Umbral

I'm getting sick of sounding like a broken record, and I wish that crybaby villside exclusive players would stop this lame track of thinking that there is any logical reason why villains should receive exclusive design time for any reason. Plain and simple. Blueside has been around for years longer and received the full attention of Cryptic for a very long period of time before CoV even existed.

The disparity between blue and redside was going to happen simply because CoV was released in a state commensurate with CoH when it was first released. If you actually look at what's been added to the game, it's been an almost entirely even split between what heroes have gotten and villains have gotten. The reason for the even split is that the devs have taken the intelligent step of supporting both of their "games", the new and the old one, equally.

What you're forgetting is that it's going to hurt blueside because you're forcibly asking for blueside to stagnate while the devs focus on giving stuff exclusively to villside.

Asking for SF rewards is similarly stupid because TF/SFs are based on average completion time, not on how much you can make in a day. Villside content rewards less specifically because they were designed to account of player complaints that revolved around blueside TFs being too long. You don't get to have the more compact SFs and better rewards for time.

Well duh :P But that doesn't mean that he caused the sundering of the Shard.

Why does everything have to tie into the Coming Storm? Hamidon doesn't tie into the Coming Storm, and I doubt Praetoria does. It's possible to have multiple cataclysm level storylines taking place at once without them all being interrelated.

Eh, if they gave vills access to the Shard, it would functionally act as a new zone.

Considering how the booster packs activated a flag on your account to allow for access to the benefits in question, it doesn't really make sense to tie stuff like that to the booster packs.

It might work to just ask the developers to send out stuff along those lines for free, like they've already done, rather than attempting to tie it to buying a booster pack. I'm pretty sure they've had the art department release a wallpaper or two (or more), and they've already given out the avatar pics.

My personal view is that content starts getting interesting when you hit 25 because you start actually fighting AVs and peaks when you hit 45 and you get access to an arc that is chock full of AVs with one in almost every mission. I've always wished that there were a repeatable contact or something that allowed you to have an infinite resource for random AV missions that wasn't the AE.

I think this is a big point as it stands now. The Shadow Shard already has enough blueside TFs that heroes don't need any more added. Of course, if the SS were modified to give villains access, I would expect 3-4 new vill only TFs to be added (which should make the "vill disparity omg!" players a bit happy) along with 1-2 contacts per zone per side to add some solo content. I also think it would be interesting if each of the new vill TFs mirrored the events of the commensurate heroside TF: the first would involve dealing with something upsetting the main plans from Primal Earth (possibly going through a long chain of events to convince Lord Recluse not to shut everything down even though Aeon ignored his command), the second might be villains trying to free Ruladak the Strong and either bargain with him or siphon off his power, the third might involve forcing Faathim to submit to some of your demands, and a fourth might involve getting what you want out of Faathim. All of those would follow through with the design of the existing ones rather well, but have a definite villainous cant to them (especially the third one, what villain wouldn't want to beat up the only "good" part of Rularuu just to get what s/he wants?).

Personally, I've never found the travel to be particularly cumbersome with all of the transit improvements they added. The problem with attempting to make each story arc apply to a single small series of island rather than each individual zone is that you'd need a lot of story arcs because the shard is just too big. With everything that the zone has to move around now, it's not too hard to move around so I'd be perfectly happy if the contacts just operated on a single zone basis rather than a purely regional basis.

I've strongly supported making the Shadow Shard cohabitant (rather than cooperative) and actually enjoy all of the TFs except for Quaterfield (you would expect a shard TF to be in the shard, wouldn't you?). The other 3 TFs make a great deal of sense for their length and aren't really untoward in length. Villains could get a new "safe" region within FBZ (which would probably get renamed in the same way that the Rikti Crash Site got renamed) and a series of mole points to mirror the heroside ones so that both sides aren't attempting to use the same transit system (except for the Hortha Vines, which are naturally occuring). FBZ and the villside version would need content updates to provide actual story arcs and probably something to introduce a new zone-by-zone competitive resource gathering thing that shifts access to certain shops/special missions from one side to the other.

In order to explain away heroes fighting villains, you wouldn't need Vanguard: you could always just use Rularuu himself. Simply explain that conflict between heroes and villains would attract the attention of Rularuu, which would interfere with the plans of your side. Since the devs have pretty much stated that Lord Recluse doesn't give a damn about the Shadow Shard, it could just as easily be something run by AeonCorp in order to exploit the weirdness of the shard and Aeon doesn't want Rularuu coming by to ruin everything.

The Shard has always been one of the most interesting zones in the entire game. I've seen no other zone in any other game that really matches the sheer uniqueness and depth of story that is present in the Shard. The Shard TFs (aside from Quaterfield) expose a detailed and well written story with ginormous potential just sitting there. The Shard is something that no other game, much less anything else in the super hero genre really has anything to accurately compare to it. It's the perfect thing to emphasize, especially with a new competitor coming out within the next year.

Wasn't there something release some time ago (~2-3 years) that showed that CoX had done something incredibly weird to the normal population curve and actually generated an increase in population without releasing a major expansion? This was before AE but after CoV so there wasn't really anything you could explain as a "major expansion" to explain the growth (minor expansions like the Issues that CoX receives or the dungeon/raid additions that WoW gets are designed more to keep current players playing rather than bring in new players). I recall a number of analysts looking at it and going "whu?"

That's pretty painfully specific, imo, and it removes a lot of the actual "play" from playing a character. A vast majority of the play comes from target choice. If the inherent power of an AT were designed to encourage it to have someone else pick the target for it, not many people will capitalize on it. Just look at how hard it is to get people to target through someone on a raid like Hami or the Mothership where you might actually want to target through someone.

I'm not even sure if that's possible, either, though, I guess it wouldn't be much more work than the idea I've got to check to see if it's targeting you. It would just be a matter of making sure that the AT of your target is a Tanker or a Brute rather than simply making sure that the target's target isn't you.

The problem with this is that it ignores the function of time. This is one of the big issues that you have to tackle when balancing offense against defense. The longer a fight goes on, the more damage you end up getting thrown at you. Damage serves to shorten the period of time in which you are subjected to this incoming damage and thereby serves to increase your survivability.

A Tanker, thanks to doing two-thirds of the damage that a Scrapper does, takes roughly 50% longer to finish a fight than a Scrapper will. This means that the Tanker will see roughly 50% more damage thrown at him and spend roughly 50% more endurance killing those targets. Now, thanks to hit points (Tankers have 40% more hit points) and self-buff scalars (Tankers get 33% more def/res from powers), Tankers take ~53% of the damage that a Scrapper does. Factoring this in, over the course of the same fight, a Tanker is going to take only 20% less damage than the Scrapper while spending 50% more endurance and taking up 50% more time.

Of course, this is assuming that the Scrapper has the survivability to survive the fight and the Tanker has the endurance to continue throwing out attacks without having to spend time recouping lost endurance to continue attacking, and, while it's possible to account for those variables by attaching values to everything, that's beyond the reach of a purely scalar analysis (which that was).

Now, if we apply some real numbers to this, we get a bit more complex. Let's assume that a minion equivalent, or ME, deals 15 DPS to a Scrapper at level 50 (this is factoring in Scrapper resistances). Apply a Tanker's superior resistance and defense scalars and a Tanker will take 10 DPS from a single ME. Now, similarly, it will take 2 seconds for a Scrapper to take out a single ME. Applying the Tanker's lower damage scalar, it will take 3 seconds to take out a single ME. Minions are worth 1 ME, Lieutenants are worth 2 ME, and Bosses are worth 4 ME, but I'm ignoring those for the sake of simplicity (higher rank enemies actually have a tendency to scale damage slower than the outright damage capabilities of the equivalent number of minions as well as reducing the negative impacts of overkill and increasing the impact of secondary effects by stacking them up more, I'm assuming these balance out the increased period of time in which they're dealing damage, but I know that isn't true: a boss is going to deal a good deal more damage over any specific interval of time than 4 minions because his damage doesn't drop as his hp drops).

Now, to complicate things (because that's just transferring the scalars into something that we can compare with what I'm about to do here), we have to factor in endurance consumption and recovery and damage recovery. Because Tankers and Scrappers use pretty much the same sets, endurance consumption is going to be same for each of them. I'm going to heuristically assign an endurance consumption, post end recovery, of 2 end/sec. Because regeneration is based off of hit points, which Tankers and Scrappers don't share a common value, I'm going to simply assume slotted Health and no +hp (which, without SOs, would simply act as a percent increase) so that Scrappers are recovering 10 hp/sec and Tankers are recovering 14 hp/sec.

Combine the two of these, and we can determine how fast a Tanker or Scrapper can defeat a group and whether that Tanker or Scrapper could survive the group and if they would run out of endurance while fighting the group. The balance comes in attempting to take out as many ME as you can without going over the twin thresholds of your survivability and your endurance. If either of those occurs, you're operating below optimum efficiency. For each ME scenario, I'm going to simply calculate how long it would take to defeat the total group (numME * killSpeed = time) and then use that time to determine how much endurance you would need to have at the beginning of the fight in order to finish it (time * 2) or die (if ((numME * ((killSpeed / 2) + (time / 2)) * minionDPS) < ((time * hpRegen) + baseHP)).

(In case you were wondering, the total damage in the "die" equation is calculated in that way to account for dead targets no longer dealing damage)

5 ME
Tanker Time: 15 second fight
die? no
amount of endurance needed to finish: 30
Scrapper Time: 10 second fight
die? no
amount of endurance needed to finish: 20

9 ME
Tanker Time: 27 second fight
die? no
amount of endurance needed to finish: 54
Scrapper Time: 18 second fight
die? no
amount of endurance needed to finish: 36

10 ME
Tanker Time: 30 second fight
die? no
amount of endurance needed to finish: 60
Scrapper Time: 20 second fight
die? yes
amount of endurance needed to finish: 40

12 ME
Tanker Time: 36 second fight
die? no
amount of endurance needed to finish: 72
Scrapper Time: 24 second fight
die? yes
amount of endurance needed to finish: 48

13 ME
Tanker Time: 42 second fight
die? yes
amount of endurance needed to finish: 84
Scrapper Time: 28 second fight
die? yes
amount of endurance needed to finish: 56

Optimal points:
Scrapper: 9 ME
Tanker: 12 ME

Now, compare the information for the Scrapper and for the Tanker. The optimal point for the Tanker requires you to have 72 endurance at the point of starting whereas the Scrapper requires only 36. While the Scrapper can only has to use rest about once every 3 groups, the Tanker would have to use rest after pretty much every group thanks to the endurance cost. The endurance cost issue isn't so much how costs for a single fight. It's more a question of downtime and how long you have to spend after each fight in order to have enough endurance to finish the next one. Because Tankers spend more endurance over a longer period of time in order to take out their enemies, they have to spend more time between each fight (or in each fight, which increases the risk of the fight by extending the period they're exposed to damage) recovering endurance in order to take out their enemies.

First off, the endurance costs wouldn't change at all because it simply increases the amount of damage you're dealing per point of endurance spent. It does nothing to increase the amount of damage you're dealing for every second you spend in combat. All that it would do is increase the amount of time you can spend in combat actually attacking in order to match better with the amount of time you can actually survive.

Secondly, and I think this is the problem with only discussing a portion of what I'm suggesting, the inherent changes I'm suggesting (i.e. both of them together) would make solo play easier without making it better than the team play that it similarly encourages because you're not going to be made redundant by another tank or a shield scrapper on the team. If anything, if you want to deal damage, my changes encourage you to get onto teams because it increases the amount of damage you can deal. If you want to be an aggro magnet, it similarly encourages you to be on a team because you'll be of benefit to your team and another Tanker on your team isn't going to cut in on your functionality without providing you with something in return (i.e. more damage). If you just want to solo, it makes you life easier by allowing you to either lighten up the endurance slotting you've got or to allow yourself more time in a fight before you have to start worrying about each point of endurance.

The propositions I made wouldn't require any rebalancing. They address specific problems with the AT without increasing peak performance. Tankers have long complained that they spend more endurance for the same functionality that Scrappers get while they are solo. Tankers have similarly complained that it's pretty redundant to get more than one when you could just have a Tanker and another damage dealer. My changes would make a preexisting Tanker that only ever runs as the only tanker on a large team better. What they would do is allow Tankers that run the gamut of situations to mitigate many of the longstanding problems that those situations pose to Tankers thanks to how they were designed and how mechanics in the game operate.

If a Tanker doesn't appeal to a team as it stands now, nothing you can do will make it appeal without making it horribly overpowered. Overpowered means that the cost it pays in damage output needs to match the comparative advantage of higher survivability and aggro based utility. Right now, it's at a pretty good point. There's a reason that MoSTF and other top end challenges functionally require a tank. The workarounds that allow some teams to ignore the need for a tank (perma-PA anyone?) are not faults with the Tanker AT and don't necessitate further buffing to make Tankers valuable under those conditions.

Were you not reading? I specifically said "on a team with another Tanker present". Reading comprehension fail.

On a team where survivability isn't an issue, the only thing that matters is damage. If you're going to argue that the AT needs a buff in situations where its entire primary focus is redundant, that's not the point where you need to say the set needs a buff. You could just as easily argue that Blasters and Scrappers need more utility or survivability because there are teams where there is already plenty of damage already. You could argue that Controllers need more damage or utility because AVs can laugh off virtually all of their mez effects.

Arguing that something needs to be done and then having your only viable condition be under arbitrary chosen situations when the primary function of that ATs is ignored is stupid beyond belief. You're attempting to salvage some scrap of intelligence but making yourself look like an even bigger idiot because the only decent situation you could come up with is a situation in which the primary strength of the AT is ignored.

I was not arguing that a penalty and a buff are the same. I was applying that same line of logic (a team renders that null, so it's not substantive) to something else. That logic does not apply. You cannot simply say "a team can relegate the importance of that functionality" as an argument that providing a similar effect to that functionality while solo. It doesn't stand up to reason.

I'm not sure if you ever run outside of IOs, but I do and all of my SO slotted melee characters can run out of endurance. I could mitigate that somewhat by slotting more end redux, but then I'd be losing out on extra damage, accuracy, or recharge. If you already slot heavily for end redux the, guess what, you wouldn't have to as much because you're getting some of that for free!

Actually, the primary problem that most people have with Vigilance is that it only contributes something whenever you're playing poorly, that the benefit is unreliable, and that it encourages bad play in order to capitalize on it. Those are the reasons that Defiance was changed. No other inherent is so counter to the role of the AT that uses it.

The other problem with Vigilance is that it does nothing solo. Sure, you can capitalize on it while on teams, but it does nothing unless there is someone else to feed it. That's the specific reason why I was separating the two portions of the inherent fix that I would apply. Tankers need different things at different times.

Now I am laughably sure that you never run with anything but IO'd characters. Either that, or your never run with anything but a Granite Tank or a WP Tank on -1 diff. Time matters hugely for Tankers. Sure, they can take hits, but their survivability curve in SOs isn't high enough to allow them to survive infinitely. If it were, then they wouldn't have soloing issues because it's of laughable difficulty, even when they grab 17 targets.

Staggering attacks is only of use when you're at a point where survival is of no concern. At that point, it doesn't matter when you kill them because they're never going to kill you. SOd Tanks do not have the benefit of managing substantial immortality curves especially when they're attempting to capitalize on higher survivability to saturate AoEs for speedier killing because SOs aren't that powerful. Sure, you can do it with IOs, but the game isn't balanced around IOs. If anything, staggering attacks is bad for xp/sec because it's multiplying the time it takes for your to kill something. Endurance efficiency allows you to not have to stagger and thereby increases kill speed.

Damage auras improve endurance economy because they provide AoE damage at the cost of ST endurance. However, they are not par for the course for Tanker sets. The same argument applies to them as it does to AAO: they are an artificial increase to endurance efficiency that cannot be relied upon for balance reasons because they are not a universal functionality.

I really have to wonder when you'll stop pulling arbitrary reasons out of your *** and realize that you have no clue what you're talking about. You don't even get half of your information correct, and you artificially apply your own playstyle or specific experience within specific sets without accounting for the capabilities of those specific sets in a global manner.

Increasing range or target caps in the manner you described is not the solution. It assumes that Tankers will never run up against single hard targets or that Tankers should be the AoE gods of the game no matter what conditions their under. It is inelegant, inefficient, and largely ineffective. Just stop. Please.

Except that it does. Go in game and check it.

Which was removed explicitly because of balance issues.

Both of which are psuedo pets and, as such, don't benefit from inherent powers.

Choking Cloud doesn't benefit from Overpower either, so there's actually some precedent here. Probably the biggest reason why neither power benefits from that is because they operate as toggles with chances of the mez effect occurring rather than as static effects.

What you're missing is that specific powers are individually being adjusted or modified rather than having every power having to be adjusted or modified. The only power you brought up that even remotely applies to this is Energy Transfer. Every other power is excluded for either mechanical or set placement reasons.

I don't think you understand what I mean by "formulaic" and "consistent" either. Find me a Scrapper attack except for those that had critical mechanisms from the very beginning that crit for less than 100% of their base damage. Find me a Blaster attack that contributes a different amount of +dam from the amount that it should based on its animation time. Find me a Controller power that deals less than 100% extra damage with Containment. All of those powers are both formulaic and consistent. They apply a specific effect and that effect does a specific thing. If the power doesn't benefit from the effect (i.e. Energy Transfer), then the effect isn't present at all. If the inherent is present, it acts in an exact manner.

Formulaic and consistent doesn't mean that it applies to everything. It simply means that it is applied in a specific way on all powers within a specific subset. Your idea isn't formulaic or consistent because you're attempting to apply different things to every single set. It's doing different things to different powers. You're not applying a 50% increase in range and a 50% increase in max number of targets to every power. You're cherry picking different powers to apply different aspects in different quantities for each set individually. That's not an inherent. That's attempting to rebalance a set.

The issue isn't that Tankers need help in all situations. Tankers only need help in 2 situations: when solo and when on a team with another Tanker present. Your "solution" attempts to make Tankers better in all situations just to address the problems of these 2 situations.

By this same logic, Granite Armor's penalty is pointless because 30% -dam and 65% -rech are incredibly easy to circumvent on a team. The power still has a penalty because it prevents you from jumping or flying, but the other portions of penalty that are usually very potent are pretty much nonexistent.

Personal end recovery powers are still useful solo with the end redux I suggested because if you want to take on larger groups, you still need more endurance. The presence of endurance recovery tools that you have natively allows you to take on larger and larger groups while taking less and less time to recover it. Try running an SO grade Tanker through a solo mission now. You're going to run out of endurance plenty. Now imagine if all of your powers had a free end redux SO (or 1 end redux SO in the power was turned into something like recharge or damage). That's not an intangible difference.

You saying arbitrarily that the ability to have a free end redux SO whenever your solo would have no effect upon solo play bears about as much weight as that statement: it's unsupported, even if it is true.

If you can actually show something like numbers or play that demonstrate that it would be true, then go right ahead. I've already given my reasoning: it makes Tanker attacks as endurance efficient as Scrapper attacks. Can you legitimately claim with evidence that this wouldn't impact normal play or are you going to just doubting it arbitrarily?

I can see this coming in to play all the friggin' time. When you're soloing, you're not just using AoEs. You're also using single target attacks. You're also using your toggles. I would gauge consumption at about 4.6 end sec (4 end/sec for attacks with no end redux, .6 end/sec for toggles/survivability powers with 1 end redux). Assuming Stamina and SOs, you'll have 2.48 end/sec recovery for 2.12 end/sec of loss. You'd be able to manage roughly 45 seconds of attacking before running out of endurance. With the end redux added to the inherent, you'd be able to manage roughly 155 seconds before running out of endurance.

Please tell me that that's not noticeable.

Because you'd be able to change the enhancement values of a power in order to maximize the benefit of it. For example, you could take RotP and have it slotted for recharge while you're alive. When you die, you could change the slotting to acc and damage. It's not really the most cost effective way to improve performance, but, iirc, that's the given reason from way back.

What I was referring to was that every power that benefits from Containment has the exact same effect applied to it in the exact same magnitude adjusted from the base: as long as the target is mezzed, the attack deals double damage. The only attacks that I know of that don't benefit from Containment are the few attacks in secondary effects. Other than those, the effect is absolutely consistent and doesn't require any special hand adjustment in order to be made effective.

The problem is that your inherent benefits some builds more than others in a very substantial way. Energy Melee would get almost nothing because it's got very little native AoE capability. Fire Melee, War Mace, and Battle Axe would all benefit in an untoward manner because they have very heavy emphasis on AoE damage.

If you look at inherent powers for every single AT out there, the inherent powers are all designed to operate in a formulaic manner. The closest you get to "hand adjustment" is the higher chances for a few Critical Hit attacks. Most of those already had preexisting "critical" mechanisms before Critical Hit was even introduced so the addition of Critical Hit as an inherent would logically require some manipulation (which pretty much equated to giving a 5% higher crit rate to the existing rate). The only attack that got the treatment without any preexisting mechanism was Storm Kick and that was added more as an upward balance of the set as a whole than as necessary modification of the inherent itself.

If every set is going to be treated in a different manner, you might as well just ask for every Tanker to get whatever tweak you're asking for rather than attempting to dress it up as an inherent overhaul. Inherents are formulaic mechanisms. They aren't tweaked on a set for set basis. Try looking for any inherent that doesn't apply a formulaic benefit in a predictable fashion to all applicable powers. You won't find one. Inherents either modify all powers in a specific listed fashion or they provide specific global benefits in a predictable(ish) manner.

The entire point of the endurance reduction was that it only applied to situations in which the Tanker was on small teams or solo. If the base values were reduced then the entire point of that modification is kind of rendered null. At that point, you're simply stating that Tankers should have the same DPE as Scrappers in all situations rather than those in which they can't properly leverage higher survivability for faster experience gain.

In the same sense as applies here, you have to realize that those Tanker sets that already have the ability to regain endurance are still advantaged because they still have those abilities while on larger teams. While solo, they'll still be more endurance sustainable because the endurance reduction I proposed is not intended to completely negate endurance problems while solo. I chose that much end redux specifically because it would provide a noticeable increase in efficiency without allowing Tankers to completely ignore endurance while solo. It wouldn't be a case of "omg! solo! my blue bar is always full!" It's a case of "now I don't have to slot end redux in all of my attacks just to solo without having to rest after every group".

The problem with giving Tankers the ability to hit more targets with AoEs is pretty much that it would be too strong and it wouldn't really be definable. Keep in mind, as well, that it doesn't buff every Tank set the same. Dark Melee isn't really going to get much more out of it than it already does because it just doesn't do much with AoEs. The only thing that might make it viable would be increasing the number of targets for Soul Drain, but that's probably going to be pushing the envelop for a self buff power like that a bit too far. Energy Melee would get even less because all EM has that would benefit from your change is Whirling Hands. Conversely, War Mace is going to get a massive benefit because it's a set that lives off of cones, which would get the greatest benefit overall.

What you have to remember when coming up with an inherent is that it has to be able to be applied to most powers in an consistent manner. Look at Containment, Critical Hit, etc. A range or target increase would, by the very nature of it, be remarkably inconsistent.

That's why I didn't say that you're supposed to capitalize heavily on it while solo. The additional damage against enemies that aren't targeting you was more to address the redundancy of Gauntlet with other aggro grabbing ATs around.

It doesn't really "correlate" to the increase range/target idea much because it doesn't equate to scaling. What you're refering to is a substantially larger buff that makes Tankers substantially better AoE damage dealers even on teams. Tankers don't need more AoE damage on teams, especially when it has the potential to render actual damage ATs redundant (hitting 50% more targets puts Tankers at the same level of overall AoE damage as Scrappers).

The point of the end redux is to give Tankers the same DPE while solo as the more damage oriented classes. They die slower, they kill slower, but they're spending the same amount of endurance to accomplish it as the faster ATs, which allows them to actually capitalize on that "dying slower" thing.

I doubt low level, non-IO'd Tankers that don't live on teams would find free end redux to be barely noticeable, especially when it amounts to a free SO in everything. Remember, I'm not just referring to some end redux in the attacks: I'm referring to global end redux. Also, keep in mind that the end redux is constant. I doubt Defenders would complain nearly as much about Vigilance if it wasn't quite so unreliable. The end redux I proposed is a constant benefit that is predictable. It would actually allow a Tanker to reliably predict his endurance costs over a long period of time.

Your Tanker already has a power that gives him a drastic increase to DPE: AAO. AAO already provides the functional equivalent of the end reduction I'm talking about because it can provide 50-65% +dam with relative ease (7-10 targets). 50% +dam equates to a 25% increase in DPE assuming 95% +dam slotting so you're already benefiting from what I'm recommending be applied to pretty much anyone. Your lack of endurance problems isn't so much due to having Dark Melee. It's substantially more likely that it is due to having a primary that makes your attacks more efficient.

BU lasts 10 seconds. RoA takes 4 seconds to cast and the pseudo pet is summoned 1.8 seconds into the animation. You can easily get off 2 attacks before losing BU functionality for RoA. Seriously, do you just say things without ever checking the information to make sure what you're saying sync with the known values? You're proving absolutely everything I've been saying about you this entire time.

If they wanted to stop rewarding them, it's doubtful they would take away the merits from the existing characters. It's much more likely that they would simply stop rewarding those merits rather than attempting to do something needlessly complex.

The problem with Tankers soloing is more an issue of the inability to properly leverage the higher survivability they get for losing out on damage. On a team, this is leveraged by a lone Tanker by being the primary target and allowing others to blast away with abandon. On a team with multiple Tankers, you don't really get any benefit because you can't really use more than one person to be the only target of every enemy's attacks.

Now, as you said, my solution addresses the two of the issues (redundancy, sensibility) without really solving the third (solo capability). I have a solution for that.

While solo, you can leverage higher survivability by simply increasing the spawn size of an enemy group: you can survive more damage so you can enter riskier situations that grant greater rewards. It's a classic trade off of safety versus speed. However, Tanks have to spend more endurance than Scrappers to deal the same amount of damage so that, even though they're capable of surviving for a longer period of time, they're not capable of defeating enemies as efficiently. The problem isn't the amount of damage the tank is dealing because they have sacrificed speed (i.e. damage) for safety (i.e. survivability). The problem is that a Tanker is going to take longer to kill those enemies and that will require more endurance so that the Tanker is more likely to run out of endurance mid-fight, especially within the riskier situations that the Tanker is capable of entering thanks to greater safety.

The solution I have is to provide Tankers with diminishing passive endurance reduction. If the Tanker is alone, he would get ~33% global end reduction. This would mean that a solo Tanker would be spending the exact same amount of endurance that a Scrapper would be spending to deal the same amount of damage (factoring in scalars). This would allow a Tanker to properly leverage the survivability time provided by greater survivability. For each ally on the Tanker's team, this end redux would be reduced by 11% until the bonus equals 0% with 3 allies.

Now, the logical base behind this additional functionality is that the Tanker is not having to be distracted by having to protect his allies. While he won't be dealing any more damage with his attacks, he's capable of using those attacks in a more efficient manner. The more allies he has, the more of his attention is spent trying to make sure that his enemies aren't attacking those friends that he loses this focus. Of course, because he's now got friends to protect, he regains this efficiency when he's failing to do his job, which makes him angry, which allows him to hit harder.

So you honestly believe that ice controllers should form the basis of proc functionality? By that same logic, every ranged damage proc in existence should be weaker because of Rad Defenders with Neutrino Bolt.

Except that every attack is worthwhile. Hell, show me how many top end attack strings don't have an attack used at least once every 5 seconds? For virtually every Scrapper attack string, that 5 seconds is going to equate to a every attack getting a piece of that.

What you're continually forgetting is that you're always assuming worst case. You might as well assume that defense sets are always going to die because it has a 5% chance to get hit from every attack. The game isn't balanced against the worst case. Each portion of your attack string has the same chance of getting the benefit of the BU buff. Just because you think it's a problem that you're not always going to be able to have your big, angry attack of hateful facebeatery ready for when it is up doesn't mean that you will never have it up. Hell, if that attack constitutes such a small portion of your attack string, why the hell are you even bothering?

Actually, in most builds that intelligent people use that know how BU works, they let fly with their most powerful attack first because the primary advantage of BU is the ability to frontload that damage and take out hard targets incredibly quickly. You don't see Arch Blasters using Fistful of Arrows, Explosive Arrow and then Rain of Arrows after they use BU and Aim. It's pretty much the reverse order of that because you want to use your biggest, angriest attack first in order to get that burst damage in.

Actually, you're a petulant, ignorant, demanding, and self righteous child. Get it right, though I guess the chances of that happening are about as likely as you actually admitting that opinion and individual data points don't trump fact and statistical rigor. You've already as much as admitted that you don't have a clue what's going on when you didn't even know what the values on the proc were in the first place and yet you still believe that there is some magical reason that exists somewhere amidst fantasy and probability that what you believe should be trumps what actually is.

This isn't an issue of quantifiable weakness that generates a noticeable degree of underperformance. If you had actually put forth any numbers that said anything even remotely resembling that, I would actually give what you're saying some credence. As it stands, all you've said is that it doesn't perform as well as you want it to in all situations except for the ones that you bring up because they don't matter because those aren't the ones you care about. You don't care that the distribution of activation is even. You just care that the proc can occur in such a way that you're not going to get as much as humanly possible out of it. This is a game where random chance plays a rather significant chance in everything that occurs. Just because random chance can decrease the effect of something rather than always give you the opportunity to ream whatever you see in the *** doesn't mean that it's broken. Hell, if anything, that means it's working.

Actually, it wouldn't. The DPS of the build itself doesn't matter significantly because it's modifying base damage, not to mention that the "benefit" of the proc actually extends past the duration of the proc thanks to only needing +dam at the time of the power's activation. Even with a series of quick animating powers, you're still going to get more than the 5 second assumed duration thanks to that.

What you're discounting is that the "damage later" is delayed over the course of less than 5 seconds. It's not going to be a particularly big issue of immediacy when, unlike the AH proc, the damage is delayed only by an attack or two and the damage is global rather than specific, so killing the target doesn't end it whatsoever especially when it's coupled with a substantial +tohit buff as well (which shouldn't be discounted because, while it isn't always particularly useful, it's still a benefit that has some effect upon the balance consideration).

I'm curious to see how exactly the BU proc is losing out compared to a rare damage proc. The BU proc deals more damage, and it actually applies its benefit to all damage dealt rather than to a single specific attack. The fact that the damage is delayed is minor when you factor in the ability for a player to capitalize on the activation by using multiple target attacks to guarantee use, not to mention that it doesn't suffer from the problem that AH does wherein the proc is virtually useless against a vast majority of targets.

The procs do not exist solely within the confines of single target design. They exist within the entire structure and assuming that the entire balance paradigm of procs is based upon the specific design of single target damage is ignoring a substantially larger portion of the design as a whole, especially since a much larger portion of the game is consumed by multi-target functionality than by the single hard target functionality that this forum so often revolves around.