Stone Armor: What I'd Do

For Tankers, that I could actually go with. After all, it makes sense that people wouldn't be stupid enough to beat on the unbreakable rock creature that walks so slowly they can stroll faster than it. Losing threat while in Granite Armour does indeed sound very natural, and it WOULD be a huge deterrent for Tankers. Perhaps too huge, however, as I dare say many will declare the power broken. After all, a Tanker surviving while the rest of his team dies is counter-productive, and a power which facilitates that has little use.

Furthermore, this does little to address the problem of Brutes, for whom controlling aggro really isn't that big a deal. They CAN tank, but they aren't meant to. This does little to stop them, as Brutes have an even easier time ignoring Granite Armour penalties, and are only left with the sheer annoyance of the power, which, to be honest, further penalties will not solve.

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 fear that your combination of conditions may not realistically have any one point of intersection. In other words, I fear that what you're asking for is impossible.

Hmm... You know, that IS mechanically possible and would be a good way to impose an ever-increasing endurance cost to the power and its other drawbacks. The problem with this is that those debuffs would also linger after Granite Armour goes down. I like the spirit of the idea mechanically...

BUT

I'm not sure I like the prospect practically. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we can make buffs and debuffs cancel on power toggleoff. What you are now proposing is a maximal cost and debuff of the power, as achieved over time. How do we balance this? To make the power a bad idea to run constantly, we need to make the cost HIDEOUS (read, worse than Repulsion Field hideous) amounts eventually, because any reasonable-but-high cost you put to it WILL be worked around with Stamina and set bonuses, just like Instant Healing's and Focused Accuracy's costs were worked around. But if you do this, you basically enforce toggleoff at SOME point, again making the power uptime-bound and breaking your own request.

Of course, this is also a question of how long this takes to build up. I suppose you can give it a LONG time to build up, like 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes. I'm not sure that's a good idea, but even THEN, it's still uptime-limited, because you'll be forced to turn off Granite Armour at SOME point, and yes, some fights do indeed last longer than 10 minutes without pause.

And again - I am highly unconvinced you can give the toggle drawbacks that AREN'T crippling and still make people have god reason to turn it off. History has shown us that anything short of turning a toggle into a click will not prevent people from never turning it off no matter how bad the costs and penalties. That's why I fear that what you're asking for is impossible to achieve. I literally CANNOT imagine a power that both has such drawbacks that would make a diehard Granite Tank turn it off, and yet won't crush my will to live.

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.

Correct.

Right. Granite Armor is just one power in the set that one can use.

Correct. However does that make it a solely defense based set? What is Willpower? One must take into account that the resistance does exist and people utilize it.

The set is not based around resistance, the set has different mitigation tactics (defense, resistance, regeneration) and can fall back upon a strong resistance heavy (with defense) armor. That is what I am saying. The set is not based upon resistance, but it would not be the same without having it.

I admit I somehow missed the all vs. Smashing/Lethal, however I still do not think it proves the original point. A substantial amount of resistance is being lost from the set. This is not being made up by the changes.

I didn't say it would have to be done that way.

From what I see, our disagreements are opinion based. I agree, Granite Armor is not the entire set.

The only thing that we know is what Castle says. The point of the thread got him interested in posting, whether or not he agrees with the premise (and from his posts, we cannot tell) is separate. What he actually posts is what we can infer from.

Sorry, but without Arcanaville to hold my hand through the process of entering it (which I wouldn't want to put her through ) I would have no idea where to begin. Excel spreadsheets...are not something I work well with.

• With Granite Armor, the set will retain the same level of survivability.
• Granite Armor's power is being reduced.
  Therefore
• Other parts of the set will be increased to make up for Granite's loss.

That is my thought process.

I guess we shall agree to disagree.

I still see it a tad differently, however I get your point.

Why not? While you can build for some slow resistance and building for defense reduces the chance of a -regeneration or -recharge debuff's chance to hit you, I don't see why a set absolutely positively cannot make up for their weaknesses. The reason that some sets can easily cover their holes, while other cannot is simply that they are designed as different sets which do different things.

A balancing factor in Fiery Aura is the relatively weak mitigation it provides due to the offensive capabilities it brings to the table. Why should Fiery Aura be allowed to mitigate it's weaknesses when regeneration cannot?

The point I was making is that the pets are different, they don't all have to be the same. Anything else is irrelevant.

See above.

Alright fine, we don't need to continue a debate which will just end up in more differing opinions.

Because it is different.

What is stopping an Invulnerability user from IOing out their build to be able to handle situations in which they would normally need to use Unstoppable (or in other words would be able to withstand as much as, be as strong as, if they were in Unstoppable?)

Does Granite Armor provide too much of a survivability increase for the drawbacks it has?
Are Granite Armor's drawbacks too easy to overcome?

These are obviously areas we disagree on, and I doubt further discussion will change it.

With all due respect, I truly hope you are wrong.

I disagree.

I disagree.

I'm afraid any further discussion is moot. It was...interesting...debating with you.

I guess I'm not understanding because this happens with a lot of other sets. The defender forums are consistently filled with teams who only want a healer, or teams that only want a Speed Booster. In the case of kinetics, Speed Boost has become the set (or set-defining power). Is Kinetics in line for a change as well? Personally I couldn’t care less what other people think my builds should have.

What your saying (correct my if I am wrong) is that this view point, is evidence to a greater imbalance within the set. What I am finding a hard time agreeing with is the severity of that imbalance which illicits the enormous changes that are required to bring it back into the fold.

Let me know If I am interpreting this incorrectly. There are a few points where you use 'set' for both the power set and the set bonuses (I believe), so forgive me if I am mixing them up.

Nothing is stopping the casual gamer from keeping Granite Armor on permanently. The difference between him and the non-casual gamer is the fact that the non-casual gamer will be better suited to playing in Granite Armor if the time comes.

Instant Healing doesn't quite match up, because if you had enough endurance to run it, you could leave it on indefinitely and not give it another thought. Turning it off meant that you had more endurance recovery, which was completely useless had you built to have enough recovery when Instant Healing was running. There was no gain.

There will always be times when not using Granite Armor is the correct course of action, due to the fact that turning it off turns off the drawbacks.

Which brings us back to the question of how much of a drawback should Granite Armor have to bring it in line with the other set.

Which is an area that we disagree in.

It comes down to this. The crippling drawbacks that you believe are needed, are not the crippling drawbacks that I believe are needed.

The crippling drawbacks that I envision would not count to you and would then force me to choose another area to lose in; however, in my opinion it would count. I don't think any further discussion will change this road block.


I'm afraid that my input is not doing much in this debate. Perhaps I am simply wrong. It has been fun bouncing ideas back and forth none the less.

Holy crap! You might actually be capable of learning!

Why are you doing this to me? You say "correct me if I'm wrong" right after misusing "your" for "you're..." It's a trap, I just know it

More to point, perception is not proof of a problem, but it is a good indicator thereof. If there is the perception that a Tanker, once he reaches level 32, can respec and remove the majority of his set, then there just might be a problem. If there is a perception that certain powers are only ever needed until a "better" power comes along to replace them, there might be a problem. Empirical observations in this case confirm that there is indeed a problem. Even if the set looks well-designed on paper, if people consistently play it "wrong," then either the set needs to be fixed to be more like how it was originally designed, or the set's design needs to change to accept the way people are playing it. This is the Granite Armour conundrum and the source of the belief that "something" needs to happen.

As far as set-DEFINING powers are concerned, those are merely powers judged the most important in the set. I understand that Speed Boost is considered important to Kinetics, but is it considered the only power worth taking at all? Because I've heard people swear by Fulcrum Shift and others brag about Transfusion. There are, obviously, people always looking for Healers, but there are an equal number of people praising the benefits of Empathy buffs.

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone but the very rare exception who would make an argument as to why it's better to run using the base armours over Granite Armour. I don't use Granite Armour, myself, and even I couldn't draw that kind of argument. That's the problem. There is no argument to be had. Granite Armour is provably superior to non Granite Armour in practically every instance, and since the system never FORCES you to turn the toggle off, there is very little reason to. This isn't a comparison between Granite Tanks and other Tankers, it's a comparison between Stone Tanks and Granite Tanks, and Stone Tanks are measurably worse off.

You can make arguments as to why Granite Armour isn't needed all the time, and I would agree. You can make arguments as to why going out of Granite Armour produces better results, and I would disagree. It's less annoying, but with the right build, it is ALWAYS better. That's the problem. As long as you can keep Granite Armour on indefinitely, you will always need to have good, strong, convincing reasons that would get give ANY build at least some tangible reason to not use Granite Armour all the time. Other self-protection sets don't face this, since their T9 powers are otherwise limited in use. As long as the use of Granite Armour remains unlimited, then it must have balancing factors just as severe as those of T9 powers of equal contribution. And the severity of those powers' balancing factors is crashes that kill you and a 1000 second recharge timer. That's over 17 minutes.

Think about the severity of penalties for every T9 power of similar performance and you should see why Granite Armour's drawbacks are little more than a slap on the wrist.

"Making Granite perma," as it were, is easily doable by picking the right AT and the right pool powers and slotting. However, a casual player may not necessarily know to do that. Few other sets are built such that you NEED specific powers to give them baseline functionality. I dare say Dark Armour if only because of its hideous endurance drain, but beyond that, most sets work well on their own. I should know. That's how I build them. But if you build Granite Armour like you would build, say, Invulnerability, you're going to be punching your keyboard by level 16. If you do not mitigate the run speed penalty of Rooted, the game will SUCK. If you do not mitigate the recharge penalty of Granite Armour, you'll be sitting on your hands. On the surface, those are half-way decent balancing factors. Except the game WITH these balancing factors is not what's baseline. The game WITHOUT those balancing factors is.

Any time you have a system where certain sets NEED certain supporting powers, then that is a sign that something in these particular sets is wrong. It could be an inefficiency in the set that the additional powers make up for, or it could be an exploitable feature of the set that these additional powers build on, such as limitations designed to make the set work being sidestepped, turning design on its head. The solutions to these problems are many, but we can't deny that they ARE problems.

When the drawbacks DO NOT MATTER (and it's not hard to achieve this), then the benefit of turning off Granite Armour becomes moot. I turn my Granite Armour off simply because I don't feel like fiddling with recharge, but I am well aware that I'm compromising my efficiency and survivability because I can't be arsed to bother. I realise that I am operating at below-average performance. I'm OK with that, but this is not a choice one should have to make. If drawbacks to a power exist, then they should not be circumventable. If they are circumventable, then they shouldn't exist. As it stands, Granite Armour is a TERRIBLE power, but Granite Armour + Swift + Hasten + Fury is a GREAT power. And I don't agree with this design.

I don't agree that I should have to grab three other powers JUST to get what is considered baseline functionality. Either baseline functionality needs to be made truly baseline, as was done with Domination, or this functionality must be forced AWAY from baseline, as was done with Unstoppable and Elude when people were running those perma.

Let me say it again - look at what happened to Elude and Unstppable when those were running perma. Now try and tell me that Granite Armour, which has similar survivability, has NEARLY the same balancing drawbacks as that.

Wait, do we disagree that Granite Armour removes death from the equation or the consequences that that should have on the power's balance? Because I can testify to Granite Armour's unkillability. You can turn on Granite Armour and Rooted and you can go AFK in a LOT of situations, which is one of the problems outlined by Jack Emmert as far back as I5's GDN. This is normal for other T9 powers, as well, but other T9 powers do not allow you to hold this level of survivability indefinitely. Granite Armour does.

If you want to essentially ignore danger, then you have to accept the consequences of that, which is that danger will ignore you in return. You can't have it both ways. You can't have ultimate defence AND significant contribution. This is the hallmark of the much-feared tank-mage. Again, precedent for this exists in powers like Personal Forcefield, Hybernate, Quantum Flight and so on. In fact, you can compare Granite Armour to Personal Frocefield in terms of levels of survivability. It's not quite the same, but it's comparable. And that prevents you from doing ANYTHING.

The penalties are not enough. And, to be frank, making them higher will just make the situation suck more.

Here's the thing: If the drawbacks you envision do not count for me, that's broken. If the drawbacks you envision are circumventable to you, that's broken. You can't go around the 1000 second recharge on unstoppable. Even with the cap of 400%, you can still only get it down to 200 seconds recharge to 180 seconds duration, and who has even that much consistently? You can't get around the 240 second recharge of Moment of Glory. Even if it's enhanceable (which I'm not sure it is), you still can't get it under 48 seconds, and the power still has only a 15 second duration. You can't get around the 360 second recharge on One With the Shield because you can't enhance or buff its recharge. You can't get around the limitations of Hybernate, because it puts you in Disable_All mode, which means you cannot use powers with it. At all. You can't go around the limitations on Rise of the Phoenix, because its limitation is "being dead."

T9 powers are serious business, be they God Mode, mini God Mode, resurrection or utility. Anything which gives you close to absolute protection comes with penalties specifically designed such that you CANNOT overcome them, or indeed even come close. Anything aside from Granite Armour. And that's the 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.

If there are mathematics that define just where Granite Armor is exceeding the limits than there shouldn't be opinions as to how to fix it. We would know exactly where it falls in what circumstances.

If we didn't touch a thing with the power ie. Duration = Perma Survivability = Same, what would the mathematics tell us the drawbacks should be. I realize you didn't specify if this is possible in one formula, however if these problems are based in mathematics there should be a way to relate them.

I don't understand why you are intentionally trying to be so mean, especially when I have not done the same to you. How is it helping the discussion at hand?

The latter.

Because I've tried to educate you as to your incredibly flawed viewpoint throughout this entire discussion, and you still haven't even gotten the slightest grasp of what I'm talking about. You're still insistent that the ability to maintain Granite Armor grades survivability at all times is not only balanced but also necessary, and, in the same note, that the penalties to the power should be no worse than they are already regardless of the fact that they're laughably simply to get around.

I am mean because I was reasonably polite for our first few exchanges but it did nothing to correct your incredible lack of knowledge that would actually allow you to contribute to this discussion. Being polite did nothing to mitigate your obvious ignorance and it, apparently, made you think that you were actually intelligent enough to have an applicable viewpoint on balance of any kind. When, even after explaining how you were wrong and why the things that you are stubbornly insistent are both necessary and balanced are required for any change to be balanced and acceptable (when it is obvious to anyone with half a brain and the ability to do basic algebra that is isn't), you are still incapable of realizing that the fundamental logic behind your ideas is both hideously flawed and horribly imbalanced. Hell, you still believe that the devs have an obligation to design sets that allow you to overcome any weakness that is designed into a set while still allowing you to do even more with the remaining resources that you believe you should have left over.

I demean you because you're in a balance conversation though you're completely incapable of even recognizing what balance actually is. Even with math, you're incapable of realizing that it's imbalanced. You are somehow impervious to facts and logic.

Yes, yes I am. But you knew this already.

*Please return to your regularly scheduled number crunching debate*

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Originally Posted by PapaSlade Rangle's right....this is fun.

Naturally, I disagree. In fact, I can give one possible design that meets all of those conditions: make Granite not mutually exclusive, have it grant +25% res to all but psi and nothing else, and give it -90% movement speed, -90% movement speed *cap*, -jump, -fly, and -teleport. This keeps Granite a toggle that can be run indefinitely, makes it less strong than it currently is, gives a stronger and less circumventable penalty, and makes you want to turn it off if you want to, you know, go anywhere. This is not my favorite proposal, but it is a proposal that meets all my conditions. If it's still too strong, tweak down the res; if the penalties are still too weak, add some more.

I mean, if you say that it's not possible to design a power that you can be allowed to keep on all the time, you're saying that all armor toggles are unbalanced. I don't think that's quite what you mean.

As for my Calcify power suggestion, I think you're missing the point. Basically, over the course of 15 seconds after activating the power, you harden up to a higher level of survivability (lower than the current level granted by Granite) and a lower level of offensive capability. Once you've reached the peak, you stay there until you turn off the toggle, at which point the buffs and debuffs fade away over the next 15 seconds.

Once again, to beat the drum until my arms give out, I'm not saying that Stone Armor should have a wildly higher level of survivability than any other armor set. I'm asking for a moderately higher level of survivability to be available whenever needed, at the cost of a decrease in offensive capability sufficient to make that higher level of survivability impractical to attain under all circumstances. This is not an idea that is in itself inherently gamebreaking.

Thanks for the catch. Fixed it and a couple other major errors.

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Interesting... So, basically kill the offensive penalties, impose harsher movement penalties. Huh... I hadn't thought of that. Not a bad idea, actually, provided we kill the movement speed debuff in Rooted. That should keep Granite Armour giving significant survivability (how significant is a matter of debate), but would force you to detoggle if you want to move between spawns. Not bad. And since it wouldn't have the Achilles' heel problem of dropping the entirety of your status protection the way detoggling Rooted to move does, then I can see this as a form of toggle-juggling. Ostensibly, Granite Armour ought to be a power you use when you've walked in on something over your head, not as something you run around in as a status quo, so that kind of penalty I can actually see.

The -teleport alone is enough to burn ever Granite Tanker who ever lived, so just that is enough to get things moving, but killing the movement speed cap so you actually CAN'T go much farther even with a world of buffs... That I actually like. Again, it'd be good as a means of survival, and I'd actually put movement speed at around 15-20%. Enough to move around inside the spawn you're fighting, but not enough to want to move from spawn to spawn. Impose a mid-range recharge on the power, say 30-60 seconds, and you have a toggle you CAN use to gain serious survivability, at the penalty of having to turn it off if you want to move out to the next battle.

This gives Granite Armour two benefits: One, you get high survivability on demand, sustainable as long as you need it and ideal for one long, protracted fight that takes place relatively in the same general area. On the flip side, it's a power you WANT to turn off when moving around, losing PEAK survivability but, if the set itself is fixed, not losing enough to make you dead meat on a misstep. We retain the ability to use it continuously AND with less of a drawback, but we have a reason to turn it off, as well.

I like that.

No, I just meant that I don't think there's a good middle where Granite Armour still performs at the levels of a God Mode (its current levels) while still being considered balanced. Either it'll be too weak, it's drawbacks too severe or it won't run full-time. Granted, that's a case of "I'm not sure." There may well be a way, but from how things look, I can't imagine there being one. Even the above-mentioned way that I really like is probably going to end up being rejected.

Why not, though? That's its shtick, isn't it? Stone Armour is the one set that's all about ultimate protection. Back in the day, it was the only set with protection from Psychic attacks. I don't see why Stone Armour can't have the greatest survivability in the most situations, if for no reason other than because that's basically what it was designed to be. I have no problem with sets like Invulnerability and Willpower matching or even exceeding it by a little with saturated toggles, but Stone Armour would still retain its power in fights against single hard targets like AVs. And I'm fine with that.

Of course, once again that's a matter of concept, as I have no real numbers to support my position, but ideally, I feel that's what we should be shooting for.

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 have to agree with this, as well. Umbral, I respect your knowledge and skills, but your attitude here is really uncalled for and, to be honest, highly counter-productive to the topic at hand. You've been rude to everybody who challenged your suggestion very much from the start, and to be honest, it's starting to bother me in a big way. I'm not going to play ethic defender here, as I know better, but if you insist on insulting and belittling people like this, then I want nothing more to do with this thread.

I'm sorry. I've tried ignoring it, I've tried letting it slide, but enough is just enough.

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.

The range and radius debuffs would make a huge difference.

Foot stomp would jump from being a 15ft radius power to a 7.5ft radius. 8ft Whirling attacks would end being 4ft radius. Cone attacks also would be crippled. Powers like Shadow Maul may prove problematic as they would still have a 7ft range but their radius would go down to 3.5, unless the foe is just in the user's Toes the power just would not hit anything.

I'm sure brutes would feel that debuff.

The only way to accept this, and I apologize if you stated it here and I missed it (have a headache right now) is by lowering granite values so that once stacked on top of everything else it ends up being the same it is now. This would just force granite to be harder to build but most IO min-maxers may already take everything they can to slot special set bonuses they want.

I think it would be too intrusive to the way players build and play the set and in the end just results in a buff to Granite thanks to it now getting psi defense.

Adding subtle but harsh penalties, like the -radius and -range i mentioned, may be a better way to go as it does not intrude with the gameplay but does lower potential aoe damage.

That's more or less the intention of the stacking.

Exactly.

Honestly, I don't know that it'd be all that intrusive. The sets would actually be better integrated and defense (other than psi) would be identical. You'd STILL be dealing with all the speed/recharge/damage output penalties intrinsic to granite. And if you want to make the Stoner "pay" for the psi buff, simply reduce the end discount on the modified Granite.

Yes, this could be offset by IOs, but how is that different from how it is now?

Adding subtle but harsh penalties, like the -radius and -range i mentioned, may be a better way to go as it does not intrude with the gameplay but does lower potential aoe damage.[/QUOTE]

I don't know that -radius or -range is going to work well, as a lot of that is baked into the AOE powers themselves. And most tank/brute AOE are point blank outside of epics. As such, -range is inapplicable, and radius is a function of the power with no means of buffing/debuffing.

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First, Psi hole is one of the penalties granite suffers. Allowing all powers to stack changes nothing and just patches the Psi hole.

The issue with granite is not that it gives that much power in it's own, it's the fact that it allows that level of survivability to be reached without many penalties. Requiring stacking to do so changes little in that respect.

This is precisely the sort of idea some one would propose in an attempt to convince the devs to buff Granite without the devs realizing (and it would not work.)

Radius is proven to be buffable and if it's buffable it's debuffable. +Range enhancements also enhance Radius precisely so they keep cones enhancing properly. This alone proves the power's attribute's mechanic to be buffed and debuffed exists.

Also, PBAoE and Cone radius are both the exact same attribute.