Tannim222

Absolutely love this show. Season 3 (i think) where they spent the majority of time in Ireland was over-all the weakest, but the next season more than made up for it.

The only problem that has consistantly come up (for me) is how they show has to get the audience to like the bad guys by pitting them up against worse bad guys, or making the "good guys" bad or completely dislikable. It's a difficulty that arises when the protagonists are more-or-less anti-villians. They're bad guys with some redeaming qualities, which does make them more "real" than paper-cut bad guys which is why the writing is so good.

But in the end you're still along for the ride with the bad guys which is why several of my friends just couldn't stick with the show. I still love it though.

I disagree, most people won't pick up as they go along. Most people aren't familiar with the majority of the Justice League, unless you want those heroes written as cliche-throw-away-characters.

Certain characters are well used in such a manner, given little quirks of personality to seperate them from the rest. The soldiers teamed with Cap were like this. None were developed characters, none were anyone the audience were really invested with. Heck even the loss of Bucky didn't pay off that well.

But do that to a group of heroes, and one, you may upset that portion of your audience that are fans, and two, you risk not connecting with the rest of the audience.

Fans will readily accept that Batman and Superman know who each other are, and that they're already the heads of a great team of heroes designed to protect the earth.

The majority of the movie going audience around the world will most likely be completely confused because they're understanding of just even Superman and Batman are the movies. None of which have ever established that the other exists within the same "world" as the other.

If it is done that way, what will probably happen is that other heroes will get a few lines to explain who they are, what they do, and why they've joined the team. They could live, they could die, and people would shrug they're shoulders either way because there's no investment. Or at the very least some might like a particular character's look and if say so-and-so looked "cool".

That rumor goes back as far as last year but nothing concrete has come about. Nolan however has stated that his Batman films and the Superman film are being kept seperate from each other. I'd think that at this time, any new Batman we'd see would be different than Nolan's take, particularly if it involves the rest of the DC universe.

I don't know if I'd buy it simply because I have no use for 3D discs. That and I'd wait for confirmation about a director's cut or extended edition of avengers given the rumors of stuff that was cut that Whedon wants / would like to put back in.

Just by reading over the things posted in this thread shows me the many hurdles WB has with a JL movie being done outright.

Just by looking at the characters which you have to tie together within a single movie, all you really have to go with for the general public are:
Superman
Batman
Green Lantern

And you have zero build up for any of them knowing one another much less having a reason to form a league of heroes.

Then you have:
Martian Manhunter
Wonder Woman
Flash

all of which would have to be given at least a breif background and screen time to show the audience who they are (this inclusdes their personality, quirks, flaws etc...), where they come from, what they can do.

That's probably the maxiumum number of characters they could pull off within a 2 - 3 hour movie.

Then there's the antangonist(s) which will need at least a cursory overview of their motives probably used as the tie in for the reason the heroes need to band together.

It all seems a bit much to pull off and be done really well.

Look at what Marvel did to pull off Avengers. They started the foundation of this movie all the way back in Iron Man 1. They took their time to establish characters for the general movie going audience.

Doing everything from the opposite direction by starting off with a big team up movie that will hopefully pan out to solo films seems backwards. Remember that guy you saw in the movie with Batman and Superman where we told you about his story in 5 minutes? Well now here's that 5 minutes stretched out for 2 hours...

According to this article, a Justice League movie script had begun a year ago.

So I kind of called this in another thread, that WB would push forward a JL movie if Avengers was a hit but that they'd make (what may be) a mistake by not building it up like Marvel did with Avengers.

On the one hand, JL has a few more iconic characters that would be more prominent with a mainsteam audience. On the other hand, the mainstream audience has gotten used to Nolan-verse Batman which doesn't quite mesh with all of a sudden hanging around super-beings in an orbiting station.

I'm betting that they'll go with the "throw lots of marketing $" out there to get people in the seats, make it flashy and 3D so they pull a profit even if the movie itself turns out to be pretty poor. Marvel set the bar pretty high for the big team up super hero movie which will undoubtedly become a franchize unto itself, so I have a hard time that A JL movie with zero lead up would come within arms reach.

I hope I'm proven wrong though.

Having multiple inherent abilities or even an ability with multiple effects insn't uncommon.

Controllers have 2. Overpower and Containment.

Stalkers have Assasination which: provides chance to crit from Hide (some powers don't or have a capped %), chance to crit increase based on team size and proximity, a Demorializing effect which can terrorize and has a to-hit debuff, they can crit on held or sleeping targets, now Assassin's Focus which allows the player to build up their chance to crit as well.

Dominators have Domination which: is has endurance recovery, doubles the magnitude of controls, increases the duration of controls by 50%, and provides mez protection.

Defenders: Vigilence which: provides a recovery buff based on low team health, and a damage buff that decreases with team size.

Kheldians have cosmic balance which can provide any combination of damage buff, damage resistance, a recharge slow resistance, and mez protection.

I'm not saying that all of these effects are perfect for each AT. But many of them stem from the fact that there were performance issues that the devs were able to assertain and in some cases (like Stalkers) it has taken many things to get them close or at where they "should" be.

On the Huge model, at max physique, with Celestial Armor 01 Chest detail the Celestial Armor 03 Back Pack (glowing rings with "fiery" effect) is almost attached. You have to view it at just the right angle to see that the rings don't in fact connect. Almost as if it were meant to connect.

The 02 Back Pack (solid metal ring) is just a little further out, but not much.

The 03 Back Pack, is very far out.

Compare to the female model and all 3 back pieces float a good distance away from the model.

I agree that having them float away from the body has an other worldly effect. That doesn't necessarily mean it's mystical in essence

I like Arcana's counter mez more that a + resistance buff per attack. Which by the way was asked about back in the defiance discussions and was turned down by Castle. Too many variables to consider such as how much resistance, types, duration across all the fields of possibility within Blaster capability to consider apparently.

I'm still partial to the idea of simply adding mez protection that follows Defiance stacks.
Cones/ AoEs provide +1 mez protection
Ranged attacks provide +2
Melee attacks +3
Max stack of 9.

Allow Blasters to still use their teir 1 and 2 primary attacks and teir 1 secondary attack while under a mez effect, but if enough mez is built, you break free.

Blasters are still rewarded for attacking, benefit more for the danger of being in melee, and have a chance to fight through mez all the while can still end up being vulnerable to high amounts of mez in large team situations. Also, just don't take an alpha from a +8 spawn

And on the inverse of that, who needs tons of buffs / debuffs or hard controlls when a the team is full of Tankers taking down everything in their path.

(Though I don't think there are any all Tanker leagues for i-content going on), but for the pre-incarnate stuff, it does happen.

As a father of a hearing impaired child, that brought tears to my eyes.

I'd love that comic for my kid!

I settled for copying the image can't wait to show my kid now.

The Tanker "needs something" issue came to light for me when I've had to literally teach several new players about guantlet, the aggro aura, and how Taunt works.

Taunt was easy as it's a familiar mechanic and has at least initially, a visible identifier that it's taken affect.

But guantlet and the taunt aura were much more subtler things for some of these people. They didn't realize that he was actually aggroing more than one mob due to his guantlet effect over the general aggro effect of entering combat, engaging one foe and which garners the attention of the nearby npcs.

By teaming with them in more of a support role, I was able to show them how they were controlling the aggro with these effects, thus protecting my more vulnerable character.

More recently I had to explain Bruising.

In short, they had no idea that they were actually taunting with their attacks and auras. It was an eye opener for them.

Play Scrappers on SOs only, and usually what a player may feel is this element of danger, but with a pay off of damage and criticals.

Building Fury is noticeable on Brutes, you see that meter build and notice more damage occuring.

Tankers, players may or may not notice that they're taunted mobs even when not using Taunt.

It could be that the "something needed" is a simple identifier for mobs affected by the taunt in guantlet and auras.

Even then, there may be an issue that some players just don't see how getting aggro that way is any different of generating threat unless they play a more vulnerable character teamed with a Tank to really understand it.

Playing a Tank should provide a unique experience compaired to the other melee archetypes.

Right now, with the AT cap in place Tankers only control the aggro of a few more mobs over Brutes, and are safer when doing so.

It may be safe to assume many players don't notice that few mob difference, but notice the damage on Brutes. Damage isn't the way to go as some people might think though, for reason's i've outlined earlier. And raising the cap is indeed a way to increase Tanker damage not just their potential. As it allows for those who double-stack rage that hit the cap now to use other damage buffs like AAO or FE to do more damage on a consistant basis. A few reds and those few characters are at JB's "balanced" cap. It'll cause more problems than it solves.

Adding additional debuff values won't work. The issue being that Tankers shouldn't end up relying so much on them that they end up working like melee-fenders.

At one time, before proliferation, Tankers had a large amount of soft controls in their melee attacks than compared to Scrappers. That's completely out the window now and there's no meaningful way of going back toward's that concept.

Which leaves us with Tankers need something, but a straight damage buff isn't it, increasing the cap isn't it, adding new / more debuffs effects isn't it, removing taunt making it inherent and adding new attacks isn't it (cottage rule, too much resources required to make it happen). That's the conundrum.

Working with the Bruising effect being stackable, and used by all attacks (the original value of the first attack bruising would have to change of course) is another possibility. It allows for Tanker attacks to end up hitting "harder" over time, without necessarily going too far as to cause balance issues.

But there may not be a very good sweet spot which is why they limited it to a tier one attack.

The absorption mechanic is interesting and once more is understood about it, there may be something to it that would work with Tankers in some way.

I don't know if anything has changed with this regard recently, but in the past it has been stated that adding unresisted damage to the pve game ends up breaking things. I don't recall which dev said it, but I believe it was Castle back when discussions were going on about changing Blaster's inherent.

Simply giving Tankers the chance to crit doesn't resolve anything either. Any change that is done to the AT should make the AT more distinct in how it plays than compared to other ATs.

I completely disagree with JB's statement that the Stalker changes makes them more like Scrappers. He completely ignores the reasoning behind all the changes that have been done to Stalkers and the goal intended for those changes to reach.

Stalkers were always inteneded to provide melee single target burst damage. Solo, this wasn't an issue - except when it was (ambushes for example).

On teams, the stars had to all align for Stalkers to consistantly use the Hide+assassinate combo. Which often left Stalkers providing sub-par damage when compared to pretty much anyone one else in melee.

So they added more chance to crit based on team size with a tether for team mate range to give Stalkers a better ability to deal damage on a team with the consideration that Stalkers wouldn't be able to use the Hide+Assassinate combo to provide that single target burst damage they were designed for.

Again the stars had to all align for this to work out well.

Now, fortunetely new tech made it possible for Stalkers to perform their role of single target burst damage more reliably in all scenarios.

It isn't that Stalker were changed because they are suppossed to "scrap it out" on teams. It's due to the limitations for how Hide operates within the game's systems that forces this scenario. But are only now finally able to fulfill the role they were meant to fill all along, single target burst damage.

Tankers were designed to be melee centric aggro controllers. That's they're role. Some may not like it, but if they don't then what they want out of the Tanker AT isn't what it's designed for.

So its either they should
A: Look elswhere to see if another AT can fulfill they're desires for playing the game
or
B: Insist that Tankers be changed to fulfill they're idea - game balance and anything else be damned.

You see, there is a danger to constantly going over and reviewing damage as they only way to resolve an issue.

People have mentioned Defenders getting a solo friendly damage increase. There is a reason for this. Defenders (that is across the breadth of the possible powerset combinations) were actually slower and at times much more difficult to solo than any other AT. Their inherent did absolutely nothing to address this concern.

The consideration wasn't compared to other ATs with ranged attacks only. It considered the game as a whole and since being solo friendly is at times a considerations for the devs regarding this game, a change was done.

So comparing Tankers sole on their damage output isn't the only way to look at them. Comparing them purely to melee characters isn't be best way to look at them.
Taking what they're intended role is, how it's fulfilled, and how it operates within the wide range of play possibilities is how they should be viewed.

Simply increasing Tanker damage as to how it compares to Brutes is flawed because it ignores 1. The Tanker's designed role (it's not about melee damage) 2. how that affects the rest of the game.

What happens if Tankers are damaged buffed and start out damaging Blasters? Or if they begin to compete with many of the Stalker single target capabilities?

What happens when Defenders are bottom of the pack for solo damage again and players begin to noticed they're relative slower soloing speed?

These are just a few scenarios and does not remotely cover all of them.

I've said the same in the past as well.
Guantlet: 5 targets
Aura: 10 targets
Taunt: 5 targets

So at least allow the maximum aggro of 20 for Tankers.

An idea someone else posted the idea that as the team size increases, so should the Tanker's aggro cap. The way it could be achieved may differ by either increasing the max number of targets affected by Taunt, or by the max number of targets affected by the taunt portion of a Tanker's aura.

Although I'm not certain that such a change is entirely necessary or would provide a unique enough mechanic to playing Tankers that further seperates them from their melee counterparts.

I had stopped collecting back in the mid-90's and it was only several years ago I got interested in getting back into comics.

But I'm just wasn't interested in going nuts trying to figure out every issue of the major cross-over dujour or the 3-5 titles for 1 hero that tends to be the formula of the big 2 (Marvel / DC).

I have 2 friends that are into comics, one who is practically a comic book store unto himself, the other that is more selective.

Between the 2 of them I was able to figure out what to read and collect.
What follows is what I enjoyed the most:

Watchmen
V for Vendetta
The Dark Knight Returns
Kick-***
Hellboy (at least the first 10 trades I haven't bought or borrowed past that).
The Goon (it's quirky and fun, but even by the tpb from last year the story hasn't progressed much)
The Walking Dead
the Sin City trades
Kingdom Come
Grendel (I have most of the trades).
Savage Dragon (I'm not up to date but between comics and trades I have the first several years).

I'm also fond of the old Conan comics, and I've gotten several of the tpb of the early runs.
the Simonson Thor run (massive book but I read much of it as a child and it was great getting my hands back on those great stories).

One thing to be aware of is that by either raising the Tanker base damage mod or increasing their damage cap too high can end up with a result of Tankers doing too much damage.

As in, keeping pace with Blasters. At the risk of invoking her presence, Arcana would probably know what those limits are.

Bad enough that there are ATs that are already doing this, it doesn't even make sense for that to happen now. Changing the most survivable AT to also have that type of damage is just...wrong.

Lowering Brute damage cap and resistance caps doesn't resolve anything either. Because, for the most part, Brutes don't reach those caps. When they do, it isn't constant, and doesn't always occur for every powerset within the Brute AT.

I'd go so far as to argue that those limits are there for those rare instances when the right circumstances occur to have that unique team dymanic that allows for a high damage high surviving point man keeping aggro on a paricular baddie.

Realize that there's a lot that requires that circumstance to occur, with the right build and / or team combination working together outside of incarnate content.

Even for Incarnate content where everyone can end up with buffs, a Tanker isn't there to provide more damage. There's been plenty of strategy built around the role of a Tanker for trials to make use of.

Not every team in the game steam rolls through mobs and maps all the time either. Even when that does happen, having a tanker doing more damage wouldn't be noticed. Heck, when that happens, sometime half the team's damage probably goes unnoticed. I know I've been there even when playing my main which is a Scrapper. My single target focus (dark melee) isn't suited for aoe steam-rolling. I may get a hit or so in, but in the scheme of things, it isn't necessary, and certainly isn't noticed by anyone.

Now my grav / kin troller, ends up contributing to the steam rolling tactic on teams and it's all due to kin buffs, the primary is completely forgotten when that happens.

Fortunely there's plenty of times when I play my scrapper or troller and I'm contributing in ways that uses those ATs to their fullest because not everyone, throughout the entirety of the game steam rolls on teams.

Even suggesting that an entire AT get nerfed is terrible. It does nothing but upset that portion of the playerbase, set a poor precedent for this game, and provide fodder for bad press either by word of mouth or articles in mmo sites.

Taking a look at Brutes "as the problem", usually stems from the thinking that this AT is capable of operating at its peak performance for the majority of time it is played.

Consider that Brutes cannot do this without outside benefit and / or tremendous amounts of influence poored into a few particule build types.

Even so, if a Brute needs assistance to achieve it's peak performance for the majority of the game (i'd go so far as to say throughout any and every portion of the game for it's maximum performance) than I'll concede that Tanks should do the same.*

Tankers retain their 400 damage cap for self damage buffs / inspiration use. However they can obtain an additional 200 damage cap from outside sources only.

*this is completely toungue in cheek.

I don't honestly believe that a net damage increase is necessary for Tanks.

Nor do I advocate providing them with team buffing or healing abilities as a core mechanic.

I do agree that Tanker aggro cap should be increased slightly.

I also believe that Bruising should be changed to be used by all attacks, including cones and AoEs, but the value is adjusted based on the over-all recharge time of the powr+aoe mod.

Longer recharging single target attacks get a higher Bruising debuff that lasts longer. AoEs get a smaller Bruising debuff that has a short duration.

The effect is stackable for the Tanker.

Forget high end IO builds and incarnate builds. They have nothing to do with how an AT is balanced.

AT ALL.

Outside those things, which the majority of the game, and for which the ATs were designed for, you look at SOs.

Brutes can't reach the caps like many Tankers can, nor can they reach the relative values of survivability that Tankers can - on their own.

The same goes for Scrappers. Those ATs have to do the damage they do in order to just survive. And many times, in the late game, with running SOs even on teams, Scrappers and Brutes will end up relying more on buffs, or even inspirations to last longer than they normally could.

Tankers don't need to rely on those things as much.

JB's previous post is just a long winded, beating around the bush, failed logical attempt at saying that the only way Tanks would be better is if they did more damage either with a straight up damage increase and / or a damage cap increase.

Just so he can see the orange numbers he's been wanting for so long on his double stacked rage SS tanker.

Such postings end up with nothing to do with game balance, but a singular desire to make Tankers something they're not suppossed to be.

The primary reason the Terminator's failed was due to their lack of information about their targets. Had Skynet contained detailed information about it's target, sending back a Terminator to resolve the issue would be simple.

So really, it depends on how much information Skynet has to go on if it wants to eliminate the Avengers.

Hulk: Being that Skynet was a military defense computer, it may be safe to assume that it had all the detailed files about Bruce Banner / Hulk that the army had. Sending back a Terminator to remove Banner before he became the Hulk isn't an issue.

Skynet 1, Avengers 0

Iron Man: Consider again that Skynet was a military defense computer, and Stark was a military contracted arms manufacturer, obtaining information about Howard, and thus Tony Stark isn't an issue. In the film version of Iron Man, the military has direct information about Tony and the use of his Iron Armor. Sending back a Terminator to remove Tony Stark isn't an issue.

Skynet 2, Avengers 0

Captain America: Again the military is directly involved. Skynet locating Capt before his serum injection isn't an issue.

Skynet 3, Avengers 0

Thor: I consider SHIELD to be a completely seperate entity from the military and while they probably have all access to military information, the military doesn't have much of anything on SHIELD. They're systems are seperate and therefore Skynet has virtually zero information on Thor.

The only guaranteed way for Skynet to encounter Thor would be from an accurate historial record, in which he was present. However, removing the other Targets would irrevocably alter the historical record. So, the only choice is to attack Thor while the other Avengers exist.

Skynet sends it's 100 Terminators back in time to attack Thor and the Avengers. The Terminators manage to obtain various automatic rifles, pistols, and shot guns. Attempting to remove their targets from range meets with virtually zero success since the Hulk, Iron Man and Capt's Sheild prove sufficient to repel the attack, alerting the others to the new danger.

Avengers remove the threat while compating the Chitari (sp?).

Skynet: 0, Avengers: 100

I agree, the problem with Praetoria is how set apart it was. You only had 20 levels, and only with people there. It did feel like an extended tutorial for a while. After 20 levels you're "praetorian" character is suddenly not taking any further part in his / her world and goes to the primal earth.

I think that it might have been interesting if you chose a hero or villian, played the first 10-15 levels in your respective starting area, and then get introduced to a contact that brings you up to speed on the "praetorian problem". Where you, the player get to choose to go to praetoria or not.

Once there, you get into it's story, and as you play through it, can end up changing your alignment as you complete missions. Of which there should be any 1 of 4 Villian, Rogue, Hero, Vigilante. So your Villian character can go straight to Vigilante for example, or your Hero straight to Villian.

Leave the Tips missions in place and the current system for older characters to change alignment though.

Then, the expansion should've been more complete with a story that went from level 15-30, not 1-20.

First Ward and Night Ward should've been the 30-50 zones already in the works for the next issue.

And make sure you have your end game ready to go. I understand they held it back to make it better. But if part of your goal is to draw back old players, it's probably fair to assume there's quite a few who have high level - almost level 50, at least one favorite 50, or severl 50's. With some end game content readily available for them to jump into, they can continue to play those favorite characters instead of only having the ability to switch alignments just to get to experience a few contact's worth of missions.