Untamed

I've said it before and I'll say it again ... late game blasters need some mez protection. It doesn't need to be overwhelming, mag 15 protection like melee's get. Heck it doesn't even need to include knockdown/immobilize ... but I would think that every secondary's level 9 (level 38) power should be a minor (think mag 5) mez protection toggle against sleep/stun/hold. This alone will fix a large majority of late game blaster issues which all more or less revolve around mezzing. In the late game everything mezzes and it's usually huge AoE style mez. For a blaster to be successful they more or less require an empathy defender to perma-CM them or whatnot. That's dumb.

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Also the Kinetics power "Speed Boost" would offer some mitigation for the recharge slowdown.

[/ QUOTE ] Quite right, but nothing within the tanker sets and no kind of inspiration would. I guess technically so would Hasten. Regardless quadrupling recharge times for 20-30 seconds would hit everyone more than hard enough and without extremely specific mitigation would result in the effect I think the devs want ... and one that would reflect the idea of what it means to "come down" from rage. I guess people might still "perma" it but it certainly wouldn't be optimal.

The only problem with a damage % based penalty is that rage itself offers a damage buff. So if you say, cut damage by 50% but someone makes a perma-rage build then they wouldn't suffer any damage penalty at all ... just for a while a reduced damage bonus. Accuracy is a neat idea but I don't see it necessarily curbing the perma-ragers much. I mean if given the choice between 80-160% damage bonus 100% of the time with a 30% accuracy penalty 25% of the time ... compared to just normal all the time ... I think the perma-rage still wins.

I like the idea of slowing down/hindering the tank post-rage ... but the penalty needs to be well thought out. As we all posted, Rage should not kill the tank when it falls, it should just reflect the tank is tired (besides unstoppable already exists to kill the tank with the crash ).

I think there's a lot of good ideas here, many of which are completely viable. One of the best points however is that if Rage is meant to "balance" the SS set, then it needs to not be considered in a vaccuum. It NEEDS to be better than buildup or fiery embrace. It NEEDS to have less of a downside than the standard powers everyone else gets. I really like the idea of Rage, I think it gives SS some much needed flavor, but I also don't think it should be the cornerstone of the set. If you want to totally balance rage then yes, give it a fairly large "crash" (the idea for slow recharges for 20 seconds sounds excellent to be honest ... why focus only on stamina??) AND balance the rest of the set. Make rage a useful and powerful power with a fair downside and then make the rest of the set stronger. This is a better approach, I feel, than pretty much forcing every SS to get rage to be "on par" with the rest of the sets.

However I don't want to see buildup for SS, personally. Its very cool having a unique power for our set and the concept of rage is totally cool. By the same token I don't think it should be "permable" ... or rather the downside of the power should make such a decision ... well bad . I think 120 seconds of glory followed by 20 seconds of slow recharges or slow end recovery or some end loss ... would keep people out of the perma-rage boat but would still leave it as a usable combat power.

However the slow recharges is the best penalty I've heard yet since AFAIK this cannot be mitigated in game by anything. Any endurance based penalty can be mitigated by a decent Emapthy defender or even some blue pills or unstoppable. Any stun based penalty can be mitigated by the basic defense powers or a good empathy defender or disciplines. But slow recharge ... I guess a radiation defender has a minor fix for this ... but there's no innate tanker powers or inspirations that will solve the problem ... which makes it the perfect "penalty". It wont kill the tanker but it will slow them down.

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Many players complained about the stun at the end of Rage because it turned off toggles and left them helpless. At the same time, hardcore players with perma-unstoppable or Unyielding were able to avoid the Stun effect. Thus the casual player was getting penalized and hardcore player wasn’t getting the desired penalty. We're still looking at the issue - so feel free to post your thoughts & ideas!

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Thanks for the post. I think the big concern now is that 100% end reduction ALSO drops everyone's toggles when their endurance tanks. I concur that it should have a penalty that people should not be able to ignore but a tanker with no toggles is dead. Perhaps a lesser drop in endurance would need your needs? 90%? 75%? I don't know if the community here fully understands your goals but our goal is to not die . Whatever penalty you come up with, please ensure that it is viable for a tanker stuck in combat. If you are in the middle of a massive battle trying to keep your team alive, rage taking you out is not an option.