Stone Armor: What I'd Do

Any change that removed the movement penalty from Rooted would be a positive one to me. I tried to make a non-Granite Stone Brute some time back but having to crawl from place to place, or constantly detoggle and retoggle Rooted...it got old quick.

Ideally I'd like to see the restriction on travel powers removed from Rooted altogether. I'm all for keeping things consistent with a concept, but having to toggle juggle any time you want to go from point A to B is too much hassle. I think the concept can flex a bit there. Giving the regen aspect the Grounded treatment seems like a good compromise to me.

One more negative to a non-Granite build currently is that you can't run Combat Jumping with Rooted for the added defense. You've got one of the lowest defense sets and then also exclude one of the most popular ways to bolster that defense. Even if the exclusion of actual travel powers stayed I'd hope Combat Jumping could be allowed.

Hrm........my first character ever created, also my first 50, and the toon with the most play time is Stone/Stone.

Granite has always been a toggle that I turned on and off.

Interesting read though.

Lower Granite Armor's numbers so that, if using the rest of the power set at the same time, it equals out to "Granite Armor" numbers. Remove the "No other armors" portion. Remove the -speed and the -damage. Add +jump. Increase the end cost in order to make it prohibitively expensive to run all the armor toggles AND Granite armor at the same time for any length of time without some serious end boosting.

There ya go. Just fixed most of the perceived problems with it while also keeping it mostly balanced.

-Rachel-

You do realize that the only power I was suggesting an endurance change for was Granite Armor itself, rather than the others..?

In which case it doesn't change the lower level playability any, but I find it's lower levels not that bad, personally. *shrugs* If you want to address that how about shifting even more of the difference out of Granite Armor into the rest of the set?

As for you ad hominem attack...



So there ya go.

It'd be prohibitively expensive to run ALL of Stone Armors toggles (including Granite) at the same time, but the player could turn on Granite and Magma for handling primarily fire/cold enemies, or Granite and Rock for Smashing/Lethal. But turning them all on and running amok would be a bad idea for long-term survivability since you'd end-drain yourself.

-Rachel-

Umbral: blah blahbbity blah blah blah
Computer: blahbbity blah, blah blah.
Umbral:

The problem with Stone Armor seems to be that the set doesn't work well with itself. The rest of the set is subpar to the average performance of other sets in both mitigation, maneuverability, and endurance consumption because it can't be equal to them else you have to question the relevance of even taking Granite.

Thematically the idea is supposed to be that you go into Granite to represent sacrificing offensive for ultimate defense, except it doesn't work this way because the rest of the set has nothing "offensive" about it. It's still just as slow because of how Rooted works, and the giant endurance consumption the set uses in comparison to just using Granite offsets the disadvantage Granite has with -recharge and -dam. Ultimately your choice is to either having subpar mitigation or really good mitigation, which isn't really a choice at all.



I think Umbral has the right idea of where to go. Rooted needs the movement penalty removed about a billion issues ago, and having the Regen activate only while your on the ground still fits with the thematic of the power enough that I would be okay with passing the idea. The endurance the set consumes also needs to be looked at rather desperately.

Beyond that, I would still like it if the thematic of the set was kept in check. As such, I think the "rest of the set" should have it's mitigation numbers increased by a much smaller amount than initially proposed, while adding a passive to Granite that grants a damage buff to the user that would be set to False when upon activating Granite. Ideally, "NotGranite" should represent a level of higher offense while Granite should represent a higher level of defense (not the evasion kind, obviously). By sticking the dambuff onto Granite you seem to ensure its' place within the build regardless of whether someone wanted "okay" mitigation with enhanced attack (a la Shield Defense) or if they wanted ultimate mitigation with less attack. In this way Granite would still retain it's appeal as the ultimate form of mitigation and remain a toggle without marginalizing the rest of the set because of it.

Beyond this, Granite probably needs it's endurance consumption increased to be roughly equal to the amount of endurance consumed by NotGranite after NotGranite has had it's endurance consumption lowered so as not to accidentally offer Granite an advantage it shouldn't fairly possess.

Keeping it pithy for the peanut gallery:

1. You can't treat defense and resistance as interchangeable, just because they come out to the same level of mitigation in some situations.
2. I'd be willing to trade -9999% damage for keeping Granite's current numbers. Yeah, really.
3. Still on board for shifting some of Granite's mitigation out to the rest of the set and making it not a mutually exclusive toggle. Granite as a mode: good idea. Granite as the only armor needed: not so much.
4. Will never be on board for making Granite non-modal. An offense/defense mode switch is fun, interesting, and unique.
5. The precedent to look at is Dwarf Form.
6. Why so serious? Nothing we say here will make one iota of difference one way or another.

It's so nice to have a cordial theoretical discussion.

Neither resistance nor defense is "better", but each one has situations where it is more or less beneficial. A blend of both is more robust than either alone, and stripping resistance for defense does remove some of that all-situation robustness. WP and Invuln perform well on a blend of resistance, defense, +HP, and healing/regen.

-9999% damage is something of an exaggeration, of course. My larger point is that any complaint about the "circumventable" penalties of Granite Armor can be obviated by making those penalties less circumventable. Tech is in place to situationally lower buff caps, for instance. It's also worth noting that the "circumventable" penalties are generally circumvented through a teammate; a different kind of teammate can push other sets up to Granite level survivability with the same amount of effort. What makes Stone nice is that it requires no external support to survive and defend.

Just because I feel Granite should be something that can be run constantly doesn't mean I want it to be something that is desirable to run constantly, though. When I say that I want a modal switch, I mean that I want a modal switch, the option to trade offense for defense. Not only is that not something you want to do all the time, it's something that not every build would necessarily ever want to do. A Brute built for offense would not necessarily want to take Granite, and if the survivability of the rest of the set were improved (which I think is a good idea anyway) he probably wouldn't feel a need to either. Incidentally, I would buy in to removing the movement penalty from Rooted, although in my experience it tends not to be that much of a hindrance.

On Dwarf form: I know my dwarf numbers pretty well, thanks. For another discussion, I ran the numbers on what a Warshade can do damagewise on SOs and IOs in Nova versus Dwarf form, and I think the damage output ratio was as high as 10 to 1 in favor of the Nova. I haven't done the comparable Peacebringer math, but I expect it wouldn't be too far different. So yeah, Dwarf is most definitely a mode that sacrifices offense for defense. I'll give you that Dwarves are somewhat more naturally mobile (though "run fast" is a relative term at best), but at least Stone Armor doesn't have all its mez protection in its defense mode.

Well, that was some teal deer right there. Anyway, in conclusion, yeah I'd be surprised if Castle harvests any specific ideas from this thread. There are ways in which forum posters can have a strong influence on the game, but this doesn't seem like one of the situations that qualifies. At any rate, I don't see a reason to get all rage-y regardless.

Hmmm.... Stone armor. How i hate thee. Stone armor is insanely hard to level up, it's annoyingly horrible to build "properly" if you dont want to relly on granite, and in the end you still are just "baseline". But take granite and you are a god, with huge debuffs but a god.

IOs have changed the playing field too, recharge bonuses have made it so that Granite's Penalties are down to a relatively small -dmg debuff and -speed. And as some one that has tried "tele-tanking" i can say it actually is far from a handicap to be "forced" to take teleport as a tank. If I had room I'd take it on all my non-shield or non-electric Melee tanks.

That being told, as I am as opinionated as anyone else, perhaps a bit more, I have my own ideas on how to rebalance stone, and these ideas too change constantly.

Right now, if i was able to, let's see...

Start with the big issue: Granite.

I'd make Granite and Rooted exclusive, same with Earth's Embrace. You cant activate EE while in Granite mode and activating rooted shuts down Graite. At this point just give Granite a 1 minute recharge once detoggled. That would be the extend of the nerf I'd give Granite.


As for the rest of the set:

Rooted: Remove travel power restrictions and -jump, mez protection remains unchanged on the power but all other non-mez protection attributes only work while you are on the ground (regen, -end res, -def res)

Mud Pots: reduce the endurance cost to match other damage auras, the immobilization of minions honestly does not warrant the cost. To a point I'd consider it a penalty as minions wont follow you if you move due to the lingering immobilization.

Brimstone and Crystal armors: both expand their resistance and defense to cover energy/negative/fire/cold. This alone makes Stone armor much more friendly to build. Add to both a bit of lethal resist/defense but not much. Just enough to make the set stronger to lethal than smashing, reason: Stone is harder to cut than it is to smash.

Minerals: many would consider that power great but its way too situational, enough for players to skip unless they plan to fight Psi foes all the time (otherwise inspirations work for an AV without expensive build sacrifices.)

Lets make Mineral more useful, turn it into a team buff aura similar to Grant Cover but only protecting from psi/confuse and granting perception.

I agree Stone Armor needs tweaked.

However, I don't think I care for you're solution Umbral.

Yes. I think they need to get rid of Rooted's penalties. This is what breaks the set for me personally. It's one thing with Granite, but Rooted? *Sigh*

What I don't like about your suggestion is the change with Granite. I like part of the idea. But the idea of it being stuck at 300 seconds and not effected by recharge, I don't care for at all.

That was WP's cool factor. It was then given to Shield. And Granite's cool factor was it had a toggle tier 9 versus the others.

I don't want to see all sets get this less crash, no recharge enhancement tier 9 treatment. It's bad enough people have asked to get the other sets Tier 9 put into this category.

Why not go with what you said...
Toggle
Recharge: 180 seconds
End Cost: .26 - .65 a second (this puts it between Granite as it is now and Phase Shift)
Duration: 90 seconds.

This I think would allow people to keep it perma as it is now (if built with enough recharge), while keeping it closer to the same.

The +Resist/+Defense it grants I think would depend on just how much of an increase it gives to the rest of the set as a whole.