Does super reflexes have to be such a pain pre-30s?

I have a lot of problems thinking my ideas will be taken seriously when they're posted in a forum labeled "For Fun!" but I'm quite irritated at my SR scrapper running into AoEs non-stop a full 10 levels before getting an ounce of AoE defense.

It seems like they could pretty easily smooth out the benefits of SR to make it less painful. There are a lot of potential avenues, and the sacred cottage rule need not be violated.

Note that, in general, I deal with rounded, whole number for simplicity. At the end of the day, all values should add up to be what they are on Live.

Very safe and easy variations:
Spread out the positional defenses among the toggles.
For example, Focused Fighting gives roughly 14% Melee Defense. Why not make it be 10% melee defense, plus 2% ranged and 2% aoe? Likewise, Focused Senses would be 2%/10%/2% and Evasion would be 2%/2%/10%. It doesn't have to be those numbers, but the idea remains the same. You end up with the same defense numbers, but it's spread out some.

An even safer implementation of this idea would be Focused Fighting at 12%/0%/4%, Focused Senses at 0%/12%/4%, and then Evasion picking up the slack with 2%/2%/6%.

A shakier solution: simply swap Lucky's position (for Scrappers) with either Dodge or Agile's position. I can't see how this is a violation of the cottage, as all enhancements would remain as effective as before, just a defense to a new position.

Burning down the Cottage: combine Lucky and Dodge. A quick look at Shield Defense shows this to not be overpowered. Grats, you have a leftover power. Perhaps it could be a teleport or a mini-hasten, but I'd prefer it actually built a small cottage.

Bonus points while I'm at it: if Lucky's AoE defense were higher and Evasion's were lower (for example, +4% to Lucky and -4% on Evasion), Evasion could be turned into an offensive toggle. Afterall, it already is for Brutes. Why not go all the way and make it meaningful? Foes affected suffer from something like -recharge or -tohit. And making Lucky's value more meaningful means you can afford to turn off the new AoE toggle and not feel naked.

Yip. There's my rant.

I predict stone brutes/tanks will find this thread funny.

Super Reflexes suffers from being a legacy power (the Scrapper version anyway).
When it was introduced at the beginning, foes did not have much AoE until the mid-20s and exotic damage didn't feature until the 40s.

Arachnos and various other groups broke this pattern (especially Arachnos *shakes fist*).

Newer defence sets/powers have some AoE defence near the beginning.

I think a switcharoo with the passives and toggles is a good idea.

I also think that Focused Fighting could do with a smashing/lethal resist component - not necessarily slottable but just something to take the edge off of basic attacks. The passives already give out a resist bonus when the SR character's health drops to a certain point and I have noticed that benefit greatly, but SR has no other mitigation. Ice Armour (admittedly just for tanks) has, understandably, the slow effect. Energy Aura, whilst not my favourite set, has tricks, and Ninjitsu has them in spades. The other sets with defence have other bonuses such as healing or regen boosts, and slottable resistance.

I'm against a taunt/damage aura for SR for Scrappers. And I see no point in making it a Tank set. It would under-perform with most content because the alpha strike mitigation is a 50/50 with no healing or regen boost to back it up.

So to answer your question, yes it can be a pain and it's one of those sets that handles everything amazingly well post-30 (even Nemesis Snipers). Pre-30 could do with a bit of love, to make it less of a one-trick pony (it's also really dull to slot and VERY expensive to slot with interesting IOs/sets - well I've found it that way anyway).

And with Fitness becoming an inherent, I have no idea what to 'spend' my three free powers on. Fighting is out of the question - even more toggles would be insane. Although I'm tempted to finally take Hasten after all these years and become some kind of insane recharge junkie!

I agree that SR takes far too long to get good.
Both Shields and Ninjutsu combine the Ranged & AoE toggle sand thus get AoE defence for the first half of your career for free, in addition to the offensive bonuses. In return, mature SR gets the best Defence Debuff Resistance and is cheaper to Soft-cap, which is neither here nor there if you can afford to soft-cap the other sets.

Switching Evasion and Lucky sounds like a good idea. By the time they come (28) your worst endurance woes are over, so getting the passive first just means lower values for 7 levels.
There are precedents for switching power orders around, War Mace did this to get a better early attack chain.

One other gripe I have with SR - there's nowhere native to stick the Steadfast IO. Almost every other defence set gets one eg Night Widows get a token Psi resist in the mez toggle.
This works counter to SR's status as "just defence and the best at defence".
I don't think it would hurt the set to pack a small amount of token S/L reistance in Focussed Fighting, for example, the way that Shield does.

But the endurance issues could be horrendous. I'd most likely need to re-respec back into Body Mastery, and I've only just started enjoying Weapon Mastery.

I suppose it depends on the primary too. My /SR is Katana so gets a nifty melee bonus from Divine Avalanche which is easily on a double (triple for foes without any slowing powers) at all times due to its quick recharge and Quickness.

I remember last year (or possibly early this year - I forget) we had an RP PvP event starting in Bloody Bay. My usually excellent Scrapper was at a severe disadvantage fighting Soldiers, Widows, Domis, et al, without any AoE protection. The shielder I fought alongside had very little in the way of problems. That alone is obviously not a reason to switch powers around in SR, but when you go from 'mass-arresting' (i.e. slaughtering) Carnies, Malta, and Nemesis, then get two-shotted it's a bit of a shock .

Should SR be altered? Yes, it should.

Same power order as brutes? Yea, I think that would help.

Given the same taunt aura as brute evasion? I want it for MY SR scrapper, but the answer is no. Brutes get higher HP than scrappers. Their inherent depends on being attacked. There's a lot of people that don't want their SR scrappers to suddenly be taking on a lot more aggro. I've been bugging Castle about it since it was added to brute evasion. It ain't happenin for scrappers even IF anything else gets changed.

SR proliferation to tanks? Yes, it should happen. Straight port from brute SR. Problems with it be damned.

I agree that this could use some work. The best fix in my opinion would be to switch the order of evasion and quickness. Then you'd have your AoE defense at level 20. It would also follow the pattern of the other positions, by giving you the toggle before the auto.

And while we're at it could we make practiced brawler a toggle? (or give the ability to put more powers on autocast)

Just to clear something up: for scrappers, you get the AoE passive at 28 and the toggle at 35. So without upsetting the cottage rule too bad, simply swapping one of the other passive defense boosts with Lucky would give you marginal AoE defense (roughly 6%) at 4th or more likely, 16th. You would still have to wait until 35 for the toggle. This is why I propose redistributing the defenses in the toggles to be a bit more encompassing -- instead of Focused Fighting being nothing but +melee defense, it should be mostly melee defense with some thought given to the other defense types.

As for Practiced Brawler, I don't mind it. Though I'd like to see all click mez protections capable of working like break frees so you don't have to set them to auto as much. I'd also think it'd be neat to use it as an excuse for "fight conditioning preparing you for everything" and insert a very small amount of psi defense -- a small enough value that it should still be their "hole" even when double stacked. As for Fear, I actually like Fear holes. I just hate which sets do and don't get it (why is an invincible guy suffering from severe nerves while the dude who's just holding a shield is unshakable?)

I do agree that SR could use some loving, how much is the million dollar question.
As someone mentioned, switching evasion around to have it available sooner would be a great, hell, I actually prefer the OP's suggestion in making each toggle carry some slack for all of the positions.

My biggest gripe with the set however, is having to take 3 auto powers. They could've EASILY combined the 3 into one or two powers, and given SR players some sort of resistance based power. Anyways, that my 2 cents.

In response to Aracanaville, I still would like to propose that perhaps the passives maybe have reduced scaling resistance, but a higher base resistance.
This CAN work out conceptually since one of the ideas of dodging is that even a connecting hit won't land solidly on you, instead a fatal hit becomes a glancing blow.
But then I'm sure both you, and the devs have considered this and it wouldn't be nearly so easy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

For Scrappers, I would be happy with combining Ranged/AoE onto one toggle and then adding a new power at level 35 which supports the sets theme. I have suggested in the past a Toggle (ala AAO, RttC, Invincibility) which provides a base accuracy bonus and a scaling +recharge amount per critter in range. It would provide a unique opportunity for SR users to have much easier of a time perfecting attack chains. I also feel that the +res values should kick in alot sooner. The amounts seem fine, just would like to see them start benefiting my scrapper before his health turns orange or red.

As to porting SR to tankers, I can absolutely agree with Arcana that pushing the +def numbers higher simply by porting over would be overpowered. My shield Tanker is a complete stud by comparison to my SR scrapper largely due to more hps and some amount of resistance. But being able to softcap by your early 20s, yikes.

My thoughts on how you port SR for Tankers would be to set the Defense values right around where SR currently sits (13.9%) and add in 15% resist S/L to Focused Fighting and 10% E/N/F/C/T to Focused Senses. Then leave the scaling resists in the passives but start the scaling at 75% health instead and as suggested above, combine the Ranged/AoE toggles and add a Taunt toggle at 26. Its not pretty, but it would work and stay thematic to Tankers.

I'm confused, A. First you say that tanking is heavily negatively impacted by the lack of solid damres/extra HP, but then you talk about how easy it will be for a tank to softcap.

Doesn't one balance out the other?

I'll give you that tanks rely on their mez protection more, so make it another toggle for 'em. If the devs are going to go ahead and tweak it anyway for tanks, why not take that extra step?

Have the scaling dam-res grant more as you describe, starting at 75% health and capping out at 75% dam-res.

Done. If a tank can't tank with softcapped defense, an average of 25% dam-res, backed up to 45ish with tough, a taunt aura in evasion and tank level hitpoints, that tank is doin it wrong.

Arcanaville,

I understand what you're saying. I just don't see it to be as large a problem as you seem to see it. Will LR be an issue? Hell, yea, especially with the blue tower up, but isn't that also a problem for the Ice Armor user? Autohit powers like Rom's fluffy and that Shard AV's damage aura are also a problem, but isn't that also true for the Ice Armor user?

What about SR brutes? They've been "tanking" for a while now redside and are migrating blue side. Won't they be running into all the problems that you have stated SR tanks will run into?

Granted, Ice and Inv both get HP buffs. Yes, they help. But I find it difficult to accept that they are so vastly superior to a softcap + 95% DDR that we should block SR proliferation because of it.

Just to say, back when the game first came out this is one reason I picked up Stealth on my SR Scrapper and even used it as his in-combat defense. Of course, back then we didn't have "real numbers", so I probably wouldn't have tried it had I known there was such a huge difference in Defense. (Then again, this was pre-GDN, so it was twice what it is now)

I personally think of SR as the "one on one" Defense. Invulnerability is about drawing crowds around you, Ninjitsu is about sneaking around and using "wonderful toys", WP is a jack of all trades and middle ground. Even though it lacks stealth, I find it easier to play SR with it, using pulling and breaking up foes so I'm not hit by lots of AoEs.

That's not exactly Tanker strategy, though.

Then again, it can be amazing playing a Stalker and having that 37.5% Def from Hide. It makes it a lot easier to deal with it on SR Stalkers. Maybe SR can have a similar mechanism, maybe an additional 10% AoE Def somewhere that you lose when you have someone in melee.

Also, I believe that once upon a time my suggestion for an Evasion replacement was a scaling power that added to your End regeneration based on number of foes around you. This would compensate for SR's noted End costs, as well as that Quickness gives you a recharge boost. Of course, stacked with Elude that might make for a lot of extra End, but perhaps that could be reduced accordingly.