Fitness is dead; long live Fitness.

[Aimed at no one in particular] I really don't think the Devs are really worried about this change alone. I19 is going to allow many highly specced out characters (almost all of which perform at that high level only in the 40s or at level 50 itself) to easily outperform what "normal" (SO only) characters can now--they do so already. The Fitness change in itself does not make a huge difference in the effective power difference between an SO'd character and a heavily IO'd character--that chasm already exists--but it will help casual players stay interested in their characters, allowing them to get further without abandoning them, so hopefully a lot more people will enjoy their climb to 50 so that they can spec out a character or two without having to farm and PL endlessly.

What will cause more of a chasm between casual players and power players is the Incarnate system: from how it sounds, it will demand more time and perhaps significantly more skill to make good use of it than what many casual players will sensibly be able to invest. The Incarnate system alone will let many characters solo content meant for teams when combined with IOs. The Fitness change is, at a whole, at least as much of a boon to casual players compared to power players. Thus, I don't think the devs are worried much about the Fitness change making content easier: I believe they want to make players--especially casual players--feel much more capable, able to crank up that difficulty a bit on even non-efficient builds. What the Devs may want to do, however, is allow for even higher difficulty settings at some point for the power player builds that will benefit from not only the Fitness change, but especially the Incarnate addition.

Mind you, I haven't been keeping up with announcements lately, so I really have no idea what's going on. This is simply an initial judgement based solely on hearing about the Fitness change and the little I know about Incarnate abilities.

Seeing as in the pylon thread you stated that BotZ allowing blasters to achieve decent levels of survivability was a real problem that needed to be fixed it certainly seems strange that you can consider a change that lets much more to be done a minor thing.

Then again it shouldn't be surprising that in this thread you completely miscast what this allows someone to do, make a calculation and then declare "SEE NO BIG DEAL"

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Originally Posted by UberGuy (Someone really good at this debate stuff would do the math themselves and then prove my assertions wrong - if indeed my assertions were wrong.) To recap the conditions under debate: Hasten with 98% recharge slotting (your number) and 60% global recharge has a cycle time of 141.9 seconds. During one cycle of Hasten, our 650s recharge power, 3-slotted for recharge (which I called 95% recharge) would earn 445.8 seconds worth of recharge time, meaning it would, on average, take it 650/445.8 = 1.46 Hasten cycles to recharge. That's 206.9s.

Somebody who could actually read would realize the ability to remove the slot from hasten, and shift 2 slots from defense powers to 2 of the 3 new powers gained would realize they just got 2-3 slots in their build without giving up anything. Or looking at it another way they would realize realize they could add or move 2 lotg and lose 3 5% recharge bonuses and still not lose anything and gain 18 slots to play with.

They might if they were really clever realize that its not additional recharge, its the ability to get the level of recharge they wanted and get all kinds of new things for 0 cost.


You keep on with the Chewbaca defense here.


Next, Its mind boggling to me that you can seriously maintain your position while presenting evidence that contradicts yourself.

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And yet if you kept those thee slots in Hasten, you would improve its uptime. I have never known anyone who had anything less than perma-Hasten to remove slots from Hasten when they got more global recharge. I know plenty people who build "min/max" versions of both of those (more Rads Emishes than MM Blasters) and none have built either without Fitness. Of course those builds were optimized for DPS and -regen - those with other goals might be able to optimize differently.

Those people with perma hasten now have 3 slots to plop their lotg globals into with no cost to their build. That gives them 3 slots to redistribute 3 powers that can be reoptimized. All those builds that had 5 red fortune plus a lotg global, they can now just take the 6 red fortune piece and gain 7.5% ranged defense for free. Or they can reslot the power for something else 9+% defense to be divided three ways ? 30% additional regen ? +54 Hp ? Lots of choices there.

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Having added PP and more than +5% end some of my own characters, I'm going to say I'm not sure that'll be as transformative as you think it is, because while I noticed the difference in my own characters, I didn't find it dramatic. I will however, concede that being able to add Body/Energy Mastery to a build that didn't have them is going to be one of the nicer improvements the Fitness move will allow. As I said, I've added that pool to characters already, and I still wouldn't consider it a dramatic change in performance, but that's getting into subjective arguments. I'd say take a look at difference the actual number of HP/sec regen you're earning between builds. If it's around 3 HP/sec or less, I don't consider that a major performance change; I couldn't "feel" the difference in play.

The difference is of course currently you have to fit them in, with the change they are a free addition whats more you can add in the important and still have a choice left over to take from another power pool.


At this point I have to presume this is just another case of Uber Guy being Obtuse Guy. Either way Its really hard to understand how someone who claims to be a min maxer could say that the ability to potentially repurpose up to 18 slots isn't a major transformation for builds.

Maybe the "coming storm" is a bunch of nerfs lolz.

Personally, I hope the coming nerfstorm is Invention Diversification, combining a functional cap on the amount of any given global benefit from IOs with the addition of alternate IO benefits to actually diversify into. I feel like taking out softcap for non-defense sets and perma-(insert whatever thing that was pretty blatantly never intended to be perma) this way would go a fair distance towards limiting the current power bloat. Although obviously people will find new ways to min/max, cutting down on the ability to hyperspecialize tends to reduce power bloat in general.

Outside of PvP, which now works totally differently compared to PvE anyway, why would the devs want to punish players who have min/maxed themselves to incredibleness if they've earned it through playing content?

It shouldn't matter whether or not we can eventually create characters that rival the power of those back in those long past dumpster diving days as long as:

a) it's not specifically only one AT or combination that can do it

b) it doesn't make PL'ing easier to do than now

c) it doesn't affect the aforementioned PvP significantly

As long as powerful builds are being made in this game with enhancements and other rewards (Accolades, temp powers, etc.) earned via the game, it shouldn't matter. In fact, it can help retain some players, as it continues to give them something to do with their old characters, at least for a while longer.

As long as sets and ATs perform well enough at a baseline, and as long as particular sets and ATs don't have an unfair advantage over others, being able to make characters more powerful is, ultimately, part of the game. A universal buff like inherent Fitness shouldn't be a philosophical problem, as it helps all ATs and sets across the board the same way.

A universal buff to keep players interested in playing is a straight win, and there really shouldn't be any reason to nerf solely because of this change. Any incoming nerfs would be for their own reasons and unlikely to be global, given this dev team's track record. They seem far more interested in giving universal buffs and nerfing very specific things that crop up as unbalanced between sets, ATs, and items.

Maybe the "Comin Storm" and the incarnate system is a step in the Cosmic Level power that super heros sometimes attain.

Beatin up on skullz is fun but I'm lookin for a bigger challenge than what this game offers at this point.

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Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

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Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.