Starsman

Hmmm.... Stone armor. How i hate thee. Stone armor is insanely hard to level up, it's annoyingly horrible to build "properly" if you dont want to relly on granite, and in the end you still are just "baseline". But take granite and you are a god, with huge debuffs but a god.

IOs have changed the playing field too, recharge bonuses have made it so that Granite's Penalties are down to a relatively small -dmg debuff and -speed. And as some one that has tried "tele-tanking" i can say it actually is far from a handicap to be "forced" to take teleport as a tank. If I had room I'd take it on all my non-shield or non-electric Melee tanks.

That being told, as I am as opinionated as anyone else, perhaps a bit more, I have my own ideas on how to rebalance stone, and these ideas too change constantly.

Right now, if i was able to, let's see...

Start with the big issue: Granite.

I'd make Granite and Rooted exclusive, same with Earth's Embrace. You cant activate EE while in Granite mode and activating rooted shuts down Graite. At this point just give Granite a 1 minute recharge once detoggled. That would be the extend of the nerf I'd give Granite.


As for the rest of the set:

Rooted: Remove travel power restrictions and -jump, mez protection remains unchanged on the power but all other non-mez protection attributes only work while you are on the ground (regen, -end res, -def res)

Mud Pots: reduce the endurance cost to match other damage auras, the immobilization of minions honestly does not warrant the cost. To a point I'd consider it a penalty as minions wont follow you if you move due to the lingering immobilization.

Brimstone and Crystal armors: both expand their resistance and defense to cover energy/negative/fire/cold. This alone makes Stone armor much more friendly to build. Add to both a bit of lethal resist/defense but not much. Just enough to make the set stronger to lethal than smashing, reason: Stone is harder to cut than it is to smash.

Minerals: many would consider that power great but its way too situational, enough for players to skip unless they plan to fight Psi foes all the time (otherwise inspirations work for an AV without expensive build sacrifices.)

Lets make Mineral more useful, turn it into a team buff aura similar to Grant Cover but only protecting from psi/confuse and granting perception.

Hmmm.... Two words:


Lightning Rod

I was thinking about it a bit and figured a way the set can be very unique mechanic wise. It may jump too much into the magic theme but still not origin defined:

When you say bone armor, this comes to mind:



And to be honest, this is very dark-knight. So another thing comes to mind: Animate Bones. The ability to summon skeletal defenders. I would not make them offensive pets though, but instead deffensive pets.

Give the character a toggle that pulses every 10 seconds. Every time it pulses it summons one skeletal defender for every foe in range to a maximum of 5, for 10 seconds.

These skeletal minions are there to randomly buff you and i mean randomly. They may give you HP buffs, they may give you resist buffs, they may give you defense buffs, these stats would change constantly, about every 2 seconds the pet's buff can change randomly.

These pets also can be killed, although this means loosing a buff until the next pulse of your minion aura, it also means that a foe may attack a minion instead of you, effectively sucking some damage.

This power alone could be the basis of the set.

Going from this basis, chaotic balance could be the basis for the set. Toggles could grant a resist, defense or HP buff every pulse, all randomly, you never know exactly what stat will you be using up next. These should be bonuses, though, you do need some sort of basis to slot around and this basis should not be wasted if you are unlucky.

The status effect toggle could even do similar again, it would always cover the basics but randomly would grant between knockback, fear or confuse protections. You may even in a window get knockback resist but fear protection, or even be so lucky you may get resist and protection to all 3 of those stats.

Again, it would be the armor for chaos and uncertainty.

My problem with this and many other type of armor suggestions is that unless you actually have the concept for a game mechanic to build the set around, what is the point? You may as well just ask for bone armor costume pieces and take invuln or willpower setting their theme to nofx.

The problems with endurance cost as I see them:

Intra-AT:

Endurance cost, although normalized, will always favor those that kill faster than those that kill slower because those that kill slower must also do extra damage due to enemy regeneration. Usually insignificant against minions but not so much against bosses/EBs/AVs or any critter that has self heals that can cycle more than once due to slower kill speed.

Endurance Cost, even if accounted for in AoE powers, still heavily benefit AoE attacks.

Cross-AT:
Some ATs, (Tankers, I'm looking at you) were designed to take on threats at a slower pace than others, but they were always just meant to be slower at defeating similar foes. AT mods, though, make these ATs, mostly Defenders and Tankers, deal way less damage for the exact endurance costs meaning they may never get a chance to finish the fight the equivalent fellow player would be able to.

I know there are some around, i recall seeing a web based one but it requires you to manually enter all data. That means it is always "up to date" though, since you are the one entering the data.

Just want to toss in this though: I never bother with attack chains but attack priority. This means I set my hot-bar sorted by DPAS. I accommodate hot-keys 1,2,3,4 to the highest dpas attacks in my build. After that I just click on them looking what has recharged, giving priority to use on anything that is to the left.

When I feel lazy to pay attention, i just spam tap 1234..1234..1234..1234..etc..etc..etc

The highest DPAS attack recharged will be the first one to activate this way resulting in the best dynamic attack chain for my current build and buffs.

OK, I have not read throughout the full thread but I'd love the myth of ET's nerf being done due to pvp to entirely vanish as they are just that, myths. The changes came though slightly before the PvP changes, if anything, the changes made sure that it was not nerfed in PvP because in it's earlier form, it would had been entirely destroyed, the power would had been the biggest laughingstock of PvP. A power that's so fast as the old ET would had been forced to do minimal damage and then hurt yourself in the process.

That being told: You wont see this power being changed back.

On the "ST mitigation is better than AoE mitigation in 99% of the game", i'd like to see a real study made on that. ST based mitigation, specially if it comes accompanied with some heavy burst st damage, can add to a very high level of mitigation thanks to threat pyramid reduction (where every otehr blow kills off a unit lowering the incoming damage permanently)

Also, it is not trivial the amount of content that contains deadly units that are better dealt with single target mitigation. Things like CoT specters that destroy y our to-hit, zappers, and deadly bosses, all are better handled by single target mitigation that tends to last much longer than AoE varieties. Every day the amount of such units increase, and I'd say they are rather high. Specially the deadly boss sector.

That aside, i still do have my own issues with EM.

It's sustained ST damage is not as high as I'd like it to be given it's low AoE capabilities, for one. Another is that Whirling Hands does less damage than the damage formula says it should. The power should do 10% more damage, or have a 10ft radius.

As for the sustained ST damage, I would not touch any of the high end powers (TF/ET) instead I'd buff the one power I'm sure most players skip: Stun. I'd modify stun to be a true attack, in similar fashion to how Clobber for War Mace works now, but with different recharge values (less recharge) 13 seconds recharge with it's proper cast time would be ideal. This would turn the power into a 1.23 dpas attack, the best attack in the set after ET, at a 13 seconds recharge. Given how almost all other attacks in the set have poor DPAs, things are kept "in check".

The beauty is that the maximum potential damage for the set does not really goes up that much, only the average and low end damage end up going up significantly (as long as the player takes the new more damaging stun)

Evil is a word that has acquired a very extreme definition. If i was to look up a dictionary definition of evil, though I get these:

• morally objectionable behavior
• morally bad or wrong; "evil purposes"; "an evil influence"; "evil deeds"
• that which causes harm or destruction or misfortune; "the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones"- Shakespeare
• having the nature of vice
• the quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice; "attempts to explain the origin of evil in the world"
• malefic: having or exerting a malignant influence; "malevolent stars"; "a malefic force"

Problem here is the constant use of the word "morals". Everyone has different morals, this means that everyone's take may be different. In the end, though, given the specific example, I'd say anyone that labels these guys evil would also label Sonic evil as the intention does not seem to be part of the definition of evil, just the actions.

On a side note, but related to the OP, found this:




Edit, also found this in TVTropes:

Fanboy #1: Squirrel Girl is Marvel's Batman. She beats people she shouldn't be able to beat.
Fanboy #2: No, Squirrel Girl is Marvel's Squirrel Girl. She beats everyone.
— Full. Body. Transplant