Official Super Strength Thread

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I don't (personally) have to have everything exactly the same as another line. I just like it to be close. Footstomp currently works well (even moreso with the KB changes). I honestly don't see a reason to touch it. Anything you did recharge time or damage wise would just exaserbate the AOE problems this game has (again, in my opinion).

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I guess I will inject my oppinion about your oppinons, not that serious issues thou. I dont think improving Foot Stomp to the normal level of Tanker attacks will have any large impact on the overall AE damage in coh. Its also likely any AE fix is an generic nerf to AE in damage or capped number of targets, so Foot Stomp would still be worse then other Tankers and probobly useless for damage after a fix that changed Blasters AE powers to be more in balance with single target damage.

Then why didn't you choose a powerset that fits that description? Slow but heavy damaging attacks are not how the base powers in the super-strength pool work. And before someone comes back with the answer of "concept", ask yourself how many other powers from alternate powerpools you picked, not because they fit your concept, but because you felt you needed to in order to have a better tanker.

There are many advantages to having faster recharge rates, and I for one am glad super-strength works that way and have no desire to see it become a slower powerset. Equal DPS's between the tanker secondary? Sure. Everyone having the same damage, same speed attacks that are only different in name? Ugh, no thank you.

Understand that every powerset has the capability to change to a degree based on the enhancements you’re willing to invest into the power. You can make super-strength heavy hitting, to a point, by slotting it with 6 damage enhancements. But blow for blow you’ll never hit as hard as an axe tanker who does the same thing. At its heart, super-strength is a mix of speed and power, where battleaxe is slow, heavy damage. What you dislike about super-strength is what makes it appealing to others who chose it for that reason.

I look at battleaxe as someone who is possibly just as strong as someone with super-strength (when's the last time you've heard of an axe causing knockback), yet chooses to wield a weapon instead of bare fists. This allows them to do more damage at the price of speed. If I was an axe tanker and super-strength was made to do equal damage on any given blow, I'd be requesting that the battleaxe set got a damage boost, citing that idea of your slapping hands doing the same damage as my cleaving axe is just silly. Then you'd have super-strength tankers asking for another boost to be brought back up to par.

The powersets behave differently because variety is essential for a game. Otherwise, just give us all a button that says "kill target" that takes 3 seconds to activate and be done with it. "Balance" for everyone.

What other Tanker AOEs are we talking here?

Fire secondary's AOEs do about the same damage as Footstomp I believe? They just get more of them.

Ironicaly i just leveled and am on my way now to test server and try out both, fire circle sword and combust (the only 2 aoe attacks on fire). Will try them both unsloted and tell you the numbers i get then. (am lvl 32)

Its not that Foot Stomp does less damage then other Tanker AE attacks, its that the end cost is higher and recharge is longer for no extra benifit.

I did choose super strength as a concept. The only reason I even started this game was so I could make my own classic super hero. A lot of people who started an Inv/SS tanker was for that classic image. I don't want to be a Superman or a Hulk, but Colossus shouldn't be out of reach, hell, I'd take Luke Cage at this point. To be honest, when I started Ayin, I thought he would be more Luke Cage like, able to take a licking and dish out a good amount of punishment.

Anyone have the base damages and the max damages for SS and Axe? I'm not saying we should have exactly the same damage, but we should be balanced.

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Ironicaly i just leveled and am on my way now to test server and try out both, fire circle sword and combust (the only 2 aoe attacks on fire). Will try them both unsloted and tell you the numbers i get then. (am lvl 32)

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Lungorthar: Cones count as AOE as well (although granted in some cases their area is almost nothing).

Znail: I find Footstomp pretty tolerable for what it does. If you're running around without any endurance regen ability (i.e no Stamina or Unstoppable or something similar) then yeah, Footstomp can wear you out. It's recharge however I've found fairly good. Anything faster and you could just chain Footstomps if you're running Hasten. I think Footstomp is relatively balanced in other words considering the line as a whole. Fire doesn't have as high of attacks so having more and faster AOEs at their disposal makes a certain amount of sense (to me).

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I did choose super strength as a concept. The only reason I even started this game was so I could make my own classic super hero. A lot of people who started an Inv/SS tanker was for that classic image. I don't want to be a Superman or a Hulk, but Colossus shouldn't be out of reach, hell, I'd take Luke Cage at this point. To be honest, when I started Ayin, I thought he would be more Luke Cage like, able to take a licking and dish out a good amount of punishment.

Anyone have the base damages and the max damages for SS and Axe? I'm not saying we should have exactly the same damage, but we should be balanced.

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You’re saying you want to be more like Luke Cage or Colossus, and I don’t understand how super-strength (damage wise) in its current form makes you feel like you’re not that way. Is it only because axe tankers get a higher damage number coming up over their targets on a hit by hit basis? Well, they chose to be more like Thor, and your Luke Cage or Colossus is just not going to be dishing out damage on the same level. I’ve seen comics where Thor fights with and without his hammer, and his attacks with his hammer are slow and massively hard hitting, and when he has to rely on his fists his attacks come faster but not nearly as damaging. That’s the difference between axe tankers and super-strength tankers.

Like you, I wouldn’t mind the same damage, but when I say damage in this regard I mean DPS. I like the faster, weaker attacks (although weaker is a poor way to term it) over slower, stronger attacks so long as the DPS all matches out in the end. Considering our attacks have built in taunts (which players keep seeming to want to get rid of, but believe me.. life for the tanker sucked before that feature got added), the more often I have attacks that I can bring to bear, the more things I can keep angry at me without having to rely on provoke/taunt. And as a tanker that doesn’t want to take either of these powers, taunting through rapid striking is what I depend on to keep agro.

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Cones count as AOE as well (although granted in some cases their area is almost nothing).

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I find cones are diferent animals, specialy breath that has a very narrow radius, but it is ok, i tested all my powers. Here are the numbers so you can compare fire with SS:


Scorch
25.09 Fire
2.98 x 2 Fire (dot)
TOTAL: 31.05

Fire Sword
14.93 Lethal
24.5 Fire
2.98 x 2 Fire (dot)
TOTAL: 45.39

Combustion (AOE)
14.93 Fire
2.98 x 8 Fire (dot)
TOTAL: 38.77

Breath of Fire (Cone)
20.31 x 2 Fire (dot)
2.94 x 4 Fire (dot)
TOTAL: 52.38

Fire Sword Circle (AOE)
23.15 Lethal
23.15 Fire
2.98 x 4 Fire (dot)
TOTAL: 58.22


Just for completeness i tested my few damaging attacks on the Fiery Aura set, please dont use it to judge the fire melee set, remember fire melee can be combined with anything, I personaly theorize Fire/Axe will be way deadlier now with no KB.


Consume (AOE)
11.94 Fire

Blazing Aura (AOE)
6.57 Fire (every 2 seconds)

Burn (AOE)
I cant measure this one, Burn is a pet and for some reason i cant see how much damage it does on the chat log, never noticed this before (may be only on test server), but it is doing a roundedd 3 hits of damage for a lot of ticks (it repeats very fast and never misses). Will try more stuff on it later.


Best way to compare these may be if you become a 32 exemplar in test...

I am not only comparing with Fire, there are other PBAE attacks like Whirling Axe, Whirling Hands, Tremor and Whirling Mace. They have similar stats and all make Foot Stomp look bad. Fire SWord Circle does more damage thou and has the same cost and recharge as Foot Stomp.

Fiery Melee does have high damage attacks too, Greater Fire Sword does as much damage as the new Knockout Blow. Incinerate also does more damage then Haymaker. Fiery Melee is actualy pretty balanced with both good AE and single target attacks.

Between the tnaker archetype, i wont deny it, fire melee is perfeclty fine. But ice and SS need a big hand, Mace maybe a small damage boost, it should be right there with Axe in my eyes.

How many thugs do you see Cage fight that take more then a single blow? I don't care if it's exactly the same damage, but there should be some balance between the secondaries. I don't care if I one shot minions, but not taking a decade to go through a group solo is reasonable.

You might have noticed in my earlier posts where I said I had only just got Rage. Well the more I play with it the more I decide you are completely right. That disorient has got to go.

Either the disorient has got to go or I can only use it against foes that don't do stun. Lets see? That would be Skyraiders. I don't think I'm getting any more skyraiders missions so I guess I am just not using it.

Okay the first time it killed me was my fault. I messed up my timing. However since then it has killed me three times due to stuns getting through US. So thats four deaths in total! I am a cautious player I am not sure this character has died that many times before!

Shame really because otherwise the power is cool. I actually felt a bit "comic book". I have also noticed that the power actually has a net effect of slowing me down (and thats even before I factor in the debt).

Debt, I don't have debt! What will my friends say?

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I am not only comparing with Fire, there are other PBAE attacks like Whirling Axe, Whirling Hands, Tremor and Whirling Mace. They have similar stats and all make Foot Stomp look bad. Fire SWord Circle does more damage thou and has the same cost and recharge as Foot Stomp.

Fiery Melee does have high damage attacks too, Greater Fire Sword does as much damage as the new Knockout Blow. Incinerate also does more damage then Haymaker. Fiery Melee is actualy pretty balanced with both good AE and single target attacks.

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See that's where we differ. I consider Mace (current Mace) or possibly the Stone the most balanced of the Tanker secondaries. I feel Fire and Axe are over the top (Fire moreso because of the AOEs). SS I think is about where it should be ... just a bit clunkier then Mace or Stone (Hurl, Rage and Handclap being the clunkyness). Ice needs some help. Energy is low end at the beginning picks up through the middle of the build and is over powered a tad at the top end (all things considered, pretty well off though).

Lungothar: Thanks for the numbers. Cones are definitely AOEs, but you're right, cone to cone the AOE of them can be pretty dramatic. Assuming Fire Breath has the same range and AOE as the Fire Blaster's Fire Breath, it's a workable and good AOE .... especially for a Tanker.

Now keep in mind that these are my takes on things. I certainly don't represent the majority considering how many people still want more damage in general and to the SS line specifically. I personally don't feel the SS line needs more damage anymore with what's on Test. I do feel certain powers need to be tweaked a bit to be made less awkward to use.

I ment Balanced as in both AE and Single target powers, not as in under or overpowered. I thought I made that clear in my post.

Anyway, you dodged the question why Whirling Axe, Whirling Hands, Tremor and Whirling Mace should be better then Foot Stomp?

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How many thugs do you see Cage fight that take more then a single blow? I don't care if it's exactly the same damage, but there should be some balance between the secondaries. I don't care if I one shot minions, but not taking a decade to go through a group solo is reasonable.

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If this is really the problem you see with the tanker class, your error is in how you perceive thugs in this game. You don’t fight Timmy who just robbed a convenience store with his handgun, you’re pitted (at a minimum) against gang members that are now superhuman because of drugs like dyne. Cage wouldn’t be able to one-shot them either. That isn’t a tanker balance problem, that’s a design decision to not have heroes fighting ordinary civilian-class villains. I have no doubt you could one-shot those, if they existed, just as you can one-shot superhuman thugs far below your level.

Something else I want to add. I think a large part of the problem revolves around too may people getting hung up on the term super-strength. The concept behind powers like knockout blow, hurl, footstomp, and handclap, combined with their visualization, justifies naming this powerset Super-strength (as these are powers that just wouldn’t fit into a name like “Melee Combat”).

However, when players think of super-strength, they think of things beyond just punching. Suppose Geko announced they were populating the maps with respawning items which super-strength tankers could use as temporary weapons to mix up their attacks: cars, lamp posts, etc, things that would increase your damage but slow down your attacks (because you have to keep the DPS the same for balance). I have no doubt many tankers would be cheering “Yes! Now THAT’s a comic book tanker!”.

I would love those sorts of options, but I have serious doubts that the same people who complained about knockback lowering their DPS are going to be the same people that take the time to stop attacking long enough to run across the street and pick up mailbox to start swinging around as a weapon. Do you really believe that AOE blaster in your group is going to be happy you’re more comic-like now when you send 15 villains sailing in different directions after clubbing them with your AOE telephone pole attack? He’ll hate you more than ever.

I often hear developers suggest that players don’t really know what they want. I think that thought matches very well when players request comic book tankers.

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Then why didn't you choose a powerset that fits that description? Slow but heavy damaging attacks are not how the base powers in the super-strength pool work. And before someone comes back with the answer of "concept", ask yourself how many other powers from alternate powerpools you picked, not because they fit your concept, but because you felt you needed to in order to have a better tanker.


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Zero on the power pools that don't fit my character bit.

We wanted to feel Super Strong, and fast, low damage attacks doesn't fit the bill, alright?

from your later post:

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You’re saying you want to be more like Luke Cage or Colossus, and I don’t understand how super-strength (damage wise) in its current form makes you feel like you’re not that way.


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Pretty simple really. Someone Super-Strong shouldn't take 4-5 hits to knock out a street thug or a lab scientist. It's not about the red numbers, it's about the feel. When they raise minion HPs and XP, it's really going to piss me off, because I JUST got the ability to knock someone out in one punch.

After reading these posts of yours, I no longer believe that you built your character based on a concept. I believe you took a set you saw as a fast attacking set and are now fighting to keep it that way.

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How many thugs do you see Cage fight that take more then a single blow? I don't care if it's exactly the same damage, but there should be some balance between the secondaries. I don't care if I one shot minions, but not taking a decade to go through a group solo is reasonable.

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If this is really the problem you see with the tanker class, your error is in how you perceive thugs in this game. You don’t fight Timmy who just robbed a convenience store with his handgun, you’re pitted (at a minimum) against gang members that are now superhuman because of drugs like dyne.


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Skulls don't take Dyne. The Warriors just train in ancient weaponry. And don't tell me that Crey scientists are super-humanly tough.

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Do you really believe that AOE blaster in your group is going to be happy you’re more comic-like now when you send 15 villains sailing in different directions after clubbing them with your AOE telephone pole attack? He’ll hate you more than ever.

I often hear developers suggest that players don’t really know what they want. I think that thought matches very well when players request comic book tankers.


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Screw the knockback DPS issues. That was never my problem to begin with. If AoEs weren't the king of all in this game, then we could do things like this. The game design is what is interfering with it, and you seem very happy to (and are even fighting to ) leave things at the status quo.

We know EXACTLY what we want. We want this game to be less "gather everything up for the AoE". If scattering foes was actually a benefit, as it should be, then none of this would be an issue!

Exactly Liquid.

Tanker Breath of Fire: 15', 30º cone
Blaster Breath of Fire: 40', 30º cone

Note that the nature of cone is to get biger by the distance. I am no expert on math so i cant get real numbers, but it does is obvious that a cone has more covered area the longer it goes. So, in the end the far end of the tanker breath covers very little area.

I can say that in practice i rarely affect 3 enemies with it unless they all are very cramped toghether and then again tney must be on a formation similar to this:


<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
x = affected
0 = unafected
% = me

00x
% xxx
000
</pre><hr />

Affecting the last one on the top usualy is very pure luck.

My avarage is of only 2 affected enemies with fire breath.

Practice is realy why i really dont like to say Breath of Fire for tankers is a AoE.

As for why the fire tanker does more damage than any other set, well the if you consider things on a way of balance, every time you knock back the enemy you are in a way mitigating damage, you are adding another effect that may help y ou. Stunn, KB, KD, Slow, you name it, they all end up doing something else. But fire attacks just do damge, their secondary effect is also damage. The fire melee goes all offensive.

This is a good excuse to make it stronger, but not a good excuse to make SS weaker than axe for the amount it is, since axe has even more KB than SS. I guess the developers tought the secondary effects of ice where huge enough to grant a extremely low damage potential (not that i agree with that).

Now, I actually agree that minions in this game are all superhuman. That includes crey "scientists". The Crey are almost certainly augmented in one fashion or another--whether by cybernetics, special costumes, or what have you. Skulls are most definitely wielding ancient magic in one way or another. We can assume they undergo a ritual that increases their power.

I don't know enough about the warriors to comment on what gives them powers--but I doubt they are ordinary 20th level dudes. In fact, they can't be. They can jump as high as we can; and that's superhuman.

However, I very much agree with Liquid otherwise.

Knockback was an either/or situation. Either everyone has it--or no one does. Becuase if you give knockback to just a few characters, those characters will be at a disadvantage. Knockback demands some very high speed movement powers for melee characers (or giving everyone good ranged attacks). If every AoE blast knocked evreyone all over the map, well, AoE attacks wouldn't be so dangerous. And that would be comic book like. Unfortunately, the devs didn't go this route.

What the did do was make me almost HAVE to be immobile as a Inv/SS tank. And that made the problem of knockback a real killer. Plus, the idea of being an "aggro magnet" and having things fly away from you--and thus out of your ability to do control them--was crazy.

It's not our fault that tanks in this game aren't like comic books. It's the decision of the devs to make a "meat shield" in this game. The two ideas aren't compatible. So a compromise had to be reached--and perhaps it has been reached.

Most SS Tankers would most definitely stop and grab a telephone post. I don't care if it takes me two minutes. As long as I can can hold aggro, I am swinging that damn telephone pole!

Now, they could have left knockback in...

If they had made it so that whatever was knocked back immeditally got up and closed to within melee range of the tanker.

Because the DPS didn't matter to me. I'll happily give DPS to scrappers. It's the power of the punch that is important to the feel of the character. Knockback helped that. And it's gone--replaced with actual in game power. I have to live with that because it's good for the team.

Now, Statesman has another plan. I'm not keen on the "Hulk-like" thing--but maybe they can do it in such a way that you don't ahve to say your character is getting "angry". I'm certainly keen on getting slow, hard punches anyway we can.

Because I do want comic book tanks. I just want them within the (sadly but naturally) flawed fabric of this game.

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If every AoE blast knocked evreyone all over the map, well, AoE attacks wouldn't be so dangerous. And that would be comic book like. Unfortunately, the devs didn't go this route.


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Wow. You know what? That would totally rule.

Of course, I'd still get yelled at for using Hand Clap, since it doesn't do any damage, and would be a "wasted" AoE.

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Now, I actually agree that minions in this game are all superhuman.

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I forgot to address this.

I feel it is important that there is a very abundant class of so-called "normals" to make us feel superhuman. These are foes we should be able to take out quickly and easily, via multiple AoEs, high damage single target attacks, etc. I took these to be minions, as many of them seem that way. Maybe Underlings are supposed to represent this, but they are really, really rare (and DE swarms certainly wouldn't qualify as "normals")

Then, we should get our challenges from less frequent, but more powerful foes. LTs and Bosses. LTs should be like the average super powered minion, and a Boss should be a hero's equal.

I view a team like the old-school Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants as an Archvillain and a mix of Bosses and LTs, not as a Boss and several minions.

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Skulls don't take Dyne. The Warriors just train in ancient weaponry. And don't tell me that Crey scientists are super-humanly tough.

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Er, Skulls are all over Dyne. Did you miss that whole plotline the first 14 levels of the game? And do you honestly think Crey scientists are the Warriors are powerful enough to be level 30+ and 20+ villains respectively and somehow not be considered superhumanly powerful? I’m not sure how to respond to that. Just so we’re all the same page, Joe-Normal and non-powered thugs are below level 1, because you start at level 1, which is hopefully a step above the civilian screaming for help in the alleyway. Infer the rest from there. In CoH, you don’t fight the normal thugs raiding the warehouse that Cage mops up by the dozen in the comic books. If you want to see what it's like though, get to 50 and then hook up with a new player on their level 2 mission. That's the closest this game lets you come to it. So, please, let's not base our balance requests off things you see in the comic that haven't translated over into this game to begin with.


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Screw the knockback DPS issues. That was never my problem to begin with. If AoEs weren't the king of all in this game, then we could do things like this. The game design is what is interfering with it, and you seem very happy to (and are even fighting to ) leave things at the status quo.

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I find it very odd that you would say that, as I have watched you push in the past to have knockback removed from all Tanker attacks when discussing ways to increase Tanker damage. Not Tanker’s avoiding irritating their group members because it fouls up their lame AOE playstyle, but simply to improve Tanker damage. Now you’re saying it was never a DPS issue for you? Weird. Just saying it didn’t look that way from over here.


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We know EXACTLY what we want. We want this game to be less "gather everything up for the AoE". If scattering foes was actually a benefit, as it should be, then none of this would be an issue!

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Ah, ok, something we can agree on. I abhor how AoE’s have impacted this game, everything from the sort of playstyle it’s encouraged, to the nerfing of knockback because it interfered with AoE combat, to the ridiculous leveling rate it causes. Thank goodness this thread is exactly about tha.. no, wait.. this is a thread about changing the super-strength powerset around. That’s strange, I can’t seem to find the thread started by Tankers titled “Make us a useful archetype again: fix the AoE debacle”. It must be here somewhere.

Are you sure you know exactly what everyone wants?

Oh, and I didn't mean to miss this.

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After reading these posts of yours, I no longer believe that you built your character based on a concept. I believe you took a set you saw as a fast attacking set and are now fighting to keep it that way.

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No, actually I just believe that characters like the Hulk are, at worst, too imbalanced to exist in CoH in the first place, and (at best) the pinnacle of extremity when it comes to a Tanker example. And neither of those represents a wise model to base a tanker on in the first place, so I honestly don’t understand why people continuously pull him out as an example of how a tanker should be.

Damage enhancements can lead to huge bonus damage. Recharge enhancements are not nearly as effective in comparison. You already have the tools to easily make a harder hitting tanker, while making a faster hitting tanker is much more difficult. What a huge mistake it would be to swing super-strength in the direction of damage at the cost of speed.

If the battle-axe powerset has a higher DPS than the super-strength powerset (and nobody has bothered to show any real numbers proving this so far), then by all means, let’s up the super-strength damage without making adjustments to its speed. But if you’re just interested in having super-strength made into a damage/speed clone of battle-axe because larger numbers get you more excited, no thank you.

My 'concept' for my character was a super-strong non-weapon using character that didn't take forever-and-a-day to land a punch. Thankfully, there was a powerset that matched that concept. So, yes, I am just a tad bit interested in keeping it that way.