Volante

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What you are describing isn't a bug, its a strategy/tactic/skill.

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That depends entirely on who you ask.

Yeah, that stuff would be mindbogglingly awesome.

Unfortunately thanks to PvP 'balancing,' none of it will ever happen.

It burns my ego too (my personal ego, not my character's) because I signed on to a SUPERhero game that offered something a bit different than the standard MMO business model of heavy grinds, timesinks and forced grouping. In the beginning CoH seemed like a game that trusted its players enough to let them be 'super', to let them do epic things they could never think of trying in other games. It dared to be different, but now everything I see from the Devs indicates that they've stopped trying to think outside the box and have firmly entrenched themselves inside it.

Want to keep players playing? Don't take away their toys. Add more things for them to do, especially high-level content. CoH's main flaw has always been that once you hit level 50, the game is essentially over.

We need more options for what to with our heroes, not less.

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I was finding myself instead feeling as if I had the combat prowess of Jimmy Olsen.

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Rofl.
Let's face it, the comic-book world was unbalanced.
Pit Apocalypse against Toad. It's a given. Or Juggernaut vs. Jean Grey.

The dmg is just too low and end cost too high.
I'm actually embarassed to fight in teams because here I have this HUGE tanker, supposed super strength. But my girly hits take about 12 dmg a pop. I wouldn't want my teammates to say, "haha look at that girl." or "What's the hold up? That guy should have been laid out minutes ago."

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And if you try to beef up with Rage and show em something, then they're left wondering why you're collapsing in a useless heap two minutes later.

One thing about being an Invuln/SS tanker is that our own powers can do more harm to us than most of our enemies can. That has always struck me as being odd.

Yeah, the animations for Jab, Punch and Haymaker are really pretty generic "Hulk SMASH" kind of stuff. Which might be the intent I suppose, but a couple more convincing actual punching attacks would look nicer. The sonic boom effects are cool. You might have missed the time early on when KO Blow did about the same (or less) damage as Jab. Ugh. If you did, count yourself lucky.

Your ideas sound good. Hand Clap and Hurl especially could use some real spicing up. Not every power has to be awesome, but they should at least be generally useful and somewhat interesting. Hand Clap is entirely too situational and Hurl is just plain slow/boring. Laser Beam Eyes from the Epic pool is exponentially more useful (and cooler) than Hurl even though it doesn't do as much damage. I always envisioned Hurl as being able to pick up and throw big stuff like dumpsters and cars, not just the same hunk of concrete over and over again. Damage wouldn't be a big issue if you could lift a car over your head and throw it at a Malta Titan. Or better still, lift up one Titan and throw it at another. That would just be insanely freakin' cool.

Rage's disorient still hurts even when running Unyielding 24/7. Even the wimpiest additional stun effect during Rage's 15-second drunk time will bust through Unyielding and leave you helpless. I think the total endurance drain is actually a bit more manageable, even though its still pretty nasty. I can think of a couple other options here.

1. Modified Disorient Penalty Rage

Lower the magnitude of the disorient slightly to allow it to be managed (barely) by the everyday status protection power available to every tanker powerset. Increase the defense debuff by a noticable but not quite suicidal amount. Add an endurance drain of 20-25 points as it ends.

2. Killer Endurance Drain Penalty Rage

Eliminate the initial End cost, keep the total End drain and small defense debuff, add a blue "-100" message over our heads to notify us of the Rage drain so we don't think we just ran ourselves out of End or that there's an invisible Sapper stalking us (again).

The addition of a large animated arm punching us in the stomach, or perhaps a large mysterious target appearing on the front and back of our costume would also be a nice touch.

Keeping fights from becoming trivial is good.

However, superheroes should still be able to feel like superheros without having to beat on blues and greens. At high levels, I feel that a small fight with 2-3 white minions should be trivial for most heroes, while 5 or more should get trickier. LTs should be fairly formidable, and bosses should be downright dangerous. Most bosses seem about right, but LTs could probably use a boost in abilities.

How about adding some function where minions become tougher in packs? Strength in numbers and all that, especially if there is a LT or boss in the group to lead them. The more of them there are, the more confident (HP and maybe small combat bonuses) they get that they can bring down that big bad hero, but as they start being defeated one by one that confidence (bonus) slowly erodes.

Just a thought.

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Minions should be thwompable in droves once you get up there, but the lieutenants and bosses shouldn't.

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Agreed. Minions are like the jumpsuit and helmet-wearing nameless bad guys of the James Bond universe. The hero can take these expendable peons down in droves, but when Jaws or Odd Job show up, he's got a real fight on his hands.

Minions should be tough enough to avoid being AOE alpha-striked, but it shouldn't require an epic struggle to defeat several of them.

I remember fighting three minions as a level 15 tanker. It quite frankly sucked.

Awesome prospects indeed.

Okay, after playing on the Test server for a week or so with the new SS changes, I went back to live and played my tanker for a while. This led me to the following conclusions:

Knockback sucks on a melee character's primary attacks. I could care less about DPS, having to chase a boss around the map or waiting for a group of enemies to come back for another Foot Stomp just isn't fun. I'd honestly rather they all stay there and punch me in the face...at least that way I can punch them too. Knockdown accomplishes everything defensively that knockback can except for physically moving enemies around.

I'd recommend leaving Handclap and Hurl with knockback, as they aren't really primary attacks and are more useful as utility or emergency powers.

With an extreme damage attack in the form of Knockout Blow, I would say that SS is fine damage-wise. Our slow, weak-hitting attack is now a slow, hard-hitting one, and whether we like the downside or not, Rage is a nice power and something no other powerset has.

If the changes currently on the Training Room go live as is, I'd call Super Strength fixed.

Yeah, Knockout Blow has come a long way...maybe far enough that it might indeed warrant a switch with Foot Stomp, but we'll have to wait and see. So far I don't think the Devs have ever altered the progression order of a powerset, just the powers themselves.

At level 38, the new KB with six damage enhancers can one-shot minions and allows me to down a LT in three blows. With Rage its even nicer. I smacked an even con for 490... I think I went into shock for a little while after that (me, not my tanker).

If its damage + disorient is kept this way, I think the 25 sec timer is quite acceptable.

In the Training Room, Knockout Blow has had its endurance cost and damage increased to equal Total Focus/Seismic Smash.

I'm all for a little Hulkishness, just as long as I don't have to morph into a huge green half-naked man.

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Ideally, the difference should be marginal and some of the changes would simply move SS closer toward that margin. All the changes though would, IMO, put it above the others.

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Alright then, that's where we disagree. Realistically though, I don't expect even half of these suggestions to be seriously considered by a Dev, let alone implemented.

Anyway the more nitpicky back and forth we have in here, the less likely that either of our points will be considered by the head honchos, so I'm off to give my tanker a Sparkle aura on the test server for no good reason whatsoever.

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The bulk actually seems to be supportive of many of these changes.

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Actually, the boards represent an incredibly small minority of the playerbase. And within this tiny sampling there are players that simply choose not to comment in threads like this one because they not only disagree with what is being said, they also don’t feel like stepping into the middle of (what feels like) a super-strength bash session and state “I disagree!” because it’s pointless. Your minds are already made up and you’re not looking for opposition, just agreements.


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Small, sure, but vocal nonetheless. As with any issue you have to speak up if you expect to be heard, which is the whole point of having a forum.

I stuck with Super Strength because it was the powerset I originally wanted. I stuck with it, played with it, and tried to find ways of making it fit the superhero concept it's based on. I was happy enough with it to keep going, though it was rather discouraging every time I played a new alt and invariably had an easier time of things. I like my SS tanker and will keep playing, and without Super Strength as a powerset I doubt I would have bought this game at all. I'm not going to just give up and play a different character when there is so much room for improvement here, and the Devs seem to actually listen.

If the vast majority are "busy playing and enjoying their powers" that's great. This is just trying to make those powers even more enjoyable to an even wider population.

If you have opposing viewpoints, present them. This isn't a dictatorship.

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"As it stands, making a soloable or offensively effective SS tanker takes an inordinate amount of work, and even then we're still lagging behind."

There's where the difference really kicks in, in differences between understandings of soloable or offensively effective.
I can solo 15 orange baddies, but it takes a good while. I find that normal. Offensively effective? I'm not as effective offensively as a scrapper or Blaster, but I stand toe to toe offensively with defenders and controllers. That seems reasonable to me.

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I'm not comparing Super Strength to scrapper or blaster damage, that's like comparing a kite to an F-15. I'm comparing SS to other tanker power sets when I say that its subpar, and since Super Strength is pretty much the classic comic book power, I think that's a bad thing.

You seem to be arguing mainly that you're content with SS as it is, which is fine. For the most part so am I. But I fail to see how any of these suggested changes will make your life harder. Even if all of these go through somehow, SS will not be in danger of unbalancing anything. We've actually put some thought into this, and as tankers I think we have as good as or a better appreciation of the balance issues facing this game than anyone else does.

Ultimately its up to the Devs. All we're doing is making suggestions.

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"This is from an L40 Tanker who also respecced on Test and is running perma-Unstop, perma-Hasten and perma-Rage."

Don't take this wrong, but anyone who wants to run this kind of character really has to sit back and be silent about what powers should and shouldn't be able to do. You are a min-maxer who wants to squeeze every ounce of effectiveness out of every power. That is not what the bulk of us want.

I don't want Super Strength adjusted so that you can make another perverse Tanker-Scrapper combo. Its the min-maxers who calculated the loss in DPS due to knockback that almost cost Super Strength its defining cool feature: Knockback.

You don't have a concept of what 'normalized' characters are doing with these power sets. You don't appreciate that Super Strength is perfectly fine in a normalized environment. You want it skewable.

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The bulk actually seems to be supportive of many of these changes. I can see where you're coming from, but I'd say its a solid grasp of how these powers do work in the 'normalized' environment that made us come up with these ideas in the first place. We've seen normal, and we're not particulary happy with it.

Think of it this way, if Super Strength gets some improvements, people won't have to min/max as much to get the hero they want. As it stands, making a soloable or offensively effective SS tanker takes an inordinate amount of work, and even then we're still lagging behind.

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Wait, wait, disorients STACK? I've never been stunned while using Unyeilding Stance.

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Rage's disorient is a heavy magnitude one, enough at least to cap Unstoppable's resist so that any other stun you get during that time will break through and hit you. US seems to be more durable, but I bet you could still get nailed through it if enough effects pop at the same time. I've gotten stunned through Unstoppable even without Rage in fights with multiple Tank Smashers and Freak Slammers hitting me simultaneously (the TV respec trial on the test server for example).

It might take a somewhat extreme encounter to push you over the limit, but trust me, things can get very messy very quick if it does happen.

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I'm very much opposed to the Rage changes. Raising the timer? How will this help SS tankers? Also, how would a -DEF or an Endurance hit help either?

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It helps by being less completely debilitating than the current drawback, which leaves you disoriented and helpless unless you use it with US or Unstoppable, and even then any additional disorient effect will send you reeling around like a drunken fool while the mobs open up a party-sized can of spank on you and your team.

I'd gladly have a full duration Def penalty AND an endurance hit/freeze instead of something that leaves me with no control of my hero whatsoever.

Looks like the Knockback enhancement changes are up on the test server, worth checking out if you can.

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One thing on rage ...is it true it only increases base damage not enhance slotted damage? Is this by design?

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Yes and yes. I'd say it was done this way so that builds with little or no attack slotting would still get a good damage boost.

Great job, I'd love to see all or at least some of these changes come through.

If in doubt, all that the Devs really need to confirm that Super Strength needs work is to make a side by side comparison between it, Energy Melee, and the other tanker secondaries. They are all ahead on damage (with the exception of Ice) and utility, despite the fact that Super Strength should be the defining powerset because of its comic book legacy.

We don't want it to be the best, just more or less equal.