UberGuy

My sentiments exactly.

And how, exactly, do you think he's trying to get it to work?

I'm not sure what other forums you've been on, but if you think this is bad, I'm not sure you should visit any others.

Now, pointing out that there are worse forums isn't a shining endorsement. However, you set yourself up on the wrong leg (let alone foot) when you were asked, without any noticeable negativity, for evidence of something you pretty obviously claimed was a broad-based dislike of this game. Your very first response was non-helpful in the extreme, and painted you as someone who was not interested in discourse.

If you post in a player forum, you should expect players to respond to you. Posting on any of the forums is not an especially functional way to get the devs to pay attention to your ideas, but that's likely particularly true in this forum. If you both want the devs to see something, and you aren't interested in players feedback, a PM to some redname is probably the way to go. Barring that, the Suggestions forum is more likely to be looked at than this one. Barring that, at least put "Suggestion to the devs" or something in your thread title.

I will say that while regulars here definitely like to poke holes in purported problems that people post about regarding the market, IOs, etc., I'm frankly not sure we've got anything on the regulars in the suggestions forum. Not if you make claims you can't or won't back up.

Ah, that I might be able to help with. You can set up alternate slotting on individual powers.

Select the power you want to compare different sets in, then click on the "Enhance" tab on the lower right (where the power info is normally shown). Then click on the "Active Slotting" image. It will swap that out with the "Alternate" slotting.

This is limited. You have to visit each power to swap to its alternate slotting. Also, AFAIK, you can't change the number of slots, just what's in the slots. But based on your description, it might do what you want.

Hm, really? I use it to do things like that all the time. I just open two copies of my character (one old, and one new) and compare their stats while changing the new one. Now, admittedly, that's not the tool doing the comparisons, it's me working around the tool not doing them for me. But I haven't really found that work-around to be a problem to do.

Sorry for the thread jack.

The farmers are all using a powerset that Scrappers have no access to, which happens to contain one of the largest melee AoEs in the game. But I'm sure that has nothing to do with it.

No, but I've probably played the next closest thing, which is a melee Night Widow. She definitely sends AVs and GMs running to the hills. Anything below AV rank tries to run too, but isn't usually a major problem, because the stacked slows rack up really fast. (Unless the critter has high slow resist, like War Wolves.) But she also doesn't have a damage aura spraying debuffs on nearby foes.

I suspect it is both. I think it's a design intent that's making the mobs act more cowardly than it should.

I think it's been around a long time, but I also believe it has been getting gradually worse as the AI has been tweaked. There's no one point where it suddenly turned on that I recall.

What I can say with fair certainty is that we first became aware something was different with the zone GMs in City of Villains. Before then, I had seen critters run, but I had never seen Giant Mosnters run. Deathsurge and the Ghost of Scrapyard were ridiculously cowardly compared my experience with things like Adamastor, the Croatoa GMs, etc.

Mobs have run away at low health for a very long time. They also have long had a "I'm losing" threshold that causes them to flee if they can't hit or reach their opponent for too long. I don't remember when those were introduced, but I remember them both as being discussed relatively early. However, I do not believe that mobs always ran away when exposed to debuffs or to DoT effects. I don't know when they started, though.

My view is that we shouldn't need a taunt aura - having one explicitly to prevent runners is a band-aid for how ridiculous AI behavior is in this regard. As far as we know, sets with taunt auras have them for two main game intents.

1. The powerset in question benefits from getting foes to gather near the character.
2. The character in question is intended to grab and hold aggro. This is almost certainly why Tanker and Brute translations of Scrapper secondaries have been given taunt auras, even when the powerset directly gains no mechanical benefit from nearby enemies.

Note that point (1) isn't specifically about keeping mobs from fleeing, it's as much about getting the mobs to go to the character to start with, and not to leave and go fight someone else. Critters did not always flee as readily as they do now, so having a taunt aura mostly just made sure a critter kept you as its designated target.

I don't want them to proliferate taunt auras into powersets that don't benefit from it and into ATs that don't have a design intent to be aggro sponges. I want them to fix the fracking running mobs.

Yes, but +damage benefits a Scrapper more than a Brute, because of the "dilution" of benefit due to a Brute's Scrapper-comparable damage coming from a combination of low base damage and high +damage.

It's the same reason that people point out that Shield Defense is better on a Scrapper, except you can't combine SD with FA. If you can get more overall damage out of KM on a Scrapper, then you get to multiply that by the bonus, scaling damage of Fiery Embrace. Ergo, the best total damage benefit, on paper, looks like it goes to the Scrapper.

Well, to be clear, I think the people who are responding to you are at least open to the idea there might be something to what you're saying. We're telling you, though, that the observations you have about the core problems are ones we've never heard (or read) anyone really mention before, suggesting that "fixing" them may not buy much. Now, you have an opportunity to try and convince us, if you care to, by providing some info backing up why you think this change is worth while.

Now, maybe your info to back up your argument is basically just your opinion on the matter. That's OK - people post based on opinions and anecdotes all the time. (Everyone's response about this being new complaints are anecdotes.) But your OP made it sound like you had more than just your personal opinion behind it, and that's why we started asking for more justification.

If you can't be bothered to actually list an explicit post or article, don't expect anyone to bother giving any credence to your claims. Especially when making claims that seem to come from left field, it's on the person claiming to present a compelling case. You have not done so - you've appealed to invisible authorities and asked everyone else to go find them. Not interested.

If my vet rewards were all that "set me apart" from other players, heaven help me. There's no one around who can have more vet badges than I do unless it's via some bug, and I certainly don't feel devalued because someone else might be able to buy as many Paragon Rewards as it took me seven years to earn as Vet Rewards. Hell, if they do that I'm pretty happy, because I know their money is supporting a game I really enjoy playing.

By the way, in case you aren't aware of it, there are still actual vet badges. It's not as granular, but there's still a way to look at a character and get a sense of how long that person's been subscribed. That's not a safe way to gauge much about a player, but it's still something that can "set apart" true vets as opposed to people who attached a siphon between NCSoft and their bank account.

They were, but a revisitation seemed inevitable once we were "shown" Cole doing something that has a hint of goodness and honor (viewed in a vacuum, at least).

I don't understand either. Today, if you don't have your £10 to spend, you don't get to do anything. How is it worse once Freedom comes around?

Edit: To be clear, it sounds like your worst case is that you have to remain a subscriber to maintain parity with what you have now. (Best case is you spend $2 a month). How is a worst case like that pushing you away? Bear in mind that a full subscription provides you with a stipend of 400 Paragon Points per month, meaning you can possibly save your £10 you want to spend on bonus features as long as you're willing to save up points to buy them.

I'm not sure what you mean by "setting aside fury for Brutes". If you do that, Brutes would do horribly low damage compared to just about every other melee AT. Their base damage is below that of Tankers. It's only because of Fury that they can reach Scrapper-like damage levels.

Because of this, it's impossible to succinctly answer the question you've asked. We have to pick a Fury level for the Brute to be able to compare the Brute's damage to the Scrapper's.

It's not really what you asked, but one place this discussion sometimes goes is what happens at the damage buff cap. A Brute can be buffed to 775% of their base damage, and a Scrapper can be buffed to 500% of their base damage. At the damage buff cap, Fury no longer matters, because it can't [edit: multiply base] damage further. For identical powersets, slotting, etc, a Brute at their damage buff cap slightly outdamages a Scrapper at their damage buff cap if you ignore criticals. If you assume even a 5% critical hit rate, the Scrapper edges ahead.

Er, not in any of the stories involving him I remember. Admittedly, it's been a while, but Marvel's Apocalypse struck me as much more similar to Recluse than Tyrant. Apocalypse's philosophy was very much about survival of the fittest. He's possibly more sociopathic than even Recluse, though, as I recall Apocalypse actually seeks to expunge the weak, rather then just let them fall to the bottom of the food chain.

I the Age of Apocalypse miniseries/crossover he committed genocide against non-mutants on an epic scale after conquering at least the Americas.

Well, I'm not sure you can have seven years of redside angst. Four, maybe. Unless you're projecting your desire to be a villain from all the way at CoH release to cover the three years where CoH didn't exist at all.

Not really. I mean, yes, it's amazing on everything, but it's particularly amazing with anything that provides +damage on top of Scrapper damage scales, because that +damage buffs the bonus damage from FE. (On a Brute, much of how a Brute reaches Scrapper damage levels is due to +damage, so the +damage of PS doesn't benefit the Brute as significantly as it does the Scrapper. Basically, what Arcanaville said.)

The grossest thing I could imagine would be if somehow you could have both Against All Odds and Fiery Embrace. Well, and some proper attacks too, since a Shield/FA Scrapper wouldn't be very offensive. (But more offensive than most things you could get by combining two mitigation sets.) Barring the impossibility/impracticality of that, the closest we can get is something like KM/FA or DM/FA. KM/* can get to its peak +damage with just one target, while a DM/FA is more inherently survivable.