The Impossible Mr. Trapdoor and Issue 19's New Theme

my favorite was the RP-justified refusal of Venture's heroes to use the merged markets since they'd never buy stuff from bad guys...even though his heroic characters would have absolutely no way of knowing that villains were now interacting with the supply pool.

Having your characters act on knowledge you possess as a player but they don't violates one of the cardinal 'rules' of role playing.

Getting rid of tank and spank (or even more situations without it) sounds grand...if you happen to not be a tank.

When that happens, you begin to question the need for a low damage AT with excessive defense and taunting when crap like the Apex death patches circumvent defenses and that little bit of tanking involved (IE taunting to get BM out of a blue puddle) can be done by Scrappers and Brutes.

But, that of course is what I've been saying for years; the devs trivialize the Tanker's so-called advantages and punish them for them at all times, even when they are not much of an advantage.

The hero ATs are 100% designed to have a tank stand in one spot, have enemies surrounding them and have their teammates picking them off. That was the dynamic the ATs and most of the power sets were designed around.

Any move away from that dynamic without first updating the ATs and power sets that were designed to work with that dynamic is unwelcome by me.

The devs want more movement by players? Fine. Make various changes to positional powers like removing the various speed penalties from Stone armor, extending Invincibility's defense buff to a 50' radius, remove all rooting and movement suppression and give all of the melee ATs more ranged attacks in their attack sets that aren't inferior DPS to their melee attacks and then we'll talk. Oh, and fix Tankers.



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The first time I tried the BM encounter, I was too busy jumping out of the blue patches to contribute much on my tank. The second time, I realized I didn't need to panic and jump uncontrollably about. Instead, I started walking to just passed the edge of the blue patch and taunted BM and she would almost always walk over to me a few seconds after the blue patch animation finished and I was able to contribute as much as I ever do against AVs on my tank. I'm guessing that the next time I try it I'll be able to back her far enough out of the patch that other meleers could attack her as well.

Thanks for the misguided generalization!

*sigh* "Reverse elitism" really isn't.

If you think that's what this thread is about then you haven't bothered to do more than skim two or three posts very superficially before posting. i would suggest going back and actually reading the thread, but it's up to you.

If that's the prerequisite for talking to you, I hope you own a pet.

Are you ever truly alone when you have a mathmagician who follows you from thread to thread, logging what you say?


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I don't think I agree with your interpretation of the basic design philosophy of the game.

There are uses for a tank other than tank and spank.

I greatly enjoyed being a Tanker (one of two) on the Apex TF. There were mobs tough enough, and groups large enough, to actually warrant having multiple tankers. Battle Maiden was not very hard compared to some bosses in That Other Game. People in this game are just so used to their Kin huddle, but that'll change.


Oh and...they DID fix Tankers. They raised our HP cap to be the highest in the game and they added a 20% Res debuff to our required level 1 attack. No one is tougher than us and we bring excellent tools for fighting groups and bosses.

You mean like kiting Ghost Widow in the STF using taunt and any ranged attacks you might have? If you do that she basically never fires off her PBAoE heal as long as the Tanker maintains aggro and distance.

Similarly, most Tankers i've run the ATF with use taunt and general aggro control to move Battle Maiden when a patch spawns near her position. A good Tanker on the ATF actually leverages their inherent to make meleeing Battle Maiden easier. Battle Maiden doesn't appear to have particularly high regen or resistances, so as long as you maintain a decent amount of DPS against her she goes down easily enough. The mechanics of the encounter mean that using some mobility and situational awareness yields a better DPS than standing still and blindly cycling attacks the entire fight.

While that was a good one, I preferred the ranting about the gender changing power.

I think you've hit on a critical piece of the puzzle that some of the doomsayers are missing here. This encounter changes what it means to be a good tanker, and that is hurting some butts.

edit: That didn't last long, considering how often I see Venture at the heroside market.

heck, the easiest way to beat Ghost Widow is to have a tank lead her in a game of ring around the rosy without getting closer than taunt range so that she never triggers her heal and everybody else pounds on her

run and gun is possible in this game...you just need to practice it

if I understand right, the patch is just that he doesn't leave the room anymore...so, he'll be just as hard for me as he was the first time, when I beat him without dying and without leading him out of the room, solo...without really even being in danger the whole fight...it was a long fight, and required a specific strategy that it gave you a lot of clues for, but it wasn't impossible or even really hard once you figured it out

first time I did that mission as a team, we charged into the room, I put myself on clone hunting and, twenty seconds later the battle was over with me only ever finding one clone

And it helped ever so much. I can just shrug off those Battle Maiden blue patches and fight on through. It's completely worth the low damage. /sarcasm

It's nice that I'm now expected slot and spam an attack that still does terrible damage for the "privilege" of buffing the damage of the Scrapper/Brute next to me who gets to laugh behind my back at the damage I do, in addition to protecting them and making sure they don't even have to feel their lower defenses and experience any kind of drawback or trade off for their damage. /extra sarcasm



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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AymM8i-oq4

So, in short you're butthurt that every fight isn't the tired old tank-'n-spank that your Tank is in no danger of dying from? Ok then.

Do you really think this is how other people are?

There's a quick answer to this problem: don't play tank, it's not aimed at the playstyle you enjoy.

Its not all tankers, its just JB (and a few others) that want to be god inside the game, and think that is balance.

I've gone on record as saying I don't think the PToD are fair and that I hate when any AT's power set is trivialized.

However:
When an AV goes PToD, your holds and immobs still do damage. Using them still matters. You still have all your secondary power set. You may not be able to lock the AV down, but both of your power sets still contribute otherwise.

Battle Maiden largely trivializes both melee primary and secondary power sets. What good is Blazing Aura when jousting is the order of the day? What good is a melee attack chain when you only have time to pop off a couple of hits before you have to flee like an insect.

PToD may take away your controlling aspect on a TF finale, but it doesn't force you to run and jump around like an idiot, rob you of the lions share of both of your power sets and render the most meaningful contribution you can make mashing Taunt to pull an enemy out of death patches.

EDIT And Controllers/Doms shouldn't be fans of her either. Holding or immobilizing her prevents her from being pulled out of the puddles, making melee even more useless.


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"Capable" is an absolute; either you can do it or you can't. The rest is overkill. Which, granted, is underrated, but that's irrelevant.

I agree, because I think the premises "anyone can solo" and "teams don't need particular construction" are bad game design. Support characters shouldn't be able to solo and generalists who are shouldn't be very welcome on teams. If the devs want to change the nature of the game they'll have to start abandoning some fundamental principles or they're going to fail. Whichver choice they make, it should be fun to watch.

Why, thank you!

To paraphrase a dead white guy, that's a good thing: it means you have standards.

Rather than trying to be "new" or "different", they should be trying to be good.

a) Have a member of your hero SG "go undercover" in the Isles as a Vigilante (may require doing distasteful things but that's a matter of perspective, and if you pick and choose you can avoid doing anything that will keep you up at night).

b) Check the market for an item that has no current bids and none for sale. Have an SG member in one location put one of said item up for sale and one in the other buy it.

c) Later, rinse, repeat until satisfied that this isn't a coincidence.

.: QED.

N.B. this uses only in-game resources. Not that such is really important, since no reasonable account could possibly explain how such a corrupt enterprise could exist without anyone, or, actually, everyone, knowing about it.

All of that being said I did have to abandon my stand here. As I went over my builds I started guesstimating how long it would take to acquire what I wanted and the results were trending suspiciously close to, say, the expected heat death of the universe. Uncommon recipes were particularly pernicious as you can't get them with AMs. Getting the Field Crafter accolade on my main's reroll without market support doesn't look very promising either, though I am likely to try. I use the markets as little as possible and won't pay outrageous obviously flipper-generated prices but I've had to chalk this up to the same kind of sadistic GMing we've been plagued with pretty much from the start.