Suikoden

Buildup and Aim have a bare minimum of I think 22 seconds down time. This means if you alternate you only have 2 seconds of downtime. However, you are not at 300% acc, 300% damage of your base as you are with HOs.

BU=100%dmg, 66% acc. Aim=66% dmg, 100% acc.
Now factor in the 266% you get off of normal enhancements. This means that alternating (as you would in the Arena presumably b/c any melee will laugh at your nuke dmg if you try the BU+Aim+Nuke/Snipe deal) you are getting a boost of 366% dmg with buildup and 332% with Aim. If you have HOs you are not only ALWAYS at the 400% damage cap (I have seen a lot of discussion about whether it is a 400% buff or 300% buff cap, I am assuming 300% b/c it seems to be the consensus for non-scrappers) AND you get a 300% acc increase without ever stopping to activate aim or buildup.... see the problem? (no of course not b/c you "worked" so why should anyone else who hates raids but has put 1000 hours into their lvl 50 get a chance vs. you???)

Example #1
To further illustrate the problem consider ice tanks or super reflexes. Neither can reliably get their defense higher than 150%. If you have an accuracy buff of 300% that completely negates their entire defense. AHA! you say, I could do this anyways by 6 slotting for acc. and then they would still be defenseless. True, but your attacks would be at base damage whereas they are now receiving full damage attacks with a 5% chance you will miss them....

Example #2
Well, this doesn't bother me because I am a /regen and I don't rely on defense. Ok... but what about your precious mez resistance? Integration has a mag 15 mez resistance which should have been WAY more than enough to squish any controller without being toned down. Now factor in the presence of mez duration/acc HOs. Now a controller can 6 slot their holds to overcome your powers merely by stacking them b/c of their duration. There is no cap on mez duration. This means they are getting a 300% buff to duration and 300% buff to acc. Compare this to normal slotting of 1 acc and 5 hold SOs = 233% hold duration and 33% acc. Hmmmm again I am sure noone sees why this can't be overcome with "skill" (I am not certain this is possible but it would go a heck of a long way towards holding someone with a high resistance in comparison to the base slotting of 1/5 or 2/4 acc, hold duration)

I definetly want to take the wait and see approach here and so I can't make any statements about exactly how things will work. Instead I will operate based on the arguments being made and assume all of their conjecture is accurate.

Cleen,
The "fitness" argument only holds water if you assume that everyone has an equal chance at some kind of similar training. If I'm too poor to afford a gym membership I can still run on the public streets or get a job involving manual labor. (stocking, lumberjack, or t.v. delivery etc.) By doing this I could theoretically equal your abilities that you gained eating wheat glutton and using the Nautilus 1843 Make-A-Man machine. Hamidon isn't extra work. It is a different kind of work. If I don't choose to belong to an SG with enough members of appropriate level to gain this reward it doesn't mean you worked harder so I deserve to get beaten. It's the difference between a street trained boxer and a Don King owned boxer. If the street trained boxer works hard enough and is smart enough he can beat the "sure thing". But a bonus like Hamidon enhancements means someone who chooses to do TFs or exemplaring or any other content cannot hope to compete. Untill they make a similar reward for a similar amount of work on a smaller team this system will be worthy of ridicule. Why should this game be about who you know, instead of what you know? (SG size vs. Build)

For the guy who said "why are some people rich and some poor?", if you want this game to be a perfect mirror of society and all of its ills you will have a lot of people flaming you. I will only ask if you would think it fair for the devs to artificially limit your powers to one enhancement slot each because you were born poor? If so I want to see your pledge that you will stand in solidarity with all the $1 a day people all over the world by only using one training enhancement for all of your powers in the arena while the rest of us beat you up and tell you it isn't our fault that God wanted us to be rich and to beat you up.

I understand that the people who beat Hamidon want something for their efforts but really why should you get more just for coordination? That is the only thing you have accomplished. The person who has done every TF in the game successfully is far more worthy of a good reward than the person who stands around and clicks a few dozen powers while less than 10 people do the star work. Hamidon raids do not require as much patience and time as doing all the TFs or getting every exploration badge on your own. Why not give potentially ridiculously overpowering rewards for that? 3 times the effectiveness per slot is INSANELY overpowering. If this is the true setup then 45+ PvP without them is completely idiotic.

How many people like to watch a fight where one boxer gets hit with punches that do about the same damage as the other but 3 times as accurate? This is completely boring. This is why only washups fight rank amateurs at the end of their pro careers. This is why there is an All Star game in baseball and not an All Star team that plays the whole regular season vs. a minor league team. This is why we don't pit MIT professors vs. high school students in Mathalons.

But wait, all of these ideas assume skill or training.... so they don't work! It is more accurate to say that one student is told to show up for a fair contest while the other gets a TI-93 to do their equations. (OH but if the pencil and paper kid uses tactics and is a super genius he will win!) I am fine with giving HOs to 7 year olds who can't press anything but brawl without drooling on their keyboard and shorting it out. But if there is a contest between 2 competitors that are even marginally in the same skill level the HO person should win every time. (and if they don't either they are truly worthy of ridicule from the entire community or the math on these is wrong)

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I don't know where this rumor of 5 levels got started. I have a 35 Dark/Dark Def, and RJ45 gave her a 40 damage/mez Hydra-Enhancement. And it's red, and it says she can't use it 'til she hits 37.

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Yeah, I eventually found out the rumor was false too, but not before I could no longer edit the guide.

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The Prima Guide (source of all my bad CoH info [I bought it with the game]) is the source for this "rumor". *Pulls piece of crap out* Page 279 of the guide says "The reward for this trial is a medal on your ID card, a large Experience Point bonus, and a special Enhancement that modifies two or more (yeah right where are the more than two kind???) powers/effects and is valid at +/-5 levels instead of the normal 3.

But it also messed up just about every detail about the trial except that you have to be 36. Just thought you might want to know that the "official" guide is the source of some pretty funny lies.

No Uberguy, I did not in any way say nerf SR. If you read any of my old posts I said invuln scrappers weren't at all needing a nerf. Especially beyond the non-perma unstop. But I am saying Ice is gimped in comparison to SR. The defense to psionics is really my only problem with SR being better off. I'm not saying SR needs any kind of a nerf but I am saying it is ridiculous that a scrapper can out tank a tank using similarly set up powers. What does Ice armor get that makes it better at tanking than SR? (I know for a fact that Chilling Embrace doesn't let me tank psionics as well as SR)

For that matter, what does Ice have to make it comparable with Fire? (since ice gets resistance only to cold, and fire gets no defense) I love my ice tank but I would like to see him get a buff to be in line with other tank sets. Statesman said that after the tanker fixes individual sets would be looked at, so please look at ice.

Lastly Solarfox, yes it is a nerf.
nerf: when a part of the game is changed in a way that players do not like. (Increasing the weight of large sewing kits was considered to be a "nerf" by many.) This term was originally used for extreme problems, such as for changes that made a class, tradeskill, etc. unusable. Due to term popularity, it is now used for any perceived detrimental change in any aspect of the game.

Smoke grenade was a bug that was fixed but the power was nerfed by this fix. I don't want the devs to feel like I don't appreciate everything they do b/c I really do. But the player community is ridiculous. How can you compare an indirect nerf due to the change of game mechanics to a power specific numerical faux pas? Besides, blasters weren't meant to have a %50 acc debuff in their secondaries. Ice tanks were meant to have good defense right? I don't want them to change it back but I do want to use the fact that they were slightly weakened to point out the already large inequity.

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So, to confirm, hopefully by Geko, no defenses stack if they are against the same type?

So, picking up CJ and haste (both non-slotted for def), you still only have 5% defense? Add in stealth and that defense is used instead of CJ and haste, not in addition to?

As a better example, as an illusion controller, slotting out maneuvers and group invisibility nets you nothing, as only the higher value will be used?

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No, this only affects typed defenses. (not ranged/melee/Aoe typed but Smashing/Energy typed) Really the only group bothered at all is Ice Armor b/c it is the only set focused on defense against a specific typed attack. (and this only insofar as EA doesn't cover it, as I am trying to get across it isn't a huge deal but it does hurt that a set many considered to be the weakest of tank armors is getting any kind of reduction.)

Since you've all decided that my non-aggressive, non-insulting post was a flame, I can only ask a question which I asked in my side note. What does ice get for being only defense (cold resist only)? With this change ice tankers have it even harder in the game till lvl 26. If invuln scrappers were stepping on tank toes, how is it that Super Reflexes which gets defense vs. everything but toxic (which noone does) isn't stepping on the toes of a tank set that now has a harder time competing with it AND still has no defense vs. psionics (which SR does get).

And yes, it is a nerf. We used to have higher defense now we get less. Call it an exploit if you must but the fact is the defense did stack now it doesn't. You used to get both. Not the higher of the two. Now ice has a harder time than it used to before EA is gained or before it is used in every fight. (how many invulns have to drain a group of baddies to gain their resistance?) It isn't a horrible nerf and it doesn't anger me, but it does have this ice tank wondering if they thought I was overpowered. If this wasn't fair, and it may not have been, give us something else to make us survivable on the way into fights against +3 or 4s on a TF. Fire gets mega damage, we get a 25% slow.

The way I see the problem is resists do stack, defense now does not. That is how ice tankers got nerfed. If invuln runs RPD and RE they get to resist both sides of the attack. But if I run 2 armors I get to defend against one. While Geko's change sounds fair to players with dual damage type attacks it is a lowering of effectiveness for typed defense powers.


SIDE NOTE
My thought: keep this change, give Energy Absorption Psi defense b/c we have nothing even close to Fire's damage to make up for our one sided armors like they get, stone and invuln get defense AND resist. Ice and Fire get defense and resist respectively as their emphasis. (woohoo.... I can cap cold resist....) To make up for this Fire gets tons of damage while Ice gets.... icicles and chilling embrace.

At the very least the uber defense set should have defense to everything in the game (the lucky strike is our hole, so are autohits [yes we can be killed by a group of swarms], and acc raising/defense lowering powers). Yes Ice does pretty well but the overall inequity just got worse. Let us continue down the path of the CoH Mantra: Fire melts Ice so all Ice sets should be lesser on one level or another. (blizzard, jack frost, defense only)

<ul type="square">[*]Supergroup Name: I.B.D.[*]Website I.B.D. Website [*]Leader or Recruiting Officers: Tushin,TickTock,Clio, and WildVine[*]Preferred Method of contact: Ingame,Ingame Mail, or Website.[*]Guild Description: I.B.D.=International Beat Down(we have 4 countries represented so far) Our motto is, "As if you could stop us."

Looking for reasonably dedicated players of all levels that are lighthearted and play City of Heroes for the fun of the game.[/list]