SR is hard mode ninjitsu

That's true. However, one should never assume that if something is trivially easy to change, then the devs not changing it is a priori proof that they don't want to change it. It may just currently fall into the category of a very low priority issue to look at.

If Castle did want to change this, though, all that would be required is the sixty seconds it would take to find and change the "AllowStrength" flag in his spreadsheet for every version of this power from a one to a zero.

Really? Quickness? I'd expect Ninjitsu to get the reverse of what Dark Armor and Energy Aura got, and trade its Hide for a Cloak of Darkness/Energy Cloak analogue. What's a Ninjitsu set without any stealth in it, anyway?

I'd also wonder how they'd treat Caltrops, given Weapon Mastery.

My feeling is that Ninjitsu with a +DEF stealth replacing Hide might be too much defense for the set. I'm just not sure how the devs will resolve that problem.

At the crux of the problem is not Ninjitsu specifically but SR. Stalker SR is actually much, much stronger than Scrapper SR. Most people aren't aware, but while stalker SR lacks lucky, Evasion more than makes up for the loss of AoE defense: in fact stalker Evasion is actually *stronger* than the total AoE defense of scrapper lucky and Evasion combined.

The loss of lucky also costs stalker SR some scaling resistances, but its not as much as you might think: stalker dodge and agile have *more* scaling resistances than scrapper dodge and agile. The net result is that while scrapper SR gets zero to 60% with three passives, stalker SR gets zero to 50% with two passives.

So, here's the comparison between scrapper SR and stalker SR:

Scrapper SR, slotted mitigation:

30.4% Melee
30.4% Ranged
30.4% AoE
0-60% scaling resistances

Stalker SR, slotted mitigation, suppressed Hide
33.3% Melee
33.3% Ranged
36.3% AoE
0-50% scaling resistances

Is there any doubt which one is intrinsicly stronger?

Now, you could argue that because stalkers have lower health, that lower health imposes a small penalty on a defensive-heavy set. The reason has to do with an effect I mentioned a long time ago (back in the I4 version of my scrapper comparisons, actually) when I called it the "run line." Basically, no player really gets to "use" all of their health if they want to avoid death, they can only get to the point where they are one shot/volley away from being killed, and then they have to run (or take their chances). This run line is proportionately higher for low health archetypes (because proportionately speaking each critter attack deals a greater percentage of health) and for defensive sets (because individual attacks are not reduced by resistance, which would lower the level of the run line).

The problem is that Ninjitsu gets a sizable percentage of its mitigation from defense and should thus be affected in a similar, if slightly lower manner. So while stalker SR is stronger than scrapper SR (in raw numbers), and stalker EA is similarly stronger than brute EA, scrapper Ninjitsu would be numerically just as strong as stalker Ninjitsu but the logic says it should be a little weaker. That's a moderate inconsistency.

The proliferation rule seems to be to proliferate to stalkers, its okay to just add Hide on top, because that extra defense is offset by the disadvantages of lower health. That rule would seem to indicate that proliferating away from stalkers you should jettison Hide.

But of course its not that clear-cut: there are examples that contradict this line of thought. I'm just tossing it out as the reason why I think its not obvious to me that Ninjitsu would get to keep its stealth+def when ported to scrappers (and stealth without defense seems to me to be too light of a power for the set).

Perhaps they could add a stealth without a defense buff but with a different compensating buff. My concern is less the stealth and more the +Def that comes with it.

I was thinking about this one a while ago, a Hide that worked similar to the MA critter one with no defense (provides strong damage buff while hidden) could do the trick. Then again, I think a more fair thing would just be to port Ninjitsu as is (with endurance in hide, off course) and simply revisit SR. I still think that set has design issues that should be addressed, although it may require the devs to finally cave into merging powers and adding new powers to the set.

Edit:
If i was to edit SR, I would off course follow my own feel of the set. While many see SR as a "martial arts defense" (and this would be the biggest roadblock for my revamp, it may "break" that feel for many) I see SR as Super Speed Defense. I mean, come on... look at the quickness!!!

As noted above, I would merge the passives, all 3 into a single passive giving us room for 2 new powers.
Then I'd add an invincibility like toggle that grants the caster a recharge buff for every foe in melee (and an equal endurance cost buff, the idea is you act faster but at similar end cost)
For the second power I'd add an in-set super speed. Stalker version would get similar treatment only they would get just the super speed, no recharge aura.

In theory, people can play the set just as they been playing so far. Only "drawback" would be the sudden loss of 2 powers to slot defense invention sets into but we can make that recharge aura grant 0.1 enhanceable defense that would be there only so you can slot sets, same for the in-set super speed.

At this point you can play the set as you always played it by ignoring these two powers, if you dont like them.

The only other issue I see is that the new aura would had made the aura-fication of a toggle in the brute set a bit redundant, but seeing how Dark Armor and Ice Armor both have multiple taunt auras, I don't think this would be a balance issue.

After all this it all comes down to fear of cottage rules, even if all numbers stayed the same due to power mergers.

It's worth noting that it was a similar suggestion on my part that first prompted Castle to articulate to me the early version of what we now call the "cottage rule.

Well, it's a combination of personal ethics, my concern that one of the reasons Shields seems stronger than SR is that you can magically erase one of its main balancing factors with an exploit, and my taking offense that EVERY time the topic comes up, people helpfully rush in to recommend everyone use the exploit.

It is a shame the original changes to the epic pools did not make it as they would had marked the precedent to destroy the cottage rule arguments. Now the turn of events just serves as a strengthening of the cottage rule.

IH was a toggle if I recall correctly.

On SR's scaling resistance. I notice it come sin VERY handy on my latest SR. DM/SR that relies on the scaling resists whenever a big hit lands. At around 20 HP regen/sec (345ish%) and using Siphon Life, I can; in most cases survive survive additional hits that land afterwards.

As far as Ninjitsu for heroes, I don't see why they couldn't keep Hide or give them Stealth. It fits conceptually into a ninja.

The cottage rule is that if Build Up today increases accuracy and damage, tomorrow it should not be changed to build up a cottage for you to live in.

Or, more reasonably, that a power that serves a specific purpose today shouldn't be dramatically changed into something completely different in tomorrow's patches. It's the reason Clobber in War Mace is still a stun (now with tons of damage too), and Energize in Elec Armor still gives an endurance discount. It's also the reason Energize in Brute Elec Armor didn't get moved to an early spot in the power set the way it did in the Scrapper and Tanker versions - the cottage rule also forbids changing power order.

It's a guideline, though, I'm sure the devs would violate it if they felt the need, just that the need would have to be pretty serious before they would do so. Since neither SR nor Ninjitsu is currently a broken set, I don't see it happening.

Note, though, that it's still a very flexible rule. As long as whatever replaces Evasion still gives some AoE defense, merging Ranged and AoE defense into Focused Senses would probably still be Cottage Rule Compliant. At least, that's my take on the War Mace and Electric Armor changes.

I might be messing up my math, but I think it takes about 140% global rech to perma double-stack Active Defence... Strikes me as less "magically" and more "for a very large amount of inf"

SR is also much easier and cheaper to softcap IME then Ninja, and once you hit the soft cap, the self heal IMO is more a luxigery then a nessissity. All i pack in my inspreation trays on my 2 softcapped SR's (scrapper/brute. stalker in the works.) are greens...

I have a nin stalker, and he's NOT softcapped because... i couldn't do it and keep the powers i wanted slotted the way i want them. I endded up with.. i think 36 or 38 active defence, in combat. Between that much defence, and a good selfheal, it plays really well for me, and i split the difference in my inspreation trays between greens and purples. A small purple softcapps him. So, if the going gets rough, i eat a green/purp and, well, the going gets easy. lol

And that, IMO, is why you should leave each set alone. They both proform very well, just differently. Why make SR a nin clone when there's a good chance Nin is going to be ported to scrapper in the near to distent future? I'd rather have the verity of choices myself.

While Ninjitsu would certainly have to lose Hide, I think the idea that it would have to lose stealth is overstated. Dark Armor does not lose its stealth for Brutes, Tankers or Scrappers, and Energy Aura does not lose its stealth for Brutes. I find it very likely that when Energy Aura is Proliferated to Tankers and Scrappers, it will keep Energy Cloak. (My only concern would be with Tankers, and now that they have Dark Armor I have to say that concern is gone)

So I see no reason why Hide could not be replaced by a more generic Cloaking Device. Caltrops will certainly need to be replaced, and that would be a good candidate for replacement with Quickness. As for Smoke Flash, while I have heard the arguments that there is really no need to replace it, it would not make a Scrapper Crit, I have to admit I'm uncomfortable with giving Placate to any other AT. I think those three powers are the best candidates for replacement, though, Blinding Powder is fine as it is, and the rest should be similar to existing Scrapper defenses.

Personally, as I've said before, I think SR has been trying to cover two concepts, the agility which is based on super powers, and the skill-based, non-super fighting ability. The latter, I think, has stealth as an inherent part of the concept, although you could skip that power if you wanted to. In the absence of the ability to move with super speeds, though, or the super ability to anticipate attacks before they even come, you must use stealth and strike from surprise to ensure you get the initiative. Which is why I picked Stealth from the Pool for my SR Scrapper.

I'll also agree with that. Two choices instead of one, particularly when those two choices better divide up the various concepts between them, is good.

The primary reason for the Cottage Rule is so that players do not suddenly find their powers doing something totally different, that they have no experience with. A very important secondary reason, however, is that once players pick a power, they have no way to change it unless they do a respec. So if a player chose not to take a power for some reason, and you take some aspect of another power and move that aspect into it, you have gimped that person's character, because you have changed the powers in a way that the player did not intend when he decided on his build.

This is the main reason why you won't have things like Focused Accuracy and Evasion folded into a single power. Someone who took FA and not Evasion will suddenly become much stronger, while the person who took Evasion and not FA will log into to his character to find that he has lost all of his AoE defenses, and "Evasion", with some new name, is doing something totally different that he never chose for his character.

In the case of Energize, while additional features were added, and the duration and recharge time of the existing power was changed, for the most part anyone who had Conserve Power still knew what that power did and what to expect from it. And as mentioned, the changes to the Epic pool violated this, and in the end they decided to add new powers rather than force players to replace the old.

The cottage rule isn't just a historical precedent, though. As both jabbrwock and Jade_Dragon point out there are very strong foundational reasons for the cottage rule. The rule is really just short hand for attempting to avoid all the issues they mention.

I need to find that damn post where Positron states that the secondary exploits in HOs are now a desired effect of them.

I understand, but precedent helps to justify changes.

As for the reasons noted, I do think the game sometimes take this too far. Imagine if games like WoW decided never to change anything because fear of invalidating character builds. No, when they think changes are really needed they dare go with huge revamps and grant the affected parties with free respecs.

Well, actually that... well, that other game that I won't mention but its initials are SWG... have angered some players by totally throwing out the existing power/ability structure and replacing it with something else. I'm sure quite a few WoW players have run into similar problems too, although not to that extent.

I think the bigger problem with WoW is coming back to the game after a year away and finding that all of your gear is now useless. So now you have to start over again and build all your gear back up again. CoH has that with Enhancements, to an extent, but when you start getting into the underlying power structure, you can't really do that. If the devs had taken all the capabilities out of Invulnerability, for instance, giving it all to Willpower, there would be no "respec" out of Inv and into WP. You'd be basically stuck starting over.

The Cottage Rule says that your underlying powers may get weaker or stronger, depending on what the devs decide to nerf or buff, but you will never come back to CoH after a year away to find that your SR Scrapper is now Res based, and Shield is now the set of high Defense.

I think this is a good time to restate my version of the cottage rule, which I did have permission from Castle to post, long before his cottage post:

Changes to either the order of powers in a powerset or to the mechanics or core effects of a power are to be considered only as a last resort when all other possibilities have been exhausted.

The "cottage rule" can be broken: Singularity, Elude, MoG. But when its broken, its broken because the problem being solved is considered important enough to break the rule, and breaking it is the only way to address the problem.

So: if you want to combine all three SR passives into one passive and add new powers, its totally irrelevant if you can prove your version of the set is better. You have to demonstrate that there exists a problem with the SR set that is severe enough it is worth breaking the rule - with all the collateral damage that always occurs with breaking the rule - and that no other solution to the problem will work.

When those two conditions are met, the cottage rule is no longer an obstacle.


This is why precident is also irrelevant. Had the devs decided to break the cottage rule for epics it would only be because of the above justification and the cottage rule would still be completely intact. That's why MoG and Singularity don't invalidate the cottage rule.


If you're saying the rule itself is not worth following, I would ask what you would replace the rule with. Because if the rule doesn't exist at all, that's tantamount to saying the devs are free to change things at whim, without any regard for gameplay precedent, so long as they think the new way is better. If they think SR would be better if Focused Senses was replaced with Reconstruction and SR had no more ranged defense toggle, it doesn't matter if players are used to an SR that has it.

I'll be honest: if I were a game developer, I would not bind myself to the cottage rule either: I would follow a somewhat different rule**. But that's the rule the devs currently follow, and if you're going to jettison it you should at least suggest an alternative that your suggestion doesn't violate. Eliminating the rule without replacement is really not an option.


** I'd mention it, but I'd rather hear what your alternative is first.

My "cottage rule" would apply to sets as a whole, not to individual powers. Unless a required nerf, I would not remove any capability or utility from a set. IOs complicate things, I would avoid invalidating current IO possibilities as the time invested in these IOs can very often be greater than the time spent leveling up the character. Due to this power replacements would have to somehow sustain current IO allowances.

Complete power replacements would have to give the user the capability to respec into a build that behaves just as the previous or better. Some one that had the wrong passive turned into super speed but skipped the other two should be able to respec and once more just have one passive that does what his old passive did and perhaps more, as would be in my proposal.

As far as power order goes, I thought there were "recent" technical issues with that but perhaps some one just wanted me to shut up. I would not fear reordering attacks as long as its done in a way that smoths set progression (like making sure all melee sets get at least one AoE or Cone by lvl 20 as a secondary) but still with care.


The problem I see with SR is similar to the problem I see in Stone (outside of granite) it's mitigation is spread across too many powers with next to no utility and any "improvements" I can think of would just reinforce the current "need" to take every power in the set.

It would seem that a mandatory requirement for this rule to be viable would be an easy way to selectively hand out respecs. Handing out global freespecs because you combined two SR passives would probably be seen as excessive.


For what its worth, I agree with you in principle. My version of the cottage rule, if I were the (lead) powers designer would be:

Changing the order or mechanics of a power in a powerset is permissible if the net result is that the powerset has the same or a superset of its original functionality for all availability subsets of the powerset, and that capability is encompassed in a set of powers with equal or lower usage cost.

In other words, its okay to transfer dodge's defense (and scaling resistances) to agile, because both are passives and agile becomes available earlier. Transferring lucky's defense to Evasion would violate the rule because that presumes no SR player would want to take lucky but not Evasion due to Evasion's endurance costs, an unsafe presumption under my rule.

This rule, too, requires as a necessary prerequisite the ability to confer selective respec to players affected by a focused powerset change.

There should be a way to do this. Based on Cryptic statements about their CrypticDB it sounds their previous projects were on SQL and with SQL the sky is the limit when it comes to criteria. Not sure how experienced are the current developwers when it comes to SQL, though. There got to be some experience in there but things have lead me guess (potentially very wrong guess) there is no SQL expert there, just SQL experienced. Anyways, derailing, there has to be a way to do this.

Even so, though, I would keep such a major revamp to coincide with the release of a new issue and they always hand out global respects with new issues.

That makes me think perhaps I would not merge all passives... instead I'd merge the AoE and Ranged (or Melee/Ranged) passives into one passive and then the AoE and Ranged (or Melee/Ranged) toggles into one toggle. This would have the side effect of still requiring two passives for full scaling resistance coverage (all in one passive may seem a bit OP) while lower SR's endurance consumption.

Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.

If you going to place things in the right order, given when they came out and all, it should be "ninjitsu is easy mode SR"