UberGuy

The last I knew, actually, things based on %MaxHealth don't actually scale in the expected way with +HP. Things kick in at the rated % of your base HP, even when you have bonus HP. So if you should kick in at 60%, but have, say, 10% bonus HP, your effect actually kicks in at 60%/110% = 54.5% of your green bar.

This is actually a bad thing for stuff like Scourge (making it kick in at a lower % of total health than expected), and it reportedly also counts against "damage taken" badges (only damage above and beyond your bonus HP counts for the badge), but it's good for stuff like SR's scaling resists.

Now, I'm assuming (a) this actually works this way for SR's resists, and (b) it hasn't changed in general. It's an effect that's kind of hard to notice unless you're looking for it, so they could have changed it without a patch note and no one might know.

Christmas on a stick, no. Stop suggesting things that make the set worse.

It does not. It only buffs the base enhancement level in the way Ultimus described.

It's actually better than both. It's now around 9.38% resistance to all (base value), at Scrapper scales.

I wouldn't hate that. I don't know if they have tech to make some things give exemplar XP and others not, but there's probably a way to swing it with level-controlled, instance-wide temp powers or something.

They can be stacked 5 times. Each one is a 5% increase in the base enhancement value of the boosted enhancer, so 5 of them makes the enhancer 125% of its base value. Done with careful thought about what to boost, that's not an inconsiderable benefit. It changes, for example, a level 50 common IO from Schedule A from 42.4% to 53% enhancement. That takes you from needing three to hit (and exceed) the ED softcap on something to only needing two.

Close. It's 2%, not 3%. That comes from the fact that, on average, every 1% of defense causes you avoid 2% more attacks directed against you assuming your foes have no +toHit and you have no -defense on you. This is derived directly from the game's attack mechanics.

Defense and resistance have different benefits. Under conditions of high-damage attacks, such that only a few blows is likely to defeat you absent some mitigation, resistance mitigation is less likely to experience sudden defeat due to "bad luck". In contrast, because any blow that hits through defense hits for its full power (absent any resistance), a rapid string of unlucky hits on you can lead to abrupt defeat.

On the other hand, resistance doesn't avoid anything, so any debuffs or other effects that come bundled with attack damage are more likely to hit a resistance oriented character than a defense-based one.

However, there is a core reason that, these days, defense is more plentiful than resistance. Defense has a very straightforward Achilles heel, already mentioned: +toHit and/or -defense.

In terms of game mechanics, applying X% resistance debuff always works out to an X% increase in DPS affecting you.* However, this is not true for defense and defense debuffs. If X% defense debuff hits you, how much average DPS increase that causes to hit you depends on how much defense you started with. Worse, if your defense was keeping additional debuffs from landing, as soon as one hits, it's now easier for more of them to hit, and as more hit, it becomes easier and easier.

Because of this, the devs are more willing to give out defense, because it can fail abruptly and they can significantly weaken its benefits fairly easily, where there is not as much they can do with resistance.

* The only rough equivalent to defense debuffs against resistance are unresistable resistance debuffs. However, the devs have largely avoided using these against player characters in PvE, and have removed the only examples I know of where they did put this is in PvE - Longbow Nullifiers. Even with irresistable debuffs, resistance failure would not accelerate the way defense debuffs cause defense to.

I like the CoH market and I don't want to stand around doing nothing else. The idea that it's a good substitute for running content while you wait in the queue is ludicrous.

If there are a significant number of people who think standing around at the market is a good time, why isn't it more common?. We do have markets we can see the people in, you know, and as a market user, I do see them. Most have zero to five people in them during US prime time hours, depending on server.

Oh, and here's my favorite part. What about the people who don't use the market? I'm totally sure Samuel_Tow is all over wanting to use the market while he's in the LFG queue.

Some people. How many, percentage wise would you hazard is a safe guess? Give some thought to how many spawns you pass on your way to and from missions every time you play, and how many are not being molested by players, outside of Atlas Park.

I'm familiar with your post history. You like to jump in threads and niggle at things you don't think are adequately provable or defensible, usually with a passive/aggressive post style. Knock yourself out. In the context of the post to which it was given as a response, I think the suggestion that we can do these two things was utterly moronic. Can we do them? Sure! Are they something any significant number of players would want to do with any regularity? I don't buy it for a second.

I don't know. You read the same forums I do. Perhaps you don't see the complaining people have done for, oh, the last two years (up until GR and Alignment Merits, at least) in the Market Forum about how they don't want to waste time standing around at the market as an partial explanation for why they thought it was so unfair that the market was the main way to get inventions.

Can you think of the last time you were on a team that wanted to street sweep?

There's a difference in "I'm doing these things" (which, per my previous post, I can't believe you're saying you do with any regularity. Seriously, you intentionally run RWZ hunt missions?) "so I'll jump in the queue" and "well, I really want to run a trial today, so what can I do for 30 minutes while I wait for one to form? I know, I'll street sweep and use the market!"

Then they need to get badges out of it, because the folks with over-level badgers will not be amused.

Yes, I know what this forum is. Perhaps you think I got an absurdly high number for a post count at some other forum and brought it here.

Let me help you out. My response which you have quoted is rooted in two bits of knowledge.

1. I don't know anyone would want to street sweep in this game - something that has been a piss poor way to make progress or earn anything for ages, but definitely since I16. Some people like the idea of street sweeping, but very few would actually do it any more when such better rewards are in instances. So the idea it as something to do in the LFG queue comes across as rather insipid.
2. While personally I'm a happy to use the market often and rather well, very few people are willing to stand around and use the market. The (mistaken) notion that this is actually required to use the CoH markets is actually a frequent complaint. Worse still that it would be suggested as "something to do in the LFG queue" given that it's not even necessary for effective use.

So I basically found the suggestion outrageously stupid, and phrased that finding using steep sarcasm instead of simply saying it outright.

Does that make things more clear?

Except that bad analogy remains bad. You specifically constructed a scenario there which does not match either what we can do with power choices or what people do in practice.

Here's a better analogy.

Sally, Joe, and Betty all have baskets that can hold 24 fruit. There are some complicated rules about what fruits they can pick in combination, but the most basic is that you cannot chose the same fruit more than once. There are four types of strawberries available. Sally, Joe and Betty all three like strawberries very much, and all take at least three different types of them. However, some of the fruits are not very popular ones, so no one takes any of them. Additionally, Sally dislikes citrus and Joe is allergic to pears, so they don't take fruits of those types.

Now all three people are given a basket that comes with all four strawberries but still holds 24 more fruit. Within the other complex rules of fruit picking, and without re-picking more strawberries, Sally, Joe and Betty can now pick four more fruit. Joe remains allergic to pears, but he likes graps decently, so he takes four types of grapes, which he hadn't had any room for before. Sally still dislikes citrus, but she takes a bananas, two mangos and a type of apple she had not tried before. Betty doesn't really see much difference in the fruits, so she takes four more citrus fruits and calls it a day.

So very much this. While I rarely sit down and explicitly prioritize them this way, the powers available to me when I build a character exist in a "value spectrum", and depending on where they fall in the spectrum they are more or less desirable to me for that build. If I wrote these powers in a list, at the top would be the most desirable powers in the build. Powers listed below that are powers that I still want, but with decreasing fervency as you go down the list.

Now, I can only take the top 24 powers on that list , but that doesn't mean that power 24 was something I only grudgingly accept in my build, even or that power 25 was one that I would not like to have. Powers at slots 25 and below were voted out because slots 24 and up were deemed more desirable. That's a subtle but important difference.

Please tell me you're kidding. Because if you're not, wow.

OK, now I understand better why you're describing this as "loss of diversity".

Here's the problem. I am convinced this is an edge case. Your example is not realistically representative of how I think most people would build that character to start with. I believe most of them are already much more "non diverse" than you seem to be assuming. In practical terms defined as which powers they have included in their builds (and not including how they have slotted those powers), I think that most characters either explicitly followed the same templates or independently concluded that the same core powers are generally important enough to have on a particular AT/powerset combo that your assumed 64 options would not have meaningful representation As a result, the practical effect of replacing Fitness with a choice of 3 new powers, even if they are unslotted, is to increase the differences in those otherwise very similar builds.

You are substituting "diversity" for presence or sacrifice and the absence of sacrifice as "loss of diversity". You are, quite simply, using that word incorrectly.

Here's what the on-line Miriam-Webster dictionary has to say about that word.
1: the condition of having or being composed of differing elements
2: an instance of being composed of differing elements or qualities

"Build diversity" means that builds contain different elements and have different qualities. Your complaint, very clearly, is that a specific tradeoff in elements has been removed from builds. This is not a net loss of "diversity" as the definition of that word is accepted.


I cannot abide lacking strong, direct access to movement in the vertical axis in this game. That means that I always have either Super Jump or Fly on my characters. However, Super Speed is a very useful power, even though it does not meet my general travel power needs. If my build has other pressing powers to take, I will always take either Fly or SJ and will not have Super Speed. However, if there is nothing pressing to take, I will take Super Speed, gaining:

• PvE stealth which can stack with either other PvE stealth or a Stealth IO
• Fast ground-based travel speed, useful when "speeding" through indoor maps or traversing steep vertical climbs. (Super Jump is very poor at traveling up steep tunnels that it cannot simply leap over, for example)
• A place to "mule" Universal Travel IOs for either ranged defense, KB protection, or recharge/speed debuff resistance

Edit: I would also like to mention that I consider Maneuvers viable with two slots, given access to the right enhancements. To Arcanaville's point, I can sometimes come up with a slot that I wouldn't have bothered moving before, because I had nothing better to do with them.

OK, I am glad I kept reading. This makes a lot more sense. Mind you, this is still not something I would buy, but at least the pricing is less horrifying with the full list of bundled products and their prices shown. It's unfortunate that it wasn't better timed with Halloween, as the theme seems odd. If you'd* put it on sale last week that would have been more thematically reasonable, IMO.

* When I say "you" I mean Paragon Studios, not Zwil personally!

Given the assumptions that seem to be at play here, it is simply impossible that options A and B reduced diversity. In the absolute worst case, they are a wash. If the majority of characters had Health/Stamina, and then Fitness became inherent and the majority of characters took exactly the same powers to replace Fitness, then their degree of diversity is unchanged, not lower.

The only way in which diversity could be reduced is if everyone who did not have Health/Stamina had already chosen all the same powers you did when you gained power picks due to inherent Fitness. But this is an extremely weak assumption, because anyone who was running without Fitness was, with very few exceptions due to certain powersets' facilities, already severely bucking the trend in "accepted" ways to build characters.

Moreover, I can't see how you can post a list of four disparate options and seriously defend the contention that diversity decreased, especially when it's possible to combine those four options. I have characters that took a extra pool and an extra travel power in a pool they already had. I have characters that took an Epic Pool they previously lacked and an new Power Pool.

There absolutely are common pools and common powers that people would pick as choices that need no or few slots. Any of the four Leadership powers. Combat Jumping. An extra travel power. Because of this, yes, without a major rejiggering of a character, the new options are limited. Despite that, the set of choices is larger than being the same Fitness powers that most people were taking. A larger set of choices cannot lead be less diversisty than everyone taking Health and Stamina.

I find even this hard to accept. I can accept one part of it - if we're all given something, then we all share that part of our "build", and that is not diverse. By virtue of the fact that we all have the Fitness pool, the number of things that we all have in common on every character increased.

However, I find that a non-useful definition of "diversity". Measuring "diversity" by including the things we all have as a shared baseline is not particularly instructive. To convince me that diversity in builds has been "decimated", you would need to show compelling evidence that everyone did the same things with those slots that moving Fitness to inherent slots freed.

Apparently, you feel that the no-brainer thing to do with those liberated power picks was to take powers from your primary and secondary powersets that you had previously skipped. You seem to assume that most everyone else did the same. I know I did so only for a minority of my characters. I often viewed the "inherentization" of Fitness as releasing me to diversify into a new Power Pool. Some characters instead took Epic Pool powers they never previously had room for. A couple of characters did take primary/secondary power picks they previously lacked, but only when they were powers that I felt benefited the character more than Power or Epic Pool alternatives. Even then, they often also added a new Pool Power.

Unless I made the same choices on what to do with those freed slots as everyone else, I do not see diversity as lost. Instead I see it as increased. We all have the same number of power picks to make, and I see the measure of diversity as a measure how many of us are picking the same things. Previously, surely a plurality if not a majority of us were spending at least two, probably three of our power picks on the same powers - Health, Stamina and either Swift or Hurdle. Now we get more freedom to chose different things with those three picks.