I understand the problem of people "speaking different languagues", it's hard to come to an understanding if you are talking about different things.
However, when two parties are discussing using differing definitions, I generally prefer it if they settle on using the "right" definition instead of the "wrong" definition.
And I did not mean that you did not consider level scaling, I know that you do that. What I was trying to say is that CE is actually worse off in that respect than what Statesman's equation suggests.
When fighting higher level mobs, our powers work at a fraction of their original efficiency.
Say that we are fighting a foe of a level that means that our powers are at 50% efficiency.
Apparently Statesman essentially says that CE will have this effect on recharge times:
1+0.5*0.5 = 1.25
The game seems to tell us that CE has this effect on recharge times:
1/(1-0.5*1/3) = 1/(5/6) = 6/5 = 1.2
1.2<1.25
Maybe it's just me, but when a dev speaks about a power in this game, I prefer it when they actually speak about how powers actually work in this game.
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It could be argued that tankers should have been bricks, with offense primary/defense secondary, and given melee powersets with the slow recharging heavy hitting attacks that people have wanted for tankers for a long time (and to some extent, already have). However, that doesn't really leave room for characters like Spider-Man, Nightcrawler, Beast, Wolverine, Batman, and the like - melee characters who are not bricks, and who are thematically quite different..
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They'd be "scrappers". Really, comic book melee types tend to fall into two types...the bricks, who hit hard but slow and resist damage, and the scrappers, who hit fast and dodge hits. A few exceptions exist, healers like Wolverine or the Hulk, but they still tend to fall into brick or scrapper categories based on how they act, how they attack.
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God, tankers with mature offense never had trouble defeating enemies in a reasonable amount of time. Ever. Ever. Ever. I'm so tired of that canard. Yes, you had 70% base scrapper damage, but you also had some hard-hitting attacks in most of the secondaries. If you had trouble defeating enemies in a reasonable amount of time, you were neglecting your attacks and blaming game mechanics.
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Yah, always felt it had more to do with slotting and when powers became available than anything. A scrapper gets some good hard hitting attacks early, tankers didn't. Scrappers got AEs early. Most tankers did not. Means tankers had longer fights, which made their endurance situation worse. Once you had stamina, it got easier. And once you got your big attacks, easier still.
Of course, it is also helpful to keep in mind that the most common tanker melee set is Super Strength, which was a weak set with a very late AE.
Basically, for most people, the word tanker means Invul/SS.
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And, scrappers could not tank as well as tankers. Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. That was never true, is not true, and never will be true. A completely reasonable argument could be made that they could tank well enough, and that I'll grant you.
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Actually, you could make that argument pretty easily. Took a scrapper more slots, more levels, but eventually, they got there. As an example, an I2 invul scrapper outtanked most non-invul tankers, most of the time, including having better aggro abilities (as they had invincibility for the aura, while non-invul tankers did not).
Basically, a mix of the power of the invul set coupled with things like bad aggro, non-stacking armors, and such.
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Right now, I say we fight for where we're REALLY getting hit-- our DEFENSE. This 25/33/whatever % delayed resistance in CE that we're getting, it's negligible compared to our defense. There's no reason why we can't have 20% base Frozen/Glacial and 5-10% unenhanceable Wet Ice!
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Well, I think most of us on the boards agree with you, but the Devs don't. The intent of I5 seems to have been to scale down the amount of DEF available in the game to a much lower level, even if this disproportionately hurt the powersets that relied the most on DEF (Ice/ & /SR) - which many felt were underperformers to begin with. The Devs aren't going to reverse this, so it is pointless to try. The best we can do is what Circ has been doing for the past few months - working to convince the Devs to improve other aspects of the set in lieu of more DEF. The fact that Statesman posted in this thread is encouraging. Quite frankly I figured that the Devs were so focussed on CoV now that any tweaks to CoH were a pipe dream. But put down your pipe - Ice might yet get a few more crumbs. 
And if that happens, it will largely be because Circ has worked so tirelessly. 
Liberty
Mister Mass - 50 Inv/SS/NRG Mut Tank [1236]
Doc Willpower - 50 Grav/FF/Psi Mag Controller
Baron Wonder - 50 SS/Elec/Mu Mag Brute
Sound Bight - 50 Son/Son/Mu Tech Corrupter
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No, it's really not. Having a Tanker class to begin with was a bad idea. A whole section of heroes that can be beaten quickly, but they can't defeat enemies quickly either? That's guaranteed to be disappointing, and that's the way it has worked out. Over and over we've had people say they made a Tank because of the powersets, and then got upset because it wasn't fun. Even Statesman has said he regrets forming the archetyes so heavily around the classic MMO classes. The result was that they have had to raise the damage that Tanks do, but to offset that they've had to lower the ability to take damage. The whole thing isn't working out.
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Having a tanker in a superhero MMO isn't a great idea, no, but saying that "thus, both melee ATs should be one melee AT" is not really an improvement.
It could be argued that tankers should have been bricks, with offense primary/defense secondary, and given melee powersets with the slow recharging heavy hitting attacks that people have wanted for tankers for a long time (and to some extent, already have). However, that doesn't really leave room for characters like Spider-Man, Nightcrawler, Beast, Wolverine, Batman, and the like - melee characters who are not bricks, and who are thematically quite different..
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Before the devs lowered the defense caps on Scrappers, Scrappers were able to *make* tanks using power pools. They were actually better than tanks because they could tank *and* defeat enemies in a reasonable amount of time.
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God, tankers with mature offense never had trouble defeating enemies in a reasonable amount of time. Ever. Ever. Ever. I'm so tired of that canard. Yes, you had 70% base scrapper damage, but you also had some hard-hitting attacks in most of the secondaries. If you had trouble defeating enemies in a reasonable amount of time, you were neglecting your attacks and blaming game mechanics.
And, scrappers could not tank as well as tankers. Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. That was never true, is not true, and never will be true. A completely reasonable argument could be made that they could tank well enough, and that I'll grant you.
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I think that getting rid of Tanks now would be much harder than if they'd just shipped that way originally, but it's still worth considering. Change all Tanks to scrappers. Open up all the powersets to both sides, so an Axe/Regen character would become possible. Raise the Scrapper defense caps so that the former tankers could still tank if the wanted to sacrifice a few more powers to tanking.
It'd be painful, but it would be worth considering. It' probably too late in the game to do it, but it's worth discussing at least.
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If you're going to get rid of tankers, make them into bricks or something. Don't bother to turn them into scrappers.
[/ QUOTE ]Gotta agree. I was never a fan of the "make them one AT" thing. I just think that the two ATs were mis-managed. In actuality, I tend to see them reversed.
Spiderman is more powerful defensively than he is on offense. "Scrappers", tend to be less powerful from the get-go than "Bricks", but make up for it with skill. To me, that means buffs/debuffs and relying more on all-on-nothing DEF-style defense.
When Spidey gets hit, he gets hit hard. (Which is not to say any melee AT should have 0 RES inherently. All fighters learn to roll with punches.)
Bricks are usually flat in offense and defense, and rely more on taking hits and shrugging them off.
So, to me, Tanks should've been Scrappers, minus the criticals.
Scrappers are the ones that should've had a more defensive leaning, with offense that started small and worked its way up (but not like a Brute's Fury).
'course, that's just me. And this is totally off-topic.
Good to see Statesman is looking into it.
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I'll doublecheck the numbers today and post something in this thread (hopefully today).
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Circeus, thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention. Now, if only we'd have that much success with the rest of the other threads around here...
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Maybe it's just me, but when a dev speaks about a power in this game, I prefer it when they actually speak about how powers actually work in this game.
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Sorry, but Statesman specifically said that a 66.7% debuff means 10s becomes 16.67s or 10 * (1 + 66.7%) = 16.67s. That is stating how the power used to behave in game.
So I'm just merely stating that the 66.7% is no longer the case, its 50%. As in 10s becomes 15s or 10 * (1 + 50%) = 15s. That is stating how the power behaves in game now.
You may not like the way its stated, but its not an incorrect way of stating it, because it is exactly how the power works in game.
And again I did take level falloff into account as the numbers I presented are calculated over the range of +0 to +4 foes, and I in fact have the exact falloff percentages are provided by Statesman as well. So again, I'm not sure how much more clear I have to be there.
Okay, my mistake, I got a bit confused here. A 2-second Brawl would be 3 seconds with a 50% debuff, so it wouldn't be a significant change.
And of course, a 50% "debuff," the way the word is being used, is akin to 33% delayed resistance because it's not doubling recharge time, but adding a third to it.
Personally, I'd rather we go with the percentage that the recharge time is lengthened rather than this whole debuff thing-- recharge time percentage translates directly into delayed resistance, whereas you have to do all sorts of mathematical mumbo-jumbo to get equivalent resistance off of a debuff percentage.
But waaaaait... a 50% recharge debuff (33% equivalent resistance) and a 7% damage debuff (7% equivalent resistance) is equal to 40%-- the same amount that's being reported for a 66.7% recharge debuff! So they didn't actually nerf CE, but they didn't actually buff it eitherAAARRRGGGHHH!!!
So anyway, they're roughly the same, and your measly 1.3%-difference numbers support this (I should've just looked at those numbers first, eh). But since the damage debuff works instantly (whereas the recharge debuff won't work on the alpha-strike), we can count that as a miniscule buff.
...So why are we bringing this up again? JUST UP OUR DEFENSE ALREADY, DAMNIT!
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...So why are we bringing this up again? JUST UP OUR DEFENSE ALREADY, DAMNIT!
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Because the RES thing is resistable, so it doesn't always even out, even if the math says it does, which I'm not sure it does.
I agree about the DEF thing, though. Let's fix some stuff here!
The change to CE is what drove me to delete 16 ice tank. While fun in the low levels...i didn't see it getting anybetter. Especially given the recent trends to fixing and improveing stuff.
Circeus,
you're a far better person than me. I consider 7%to be an insult..you at least gave it a chance.
Thanks for posting your results Circeus. Hopefully the Ice tanks can become tanks again.
Thanks for this information Circeus, you've always been a huge help in trying to make ice armor balanced. I can't say that I'm surprised though, defense got screwed with this update, and Ice armor got less powerful once again. I'm thinking though that CoH may be near its end, I've never seen a server at full at any time I've logged on for the last 2-3 months. I think the real problem is they took a game where people want to be super heroes and changed it to something else. I've been one of those saying keep it up ice tanks, we'll have our day. But now I'm getting so tired of this game and the "Balance vision". Yes the blasters needed the health increase and defiance, but why do these updates seem to mostly lower powers? I'm not going to delete my ice tank I worked too darn hard to get him to 50, I just want a balance within the tanks for once!
Too many alts to list.
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So anyway, they're roughly the same, and your measly 1.3%-difference numbers support this (I should've just looked at those numbers first, eh). But since the damage debuff works instantly (whereas the recharge debuff won't work on the alpha-strike), we can count that as a miniscule buff.
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The 1.3%ish number comes out of the fact that its only 33% + 7% if the mobs are +0. And I calculate for mobs in the +0 to +4 range. Also keep in mind that most mobs have, at the very least, resistance to Smash/Lethal which means in geneneral its not really 40%... well... ever.
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I'll doublecheck the numbers today and post something in this thread (hopefully today).
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Maybe you should just hire Circeus to work on the Ice Armor set.
"I never said thank you." - Lt. Gordon
"And you'll never have to." - the Dark Knight
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I'll doublecheck the numbers today and post something in this thread (hopefully today).
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Maybe you should just hire Circeus to work on the Ice Armor set.
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No thanks. I've been out of the video game industry for a while now, I doubt they could afford me based on industry salaries.
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No, it's really not. Having a Tanker class to begin with was a bad idea. A whole section of heroes that can be beaten quickly, but they can't defeat enemies quickly either? That's guaranteed to be disappointing, and that's the way it has worked out. Over and over we've had people say they made a Tank because of the powersets, and then got upset because it wasn't fun. Even Statesman has said he regrets forming the archetyes so heavily around the classic MMO classes. The result was that they have had to raise the damage that Tanks do, but to offset that they've had to lower the ability to take damage. The whole thing isn't working out.
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Having a tanker in a superhero MMO isn't a great idea, no, but saying that "thus, both melee ATs should be one melee AT" is not really an improvement.
It could be argued that tankers should have been bricks, with offense primary/defense secondary, and given melee powersets with the slow recharging heavy hitting attacks that people have wanted for tankers for a long time (and to some extent, already have). However, that doesn't really leave room for characters like Spider-Man, Nightcrawler, Beast, Wolverine, Batman, and the like - melee characters who are not bricks, and who are thematically quite different..
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Before the devs lowered the defense caps on Scrappers, Scrappers were able to *make* tanks using power pools. They were actually better than tanks because they could tank *and* defeat enemies in a reasonable amount of time.
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God, tankers with mature offense never had trouble defeating enemies in a reasonable amount of time. Ever. Ever. Ever. I'm so tired of that canard. Yes, you had 70% base scrapper damage, but you also had some hard-hitting attacks in most of the secondaries. If you had trouble defeating enemies in a reasonable amount of time, you were neglecting your attacks and blaming game mechanics.
And, scrappers could not tank as well as tankers. Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. That was never true, is not true, and never will be true. A completely reasonable argument could be made that they could tank well enough, and that I'll grant you.
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I think that getting rid of Tanks now would be much harder than if they'd just shipped that way originally, but it's still worth considering. Change all Tanks to scrappers. Open up all the powersets to both sides, so an Axe/Regen character would become possible. Raise the Scrapper defense caps so that the former tankers could still tank if the wanted to sacrifice a few more powers to tanking.
It'd be painful, but it would be worth considering. It' probably too late in the game to do it, but it's worth discussing at least.
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If you're going to get rid of tankers, make them into bricks or something. Don't bother to turn them into scrappers.
[/ QUOTE ]Gotta agree. I was never a fan of the "make them one AT" thing. I just think that the two ATs were mis-managed. In actuality, I tend to see them reversed.
Spiderman is more powerful defensively than he is on offense. "Scrappers", tend to be less powerful from the get-go than "Bricks", but make up for it with skill. To me, that means buffs/debuffs and relying more on all-on-nothing DEF-style defense.
When Spidey gets hit, he gets hit hard. (Which is not to say any melee AT should have 0 RES inherently. All fighters learn to roll with punches.)
Bricks are usually flat in offense and defense, and rely more on taking hits and shrugging them off.
So, to me, Tanks should've been Scrappers, minus the criticals.
Scrappers are the ones that should've had a more defensive leaning, with offense that started small and worked its way up (but not like a Brute's Fury).
'course, that's just me. And this is totally off-topic.
Good to see Statesman is looking into it.
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I also agree with this, I always felt that they messed up big time with the tank idea. I always felt that from wat I read in comics, guys like spidy, wolvie, beast, cap, and others rely on skill/defs, while supes, hulk, colosslus, and others, could take it but beat the hell out of you to. So if they ever decide to change than thats how I think it should be IMHO.
Mastoid lvl 50 ss/inv tank Freedom
The Solar Sentinal lvl 2 ss/fire tank Freedom
Steel Bus lvl 34 ss/inv tank Virtue
War Tide lvl 6 axe/inv tank Triumph
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You may not like the way its stated, but its not an incorrect way of stating it, because it is exactly how the power works in game.
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Recharge = Base_Recharge * (1 + "debuff") is an incorrect way to state how recharge debuffs work in this game.
It gives the correct result for the special case where you are fighting even foes with no resist to recharge debuffs or other recharge buffs/debuffs on them, but for any other situation you end up with an incorrect result.
That's why I said that they give the same results "in a vacuum".
It is no more correct than to say that:
Damage buffs increase your damage through this formula:
Damage = Base_Damage/(1 - "damage buff"), and the "damage buff" of an even level SO is 0.25.
This gives the same result as the "real" formula in the special case where the only damage buff is an even level SO, but for all other cases you end up with garbage.
or:
Recharge buffs have this effect on the recharge of your powers:
Recharge = Base_Recharge * (1 - "recharge buff"), and Hasten has a "recharge buff" of 41.18% (a.k.a "1 - The Number That Should Never Ever Be Uttered Aloud").
Again, this gives the correct result for Hasten for the special case when you have no other recharge buffs/debuffs on you (including Recharge SOs), but for all other cases you end up with nonsense.
This is pretty much the exact same situation as we have with the formula for "recharge debuffs".
So, while Recharge = Base_Recharge*(1 + "recharge debuff") gives the correct answer for one special case, it is not how the game appears to handle recharge debuffs.
And level scaling does not seem to fall within that special case.
As I said above:
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When fighting higher level mobs, our powers work at a fraction of their original efficiency.
Say that we are fighting a foe of a level that means that our powers are at 50% efficiency.
Apparently Statesman essentially says that CE will have this effect on recharge times:
1+0.5*0.5 = 1.25
The game seems to tell us that CE has this effect on recharge times:
1/(1-0.5*1/3) = 1/(5/6) = 6/5 = 1.2
1.2<1.25
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Circeus, thank you for all the hard work and dedication you have put into your research.
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No thanks. I've been out of the video game industry for a while now, I doubt they could afford me based on industry salaries.
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"I never said thank you." - Lt. Gordon
"And you'll never have to." - the Dark Knight
OK...here's what Chilling Embrace ONCE did...
-0.4 to Recharge
We changed it to...
-.32 to Recharge
-.07 to Damage (thought it was .1, to be honest)
Needless to say, Circeus is right - it's a mild nerf! Eek.
We checked a change in so that Chillling Embrace will NOW be:
-.32 to Recharge
-.14 to Damage
I'll post tomorrow explaining these numbers...
Why did it need the -Recharge changed?
Was it that overpowered with the damage debuff?
Not too shabby, I gotta say
This space is intentionally left blank.
Sounds better, but I'll have to rely on Circeus' reaction to guide my own.
While we're being all forthcoming with information and changes, any comment on the overwhelming desire of Inv Tankers to be skewed more towards RES than DEF, particularly the widely-held opinion that Invincibility is the *only* power in the set that's really important?
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And, scrappers could not tank as well as tankers. Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. That was never true, is not true, and never will be true. A completely reasonable argument could be made that they could tank well enough, and that I'll grant you.
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I think, back in the good ol' days, scrappers could tank sufficiently efficiently, that the only thing that could bring some of them down was the purple patch, and the purple patch is exponential in effect. The problem was that sometimes, the difference in efficiency between a really well-built scrapper and a really well-built tank went so high up the scale, that in effect the difference between the two was lower than the difference in difficulty between notches in the purple patch. In effect (and with made up numbers) it was entirely possible to have a scrapper and a tanker such that both could tank +8s, but neither could tank +9s - something like that.
Thus - just for some extreme cases - a scrapper might not be able to tank as well as a true tanker, but there were very few actual situations that existed where the difference between that scrapper and that tank was discernable. A distinction without a difference, as it were.
Mind you, I'm all for precision in language, especially when discussing more sensitive topics. Technically, scrappers as a group could never tank with the same efficiency as tankers as a group. However, there were many cases where scrappers could survive the tanking role to the same degree as tankers for all game situations ever encountered or were likely to be encountered. Those are subtly different statements, which probably helps perpetuates this argument.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
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Sounds better, but I'll have to rely on Circeus' reaction to guide my own.
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Same here. 
I find it much more relaxing that way.
That does sound better States and I appreciate you looking at Ice Armor once again.
The Dark Blade
"I've felt your mouse on me before, you perv...." - Troy Hickman
Paragon Wiki
Its like this. Look at above where Stargazer and I are saying that 66.7% is 40% and 50% is 33.33%. The 25% number is more comparative to the 40% number but also comes from a time when we weren't using demo files to count and didn't have the arena for timing measurements. So for a while it stuck as the number, but was based on somone counting on their fingers the number of times they were attacked in 15 minutes w/out CE and then the number with CE. So defintely subject to error.
When looked at more closely though the number was wrong. When Statesman gave me the 66.7% number, which was during I4, I went into game and verified it. It was defintely causing about 40% less attacks when I did this (I didn't think to measure vs a PvP opponent in the arena at the time btw).
And now its defintely less than that number both in PvE and PvP, coming in at 50%.