Wait, why Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer?

Possibly you're attacking too randomly. I currently am running a stone/stone brute who should be the very antithesis of Fury building.

I'm using the two mallet attacks, the stone brawl(can't remember its correct name) and seismic smash along with my ranged origin attack. That's right, I stopped using brawl *gasp*.

I still get decent Fury building. I was on a BNY team last night and when we got to the snow beasts in the cave with the redcaps all around, I was in Fury heaven. My bar went to almost full and I was laying down the smack. I also finished Snaptooth with about 65 Fury. Which isn't bad considering that we had a tank along.

I have a certain rhythm for building Fury. I usually do 2 passes of my lower damage attacks and then start in on my higher damage ones. I find the rhythm is different for each brute primary, but I don't really get problems building it except for enemies with very few attacks combined with slows.

Maybe impatience is the issue. Sometimes you have to forgo using using your big attacks in favor of waiting for a couple of your minor ones to recharge. I find this to certainly be the case with stone melee.

I pretty much disagree here.

I plan to take Controllers, Blasters, and Scrappers over to redside. But I also plan on taking Doms, Brutes, and Masterminds over to blueside. I don't care about "base stats" or "gimmicky inherents," all I really care about is how the toon performs on average.

As far as lacking solid damage -- a Blaster has 1.125 range and 1.00 melee. They also get a highly-gimmicky inherent which rewards them for fast attack chains. Like Brutes. Nobody would argue that Blasters are among the highest damage dealers. But...

Even if you discount Brutes (which if you're in combat at all, unless you're among people who are sapping all the aggro, should have at least 50%-80% Fury and be doing fantastic damage), there are several redside ATs that do great damage right out of the gate.

Stalkers and VEATs all do 1.00 damage. Stalkers will also get at least a 10% crit rate. Even without inherents, both Stalkers and VEATs are doing quite good on sustained damage. No gimmicks or hoops needed, they just flat out do 1.00. Granted Stalkers aren't usually that sought after for teams, because of their lack of AoE (in my opinion at least). But VEATs are always a good choice.

Doms also have 0.95 range and 1.05 melee, averaging out to somewhere around 1.00 depending on how range or how melee heavy your secondary is. I tend to consider Doms the Blasters of redside, because they're squishy and high on the damage. I have a Plant/Earth Dom I play like a Blapper after the confuse toss. I can't express how fun it is to hit someone over the head with Seismic Smash with a 1.05 damage modifier. And then swing my hammers around.

And MMs, between all their pets, do very good damage. I'm sure the math would be pretty complicated (since they're lower in level), but even though the pets have low modifiers like 0.35, you get six of them.

So unless you consider "summon your pets" as jumping through hoops, or consider damage scales of 0.95 to 1.05 to be inadequate for damage, there are at least 4 ATs redside that come right out of the gate doing great damage, no hoops.

If you're looking ONLY at base damage scale:

1.200 - Squid form for Khelds
1.125 - Scrapper, Blaster range
1.050 - Dom melee
1.000 - Stalker, VEAT, Blaster melee, Dwarf form, pet (non-MM) melee
0.950 - Dom range
0.850 - Kheld human form melee
0.800 - Tankers, Kheld human form range, pet (non-MM) range
0.750 - Corruptor, Brute
0.650 - Henchman 3 melee, Defender range
0.550 - Henchman 2 melee, henchman 3 range, Controller
0.450 - Henchman 2 range, henchman 1 melee
0.350 - Henchman 1 range

Overall, Scrappers and Blasters are the top damage dealers right out of the box (discounting squids). You have 4 villain ATs that are right below that before you even reach the next lowest damage dealing toon for base stats. And MM pets range from 0.35 to 0.65, but again, you get six of them. So if Blaster/Scrapper damage is your baseline for adequate damage, those are the ONLY two ATs you can ever play. Except maybe a squid-only kheld.

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

Here's the thing - I don't have one specifically designated. I think the closest I can give you is my Axe Brute, who typically goes like this:

Swoop -> Cleave -> Gash -> Pendulum -> Beheader -> Chop, redux. Possibly a Whirling axe appended at the end if I'm hit with a slow. It doesn't always go like this, but against a single target, it tends to. Against multiple targets, I tend to emphacise Pendulum over Cleave over Whirling Axe over everything else.

Basically, my approach is to hit Build Up and cycle attack from the strongest downwards so as to maximise my Build Up time. It's not as meaningful on a Brute as it is on most other ATs, but it still has merit to abuse it as much as I can. Energy Melee can take out two enemies with two attacks and no Fury if I abuse Build Up, for instance.

And, no. No Brawl. I don't tend to have time left over for it, anyway, though now that it doesn't cost, I don't see why I couldn't use it. It was costing me more than it was worth before, so I took it off auto.

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 can use the leash to control that.
When they start to run, call them back. Let them run back a bit and then sic'em again. They do their ranged attacks and start to rush in again. Repeat.
Works for me.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that my observations were very, very OLD, and apparently I need to update my game plan. I still live with the sense that Stalkers are 0.9 and Doms are in the crapper, when they actually are not. I still have damage-related grievances with Dominators, but those aren't based in fact so much as preference, so they are irrelevant. I do not have any damage-related grievances with Stalkers, not in practical terms, but I have a theme-related complaint regarding them. Stalkers are all fighters, and typically small-scale fighters, as well, with a lot of Scrapper-borrowed sets lacking an AoE to fit in Assassin's Strike. While this isn't a problem in actual practice if you approach them with the right mindset (and I do just fine), it's a problem conceptually.

Let me put it like this. If I have a concept for a very powerful... Mage, let's say, who's able to... Let's say lay waste to cities with fire. CoV-side, I can't pick a Stalker, for one because they're all smaller-scale fighters, and for another because they don't wield many of the direct elements (yet). I could pick a Dominator, but while their damage is decent, it's not quite decent enough for lack of Build Up, Aim and a decent selection of large-scale AoEs. They do have larger-scale control, but this isn't exactly what I have in mind. I CAN make a Blaster, and the concept is pretty much tailor-made for that, but I can't take that Blaster CoV-side... Yet. Once I am able to, I will have no complaint to make regarding AT balance.

Which is kind of while I hate the idea of unique powersets to an AT and unique ATs to a faction. Some concepts just fit elements and ATs that aren't native to the side I want to work with, so more freedom enables me to get exactly what I want. I envision Going Rogue solving a lot of AT-related grievances, in fact.

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.

Part of the problem, at least given your preferences, is that there actually isn't a non-gimmicky archetype, just ones that you are willing to accept the gimmicks for. And the reason why is because all archetypes have a conceptual basis, and all concepts are intrinsicly gimmicky. No game designer is going to make an archetype whose conceptual basis is "has nothing special about it."

They will make powersets like that, though: witness Martial Arts (sorry Castle, I had the shot, and I took it).

Blasters don't have to jump through twelve hoops to see their damage: they only have to jump through one. They have to be alive. And prior to I11, that was not a given (and it might still not be a given). A Blaster without the gimmicky tricks of having follow up in every attack and being able to shoot their low order attacks while mezzed is on the edge of being unplayable as the devs define substandard performance, as they were significantly underperforming prior to the Defiance buff.

If you were in charge of powers design, given your opposition to gimmicks, are you saying that rather than add the gimmicks Castle added, you would have just continued to increase the Blaster damage modifiers to keep the "straight-forwardness" of the archetype until the problem was solved?

I think the concept of a mage fits Doms better than Blasters. All Blasters can do is deal damage, while Doms can do all sorts of creative things.

Anyway, there's one secondary with BU, one secondary with Aim, and one secondary with Fiery Embrace. And the only one really lacking in AoEs is Energy, unless you're counting nukes.

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

That depends on what you prioritise as the general output of a mage. In my universe, a mage with the power of fire would generally focus on burning things first and foremost, and do fancy tricks like making cages out of fire on a distant, like, fifth. Which is why choice is a good thing.

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.

Actually if I were in charge, I'd have given them shields and protection of some sort, which is still rather more direct, but I think we can clearly see one of the many reasons why I am NOT in charge.

For what it's worth, I feel the solution to Blasters was pretty good. They upped their damage both directly and a little more subtly and they even added what has to be the most eccentric form of status effect resistance I've seen in any game. As you point out, surviving is still not a given, which still bugs me now as it did before, only it bugs me a LOT less.

If I have to be quite honest, there are still a few sore spots about Blaster balance that get my panties in a bunch, but those are unlikely to ever be resolved in a way I'm going to be happy with unless I suffer some kind of benevolent divine intervention and someone decides to make Snipes worth using for their damage or open up Epics a little sooner, which has a chance to occur so minuscule I tend to ignore it.

I like to say that Blasters are about the bare minimum of what I'd consider "decent" when it comes to self-sufficiency, performance and progress speed, and that's largely because they're undoubtedly fast. They're not at all easy to play and their not in the slightest safe, but it IS possible to play them reasonably well without compromising speed of progress or, indeed, style and dignity too much, so I can't complain. Going below that, however, is not something I'm willing to try again any time soon. I've tried and I've hated 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.

You're last statement paragraph is NOT universally true of all blasters.

Some has enough control that they are in fact safer than most archtypes.

Ice blasters come to mind.

But that's my only disagreement with your statements.

That's sidestepping the question a bit, because the question really comes down to, if you had to choose between increasing the blaster damage modifier by a potentially very large amount, or adding the gimmick of shooting while mezzed and follow up in all the attacks, plus a small increase in the damage modifier, why would you pick the gimmicky solution in this case? You've suggested that Blasters are a more or less "straight up" archetype in its design that's free of "gimmicks" but it has one of the most gimmicky inherent abilities in the entire game *and* one of the most heavily *required* inherents in the game. Take Fury away from a Brute, and you end up with a slow-levelling Brute. Take away Defiance from a Blaster, and datamining says you often end up with a dead Blaster. That's the ultimate in reliance.

What I'm confused about is the archetype you've described as the most straight-forward and least intertwined with its inherent is the archetype that unambiguously relies on its inherent the most of any archetype on average, has one of the most gimmicky inherents of any archetype in its mechanics, and historically is one of the most problematic archetypes to balance. That seems to be a contradiction to me.

Even when the overwhelming majority of foes don't just fold under a hit of damage and will persist and bother you? Many of which can easily kill you if you don't do something about them, and some of which can mez you if you don't mez them first? It seems like a mage would bring more than just damage (your example states fire, and fire does NOTHING else) to a fight. After all, if damage isn't working... well, you can't do anything else. You aren't taking other abilities 5th, you're taking them... never. Unless you count a single target hold from an epic with a long recharge.

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

I think you should watch this...

Let's imagine that the devs design every AT/powerset limited by a percentage.
(Numbers are just made up to show a point)

Blasters are 90% Damage 10% Debuffs/Controls.
Scrappers are 75% Damage 25% Survivability.
Tanks are 50% Damage 50% Survivability.
Defenders 50% Damage 50% Buffs/Debuffs/Controls.
Controllers 30% Damage 70% Buffs/Debuffs/Controls.
etc..

Now let's say you boost everyone to 100% damage. (Turn everyone to eleven!)
Well now Defenders are overpowered since they can do 100% damage AND 50% buffs/debuffs.
Meanwhile Blasters are 100% damage and only 10% Debuffs.

So what do you do?
Logically Blaster's are meant to deal more damage so you buff their damage to 140%. (Make ten louder and have that be the top number)
We've ended up back where we started in terms of the AT's relative balance with one another, but now the enemies are underpowered.

Let's continue using percentages and let's have 100% be the maximum. (Because going to eleven is stupid)
If everyone did the same damage [75%], then in order to keep balance you can only have [25%] for any other extra abilities.

Blasters are 75% Damage 25% Debuffs/Controls.
Scrappers are 75% Damage 25% Survivability.
Tanks are 75% Damage 25% Survivability.
Defenders 75% Damage 25% Buffs/Debuffs/Controls.
Controllers 75% Damage 25% Buffs/Debuffs/Controls.

The roles in teaming have now been homogenized, in that now everyone is expected to do damage, albeit with different ways of doing it, or different side abilities.

If everyone did similar damage, in order to keep balance, you'd have to nerf their other specializations. "Jack of all trades and master of none."
We've simply recreated CoV...
A Brute is just a Tank/Scrapper hybrid.
A Corruptor is a higher damage, lower debuff Defender.
etc.

So great, everyone can kill relatively fast, but now there's no AT for someone who wants to be an exceptionally tough Tank (25% damage 75% survivability/Stone Tank), or wants to be a glass cannon (100% damage/Fire Blaster).

Combat prowess is not just about damage. And support is not just about healing/tanking.
Everything is required for a fight.
Debuffs are a combat prowess and damage is also a form of support.

NPCs need to be tougher because of AI limitations.
They can't play smart, so they just cheat!

CoX uses Tank/Support/Damage Dealer because it is an MMO.
Personally I see nothing wrong with the underlying concept of it, as it is still a design that works and encourages players to have roles in teams, and promotes specialization and diversification. The problem with other MMOs is that they rigidly force you into those roles, whereas CoX allows for greater flexibility.

1) Everyone can defeat an enemy at a reasonable rate.
eg. My Defender has low damage, but I can still kill off any stragglers that come my way.

2) There are different ways to defeat an enemy.
This is one of the most important aspects of CoX, since while you still require damage/support/aggro management, you can do it in different ways.
eg. You don't need a Tank, if everyone is buffed up and enemies are controlled.
You don't need healing, if no one's getting hurt.

Teamwork isn't made vital by having blatant deficiencies. That basically makes each person have to perform a role regardless of if they might want to do something else at any given time. That's not encouraging socialization so much as one dimensional thinking.

That sort of thinking is something that makes me nauseous because it puts images in my head of needy people who crave 'belonging' and have to seek it by being a vital link in a carefully laid out chain.

Teaming can be fun no matter what ATs are thrown together. In COV, people often say how the ATs don't encourage teaming. That's false. What happens often is people who are so accustomed to fitting into one slot only, suddenly find they have some freedom in a team and literally don't know what to do with it. So they end up not doing much to help to the team. Limited not by their AT capabilities, but by their own imagination and lack of creative thinking.

If you're a mastermind, don't just buff and heal your pets, do the same for your teammates. If you're a dominator, use your holds strategically and deal damage where it's needed most. Use domination to lock down tough boss fights. If you're a stalker, make sure you pick the most vital targets for your AS strikes and make things easier for the team to mop up the softer mobs. The list goes on.

I may not outright agree with Sam in his assessment, but I really hate this 'I'm needy and want to be needed' way of thinking that some MMO players have. Socializing in an MMO does not have to depend on handicaps. I solo a lot of the time. But I often team with my SG mates and other friends when we're on together. We don't have more fun because we're filling roles. We have fun because we like each other and enjoy spending time playing together even as we talk and laugh about life, friends and family. Our team composition is often 'sub-optimal' because some of us just like to play certain ATs and we don't feel pressured to make sure we get it 'just right'. We play and have fun anyway.

We're talking about concept here. "A single target hold from an epic with a long recharge" isn't exactly concept, now is it? A Dominator is not a dedicated damage dealer. I've played Dominators, and they are not damage dealers. Yes, they deal damage, but their focus is not damage. Nor are their damage-centric abilities all that impressive, either visually or practically. And if I want someone to reign destruction, I'm going to want massive fireballs and fire from the sky, not smoke and fire cages.

You're not going to win this one. It's my concept, I choose what it should be. Doubly so, since I'll be able to have my cake and eat it, too, very soon, so I don't see why that remains a problem.

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.

Even before the Defiance changes, I found 'blapping' on an Elec/Elec blaster rather fun. Yes there were faceplants. Sometimes you roll snake eyes.

With the holds and sapper powers in the sets, it only got more fun as I leveled up. Snake Eyes still popped up occasionally, but that's how I learned to sometimes "thin the herd" milling around an Elite before charging in and electrocuting the sucker.

Now Mistress Ohm is 50, and she's tied with my Robots/Traps mastermind for fun solo action and team action.

I'm not really seeing the issue here, honestly. Yes, defeating mobs is the end goal to all mob encounters. How you accomplish this, without getting flatlined yourself, is up to you.

Your math is off, because you seem to have missed the point. In fact, you're just retreading ground I specifically wanted to get AWAY from. This notion that each character has 100% and that has to be divided between damage and everything else. Why? I realise "damage" is not the same as "combat prowess," but let's go with damage for simplicity.

Why have 75% damage, 25% everything else? Why not have 1.0 damage between everyone, and then have 100% everything else divided by what else the other classes can do. Let's say...

Damage + 50% survivability +50% control
Damage + 100% survivability
Damage + 100% control
Damage + 50% control +50% support
Damage + 50% support + 50% survivability
Damage + 30% survivability + 30% control + 30% support + 1% extra
Damage + 20% pets + 80% support

See what I mean? Not damage (again, let's just roll with damage for now) at the cost of something else, not damage as one perk. Damage AND something else. Once you stop trying to wiggle damage in as a balancing parameter and just standardise it among the classes, then it becomes a basic game trait. You know, like the ability to run and jump. You still have classes, you still have specializations, you still have diversity, it's just over things OTHER than damage.

And again, this isn't just about damage, but I picked that as the easiest example just to make the numbers work. And, no, I've no idea if this would be balanced, and it most probably would not be. It's just an example an an illustration, not proof of thesis.

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.

Then I have to pull the powerset card. Yes, Electrical Manipulation does have some nice tools to "blap." Devices does not. Assault Rifle/Devices has very little. Fire/Fire has a lot of damage, but no control, and a few garbage powers. Certain powersets do work. Certain powersets fail spectacularly. The point, however, is that before Defiance, Blasters were simply not tough enough for the damage they did, and I've seen more than a few instances of Scrappers consistently out-damaging them.

This also goes down to speed of progress. Yes, sometimes you need to think the herd, which takes bloody ages. If you end up having to think the herd too often when a Scrapper never has to AND does the same damage as you BUT is several times more survivable, you start, or at least I started, asking myself the simplest of questions - why bother playing a Blaster when Scrappers were faster, hit harder and survived longer? The answer to that question was Defiance 2.0, but prior to that, the answer was a shrug.

To quote Yhatzee: "OK, a dodge move that can't dodge ****. Yeah, I guess that would make for a hard game, but it doesn't seem like I'm being given much of a chance here." Essentially, yes, it's possible, yes it's doable, but no, it is indeed not in the slightest very much fun. Defiance 2.0 fixed that, but only just. Which I suppose was the point.

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.

That's pretty much the take I have on this. This idea that, just because this is an MMO and "should" be team-centric, then let's cut the legs off from under everyone so they have to prop each other up is one thing I've always found despicable, and one thing that has, for the most part, kept me out of other MMOs over the years. I've always felt that teaming should be a choice, not a mandate, and while I have nothing wrong with fat, slimy rewards hung in the distance to softly coerce me into teaming without me realising I'm being led by the nose, I do take slight when this is done via "your money or your life" mechanics, which is to say "team or die." It's a choice in the purely technical definition of the term, but no, it actually isn't a choice in the slightest.

This brings me back to a recurring question - why must teaming be emphasised by restricting people from not teaming, rather than by rewarding people for teaming. Again, City of Heroes is probably the most lenient MMO I've played when it comes to this, but it is STILL designed with that in mind. And it's actually a pretty paradoxical design at times. Often, I see things thusly:

Option 1: Hey, you there, team-centric dude! Yeah, I know you're having a hard time soloing, but with the way difficulty scales, you'd be incredibly more powerful than the sum of your parts if you got on a team and took on things other people couldn't handle without you.
-This is great, now I just need to find a team!

Option 2: Hey, you there, soloist thing! Yeah, you're really cool fighting things on your own, but I'll bet that eight of you can't handle eight people's worth of monsters unless you bring along someone who doesn't solo as well but multiples your power!
-So? How likely am I going to fight more peoples' worth of monsters if I don't team with more people?

The gist of it is that, yes, "teamers" are designed to start low, but be a great asset to a team, whereas "soloers" are designed to start high, but peter out against some of the team-specific challenges. But here's the thing - a teamer needs to alter the status quo, find a team, scale the difficulty and only THEN become truly needed. A soloer has to go out of his way to NOT be needed, which strikes me as a deceptively backwards design which came close to sinking Scrappers at some point in the ancient past, and actually sunk Stalkers before they were altered.

Tangent aside, offer rewards rather than taking away ability.

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.

There are classes that do it all though, so people who want to do it all can. But we also have niche classes that people can pick from.

Some people here seem to want classes that do everything. Some people here just want classes that do one thing so we have to team. But we have some of each, so there's something for everybody. There's no need to rebalance Defenders so they can fight. We have support ATs that can fight. Soon enough you'll be able to play them on whichever side you want. Defenders are there for people who don't care if they can fight or not, because they want to be totally rockin' on buffs/debuffs.

Firstly, I'm not trying to "win," I'm trying to understand. And it's not a "problem" so much as me comparing my concept to yours. Personally, If I was to make a "fire mage," my first thought would be Dominator. Because in my concept of mage, the person would want to have all sorts of spells and abilities, and the only thing a Blaster can do is cause harm. Dominators can do so much more. I like Blasters, but if we're talking concept, Dom makes so much more sense to me.

I disagree that Doms aren't damage-centric. Castle even said he was worried about suggesting the Dom change because the numbers he was suggesting would basically mean that Doms have two primaries. Secondaries are usually built to be weaker and to augment the primary, but in the case of Dominators, they have the highest base damage of any toon you can make redside. If that makes them "not damage dealers," I don't what to say.

Per Castle, they have "two primaries" now, and their main focus is to mez AND to do damage. My Plant Dom tends to use about 2 mez powers and then goes right into laying down the hurt from that point on. I'm not sure how everyone plays Dominators, or how people think Dominators are "supposed" to be played, but if I spent more time mezzing than dealing damage, I would feel extremely useless, and probably would be.

How long ago did you play Dominators? Because my Doms are definitely damage dealers.

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

Actually, I sometimes feel like my 33 fire/fire dom is unfair to play...

I hardly even need to use Fiery Embrace now...

My last high level Dom had BU. My new one is Plant/Earth. I don't miss BU at all. I can still one-shot minions and annihilate lieutenants. What's more, Plant packs a punch with damage as well, and Earth packs some mez. I can hold bosses in about 2 seconds even outside of Domination thanks to Seismic Smash. I also get random AoE stuns. I can Power Boost when Domination is down to get super-long mezzes. Then throw down Creepers to do damage while I crunch badguys. The two combined have really high mez and really high damage. Really wild toon. I'm looking forward to adding Soul Drain to all that!

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