage based -resist can in theory be very useful and interesting to play around with.

There is another gotcha.

In isolation, you will never find equivalent quantities of -MaxHP% to -Res unless you prevent any form of stacking and limit it to only one -MaxHP% power in the entire game.

Just like +MaxHP has an inherent diminishing return, -MaxHP% has an oposite ... whats the right math term? Dont think exponential cuts it... but something on that ballpark.

-5% max HP will be the equivalent of -5% Resist, but as you go down, it gets way too strong. Here is a quick list of equivalents:

It's more akin to +Resistance for survivability, where the closer you ge to the cap (realistically you cant lower -MaxHP% past 100%) the stronger each percentile becomes.

So it gets insane fast. So: where to cap it? How to assign numbers so that one stack of the debuff is not too weak without making 2 stronger than intended?

+The constantly multipling effect of Resistance and Defense stacking has been a big balance issue in this game. Starting to rely now more on -MaxHP% would make it worse.

I'll give you that. I have made this error, or a variation (pick a primary but select no power) on every single new character I have created since I returned. Dont think I made even a throw away character where I got a "you must select a power" error.

But at the same time I found it insanely fresh and up to date visually. The old interface, although functional, was still... not sure how to say it... too toned down. It did it's job but it was not flashy enough. Out of the costume editor, there was little to be excited about.

BTW, since we talking GUI design, is it too late to say that I always, from day one, loved the Enhancement Merging UI and animated creation, and that I was always disapointed they didnt use THAT same design for inventions?

Yea, agreed on those issues. For capturing the attention of new players (i guess the big goal) with the new eye candy, it works. But there are issues, and I think some go beyond the UI itself. With this one, I think they should sort of scrap the ability to start in Pretoria, and only allow you to experience it's content eithe via some story arc that sends you somehow there, or via Ouroborus.

Have not gone there again, but it can be frustrating to go there and be one of the very few players in the zones. It's a choice you should not even have to do.

BTW I agree with all your other points, I just didnt pour much thought on it the times I went through them. Was never in a critical mindset.

Best... job title... ever.

Thought it had gone up to 100%... but that was as I was quitting so I didn't pay much attention.... Well I guess I have a second request to get through!!!

But My goal was still not to get to the cap. I know dull pain would not really do much, but its still room for buffing.

Besides, just like I seen people build their Invuln tanks to cap defenses with just one foe, I think the "room for buffing" goal remains valid.

That aside, how do you think those numbers look? Would the loss of Instant Healing make up for the increased damage mitigation? (I have my spreadsheets archived somewhere and still have not taken them out to resume my own crunching.)

Yea sorry, thats what I meant, was actually just thinking 10% non stackable/4%stackable but attempted to translate to common terms in a rush.

Resurgance is not used as a tanking tool, its more of a "get out of jail free" card. Willpower does not need Resurgance to tank. The discussion here is to somehow turn death into a tanking tool for regen tankers.


Agreed.

Fair enough.

Lets see step back quick, death annoyances are:
Debt
Retoggling
Buff loss
Aggro loss

We may be able to have the click payoff the debt, and grant an HP buff that compenstes for lost buffs, and pulse a taunt to regain aggro.

Although retoggling may not be inmediately required, eventually it must happen. If the tanker set is built with the goal of bouncing back from death often, then perhaps thats enough to justify changing the activation animation for Integration? What if Integration had no cast time, like super jump or super speed? I know that still leaves activating Tough but... well, there is that "balancing for power pools" can of worms...


Why dont I back off from the damage penalties? Because when a player dies solo, he gets to use a high recharge rez if its up, but then he has to wait if he dies again. He suffers debt, and even then is no allowed to just rez back to back. Only other way he can do so is with very risky to use inspirations with heavy penalties.

Allow a soloer to resurect back to back without any penalty and death becomes basically non existant, even if you kept the debt for some users. If a user spams solo the die-rez card, he should be slowed down much more drastically than just the 10 seconds it may take them to retogle.

Its either that or make it too high recharge for it to be viable as a constant tanking tool.

They tend to have rather prolonged recharge making sure you cant use them too frequently, though, and also dont eliminate debt.



I can see those two points as actual issues. Then again, I would say the power can grant the user strong survival buffs, like fully cap max HP.

The main reason I would give the power offensive penalties is so it does not become too powerful in the soloing realm. Also like the thematic feeling of the hero that keeps standing up, every time he is in worse condition and seems to be able to do less, but still seems to take as many hits to take down every time he stands up.

Do note, I did suggests a temporary immunity, but not long enough to cover the retoggling timing Sarrate suggests, nor to make up for potential loss of dull pain.

What about what i mentioned earlier? Revive would pulse an AoE taunt that would make sure everything focuses back on it, and pays back lost debt, on a much shorter recharge so it can be used regularly, but with a cumulating temp power debuff so it becomes harder and harder to keep doing it back to back.

Hmmm... I sort of like the direction of that idea... Not the full implementation but the core idea is actually darn good...

Regen falls down to stand up again and scream to the turning mobs "HEY, IM NOT DONE WITH YOU GUYS!"

But the i mplementation you note can be heavily abused and problematic... Not to mention it seems to be more fit for Revive than Instant Healing.

Let me see...


How about modifying Revive to do this:

• Lower recharge to 60s (that way it can be used every 30 seconds with SOs, enough to have it for every alpha)
• Remove debt protection, but instead somehow pay back debt equivalent to what you just lost. (suppress this effect for 60 seconds)
• Add a Taunt Pulse that makes sure foes around you once more pay attention to you.
• Lower heal %, so it requires 3 SO slotting for you to get 75% health back.
• A stackable 60 -max endurance debuff (temp power that persist death.)
• 60 - 30% damage debuff for 30 seconds (again temp power that stacks)
• Half the heal suppresses for 60 seconds.

This would give a regen tanker the ability to fall down, and then wake up "hey, where you think you going, im not done here!"

Should your regeneration succumb to an alpha, you can just stand up again.

Without hasten, in an SO world, you end up able to absorb an alpha about every 30 seconds, but get the xp debt refund only every 60 seconds.

You also are more less likely to stay standing the second time you return from death within 60 seconds of your previous revive.

The stackable -max endurance and -dmg will make sure this is mostly for tanking, and not something that will make you a godly soloer. It will denote an exhaustation after each regeneration from death.

It will require user action, and you still will miss on any xp granted while you are dead (easily avoidable by setting the power to auto at the expense of no auto hasten or Rage or anything else.)

There will be lots of people that will still hate the dying, but some one that gets into it will not see it as death, but as a knockdown and start of round 2.

And I dont know Arcanaville, but I HATED those scalling resistances from day one.

To this day I sustain, SR should had been improving by giving it +HP, not resistance. (Would had fit perfectly in Practiced Brawler, too.) You could had even gone with passive scaling +HP, I would not care about the scaling part, just about the resistance part.

But thats an argument for another day.

Don't hold your breath on that. Scrappers are not entitled to taunt auras unless they are assigned and am shocked they got one with Taunt Aura, but that may just had to do with timing, since it was added as it was being proliferated.

As for power reordering, my understanding is that cant happen once a set goes live. Reordering powers can result in character corruption. They can transform one power into another, but still there are issues there with existing builds and slotted IOs. Last time it happened was while rebalancing a few weapon sets powers and the powers in that got "reordered" by morphig them into eachother all shared enhancement slotting.

Dont like the idea for many reasons. Instant healing's absorbed works because it actually tells you it absorbed when it works.

A resist toggle will just look like resist with nothing making it look otherwise.

Ideally, I'd make it a +regen aura, but that would make it look way too much like Willpower.

I guess the second option would be to instead make Instant Healing add a per-target heal and +HP enhancement. This would make the power strengthen all other regeneration powers the more foes you have in range.

Reconstruction would not be affected due to it having enhanceable toxic resistance and being flagged to ignore outside buffs.

I am not sure how willing the devs are to do this, but i would also give the tanker version some exclusive buffs that would not go into the other ATs. Mainly, adding +HP to FastHealing.

There are many reasons to make the regen tank also different from the scrapper one. Where a regen scrapper is instantly relatable to Wolverine, a regen tanker may be more likely compared to The Hulk, a way sturdier and way more ressiliant character with a nature to get stronger the more people are about (may apply to brutes too but I would not hand the treatment to them for balance reasons.)

Thats a different ball game, though. Incarnate trials are designed to be end game content, they are meant to be hard and to make heavily developed characters feel challenged (although I hear thats not exactly awlays the case, but its hard to, lets say, challenge Arcanaville without making the average level capped player mail a bomb to the developers.)

So, Incarnate content has to be balanced with IOs in mind (good thing for the devs, due to some bad decisions in IO design, that just means worrying about heavy recharge and heavy +def)

When they balance new casual stuff, though, like new level 20+ content in pretoria, they better make sure they only consider SOs.

We getting into dangerous semanthics here. I said a "regeneration based set", with lowercase R. Not talking specificly about Regeneration as in the set named that.

At the end of the day all sets are just reducing damage and hoping their natural regeneration covers the rest. If you have no damage reduction mechanism, you better just have a lot of regeneration.

But you can make a tanker set that can be mostly regen/heal based and be a perfect tanker. The problem is, as Arcanaville pointed, such a set would be an overpowered scrapper and brute set. (Case at hand: Willpower)

This.

You MUST ignore IOs while balancing sets. You can partially keep them in mind (like give some set a minor token buff only so they can accomodate X IO options) but you MUST make sure that without IOs all sets are balanced.

Now more than ever. Although got to say, most people I know in game level with just SOs or lvl 25 generic IOs until they get to lvl 50.

IO balnce issues have to be addressed while balancing IOs.

I been here since nearly the start, and this game has never been as balanced as it is now even outside of the invention system. Not saying its perfect, but set balance was horrendous back in the day.

The main reason regen and healing was not used much before was because the developers themselves didnt understand it, its weaknesses, it's strenghts, nothing. They just thought it was a nearly broken mechanic (and it was, due to how they handed it out without understanding it.)

Until Willpower, the devs seemed to have a phobia towards the set.

As for role, the role of a tanker are basically three:

1. Maintain aggro.
2. Survive the alpha (where all heavy hitting attacks are ready to fire, all at once)
3. Survive the rest of the DPS.

I list those two survival points as separate ones because they are very different.

A regeneration based set can survive perfectly fine the sustained DPS, specially if it gets a scaling mechanic as Willpower does. Regen may need adjustments to be a good tank, but most of the non-regen based adjustments are only required due to it's likeliness to not survive an alpha wave. And its very likely, once you fix that problem, you fix the problem of the regeneration not scaling with modifiers.

Technically Regen would not need MoG to be up all the time. It would just have to be ready at the start of every fight. It does not evenhave to be on for the 15 seconds it last, just long enough to absorb the alpha volley.

It also would have to be available much earlier.

It's not wrong, but there may be a bit of a missunderstanding at work here.

Quick example with some entirely baseless numbers:

• Lets say a set with pure regen has a survivability "score" of 3.
  
  If you scale it to tankers, it goes up only 25% to 4, because thats all the scaling it gets.
  
  
• Now lets say a set with pure resistance has a survivability "score" of 2.
  
  If you scale it to tankers, it goes up by 25% (due to HP) and then another 33.3% due to resist modds, for a final result of 3.32.

The resist build, did increase more than the pure HP+Regen one. It did not increase TO more, but it did increase BY more.

The reason to even bring this up is that "common sense" of regen being uber for scrappers wont translate on it being uber for tankers.

If that is the point you want to make you actually have to run those numbers twice.

For tanks and for scrappers, and then you have to prove that the scrapper regen has the same percentage of advantage over the fire scrapper as the tanker does.

If you are doing everything right, you will see regen scrapper will have much more sustainable survivability than the fire scrapper, but nearly tie in tankers.

Thats what Arcanaville means by saying regen does not scale with the AT as resist does (or at least thats what Im taking she does, given my own understanding of the topic.)

In other words: just because a regen between scrappers can be as survivable as, perhaps an invuln (pulling off the air, no numbers at hand) does not mean it can do the same in the realm of tankers.