What can the other secondaries do better than /Shield?

That's very similar to the idea that I've been tossing around for the power as well, though mine is part of a whole series of FA changes that I think need to occur (reduce the animation time on Healing Flames, put some Immob and KB prot/res into the armor toggles, buff FE so that it isn't half the strength of BU unless you're FM/FA, change RotP to be a multipurpose power that can be used when dead for full effect or alive for less effect).

My idea would render the damage portion of the patch to a largely token value while keeping the afraid component for those that use it for mitigation, while having the power itself provide an even split of up front damage and fire DoT to all enemies in a larger radius (~12' radius). I'd also up the overall damage, and commensurately increase the recharge (probably to 45-60 seconds) and endurance, to give the power some extra kick.

FA got hit hard by both ED and issues 4-6 (remember back when you could cap your s/l resist on an FA?), and it lost a lot of the survivability that was superfluous for other sets but was virtually requisite for FA to function. Until Shield hit, I was perfectly content to simply say that the increased damage that FA got countered the lower survivability, but Shield set an entirely new bar for the relationship between survivability and damage in a defense set, so, as I see it, FA as a whole could use some reevaluation if the devs have shifted the paradigm. Of course, I'd prefer the devs to simply reign Shield in a bit (weaken AAO and Shield Charge so that they're not omgwtfbbq powerful) and give FA a smaller buff. Though, from all of the commentary from the player base, it seems that Castle is content with simply allowing his new defense sets rule the roost numerically (WP... don't get me started...).

It terrifies me that this is possible... do you need to be IO'd with solid purples to get this absurd level of invincibility, or can you get it with SOs or a non-purple IO build?

No just some relatively inexpensive IO's and the +HP accolades and your god.

He's talking about an IO'd out wp toon, and on top of that, wp works pretty well vs rikti because its easy to cap vs energy and with the massive regen a maxed out rttc gives you, rikti are pretty easy for a wp to handle.

But like any secondary, regardless of how pimped out it is, there are plenty of enemies that will make wp weep. Overall though, wp is a strong survival based secondary, and thanks to layered defenses its good vs a wide range of enemies, that you just turn on and forget, with the added bonus of additional endurance.

No, I'm definitely not calling for nerfs, lol. If you've read any of my posts it should be clear that I rarely support nerfs, unless something is ridiculously broken. For example, I can fully understand the AE nerf to the mm farm where people were hitting 50 in a day or two.

I was trying to drive home what you clearly understand, that while SD is great, especially io'd to the gills, it's not AS good as it looks when you look at specific situations like pylon soloing.

But I was also trying to point out that while SD is one of the shining examples of scrapper combos, it should be noted most at's have a shining example or two, and that some of them can do even more extreme things than SD's can, and not just in big target contests like av's and gms, but in team dynamics as well, where people cry 'overpowered' in terms of shield charge. Buffs, debuffs and controls can allow you to do things far more ridiculous than anything SD can accomplish solo, and even moreso in a team environment. That's why when I hear people crying for SD nerfs, it just sounds ridiculous to me, but maybe these people are focusing only on the scrapper at and not the game as a whole.

I'm 'barging' into a balance discussion, lol? If you want a one-sided discussion, don't post on a public board. If you have the right to claim it's 'imbalanced' or 'overpowered', I have the right to disagree and explain why.

And claiming that before I came in, it was a 'buff FA' argument is simply either dishonest, or simply wrong, one only needs to look at the title of the thread to understand that. And the loaded question brought out the 'overpowered' claims, but it's interesting that you would consider me, someone who is clearly opposed to any nerf to SD, to be a nerfherder. Even if you simply mean I brought dev attention to it, because according to you, if the devs want to nerf sd, "they'll know it from datamining, not by listening to random forumites". And if you mean that I brought in the pro-nerfers, I'm thinking the fact I was responding to claims it was overpowered would imply they were already here, if the title itself wasn't enough of a draw...

In regard to "I'm not really interested in participating in what turned into emotional "you evil nerfers" shouting"...

One, where was the shouting exactly? We're just typing arguments, if you disagree, that's fine, I'm sure we'll both survive our disagreement.

Two, who is calling you an 'evil nerfherder', lol. Again, some people simply don't agree with your stance that SD 'needs' to be weakened, no need to confuse that with being called evil...

Other than to marvel at the art team's work, no.

Shield is not a problem until you add at least moderate levels of IOs. You know this. Everyone posting knows this. Shield is an irate god with IOs. That's all this is about.

IMO, if the older sets could do the same we would be good.

When the dps's obtained from the pylon soloing came in, and people talking about dancing around in the middle of aggro-capped ae bosses, I think it's fair to say we're talking about IO'd out builds. And I'm sure the soft cap discussion came up pretty early, and you're not doing that without IO's either.

This is from you in post #6:

"Not really looking forward to when it gets the EM treatment as I enjoy my bs/shield, but...it has to be coming."

Does this have multiple and/or fuzzy 'interpretations', lol?


I guess you missed post 12, where it was brought into the discussion which led others to say nothing else could compete with dm, which led me to show that in fact another combo could and did. So no, I wasn't changing the subject, just continuing the discussion.

Again, it was specifically mentioned in post 12, you obviously missed it, I did not.

And I explained why I used that example - to show that other combos are capable of putting out that kind of damage. Another important difference is that the db/elec will have all those bonuses more often than an sd is surrounded by harmless aao fodder. And there are many differences after that, both pro and con for either combo, but again, my point was to show another combo that could compete with */sd in that instance.

I think it's also important to note that only 2 primaries dominate that chart, fire and dm. If aao is the primary factor, and the only thing out of balance, why aren't any other primaries up there with fm and dm?


It was brought into the argument way before I came into the thread and I used it to make a few points, all relevant to the discussion of SD and competing secondaries. If that upsets you, grab a tissue, because my argument is on topic in terms of the title of this thread.

I've got every right to state my opinion and defend it, and to correct false information, like claiming I'm the one who first brought up rikti pylon soloing or single target dmg, and ridiculous stances like claiming that me talking about SD and competing secondaries in a thread about SD and competing secondaries is somehow a tangent.

Finally, where exactly was my 'tone' upsetting you? I'm guessing the parts where I don't agree with you. In a public forum, you don't get to decide what the 'quite a few areas' of discussion are, and trying to shout down people who don't agree with you, especially using false claims, is downright lame.

>.<

Don't do it... seriously... I will Shield Charge your face if you do!

Definitely, waaaaay too many people enjoy the set. Give it the em or pvp treatment.

Unless you want to balance the rest of the game around IOs, no.

[Team] Imperious Rex: Yep. once again, the Robo's Lounge folks showed me how easy this game is.

It's mostly just the double-stacking debuff resist that it can get that's the problem. Take that away and it's about as soft as Energy Aura (though, admittedly, much easier to soft-cap) with crazy damage instead of crazy endurance recovery.

At the present time, I wouldn't recommend it. Just AAO alone opens a can of worms best left till after GR at least. And we all know what happened with SC.

EvilGeko summed up key points nicely.

I will add that balancing around IO investment would be unwise. Daring to mention a competitor, getting decked out in IOs is essentially CoX's version of the time/effort of getting decked out in Epics in WoW. Classes in WoW certainly aren't balanced around what loot the players amass. Off the top of my head, I can't recall one that is.

Therefore, /Shields is perfectly in line with other secondaries, sans /FA, which is underpeforming and does need looked at. Also, with the other MMO options out there, messing with something the player base likes is probably counter-productive.

You should. Remember how everyone in Beta for Shields kept saying it was teh gimp and the worst Defense Set? It definitely needs a buff!

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Eh, it doesn't terrify me. It's not that Willpower can achieve more than other secondaries, though obviously it can in some situations since not all secondaries are the same. But it will achieve it with less user input, and in many cases, no user input at all. It's a toggle on and go secondary. It's for people who want to pay attention to all the damage they're doing instead of the damage they're taking.

Me, I prefer a more active secondary in general, but I've played a lot of Willpower too.

There's a game other than Scrappers? What's it like?

The thing you should look at is the relationship between damage and mitigation as presented in armor sets.

Using just SO's as everyone quickly wants to deflect this to IO's and brush the issue away
Fire Armor:
1338.6hp
652.3 heal every 22.22 sec (cast+rech) = 29.36 hp sec
35.1% res to s/l
base regen 5.58hp

vs 200 dps incoming damage (s/l)
44.68 sec survival time

Shields:
1338.6*1.195 = 1599.63 hp
21.3% def
15.8% res s/l (2 res SO's in deflection)
base regen 6.67

vs 200 dps incoming damage (s/l)
38.4 sec survival time

*flee effect of burn not calculate, nor the fact that SC would just one shot the whole group
*Nor does it account for Shields having a usable Tier 9 with 33% uptime.

Even on SO's which is where fire performs best relative to other armors and Shield is apparently "really weak" there is only a 14% difference in survivability. Yet there is more than a 14% difference in offensive output in favor of shields. IO's just exasperate the issue to the point of ridiculousness due to a variety of reasons such as def stacking better than res, the offense of shields responding to recharge better than fire's and so forth.

Personally I play both armor sets and I like both armor sets because I like offense more than uber survivability. Shields invalidates my Fire armor toons. Which leaves several options:
1. Buff FA so it is as clearly offensive as Shields
2. Nerf Shields so it is as clearly underwhelming as FA
3. Buff FA a bit and nerf Shields a bit and meet at some nebulous balance vector in the middle

edit: Shields probably should suck compared to Willpower at surviving, cause WP sucks compared to shields at killing things. Those two sets aren't as directly comparable as FA and Shields unless you have clear metrics on how survivability and offense is being weighted. But just looking at fire vs Shields that metric is not defined.

Actually it is probably because they are looking at the game as a whole that Shields conjures negative attention

Well said lol. The problem isn't with shields, its the big freaking problem that there is way too much damn money floating around in this game, and just like the US government the developers keep printing more money!