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

Actually when I posted this my full intention was the question that was asked. I didn't really expect it to turn into a SD argument, but I must say, watching it unfold has been quite amusing.

Except the mitigation sucks. It's only with heavy IO investment does the set become serviceable, I'm not really sure if billion dollar builds should be the benchmark we use to view these things. /Inv also makes SR just about obsolete (aside from the higher DDR) when it comes to surviving when it's soft-capped.

You don't need as much mitigation when you're killing things in half the time that other ATs are (and have a tool for massive frontloading of damage so that even fewer enemies are present to attack you after your initial assault). +Dam is itself a survival tool because it shortens the time frame that you're actually exposed to damage. That's honestly why SD still has awesome performance in SOs (and why the "lower mitigation" argument is a complete and utter lie).

I'd say all those playing Shield Charge with SOs, and thinking it's the best set ever, is proof that it's not under performing.

Shield charge isn't needed for that. There are plenty of scrapper builds that can solo 95% of taskforces and will do so. If you want fun play a squishy on a speed tf with heavily twinked out scrappers. Its either build to ghost or stay back we will call you when we get to the AV/GM.

When you say the blaster can clear the riff raff out faster you have to ask what is it taking to do that and does it matter. The blaster isn't doing that on their own, they do that with the aid of the rest of the team. The blaster is going to need the tank to concentrate aggro and or a defender to back them up. There are a few powersets that are exceptions. Assault rifle/Archery/Fire all put out enough AOE that they come close to being survival through superior fire power. This breaks down on spawns with bosses where what a blaster has to do survive reduces their effectiveness far below scrappers.

The -Regen from drain psyche was incredible, I know many blasters in the game that went without stamina and operated entirely off of a high recharge drain psych. I say was because now its available as a temp power that anyone can have and as an offensive attack envenomed dagger is better.


Agreed it was admittedly a quicky build that I didn't bother to optimize, but I believe you are wrong about its need for a tonne of blues. Dark Consumption is up every 48 seconds and only needs to 4 targets to completely replenish end. As long as you have enough end to fire off the dark consume at the end of 48 seconds your end use doesn't matter. The point of the build was to illustrate that SR can go in other ways and do other things that shield def wouldn't be able to touch

I have to agree, for me its been like watching people argue over the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic.

Wonder why that logic fails when it comes to blaster survivability.

Because Blasters don't have any substantial existing survivability tools. Shield Defense does. It's not even remotely close to the same thing.

I am aware of that. However the sheer speed of killing of shield scrappers makes the rest of the team obsolete. I prefer to actually play my characters rather than watching others play theirs.

It's insulting that you even had to explain this.

So applying that logic either scrappers need a big damage nerf or blasters need a big damage buff. After all if you can build a scrapper to the point where it can survive virtually any spawn the game throws at you (The general meaningful limit for survivability) they shouldn't be able to do near blaster levels of damage.

If there is a problem here its not SD vs SR its that the entire scrapper AT has its balance points to high.

So now you're trying to parley the SD/SR disparity into a larger scale AT disparity between Blasters and Scrappers? Quite bold of you, but, once again, completely and totally wrong.

First off, by the very merit of their powerset designs, Blasters already have a substantial advantage in damage dealing capacity by simply having more AoE capability. Secondly, Blasters don't need as much survivability because, when on a team, they have range, which allows them to avoid large amounts of untoward damage (from AoEs) that Scrappers have to deal with.

Finally, feel free to ask Castle whether he thinks Scrappers are an overpowered AT. I'll be willing to bet virtually anything that he'll say they're not and do you know how I know this? Castle hasn't done anything to Scrappers as an AT in years: that's why. He's tweaked Tankers, Stalkers, Defenders, Blasters, Dominators, and HEATS. And yet, for some reason, he hasn't tweaked Scrappers. Imagine that.

Either way, your straw man argument here is a complete joke. We're talking about Scrappers (yes, Scrappers) and how increased damage capacity is functionally mitigation (along with an increase in overall effectiveness) so the very fact that SD Scrappers have nominally lower survivability is a farce because they can kill things fast enough to not need the higher survivability that is supposed to be the balanced factor with other sets. If you want to start talking about inter-AT balance, fine, I can talk about that plenty (probably more than you want) but it's not the issue at hand. If you're going to try to argue, at least try to use arguments that actually apply.

Within the Scrapper AT, SD is overpowered because the cost:benefit isn't in line with what every other powerset. If you honestly want to continue deluding yourself by saying that it's not, that's your prerogative, but I'm going to be over here actually attempting to bring the game back in balance so that there is a numerical reason to play something other than SD. You can say there there are reasons to play something other than SD, but I'm really curious whether you actually believe them or whether you simply want to believe that SD is balanced, even in the face of all of the evidence to the contrary that people that know the numbers a lot better than you (and a bunch of other people that barely even know what the numbers mean in the first place) have posited because you like being overpowered and think that if you convince enough people that the SD is weaker than it really is that somehow Castle will stop paying attention to the people that he has relied heavily upon in the past to actually give him good advice and direction.

Go on and keep arguing with the numbers, demolishing the universe with SD, and then trying to convince people that it's not a set that outperforms everything. I doubt you'll succeed simply because anyone that's played the set can pretty much tell you flat out that it makes everything else look like a joke.

Maybe blasters just need a big box that pops up when you go to make them saying don't play except on teams.

Would that be the same Castle who said he didn't see AAO as a problem or that big a buff ?

Trades lower survivability for more damage to kill things faster. So apparently Scrappers as an AT trading lower survivability than tanks in order to kill things faster is OK.

I'd love to see the numbers where you actually computed that out, taking equivalent cost builds based on market pricing and comparing their performance across the board. As I said at the beginning SD's greatest power is to absorb inf.

SD's mitigation sucks with SOs? Really?

Let's compare because facts mean a hell of a lot more than hyperbole.

11.25 melee def = 17.55 slotted
11.25 S/L dam-res = 17.55 slotted
11.25 range/aoe def = 17.55 slotted
13.84 DDR = 21.59 slotted
11.25 F/C/E/N/T dam-res = 17.55 slotted
+133.862 HP = +261 slotted
30% DDR
3.75 m/r/a def
13.84 DDR

And for 1/3rd of the time with OwtS slotted 3dam-res/3heal, 35.1 S/L dam-res, 17.55 F/C/E/N/T dam-res and another +522 HP

So for 66% of the time, the level 50 shield scrapper with nothing but SOs is running around with:
21.3% def to melee, range and aoe defense
17.5 dam-res to all but psi
An extra 261 HP
57.68 DDR

33% of the time for the cost of some end but no real crash beyond that, we're looking at:
21.3% def to m, r, a
52.65 S/L dam-res
35.1 F/C/E/N/T dam-res
+783 HP
57.68 DDR

And this sucks? Really? SR gets 31% defense to m, r, a all the time, capped DDR and some scaling dam-res that is easily leap-frogged by hard targets. And for 35% of the time it can softcap its defense for the price of a complete endurance crash.

Like willpower, SD has layered mitigation that can be built upon. SR doesn't. SR is awesome. I can do incredible things with it. But that's only true NOW that I've dumped billions into it. With just SOs, SR is squishy as hell.

Make no mistake, the softcap on its own is very nice, but the softcap backed by consistent dam-res and substantial HP buffs is vastly better. And then to cruise around with +50% damage on top of that on average? K.

And that would be the same Castle that didn't realize that Shield Charge was doing way more damage than it was supposed to for an exceptionally long period of time even while some players actively said it was too strong and other people like you said it was just fine. Oh, and then he realized how broken it was and fixed it.

Why yes, because that's an inter-AT balance issue, not an intra-AT balance issue. Are you done with this farce yet?

This is a fun one.

Download a survivability spreadsheet (like the one from this thread). Turn on realistic assumption (like the Fighting pool, Health, etc), thrown in some enemies (I would say 5 is a fair number), and then look at the comparative survivability over the 30 and 60 second time frames (unless you honestly believe that the indefinite survivability time frame is the only one that really matters). Normalize this for the increased damage provided by AAO for that number of targets (125% higher survivability than listed because of the 25% faster kill speed, not including Shield Charge's massive frontloading). Oh look, SD is generating better numbers than any set except for Invuln and Willpower and that's ignoring the frontloading capabilities of Shield Charge wherein it's possible to wipe out entire enemy groups in a single shot.

Isn't math just fun? Seriously, shut up now.

Math is great fun so is reading so just taking your advice.

Oh look there's shields solidly below SR

What was the question here "Is SR obsolete ?" Looking at this guess not.

Well that's the 30 maybe it does better at 60
It seems to be behind fire here.

You wouldn't even have to go that far, leave AAo alone and eliminate the enhanceable DDR on AD and now you already have a problem. SR still needs love in the AoE department, it always has and nothings been done about it. A simple fix would be to make Scrapper SR like Brute SR.

No kidding, I don't even know what those numbers stand for.

A perfect example of how Shield Defense blows Super Reflexes off the earth let alone out of the water is just go look at the Pylon result thread. All of the top 5 are all Shield wielding heroes. Coincidence?

LOL, right! All these people are fixated on how broken or overpowered Shield Defense is and forgot all about your question of if Super Reflexes is obsolete.

Short answer: Yes, for pve it's still effective. Pvp it's lacking unless you heavy IO build.

Long Answer (but not too long ): SR is a solid set for pve and I still stand by it for scrappers, brutes or stalkers. It's easy and cheap to soft cap defense at 45% or more. And even without use of the Tier 9 [Elude], the set does the job. Nor do you have to singlely focus on soft-capping defense at the sacrifice of missing out on other bonuses or taking additional powers to compensate to get increased accuracy, to hit, or damage. I do think though that it could use some possible tweaking/love in the future to bring it on par with some of the other sets. Perhaps maybe adding a increase to regen factor each time Practice Brawler fires? I'm sure other people have better ideas.

=)

Sounds like a predominately single target scrapper would feel on a team with blasters, controllers, dominators, corruptors or mm's using all of their aoe's. This game is about aoe's, especially on a team - if you don't have aoe's on a team, you tend to get overshadowed. SD gives scrappers some added aoe. Not to mention the aoe it gives just got cut in half in terms of damage dealing ability. Despite the added aoe, scrappers are still behind many other at's in terms of value added to teams, though that is as it should be.

Read Umbral's post and follow the link to Arcanaville's topic for background on what the numbers mean.

On topic and speaking purely from a performance-oriented view, this sure is a lot of responses for a question that could've been answered in the first post with a three-letter word that starts with 'Y.'

The argument is not about shield charge - the nerf/change has already been implemented, now try to keep up.