Just in: new Tank powersets

erm.....

While I hesitate to point this out, Tankers were recently given a 20 percent buff to their offense and at the same time, had their hit points increased.

Thus, their mitigation was improved, while their offense was also improved at the same time.

So... I don't get where you think tanks need to have their defenses lowered to get more damages. I mean, the Dev's kinda just did the exact opposite.

...just sayin'.

No, they didn't get a 20% buff to their offense. They got a 20% buff to their offense when they are solo.


Otherwise, everyone on the team - including Scrappers and Brutes get a 20% bonus to their offense when the Tanker uses their T1.

Anyway you slice it, this is a good thing.

Interestingly, Tankers have 20% more base health than Brutes, but the exact same max health cap ("Max Max Health"). That one always struck me as a little strange. Its very obvious that the design intent of Brutes is to have lower base numbers than Tankers but essentially identical maximum (mitigation) numbers across the board, so they could be *buffed* into being as strong as Tankers. That reliance on buffs was supposed to propagate into the offensive side of the ledger but they didn't balance Fury correctly at the beginning of time, and have been very reluctant at this late stage to do more than tweak it. Even small tweaks to Fury were met with howls, and even small (downward) proposed reductions in resistance caps were met with a lot of opposition (which, to be honest, I felt was completely unjustified - the complaints, not the changes).

Brutes are actually a much bigger on-paper threat to Scrappers than Tankers, insofar as Fury is demonstrably almost impossible to sustain at levels below the break even point on offense for scrappers even solo. But really there isn't a mass exodus away from Scrappers towards Brutes (or from Tankers towards Brutes either) and really, archetypes have no right to complain about fairness. Archetypes are just numbers in a spreadsheet. The important two considerations for archetypes are: do they meet the minimum requirements for reasonable gameplay, and do they offer a materially different set of gameplay options. Brutes, Scrappers, and Tankers tend to. The fact that one or another might be seen as a universally superior option by a player is an indication they should play that one. So long as most players don't believe that, and it isn't obviously true in most of the normal gameplay situations actual players find themselves in, there's no actual problem with the archetypes that needs redress.

In other words, Tankers are there for players that want to play Tankers. The players convinced Brutes are better than Tankers in all respects should play Brutes. The people who think Brutes are better than Scrappers in all respects should also play Brutes. Scrappers and Tankers are there for the players who view them as having advantages over Brutes and each other., and there's no compelling reason to take that option away from them.

.....You always put up the most INTERESTING toys.


Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.942
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Magic Tanker
Primary Power Set: Stone Armor
Secondary Power Set: Super Strength
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Energy Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Focused Fighting -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(3), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(3), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(5)
Level 1: Jab -- C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(11), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(13), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(23), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(27), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 2: Focused Senses -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(5), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(7), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(7)
Level 4: Agile -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(9), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(9), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(11)
Level 6: Practiced Brawler -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 8: Dodge -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(13), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(15), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(15)
Level 10: Haymaker -- C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(23), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(25), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(25), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(27), Zinger-Dam%(40)
Level 12: Evasion -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(17), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(17), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(19)
Level 14: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 16: Tough -- RctvArm-ResDam(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(29), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(29), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(31)
Level 18: Lucky -- GftotA-Def(A), GftotA-Def/EndRdx(19), GftotA-Def/Rchg(21), GftotA-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(21)
Level 20: Weave -- GftotA-Def/EndRdx(A), GftotA-EndRdx/Rchg(31), GftotA-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31), GftotA-Run+(43)
Level 22: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(33)
Level 24: Combat Jumping -- ULeap-EndRdx(A), ULeap-Jump(43), ULeap-Stlth(43), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(46)
Level 26: Quickness -- Run-I(A)
Level 28: Knockout Blow -- Hectmb-Dam%(A), Hectmb-Dmg/EndRdx(33), Hectmb-Dmg/Rchg(34), Hectmb-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(34), Hectmb-Acc/Rchg(34), T'Death-Dam%(36)
Level 30: Rage -- GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(36), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(45), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(45), AdjTgt-Rchg(45), AdjTgt-EndRdx/Rchg(46)
Level 32: Elude -- SW-ResDam/Re TP(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(33), LkGmblr-Def/Rchg(46)
Level 35: Super Jump -- Winter-ResSlow(A)
Level 38: Foot Stomp -- Armgdn-Dam%(A), Armgdn-Dmg/EndRdx(39), Armgdn-Dmg/Rchg(39), Armgdn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Armgdn-Acc/Rchg(40), Zinger-Dam%(40)
Level 41: Maneuvers -- GftotA-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(A), GftotA-Def/EndRdx(42), GftotA-EndRdx/Rchg(42)
Level 44: Conserve Power -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 47: Taunt -- Mocking-Taunt/Rng(A), Mocking-Taunt/Rchg/Rng(48), Zinger-Taunt/Rng(48), Zinger-Taunt/Rchg(48), Zinger-Taunt/Rchg/Rng(50), Zinger-Dam%(50)
Level 49: Physical Perfection -- RgnTis-Regen+(A), P'Shift-End%(50)
Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve
Level 0: Portal Jockey
Level 0: Task Force Commander
Level 0: The Atlas Medallion
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Gauntlet
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(A), Numna-Heal(36), Numna-Heal/EndRdx(37), Mrcl-Rcvry+(42)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod(37)



HEE!

By that logic, why not raise the Tanker damage cap if the people who want to play Brutes and Scrappers are just going to continue to do so.

Because doing so would cut into someone's lunch time? I'd gladly pay for the meal.

If those are the two important considerations, what's it to the devs to up damage damage or damage caps?

Tankers would still play differently because they don't have Criticals or Fury.



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Yeah, kind of like defenders also got a 30 percent boost to damage while solo. And they lost no mitigation while doing so.

I'm noting a trend here.

I think tankers would be just fine if they got the very same buff to damage Defenders did (+30 percent solo, scaling down) and would still be nowhere near being overpowered in any way shape or form.


Yeah, and this is weird.

Despite Johnny's fixation on the broken-ness inside melee (although he misses completely the sorry state of stalkers in the equation), we ALL know what's really broken in the game, and that is infinite stacking of buffs and debuffs.

It's 100 percent 'City of Debuffs', and that's a fact.

It is telling that the Dev's big move to boost Tankers (for which we are very grateful, thank's Devs!) was to give tanks a juicy inherent debuff.

It seems that debuffs are some sort of a sacred cow to the Dev team, and I frankly don't understand it.

I am puzzled. (Assumes puzzled pose.)

I am not really sure it should be -- At least for a good sized chunk of the level 50 content.

But on just SOs no Scrapper or Brute comes close to Tanker survivability with comparable sets. (minus outside buffs of course)

At 50, my decently IO'd for survival MA/SR scrapper has roughly the level of survival my WP/SS tanker had on SOs.

I know of Stalkers. They're easy to miss because they tend to turn invisible.

They have(had?) the same issue of having to suck just to make Scrappers and Brutes look good. They are(were?) exiled to the other end of the melee spectrum that Tankers were.

Truthfully, I don't know how Stalkers are since their last round of changes. I do know that their reputation of being inferior to Scrappers hasn't improved much in my observation.


I will say, as I always have, that if Stalkers and Tankers were the only melee ATs that had been created from day 1, everyone would likely be a lot happier.


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Because nearly all designers of anything, not just MMOs, need a good reason *to do* something, not a good reason *not to do* something.

That's why no one has ever won the "why not" argument. Its completely valueless.

Within the context of this discussion, standard difficulty content is designed on the presumption that everyone slots SOs, so players that slot SOs can actually do that content. In that sense, all of the archetypes are "balanced" around SO slotting, in the sense that they are balanced against the content as if they slotted SOs.

However, archetypes are also balanced against each other and for that the devs datamine actual player performance in-game. So in that sense, when balanced against other archetypes the devs implicitly assume the average slotting of the playerbase. In other words, if the average player at level 50 has common IOs, then the archetypes are being implicitly compared as if they do, because they are being compared based on their actual performance when played by actual players, and built and slotted by actual players. At least at level 50. If they have SOs at level 40, and SOs at level 20 on average, then that is how they are compared at those level ranges.


One thing I find interesting is when players use the word "balance" they often use it singularly: some *thing* is "balanced." But balances tend to have two sides, and balance usually describes a relationship between at least two things. When someone says an archetype, for example, is "balanced" they rarely state what they think its being balanced against. Which implies they think "balance" is an abstract target, as opposed to an actual relationship between two things. Or that there can be multiple balance targets based on multiple relationships between different things: archetypes against each other archetypes against standard content, archetypes against the overall average of all archetypes, etc. The last time I counted, there were about two dozen different "balance" relationships each with their own individual metrics and targets that I was aware of.

-Because I've asked nicely a number of times.
-Because I've asked rudely a number of times.
-Because I'll be their friend for ever and ever.
-Because I'll leave them alone for ever and ever.
-Because the current performance of Tankers doesn't synch up with their description in game or on the website and that could be off-putting to new players coming in with CoH:F
-Because my two cats are adorable and agree with me on Tankers.
-Because, as proven with Invul, once something is fixed I tend to shut up about it.
-Because I've put countless hours into hounding for Tankers to be treated fairly, all the while entertaining the community.
-Because it's there.
-Because despite my ranting, I hunt for bugs, boost the game with potential players, help anyone who asks, give away a large amount of in game stuff to strangers in the name of good will and while I can never match the contributions of others, especially someone like you, I try damn it. That should count for something.

You may not think any of these are good reasons, but added together perhaps they amount to half of one good one?


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Except for the cats, I do all of that and more and it took six years for the devs to adjust Martial Arts, and they managed to actually nerf it first. So unless cats are worth a couple years a piece, you might want to consider kicking in a couple of goldfish or something. Unless you want to see them replace invincibility with swift to counteract the movement slow in Unyielding, before buffing Dull Pain in 2014.

Also, Castle knew you'd like the changes to Invuln, but to his credit he did them anyway.

And you said the devs didn't listen to me.



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This is pretty much what I've been trying to say for most of my time in this thread.

JB is calling for tankers to get more damage because:

- Brutes outperform them when they are at their caps.

(This ignores the 99% of the time they are NOT at their caps)

- Incarnate abilities exist in the game.

(This ignores the fact that you have 49 levels before Incarnate abilities are even a possibility)

- Scrappers and brutes can get close to tanker survivability when slotted to the gills with billions of influence worth of IOs, in other words, all the best stuff in the game.

(This ignores the fact that not only is the game still balanced around SOs, but the majority of the players still USE SOs)

What he is asking, no, demanding, is that the balance between scrappers, brutes and tanks be altered because of a few factors that the game is not, was not, and never should be balanced around.

The balance between brutes and tanks exists as it is because when you slot both ATs with nothing but SOs, the brute does more damage, and the tank survives better. THAT is where they are balanced at. They are NOT balanced around ridiculous assumptions like 10 billion influence IO builds, Incarnate abilities, and sitting at their respective caps at all times.

The truly hilarious thing is: He really believes the game should be balanced by all those things.

If you balance the differences between archetypes by things your average player probably doesn't have much interest in acquiring, you are telling them "not only does your character suck because you don't min/max, but it's not even balanced because you don't."

I'm sure you've seen all the complaints from people feeling like they're being forced to grind Incarnate content.

Go ahead and tell them that they're going to be forced to do that stuff because the ATs are balanced around having all tier 4 Incarnate abilities and multi-billion influence builds.

Go ahead, tell em. I dare you.

And that doesn't even address how our soon to be joining us new players will feel if they're told their characters are balanced around things that they literally CAN'T use without paying real money for the privilege.

Do you want to tell all those new players that in order to reach a point where their characters are fairly balanced they have to drop some cash and spend hundreds of hours grinding to get all the best stuff?

If *I* were a new player and someone told me the game were balanced around min/maxing my character, and that I would never even reach a point where I could keep up with other players unless I did, well, I'd drop this game like a live grenade and never look back.

The game is balanced around SOs for a reason, whether anyone likes it or not. The only way to balance the game fairly is to balance it around the minimum enhancements possible, the ones that are available to everyone equally. You can't possibly expect me to believe that hugely expensive IO builds are available just as equally to the person who plays 30 hours a week as they are to the person who plays 3 hours a week.

Balancing a game around the metric of what a power gamer can achieve is a HUGE mistake, and one that I'm pretty sure the devs aren't stupid enough to make. It alienates both new players, and veteran players who aren't inclined to play the game that way.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Actually, I'm ambivalent about Tankers getting more damage.

What I want is to see Tanker damage caps increased. Not the same thing.

Alternatively, they could have Brute resistance caps and Brute and Scrapper Max HP caps adjusted downward.

Obviously, the alternative option would upset some Brute and Scrapper players, while my preferred course wouldn't really upset the apple cart, according to what Arcana said at least.



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That changed, I think, in issue 19. Now the Brute cap is ~3212 and the tanker cap is ~3534. So tankers have approximately ten percent more health at cap.

Actually, I thought the idea of putting Scrappers to 80% Resist Cap and Brutes down to 85% Resist Cap was always a good idea!

But I think the fact that Brutes and Scrappers can get to softcapped defenses, to equal Tanker survival is false.

Yes, Brutes and Scrappers can get to 45% defense. So can a Tanker. And all things being equal on the IO front, the Tanker will STILL BE more survivable. Always.

I would support this change, provided Stalkers get 80% resistance as well. I always thought it was a little odd that an AT meant to be in the thick of combat cannot get any more resistance than a Defender.

This is true as well.

It's part of why I think SR tanks will have issues in the high level game. The high level game is chock full of enemies that are capable of making a mockery of defense, and SR really doesn't have anything else to fall back on.

That's why adding defense to resistance based builds makes for such a powerful character. When defense fails (and it will), they have resistances, and usually a self-heal to fall back on. An SR tank would only have slightly more HP than an SR brute, and nothing to soften the blow when their defense fails. I have a feeling that it will lead to SR tanks being undesirable for some tasks in the game. For instance: That autohit Nictus in the ITF is going to SUCK for them. As are DE and Veng buffed Nemesis. And Rularuu eyeballs. Even non-positional Psionic damage is going to suck, as SR lacks a self heal or a way to really increase their max HP much (which is about all an Invuln can do about Psi)

Just getting to the soft cap does not mean you are suddenly as survivable as a Tanker. There's more to it than that. Is a soft capped Blaster or Defender as survivable as a Tanker? Not that I've ever seen. It does help, but defense alone does not make a squishy AT suddenly non-squishy.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

You support raising resistance caps on Scrappers, already one of the highest performing ATs, without a commensurate decrease in damage. But Tankers aren't allowed to have their damage cap raised without gutting their survivability?

Hypocrite.


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Stalkers =/= Scrappers.

He was saying he supported the change to the Scrapper cap as well.


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