What I'd Do To Rage

so its quite a ways away?

No, it wasn't. Or at the very least, I argue the "obviously" part.

* Animation times aren't a part of balance. Low damage/recharge powers were intended to have higher DPS than high damage/recharge powers. Due to DPA, this completely fell apart.
* KO Blow used to deal little (think EM/Stun) to no damage. I can't remember which, but the damage was added later.
* A lot of SS's powers did knockback. This includes Punch, Haymaker, and Footstomp. (The knockback being detrimental to player damage output wasn't considered - it was added because it was thematic.)
* Rage didn't use to have a def crash, it used to have a high MAG disorient. It was either strong enough to detoggle your by itself, or all it took was an additional MAG1 stun to break your status prtoection.

I do not think Super Strength, and honestly a lot of the original sets, were balanced around many of the intangibles people think they were.

I wasn't necessarily arguing that the balance is intentional, but it is balanced with competing sets WITH rage right now. If you weaken rage, the damage bonus anyway, the set become subpar in relation to it's competitors.

Having said that, I think some of it was intentional when you compare most of the powers with similar sets and see that they are all underpowered damage-wise on their own. I'm not saying they had some perfected balance equation, but I think they took into account most people would take rage, and the fact it was easy to make it a permanent damage boost, so they had all the attacks do lower damage than other sets without such a power.

What is good or poor design is a matter of opinion. Granted with some recent changes, it seems the devs agree with your opinion, but it's opinion none the less.

I personally think it's ok for some sets to be balanced with a bunch of good, equal strength powers on one extreme, and another to be balanced around some weak powers and a few really strong ones. It creates more diversity. If you balance all the sets the same way, I think it would get monotonous real fast, and many sets would lose their unique identity.

Poor set design/balancing, imo, is when said set is disliked by players and never gets played. They went with your opinion with em, and now the set is a subpar mess that gets little play. So imo, that was a really bad move, because they took a set that many players loved, and ruined it, angering many of their paying customers. And people can argue to the contrary if they want, but the fact is em was not dominating pve play in any way, shape or form, to justify crippling it as they did.

Yeah...don't get me wrong, I have a Fire/Psi I don't play anymore since the changes and an EM/FA Brute I don't really play anymore either.

For me, SS is stupid-awesome because I've got IOs that mean I don't ever have to use the crappy attacks so I'm only ever using Rage, Footstomp, KO and Haymaker.

While you're right that if every set was balanced in the same way it would be boring, the reality is that with IOs a set with a bunch of weak powers "balanced" because it has a super-duper OP power just means you build around using the super-super power all the time.

With old PSW, people kidded themselves and said, "nah, PSW won't get changed because the rest of /psi sucks". That might have been true if people kept on using the rest of /psi outside of DP and PSW even after 38, but they didn't. You hit 38 and you used PSW, PSW and more PSW. You built for permadom because permadom is great but more recharge meant more PSW.

As for whether SS dominates PvE play, I dunno. It certainly is very, very popular. Unlike old EM, it provides a lot of AoE and pretty decent ST damage. If you ask me, I think its popularity is because of two things. One, this is a superhero MMO and it's friggin' Super Strength and two, it's effective as hell.

Now, I don't want SS to get changed ala EM, which I now feel is underpowered*, I'm just saying I wouldn't be surprised if it dos get changed sometime.

I just hope it'll be changed in an improvement to the set overall, be it by tweaking the overpowered stuff and bringing the set up as a whole or whatever, rather than just a whacking of the overpowered stuff.

More /psi and less EM/, pls.

*: Because it used to have its particular roost that it ruled, namely ST damage/burst and it now doesn't. More importantly though, it now has two suuuuuper slow attacks. I'd much rather have a weaker but faster TF or ET.

I do love KO Blow and I do very much agree that SS as a set does provides very solid AoE, but I disagree and I don't think it provides decent ST damage.

I've got more than a half a dozen Brutes at L50 and I can confidently say that without adding patron attacks, SS is definitely low on the ST damage as a set compared to others.

You can't really bring PPP/APPs into the equation either, because they let various sets do various things beyond their actual capability, so it's fair game at that point.


Here are some numbers, which while aren't the whole story do at least support the idea to an extent.

I hope Bill Z doesn't mind.

Original thread here

SS falls nearly at the bottom for Brute ST damage, Rage with 3 L50 Rech Rdx IOs would be just barely shy of perma. (different results for scrappers, unsure of Tankers).

On that list I've played Fiery, Claws, Warmace, Dark, Stone and Strength to 50, and while I wouldn't be able to place them that accurately I would be able to state that SS is definitely at the bottom compared to those primaries - and this is including rage.

Fiery is cleanly at the top, even though it also provides very solid AoE as well. This is mostly due to how fury affects DoTs I think, but FM as a set is still excellent in both ST and AoE damage.


Without Rage, Super strength as a set would be awful.

While the set is not perfectly balanced, I've grown to enjoy the way it plays - crash and all.

And while improvements to the set as a whole would be great, I'm extremely wary of any "fixes" that the devs might make.

I agree with you on why it's popular, I said pretty much the same exact thing a few posts up (or maybe it was in another thread, not sure, lol). But it's not popular because it's way better than anything else, it's just a top notch set and good at both single target and aoe. There are several sets that are better single target performers and there are better aoe sets as well.

That is precisely why the devs would be crazy to change SS. Because it is popular and it's not blowing the competing sets away at anything, outside of being a complete set that has balanced single target and aoe abilities. If they have a different idea for an SS set, why not just make a new SS set and offer it along side the old one? Then you make everyone happy and you offer a brand new set without having to make one up from scratch. And if any super power deserved alternate choices, it's the definitive super hero power super strength.

At this point, I'm pretty convinced that the devs are the only people familiar with this game who are OK with the present state of em, lol.

Truth - I keep hearing people expressing the misconception that SS is somehow overpowered but that simply doesn't mesh with the facts.

And as you noted, any nerf to rage would cripple SS and immediately make it non-competitive with other sets.

There are other sets that do much better single target and/or aoe damage than SS. But you can't look at popularity and assume that is correlated to performance. A big reason SS gets more play than fire or stone is because people grew up watching superman, spiderman, hulk, etc, not super fire guy and rock kid, lol.

And the jump in performance is because sets designed with only a few good powers benefit much more from recharge than well balanced sets. The ST damage is on par with Fiery, Dark w/10 can be discounted as very difficult to do, so its the 3rd highest ST damage set available to a well build brute (The Rage crash is included in these figures, which are also from Bill Z). Then you add Footstomp on top of that and I actually think it is borderline overpowered, people don't farm with underpowered sets.

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

I'm sorry but that is a totally inaccurate picture of the thread in question.

Which can be found here

Here's what you either missed, or left out.

1) "Good Recharge"

250% Recharge is quite frankly, bordering on ludicrous.

Just so you're aware, I have a L50 SS/WP brute with 3 Purple sets, 4x LoTG 7.5s and a a bit of other recharge (5% I think) still doesn't have the 250% rech needed to run the attack chain you quoted. (Gloom is shy by about 25% Recharge in my particular build for the needed 250% - I have 65% Global Recharge, +70% from hasten and 90% in Gloom)

I could get him there, but it would require a loss in survivability.

So yes, it's doable but it will require build sacrifices as well as 5 purple sets & 4x 7.5 LoTGs. You also need to ED cap Rech Rdx at 100% in Gloom or find another 10% recharge from somewhere if you're at 90%.



2) The attack chain.

The jump in performance while somewhat due to double stacked rage from the previously mentioned 250% recharge, also has another critical source.

Gloom.

That's the attack chain that gets 212 DPS at 250% Rech with double stacked rage.




So, some final points.

• No power or powerset is balanced according to having 250% recharge.
• To reiterate, claiming SS is "overpowered" based on something like 90% global recharge before hasten & Rech Rdx slotting is added in is ridiculous as having that much recharge in and of itself is overpowered.
• It also doesn't account for Gloom, which is a major source of that ST DPS chains jump in performance.
• I specifically addressed gloom, and other PPP/APPs in my previous post. Feel free to re-read it.

Lastly, even though I could make a build with that much recharge, and double stack rage often - I wouldn't. My opinion is that suffering such frequent crashes would be more of a frustrating hindrance, and is only useful for vacuum testing pure DPS chains and not actual in-game play.

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

You said:

which means it was intentionally created such that the set was underpowered without Rage, but on par / balanced with it. That may not have been what you meant, but that is what you said.

Again, I doubt it. Like I said, you have to completely throw animation time out of the picture if you're looking at balance of these legacy sets. The bottom tier powers (low dmg/rech) are designed to deal more dps than the top tier powers (high dmg/rech). Simple example:

Punch: 1 scale dmg, 4s rech. 0.25 dmg/sec
Haymaker: 1.64 scale dmg, 8s rech, 0.205 dmg/sec

With that in mind, if you compare Haymaker with Stone Mallet and Bonesmasher, you'll see they have the same stats. Likewise, Punch will share the same stats as Energy Punch. They were designed to be equals, but they didn't include all factors into their equation (cast time, full attack chains, etc), so the intent fell flat.

(The only power in the set is worse than it should be without Rage is KO Blow, it should have a 20s rech instead of 25. Of course, it also is available at lvl20/8 instead ov lvl38/18 and it has a heightened range (13ft vs 7ft).)

Do these deficencies deflate Rage's potency a bit? Yes, but that doesn't mean Rage's current strength is necessarily a good idea. The problem with Rage/SS is three fold:

1) Rage doesn't just boost some of SS's deficient powers "up to par," it also boosts the strength of all attacks. So damage auras, pool powers, epics, temp powers, and vet powers are all stronger on SS than they would be on any other character. This means powerful attacks (such as Fireball) would be boosted as well.

2) Footstomp is too good. I have Footstomp, and I love it, but it is too good compared to other sets. It deals too much damage for the recharge / radius that it has. It is balanced as a 10ft radius, but actually has a 15ft. (Compare it to Frozen Aura, which has the same damage/rech and only a 10ft radius.) This is exasperbated by Rage, which makes it that much better. There is a reason a lot of people say SS is a great AoE set even though it only has one.

3) It scales very well. Since the bottom teirs are so lack luster and the upper tiers are so good, adding recharge to maximize powers like KO Blow and Haymaker while squeezing out Jab has a tremendous impact. It also means that there is room to add in better powers (like Gloom).


To sum up:
* SS wasn't designed around Rage. If it's balanced with it and underpowered without, it's a coincidence.
* Rage has farther reaching consequences than just bringing it up to par.

Actually vet powers ignore damage buffs; use them with double stacked rage or during the crash, they'll do exactly the same damage.

I completely agree with this. Another issue with Rage is the ToHit buff. Having access to a permanent 20% to 31% ToHit buff makes Super Strength significantly superior to other sets when fighting higher level opponents. Foot Stomp is so good not only for its huge radius, but also because it's running 95% hit chances far more often than other sets are able to, and this buff extends to APPs/PPPs, Pool Powers, damage auras, and Temp Powers/Vet Powers (both of which happen to break the -9999% damage crash, and are more often ignored for their accuracy deficiencies than lack of damage).

SS doesn't have baked-in deficiencies that Rage mollifies. An 8 second recharge attack still does 1.64 DS, just like every other set in the game. Hurl is an exact clone of Hurl Boulder, and if SS were indeed designed around Rage then Hurl's value should be lower without Rage active but higher while buffed. It's not penalized, and neither are the set's other attacks.

As pointed out earlier, the only adjustment that any power has is a 25 second recharge in KO Blow. KO Blow used to do paltry damage, less than jab in fact, and was given extreme damage shortly after the release of City of Heroes. This recharge penalty was seen as a trade off for receiving an extreme attack at 18 rather than 38-- a full 20 levels sooner than most other sets for Tankers. There's also a chance that Rage played a role in having 5 additional seconds of recharge.

They are stronger because of the 20% to 31% ToHit buff. Vet Powers and Temp Powers aren't used in the high levels because of their awful accuracy. SS doesn't have this issue thanks to Rage, but can also use them during the crash, fully benefiting from ToHit buffs to provide significant damage despite the -9999% damage penalty.

Vet Powers are significantly better on SS toons.

I take it from the (rather selected) comments quoted that you mainly use /SS on tankers. On the other hand my experience comes from three SS/ brutes. The improved accuracy presumably is more important than them ignoring +damage when you aren't cruising along on +240% damage bonus.

Yep, that's exactly what I was getting at by including Veteran Reward powers.

While many of the powers are not adjusted to compensate for rage, the set overall has been balanced based off of lower damage faster charging attacks.

Your first 3 attacks are on timers of 2, 4 and 8 seconds. The faster the recharge, the lower the damage. Most other sets have longer recharging attacks with higher base damage. When you get into higher recharge builds, jab becomes a liability and you are left with only 3 fast charging attacks (including hurl) while you wait for your 1 heavy hitting attack to recharge.

Compare this to say Axe that has 4, 8, 10, 12 and 15 second recharge attacks. When you get to high recharge builds you still have a fluid attack chain of decent damage attacks without having to dip into pool powers or wait for your epic/patron powers.

Build it, post it.

I'll let you know if it stacks up to my survivability standards, which include being an alpha spawn breaker on the ITF/LGTF.






What it shows is that Gloom is really awesome and that players can do amazing things with insane levels of global recharge.



I'm sorry, but no it doesn't.

Gloom doesn't count as a part of the Super Strength powerset, because it isn't.

If you'd like to run the numbers for a pure SS attack chain with 250% rech, making sure to account for rage stacks and rage crashes I'd be happy to listen.

Great post again. And like you said, the chart princess posted was with about as much recharge as you can possibly get, AND it takes into account some stacked rage (which would probably create some end issues with all the crashes), and it's still not the best single target set, so I'm not seeing how people can claim it's 'overpowered'.

To sum it up - SS is balanced to other sets with rage, I see it in having played all the melee sets to 50 at least once, and it's supported in two different spreadsheets put out by reputable players. If you want to think it was completely accidental, that's fine, but I disagree.

In regard to your rage points:

1)Of course rage does more than just boost SS's damage up to par with other sets - it should since you have to use a power pick to choose it, and then slot it up, I would hope it would do more than just allow the set to do damage on par with competitors. And despite the fact it boosts attacks outside of SS, the set still does damage overall on par with competing sets, again, as evidenced in play and in various spreadsheet tests. In fact, for SS to be one of the above average single target damage dealing sets, it's forced to use 'gloom', a power outside of its set, to compete with other sets. Without gloom, SS would be a mediocre single target damage dealing set in most comparisons (actually, the brute SS is below average in single target dealing damage in bills scrapper/brute powerset comparison).

2)Footstomp is not 'too good'. Is it a great power? Yes. Is it better than many other sets aoe powers? Yes. So why is it not 'too good'? For several reasons. For one, it's the only decent aoe power the set has. Some would argue the only other aoe power in the set, handclap, is more of a detriment to the set than anything else due to the horrendous knockback and scattering of enemies. Secondly, you don't get the only effective aoe power in the set until the end of the set/late game, where every other set gets some kind of aoe ability far earlier. That is why footstomp SHOULD be better than other aoe powers. But I can see why the City of Same folks would have a problem with it, it's not a clone of several other powers, and the set is balanced differently than many of the other sets. For the countless SS fans, it's ok to be different.

3)If it scales so good, you'd expect it to be the best single target set in the game, yet it's not. And any set can add gloom to their chain, the fact SS NEEDS it (and gloom has excellent single target dps) to compete near the top of the field in single target points to the fact the set is deficient in single target attacks. Again, when you take gloom out of the competition, SS falls to below average in single target competition. Of course that is why it has a really powerful aoe attack, to make up for that fact, which supports my contention that footstomp is not overpowered in this set. 'nuff said.

Only if its a new SS set that will be offered along with the old one. Too many players like the old SS, so to 'fix' it would be 'ruining' something many, many customers love, and since it's been clearly shown that SS does not blow the competition away in terms of performance, no 'fix' is needed.

This game has many things that truly are broken and require fixing, fixes that the vast majority of customers would actually enjoy. And if they get the urge to work on powersets, keep putting out NEW ones to keep the fans interested or buffing underperforming/underplayed sets, instead of tweaking old ones that people like, which only results in pissed off players.