My eyes are opened!

And I'm not sure I like it.

I'll explain. I've recently been building a bunch of new characters, using power sets I've never used before. It's partly because I've been making characetrs that are intended as homages to existing characters, partly just to try new things.

Today I made a Claws/Regen Scrapper. All I can say is, Holy COW.

This character does enough damage to defeat one of my AE minions in one, sometimes two hits. He uses a miniscule fraction of the endurance that ALL my other characters use. He uses so little endurance, in fact, that he can fight through whole missions with Sprint turned ON!

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I'm wondering why all other ATs and sets don't behave this way?

I mean, just compare the first power of several sets (the comparison is similar throughout the sets).

Claws-Swipe - 20.7 dps
Broadsword-Hack - 12.1 dps
Dark Melee-Shadow Punch - 15.1 dps
Dual Blades-Nimble Slash - 14.1 dps
Martial Arts-Thunder Kick - 15.1 dps

Claws outpowers everything, and by a fair bit. The damage per endurance stats are similar, but less pronounced. Overall, endurance per second is about the same across all the sets, but Claws uses less because it defeats its foes faster.

I'll say this, too. Because I'm using Regeneration, I have no toggles to use endurance up. However, even when I fight with toggles off, I'm doing less damage than Claws will do.

Why don't I like this? Because everyone else is being short changed! I mean, Tankers are gasping for breath after one minion. Claws Scrappers can go through whole missions and never fall below 75% endurance.

This is my suggestion. Rebalance endurance use so it is relative to damage output. That is, if it takes 1% endurance to do 5 damage, it should take 1% to do 5 damage for everyone. Tankers will use less endurance, Defenders will use less endurance, Blasters would use more. Of course, powers with additional effects should use a little more endurance, but this too, should be standardized.

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Because when you're level 50 you won't have the best single target damage, won't have the best mitigation and won't have the best AoE damage.

Claws is simply good at it all. Nothing else to it.

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Be well, people of CoH.

Seems like the solution to the problem of Tankers using more Endurance is to make Claws Tankers.

Seriously, though, Tankers are just going to use more Endurance in general. Claws/Regen is very efficient, yes, but so is Willpower. WP/SS is going to be fairly End efficient, since Rage will only be costing you End when it crashes. And Claws may also mature early, being much better in the early levels than, say, SS, and giving you the impression it will be better overall. I know from playing my Claws/Inv that it seemed to grow fairly quickly, but then around 25 or so it seemed like I couldn't squeeze any more damage out of it. It wasn't until I got Shockwave that I really felt like my damage got any better.

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I disagree with the idea of standardizing DPE across the board; also the secondary effect of Claws as a whole is that it has cheaper endurance costs and faster recharges, which is why many of the attacks don't have any other effects.

So you're using the easiest set on your endurance, paired with the secondary that provides the earliest help with maintaining it and lowest consumption, and saying that it's not going through endurance quickly. Working as intended, move along.

Also I have no idea how you're calculating dps - those numbers aren't correct for any of the sets at any of the levels I was able to select.

Using the in-game numbers for DPA, which is what actually counts once you have an attack chain, you get the following (base numbers at level 50):
Broadsword / Hack - 77.14
Broadsword / Slash - 47.04
Claws / Swipe - 57.29
Claws / Strike - 57.75
Dual Blades / Nimble Strike - 51.02
Dual Blades / Power Slice - 51.84
Dark Melee / Shadow Punch - 63.32
Dark Melee / Smite - 85.14
Fire Melee / Scorch - 64.76
Fire Melee / Fire Sword - 73.20
Katana / Sting of the Wasp - 62.03
Katana / Gambler's Cut - 78.44
Martial Arts / Thunder Kick - 63.32
Martial Arts / Storm Kick - 99.50
Spines / Barb Swipe - 23.05
Spines / Lunge - 47.45

Looks like Claws is only ahead of Dual Blades and Spines with those first powers... maybe you should stop making things up?

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I got the numbers from Mids'. I didn't make anything up, and I am offended by the suggestion.

Part of why I posted was that I've only played Claws to around L10, and I thought it possible it would be outstripped later. However, it SO greatly eclipses everything I've played previously, that I can't imagine anything else coming close.

I think I stand by my suggestion. Personally, I think a degree of standardization would be good for the game. There seems to be a lot of arbitrariness.

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Lethal Damage = fail at higher levels, especially redside. My claws stalker sort of tapered off into uselessness in the 20s against Longbow.

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[ QUOTE ]
I think I stand by my suggestion. Personally, I think a degree of standardization would be good for the game. There seems to be a lot of arbitrariness.

[/ QUOTE ]

The following is not an attack. I really, really dislike the way you think. Your posts consistently seem to me to contain suggestions that I think are extremely myopic and, as a result, extremely poor for the game.

Allow me to try to explain why I think this about your latest suggestion.

Damage is not the only metric by which powersets or, indeed, ATs, are measured. Your post above makes it clear that you may think it is, and indeed there are plenty of players who agree with you. That does not make them, or you, correct.

Some powersets have secondary effects. Some have less damage in some powers and more in others. Some ATs bring other things to the table, like buffs and debuffs. Some ATs are balanced around being unlockable.

Finally, the DPS of one power as listed in Mids' is not a valid metric of how much damage that powerset deals. What matters is DPA (damage per activation) divided by activation time, because of how activation times are the limiting factor in how quickly you can deliver damage once you have enough attacks (or enough recharge, or both) to sustain a continuous attack chain.

In other words, even if you were right about how things should be balanced (and I very much believe you are not), you've gone about analyzing that balance wrong.

Edited per Umbral's suggestion. I think of DPA as the abbreviation for what he's talking about, but that wouldn't be clear to readers.

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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

[ QUOTE ]
What matters is DPA (damage per activation) because of how activation times are the limiting factor in how quickly you can deliver damage once you have enough attacks (or enough recharge, or both) to sustain a continuous attack chain.

In other words, even if you were right about how things should be balanced (and I very much believe you are not), you've gone about analyzing that balance wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]

You may want to tweak that and specifically say "Damage per Activation second". Damage per Activation is how much damage is dealt from a single application. DPA (as is used by number crunchers) is that number divided by the activation time (generally modified for Arcanatime).

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You're seeing two effects, most likely.

1) Low Level Scaling. At level 1 a scrapper can 1-shot a minion with Hack. I think that stops working at level 3. At level 8 a blaster can 1-shot a spawn with Frost Breath. That stops working at level 9 or 10. You aren't working with the "true" AT- to -AT ratios till 20 , and the AT-to-badguy ratio keeps changing till level 35. If you want to see this look even more impressive, roll up a Fire/Energy, getting Fireball at 2, Build Up at 4 or 6 and Fire Breath at 8. Now go to Perez.

2) Regen, specifically, gets "stamina at level 4". It's slightly better than actual stamina, and it lets you cruise through the lower levels. I don't think you are seeing massively more efficient Claws, I think you're seeing 33% more End Recovery. I could be wrong, and it could be the combination. But everyone else is going to be pretty much in the same place endwise by level 20-24. You're not so much BETTER as EARLIER.

Regen's strong, and I like Claws, but lemme know if that build seems as hideously overpowered at level 30.

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Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.

So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.

I actually think it's better for the game is sets are LESS standardized. It gives people more reason to pick certain sets.

Instead of comparing tier 1 to tier 1 power, it is more interesting to compare set 1 vs set 2. Some sets can have sucky tier 1 and tier 2 attacks but tier 3 is really good (ex: Cosmic Burst!).

Don't forget Claw doesn't have Build Up so your burst damage is less. Follow Up can be an advantage and a disadvantage too.

I think Claw is a great set. It's probably my most favorite Stalker set so far. I love the knockdown from Focus and now Eviscerate does good damage too.

And don't forget lethal resistance. It does get really annoying when you fight Longbows, Malta and any robots.

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What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.

So I'm hearing that it balances later. Ok, I can deal with that. It's kind of unfortunate in a way, since endurance problems are most sever at lower level. I'll let you know how it goes, but I tend to level very slowly, and I have a lot of alts.



I took no offense, Uber, you took the time to explain, and I appreciate that. Perhaps I should explain where my ideas often come from, though.

Many moons ago, I played Champions. Many of you will remember. In Champions, you would purchase powers using points. The overall effect of the powers would be modified based on advantages and idsadvantages that the specific power had.

For example, an Energy Blast would cost 5 points per 1d6 damage. I could, however, add a modifier to that, such as No Normal Defense (which would make the power ignore normal defenses). This modifier would increase the cost per die to 10/1d6.

I envision a balanced game working similarly. That is, two identical powers should have identical stats. However, that's not the case in CoH. Look at Blasters and Defenders. A Defender's Energy Blast does far less damage than the Blater's identical power, yet costs the same endurance. To me, that's unbalanced. The Defender's power should cost less endurance.

The same basic idea should be applied to all ATs and all damage sources. That is, they should cost endurance based on the damage they do, modified by the special effects involved. To me, that's balanced. There's a lot of discussion on the boards about endurance woes, I think something along these lines might alleviate much of the complaining.

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You should try a widow. Claw speed with bonus DoT = NICE!

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[ QUOTE ]
A Defender's Energy Blast does far less damage than the Blater's identical power, yet costs the same endurance. To me, that's unbalanced. The Defender's power should cost less endurance.

[/ QUOTE ]

This on its own might not be a bad idea. I think it's been suggested in the past, and I'm not really sure what harm could come of it, as long as it was as much a "rule" as the current endurance rules are. That's to say, the devs sometimes "break" the current rules intentionally as part of the features of a power or powerset (and Claws is an example of that).

For what it's worth, it actually used to be worse. Tankers and Defenders not only did less damage than Scrappers and Blasters for equivalent attacks, they also payed more endurance.

Some of us sometimes joke that the devs come up with three ways to attack a perceived balance problem, and then implement them all. This seems to have been a case of that at design time. Thankfully they backed off of it.

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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

Standardization of powersets based on a single value is a very, very bad idea.

Please cite PvP as a prime example.

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Quick Reply, to OP:

Wow...its so late, i must go to bed. I see some very respectable names posting their input on this and im thouroughly convinced eveything is full of deeply scrutinized details!

But without having the mental stamina to make proper tribute to everything said yet, i must say this to Ultimo...and this is my own personal view on this game over 60+ months playing it...Welcome to CoH diversity! I discovered some of this game particularities very late also i may humbly add. What your talking about is what makes any scrappers and controllers and defenders equal in some way -while stifly differenciate them also. It all reside in the skills required to achieve the same results.

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Claws "secondary effect" is an endurance discount on all powers.

It also has a recharge discount, meaning it does more damage per recharge second.

It also has a third effect designed precisely to make sure the game does not get to do too much dps, it's a more recent addition, but it tries to make sure no attack does more than 1 scale damage per activation second.

All it rounds to an extremely fun low level experience (you run out of endurance less therefore you can attack longer and kill things you may not be able due to endurance issues in other toons) but you wont be killing faster than anyone else in a team or after endurance stops being an issue.


[ QUOTE ]
To me, that's unbalanced. The Defender's power should cost less endurance.

The same basic idea should be applied to all ATs and all damage sources.

[/ QUOTE ]

At one point I would had agreed but not today. These days there are only two ATs you can safely mess with their endurance costs: tankers and defenders.

Other ATs may do "less damage" but have inherent abilities that push the average damage up.


<ul type="square">[*]Scrappers, Blasters, Stalkers and Brutes already do higher than standard damage per endurance by definition, they were meant to be THE damage ATs. Brutes actually do this by a damage buff, their base is rather low but it gains in damage without increasing in end cost.[*]Corruptors get scourge that in avrage can take their damage from .75 to .90[*]Dominators (for now) get Domination that takes their damage from .65 to around 1[*]Controllers do double damage with containment taking them to about 1 damage mod.[*]Masterminds are nearly impossible to quantify and actually their own attacks and powers are intentionally magnified in endurance cost to compensate that their pets are doing almost everything for them.[*]Soldiers get increased endurance recovery[*]Kheledian's forms give them increased end recovery[/list]
Tankers and defenders get hosed though. IF these two ATs got looked at for endurance efficiency, I would not just lower endurance cost. Instead, since all other ATs already go around end consumption in interesting ways, I would modify their inherents to benefit their endurance issues. I like the idea of making the tanker endurance bar much higher while expanding the defender's Vigilance endurance discount to always work even if no team mate is harmed, only make it get stronger if allies get harmed.

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So to sum it up....close your eyes. )

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An interesting analysis, Starsman, I have to agree. It would be a significant task to make this whole thing work.

As for Defenders and Tankers, how do you like these ideas (I think I've posted them elsewhere before):

Gauntlet would generate an endurance discount for each foe affected by the punchvoke effect. Thus, he'd have a larger benefit in larger groups.

Vigilance currently generates a discount based on the state of the Defender's team. I wonder if allowing it to work based on the Defender's (as a team of one) own state. That is, as he gets in hotter water, he gets a bigger discount.

Obviously I've not got any numbers, these are just concepts. What do you think?

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[ QUOTE ]
Gauntlet would generate an endurance discount for each foe affected by the punchvoke effect. Thus, he'd have a larger benefit in larger groups.

[/ QUOTE ]

Considering how Gauntlet is implemented (by creating a second AoE at the point of impact of the initial target) having the effect feed back and generate a buff on the Tanker would be... problematic. The only way to feasibly generate this would be for the Gauntlet AoE effect to generate a second AoE that targets the Tanker and his allies, distributing end redux that way (re: every attack is a Fulcrum Shift with Taunt instead of -dam and end redux instead of +dam). I don't really see that as being a viable option for obvious reasons...

If they really wanted to give Tankers greater endurance, they could just reduce the endurance of all of their attacks or give each attack an end reduction benefit that is simply applied right back to the Tanker similar to how Blasters get +dam from Defiance. Personally, I don't really see much problem with it. Tankers are fine as an AT, imo. The only things broken about them are a couple of their powers (I'm lookin' at you Rage!).

[ QUOTE ]
Vigilance currently generates a discount based on the state of the Defender's team. I wonder if allowing it to work based on the Defender's (as a team of one) own state. That is, as he gets in hotter water, he gets a bigger discount.

[/ QUOTE ]

This has been proposed numerous times and pretty much everyone agrees with it. It would be awesome if Defenders actually included themselves in their vigilance calculations, though, personally, I'd rather just get a more useful inherent than a bit of end redux. Some defenders love it for reasons I can't quite comprehend (well, I can, but I don't see it as a reason to love it, especially when +recov is so prolific on teams via set bonuses). I'd much rather have an inherent that provides +dam to compensate for defenders pathetic and demonstratively low damage. Defenders are stuck at .65 whereas every other AT can easily attain at least .85 naturally or via benefit from their inherent, which doesn't balance out with the fact that their buff/debuff scalar is only .25 better than all of the other support ATs, some effects of which aren't even affected by it (rech for instance).

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I disagree on your guys points about tankers. You seem to be leaving out the point that most tankers I see can walk into a spawn and stand there holding agro with the taunt in thier aura and never die. I saw an Invuln sitting there with 5 master illusionists and only need a heal once every maybe 5 minutes.

Tanker survivability is so extreme that I sometimes wonder if the devs over did it.

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I'm just going to mention that Invulns have no protection against most of the stuff master illusionists do and leave it at that.

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Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.

So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.

[ QUOTE ]
I disagree on your guys points about tankers. You seem to be leaving out the point that most tankers I see can walk into a spawn and stand there holding agro with the taunt in thier aura and never die. I saw an Invuln sitting there with 5 master illusionists and only need a heal once every maybe 5 minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm with Fulmens. This is either massive hyperbole or you were missing something critical, like the fact that those MIs were -3 to the Tanker or something. The only mitigation an Invuln has to MI attacks is Dull Pain, and an Invul who went and sat in 5 even-level (or higher) MIs would not be sitting there long.

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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

... even force fields don't stop some of that MI damage.

I've seen an INV tank walk into a room full of +7 freaks and basically fight them to a standstill, but the tank in question had the little bubbles from force fields. (Sometimes the exemplar/autoexemplar rules get mixed up when you're doing a respec... and sometimes you go "What if we try it anyway?" )

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Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.

So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.

[ QUOTE ]
An interesting analysis, Starsman, I have to agree. It would be a significant task to make this whole thing work.

As for Defenders and Tankers, how do you like these ideas (I think I've posted them elsewhere before):

Gauntlet would generate an endurance discount for each foe affected by the punchvoke effect. Thus, he'd have a larger benefit in larger groups.

Vigilance currently generates a discount based on the state of the Defender's team. I wonder if allowing it to work based on the Defender's (as a team of one) own state. That is, as he gets in hotter water, he gets a bigger discount.

[/ QUOTE ]


The problem with those two ideas is that teams is usually the last point you need endurance at (unless you extremely lowbie trying to run all toggles and tank for a full team but hp is also an issue there) so making the endurance discounts better when herding/teaming leaves the people that are in the most need of a boost in the cold.

I would simply say for tankers that they were designed around the idea that they would take longer to kill things because they CAN stand there longer to take the damage, but this is true due to high mitigation and higher hp than anyone else. However, how can you do this if your endurance is burnt at the same speed as everyone else even if you kill slower? In the end, you run out of endurance before you can kill the same target a more endurance efficient at would. By boosting the base endurance you are actually giving the tanker the one tool they need to be able to stand there longer and fight longer but slower.

Many would think I'm insane by looking at the number but should you ever want to truly make the tanker match endurance efficiency of a scrapper without critical, you would need to increase his base endurance from 100 to 140. Due to critical the tanker would still be 10% behind in endurance efficiency.

As for defenders: making the vigilance kick in on his own demise is not going to help them much. How much good is an end discount going to help them if they are close to dying already? An endurance discount would be much better for them. Now, the defender has other issues, soon they will be the lowest damage AT in the entire game (doms without domination where about there too.) IF you wanted him to have the same endurance efficiency as a 1 Scale Damage AT, you would have to give him a 54% endurance discount. But that's not going to do much to his effectiveness as the defender does not have the tanker's luxury to fight for a long period of time, therefore defenders need a more in dept look than just endurance, specially given that they were the only AT exclusively designed to be team ATs.

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[ QUOTE ]
I disagree on your guys points about tankers. You seem to be leaving out the point that most tankers I see can walk into a spawn and stand there holding agro with the taunt in thier aura and never die. I saw an Invuln sitting there with 5 master illusionists and only need a heal once every maybe 5 minutes.

Tanker survivability is so extreme that I sometimes wonder if the devs over did it.

[/ QUOTE ]

As I noted on my previous post and I will redundantly state here:

The tanker was designed to take longer to fight, by virtue of having the luxury to survive that long. He, however, burns endurance at the same speed as everyone else, and regains it at the same speed everyone else. The result is that the tanker must kill with the same endurance budget so he looses the luxury of perpetuity and is forced to look into additional endurance regain tools and even more blue insps to be able to do that (this may change with IOs but the game can't be balanced around IOs, specially since many just can't afford IOing until the high end game and it's the low end that these issues are the most obvious.)

Let's pretend it takes 15 swings of normal attacks for a scrapper to kill a boss.
The tanker would take 21 swings to kill the same boss provided he does not regenerate first.

Now, imagining a fake world where every attack does exactly 1ds of damage, you can only swing 19 times before you run out of endurance, and thats not counting that your toggles are also consuming endurance.


Compensating the endurance consumption of the tank (via more endurance recovery like fortunatas, or via endurance discounts, or via increased base endurance) would finally give the thing they were missing to do what they were intended to do: stand there and kill slowly without requiring backup* or to fall back.

With my proposal the tanker still would have to swing those 21 blows, but he would actually have the endurance to do so.

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