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Quote:Superman beating up carjackers is its own brand of fun. My main endgame settings these days are +0x1, +0x8 and +4x8. Burning through missions for rewards, facerolling crowds to relax and get drops, or something nasty for the fun of it. No real in between settings. It just depends on my mood.That's what I'm seeing a lot of. People becoming Superman and beating up carjackers instead of fighting something that can fight back.
Leveling up tends to be as hard as I can do comfortably and predictably. Not really facerolling, but not really a big threat either. Dying once per hour or so, maybe. -
When you're talking about buffing an entire AT, it's almost impossible to do so in a vacuum, without referencing other ATs. Once you compare to another AT, and assuming one is superior to the other, and a bit oversimplistically, your two options if you want to fix it are buff one or nerf the other. So you're rather unlikely to see a thread that doesn't include the nerf option.
I'm not convinced of the basic assumption that the ATs are out of balance, though. -
At insane levels of recharge, yes. But Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals is reasonably competitive with a much lower recharge requirement.
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Well, that was a few hours of reading. I guess you think the thread's consensus was "Brutes are OP and should have their resistance cap reduced to 85%"? Or at least that seems to be what you argue against the most. The thread itself is much more wide ranging, and there seems to be little consensus, even if some ideas find more favor than others.
As I understand it, you think that 85% would unfairly penalize Fire and Electric Armor, while having little other practical effect. That if Brutes are OP, this does very little, and that if they aren't OP, it isn't necessary.
Like you, I don't think Brutes are OP, but I also don't think lowering their resistance cap to 85% would be much of a nerf, even for Fire and Electric outside of very specific situations.
I also don't think Tankers are underperformers that need more damage. But like lowering the resistance cap on Brutes, I also don't think raising the damage cap on Tankers would have much effect outside of very specific situations. It all sounds like much ado about nothing to me.
But then, I avoid iTrials to the extent possible, and while I have a number of Tankers, none have top end builds, and none are designed to play the Tanker role. I may play Tankers, but I'm not a Tank. I don't think I've ever been on a PUG with one of my Tankers, so I'm not subjecting any unsuspecting innocents to my complete lack of tanking.
And since it was referenced in the thread, honestly, the biggest reason I rerolled my main Scrapper as a Brute was because I was sick of runners. (Well, OK, I did kind of ragequit after getting spanked by Banished Pantheon, but I'm still leveling the Brute primarily because I hate runners.) But whether aggro control (and stopping runners) helps Brutes themselves in general is debatable. I personally like it, and I expect to leverage it into a faster kill rate than I had on my Scrapper (outside of hard targets). But I'll probably be taking more incoming damage as a result, and a lot of people don't want aggro auras on their Scrappers for this reason. The Brute has better survivability to cope with it. But then I don't have access to, say, Water Spout or Hibernate. I have less burst damage potential, so it's harder to eliminate troublesome enemies quickly, particularly after a pause in the action. In general, I like powers like Superior Conditioning more than powers like Conserve Power, but Conserve Power is the better response for endurance drains. But then, I'm planning to go with Ageless. But with Ageless instead of Barrier, I won't be hitting the higher resistance caps very often, mostly eliminating that advantage. It's all a rather complicated picture. In my mind, neither AT, even specifically for a top end Katana/Dark in solo incarnate content, is clearly superior. I suspect the Brute will be a little more survivable. But mostly, I'm just sick of runners. -
I think it looks great and is plenty effective. The combo system is painless if you're used to attack chains instead of just pounding whatever has recharged. You'll hate having lethal damage when you're fighting robots, but other than that it's not too bad.
For a Tanker, it may be more about spamming AoEs than worrying about combos, or you may be switching back and forth between Sweep and Attack Vitals, with Blinding Feint thrown in to improve damage. I'd definitely get at least Sweep up and running. -
Quote:Awww, the Super Stunners make the Freakshow more interesting! I agree, though; they're not quite the punching bags they used to be. But they're nothing that inspirations can't handle. But yeah, if I'm just street sweeping for XP, I'll pick a group with a Tank over a group with a Super Stunner any day.Players will often use the path of least resistance.
If you make enemies tougher, you'll find people will just move on to the next easiest mob. Look what happened to Freakshow....they were everyone's favorite punching bags. Then they added in super stunners. Now, they are not as popular.
Fifth Column/Council have always been my favorite punching bags, though. They're easy, and who doesn't like beating up Nazis? -
Absolutely! We're just talking about more options. Specifically higher difficulty levels, but lower difficulty levels were also mentioned if the devs can figure out how to balance the rewards.
Quote:That said, I *also* want more stuff that "If you go along like you have been, facerolling your way through content, you WILL have problems here." Create more enemies you don't WANT clustered for AOEs - because they'll buff each other to ridiculous extents.
I whine about it, but Vengeance is one of the things that makes Nemesis interesting - unless you're on facerolling difficulty, you need to save the lieutenants for last, and if they're clustered in a group, you may not be able to just cut loose with a ton of AoE. What you don't want left at the end are half the lieutenants and a few Nemesis bosses buffed into the stratosphere. I'm guessing good teams just steamroll them, though.
As I recall, Rularuu Brutes have similar requirements. I believe the lieutenants heal, and when the minions go down they give a damage buff. So solo at least, you want to kill the lieutenants first, then the bosses, then the minions. I might have the particulars wrong, but I remember them being a lot harder if you didn't kill them in the right order. Nobody fights Rularuu, of course.
Quote:for instance, Max's DA arc. If you do the prep work, it'll be easier. If not, you'll face everything.
From all the agreement, though, it sounds like they really nailed that arc. And even for me, it's one of my favorite missions right now. -
Quote:Not so plain and simple for everyone. I hate PvP. That's not what I play MMOs for.If someone is interested in something new and challenging, PvP is the answer for that. Plain and simple.
However, I agree that playing against actual human opponents is a great challenge if that's what you're into. It pretty much doesn't get any harder. I have great respect for the PvP community, and I'm sorry that this game hasn't been a better platform for them. Seriously, y'all are great, and deserve better.
Quote:Lastly, if you want a challenge in PvE, fix critter AI. Melees have it extremely easy. Critters should scatter and use ranged/debuffing while kiting, now that would be a challenge.
Bingo. One of the big complaints on the Scrapper board is how annoying it is to have enemies constantly running away, and how many of us want an aggro aura just so that we're not constantly chasing targets. I recently rerolled my fully-incarnated and IO'd main as a Brute because I just couldn't take it any more. I don't expect you'll find many meleer's who'd agree that the way to make the game more fun is to have everything constantly run away even more than they do and plink at you and debuff you from range. I agree that it's more challenging. It's just not my idea of fun.
If it was all ranged kiters and debuffers, I'd play something other than melee. -
Quote:Sounds reasonable. To avoid bad experiences, I agree with gating the harder settings so that nobody is cranking it up on a whim or on a new character. Becoming an incarante or picking up incarnate levels sounds like a reasonable way to gate it for most people most of the time. I'm sure there are people who would want to crank it up on non-incarnate toons, and maybe we can gate it reasonably so that they can do so, but being an incarnate or having incarnate levels just sounds like a nice, clear dividing line.How about this idea? Allow players to unlock the increased difficulty levels as they gain incarnate levels. So essentially, unlock the Lore incarnate level and unlock an "Incarnate difficulty" level available in the difficulty NPC. If the concern is that new players can still see the higher difficulties available (even if they can't select them), make them invisible until unlocked.
A side effect would be that accessing and changing incarnate difficulty levels is limited to incarnate toons only, so while non-incarnate toons could join these teams, they couldn't set the difficulty up that high. Which is fine. Doesn't really affect anything, but still a side effect worth mentioning.
What do you think of that? That way, new players don't dive in to +8 and immediately get slaughtered, but veterans can still take their main toons into new and uncharted difficulties. -
Quote:As I recall, there's no additional benefit to fighting anything beyond +5 as far as XP or other rewards while leveling. So I suspect there's nothing to be done with the rewards unless they specifically want to reward it, and I see no reason to. And yeah, I suspect this would be an easy change to make. But at least for now, the number of people thinking "man, I wish I could set the level higher than +4x8" are probably dwarfed by the number of newbies who would go, "Look, you can totally crank this game up! *splat* *splat* *splat* Dude, that's impossible! This game sucks! I quit!" Never get a second chance to make a first impression and all that.I sure wish it would happen. Choice vs. no-choice. Even if no team could handle 53+8, maybe some teams could handle 53+4 or +5. Or maybe not. But it wouldn't affect anyone else playing and that team could be free to dial in their difficulty to just the level they want. The reward levels could be addressed to avoid unnecessary powerleveling (if even possible at that difficulty). Ultimately, CoH's difficulty already does this...I'm just advocating for a larger range at the higher levels. I'd be surprised if, given the current system, this would be difficulty to code and implement.
As an aside, it would also work well in the dev's favor because it would allow them to keep rolling out powerful incarnate abilities without fear of trivializing existing game content due to the cap on difficulty levels.
(Edit: Or maybe not. People can already show up in Atlas with their level 1 characters, set it to +4x8, and get smeared in seconds on the first spawn of their mission, over and over. Either that's not happening, or people are smart enough to realize that if you crank the game to the max from the start, you can expect to faceplant repeatedly until you turn it back down, and shouldn't blame the game for that.) -
I oversimplified AAO in my comparison, being honest because I didn't realize it was different between a Scrapper and a Brute. 5 target AAO gives +46.88% on a Scrapper, but only +37.5% on a Brute. I was using 4 target AAO, which gives +32% on a Brute and +40% on a Scrapper.
You seem to be using 4 target Brute numbers for 5 targets on each.
But the gist of the argument is intact, of course, which is why I didn't (and still haven't) double checked my own numbers. -
Quote:In that sense, I don't like difficult content, because I don't like dying. I get unhappy if I die more than about once per hour, and I try not to die at all. (This "rule" can be suspended for challenge play, where face planting repeatedly is fine.) So I like content that is challenging, requiring me to play well, but which I can consistently survive. That can still be a pretty high setting for the game.What is fun to me is I have friends who complain about the lack of difficulty, too; and yet when I bring them into situations where the difficulty is high enough we die a few times or struggle a bit to get through, they start to get discouraged, sometimes really fast.
So do people truly like difficulty or do they only believe they do? I lean towards the latter...
And even then I can be a whiner. "OMG! I had to use my HEAL! I had to use inspirations! I had to pull! I hate these guys!" It's not really serious, but sometimes I get so used to steamrolling that it takes me by surprise when I actually have to use the tools available to me or to even use... tactics.
Quote:I'm all for more difficulty options but I question whether it's needed, and whether the suggested fixes wouldn't break something for other players; for example, making level shifts essentially irrelevant (or even a slight nerf due to the hp/damage scaling) in DA missions would put a damper on the average Joe's feeling of power after "working hard" for his incarnate loot.
I maybe haven't thought this through, but it sounds good to me on the surface. We can all still feel like we really got better when we got our incarnate levels, as we can either steamroll our previous settings, or turn our settings up. But we can trivially set ourselves to an impossible level of difficulty, so there's always a challenge for any toon, for any team.
(Edit: Also never going to happen, so only a half-serious suggestion.) -
To confirm, you're comparing level 10 characters?
Your observation then seems spot on. Brute is a pretty clear winner at level 10.
At level 10, your attacks aren't properly slotted. On both Scrapper and Brute, what few slots you do have would go accuracy and endurance reduction. So both are doing base damage.
The damage scale for Scrappers is 1.125 and for Brutes is .75, but let's add a 10% average chance of critical to the Scrapper and call it 1.24. By the time your Brute hits +65% damage from Fury, which is trivial, you've caught up to the Scrapper. In fact, you might well bump up on +150% damage from Fury, at which point you're doing 1.875, or about 50% more damage than the Scrapper. Or as you say, "In some cases the Brute is easily doing 40% more damage." Yep. Scrappers aren't even close at level 10.
But maybe sometime in the 20s, you'll have damage SOs slotted in your attacks. Let's call that +90% damage. You'll also have Against All Odds. It varies, but let's call that +40% damage. Now the Scrapper is doing 2.85 and the Brute is only doing 2.21 at the previous draw-even point of +65%. The Brute now has to max out at +150% to draw even. So by then, in practice, the Scrapper is ahead.
Other damage buffs continue to push the Scrapper further ahead, because they're buffing a higher base. So when you hit Build Up, the Scrapper is getting more out of it. If you add Musculature, the Scrapper is getting more out of it. (Edit: If you surround yourself with more enemies, which might be typical at higher levels, Against All Odds will give you much better than +40% damage, and the Scrapper will get more out of the additional bonus.)
On the other hand, my understanding is that the Brute ATO set is drastically superior to the Scrapper one for adding damage. And I think (I could be wrong) that the Lore pets are a straight add unaffected by archetype, so would bring the two closer together regardless of which is ahead. For that matter, many procs are straight adds, so again would bring the two closer together regardless of which is ahead.
So it can be a complex picture. Heck, I've probably made some error above. But yes, I believe the general consensus is that a Shield Scrapper will put out more damage than a Shield Brute.
Except at level 10, of course, where the Brute wipes the floor with the Scrapper.
And be prepared for the terrible teens. The teens are just evil for my Scrappers, where my Brutes coast right through them. Price of admittance for later awesome. -
Quote:My endurance usage is built around having Cardiac Core. So speaking only for myself, yeah, my build would crumble without it. Or at least chowing down blues to keep fighting isn't my idea of fun or a challenge. I had an endurance sustainable build before Cardiac, but it was built differently.Surely their godhood wouldn't crumble to nothing by unslotting their alpha, right?
Basically, I want to play my character as I built it. I'd much rather face stronger enemies than tie my hands behind my back, even if the practical result is the same.
Oh sure, for some people at least some of it is about bragging rights. I know I can personally be a braggart. But I run plenty of high-difficulty stuff without ever posting about it. It's FUN for some of us, making as good a build as we can figure out, testing it to failure, playing at the razor's edge. I also do plenty of play at +0x8 to relax and just flip out and kill things, or even +0x1 when I want to burn through missions. Sometimes I use inspirations. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I allow myself to run. Sometimes I insist on going down fighting. Whatever I'm in the mood for at the time.
There was actually a discussion on the Scrapper board recently about where all the bragging had gone, basically. We used to find the RWZ challenge challenging. Then it was AVs. Then, well, nothing really. Not that there wasn't challenge available, but there was nothing really specific to sink your teeth into and conquer. So there's not a whole lot of bragging going on these days over there.
Quote:It's not just about bragging rights. I can only speak for myself, but it's about fun too... It's the same reason why I don't turn on god mode cheats when playing an FPS...
And sometimes, I'm not so much for that kind of crazy. I play Left 4 Dead 2 on easy, and I admittedly suck at it, but still find it fun. Different games are fun for me in different ways, and at different difficulty levels. -
Quote:I get what you are saying, but I rarely kite as a scrapper or a Brute unless I am testing my build at edge cases; ie. recently read a Werner post. In fact I set my difficult to be just at the edge of where I would have to kite to do normal content.
So what is this "kiting" y'all speak of? It sounds strange and exotic!
Kidding aside, I kite mercilously on Blasters. My Scrappers almost never do because I always seem to pick sets like Katana that have to stay in melee to stay alive. But once upon a time, some people questioned whether Regen could do a Rikti War Zone challenge without a sword primary. I believed it was possible, so I did one on my Katana/Regen without Divine Avalanche. Oh, the kiting. So yes, perfectly valid and effective tactic on most Regens. And I can see the argument that many Brute Regens need and use all the extra survivability since they pay a higher damage cost for kiting.
My normal play difficulty varies wildly based on mood and character.
I'm probably mangling this quote, and don't know who it's from, but:
"I'm not running away from you. I'm kiting you."
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I think the difficulty level should be based on your effective level. So if I set it at +4x8 and I'm currently 51 with my Alpha level shift but not going against incarnate content, then the enemies should be level 55. If it's incarnate content and I'm level 50+3, the enemies should be level 57. You know, +4, like I asked for. That said, there's no way I could turn up the difficulty to a REAL +4x8 in incarnate content. But then, that's the intent - a difficulty level I just can't handle.
I also like the idea of having -2 or -3, again based on effective level. You can already use -1x1 to trivialize content on a decent build, so I don't think there would be a good argument about "but then it's too easy to get mission completion rewards". It's something the devs would need to take a look at, though. In any case, I think it would be nice if anyone with any build were able to solo effectively on SOME setting.
DarkSideLeague, I can farm +4x8 Knives of Vengeance just fine on my Katana/Dark Scrapper, I think as easily as I used to farm +3x8 Council on the same character before the incarnate powers and level shifts. But I can't back to back compare, and perhaps memory is faulty. (Edit: and granted, you said +0x8 - no, it's not THAT easy) Talons of Vengeance are a bigger challenge, and Banished Pantheon are downright nasty.
Here's me soloing the final mission of Dark Astoria arc 5 on +4x8 no temps, no insps, no deaths. I got through the first five arcs that way. The sixth beat me, and doesn't look possible on my current build, though the community gave me some great suggestions for improvements. By the way, the video is boring and long and includes pauses waiting for powers to recharge. I don't expect anyone to watch it. Just showing that even +4x8 incarnate content is arguably too easy for some builds. (I did die once on arc 4 and had to redo it. Arcs 1, 2, 3 and 5 all went down on the first try, no deaths.)
http://youtu.be/ZLfLYGwysl4
And here are some Banished Pantheon killing me under the same conditions and constraints. So I can still find stuff to kill me in this game if I go searching for it. I'm not personally complaining about difficulty level, just acknowledging that there could at some point be an issue for a few people if power levels keep going up.
http://youtu.be/VATfajOsMJU
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The few people I socialize with in game know how survivable a Scrapper can be. But my main doesn't tank - no aggro aura. If he had that, he could probably tank. So now he's a level 33 Brute.
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Both would be just fine, as both are secondaries that don't really need anything from the primary. I didn't IO it out, but I leveled a Dual Blades/Willpower to 50 and really enjoyed it. I think Invulnerability does best with a heal, which might push you towards Aid Self for leveling, which a lot of people (myself included) don't like. It's also nice to not have to worry much about endurance. So I guess I'm recommending Willpower as being more fun?
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Mids' links don't work for me, unfortunately.
Quote:Yeah, I think that's affecting the analysis. You targetted the same defense levels, so it's like you didn't even take Cloak of Darkness. You're basically missing the 6% defense it gives you, and in the realm of defense where that can actually make a big difference in how much you can survive....I ended up 'settling' for going for 32.5 s/l/e/n as the baseline I was shooting for, and then stacking damage or health or whatnot with what I had left over. So maybe I wasn't really playing to the strengths of the armor sets as I tweaked different builds.
Also, Dark is a 100% heal every 12 seconds, often averaging no endurance cost if slotted properly and used in large groups. The heal % is per target. You don't really even need to slot for healing, though I personally do. On the downside, you need a target, and you need to be able to hit that target, though that's rarely a problem. It is occasionally one, though.
After that, Dark is more about the subtle advantages I was talking about - mez auras, unsuppressed stealth, endurance and recovery debuff resistance, but they add up. Minions locked down, alpha broken up, no double pulls, and they can't kill you with drains and the like.
You also don't need to skip your mez auras to save endurance. Take Oppressive Gloom if that's a concern. Most people don't take both, and Oppressive Gloom is probably better for most builds.
Unfortunately, I've not played Fire to 50, let alone IO'd one out, so I can't really give you a fair comparison in that sense.
Invuln is great. I can't argue with Invuln. Add a heal, and it's amazing. -
Quote:I like several things about Dark:I've heard a lot of good things about Dark and that intrigues me, because on paper it doesn't look any sturdier than Fire other than covering the psi hole. Is it the mez toggles?
- spammable full heal
- at least good resists to everything, including toxic and psionic
- endurance and recovery debuff resistance
- fear protection
- mez auras
- damage aura
- unsuppressed stealth
Knockback is pretty easily addressed with IOs. It's not perfect, but it's almost always enough.
It totally fails on defense, though, the third basic pillar of survivability. Fortunately, defense is one of the easiest things to add to a build. With Katana, pool powers and lots of set bonuses, I've played it soft capped, and it's a monster. For incarnate content, I've backed off the soft cap (since it no longer is) and buffed other aspects of the character, mostly recharge for the heal. It can be hugely survivable.
But the defense debuffs. Oh, the defense debuffs. Enter Barrier if you're expecting moderate debuffs, or Ageless for the most severe. And apparently, fixed!
As for Fire, I'm sure you could make a very survivable build if that's what you targeted. But there are subtle differences that I think add up. First, Dark has a tiny little bit of defense. It might seem like it means nothing, but if it's the difference between 40% and 45% defense in normal content, that can mean surviving being surrounded by twice as many enemies. Then yes, we have the toxic and psionic resistance, the mez auras, unsuppressed stealth, and I think the whole package adds up to more than most people might think. -
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I'm not sure I'd have said, "plow". Depends on the enemy, I suppose.
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Here's the info I had:
Ageless Radial Epiphany: +100% end, +70% rech first 10s, 40% next 20s, 20% next 30s, 10% last 60s (120s total), +85% debuff RES first 22.5s, 42.5% next 22.5s, 21.25% last 45s (90s total), 60ft radius
I'm comparing Ageless Radial to Barrier Core, and I have Radial with a 90s duration on the debuff resistance. But you're right. Looking in game, it looks like 2 full minutes. Even better!
Barrier Core Epiphany: +90% RES/DEF first 10s, 32.5% next 20s, 7.5% next 30s, 5% last 60s (120s total), 60ft radius -
Hasten on auto and Dark Regeneration when and if you need it. Of course there are some incarnate clicks and click toggles. But defense debuffs are Dark's Achilles' heel. I haven't tried it with Ageless, though. I do like Invulnerability. I haven't done much with Electric.