Suggestions about Stone Armour.

Well said.

I think most of us Stone Armor fans agree that the set is actually a lot of fun just the way it is. A little quirky, but fun.

Pardon me if this sounds presumptuous, but isn't that what makes you fans? Furthermore, isn't it assumed that if you asked fans of a given something, they would universally like that something because they're fans?

All's I'm sayin' here is that, yes, there are plenty of people who feel that Stone Armour is fine as it is. I would, however, claim that there are plenty of people who feel that it isn't, but rarely join threads about it as they don't care about the set. The only reason I keep popping up in these is because I've already played the set as high as it will go and I'd like to see changes made so that particular character doesn't feel so... I don't want to say "broken" but doesn't feel so "awkward."

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.

You have proved the first by stating the second.

The penalties for using Granite are virtually nonexistent compared to the benefits. Granite Armor provides survivability on par or in excess of traditional god mode powers (Unstoppable, SoW, OwtS, Power Surge, etc) on a permanent basis (10 second base recharge on an unrestricted toggle is functionally permanent; manipulable recharge god modes have baseline uptimes of ~18%, set recharge god mods have uptimes of ~33-40%, and that's assuming you have a use-paradigm that insists upon immediate usage upon recharge). The Granite Armor penalties are a moderately easily overcome reduction in movement (take teleport, get some IOs, Speed Boost), a minor decrease in damage (30% -dam is a ~15% reduction in end damage to a Tanker, which only really needs damage while solo, and a 9% reduction in end damage to Brute), and a substantial decrease in recharge (65% reduction is the functional equivalent of removing all enhancement slotting from an attack slotted 1acc/3dam/2rech) that can still be overcome comparatively easily (frankenslotting heavily mitigates the losses otherwise forced upon upon you by SO slotting, Speed Boost and other sources of -rech debuff resist like the Winter's Gift unique partially or completely mitigate the debuff because it isn't flagged to be unresistable). Traditional god modes are remarkably difficult to mitigate: Unstoppable completely removes all of your endurance (which equates to dropping all of your toggles as well) and sets you to 10% of your max health; OwtS takes away 60% of your endurance and cannot be resisted; SoW takes away 50% of your endurance and cannot be resisted; Power Surge completely removes all of your endurance and flatlines your recovery for the next 20 seconds and sets you to 10% of your maximum health. The only way to really mitigate the penalties associated with the traditional god modes is to have an exceptionally well timed and coordinated buffs on you right as they crash; without them, an in combat god mode crash is, in essence, a death sentence.

So I'm curious how the easily mitigated penalties of Granite Armor are really all that "serious" or even remotely close to balanced: Granite Armor gets all of the benefits of a traditional, crashing god mode at all times with easily mitigated penalties that aren't going to substantially hinder your progress. Care to explain this to me?

The difference is Granite can only be used with Granite. You can't activate every single other armor in the set while granite is active. Every single "God mode" power that you mention may have a crash, but they're also -all- naturally superior in survival in comparison to granite armor in that they have other armors to stack on top of them while active.

Granite has nothing of the sort except itself, and maybe tough/weave if you spec into it but that's just two types of damage.

The only thing I can't figure out is where some stone armor guy touched you to make you so angry at the set.

Try actually looking at the survivability that Stone Armor with Granite Armor active provides side-by-side with the survivability provided by a set like Invuln, with Unstoppable active and inactive. You'll then realize exactly how wrong you are. Granite Armor on its own provides survivability commensurate with god mode powers. If you can't see that, you need to get your eyes examined.

If you're curious why I'm so angry when people start talking about Granite Armor it's largely due to the people like you that honestly believe that Granite Armor isn't horribly overpowered and in need of a good nerfing. I've actually looked at the numbers and compared survivability and effectiveness with and without the power active. I've actually done the math and it is patently obvious that the power is ridiculously overpowered. I get angry when people tell me that it isn't overpowered, provide me with some half-***** piece of evidence that doesn't even support that claim, and then act like all is hunky-dory with the world. If you actually looked at the numbers, you'd agree with me. Hell, Castle agrees with me. Every single person I know that I respect to any degree that has actually looked at the numbers rather than a blind desire to believe that Granite Armor isn't some horribly broken remnant of a bygone era agrees with me.

I'm angry because people are stupid.

These are brute numbers by the way

Unstoppable

52.50% resistance to smashing damage for 3m 0s on self unresistable
52.50% resistance to lethal damage for 3m 0s on self unresistable 52.50% resistance to fire damage for 3m 0s on self unresistable 52.50% resistance to cold damage for 3m 0s on self unresistable 52.50% resistance to energy damage for 3m 0s on self unresistable 52.50% resistance to negative energy damage for 3m 0s on self unresistable
52.50% resistance to toxic damage for 3m 0s on self unresistable +100.00% recovery rate for 3m 0s on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
100.00 knockup protection for 3m 0s on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
1000.00% resistance to knockup for 3m 0s on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
100.00 knockback protection for 3m 0s on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
1000.00% resistance to knockback for 3m 0s on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
10.00 repel protection for 3m 0s on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
1000.00% resistance to repel for 3m 0s on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
17.30 stun protection for 3m 0s on self unresistable
17.30 hold protection for 3m 0s on self unresistable
17.30 sleep protection for 3m 0s on self unresistable
17.30 immobilize protection for 3m 0s on self unresistable
-100.00% AttrEndurance on self after 3m 0s delay Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
-90.00% special damage on self after 3m 0s delay Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
+100.00% special damage on self after 3m 0s delay Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable

GRANITE

37.50% resistance to smashing damage on self unresistable
37.50% resistance to lethal damage on self unresistable
37.50% resistance to fire damage on self unresistable
37.50% resistance to cold damage on self unresistable
37.50% resistance to energy damage on self unresistable
37.50% resistance to negative energy damage on self unresistable 37.50% resistance to toxic damage on self unresistable
+15.00% strength to smashing on self unresistable
+15.00% strength to lethal on self unresistable
+15.00% strength to fire on self unresistable
+15.00% strength to cold on self unresistable
+15.00% strength to energy on self unresistable
+15.00% strength to negative energy on self unresistable
17.30 stun protection on self unresistable
17.30 hold protection on self unresistable
17.30 sleep protection on self unresistable
17.30 immobilize protection on self unresistable
10.00 knockback protection on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
10.00 knockup protection on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
10.00 repel protection on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
-70.00% run speed on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
-65.00% strength to recharge on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
-30.00% strength to smashing damage on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
-30.00% strength to lethal damage on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
-30.00% strength to fire damage on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
-30.00% strength to cold damage on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
-30.00% strength to energy damage on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
-30.00% strength to negative energy damage on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
-30.00% strength to toxic damage on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
-30.00% strength to psionic damage on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
-50000.00% jump height on target Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
+50.00% jump speed on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
10.00 fly protection on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
34.60% resistance to defense on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable

Kay. Let's see if we can't compare this mm?

Unstoppable has a 15% resistance advantage across the board.+
Granite has a 15% defense bonus across the board.+
Unstoppable has a 100% recovery rate bonus for the full duration.+
Unstoppable has a one-time crash that is 100% predictable and can be worked around. This is unstopppables ONLY downside. -
Granite reduces ALL damage done by 30% (negated on Brutes usually, but tankers are up the creek without a paddle)-
Granite reduces recharge rate by 65%. That's over half of your recharge times tacked onto your powers, effectively making you attack like a sloth.-
Granite cannot fly or jump (I'm lumping these into one minus to be nice). -
Granite suffers a 70% reduction to run speed. -
I don't know how to factor the knockup and knockback differences but I'm fairly sure Unstoppable has the upper hand across the board there as well since Stone is supposed to use rooted for full mez protection (more hindrances I'm not even going to bring into this little discussion because you are already sorely wrong without me having to)

That's all without even factoring ehancements. What, you say? The downsides can be negated with IOs? The game is not balanced around IOs but I will humor you nonetheless.

Can granite negate its effects? No, not entirely. Sure you can completely litter your slots with recharge IOs and run speed IOs, set bonuses that give you recharge and run speed. What do you lose out on when you do this? The set bonuses and IO sets that all other tanking sets have no need to worry about losing. Granite essentially is completely unable to slot even a full purple set even if we wanted to by your logic. We have three choices. Take the huge penalties in the **** and slot to be completely unkillable all the time while hitting like a wet noodle, go somewhere in the middle where you are still a monster of survival but still very killable, or you can do what I layed out before and ATTEMPT to negate all the massive minus percentages that granite slaps you with and be the gimpest survival stone armor person alive but still do some damage.

No matter what you do as granite:
Psionics still kill you.
You still cannot jump.
You are going to lose out on a good amount of either resistance, defense, damage, reharge, or run speed. What those stats are is your pick.

What do you have to sacrifice with unstoppable? Waiting ten seconds after a pull so you can pop inspirations to heal yourself back up to full?

Unstoppable clearly has the advantage over granite in every way shape and form aside from the brief crash and 15% defense. And that is before even factoring in all the other toggles you will be running at the same time as an invuln which will stack on top of your "god mode" button.

Edit: Just for kicks and to further prove my point. Here's another mass of percentages you can add ontop of unstoppable. This is all of invulnerabilities toggles that would be running with unstoppable. I'm not going to do the work for you this time, you can add it yourself.

7.50% resistance to smashing damage on self unresistable
7.50% resistance to lethal damage on self unresistable
25.00% resistance to defense on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
22.50% resistance to smashing damage on self unresistable 22.50% resistance to lethal damage on self unresistable
7.50% resistance to fire damage on self unresistable
7.50% resistance to cold damage on self unresistable
7.50% resistance to toxic damage on self unresistable
20.00% resistance to run speed on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
+20.00% resistance to recharge on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
20.00% resistance to fly speed on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
20.00% resistance to jump height on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
20.00% resistance to jump speed on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
10000.00% resistance to knockback on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
10000.00% resistance to knockup on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
10.00 knockback protection on self unresistable 10.00 knockup protection on self unresistable
10000.00% resistance to repel on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable
10.00 repel protection on self unresistable
3.75% resistance to smashing damage on self unresistable
3.75% resistance to lethal damage on self unresistable
7.50% resistance to fire damage on self unresistable
7.50% resistance to cold damage on self unresistable
7.50% resistance to energy damage on self unresistable
7.50% resistance to negative energy damage on self unresistable
7.50% resistance to toxic damage on self unresistable
10.38 stun protection on self unresistable
10.38 hold protection on self unresistable
10.38 sleep protection on self unresistable
10.38 immobilize protection on self unresistable
+2.00% tohit on self unresistable
+0.75% strength to smashing on self unresistable (Invincibility, not factoring in number of enemies for FURTHER buffing)
+0.75% strength to lethal on self unresistable
+0.75% strength to fire on self unresistable
+0.75% strength to cold on self unresistable
+0.75% strength to energy on self unresistable
+0.75% strength to negative energy on self unresistable
+3.75% strength to smashing on self unresistable
+3.75% strength to lethal on self unresistable
+3.75% strength to fire on self unresistable
+3.75% strength to cold on self unresistable
+3.75% strength to energy on self unresistable
+3.75% strength to negative energy on self unresistable(End of invincibility)
+3.75% strength to smashing on self unresistable
+3.75% strength to lethal on self unresistable
+3.75% strength to fire on self unresistable
+3.75% strength to cold on self unresistable
+3.75% strength to energy on self unresistable
+3.75% strength to negative energy on self unresistable
25.00% resistance to defense on self Ignores buffs and enhancements unresistable

Have at it tough guy.

I never once said Granite was not good at surviving. In fact I said that is -all- we are good at doing, and that is hardly overpowered.

Edit2: For the record, I'm with the crowd that went towards the middle ground. I rarely use rooted because I can run at a normal speed in granite which makes me happy. I still have to teleport somewhat often, and I still usually have to leave granite and just toggle on my regular armors to DPS because I feel noticeably weaker when I'm in granite mode. Thanks to my IOs I'm not actually that weak, but I'm not unkillable either. I've died a number of times in granite, even after healing to full with Earths embrace and using rooted. I can't even fathom being called overpowered as a stone armor tanker. There's no way at all for them to overcome their damage debuff, but at least they are truly more unkillable than I am.

Granite Armour in particular and Stone Armour in general is probably the game's single biggest example of "balance by annoyance." Nothing among the drawbacks of Granite Armour is functionally meaningful as all of them are easy enough to mitigate. They are, however, ANNOYING. I'm not sure what the original intent behind the power was, but it seems to be along the lines of "This is a great power, but it'll be too unpleasant for people to use constantly." As a point of fact, that doesn't work and only serves to annoy.

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.

Oh, I love this game because it lets me show you how little you actually know about the game! Of course, we should keep in mind that I said to look at survivability, not just numbers, so it's not like you even did what I asked you to do in the first place. You've simply learned to bring up City of Data and copy-paste power entries without really learning what they mean. (I'll even keep with using Brutes, regardless of the fact that they're not intended to be the primary meatshields that Tankers are supposed to be, which is what the intention of Granite Armor seemingly should be)

First stop. You're forgetting about enhancement values and resistance capping. Unstoppable combined with the rest of Invuln's powers put Invuln's resistance to s/l at 95%. Depending on your slotting of Unstoppable (this varies rather heavily since it's not a particularly powerful payout on a slot-for-slot basis), you're either going to manage ~65% +res(f/c/n/e) or ~94%. For Granite, because slots are so easy to get and slots in Granite do so very much, you're pretty much guaranteed to have 88% +res(s/l) and 58.5% +res(f/c/n/e).

Those numbers provide a slight edge to Unstoppable in the resistance department: only about 7% +res. Not really much there, honestly.

Let's do the same math here!

Granite Armor provides 15% +def(all but psi). Enhance that and it's 23.4%. Invuln manages 3.75% from Tough Hide, and (let's give it a nice average of 5 targets) 7.5% from Invincibility. That's 17.55% +def(all but psi).

So, doing some simple math here, that's a 5.85% +def advantage to Granite Armor. Keep in mind that, from a survivability standpoint, defense mitigates twice as much damage as resistance and Granite Armor is already doing better from a survivability standpoint than Invuln with Unstoppable is.

So Unstoppable has increases your recovery by an amount equal to your baseline recovery? Amazing. Truly, I never would have remembered that. Except for the fact that you're ignoring endurance costs for the powers in use. Granite Armor (.23) + Rooted (.21) + Tough (.33) + Weave (.33) = 1.1 end/sec. Invincibility (.21) + Temp Invuln (.26) + Unyielding (.26) + Tough (.33) + Weave (.33) = 1.39 end/sec. Let's give that 100% +recov bonus (1.67 end/sec) a reasonably fair uptime of 40% (.67 end/sec). This means that the end buff that you laud only really equates to a .378 end/sec advantage over Stone Armor and that's not including the end crash (which actually pulls it down to Invuln having only a ,155 end/sec advantage if you completely ignore burst endurance drain and operate under the assumption that endurance drain happens only when averaged over long periods of time).

You know, aside from having lower survivability thanks to having lower total defense, but you're not paying attention to that, right?

I'd also like to know how you regularly plan on working around it like you do with Granite Armor. You can't use IOs to get around the massive endurance crash since it removes the 100% of your endurance bar, not just 100 endurance. You've only got .5 seconds at most to get your endurance back before your toggles cycle and drop off because you don't have the endurance to run them, which also means you can't be in the middle of an animation when it drops or else you're SoL. The only "workaround" is having insanely fine-tuned response times. And by insanely, I, of course, mean that you've got a less-than-half-of-a-second-response time.

Did you not read my previous posts that actually went over this? It's not a 30% reduction in outgoing damage. It's a 30% -dam debuff. With default enhancement values, Tankers reduce this to only a 15% reduction in end damage output. Brutes, thanks to Fury, reduce this to only 9%. 15% reduction in damage output for several times increased survivability is an insanely favorable exchange.

Actually, it's not. Good job attempting to understand how recharge mechanics work, though. As said before, the -rech is applied as a debuff, not as an end penalty to all recharge values. This means that a theoretical power with a 10 second base recharge and 65% recharge reduction would have it's recharge reduced from a 6 second recharge time to a 10 second recharge time. Unless you're really saying that everyone has more than 130% +rech in all of their attack powers, you're not going to be adding more than half of the recharge times of powers to powers.

You're also forgetting that just because your attacks aren't recharging as quickly does not mean that you are attacking any slower. A reduction in recharge time doesn't suddenly lengthen the animation times on your powers. Since Stone Armor has so very few necessary power selections compared to pretty much every other set out there, you're given free license to pick up other powers, which means that you should have a power available for recharge at virtually any time.

Something else I guess you didn't want to consider is that the -rech isn't just countered by +rech. One of the reasons that Speed Boost is so potent for Granite Armor users is that the -rech isn't flagged to be unresistable so, whenever you get hit with Speed Boost, you're suddenly going from -65% recharge globally to .175% +rech, which means you're getting 82.5% +recharge from that SB, not just 50% +rech.

You're forgetting yet another one of Stone Armor's advantages too. Rooted. You may dislike it for the heavier -spd penalty, but even if you only toss it on when you're already entrenched, you're still getting 195% +regen. Factor in slotted Health and that's a 110% increase in your end damage recovery capabilities, which means you have 110% of the long term survivability capabilities of Invuln.

Strange. You're acting like I was saying that it could completely negate the effects on its own when I never did that. In fact, I believe I said that it could mitigate the effects and that the question, in fact, was not that it could or couldn't mitigate those effects to a substantial degree but in fact that the penalties did not, in fact, provide substantial enough penalties to justify the massive increase in survivability provided by the power.

First off, psionic is going destroy Invuln just as much as a Granite Armor user, so it's not really a viable weakness to note, or did you just not notice that nowhere in Invuln's capabilities does it note resistance to psionic?

Secondly, Granite Armor is managing higher survivability than Invuln + Unstoppable thanks to higher defense and damage recovery mechanisms and it's managing it at rather than just 40% of the time.

Thirdly, the lack of ability to jump is completely mitigated by the fact that you can still teleport just fine. So what if you can't jump, you can teleport.

So unstoppable only ever crashes when you're done with a pull and out of combat? The unstoppable crash is big enough (no toggles and you're at 10% health) that, if there are any enemies still up and swinging at you, you're dead. You seem to be discounting the impact of that crash a lot.

You're also completely ignoring the single most important aspect of this as well:

Unstoppable as a duration of 180 seconds and a base recharge of 1000 seconds. It is literally impossible for Unstoppable to be up at all times. Most players would be able to manage a 40% uptime and that's activate it at every single instance and feel like dealing with the crash every single time. Granite Armor is permanent right out of the box, with no detrimental and sudden crash in performance that skyrockets risk of death.

I did all of the work (not that you really did any of the work previously), and it still demonstrates that Granite Armor is ridiculously borked. All you demonstrated was an ability to copy-paste info that you don't even understand from a site that you likely don't even know how to use.

When I asked you to actually look at the survivability of the sets under the conditions in question, I didn't ask you to copy-paste information from a site. I already use City of Data and use it rather aggressively to boot. i asked you to actually analyze some data, which you shied away from for whatever reason. Looking at survivability numbers means actually looking at the sum capabilities of sets and comparing the ability to survive. It doesn't mean looking at Unstoppable and Granite Armor separately and arriving at blatantly inaccurate conclusions. It doesn't mean completely ignoring fundamentally important balance factors like uptime and damage recovery capabilities. It means actually understanding what's going on.

The next time you feel like calling me out on something, I challenge you to actually know what you're talking about enough that I'm not having to correct you every step of the way. I really don't like having discussion with people that are obviously too uneducated to actually comprehend what I'm talking, much less when I'm having to teach them the fundamentals of the topic at hand because they didn't understand them in the first place. If you want to argue, learn about the topic first so you don't stick your foot in your mouth over and over again by spouting blatant and obvious falsehoods that you mistaken think support your viewpoint when really they're evidence that you are wrong.

This.

I'm sorry to say this, Sensei, but you are wrong. Badly. The game is balanced around SOs, which has been stated by the developers numerous times in the past, most notably when Inventions came out. What Castle said back then was that the game would not be rebalanced to assume everyone would be using Inventions, but SOs have been the expected norm in the game ever since ED and the GDN. The entire point of ED was to control people's use of SOs.

Secondly, you have to account for enhancement values, because especially in the case of Invulnerability, slotted defences meet and exceed caps, wasting much of their percentages. You picked Brutes, which is a loaded example as Brutes have low defensive numbers but high caps. Everyone else with access to Invulnerability, which is to say Scrappers and Tankers, can almost cap their physical resistances with just the toggles and passives, thus making Unstoppable largely wasted. This is even more true in the case of SR, where JUST Elude on its own puts you past the defence soft cap, and where the toggles and passives can put you about two thirds of the way there without factoring in extra powers.

Finally, you can't cite buff and debuff numbers in a vacuum, because their interaction with enhancements is very important. A 30% damage debuff does not reduce a Brute's outgoing damage by 30%. It simply subtracts 30% from the Brute's buff/debuff count. But a fully-slotted Brute will have around 100% damage enhancement and at least 100% Fury damage buff, for a total of three times base damage. Taking out 30% from that reduces his damage by a tenth. And that's assuming the Brute doesn't have even more Fury (more than 50) and isn't using Build Up, at which point the debuff is even less than what Umbral posted.

You can't ignore these things.

The point isn't that it's overpowered. The point is that you ignored it in your calculations, and regeneration has a SIGNIFICANT impact on survivability, especially when combined with high resistance values and the ability to boost your own maximum hit points, which is what Earth's Embrace does. Earth's Embrace, furthermore, is both a heal and a buff that's usable under Granite Armour.

False on both accounts. The icon does flash, but it flashes for a good ten seconds, a time which I typically don't have to spend staring at an icon in combat. And while you CAN develop a feel for when the buff will crash, you CANNOT develop a feel this precise. Maybe I just suck, but I've been using God Mode powers almost constantly on the characters who have them, and the most I can "sense" is when it's about to drop within about 30 seconds.

Furthermore, you DO NOT HAVE time to react from when Unstoppable drops to when your toggles drop. Umbral listed half a second, but that's a generous estimate, assuming the drop catches all your toggles just after they cycle. In my experience, toggles drop pretty much simultaneously with the crash. And, yes, I've been killed by the crashy many times in the past. Once by Energy-Transfering myself to death, in fact.

---

One more thing to mention: There is a marked difference between raw numbers and mitigation numbers. You can take the direct translation of numbers to mitigation, or you can use my "proof of concept" test of calculating the time it would take to kill an unprotected character of your hit points vs. the time it would take to kill a characters with all toggles running. That's when you notice that mitigation doesn't really behave linearly with defence and resistance values. Off the top of my head, going fro 0% to 5% defence increases your survivability time to double the original. Going from 40% to 45%, on the other hand, increases it about 20 times or thereabout. I'd have to run the numbers to be sure.

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.

It's just what it says on the tin - lots and lots of raw data. A lot of the time it's more accurate and more real than the "real" numbers we get in game, which often actually lie and even more often omit vital information.

I don't play the game as a sport. This isn't the kind of game that lends itself to being treated like one. Something like Street Fighter, Unreal Tournament or StarCraft I can see treating as a sport to train for, but City of Heroes just ain't it. Were I so inclined, I could just run HeroStats and get a nice little timer to tell me exactly when it's happening, but I just don't play the game like that. When my Unstoppable crashes, I want to be out of combat. If I'm in combat, I run away. It's as simple as that.

What you're suggesting is technically possible, but it's no less out of the norm than Inventions slotting is. You're relying on the kind of precise timing that the game really isn't "about." I've used the power a lot. I have I believe three characters with that particular God Mode, as well as quite a few with comparable ones. I just don't feel confident enough to chance getting one-shotted mid-combat, just as I don't feel obligated to use it whenever it's on, or indeed to slot it for recharge. It's a last resort solution.

I feel Granite Armour just sucks as a power. It offers you far too strong a buff and it disables much of the rest of your set. People keep taking it and building builds around it because it really is the strongest T9 protection power out there. BY FAR. However, it is a child of a long-outmoded design principle, that of mutually exclusive toggles.

Once upon a time, all Stone Armour toggles were exclusive to each other. This meant that you could either have smashing/lethal protection OR Psi protection, but never both at the same time, and never fire/cold or energy/negative energy protection with them. I'm not sure what the goal was behind doing this, but people didn't like it, so all the other toggles were unified, but Granite Armour was left as is. I still maintain that this was a mistake.

What would balance out Granite Armour is not debuffs, but spreading its protection across the rest of the set. It would still give people their "defensive mode" as before, but at a much higher actual cost - that of running more toggles, something which is actually a chore even without Granite Armour's cost.

Granted, then we walk into the Instant Healing toggle problem of people just building for more endurance and running it that way, but at least it doesn't make the rest of the set pointless. Any time you split a character into "modes" such that people can choose one and ignore the other, people will.

In general, City of Heroes is not a game of modes in this way. You can use multiple builds to tailor your character to the specific incoming mission or faction, but there's very rarely any specific need to swap modes on the fly. If your Stone Brute, say, gets invited to a team to act as a Tanker, then you have no reason to turn Granite Armour off, something mine has been asked many times in the past. And if you join a team with a tanker-equivalent, will never actually need it.

I firmly believe that Granite Armour's drawbacks aren't nearly enough to balance out its benefits, as evidenced by the fact that they never seem to make people want to turn the thing off. However, that's not my problem here. My problem is the power's basic design and how it replaces the rest of the set. That's not right, because the rest of the set isn't actually very good without it. Stone Armour in general needs to be improved, and at the cost of Granite Armour, as well.

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.

Oh it is definitely overpowered. And yet..... strangely not everyone is gravitating toward it. .....


Something I've noticed about tank players online is that most of them are novices who don't want to focus every last bit of their build on survival. By the mid 20's, I've still only got 2 attacks and a damage aura, but defense is soft capped, so I can lead teams through a rediculous number of red or purple mobs (or at least orange). All my teams act like they've never seen that before.

Stone Armor post level 32 is the holy grail of overpowered sets..... unless you're fighting Lost, because the psionics will just tear right through you, but a lot of sets have that problem.


I would agree with fixing Rooted. There needs to be some real incentive not to live in your granite armor your whole life. The ability to defeat curbs would be a good difference between the two options (Granite vs. your other auras).