Maneuvers: Why so essential?

Having read a lot of the posts around, it seems a lot of players hold Maneuvers in high respect for SoA's. I am merely curious as to why.

Any player is capable of taking Maneuvers for their character from the leadership pool, so is there something special about the SoA's version that makes it more powerful or sought after than the leadership pool equivalent? Just trying to discover why its considered essential for SoA's, but not for other archetypes.

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Characters:
The Heroic Mary Grace (50)
The Mystical Thunderspark (50)
The Candy-loving Little Jenny (50)

The SoA version... It's insanely powerful.

It gives 10% def at base, so four widows or spiders running it and you've more defence than an ice tank for the whole team. Don't skip it, until they get around to nerfing it.

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DON'T eat muffins while I'm developing you.

Pants! Turkey Magnates! A man in a box! Rogue AI! Come one, come all, to arc ID 10107 - It's [i]'Not as long as some other arcs'[/i]!

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The SoA version... It's insanely powerful.

It gives 10% def at base, so four widows or spiders running it and you've more defence than an ice tank for the whole team. Don't skip it, until they get around to nerfing it.

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Nerfing individuals based on their team stacking is very foolish in a team based game. You can build teams with optimal and "insane" performance outside of Villain Epic Artchetypes. What about nerfing non-VEAT team setups that can tear through everything with ease?

It's not gonna happen, and you know it.

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Still, 10% is a massive base figure for a Defence that can be further enhanced with slotting.

Compare it to the Leaadership pool equivalent which varies by AT but at its very best (ie. for Defenders) is 3.5% base.

Huuuuuuuuge difference.

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Widows only get 5% defence from their maneuvers. Buuuut we also give 10% def from Mind Link.

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Tactical Training: Maneuvers for Soldier is 10% Def, for Widow it's 5% Def.

It's a lovely power to take to help your own survivabilty when solo and great in teams, espically with other SoA with it, or a bubbler or trapper.

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[ QUOTE ]
Still, 10% is a massive base figure for a Defence that can be further enhanced with slotting.

Compare it to the Leaadership pool equivalent which varies by AT but at its very best (ie. for Defenders) is 3.5% base.

Huuuuuuuuge difference.

[/ QUOTE ]

Cry me a river. Are you afraid Villains will get more critters with less healing badges involved? Go to your Defender forum and advocate a buff. ;-)

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The Spiders version of Maneuvers gives 10% defence to all, the Widow version gives 5% defence to all. As noted, both are higher than the pool Maneuvers which, with the highest mod (Defenders - now shared with Spiders and Widows), gives 3.5%.

For Spiders, the 10% to all is worth the endurance cost even if you're soloing - it's one of their primary forms of mitigation.

For Widows, the 5% stacks nicely with all their other defence powers - you might not want to run it all the time solo, but in groups it's still very valuable. Widows can also access theirs 6 levels before Spiders.

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@Hakeswell
Union Ilservian, Evinlea
Defiant Expeditor, Hakeswell

Arc: 70119 Hellion Initiation

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It's not gonna happen, and you know it.

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Maneuvers used to be much more powerful; it got squished as part of the GDN.

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DON'T eat muffins while I'm developing you.

Pants! Turkey Magnates! A man in a box! Rogue AI! Come one, come all, to arc ID 10107 - It's [i]'Not as long as some other arcs'[/i]!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Still, 10% is a massive base figure for a Defence that can be further enhanced with slotting.

Compare it to the Leaadership pool equivalent which varies by AT but at its very best (ie. for Defenders) is 3.5% base.

Huuuuuuuuge difference.

[/ QUOTE ]

Cry me a river. Are you afraid Villains will get more critters with less healing badges involved? Go to your Defender forum and advocate a buff. ;-)

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[/ QUOTE ]

Erm, what???

Someone asked why the SoA power is worth getting compared to the Leadership power, I gave them the best reason.

Where's this come from?

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Wow, thanks for the quick responses everyone. I didn't realise that it was so much stronger. I had taken Maneuvers on other characters via Leadership and found it worryingly weak, so it confused me immensely when it was suddenly deemed the must-have for the new epics.

Two final questions. As you can also take Leadership pools with the new epics on top of your regular AT versions, do they stack and are they equally strong as the AT powers when used by SoA's? Lastly, if the other powers are enhanced above the normal versions, does this also apply to the (already powerful) Vengeance and if so, by how much?

Thanks everyone.

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Characters:
The Heroic Mary Grace (50)
The Mystical Thunderspark (50)
The Candy-loving Little Jenny (50)

Nope, pool maneuvers is rubbish on VEAT's. I don't know about vengeance, I'm afraid.

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DON'T eat muffins while I'm developing you.

Pants! Turkey Magnates! A man in a box! Rogue AI! Come one, come all, to arc ID 10107 - It's [i]'Not as long as some other arcs'[/i]!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Still, 10% is a massive base figure for a Defence that can be further enhanced with slotting.

Compare it to the Leaadership pool equivalent which varies by AT but at its very best (ie. for Defenders) is 3.5% base.

Huuuuuuuuge difference.

[/ QUOTE ]

Cry me a river. Are you afraid Villains will get more critters with less healing badges involved? Go to your Defender forum and advocate a buff. ;-)

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[/ QUOTE ]

Erm, what???

Someone asked why the SoA power is worth getting compared to the Leadership power, I gave them the best reason.

Where's this come from?

[/ QUOTE ]

Be careful where you stick the reply please. You can however disregard that, since you clearly addressed the OP directly. The emphasis on the huge difference was unfortunate in the wrong context. Sorry.

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It's not gonna happen, and you know it.

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Maneuvers used to be much more powerful; it got squished as part of the GDN.

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I suppose the developers know this as well. And last time I checked, the previously nerfed maneuvers was a *pool power*, not an AT specific power.

It's possible to build non-VEAT teams that can do the same content just as fast, if not faster, than a VEAT team. When will these team setups be nerfed, because they stack certain buffs? It's meaningless to say something should be nerfed based on stacking, because then you would have to restrict how many identical Archetypes a team can have or something. This is an extreme setup, pure VEAT teams is a thing of the present, nothing lasts forever.

And besides, too many toggles such as these will be nicely capped. Defense is not only there for the team, it's for personal use too. It's not a pool power, taken as an additional resource. Not in this case.

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You can stack power pool leaderships on your own leaderships as a VEAT, but may the buyer beware as the bang for buck isn't the same. You pay the price on the back of endurance bar and once out of endurance your losing out on the other benefits, logically it's normally in terms of pace.

You can have too much of a good thing or too little min/maxxing is about having just enough of everything for either a specific task or things in general.

VEATs are largely defensive and some types are compromised in terms of resistance more than others without the total in hitpoints being that grand anyway. Against a certain amount of offense you have a limited amount of life expectancy and to do unto them is better than they unto you so you may put offense and/or control in there to help.


2 things:

Guide to Defense
Mids Hero Designer Pirate Update with SoAs

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He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.

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Two final questions. As you can also take Leadership pools with the new epics on top of your regular AT versions, do they stack and are they equally strong as the AT powers when used by SoA's? Lastly, if the other powers are enhanced above the normal versions, does this also apply to the (already powerful) Vengeance and if so, by how much?


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You can take leadership toggles on top of everything. But the stamina drain will be considerable, and you have to drop some good "native" powers. There is many more powers than you can afford already, so it's not easy to make room for more.

The leadership pool is not weakened for the VEAT, so they will stack as expected. There is no VEAT vengeance.

Edit: Oops. Answered. Was a bit slow there.

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There is no VEAT vengeance.

[/ QUOTE ]Yeah there is.

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There is no VEAT vengeance.

[/ QUOTE ]Yeah there is.

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Yeah sorry. There is no VEAT vengeance for the soldier branch. It appears that the Fortunata/Night widows gets those. And they look identical, to the pool vengeance in mids. Which is a preliminary source of information, mind you.

( Don't play the widow branch, find the male counterparts disturbing. Shoot me. )

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<Struts about in a tight tight TIGHT male widow outfit>

Don't ye think ahm sexah?!

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[ QUOTE ]
You can take leadership toggles on top of everything. But the stamina drain will be considerable, and you have to drop some good "native" powers.

[/ QUOTE ]I was thinking more about taking Assault on top of the default Widow version to give myself an additional 10% damage. A permanent 20% damage is little cause for scoff, and endurance IO's take care of the energy drain problem rather well.

As for losing a power, its a small price to pay considering it will directly enhance most of your skills. Perhaps not something for the Fortunata's, but I can imagine its usefulness as a Night Widow.

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Characters:
The Heroic Mary Grace (50)
The Mystical Thunderspark (50)
The Candy-loving Little Jenny (50)

Having assault from the ldrship pool on is good whilst attacking but bad between fights as it reduces your end rec considerably. For large teams its generally great by default.

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He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.

You are alowed to turn it off you know.

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I really should do something about this signature.

That's something I never thought I'd have to mention. I do actually run foc acc (which is worse) off and on and that did actually mean putting a recharge into it to have it up when necessary and down when it's not. Most people don't like to bother with that but if your end rec and end cost are too close then you have to. With these VEATs you may have to use toggles choosingly at times depending on your build.

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He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.

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<Struts about in a tight tight TIGHT male widow outfit>

Don't ye think ahm sexah?!

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Rofl. Don't worry, Gil, I'm sure Black Scorpion will be interested

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these VEATs you may have to use toggles choosingly at times depending on your build.

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Or team with at least one Kineticist

I've been running a low level team as a Soldier (hoping to be a Crabby as I spent 1-50 as a Stalker and realised eventually that I don't like them all that much) and enjoyed teaming with different archetypes. Teaming. In City of Villains. I thought I'd never say it! (Apart from the dash from 40-50 which was just team team team for me)

I think a team of all-Soldiers/Widows could be fun - but lacks the metal-crunching, fast-pacedness of say a Stalker, a Corrupter, a Brute, a Domi and an MM plus to very useful skills of a Soldier and/or Widow. Of course, team them up with Heroes on co-ops and you're well away.

Personally I don't see the point of nerfing the defence - purely because this is an EPIC archetype. The damage is 'okay' for VEATs to compensate for some very handy secondaries and they will provide some much-needed survivability that, hopefully, will encourage teams and therefore keep Villains going longer (theoretically the more people teaming, the quicker to 50, people have more scope to try other ATs - that's my take on it anyway).

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