I would say that yes, some sort of drawback to Rage needs to be in place.
The problem is this... Rage, from what I have seen and experienced, never seemed to be particularly unbalancing. Rather, from what I've gathered it is what brought SS *up* to par to the other Tanker secondaries. SS has never been a damage-heavy power, and it lacks many of the bells and whistles of the others, like fire's DOT, and Energy's frequent stuns, not to mention that its damage is actually lower. So rage sort of made up for that difference.
For one, the magnitude of Rage stun made it fairly easy for a tank to become stunned even if they had unyielding on. It happened to me a number of times at Peregrine Island, and to me that was fine. It's a risk one takes.
However, now SS tanks are rendered effectively helpless when Rage wears off. This is bad in a group as well as solo... if the tank goes down in a group, it's usually time to run.
Basically, what I'm saying is that an endurance drop isn't unfair. A TOTAL endurance drop seems pretty extreme. Because right now Rage has reached the stage where its drawback overwhelms whatever usefulness it may have.
My suggestions are the following. Either:
1) Return it to the way it was, keeping in mind that a SS tank is fairly easily stunned after Rage crashes.
2) Make the endurance crash less severe, like 50% or 75%. Give the tank a fighting chance. If their toggles drop because they've been fighting hard, so be it.
3) Replace it with Build Up like the other tanks have.
I guess my point is this... I have never heard any complaints that Super-Strength with Rage was overpowered. Even with Rage, SS tanks don't even approach scrappers in terms of damage output. Our damage is okay, but nobody, including other tank builds, ever seemed to have an issue with it.
The problem is twofold -- this has made Rage an undesirable power to take, and in turn has made it less fun to play a Super Strength tanker. I know that my tank, who I never even considered retiring before now, may finally find himself on the shelf for good if this goes live as-is.
I understand that damage dealing is not a tank's job in a group, or at least not its primary one. But this seems to reduce the SS tank to being solely a meatshield.
And playing a walking wall just isn't much fun, especially considering the comics we're trying to emulate.
The Guardian Force. You don't need a reason to help people.
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Especially as Hasten is superior to Rage in damage gain.
Hasten almost halves recharge time, and thus almost *doubles* DPS (enhanced damage that is, not just base damage!). Rage raises base damage by 80%, ignoring Damage enhancements. Depending on slotting, the net gain of Rage is far smaller than Hasten's in terms of DPS.
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FYI Hasten does not completely halve recharge times - it gives recharge times a divisor of 1.7. So essentially an attack that does 100 damage and a 10 second recharge timer will do 1000 damage over the course of a 100 seconds on its own, 1700 damage with hasten and 1800 damage with rage (assuming you aren't running rage + hasten together).
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Many players complained about the stun at the end of Rage because it turned off toggles and left them helpless. At the same time, hardcore players with perma-unstoppable or Unyielding were able to avoid the Stun effect. Thus the casual player was getting penalized and hardcore player wasnt getting the desired penalty. We're still looking at the issue - so feel free to post your thoughts & ideas!
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There is no longer any such thing as perma unstoppable and unyielding is a lvl 8 power well within the range of the casual gamer.
I confess I haven't pored over every single entry of the boards but I haven't read about any tankers or know of any who complained so much about the disorient that they wanted this.
When I was researching my powers I did not take rage until I had a way to deal with the effect.
If you insist on a penalty given for the use of this power, decrease rage's length.
With the number of endurance issues that tankers have posted, I can't BELIEVE this is being considered, without any warning AND after many have taken their free respec which in many cases was their last.
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I understand that damage dealing is not a tank's job in a group, or at least not its primary one. But this seems to reduce the SS tank to being solely a meatshield.
And playing a walking wall just isn't much fun, especially considering the comics we're trying to emulate.
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This is true but also I would like to elaborate more on this as well. Tankers are Defense primary but Offense Secondary. Pretending we are mobile pillboxes is not going to work. It is fun to be surrounded and getting hit and not dying, while we dish out tolerable if not stellar damage, but it is not fun standing there taunting. Do not forget that punch-voke is more effective based on the damage we do. So Rage enhances the punch-voke effect. Therefore it is desirable not only for soloing but also in teams.
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I guess my point is this... I have never heard any complaints that Super-Strength with Rage was overpowered. Even with Rage, SS tanks don't even approach scrappers in terms of damage output. Our damage is okay, but nobody, including other tank builds, ever seemed to have an issue with it.
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I have never had any teammate complain about my damage being too high or that Rage was too powerful, especially after all the "Vixen are you drinking on the job again?" jokes from Rage stuns. Rage does need a penalty since it's benefit is much better then Build-Up's but not losing all end. That is too much and defeats the purpose of the change as Statesman stated he wants to let us keep toggles up after it falls. 0 end = 0 toggles.
Now that we've looked ahead and planned out our characters, and used up our respec you wanna make more changes. I say that if we are smart enough to work around a problem with a power we use then good for us! Tankers are still underpowered in damage compared to most other AT's. If you wish to continue making changes to our characters then you'd better keep handing out the free respecs, if you are looking to make the game more challenging then you need to stop changing our characters and start changing game content! I love the game and in my opinion building a character is half of it, but it is unfair to continue making us jump through hoops! I am Paragon Titan, and now it's back to the drawing board. Thanks again.
I still don't understand exactly why it, and most powers in general, has to have a penalty. We spend our time leveling up to acquire new penalties? That's hardly an incentive to level up. We want to aquire nifty new powers and the powers should work, you balance them via endurance costs and recharge times. Rage is superior to Build Up? Well it is in a generally weaker powerset, there is the balance. I don't see that it necessarily needs another huge drawback piled on top of it.
Supes doesn't get all weepy after using his Heat Vision
Wolvie doesn't curl up into the fetal position after popping his claws.
Bats doesn't blubber after angsting someone to death.
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FYI Hasten does not completely halve recharge times - it gives recharge times a divisor of 1.7. So essentially an attack that does 100 damage and a 10 second recharge timer will do 1000 damage over the course of a 100 seconds on its own, 1700 damage with hasten and 1800 damage with rage (assuming you aren't running rage + hasten together).
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Yes, but it does with Damage enhancements included. A Power with 3 damage SOs still gets the full 1.7 multiplier, whereas Rage just adds to base damage, not enhanced damage.
I think there's a lot of good ideas here, many of which are completely viable. One of the best points however is that if Rage is meant to "balance" the SS set, then it needs to not be considered in a vaccuum. It NEEDS to be better than buildup or fiery embrace. It NEEDS to have less of a downside than the standard powers everyone else gets. I really like the idea of Rage, I think it gives SS some much needed flavor, but I also don't think it should be the cornerstone of the set. If you want to totally balance rage then yes, give it a fairly large "crash" (the idea for slow recharges for 20 seconds sounds excellent to be honest ... why focus only on stamina??) AND balance the rest of the set. Make rage a useful and powerful power with a fair downside and then make the rest of the set stronger. This is a better approach, I feel, than pretty much forcing every SS to get rage to be "on par" with the rest of the sets.
However I don't want to see buildup for SS, personally. Its very cool having a unique power for our set and the concept of rage is totally cool. By the same token I don't think it should be "permable" ... or rather the downside of the power should make such a decision ... well bad 
. I think 120 seconds of glory followed by 20 seconds of slow recharges or slow end recovery or some end loss ... would keep people out of the perma-rage boat but would still leave it as a usable combat power.
However the slow recharges is the best penalty I've heard yet since AFAIK this cannot be mitigated in game by anything. Any endurance based penalty can be mitigated by a decent Emapthy defender or even some blue pills or unstoppable. Any stun based penalty can be mitigated by the basic defense powers or a good empathy defender or disciplines. But slow recharge ... I guess a radiation defender has a minor fix for this ... but there's no innate tanker powers or inspirations that will solve the problem ... which makes it the perfect "penalty". It wont kill the tanker but it will slow them down.
I can understand implementing some form of penalty for using a power that can be tweaked to be too useful. But I think the idea of implementing disadvantages to another power that can potentially knock the player out is a bit severe. As a tank (especially if teamed) the odds are if I do not use rage at the right time, I will be surrounded by enemies that can make quick work of me if stunned or no endurance. I don't understand why this penalty for having rage has to be so severe.
Many people have stated this before which I think is a great idea, after rage expires introduce a severe damage (or accuracy) reduction on the player's attacks for a good 30-60 seconds. Or increase the recharge of the power and don't allow it to take recharge slots. That way it becomes a useful tool for players to use in a bad situation, but does not cripple the player if that situation is not under control at rage's expiration. All the while, it will prevent a player from constantly using the power without having some manner of a penalty.
How nice... so anyone with Perma Unstopable is "hardcore"?
Perma Unyeilding being hardcore?
Heh, casuals must be to dumb to figure out how to get perma Unyeilding... classic
Nice criteria.
The only problem with a damage % based penalty is that rage itself offers a damage buff. So if you say, cut damage by 50% but someone makes a perma-rage build then they wouldn't suffer any damage penalty at all ... just for a while a reduced damage bonus. Accuracy is a neat idea but I don't see it necessarily curbing the perma-ragers much. I mean if given the choice between 80-160% damage bonus 100% of the time with a 30% accuracy penalty 25% of the time ... compared to just normal all the time ... I think the perma-rage still wins.
I like the idea of slowing down/hindering the tank post-rage ... but the penalty needs to be well thought out. As we all posted, Rage should not kill the tank when it falls, it should just reflect the tank is tired (besides unstoppable already exists to kill the tank with the crash ).
All I can speak of this is from my own design and I do enjoy the benefits of Rage espicially the length of it. I accept the possibility of toggle drop if I get hit by enough mezes. Just part of the game.
I rely on Resist Physical Damage to get me thru the wave of hits after the toggles go down. I currently have it five slotted. The very second the the daze is gone I use hand clap to knock away all the villians and to give myself a chance to pull up toggles. I only have hand clap one slotted with accuracy and I usually clear the board save one maybe two. The I pop the toggles starting with Unyielding. And go down the line. Then hit Dull Pain to heal a bit. This works well for me and I have only bit dirt once since I3. It is stressful but thats what makes a game fun.
The problem with my plan is that the Hand Clap and Dull Pain become panic buttons. Don't like the idea of having two good powers as only panic but that is a fair trade for the Rage benefits.
I would suggest that if you are too change to make it for the casual then hit it with a higher endurance cost or perhaps a small defense debuff (puts on 'flame' suit). Or just lower the high benefit and knock off the mez.
My two cents.
How about changing the name of the power. One prominent story arc features a Tsoo manufactured drug called Rage. I even have a souvenir Rage Ampoule.
Each time my tank uses the power, it produces an effect similar to a drug induced state, which quickly ends leaving him needing more. See the similarities? I'm not saying it was intentional, but the names are the same.
Some better names for the power would be Berserker, Fury, or Surge.
As for the power leaving you disoriented, it should be changed to major end loss.
I didn't beat Mr Shin, Mr Po, and Mr Mann just to get hooked on their junk.
I posted this in a different place but I will post it here as well.
Okay lets look at what rage does as compared to another power that does something similar.
Rage I believe gives you +100% damage and +33% accuracy (like build up but for a very long time) So this basically doubles your DPS.
Hasten reduces all attack speeds by about half which also basically doubles you DPS. It increases defense instead of accuracy. Actually it also doubles use of ALL powers not just DPS.
So perhaps they should have similar restrictions. This may require that Rage needs more slots to become perma.. that is acceptable. But if -20% end on hasten is balanced then it should also work for Rage.
These two powers of course do not 100% reflect each other. But they are quite similar in their ability to double DPS. There are a few differences one is a level 6 power pool power and one is a level 28 secondary power. Attacking twice as much uses more endurance. Hasten Effects EVERY power and Rage only effects damaging powers. I generally believe that Hasten out ranks Rage in power by a bit but that is my opinion.
So I think the differences are currently somewhat balanced. The complete drop in end, I have to hope it is an error(which statesman just said basically wasn't). -20% like hasten seems plausible and will actually be more hurtful then the disorient has been. Hitting the tanker or anyone in the endurance is often more of a problem then the disorient was and will be a problem for everyone. I frequently even with 6 slotted stamina run out of endurance or nearly so. If I had a -20% drop at that time. It would drop my toggles equaling death.
I do not believe the risk should be any greater than Hasten.
SS does not have multiple area effect damage powers or cones. Until the 9th power there is only single target damage and one pbaoe disorient/knockback which is completely useless except for fun and a few situations(the only tanker power that might be worse than this is frozen aura). KO blow has the longest recharge times in the tanker secondaries for a damage power. Almost all of the secondary power sets have one cone and one pbaoe damage, some have multiple, SS only has Footstomp which is great but you can't get it till level 38.
I also realize that as I post this you may say hmmm, Hasten is not balanced so this is a not a valid argument except in the reverse and now we need to adjust hasten to be equally sucktastic. I hope that isn't the case but it is what it is.
Statesman I can see where you are coming from but completely disagree with this change. This makes this Rage unusable. Don't punish the clever people because other people choose to be ignorant.
Lets face it they can avoid stun with Fireshield, rooted, Wet Ice and Granite Armor as well. So lets not continue targeting Invulnerability as the cause of all tanker imbalances. Though it is likely that there are more invulnerability tankers with SS than any other primary ability because it is more traditional comic bookish.
I think with this change you are loosing site of the big picture. This removes a power from play it does not balance. Rage was theoretically the boost for all the low damage powers and lack of cones etc. However, it did have a side effect. If you do this change then I would increase everything's damage and turn it into build up. We don't have extreme or superior pbaoe or cone attacks. We do have one moderate large pbaoe with foot stomp. W/o rage there is a damage imbalance to fire, stone, mace, Axe and Energy. Ice is a different bird but likely could use some help. Possibly mace to but mace looks pretty good to me on one of my alts at least at low level.
Ramseys
Given the fact that you have recently changed all the Status Protection powers of Tanks can I ask that you let those bed in a bit before you even think about changing Rage.
1) The casual player will now be in a better position to deal with the disorientation effect.
2) The hardcore player no longer has perma-unstoppable to remove the balancing penalty.
3) There is no sure fire way of avoiding the disorientation effect while using powers like Unyielding or Plasma Shield. The tools I have to do that are my Heavy attacks or my defender friends. These are tactics you should be encouraging not removing.
Mitigating the disorientation effect of Rage is one of the few areas left in the Inv/SS configuration where I feel I can exercise any skill. Please do not remove it.
I am also worried about the notion that something being a draw back to casual players but can be worked around but hard core players is a bad thing. Please think about that for a while. I'm sure you can work out the implications.
PS: I HATED Rage when I first got it and said I was going to respec it out. Now I have learned to live with it and appreciate its benefits. Surely that MUST be an example of a good thing?
This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04
After no more perma-unstoppable, I used Rage only against enemies that didn't stun much. I respeced it down to only the initial slot it comes with, that was all I needed with Unyielding being a toggle, didn't want many unwanted stuns.
Now, after I have already used my "we are waiting to get all the powers finalized, before we give the Free Holiday Respec to you, respec", Rage will be removed from my tray. Now, it is as [censored] and useless as Unstoppable, which I don't have, for reasons just mentioned.
We ask you again:
Please stop helping Tanks!
Come on devs, art guys, where is my Maid costume for my characters! 5 years now, its a simple request.
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However the slow recharges is the best penalty I've heard yet since AFAIK this cannot be mitigated in game by anything. Any endurance based penalty can be mitigated by a decent Emapthy defender or even some blue pills or unstoppable. Any stun based penalty can be mitigated by the basic defense powers or a good empathy defender or disciplines. But slow recharge ... I guess a radiation defender has a minor fix for this ... but there's no innate tanker powers or inspirations that will solve the problem ... which makes it the perfect "penalty". It wont kill the tanker but it will slow them down.
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Also the Kinetics power "Speed Boost" would offer some mitigation for the recharge slowdown.
Tygara - 50 Claws/Regen/Power Scrapper, Virtue- Member of Kitties on the Prowl.
Shadeburn - Dark/Rad Defender, Virtue- Member of Catch 'Em Crew
Nature Boy' - Elec/Ice Blaster, Virtue - Member of Young Phalanx
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Also the Kinetics power "Speed Boost" would offer some mitigation for the recharge slowdown.
[/ QUOTE ] Quite right, but nothing within the tanker sets and no kind of inspiration would. I guess technically so would Hasten. Regardless quadrupling recharge times for 20-30 seconds would hit everyone more than hard enough and without extremely specific mitigation would result in the effect I think the devs want ... and one that would reflect the idea of what it means to "come down" from rage. I guess people might still "perma" it but it certainly wouldn't be optimal.
Hail Statesman,
I understand that permanent Rage may not be the intended use of this power. Perhaps another look at the tanker secondary sets, and if necessary, a balancing of these sets in comparison to each other would be appropriate.
Maybe you are trying to keep the bonuses of Rage without the penalties being mitigated by status protection powers? I am not familiar with Build-up: does it not allow permanent status? If so, maybe Rage should have some similar penalty and recharge time. Maybe the idea is for Super strength to be less than other tanker secondary sets, yet match those sets with the application of Rage?
Complete endurance drop may not be appropriate unless Rage is much better than Build-up and Super strength is comparable in power to the other tanker secondary sets.
Keep up the good work. Thank you for your time. I am looking forward to City of Villains. Thank you for your continuous efforts to improve City of Heroes.
I enjoy Rage the way it is. It has NEVER killed me. Not once. I simply don't use it in situations where I might die, like teaming with others. It's a soloing power, in my opinion, nothing more. And in a solo mission, the chances of me getting killed while I'm stunned (and playing my invuln tanker) is astronomical.
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@Razoras
How about changing it from disorient (which ends toggles) to knockdown? a very high magnitude knockdown that knocks you down even with unyielding on maybe? then toggles wouldn't drop but the Rage-ended hero would still be unable to attack just as if they were disoriented. They're unbalanced by the end of the Rage and fall down, eh?
Thank you Statesman for presenting the issue for discussion before presenting a solution. I think this approach to balance & tweaking will help to reduce the friction with some the player base. Quite possibly, it will also help you to settle on the best solution faster.
Keep up the good!
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Many players complained about the stun at the end of Rage because it turned off toggles and left them helpless. At the same time, hardcore players with perma-unstoppable or Unyielding were able to avoid the Stun effect. Thus the casual player was getting penalized and hardcore player wasnt getting the desired penalty. We're still looking at the issue - so feel free to post your thoughts & ideas!
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I actually have some questions about this that I am hoping maybe you might answer.
1) I was under the impression that a power in a set was gauged on the set as a whole and compared to the other sets of like nature (offensives in this nature). This sounds like Development wants to change this power based on a defensive power set. How does this play into all the other defensive sets that have Superstrength?
2) Is Superstrength as a set overpowered? A few months ago a rebalance was done on the set to bring it closer to par with the other offensive sets. No changes to Rage were made at this time, so it leads me to believe that if you are going to drop the effectiveness of the power, you would in turn be increasing the effectiveness of the other powers in the line to make up for that. Are there plans to make these types of changes to compensate?
3) I use Rage quite a bit, and while there are times when the disorient at the end can be mitigated, it is still a very real and tangible negative. There have been a number of times when I was caught with a stun as the disorient was running. It required a watchful eye and good planning to lessen the number of times that this happened. Even with that care, it was still a risk and still occurred from time to time. On top of all of this, it always cost a fair chunk of endurance to use and had a defense debuff component, so it wasn't like all of the costs were mitigated. With these negatives, is it really that much more powerful than its cousins (build up, etc) in the other sets? I don't think that any of the other sets require these extra damage abilities to be "situational" powers. When it cycles around, they use them. Why is Superstrength being singled out amongst all the sets?
I appreciate the effort Development has to put in to make this game work, and I think as a whole they do a fantastic job. This particular decision needs to be rethought however. It seems to fly in the face of everything Development has told its customer base, and I am trying to figure out why. The only reason I can think of is that the focus has been centered on which powers seem like they are "too good", rather than looking at the sets as a whole. It's my hope that when Development steps back and looks at it, they'll realize the same thing.
In any case, thanks for hearing me out.
It scares me when statesmen says things like "hardcore player" and "average joe" in the same sentence. You can't really balance the game for both. All it took to mitigate rage's stun was Unyielding...if you can't figure out by level 28 that Unyielding is a power you need, then getting stunned by rage is going to be the least of your worries. States says things like "Its only on test people please!" I understand that I do, what I don't understand is how you can think THIS was a better solution for the average player AND the min/maxer alike. End is already a huge problem for tanks.
As a perma-Elude SR scrapper I can contest that a full Endurance bar drop is way to extreme for Rage, only reason perma-Elude works with it is because it is a click and provides enough defense when combined with passives to continue to work without endurance.
Another side effect of Elude is no natural endurance recovery for 20 secs (-1.667 EPS for 20 seconds).
So since Rage sounds like it is all about getting angry to hit harder why not add some sort of no endurance recovery for 1/5 of the duration of rage. Damage mitigation would come from the fact that for them to keep endurance for their defense to stay on would be to not attack or slow their attacks way down without popping catch of breaths left and right as Tanker attacks already have a fairly high cost.