In the Age of IO's, is SR obsolete?

Now, now, ladies, we're all scrappers here. How we deal with incoming damage is not nearly important as the fact that we can dish it out.

We're not a bunch of whiny tanks now, are we? No.

Smashing someone in the face with a shield is extremely satisfying. It is also extremely satisfying to stand in the middle of an aggro cap of +4 CoT and laugh as they flail about you unable to connect enough to matter.

Just what are you insinuating here?

Oh, you don't think I read these forums?

hehehehehe

I'm talking about getting DDR to Super Reflexes levels, which to me means perma double stacking Active Defense, which means huge recharge, which means lots of purples and Luck of the Gambler globals, which means huge cost. I agree that you can make a great Shield Defense toon for less. But that Shield Defense toon wouldn't then be "everything that Super Reflexes is, and more", because its DDR would still allow for cascading defense failure. So to me, while it might arguably be better than Super Reflexes, it at least isn't better in every way, and Super Reflexes still has a niche.

Yup. And in combination with the Shield Charge nerf, would probably be plenty. Changing Active Defense in this way would affect VERY few people, most of them powergamers who should be aware of the discrepancy in performance, and that this isn't generally desirable in a game. Shield Defense would still be very, very good. But Super Reflexes' niche would be preserved, even in the top tier builds.

The subject is "In the Age of IO's, is SR obsolete?" It's very difficult to discuss that without discussing the main other secondary that arguably makes Super Reflexes obsolete. Ignore the elephant in the room if you want, but when the question was, "What the hell is this giant thing in the room?" I think discussing it is on topic.

I also believe that the only proposed nerf to Shield Defense so far in the thread was "removing the ability to enhance the DDR in Active Defense". This affects almost no one. It is also likely "not working as intended", so if you accept that as a reasonable rationale for nerfing Shield Charge, well, there you go.

(Edit: I think Against All Odds was also mentioned. Not sure I agree it's a problem, but it does mean that Active Defense wasn't the only thing mentioned.)

I agree that SR is great. That doesn't mean it isn't obsolete. A race car might be very fast, but it'll still lose the race if there's an even faster race car.

Before Shield Defense was released, Super Reflexes was considered by many to be the top of the heap. You don't buff #2 unless you also buff #3 - #8, and then you're just asking for a giant mess, because there's no way you'll get the balance for all seven other sets exactly right, and then we're right back where we started. I DO believe that Quickness provides too little compared to Hasten. I'm just not sure we can make even reasonable buffs to Super Reflexes without creating a mess.

Edit: I feel like I should perhaps clarify my position. I think Super Reflexes is slightly obsolete - in one obscure corner of the game that I happen to care a great deal about, top end level 50 builds, and only because Shield Defense can step all over Super Reflexes' tricks in that specific case. I don't think Shield Defense is massively overpowered. I don't think Super Reflexes is at all underpowered. I have two Shield Defense characters at 50, and I was very upset by the news that they were nerfing Shield Charge, and I whined about it stridently. But I'll agree that it's justified. One of my Shield Defense characters is using the Hamio trick, and I'll be upset if they nerf Active Defense to not have buffable defense debuff resistance. But if it ever happens, which I doubt, I would agree that it was justified. If I were a dev, that is as far as I would go if I even went that far, and then I'd see how things played out, particularly with Going Rogue and Incarnate levels coming up, which is almost certain to shake up any established order.

Edit: Clarifying further, I DON'T think that IOing up other secondaries to the soft cap makes Super Reflexes obsolete. 95% DDR is VERY nice, and worth taking Super Reflexes for. I have a soft-capped Katana/Dark that, generally speaking, is significantly more survivable than my DM/SR. However, if I were joining an unknown group for unknown content, I would prefer to bring along my DM/SR. He has ENOUGH survivability for almost any situation, and won't be debuffed into uselessness the way my Katana/Dark can be. Quickness is nice too.

Considering all the buffs that SR had to receive in order to fix it over the years, I find that I have to agree. SR needs no buffs. At all. I certainly wouldn't mind a power order shuffle along the lines that brutes received, but even that I don't see as necessary.

I don't think the power order CAN be shuffled. For the same reason brutes didn't get Energize any earlier when they changed Conserve Power into it in Electric Armor.

They couldn't give the same power order to SR scrappers because it would very likely break thousands of characters. You might get something to happen if you would be okay with every SR scrapper in the game getting auto-deleted in order to push the change through. Since you are VERY unlikely to see that happening, scrapper SR is unlikely to change.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

You know what?

I'm over in the brute forums right now, busting my rump and trying to defend the notion that a brute should by no means be pigeonholed into the role of a "tank," and this is the thanks I get? You call me a whiny tank!?

That's it, the gloves are off you sissy scrapper. Go off on your own and solo your +4/x8 mobs. I'll do it too, it just takes longer. Go off and solo your AVs. I'll do it too... just with shivans... or ... no I won't solo AVs. But I'll survive them, damnit!

Screw you guys, I'm going home.







*The above is an overly dramatic and sarcastic reaction, not meant to be taken seriously.

Perhaps there would be a way to grandfather in people who had taken powers that were no longer available at that level.

Times like these I miss rep. Thanks, Dechs... I needed that laugh.

Didn't they do that when they changed the level at which Taunt was available? It certainly didn't delete all the tanks on every server.

I want the taunt aura for Scrapper /SR. Stupid ****** runners. I can't kill stuff when it's running away. If I had that taunt aura I'd be happy with my minimal investment toward soft-capping freeing up slots for all kinds of other stuff.

I want a taunt aura too. That would make my DM/SR complete.

I hear and agree 1000%. But Castle has already told me in no uncertain terms, "Hell, no."

Wimp.

Try holding the aggro of FIVE RIKTI MAGUS ... solo ... for 4+ minutes, waiting for the cavalry to arrive.

And after you've done that once ... DO IT AGAIN ... on the same Mothership Raid, without faceplanting even once.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

For me the answer is yes .... and No.

To elaborate, here is a build that I have been working on for one of my toons which switches the focus to +regen. Not having to worry so much about soft-capping thru IOs means that you can go after something else. Hence why so much +regen.

Psssh.

I jumped into the bowl and grabbed U'kon's aggro before the raid leader said it was time to go after him. The Raid Leader yell at me for jumping the gun and I had to hold his aggro for a long damn time, while arguing in global that the Raidwipe couldn't be my fault because the GM was still trying to hit me and only me.

Somebody just didn't call out a bomb. That's not my fault.

The bolded part confuses me, as I've heard nothing but "Dual Pistols isn't uber" and complaints about Kinetic Melee.

So, how would it be that Castle thinks all his new sets must blow the others out of the water?

As for Shield being better than SR. Sure, if you want all your toons to make use of a shield. Oh yeah! That's a big concept power if I ever heard one! That's why so many super heroes make us of a Shield! They're just so popular among the superheroes in comics!

SR isn't bad at all. If they were to ever buff it, I'd hope they would say "You know what? Let's up that plus recharge of Quickness to 33% maybe 35%"

Since that would gut punch a whole lot of existing builds, that seems unlikely.

Still, it may be a fixable problem. Most of the "problem" is in end game builds. The end game is changing with ten new incarnate levels, right? Add more to-hit to incarnate enemies, increasing as the levels increase. Super Reflexes could keep up pretty easily. Other secondaries start requiring more compromises to soft cap against the new enemies, and others just can't do it any more. My Katana/Dark would be an early casualty. It's OK. I'll take one for the team.

Tohit flat out negates defense, so I'd rather see more defense debuffs if they go that route.

Well, OK, but that was the point. I think it'd be much better to negate some defense as you level than to nerf IO defense. The idea is that your character still performs just as flawlessly as ever against all the enemies you're used to facing. You weren't nerfed at all. Oh? What? Those new enemies? The ones you're going to need to face to get even better? Yeah... they're... a little harder.

OK, yes, debuffs would have similar effect. But generally speaking, I'm just not a fan of debuffs. I'd rather the enemy simply be better than that the enemy make me weaker, even if the net effect is the same. I want to see tigers tearing each other apart, not tigers debuffing each other into kittens.

Yep. And I think an end game issue could be addressed with an end game (incarnate levels) solution, whatever that might be. I think that would be much better than doing it with nerfs, even if the net result for continued leveling is the same.

And if that leaves imbalances in place for level 50s with no incarnate levels, does it matter? It's almost like worrying in great detail about balance at exactly level 37. We'll hit it and move right through it. It's good to not be terribly unbalanced, but it isn't terribly unbalanced, so I'd call it good enough if it's just one more rung on the ladder.

Not that they'll do a great job of balancing the incarnate levels. To me, getting everything perfect out of the gate is basically impossible. But it just seems like a golden opportunity to address any lingering issues in a way that simply wasn't available before.