Wait, why Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer?

I'd argue that it is almost needed but in a less broken fashion. Even without travel powers, we usually outrun our enemies so one who actually stays out of the way makes sense. Plus, Taunt/Confront has a -range component that helps alleviate that since properly applied range will be a good NPC tool and taunts can be used to eliminate it.

I wonder if we should have a few enemies with a knockoff of the Ace of Spades temp. It's an autohit that slowly lowers defense but drains life in the process. Giving this to a ranged enemy will make them a subtle threat to tanks/scrappers/brutes but not instantly overwhelm them.

My Arcs
-----
Mission Architect Handyman

Look, I have no illusions that I'm some kind of saint, or that I'm always right and everyone should always agree with me. If you feel I've overstepped the line and moderator action is in order, then by all means, report me. I don't hold grudges, I don't blame people and, quite frankly, I won't disagree I deserve it in this case. I'm not on a crusade to prove that you're wrong and I'm right, or that you are somehow victimising me. I take slight is you mixing what I assume is a genuine desire to enlighten with, quite frankly, pretty basic, unpleasant put-down, which causes your intent to come into question. I say again - if and when you do to genuinely and objectively bring something to light for someone else, do endeavour to do so in a way that doesn't crush them in the process. That pretty much writes sarcasm out, to put it bluntly, but it's hardly as simple as that.


I "victimise" myself not through criticism of my opinion. That can hardly be unexpected. I take slight, however, when I am faced with criticism of my RIGHT to hold that opinion. You may or may not have noticed, but a great many here are very quick to discredit a poster over a post they disagree with, and that, to be perfectly honest, is what you are doing right here. The problem isn't that you disagree with me, or that I fail to agree to disagree with you, the problem is that my argument shouldn't exist because of meta reasons. I am not trying to order you around and tell you that you are wrong, but understand that I'm not very much willing to just be told that I am wrong when I don't agree. It is no discussion if all sides merely restate their opinions and refute the other side's, as that is simply not interesting.

I express disappointment in a lot of things. It's kind of what I do for fun. If I could find some way to rant AND be paid for it, I would live life in heaven on Earth, but I have so far been unable to achieve that, partly because I don't feel I have enough talent for it. The point is that while I agree I can easily be criticised for complaining about everything which isn't as I always dreamed it should be, that's not the reason I'm put in a position of having to defend my right to hold an opinion. I react not with shock and bewilderment when someone handwaves me away with "Bah, what do you know?" or "Yeah, but that's just YOUR opinion and nobody agrees!" or "So you think, but the harsh reality is different." bur rather I react with an eyeroll and a sigh, because THAT'S NOT THE POINT.

Here's what bugs me: You know how sometimes people will make suggestions, and be immediately deluged by arguments that "I would rather they work on something else?" Who god damn cares? I'm sure everyone has their own pet peeve they would rather the developers work on, but that's not the point of a suggestion, now is it? Discuss THIS suggestion, or simply go away. If you want to discuss another suggestion, post about it in your own thread. This is sort of what raises my ire here. I started a thread that was half hypothetical and half unlikely retrofit. I am well aware of why it cannot be put into the game, I am well aware of the arguments of why it is a business decision like it is and I am well aware that not everyone holds my opinion. I am WELL AWARE of this. Beating me over the head with restatement after restatement of this has no point, because this isn't the point.

I understand that phrasing the title as a question: "Why Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer?" does sort of suggest people tell me why, but the title was more thematic than it was the actual question. My actual question, rather, was "Why that and not this other thing?" So far, a lot of people have told me that they don't like this other thing, which I respect and have no problem with, and indeed enjoy conversing with them because we can compare contrasting opinions. I have also been told that an unspecified other
majority does not like my idea which, to be blunt, I don't care about since I'd rather people speak for themselves and which serves as nothing more than a showstopper. And I have been told that I'm wrong to insist on this opinion because I'm selfish and want to turn the whole game into my own baby (which I do, but obviously can't), that I'm arguing against everybody while trapped in my own little world and so on and so forth which has absolutely no point whatsoever because I'm just going to ignore it and keep going anyway. And I'm not going to wake up tomorrow feeling a bit of shame.

If you disagree with me, fine. A discussion where everyone agrees with me isn't very interesting. But don't be surprised if I don't just shrug my shoulders and go "Oh, well. To each their own." I'm not averse to doing that, but I reserve that option for when we have cleared up all misunderstandings and find a point at which we plain and simple cannot agree. Since people are still accusing me of contradicting myself and I have still not been entirely able to explain myself, partly through foot-in-mouth disease on my part, partly through people reading diagonally and seeing boogie men, I feel there is more to be said on he subject. I don't see why this has to attract ire to me, but that's just how it goes.

*sigh* See, this is what I'm talking about. You're still missing my point. Do Defenders solo just fine? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. It comes down to what each person defines as "just fine." Do Defenders solo just as fine as, say, Scrappers? No. No, they do not. And, to be perfectly blunt, I would question to validity of anyone who claims otherwise, because that I see as uncontroversial fact. Not all ATs solo equally well, because some are designed to solo and not do much else while others are designed to do much else but not really solo. THAT is the point which I contest, and I am frankly amazed that I have to keep explaining it and still have it fly over people's heads.

The thinking behind current design is simple. As anyone what each of the of the original ATs was designed for, and they'll paint Scrappers as the "soloist" AT. This, to my eyes, is a mistake in its very inception, as "solo" should not be a skill given to just one class as their one and only specialization. It should be a baseline skill given to all classes IN ADDITION TO their specialization. I frankly don't see why that is so unacceptable to people, as most of the arguments against it seem to boil down to "then everyone will be the same," which I don't see as the case. Not, specifically, since I have seen it work in other games and it worked just fine. I go back to Dungeon Siege for that, where everyone could be a Warrior AND something else. A Warrior/Archer was deadly to foes of all types, while a Warrior/Mage was outright scary with some of the self-applied buffs and offensive spells.

But what if people want to specialise anyway and don't want battle prowess? Even though I disagree with that prospect, it is reality, so I don't see why over-specialization shouldn't be an option, as long as combat prowess is still there to be chosen AFTER character creation. Basically, most MMOs ask you this question once and only once - what do you want to be? If you pick something that really shouldn't be fighting on its own, then that is a choice made and a choice that cannot be unmade without starting a new character. And I don't like that.

You see, this is what I take slight at, because it insults my intelligence. And your own, to be honest, because this is only one step removed from a wilful misreading of what I have actually written. This isn't a question of what I, in my infinite wisdom, deem as the appropriate level of solo performance, and to try and dismiss an argument by insulting me in that way should be beneath you, honestly. As I explained before, this is very much quantifiable in a direct comparison between the ATs. Currently, such a comparison is telling, in that the difference in solo performance is vast and great, and that is a fact. This I do not approve of, and while other people seem to approve of it, I'm trying to question if it is the inequality they want to retain, or if it is class uniqueness and specialization that they want to keep. Because both can still coexist with equal self-sufficiency, just in a slightly different system.

Instead of a system where everyone is defined as "he can shoot," "he can block," "he can jump," I'd describing a system where everyone is defined as "he can shoot and jump," "he can shoot and block." Specialization still exists, baseline performance still exists, and I have actually removed the one thing I'm constantly being accused I want to turn everything into, ironically enough. I have little hope there will be much interest in discussing my actual point any more, however, as discussing ME seems to be a lot more interesting. It is what it is.

I regard my observations as nothing more than that - observations. If I came off as trampling people along the way, I apologise. It wasn't my intend. But by the same token, I find myself incapable of seeing things other than what my eyes tell me I see just because someone insists they are completely the other way around. I tend to avoid speaking about things I have no personal experience with, and while I'm perfectly willing to accept alternate interpretations of things, few seem to want to offer that. For the most part, people like to question my direct observations and experiences like I'm blind or stupid and I just don't know what I'm talking about, and simply contradicting me as nothing more than your word against mine, I tend to not be very receptive of this. Especially when it comes to things that I have seen.

You'll note I offered an interpretation of the intended look of City of Villains and why I feel it has the effect I feel it has, several times, in fact, yet all everyone wants to question is my colour perception and my monitor settings. As I said before, it doesn't come to the number of colours found in carefully selected screenshots, it comes down to atmosphere, but that's harder to argue because it's so abstract.

While I appreciate the sentiment (and I do), you really should consider a better vessel for it. I'm no stranger to doing the same thing, but the backlash I've taken over the years has taught me that there IS such a thing as a good and a bad approach to it. I'm perfectly at home dropping self-righteous put-downs on people and letting them sort it out, but then I hold no illusions that that makes me anything more than a jerk with a good vocabulary. To be perfectly honest, I find it quite pretentious to presume to pass down wisdom and judgement just in itself, and bordering in hypocrisy to do so while delivering put-downs and snark and talking down to people like they're petulant children. I can certainly see the argument that it's on me to gleam the wisdom from your words, but it strikes me as the same order of feedback-loop rhetoric my Linear Algebra teacher was trying to give me when, for some inexplicable reason, he started talking about metaphysical gods and auras and such. His words were pretty but dismissive, and it all boiled down to "If you are enlightened enough, you will understand, but if you doubt, how could you see?

See, I call nonsense to that, because it's a self-sustaining illusion. You don't see because you can't see, and you can't see because you don't see. Or maybe he's just full of crap, but then it seems most mathematicians eventually grow "eccentric" and believe they can explain love with Ring Theory. Makes me wonder when I'll flip my lid, if I haven't already.

The point of all of that was to say that, yes, it is partly on the listener to make sense of the speaker's wisdom. But it is also on the speaker to both motivate the listener to listen and deliver his wisdom in a non-opaque way, and approaching me with snark and put-downs does not, to be quite honest, put me in the right state of mind to humble my spirit and learn. It puts me in a state of mind to sigh, roll my eyes. I still appreciate the sentiment, but I say again - perhaps you should look into mine. I'm not here to slam my dick on the table, I'm here for the interesting discussion. And while I'm well narcissistic enough to want to discuss nothing but myself, I know this is interesting to no-one else, and the character assassination is starting to wear on me.

Thread, topic, point. Not me. I'm not interesting.

*edit*
Like an idiot, I'd messed up half my quote tags and didn't bother to proofread. Oops!

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

See, mechanically, I might be inclined to ALMOST agree. If we're looking for something to level the playing field, it would need to threaten Scrappers more than Blasters. In terms of gameplay experience, however, I couldn't disagree more. Cheap enemies are never the solution to anything, least of all challenge. We have defences for a reason. Enemies ignoring them is not fun and not a challenge. It's Nintendo hard, if anything, but that's rarely a good thing. The reason I bring up my Diablo anecdote is to show an instance where I TORE MY HAIR OUT over aggressively crappy design, to the point where I was ready to clothesline my monitor with my keyboard. This is not fun. Voids are not fun. They're hard, just... Not in the right way.

Let me explain - I like the Warriors as a concept. They're tough, at least to physical attacks, and their outgoing damage is SCARY. Tanks probably still laugh at them, but I know an unattentive Scrapper aggroing two Hewers is going to blink and notice 2/3 of his health bar gone before his Build Up is finished animating. A Blaster caught in the slaughter would be dead, of course, but a Blaster on the ball will stay out of melee range, and so away from those gosh-dang axes. The Warriors DO have ranged attacks, but come on now. They're far from scary, and your average Blaster has enough pure hitpoints to just tank the arrows and bolts and simply shoot them all. The Rogue Vanguard are a lot like that, as are the Cimeroran Traitors, though to a lot smaller extent. Enemies strong in melee and weaker at range is not a novel concept, and while they ARE cheap sometimes, especially when they deliver enough damage to one-shot you (I got pummeled for 1200 by a Noble Brute), but they are still a bigger threat to melee than they are to range.

As far as I'm concerned, any rebalancing of solo potential or difficulty should not come via cheap, annoying, obnoxious enemies, especially those that simply stay out of range. One of the reasons I LIKE the City of Heroes AI as it is is that it ISN'T terribly smart, and as such isn't cheap or annoying. Annoying enemies still exist regardless, but I'd still choose dumber enemies who don't constantly pull off cheap moves. Marcone Snipers, for instance, are just so annoying they shouldn't exist. They're not fun, they're not a challenge, they're just pests that are hard to swat. They are, essentially, the human variant of Doddamned Bats.

Frankly, I consider the inclusion of Void Hunters as a constant irritant to Kheldians to be a major mistake, and I consider NOT including such a thing for Soldiers of Arachnos to be an acknowledgement of that fact. And I'm happier for it. Cheap enemies are probably the worst aspect of any good game. CURSE YOU, MALTA!!!

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Could you please explain how these two sentence fragments logically align?

You can not work from subjective terms unable to see other points of view. If you are incapable of accepting other people's opinions then you must quantify your positions and compare facts. When others try to do this (snarky or not) you get offended because you say it devalues your position.

Some of your posts in this thread remind me of the people who wanted tanks to be Superman strong.

I see what I see, and I do not accept people telling me that my eyes deceive me. If I see something as brown, I'm not prepared to be told it's actually green, and if I see something as yellow, I'm not prepared to accept that it's actually grey. I have been tested for colour blindness, and I am not colour-blind. My monitor may or may not be completely accurate in how it is tuned, but I am capable enough to tell one colour from another. I am not prepared to be told told that things I can see with my own eyes are not what I see, because I trust my eyes before I trust other people.

I am, however, prepared to accept that while we do see the same thing, we each interpret it differently, emphasising different things and ignoring different things. To me, the whole of the Rogue Isles, and I have seen everywhere there is to be seen, is drab, dreary, depressing and all-around greyish-brown, and I see a large part of this being that this is how it was apparently DESIGNED to look. If someone can offer me an alternate explanation of how it was designed, then perhaps I can see things in a new light, but I seriously doubt anyone would. The most of what I've seen is apologetic that, yeah, the place is a dumb, but look! It has neon lights! On the other hand, I see those neon lights and feel them more a colourful distraction from the grey, depressing reality, designed specifically to give the place a look of hollow glamour and a mask of high-life hiding the crushing depression that the REST of the area provides you, with abandoned warehouses, collapsed roads and an an outright demolition zone. That is interpretation.

And again, why are we discussing me? Am I truly that interesting that I merit such introspect? Of course, I am honoured by this, but again, I question the point of all this. You ask me a question, but do you actually care to hear the answer, and will you be satisfied by it? So far, I have rarely seen people asking questions for the sake of getting answers, and instead seen plenty of examples of people asking rhetorical questions as a means to say something without actually having to lay tangible accusations. I am more than willing to answer all of these questions, certainly, but I have to wonder if these answers are in the slightest welcome. You asked why and how I do things, but do you honestly care to know? And, yes, that is a genuine question in search of an answer, because at this point, I have my doubts.

I have no problem with people quantifying their positions with facts, but I do begin to take slight when this involves questioning my place to even hold opinions on the matter, or dismissing mine as irrelevant by reason of unpopularity or other such technicality. Argue against the point, and I will not bat an eye, as I have no illusions Sam is smartest there is. But argue against the poster, and I WILL defend myself, even if that makes a fool out of me in the process. Actions and consequences and all that.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You are far more interesting to me then the topic.

RI is run by people who make their lives by destroying others, so the majority is down trodden and are barley making it by. PC is in America and looks like generic American locations.

I wonder if I should be flattered that I am interesting enough, or disappointed that my topic is so boring that it makes even ME interesting

Well, certainly, but the Rogue Isles could really use a little more variety. I'm beyond asking for Arachnos to be injected with any sense of believability, as they play the role of the Combine crossed with Darth Vader and with a bit of Sauron sprinkled on top, but I do take slight with EVERYTHING being under their boot and, for that reason alone, downtrodden and depressing. I'm not sure how it turned from rumours that we will be able to join one of many villain organisations (an idea bad in its own unique ways) into a game that's basically all about Arachnos, and occasionally Longbow. Arachnos are a decent design, but they don't have nearly enough thematic variety to make an entire world all of their own. With them, you can basically pick between overt evil, crushing depression and overt evil.

I've long since clamoured for a Nemesis Island somewhere out at sea, where life is seemingly idyllic, clean and orderly, but hard dictatorship exists beneath the surface, and it seems I'll get just that in Going Rogue. Well, minus Nemesis, who is apparently dead over there, but beggars can't be choosers. I've also long clamoured for villainous settings where we are bad guys in a GOOD place, and while Going Rogue seems like it will skirt that, in the end it's still a hidden totalitarian state which will likely have a lot of "But they deserved it!" undertones that kind of undermine outright villainy.

I keep wondering if it wouldn't have been a better choice if the Rogue Isles weren't a collection of islands all controlled by different groups, instead of all controlled by Arachnos. Mercy and Grandville can stay Arachnos-controlled, sure, just to maintain the needlessly railroading overarching plot. But beyond that, why NOT have a Nemesis-controlled island of cleanliness, oppression and sinister evil? Why not have a Crey-controlled island of soulless consumerism with civilians leading visibly good, but empty, soulless lives driven by mind-control advertising and a cut-throat employer? Why not have a Council island reminiscent of an old Soviet state of overt repression where people are safe from crime, but never from the state? Hell, why not have a GOOD island controlled by GOOD people and populated with GOOD people, where the skies are blue, the grass is green and everyone is living the perfect life, only for us to pray on their lax sense of self-preservation ala the Demolition man?

Diversity is there to be had, yet they instead chose to plaster Arachnos over everything like the price tags in a supermarket run by a complete slob. Arachnos come with their own pretty overt theme, and I can't fault their design for this. How many enemy groups do we have that are as diverse as they are? But they are still one group with one narrow theme, and building an entire game around their theme leads to a bunch of problems that irritate me to no end. Co-op zones do help break the endless monotony of evilnessnessness that the Rogue Isles exude, and I'm sure Going Rogue will bring more variety still, but that still doesn't make me a fan of the Isles' original design. It just makes it more bearable now that I have options. And I'm still stuck in Sharkhead during levels 20-25, watching the same damn volcanic ash...

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

What do you mean specifically by "severe penalties?"

I'm curious about that myself. The word 'severe' seems a bit...severe.

They received their extra awesome in enema form.

Pretty much, ironically enough. In terms of final balance, the ATs stack up, but a lot of that comes from their Inherents, which are purpose-designed to be unreliable, fiddly or otherwise limiting in new and creative ways. Easy example:

Look at Brutes in the absence of their inherent. They have damage WORSE than a Tanker, defence numbers identical to those of a Scrapper and slightly more hit points. By and large, they're straddling the boundary between Scrapper and Tanker, only they aren't quite in the middle. If you look at them as modified Scrappers, then they lost a LOT of damage and gained almost no survivability. If you look at them as modified Tankers, then they lost survivability AND LOST DAMAGE. Either way, their baseline performance is in the pits.

BUT
OF
COURSE

This isn't the whole story. With Fury, Brutes can do respectable damage, sometimes even rivalling Scrappers under certain circumstances, so in terms of final design, they at the very least break even. I won't get into the comfort of the mechanics since this isn't really the point. The point, in this case, is that Brutes give up a lot of damage AND a lot of self-protection as a trade-off for doing both, and while they do get a mechanic that can sort of help them make up for that, it's designed to be limiting in its own right, giving host to a whole other load of arguments, complaints and disagreements.

That's what I meant. Balance-wise, the developers weren't quite adventurous enough to give them seriously serious numbers, but couldn't quite afford to give them seriously laughable numbers, so we have their very important inherents, which I see as a next best solution that doesn't give them quite the baseline performance that a half-way cross of two ATs ought to have, but still lets them shoot for it if they try hard enough. I don't believe that balance is bad, as from what I've seen, it works well enough, but I also do believe it was more conservative than it might have been in the absence of CoH's specialists and their current performance to act as a benchmark.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

From what I can tell they start out at roughly 60% scrapper damage and about 30% Fury they are equal. That's painfully easy Fury to gain and surpass solo.

The "certain circumstances" you mention would be about 15 seconds after alpha on a mission.

You're making the assumption that the way Brutes (just as an example) were designed is that they were given bad numbers and then Fury to compensate, or alternatively they were given good numbers but had them taken away as the "price" for Fury. That's unlikely.

Much more likely is that Fury came first. And more specifically, not just Fury, but the concept of something that starts off with lower damage, and quickly builds in strength with activity. In numerical terms, the damage modifier and Fury started off as a singular package, as an implementation detail of the concept of Brutes. Then the rest of the Brute archetype was "wrapped around" Fury.

Brutes did not give up anything for Fury. Fury itself is the implementation of a concept, and that concept is not "buff damage." Its "start low, end high." You seem to be suggesting that the devs were unwilling to instead implement "start high, keep going higher" because of some intrinsic design cowardice on their part. I cannot speak for them on that score, but what I can say is that if it were me, I would have no problem defending the basics of the Fury implementation (if anything, it probably tops out slightly too high, not bottoms out too low) as being not some compromise, but precisely what I wanted to do.

Fury is actually one of the devs better design decisions all around. Specifically:

1. It benefits lower level characters more than higher level ones, so it starts off visibly strong immediately for new players, without creating overpowered buffs at the end game.

2. It rewards skill.

3. Its benefit is linear, so its proportional benefit diminishes with high damage buffing (it doesn't have accelerated stacking).

4. Its directly integrated into the tools its intended to support (i.e. its mechanism is built into the attacks its intended to buff).


Given that Fury + Brute damage tables are a single package, its rather obvious that Brutes didn't sacrifice *anything* for Fury. If anything, Fury comes a little too cheaply from a balance perspective relative to Scrapper design. The "baseline" comparison you're making is almost entirely hypothetical, like comparing Scrappers to Blasters starting from the "baseline" of both of them not having any range. To amplify on LISAR, lets look at level progression a bit. At level ten, the Brute is doing 15.43 damage with a scale 1.0 attack, while the Scrapper is doing 18.73 and the Tanker is doing 15.87. With minimal damage slotting at that level, the Brute will basically outdamage the Tanker at +2.9% damage, and the Scrapper at about +21.4% damage. That's about 11% fury to beat the Scrapper and 1.5% fury to beat the Tanker. I defy you to *see* 1.5% fury in actual combat. In actual fact, any player with a pulse is going to outpace both Tankers *and* Scrappers at lower levels (crits are going to add some damage, but on average they are only good for about 7% more damage on average).

At level 15, assuming 3 DOs of damage (+50% damage) slotted for the Tankers and Scrappers *and nothing for the Brutes* we end up with Tankers doing 29.03, Scrappers doing 37.35, and the Brute (remember: unslotted) doing 18.50. At that point, the Brute needs +56.9% damage to overtake the Tanker, and +101.9% to overtake the Scrapper. At this point, we're talking about 28.5% Fury to overtake the Tanker and just over 50% fury to overtake the Scrapper. Its still reasonable to assume most Brutes will overtake the Tankers under nearly all playing conditions. We can't assume the average player will consistently overtake the Scrapper anymore, but they will be getting close even if they do not slot any damage, and even if they only solo.

At level 25, assuming the ED softcap slotting of +95% damage for all three archetypes, we now have Tankers doing 53.57, Scrappers doing 75.33, and Brutes doing 50.21. Now, to overtake the Tanker requires +13% damage (6.5% fury), to overtake the Scrapper requires +97.5% damage (48.8% Fury). Even the worst Brute on Earth is going to land between those two numbers on average for solo combat. A better than average Brute is going to exceed that value without difficulty.

At all phases of the game, the Brute is going to exceed Tanker damage numbers. Its just that the numbers will ramp up from just slightly under to significantly over Tanker numbers in each fight. This makes it impossible to seriously argue that Brutes gave up significant damage relative to Tankers. They *did* give up some damage relative to Scrappers (keeping in mind I'm using the phrase "give up" very colloquially here) but you can't call that a direct cost either: they "gave up" starting lower for the opportunity to potentially end up higher. Most Brutes don't consider that a penalty: they consider that a bonus.

Just to put a period at the end of the sentence, at level 50 Brutes have about 12% more health than Scrappers. If we assume just for simplicity that this suggests Brutes should do about 12% less damage (or 11%, depending on how you like to calculate this), and if we also assume criticals increase average Scrapper damage by about 7%, then for Brutes to end up about where they belong relative to Scrappers they would have to average about 40% Fury. I'll leave it to the readers to decide how difficult it is, even for neophyte players, to average 40% Fury.


To summarize, Fury is not a bandaid for low damage. Fury + Brute Mods are a single damage package concept intended to give players the choice to play something that rewards activity, and implements the concept of building in strength. There's no "penalty" for this opportunity anywhere within the numbers for Brutes that I can find that's actually a real penalty on players.

Thanks for that post Arcanaville. I was actually going to request that you help out with some numbers. (You aren't reading my mind, right?)

I've never felt like second best when playing my brute...and now I'm glad to see some proof that my gut feeling is actually correct.

By the same token, I finally feel like Dominators are close to where they should be with the recent buff. So yeah...I'm pretty much satisfied with the COV ATs.

On average, yes. But on average, are you sure that on average the crit rate is about 7% on average?

Your analysis is pretty good though. I think if I was to play another Brute I'd forgo slotting damage in the low levels entirely, and focus more on end.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

It might be lower, it might be higher, but since the effective range for this parameter is between 5% and 10% (there are some attacks that crit at a higher percentage, but not many), and since you're unlikely to completely avoid minions, it has to be significantly lower than 10% and probably higher than 5%. I'd say the average pretty much has to be between 5% and 8%, and probably leans towards 6%-8%. There's not much wiggle room to be very wrong there.


I do. The benefits are much higher until you reach either stamina or damage SOs or both. Fury dilutes the benefits of damage slotting, but you get practically full return on endurance (and recharge) slotting.

Right out of the gate, I slot accuracy and recharge. Around when DOs become available I transition to slotting accuracy, endurance, and recharge in that order. The logic is that at very early levels, you don't have enough attacks to run out of endurance, but you do end up waiting around for attacks to recharge (even with brawl). So recharge is more important than endurance (TOs don't help a lot, but 8% is 8%). Just about when DOs start to become available you also start to have enough attacks to close the gaps in your chain (not completely, but significantly) and run out of endurance, and its endurance that is the bottleneck. Once you hit SOs (and get stamina) the options open up for Brutes. But until then, I tend to slot for sustainable activity first, and damage last, because Brutes tend to be running around nearly perma-raged anyway.

Purely numerically speaking, Scrapper damage is 150% Brute damage (which would put Brute damage at 66.(6)% Scrapper damage), but that actually gets quite a bit more serious in difference with damage slotting. For the sake of simplicity and because it's 5 AM, let's give a Brute an attack that deals 100 points of damage and give him 100% damage slotting. With that, he deals 200% damage, or (100% base + 100% slotting)*100. A Scrapper would deal 150 damage with the same attack, and with 100% slotting deal a total of 300 damage, or (100% base + 100% slotting)*150. For a Brute to deal that, he would need an additional 100% damage buff, or 50 Fury, or indeed (100% base + 100% slotting + 100% Fury)*100.

50 Fury is not out of the question, granted, but it's still more work than a Scrapper has to put into it, and it gets even more significant once you factor in Build Up.

But I'm not complaining about Brutes. In fact, they're one of my favourite ATs, especially ever since I went to -1x3, as Fury builds itself with enough enemies. My point was combo ATs seem to be balanced conservatively. Arcanaville makes a good point, but again - it's 5 AM and I don't have the time or opportunity to respond to that right now.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I'm going to sidestep the numbers discussion because A) You are correct and B) This is what it ultimately comes down to. Yes, you're right that I make the assumption that Brutes (and indeed all CoV ATs) started low, and were then given something to compensate when they went TOO low. Of course, I could well be wrong, and I'll take you on your word that the other way around was a lot more likely. That puts my argument down right there, and I can admit it when I am wrong. But let me explain what causes me to feel as I do.

When CoV rolled out, there was not a single AT with a decent damage modifier, and from what I saw, not a single AT with any really impressive modifiers of any kind at all. CoH-side, if I wanted to deal damage, I could always pick a Scrapper or a Blaster and just out and out deal damage. CoV-side, I had to choose between Brutes with 0.75, Corruptors with 0.75, Dominators with... How much did they have before the changes? Stalkers with 0.9 or Masterminds with something like 0.55, though for them this isn't terribly relevant. Yes, some of them could kind of manage it by use of their inherents, but in actual gameplay, this played out as much like a gimmick as it did like a direct strength. Now, of course, these days we have Stalkers with 1.0 and Doms with 0.95 ranged and 1.05 melee, so we sort of do have direct damage dealers, but this about my impression of original intent, rather than current reality. As we've all seen, the original intent for City of Heroes was something very different to what it mutated into by player disregard.

Secondly, the changes and additions the CoV ATs have undergone over the years directly depict, in my eyes, that the original design put a little TOO much faith in gimmicky inherents and a little too little in decent, strong AT modifiers. I'm not sure what led to Masterminds getting Bodyguard, so I'll skip those, but let's look at Stalkers. By everyone's admission, their design was really, really not what it ought to have been. They are, in fact, one of the instances I can point to and define "decent," as they could both solo AND team somewhat, but no-one really ever picked them, because they could do neither decently, and the fix for them was a straight-line buff. Stalkers got more damage, more hit points and then more damage besides via additional criticals. They went from a gimmicky AT that more or less HAD to hit and run to one which probably ought to, but can also stand and fight in a lot of cases, simplifying and strengthening them in the process.

New paragraph, same topic. Next in line were Dominators, whom I never played before the changes so I can't really comment on their playstyle back then. However, from what I've seen and heard, I believe the problem was that the AT itself rather underperformed outside of Domination, driving a lot of people to seek the so-called "permadom," driving the bar for Dominators into min/max territory and, in the process, penalising more casual players of them. Granted, this could very well be a problem of an exploitable inherent, but the net result is that, outside of double- and triple-stacked Domination, Dominators lost no degree of control and only gained more damage, outside of one specific powerset, which I'm not familiar with. They were given more solid and more direct performance at the expense of their gimmick.

And even if we look at Brutes, Fury is an interesting mechanic, but also one which causes its own slew of problems by rewarding a very specific subset of factors. The easiest limitation I can point to is precluding Brutes from ever wanting to use Slow effects, on the one hand eliminating the possibility for Ice-based powers, and on the other hand just slashing one tool out of the toolkit. As well, it rewards taking on many weak things over taking on a few large things, and even though it's supposed to build faster from bosses and up, it does not. In fact, at the difficulty setting I'm set at, I can't sneeze without getting a ton of Fury from the many, weak enemies I've set to spawn, but as soon as I face down a lone elite boss, I have to more or less fight him without Fury, because he won't build any at all. It also rewards fast, small attacks over large, slow ones, which causes people to whine about things like Battle Axe and War Mace, and not entirely unreasonably. This whole thing does limit the circumstances under which Fury is truly useful, and if "just don't use Battle Axe" is what makes a player smart, then I'm proud to be a dumb player.

Some of the CoH ATs have also been retrofitted with gimmicky inherents as well, sure. Blasters used to have Suicide as theirs, but right now they have a damage buff for doing damage, and in a very specific way, if you pay attention to your Defiance numbers. Scrappers have a non-committal one, but Controller Containment actually does really matter. Defender and Tanker Inherents have been squabbled over for years, but I wouldn't describe either as truly character-defining in the same sense that Fury is.

I just wish that there were a hybrid character who could perform well without the need for gimmicks, but I have little hope that will ever happen. Even if Going Rogue brings us new ATs, which I hope it will, but it probably won't, they'll likely be even more gimmicky.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I'm not sure I really understand what you're saying. Your argument sounds like you're saying the CoV ATs suck without their inherents. But you can't play a Brute without Fury or a Stalker without Assassination, so you can't JUST look at their base numbers and say they're weak because of it.

Whether you feel it's a good idea or not, the CoV ATs rely more heavily on their inherents than the heroes do. In fact, a few of the hero ATs could not have inherents at all and you'd barely notice. Hero ATs were designed and balanced before inherents existed. As a result, they're weaker, to make sure the classes aren't unbalanced after the change.

CoV ATs are designed to have their inherent powers. Stalkers start off with hide so that they come out doing controlled crits at level 1. And as much as you seem to think so, there's no situation where you're going to run a Brute in combat and have 0 fury all the time, making the Brute do crappy damage with his pitiful 0.75 modifier.

It didn't matter that all the ATs had low base damage modifiers. All that mattered was that Brutes did great damage with high Fury, Stalkers had controlled crits, and Dominators had Domination. Corrs can debuff and scourge, and MM damage is dispersed through their pets.

You may view that as too gimmicky, but you still can't discount the benefit of the inherents in normal play. The gimmick may make the ATs not fun for you to play, but you're missing half of the picture if you just look at a Brute and say "He has low base damage."

I don't think the changes were a sign that the inherents were too gimmicky. I think it's more a sign that the classes themselves were unbalanced or the inherents poorly designed. If anything though, an AT needs to end up with good stats, whether they do that through pure core stats, through a significantly strong inherent, or both. Stalkers originally didn't have either, and Doms were great but only with certain builds which lead to a smoothing-out of their performance curve. Brutes attain their awesomeness almost entirely because of their inherent, but it's because the inherent is more or less reliable in all situations (unlike Domination was).

Brutes were never changed, and they have probably the most gimmicky inherent there is. You have to maintain constant combat and be under attack as well as attacking to have the benefit from your inherent. And if you don't have it, you do less damage than all the other melee types. If that's not gimmicky, I don't know what is. However, as its endured the test of time, it shows that Fury was well-designed, if gimmicky.

Stalker inherent was changed to be usable in more situations, more often. The AT also gained core stat buffs, but if the AT was going to be balanced around pure core stats like some of the hero ATs, Assassination wouldn't've been buffed so much. I would even argue it's LESS gimmicky, because Stalkers used to only crit when enemies were mezzed, meaning you needed a pocket Dom.

Domination could have perhaps been viewed as too gimmicky. But it still is. The thing was, Domination used to have a large +DMG component, making having Domination on as often as possible the intended goal for all players. Now that the damage is inherent to the AT instead of tied to the power, it's not as needed. However, Domination still offers numerous combat benefits, and having it around often is still a good idea. The basic gimmick of the power, to attack enemies so that you can enter an uber state where you're more powerful, is still in tact. It's just less sought after.

MMs got bodyguard because they were so easy to kill and all you could do was throw pets at badguys. I always thought the MM inherent power could just be coded into the core stats of the pets and then there wouldn't be a need for the bonus. So I always felt it was kind of a weak inherent. But I recognize the need for it, since it promotes keeping pets near you.

The "need for gimmicks" as you call it isn't a problem. It's just a different way of designing classes. Take a look at Tankers and Defenders, who have the weakest inherents in the game. They also do weak damage, and are some of the most unpopular ATs. And there are always people trying to suggest a better inherent.

Not everyone feels that the "gimmick" is a bad idea. But at the same time, the gimmick doesn't have to be overbearing. Scrapper gimmick is just random crits. The AT doesn't heavily rely on them, nor is it something you even need to think about.

There are quite a few reasons why inherents exist. One reason is to give variety between the ATs. Without inherents, the difference between a Stalker and a Scrapper, or a Corruptor and a Defender is just modifiers. Inherents allow an AT to focus their strengths and weaknesses more specifically than just a boost to a core stat would. Stalkers are a good example of this. Instead of having crits, the AT could just do a lot more damage. Instead, the damage is focused around times when you're sneaking and hiding. And in theory (although most people disagree and think it's a crappy design anyway), the Defender inherent is meant to highlight performance when you need it most.

There's also the fact that inherents can just be fun. A Scrapper's inherent is so basic and automatic that you could just replace it with a flat damage boost. But that wouldn't be near as fun as randomly seeing large crits pop up and one-shot enemies. Or counting how many crits in a row you get.

tl;dr version: Inherents are good, inherents exist for a reason, "gimmick is bad" is not universal, don't ignore inherents when comparing ATs.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

It was a meaningless tangential argument that somehow got blown out of proportion into this big deal about how I hate the CoV ATs because they have Inherents or something. All I'm saying is that a lot of the CoV ATs' performance has, in comparison to CoH ATs, shifted to their inherents as opposed to on their stats. That's all. It's a pure observation. The only even remotely meaningful conclusion I drew on this was so as to make them strong, but not in a reliable way, as that tends to allow greater upper bounds of strength. Arcanaville disagrees on that tangent and it IS a big assumption, so I'm not really pressing it.

That one's fairly simple. I look at these changes, and see a slight shift of performance from the inherents and into the base stat mods, which I interpret as an acknowledgement that, in these cases at least, there was too much gimmick and not enough stability. Granted, Stalkers got a boost on their inherent, as well, which could actually be very meaningful on teams, but solo, what helped the most was the stat boosts. Fitting, given that the change was largely aimed at making them less hated on teams, not that it helped fix stupid Stalker players and stupid team leaders refusing to invite Stalkers, but that was the aim, and I'd say it succeeded in most reasonable instances. It's just something I see as an acknowledgement that stats ought to matter a little more.

I'm not saying gimmicks are bad, I'm saying they're omnipresent and the one-size-fits-all solution to new ATs and fixes of old ones, it seems. I'm not saying it's bad and everyone should hate it, but at the same time, I enjoy flat stat characters as well, and CoV plain doesn't have access to those. Or doesn't at the moment, at least. Taking Blasters villain-side will be one of the first things I do. Not because I think Blasters are cooler than villain ATs (they're actually last on my list of favourite ATs), but simply because CoV lacks a simple, straight-forward, no-frills outright damage dealer that doesn't have to jump through twelve hoops to even see his damage. Opening up both sides to both ATs (which isn't actually happening, as I hear, but we'll still get the next best thing) would probably solve a lot of my woes, as I'll be able to use both gimmicky and non-gimmicky characters on both sides, being limited not by what I can build where, but rather by what each character would really fit. I have Brutes that ought to be Scrappers, I have Scrappers that ought to be Brutes and so on and so forth.

I don't question the need for having Inherents. I agree with them, and they DO bring in a lot of variety. I actually enjoy a lot of them, even if I can't really justify my playing some. But, when it comes right down to it, I am the most a fan of flat stats and good stats, and would personally like to see a few more ATs that rely more on their stats than they do on a minigame around getting their stats higher. It's not a call for homogeny or yanking people's fun from under than, but rather a call for diversity by giving us an AT that acts more like ours did back in the old days. That, however, is highly improbably, as it would require Going Rogue to have new ATs, which I doubt it will, and it requires one of these ATs to be more basic, which I HIGHLY doubt will ever fly. Doesn't stop me from wishing for it, though.

I'm not dissatisfied with the CoV ATs at all. I just wish they had something more like a Blaster among them. And, no, Corruptors don't cut it.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

As weird of an admission as this may seem coming from me, when I first played all five archetypes - in CoV beta - I had no idea what their damage modifiers were. In general, I don't choose what to play based on things like damage modifiers alone, because I know they do not tell the entire story. If I wanted to deal damage, initially I could play anything except possibly dominators. Out of the gate everything dealt more than enough damage to solo pretty quickly. Brutes especially, but also Masterminds.


You keep saying that the inherents are "gimmicky" and I'll have to take your word for it that it seems that way to you, but it seems to be enough of a matter of opinion that I don't see how this eventually comes around to pointing out a way to make a better game. If we remove everything that seems gimmicky to you, it sounds like it will remove a lot of features that many people find actually fun.

What ends up being a "gimmick" and what doesn't is something none of us can really predict: it usually ends up being something the playerbase as a whole in effect votes on. The SR scaling resistances were called gimmicky when they were first added (including by me) but they've persisted because the playerbase overall accepts them without much second thought. Fury isn't considered gimmicky by probably the vast overwhelming percentage of the playerbase. On the other hand, Defiance 1.0 was ultimately considered gimmicky simply because our playerbase cannot, on average, leverage it properly. I was doing perfectly fine with it, but datamining showed that people were getting too hung up on trying to maximize its effects and getting killed in the process.


Honestly, that's because the devs tended to take the easier way out. The easiest thing to do when something is perceived to need a buff is to buff its damage modifiers, and that's what the devs have tended to do. But I don't think you can say they put too much "faith" in inherents, because the devs never had any faith to begin with that the mere possession of an inherent meant the archetype would be perfectly fine.

Consider Stalkers. Your thesis seems to be that the devs first "relied" on assassin's strikes, criticals, placate, and hide to "fix" the archetype, and when that "failed" they were forced to increase the damage modifier of stalkers. But that's not what happened. The devs went out of their way to:

1. Make hide cost zero endurance to eliminate its cost to run
2. Improve the benefits of assassin's strikes
3. Scale criticals with team size
4. Increase the stalker damage modifier

The damage modifier increase which you are emphasizing is just one of a laundry list of modifications *most* of which are specifically directed at improving the basket of abilities most would consider part of Stalker's "inherent." And in fact, many players now believe that it is the gimmicky team-scaling criticals that make Stalkers more effective on teams, not the relatively small increase to their damage modifier.

Dominators are the only clear example where the devs backed away from the inherent, but there was a specific reason for that which you specifically referenced: the devs perceived that too many players felt the performance swing between inside and outside of domination was too high. In other words, its not that it was gimmicky that was the problem, it was that the gimmick didn't work properly.

Among the other "gimmicks" this sort of thing is true for are powers like Energy Transfer (which is dangerous to use on a consistent basis if you don't have a self-heal), the Phantom Army (which doesn't synergize well with secondaries focused primarily on buffing rather than debuffing), Invincibility and Rise to the Challenge (which scales their buffs upward to higher numbers, but degrades when facing very few). There are a lot of powers and effects that could easily be classified as "gimmicky" and quite a few of them are gimmicks the players actually want.

Also, I'm not sure I can accept the assertion that you can't build fury fighting a single elite boss. You might not saturate fury, but you don't need to saturate fury to achieve near or higher than scrapper levels of damage.



That's an interesting statement to make, as the canonical inherent is Gauntlet. Its really the reason the term "inherent" was invented for in the first place, and was intended specifically to address concerns by the players that the archetype was not designed properly to satisfy its team role. Its *intended* to be archetype-defining by both the devs *and* the players (at least the players of the time).


I can understand that preference, but we started at a point where you were suggesting that such a design goal was either better or an advancement over current designs. My own design philosophy is that I believe in trade-offs; I believe in presenting the players with choices that have consequences; I believe in having (at least some) reward for applied skill. Within the context of this discussion, I believe in gimmicks, and I believe that the future should have better gimmicks, not less gimmicks. I don't believe my own preference here is a step backward.

That hasn't been my experience. When there's only one elite boss left, my Fury drains faster than I can build it, which basically drains me to nothing in not too long a time, which is unpleasant and problematic.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Sam, you're doing it wrong. Every brute I have, and I think at last count that was 6 of them on Pinnacle, all are designed to build fury on their own with their attacks.

If you are losing fury while punching anything, especially hard targets that take more than two or three hits, then your attack chain is to blame.

I'm honestly unsure what you could be doing to lose fury against hard targets. That makes no sense to me at all.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.