mauk2

(raises hand)


Having seen one of Iggy's costumes 'up close and personal' as it were, I can testify to the truth of this statement.

(don't kill me!)

It's easy to get costumes these days, head over to "Screenshots and Fan Creations', admit your lack of fashion sense, explain how ya wanna look, and those fine folks will SO hook you up.

Here. Try this thread for size:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=204518

Oh, and never forget:

Stone Armor is King. It is not even close.

That's quite wrong. Dull Pain and it's cousins, when nicely slotted, can easily get a tanker to the hitpoint cap, right around 3500. With a lot (LOT) of recharge, that can be permanent or darn near.


It is a considerable edge.

That said, I think Electric is flippin' awesome for the new content.

Sadly, I just happen to think fire might be better. Although it's close.

Really!

I've been bringing break-frees to use on my fire tank while burninating a spawn door. I usually have a few left over, so I'll be sure to try this.

Great tip!

Hmmmm....


As I recall the discussion..... Man, this was YEARS ago now....


I seem to remember people discounting capped resistance vs soft-capped defense, because the defense also mitigated 90 percent of the debuffs that were incoming.

Resistance does not, and you have to simply endure.

Granted, since then they've added some DDR here and there, but I'm not sure enough to make 90 percent resist equal 45 (90 percent misses) defense.

Thus why I'd shoot for 93, to try and make resistance an equal partner. Well, a more equal partner..... I dunno, maybe 95 would work better? But even 92 would serve as a potent differentiator between tanks and brutes.

It'd be nice if the Dev's would add some additional status resist/DDR to some click powers or lesser valued toggles inherents.

That's a bit similar in result to what I was proposing, and might even be simpler. However, I don't want to advocate nerfs on any AT unless absolutely required, and frankly, it's not here.

Why should Brutes get nerfed because tankers are not sufficiently more durable to make them worth it? Tankers just got a hefty damage buff, let's address their core functionality as a differentiator as well. 3 percent may not sound like a lot, but it would cut the damage a capped Tanker takes by a whopping 30 percent.

It would also make resist capping a Tanker a MUCH more desirable goal, and would reduce (somewhat) the utter dominance of +Def compared to +res as a damage mitigator. The Devs have been giving the resist sets a lot of love lately, why not take it to the logical conclusion?

(Honestly, as I recall the old 'immortality line' discussions from ages ago, even 95 to 96 percent resistance would not be out of line with the strength of capped defense. But I may be recalling incorrectly.)

(heh)

I assure you, I'm quite familiar with scrapper damage at the cap. Kins are some of mah bestest buddies.

Also, I did not forget about blasters, I did not include them in the example. That would be why I included the words 'for example' in my post. (Not to mention that 'do similar things' line.)

I excluded them because this is not a blaster board.

However, since you brought it up, how would YOU address blaster/dominator/corrupter/defender damage?

For that matter, do ranged damage dealers have an issue with similar damage dealt? Defenders just got a huge solo/small team damage boost, is that causing issues with defenders stepping on other AT's ranged toes? (I seriously doubt it.) Does a corrupter put out almost as much as a blaster, or even more due to 'better' secondaries?


Also, since the Dev's seem utterly determined to cram a debuff onto everything in the game, would this issue be better served via that route?

Going back to my original example, (see me ignore blasters some more) would it be better to include a -res debuff in all of a scrappers attacks, instead of raising their damage cap? This would also make scrappers more team-friendly just like Tankers, which may of may not be desirable.

Ehn, just some thoughts. Take 'em or leave 'em!

That brings up an interesting point.

I think the dynamic range for the various AT's should be slightly expanded.

For example, let's look at the four melee AT's. Tanks, brutes, scrappers, and stalkers.

They should rank in order of toughness, from highest to lowest, and in terms of damage output, from lowest to highest. In reality, they are waaay too close together, as this entire thread relates.

So, I think that Tankers should have their resistance caps raised by three percent. IE, Tankers can cap at 93 percent. Brutes at 90, scrappers and stalkers at 75 percent.

Leave Brutes alone.

Raise the Scrapper damage cap by, say, 100 percent.

Raise the Stalkers damage cap 100 percent AND increase their base melee damage scalar to 1.2.

So, widen the range so that tankers can be 'uniquely tough' and stalkers can be 'uniquely deadly.' Brutes are just fine as-is (and are frequently referred to as inducing obsolescence in other AT's). Scrappers can now firmly out-damage Brutes in the same teaming situations where Brutes now firmly out-durable scrappers. All balanced, all clearly distinguished.

Do similar things for the other AT's.

I think we need this sort of a distinguisher, especially as the Incarnate abilities are 'flat'. A Tanker judgement does the exact same damage as a Blaster judgement.

How does that make sense? Give me back my uniqueness!

Yeah, I just got my first i-level, and wow, what a difference. Time to get that second tier 3!

That's very true! I could see a very dynamic playstyle for a claw/sr, using focus and shockwave liberally at range to knock baddies all over the place.

Not my cup of tea, but I'm sure somebody would like it.

I suspect as folks get more slots open and slotted, you'll see less tankers needed/useful.

But right now, it's pretty common to see 4+ on each trial. This stuff is TOUGH. Thank god for the tanks!

Yeah, i got the cash to unlock these outta pocket change, but then I look at the yawning well of the crafting costs and think, "i'm hanging onto my inf for now.'

Really, really likin' this system so far.

Well, it's your toon! (For example, I would never take Shockwave with an Inv. Ick.)

But on your build posted above, if you remove the Kismet, set the base to-hit to 39 percent (vs +4's), and then double-stack followup and have three foes in Invincibility, your to-hits are as follow:

Strike, Slash, and Followup: 119%
Spin: 125%
Focus: 126%
Eviscerate: 114%
Shockwave: 114%

Not too shabby vs +4's, and to be frank, your attacks are weakly slotted in that build. I'd drop Eviscerate and Shockwave and thicken up the rest of the build with those ten slots, but play what ya like.

I ran the Lambda 4 times on my fire/fire/body yesterday.

Never completed. Three runs were with 8, one run with 16.

My tooled up fire/fire was able to do more than okay, gobbling purples and oranges like candy the whole way through the maze.

When you hit the courtyard: You NEED to get the team moving on the portals RIGHT NAO.

We never got the portals under control early enough to make a difference. I dunno, maybe people are trying to get the badges and hoarding or something.

BTW, those badges, if they are what I have heard, are literally rewards for griefing. I have no ideas who thought those things up.

I got my tier 1 interface using some banked shards, but I think I'll follow the quide the rest of the way. Until my willpower caves, that is.

And, for the record, it is a lovely combo. Like peanut butter and jelly.

(shrug)

Let's see your scrapper reach 3000 hitpoints.

(waits)

Sure, there are edge cases where some scrappers do slightly better ST dps than some brutes. That must be why every farmer in the game is running a ss/fire scrapper, right?


Oh, wait....

Fire and footstomp baby, that's where all the cool kids are these days.

And by 'cool' I mean all the number-herding wannabes.


The REAL cool folks are stylin' it up on scrappers. Awww, yeah. Crits are teh sexay.

Holy CROW.

That build makes my brane hurt. First, because it's insane, and second because it would WORK.

I am in awe. YOU ARE A MAD GENIUS.

I salute you.