Invulnerability, Tier9, and i20

Some people won't like unstoppable, some might not ever work out the crash but that's their problem because their will be others that don't have problems using it and can work out the crash.

Personally I don't think Invulnerability needs looking at, at all. I play all kinds of tankers and to say that Invulnerability needs a change to it and soon would be, to me, just wrong. It needs to get inline behind other sets.

For me what usually happens is I spend 2-4 seconds popping purples before crash and/or stepping back and/or popping a blue and/or popping DP and ~20 seconds toggling back up (Invincibility, Unyielding, Temp Invul, Tough, Weave, Maneuvers, Tactics - total time for these toggles is about 17 or 18 seconds if Mids numbers, adjusted for server ticks, are correct, and without looking at it deeply I feel that it fits with my experience in game). So all in all, a good 23 seconds to handle a crash.

Let's say I'm really bad at the game, and that a good player (by some tactic that I admit I don't fully understand) doesn't even waste a millisecond preparing/recovering from the crash itself and doesn't lag. With a build similar as mine, he's still going to have to deal with a 17 second downtime to toggle up. No amount of skill will compress that time period, it's the activation time of the toggles added up.

I don't really care if my team can manage or not without me while I'm recovering - most likely they can, and most likely by taking steps reducing their damage output compared to if I was up and holding aggro. Sometimes I do hold aggro while retoggling anyway. I don't even care if I have a team at all. The point is, no matter what situation I'm in, I'm out of the fight for 23 seconds. The point is, no matter how good I would be at the game, I would be out of the fight for 17 seconds. For a 3 minute power, that's significant downtime, especially considering there are more and more options that will give the same return - not necessarily in terms of pure numeric values, but in staying alive without more effort ; and those options won't have a hefty crash that ends up in forced downtime even in the best case scenario.

I don't really need Unstoppable on my tanker because, well, it's pretty much unstoppable as it is. However, on my Scrapper I love it. Because I can follow the crash with Hibernate and emerge fully recharged. Takes a bit of timing but that's half the fun.

Actually the most fun part of Unstoppable in my opinion is to see if I can survive the crash - either by killing everything before it hits, or by whatever trick I can use to get back in the fight if it hits me while enemies are still around.

Like I said above, which a very passive aggressive someone tried to ignore simply by writing off my argument as a mere dismissal of his own, 1 well timed blue inspiration, 2-3 lucks and maybe a green is time, resources and attention spent. Ethereal temp power is completely crazy by my standards as it's a full 30 seconds spent out of the fight.

I can understand the point of view of people who don't care about performance and enjoys toying with the crash, but just because the crash is fun to some doesn't make it balanced. Unfortunately for me, fortunately for you guys, it probably means we won't ever see changes to the power.

I'd certainly be interested in seeing dev stats of the % of WP/Shield users who take SoW and OttC compared to the number of Invul/Elec users who take Unstop and Surge, compared against the # of uses of these powers over time. My guess is the number is about the same in the first case, and much higher for WP/Shield than Invul/Elec in the second one.

Okay, I am going to try to get to the heart of this. Why I think Unstoppable is broken. I want to thank everyone who has posted. Very interesting ideas, concepts, thoughts, and real gaming experience showing up here.

I think Unstoppable is broken because it will either A) Simply lead to death B) Lead to having to retoggle and scramble for cover for 17-30 seconds.

Now, this is not because I mind death on a character. My first 50 Brute, who ran Invul, regularly killed himself on the Grandville towers and had the 10 million death badge before level 44. An extra death in a mission was just a bonus towards that goal. Not sought after, but not unwelcome. I am unfazed by the death of a character, in and of itself.

Tanking however is different. My belief is you need pride to be a Tanker. When I am Tanking I want to run in and grab the Agro fast, taking everything that a mob can throw at me. I want to know where my team is heading, and be there before/with the 1st wave to do my job. I know my Knockout Blow is really not that impressive for damage, I know my Footstomp is mostly just for flooring the fools and getting agro on me. But if I can get all eyes on me, whatever team I am on can shred, shred fast, and keep moving. I take great pride in that. Not a seeker after DPS, not a Scranker, I Tank, and I believe I Tank well. Not perfect, but a very good team member and solid Tank.

The tier 9 from Willpower helps me Tank. It gives a good buff for a while, and here is what is so important i cannot stress it enough, it does not remove me from my job tanking. It does not pull me off the line for a single solitary second. Many times, I never even notice it dropped. the decision to pop it was 2 minutes ago when I charged a particularly bad spot. That problem was resolved between 30 seconds and 1:30 ago, and now we are on to other problems. No Hangover.

The tier 9 from Invulnerability floors me. It either gets me killed, or at best pulls be off the line to lick my self inflicted wounds for a very long time in combat. Then I gotta get back to where the team is, and get back into my job.

If you think about Scranker, Scrappers, Blasters search for DPS, consider this. I am after Tanking per second. What character build can I create that allows me the greatest Tanking per Second? Okay, so say you give Scrappers a power that boosts damage to Cap for 3 minutes. Then they either die or spend 30 seconds doing zero damage. Great right? Okay, now tell the scrapper the fight is 5 minutes to 10 minutes long. Recalculate. Wait, what? I die? That means my DPS goes to....swirl flush. Yep. Same with Tanking, you can push certain numbers to hardcap to help me Tanking for awhile, great. But if it causes me to take a giant step backward and literally go feel my lifeforce drain from my body, no thanks. Cause that will not help me tank. It will not allow me to be the dependable member of the team I feel I need to be.

This is why I think the tier 9 from Invulnerabilty is broken. Because it works completely against the TPS (Tanking per second) that is needed in a fast moving long fight modern strike force team. It is built for old, clunky, i2 teams. In i2 the boss fight at the end lasted less than 3 minutes. There was one boss. In i20 there are many times multiple AVs, the AVs take longer than 3 minutes to put down. The corridor fights are non stop rolling madness for 10 minutes at a time. Unstoppable is like the T-72, very solid for it's time. The T-72 gets shredded by modern armor. It cannot withstand what is happening on a modern battlefield. Sure, its still great against most infantry and light mechanized stuff. But you put it up against a modern Tank, and the crew will be lucky if they can figure out they need to leave the thing fast enough.

It's really weird to be on this side of this argument. I remember making all those same points about 5 years ago, before Invuln got all the buffs its gotten outside of Unstoppable, and before we got the crash warning from the blinking icon.

Unstoppable serves one purpose: allowing you to withstand high non-S/L damage that your Defense doesn't protect you against (either due to it being from a single target that isn't floored, or def debuffs/tohit buffs) for long enough to keep the rest of your team alive. Maybe that's so you can defeat an AV, maybe it's so you can trade off with another Tanker for a longer period.

There aren't a lot of situations where I use Unstoppable with my Tanker. But when I do, I need it. SoW would do absolutely nothing for me in those situations, and I'm predicting that those situations will comprise an important part of that Anti-Matter trial when it comes out.

Aside from those situations, Invulnerability is already strong enough to handle the "Tanking Per Second" you refer to, and we already have a SoW equivalent: Dull Pain. They get our extra res, we get their extra +MaxHp (and a heal). And we can enhance ours for recharge. Unstoppable is a bonus. Skip it and take Tough if you don't like it, you'll be capped to S/L full time when Willpower only will be for 2 out of 5 minutes.

Or they could just, y'know, move the health/endurance crash up 10 seconds so the tank isn't completely helpless without a dozen inspirations needed to counteract any DoT or status effect (s)he picked up, providing enough time to reestablish basic defenses.

I've had Unstoppable in and out of my build several times over the years. Frankly ever since issue 13 and the Invuln/IO changes I've found it to be fairly useless... an Invuln who's soft capped to S/L/E/N will very rarely find it to be of any use and for those few situations where it might have been useful the judicious use of an inspiration or two generally takes care of the problem.

Currently CMA doesn't have Unstoppable and I don't miss it. In roughly 70 trials I haven't found a situation yet where it would be a better choice than simply popping an inspiration. The only real problem is in Lambda dealing with all those Seers and their psi/end drain; that's something that Unstoppable won't help much with.

The crash can be managed sure, but I personally don't feel that it's benefits justify the nuisance of dealing with it's crash. Back prior to issue 13 it was a different story as you simply couldn't build to the same level of durability you can now. I'd only take it on a tanker nowadays if I wasn't going to invest in the IO bonuses needed to boost at least S/L defense close to 45%.

When Electric Armor first started, Power Surge would not warn you of its impending crash. (by blinking icon in the power bar). I implored Castle to fix it, to make it more like Unstoppable. Took 9 months to a year before it was actually changed.

Phase shift temp power, is a dirty work around for tier 9 crashes. Its not expensive, just takes time to make it.

On my long time invul/macer, having all the accolades helps prevent toggle dropping on unstoppable crash, gives you time to eat a blue and/or green and Dull Pain. I have yet to take him on any BAF or Lambda trials. Seems theres always at least 1 or 2 stone tanks. So I bring damage with either scrappers or blasters.

The hate for Unstoppable is blown out of proportion if you ask me. Yes the crash can kill you, but you shouldn't be using it unless you'd die anyway if you didn't.

Ok, perhaps someone can enlighten me to what has been happening on my INV/DM Tank. He's currently level 40 and I've had Unstoppable since 32. I've used it occasionally when things looked bleaked and have not once died due to it's crash. I've died due to not using the power or not using it soon enough, but never the crash.

Anyways, I've noticed the last few times the crash has occured I am left with endurance. Enough endurance to keep toggles running and active Dull Pain. This wasn't a one time occurence, but every time (3 in a row now) I've used the power.

I do not have any accolades but I have Numina/Miracle Uniques and a few recovery bonsues.

If the crash is 100% endurance, then why I am left with end to run toggles and activate Dull Pain? I can't be the only one experiencing this.

A wild guess:

At the same tick as your endurance is reduced to 0, your recovery kicks in and gives you a few points of Endurance back. Toggles are cheap and a lot of them can keep running on fumes.

Or 100% doesn't actually mean 100% but 100 points and any bonus endurance you have is left after it's reduced by 100 points.