detherk

I originally had the drivers off of the OS X cd. This morning I installed the Bootcamp drivers for XP off of ATI's website. No change in performance.

I've been running the Mac client for a while now, with no major issues. Highest graphics settings for the most part, with severe graphics lag only in the arachnos maps.

So I installed the PC client on my Boot Camp partition, expecting better performance. The game was so jerky it was unplayable. Even when logging in...when you get to the character selection menu, as I would mouse over my characters, there was a noticeable delay between when my mouse was physically hovering over a character, and when the game caught up and highlighted that character's name.

FWIW, this is a ~2 year old iMac, 24", with the ATI Radeon 7200 card.

I've been playing with the Mac client for a while now, and it runs fairly well. Just for kicks, I installed the PC client on Boot Camp expecting better performance, (since the Mac client is just the PC client with an emulator wrapped around it.)

My performance with the PC client running under Boot Camp is very jerky...I've never seen anything like it when using the Mac client, even at peak hours.

States...comparing the numbers btwn SR and Ice, it looks like the scrapper can totally out-perform the tank for resisting def debuffs. If they both have all relevant toggles on, the scrapper has a higher total resistance than the tank does!

And from Havoc's number crunching spreadsheets, it looks like SR was already superior to the Ice tank.

These changes sound great! Don't get me wrong. Between this, and dmg resistance insps, Ice tanks will be doing a LOT better than before. But I still think a tank should have a better base defense than a scrapper.

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Or Radiation, or Storm? I was under the impression they were debuff defenders also. While Empathy, Kinetics and Bubbles were more concerened with buffing teammates.

Cheers!

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Sorry, those sets have buffs. Radiation has AM, and Storm has O2-boost. Sure, those are mostly debuff sets, but TA is entirely debuff.

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Adron's comments brings me to a solution I came up with to make DEf equal to RES.

The problem lies in that DEF is *subtracted* from accuracy, while RES is *multipled* against damage.

ie: Accuracy = Base - DEF, while Damage = Base * (1-RES)

I propose we change the calculation for how DEF is applied, making it:

Accuracy = Base * (1-DEF).

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5 stars for you. This is a brilliant idea.

And as for the 0.5% base DEF...Are you nuts!?!
This is saying that one attack every 200 attempts will miss us, because of the defense given by this. Thats insignificant.

Statesman, you always say you want this game to appeal to the casual player...That we shouldnt *need* the numbers in order to build effective characters. And then you go off and do all these internal tests, and build characters knowing full well what the numbers are (and so you can make intelligent choices for slotting, and picking powers). Whereas Joe User sees "wow, let me slot this defensive power for more defense", and ends up wasting 5 slots.

When I heard that the game manual was going to be revised and re-released, I was excited...Finally I can see the sum total of all the game changes since release. Call me underwhelmed. I was expecting to see things like "integration is 50% enhanceable for heals". Or shoot, I'd have been happy with seeing that it even takes healing enhancements. With each issue, I've been trying to mentally keep track of how powers have changed for all my characters. The problems and unpleasant surprises have mostly been for new characters I've made for which I hadn't kept track of previous changes. And I still dont know if "50% enhanceable" means only a max of 3 heal enh's can be used, or if the percentage increase in rgen ability is 50% of what it should be.

I don't have an ice tanker (but I liked the idea, initially). What held me back was seeing that the armors don't stack. Last time I checked the in-game power descriptions at character creation, it still said the powers dont stack. But a few days ago an ice tanker told me they did. How can I make intelligent decisions when we (a) don't have the data, (b) are allowed to waste slots on useless enhancements, and (c) in-game and out-of-game documentation isn't kept current?

If you're going to let us slot a power with something, make those slots count. If you're so dead set against us being able to make intelligent decisions by ourselves, then you need to make the decisions for us. If we try slotting this ice power for defense, you need a figure that popups, waves an arm and says "thats not the enhancement you're looking for".

Unless I missed a memo, the role of a tank (as purported by Statesman himself) is to be a damage sponge. Soak up damage meant for the squishies.

Every tanker primary power should, in some way, help towards that end. I can see only 2 ways any given power could do this:
1) more protection (resistance/defense/status prot)
2) aggro capability

So where DID Burn fit into that line of thinking? It gave some status protection, and by doing damage, it annoyed the enemies enough to want to bash the tanker's skull in, despite the fact that it hurt to do so. OK, so maybe the damage was a little insane, but it still fit the tank AT.

Now where does Burn fit? Still the same status protection, but no aggro whatsoever, because of the fear effect. (And as a resulting consequence, very little damage output). Burn is now the anti-tank power. A fire tank uses it to remove aggro from himself, so he can watch the squishies all die horrible, painful deaths. How very noble of him.

Whatever else you say, or do...the fear effect has GOT to go.

Now comes the related question of why do we have multiple tanker primaries? Why not just one (insert favorite powerset here). As I understand it (and hope to be the case), its to create a bit of variety in the game so we don't have a bunch of cookie cutter builds running around. Fire gives up some of #1 above, in exchange for more damage output (and more damage should equate to more aggro). So he gives up #1 for more #2. Survivability is about the same, because of the additional damage. If you don't want tanks to have additional damage capability...fine, then we'll all go back to our cookie cutter non-fire builds. Less protection should equal more of something else, with that something else yielding equal tankability.

By squeezing us dry on resistances and defenses...you're only making us hold on to what little resistances/defenses we have even more. We're becoming more cookie-cutter than ever.

If burn was bad because of overkill damage, and abuse of such in conjunction with mass herding, then make some more rational change. Tanker powers to NOT need fear. Tone down the damage, but not the recharge (or at least, not by such insane amounts).

For herding problems, give us soft caps on # of people we can be attacked by, and still retain full defensive power. If I'm being attacked by 1 person with a sword, we can trade blows and parries for a while. if I'm being attacked by 20 people, I can parry some of the blows (while never getting my own attacks in), but there's no earthly way I'll be able to defend against all 20. Their numbers will overwhelm me quickly. <snarkiness> Unless I'm a superhero </snarkiness>.

Positron,

If the changes you listed above do actually make it to test, please do everyone a favor and play a TA/A defender solo, and in an 8-player group. I'd like to know how defendery you feel....whether or not your debuffs are helping to keep the group alive.

I'm from the "dont increase recharge times" camp. The more this tactic is used to prevent uber-builds, the fewer viable build options become available. It'd practically force TA defenders to use perma-hasten.

FWIW, I'd also prefer TA as a blaster secondary. This set is on par with devices. Currently, there isnt really a great secondary for archery blasters to use, aside from devices

Not shaggy monsters, but I've seen Egyptian gods represented as evil parasitical worms, and Norse gods represented as short grey skinned aliens. As for the Roman gods, I've seen them represented as uhh, planets.

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on another topic but still in this general topic of I5... saw this on another board and I couldn't agree more.

I'm a bit miffed from a cultural perspective. The Tuatha deDannan were the Faerie Folk of Ireland, not big shaggy monsters. It gets a bit tiresome seeing the religious beliefs of my ancestors ground up and spit out in a totally outrageous form. No one depicts the Roman Gods or Norse Gods or even Egyptian Gods as shaggy monsters, but hey, who cares about the Irish!? We can do whatever we want to their Gods, right?

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I also agree with this view.

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Go here. According to this, "Tsoo" is Hmong for "beat", "break", or "smash". And you pronounce it (oh, THIS will drive you all insane)...

Joong.

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So, then... shouldn't we spell "Hmong" this way?

HMOO.


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No no no...there is a convervation of O's
TSOO has 2 O's, as does Joong.

So logically, Hmong should be spelled "HMO"

And to continue the movie quoting,

"Those <bleeping> HMO's"
"Actually, i believe thats the technical term for them"