City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

So I got a PM from Synapse about buffing Tankers

Acemace

By Acemace,
Posted on: 2011-11-25 15:37 in Tankers

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rangle M. Down View Post
Bruising already gives a -res. Adding in -def and more -res into gauntlet or taunt would start to step on the true de-buffers toes.
Ah yes, I had forgotten about Bruising since I went on hiatus shortly after GR launched. I wonder then if the devs would consider making Bruising non-resistible, perhaps at a much lower percentage? Or better yet, make Bruising (in its existing, resistible form) part of Gauntlet (making it an AoE) instead of attaching it to secondary attack powers. The fact that many Tanker attacks are single target, and the Gauntlet is an AoE, lessen the benefits of Bruising. In fact, I barely remembered it existed until you mentioned it.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Party_Kake View Post
Bah! Meters talk!
Leave dps meters out of this game!

If you're contributing to the team in ANY WAY, and your actions lead to the target dying faster, that's YOUR DAMAGE. YOURS.

Nobody can take that away from you! You added brass knuckles to those teammates, you get to take credit for some of the damage they're doing.
QFT. A lot of people are fixated on DPS. Eventually, you need damage to take down an enemy, yes. But if that were the case, there would be no need for Controllers, Dominators, Corruptors, Defenders, etc. Crowd control, damage mitigation, buffs, and debuffs are just as valid in the total battle dynamic as DPS.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane View Post
To clarify, in the post you're referring to, I'm not complaining that Bruising really isn't a 20% buff to ST damage. As you can see, I'm fully aware it has other advantages.

What I do take issue with is Bruising improving Brute and Scrapper damage (and improving it more than it does for the Tanker) in light of the current dynamic where Scrappers and Brutes benefit from the presence of a Tanker both to their personal survivability and their personal damage, and then get to go off and solo better to boot. Yet Tankers see no comparable reciprocation, they just get to see smaller damage numbers coming off the enemies they attack.
That's not a special quality of bruising: its true for all debuffs. So in particular, its true of defender debuffs. Since defenders have even lower damage modifiers than tankers, its equally true that defender debuffs are really helping tankers, scrappers, and brutes more than themselves, and they shouldn't really get credit for those debuffs increasing team damage, only their own.

The same thing should be equally true for defender damage *buffs*. So in fact, defenders really should get credit for almost nothing except healing and their own damage, and should therefore be in an even more seriously disadvantaged state than tankers.

[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

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Posted

Why not give Tankers inverse Fury?

I am not sure who to think of from comic books that resembles a melee aggro controller. The Hulk? He smashes from the get go and as he gets angrier the more gnats get sent his way the harder he smashes. (Sounds like a Brute really.) Superman? Probably best fits the reserved but switches into serious mode when innocents/friends/family are threatened. So do the same with Tankers.

Pump Tanker damage when a team member suffers damage. Yes, this works opposite (a) the goal of the Tanker and (b) the goal of other players. The tanker does not want others to take damage and others (especially squishes) do not want to take damage either. But when they do, watch out! Arguably the defeat of a team member should really send the Tanker over the edge. So I guess toss in an inherent, self-applied Vengeance effect.

There are a number of ways this could be handled, with some probably being better than others to prevent player abuse. A first guess at a method would be a limited duration buff to the Tanker whenever a team member within range takes damage, perhaps limited by a threshold, so damage done to a team member only counts if the team member is beneath a certain percentage of health.

Soloing would remain unchanged--a tank survives better than other ATs at the cost of dropping opponents slower. On a team where the Tanker manages to control things, again, no real change. But if things start to slide south the Tanker becomes the one to pick up the slack. And heaven help you if you cripple Lois Lane.

Under construction

 

Posted

Ok guys I had sent this to Synapse and I got a response back.

They are going to sit down and have a discussion about TANKERS

Quote:
  • The Tanker's defense stats can be matched by a properly slotted Scrapper or Brute - but the Tanker can not approach the Scrapper or Brute in damage. -- The Tanker's resistance stat can be matched by a buffed Brute a buffed Tanker cannot match a Brute's damage.

    This is a problem because in end game content, IO's are prevalent. This allows Scrappers and Brutes to match Tanker's defense (45%) with smart IO slotting. On top of this, in end game Incarnate content or teams with lots of buffers, nearly ALL classes hit these defensive stats. Brutes hit the Tanker's resistance stats through powers like Incarnate Barrier, T9's, and or buffs from Controllers, Defenders, MM, Corruptors. A League team will have many buffers.

    There are two possible solutions to this:

    1) Buff Tanker's defensive/resistance caps. Personally, I think its too late in the game's lifespan for this. The game is balanced around having a minimum to-hit of 5% and increasing the resistance cap beyond 90% would not help a Tanker shine more due to unresistable damage (More on this in a bit).

    2) Increase Tanker's maximum damage potential. Bruising helps but I think its not enough. The other possibilities would be increasing their damage mod, raising the damage think, and or introducing a new mechanic.

    I think raising the damage cap would be the best option because it gives them potential that can only be reached via inspirations or teams.

  • Adding another Tanker to the team is not beneficial.

    In the early to mid levels, a group will not be fighting more enemies at a time (Unless its a really bad pull) then the Tanker can take control of before hitting the aggro cap. In the end game, once again rarely do we see a situation where multiple Tanks are needed. (Such as so many enemies that more Tankers are required to tank them or multiple AV's.)

    Regarding the end game, this is also a problem because once again everyone in a League is buffed and a Brute will be matching Tanker defensive levels and resistance levels with other ATs reaching the same defensive levels.

    Another problem is Bruising does not stack between Tankers.

    Ultimately, the problem is why add a Tanker when you could add another of any other class? The other melees bring more damage, the range bring more damage, and other classes bring more debuffs and buffs that stack.

    The Solution:

    Allow bruising to stack between Tankers.

    Increase Tankers damage caps allowing them to deal more damage.

  • The Tanker is too specialized in its role

    The problem here could be illustrated like this:

    Imagine if two AT's both were designed for damage. One of the AT's did 25% more damage (Like a Tanker's 25% more resistance) then the other. However, when capped they both have the exact same damage potential. However, the AT that does 25% less damage has nearly 2.5 times the defensive capability.

    Another problem to being too specialized is there isn't a need for it:

    1) The Tanker has an aggro cap. There is nothing at aggro cap that a Tanker can tank that an equally built Brute (And possibly Scrapper) couldn't tank.

    2) A lot of the damage dealt end game is unresistable, by HP percentage, or auto-hit. The problem here is that despite having 25% more defense/resistance the Tanker doesn't really shine. Even having more hitpoitns does not help when an ability deals damage for a percentage not a numerical value.

    Possible Solutions:

    1) Raise Tanker's aggro cap. By raising the Tanker's aggro cap, he could take advantage of his extra hitpoints, defense, and resistance by maintaining more control of enemies.

    2) Allow the tanker to resist unresistable damage.

    3) Or as I suggested above allow them to have the potential to deal more damage.

************

Anyways, I hope this isn't too long and outlines some of the problems.

I also came up with a possible mechanical idea for improving damage as well:

Quote:
Regarding damage, an idea popped into my head that could make Tankers be different then the other melee ATs, have higher damage, and give some interesting mechanics.

I thought about when you build a Brute or a Scrapper defensively, you always try and take as many defensive (The actual defense, not resist) powers as possible (CJ, Hover, Maneuvers, etc). You also build your IO's around this method.

What if Tankers got an ability that really makes them out to be the "powerful" comic book heroes they are suppose to be? I mean their initial attack hits so hard it causes the target to bruise.

Here is how it would work:

Every attack power the Tanker uses invokes a cooldown to that specific power. When its not on cooldown, that power hits for (Tossing out a number, this could change) *TWICE* the *BASE* damage.

Upon hitting for that, that power gets a cooldown in addition to its normal cooldown time. If the power is used again, it hits for .8 (Tanker modifier) damage until the bonus damage is off of cooldown.

Since each individual power has its own cooldown, this encourages the Tanker to take lots of attacks and potentially slot them. Thus, on one hand, a tanker could come up with some interesting builds that could sacrifice some defensive abilities for damage by taking more attacks.

Here's some examples of how it could work (I am using numbers to illustrate the point but these aren't set in stone)

A Super Strength Tanker has 4 attacks:

Jab, Punch, Haymaker, KO Blow. -- For simplicity lets say they do, 25, 50, 75, and 100 damage unslotted.

The Tanker Jabs the target for 25+25 bonus damage, Jab has a 4 second cooldown lets say. The bonus damage goes on cooldown for 15 seconds.

He punches the target doing 50 + 50, it has a 8 second cooldown plus 20 second cooldown bonus damage.

He jabs the target again for 25 damage (No bonus) still 10 seconds left on bonus damage cooldown for this power.

He KO Blows the target, 100 + 100 bonus damage, 25 second cooldown, and a 35 second bonus damage.

The Tanker then gets 100% damage buff, and Haymakers a target for 75 + 75 Bonus damage + 150 from the damage buff, Haymaker goes on a 12 second cooldown with a 18 second bonus damage cooldown.

The bonus damage cooldowns are uneffected by recharge modifiers hence it encourages to take a lot of different attacks.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rangle M. Down View Post
Did you know that, with the exception of Energy Melee, all the tier 1 attacks do the HIGHEST ST DPS in each set? This is before bruising is applied.
That's swell, but I tend to look at damage per animation when looking at attack chains.

If you're looking at one attack in a vacuum, the recharge of the power matters. When you're chaining multiple attacks, the damage the attack does versus the time it takes to cast it and fire the next attack seems more important to me. You put your best DPAn attacks at the front of the chain and then always use the best DPAn attack that's up. Of course, Bruising makes that more complex. You lead with your T1, then your best DPAn attacks until you need to refresh Bruising.


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Posted

Have you done the math to figure out exactly how much of a survivability advantage tankers have over scrappers? I have. I'm leaving brutes out of it for the time being, just to keep it simple, and I'm using round numbers instead of actual comparisons between powers to A) make the math easier on me, and B) make the math more easily understood.

Given identical circumstances, say fighting an enemy that makes a mockery of defense (like a Quarts buffed DE for example, just to show that they DO exist), the following scenario will happen:

Assuming both ATs are at their respective caps, and are running the same powerset combination (so the powers can be more easily compared).

Okay, say the scrapper and tank are both using an attack that deals 100 damage. The tank's damage scalar of .8 will make that 80 damage, while the scrapper' scalar of 1.125 will make his damage 112.5.

Multiply that by their respective damage caps and you have:

Tank: 80 x 400% = 320 damage that attack will do at the cap, 384 with Bruising.
Scrapper: 112.5 x 500% = 563 damage that attack will do at the cap.

Fighting an enemy with 10,000 HP, it will take the tank 27 attacks to kill it if you count Bruising, while the scrapper needs only 18 (brutes need the same amount as scrappers at their damage cap). With that many attacks, odds are one of them will be a critical for the scrapper, reducing the effective number of attacks to 17.

Now, for the survivability difference.

A tank's HP cap is 3534, and their resistance cap is 90%.
A scrapper's HP cap is 2409., and their resistance cap is 75%

Now, if the enemy that both ATs are fighting deals 1,000 damage with each attack, the respective resistances will work out to the tank taking 100 points of damage with each hit, and the scrapper taking 250.

Now, with the respective HP caps, it will take that enemy 36 hits to drop the tank, while the scrapper can only take 10 before it's dead.

Why is that a big deal? Because the scrapper needs 17 attacks to win the fight, while the tank needs 27. The scrapper requires more hits to win than it can take, while the tank can take more hits than it needs to win.

End result: In identical circumstances at the caps that Johnny keeps going on about, the tank will win that fight while the scrapper will die.

For the percentage minded:

If you take the scrappers survivability in that situation as the baseline, the tank will have 360% of that amount, for an advantage of 260%.

Conversely, the scrapper needs 17 hits to win to the tank's 27. That works out to just over a 50% advantage in the scrapper's favor. (it's exactly 50% if you remove Criticals)

Just for the comparison, that is a 260% survivability advantage enjoyed by the tank, while the scrapper only has a 50% damage advantage

Now, if you were to increase the tanker's damage cap by 100% (to the same value as a scrapper's) and change nothing else, the tanker's attack would then deal 480 damage per hit (counting Bruising) and it would require 21 attacks to win the aforementioned fight, reducing the scrapper's damage advantage from 50% to 30%. (or in the neighborhood, my math is a little fuzzy on the exact formula I need to use to figure it out, maybe someone better at math than me can plug in the correct percentage)

Now, the tank already survives 260% better than the scrapper, while the scrapper in return does 50% more damage.

Would you consider it "fair and balanced" if the scrapper's damage advantage were reduced from 50% while not changing the tank's 260% survivability advantage one iota?

I wouldn't. If tanks want to reduce that 50% damage advantage scrappers have over them, they better be prepared to give up some of that monstrous 260% survivability advantage they have.

Now, I used a bunch of round numbers to make the math easier to compute and understand, but my percentages should be pretty close to accurate. Since I see that Arcanaville has popped into the thread, maybe she could do me the favor of checking my math for accuracy?

Quote:
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.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane View Post
You talk of the 'intent' of the AT and its role, The intent is clear from that very old post. Tankers are supposed to deal powerful damage and better reflect their comic counterparts. You find me a post or original development document that says otherwise.
CoH dev diary 3

Quote:
So, I began thinking of heroes in comic books and on the silver screen. I thought about the types of combinations that seemed to fit at least the majority of heroes that I could imagine. They were:

Melee and Defense
Melee and Ranged
Ranged and Buff/Debuff
Crowd Control and Buff/Debuff

Then, I opened up the floor for anyone to imagine their hero - just from a background point of view. Could this rather simple system capture the heroes that the Cryptic staff had always wanted to play? We found that yup, it succeeded on that level.

We tweaked it a little bit though - we decided to break down the combinations into a primary and a secondary role. In particular, we found that melee heroes came in two particular flavors - the big, strong type that could absorb enormous amounts of damage, and the master fighter type. So, we created two combinations, one where Defense was primary, the other where Melee was primary.

...

Because of this, I decided to name the Archetypes with terms that pretty much described what they did. I avoided flashy, heroic names in favor of evocative ones.

Scrapper - a hand-to-hand specialist (Primary Power - Melee, Secondary - Defense)
Tanker - could resist damage (Primary Power - Defense, Secondary - Melee)
Blaster - does tons of damage (Primary Power - Ranged, Secondary - Melee)
Defender - helps protect other teammates (Primary Power - Buff/Debuff, Secondary - Ranged
Controller - can affect AI behavior (Primary Power - Crowd Control, Secondary - Buff/Debuff).
Jack's statements from those dev diaries are a lot more trustworthy than other statements, because they were statements he made at the time of development. His opinions of what things should be became more, shall we say fluid over time.

However, at the beginning of time only *one* powerset combination got the reverse treatment, and that was the Melee/Defense one. And it was because Jack felt there was a difference between hitting hard and absorbing a lot of damage. If he didn't, we'd have only one Melee/Defense class, and it would have been Scrappers.

Tankers only exist *because* of Jack's belief that there was a distinction between a class that was capable of absorbing more damage but did less damage than the class that did more melee damage but was capable of absorbing less damage.

[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
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Posted

See, now you're changing your argument to suit yourself. You've always used ST DPS as part of your "reasoning" why bruising "doesn't count", now you're changing it to DPA... lulz.

So you must be a big fan of Energy Melee, War Mace, and Ice Melee as they've got some of the biggest DPA attacks outside of Super Strength's KB.

Throwing darts at the board to see if something sticks.....

Come show your resolve and fight my brute!
Tanks: Gauntlet, the streak breaker and you!
Quote:
Originally Posted by PapaSlade
Rangle's right....this is fun.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimus View Post
Imagine if two AT's both were designed for damage.
I don't have to imagine that. All fourteen archetypes are designed to deal substantial damage. And they keep dealing ever more damage over time. Except one.

[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect View Post
Just for the comparison, that is a 260% survivability advantage enjoyed by the tank, while the scrapper only has a 50% damage advantage
I don't care if your numbers are correct or not. 260% more theoretical survivability does not translate to "dies 260% more often".

I asked this before:

Of all the scenarios in the game, and that includes everything from fighting green con enemies to +4x8, what percentage exists that a Tanker can survive that a comparable Scrapper or Brute can not? 5%? 20%?

My guess is the number is lower rather than higher since the devs have said Scrapper and Brutes solo better.

Once you are above the immortality line, more survivability than that doesn't matter. And Scrappers and Brutes are well above the immortality line in far more than 50% of the content of the game that Tankers can also survive.

If every one of those situations, even in the ones that aren't even going to remotely threaten a Scrapper, they retain their damage advantage while the Tanker doesn't get anything more from superfluous survivability.



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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane View Post
I don't care if your numbers are correct or not. 260% more theoretical survivability does not translate to "dies 260% more often".

I asked this before:

Of all the scenarios in the game, and that includes everything from fighting green con enemies to +4x8, what percentage exists that a Tanker can survive that a comparable Scrapper or Brute can not? 5%? 20%?

My guess is the number is lower rather than higher since the devs have said Scrapper and Brutes solo better.

Once you are above the immortality line, more survivability than that doesn't matter. And Scrappers and Brutes are well above the immortality line in far more than 50% of the content of the game that Tankers can also survive.

If every one of those situations, even in the ones that aren't even going to remotely threaten a Scrapper, they retain their damage advantage while the Tanker doesn't get anything more from superfluous survivability.
So, with your stance here firmly stated, would you accept a reduction in tanker survivability in return for more damage?

Quote:
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.

 

Posted

Not sure you guys missed it but I said Synapse said they are going to have a meeting regarding Tankers.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rangle M. Down View Post
See, now you're changing your argument to suit yourself. You've always used ST DPS as part of your "reasoning" why bruising "doesn't count", now you're changing it to DPA
You're confusing terminology.

DPS in terms of damage output per second: A measure of damage output over time. Damage per minute is probably a better yardstick in this game in most cases.

DPS in Mids: The damage an attack does versus it's cycle time. Not the same thing.

You said: "So I just poked my nose into Mids and did a powerset comparison between all the tank secondaries, specifically looking at base DPS numbers. Did you know that, with the exception of Energy Melee, all the tier 1 attacks do the HIGHEST ST DPS in each set?" That may be true, but Mid's doesn't calculate its "DPS" in useful terms for attack chains.

DPAn in Mids: AKA Damage per Animation. Better for determining your true damage output over time, IMO.



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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimus View Post
Not sure you guys missed it but I said Synapse said they are going to have a meeting regarding Tankers.
I saw it.

I'll be surprised if their conclusions differ greatly from mine.

I'll be even MORE surprised if they decide scrappers and brutes reaching comparable survivability with extensive use of IOs justifies tanks getting a buff to damage potential that is effective with just SOs.

If they DO decide that it pretty firmly puts a nail in the coffin of the notion of the game being balanced around SOs.

I'd hate to be the guy who gets to tell the free and premium players they have to become VIPs before they get to play a balanced game.

Quote:
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.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimus View Post
Not sure you guys missed it but I said Synapse said they are going to have a meeting regarding Tankers.
Oh snap.

"We came to a decision at the meeting. We're tired of dealing with Tankers so we're shipping them off to Aion. Your wings arrive next month."



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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane View Post
Oh snap.

"We came to a decision at the meeting. We're tired of dealing with Tankers so we're shipping them off to Aion. Your wings arrive next month."
You still haven't answered my question.

Since you keep saying that tanker's survivability advantage is irrelevant, would you accept a reduction in tanker survivability -or- a buff to scrapper survivability in return for more damage potential on tanks?

Quote:
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.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimus View Post
Not sure you guys missed it but I said Synapse said they are going to have a meeting regarding Tankers.
You may want to point out what part of the quoted text in your post is from Synapse, because it looks you just quoted what you sent him?


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect View Post
I saw it.

I'll be surprised if their conclusions differ greatly from mine.

I'll be even MORE surprised if they decide scrappers and brutes reaching comparable survivability with extensive use of IOs justifies tanks getting a buff to damage potential that is effective with just SOs.

If they DO decide that it pretty firmly puts a nail in the coffin of the notion of the game being balanced around SOs.

I'd hate to be the guy who gets to tell the free and premium players they have to become VIPs before they get to play a balanced game.
No offense to premium or frees but the developers have stated themselves the majority of their income is from VIP players. You shouldn't balance a game around the players that contribute the least to the game.

On top of that, an IO license is only 2 or dollars a month. Not to mention Frees and Premium are already inferior once they hit 50 since Incarnates come into play.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane View Post
You may want to point out what part of the quoted text in your post is from Synapse, because it looks you just quoted what you sent him?


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Right I didn't quote what he said because its against the forum rules I believe. However, he did reply that he would have a meeting regarding them.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimus View Post
Regarding damage, an idea popped into my head that could make Tankers be different then the other melee ATs, have higher damage, and give some interesting mechanics.

I thought about when you build a Brute or a Scrapper defensively, you always try and take as many defensive (The actual defense, not resist) powers as possible (CJ, Hover, Maneuvers, etc). You also build your IO's around this method.

What if Tankers got an ability that really makes them out to be the "powerful" comic book heroes they are suppose to be? I mean their initial attack hits so hard it causes the target to bruise.

Here is how it would work:

Every attack power the Tanker uses invokes a cooldown to that specific power. When its not on cooldown, that power hits for (Tossing out a number, this could change) *TWICE* the *BASE* damage.

Upon hitting for that, that power gets a cooldown in addition to its normal cooldown time. If the power is used again, it hits for .8 (Tanker modifier) damage until the bonus damage is off of cooldown.

Since each individual power has its own cooldown, this encourages the Tanker to take lots of attacks and potentially slot them. Thus, on one hand, a tanker could come up with some interesting builds that could sacrifice some defensive abilities for damage by taking more attacks.

Here's some examples of how it could work (I am using numbers to illustrate the point but these aren't set in stone)

A Super Strength Tanker has 4 attacks:

Jab, Punch, Haymaker, KO Blow. -- For simplicity lets say they do, 25, 50, 75, and 100 damage unslotted.

The Tanker Jabs the target for 25+25 bonus damage, Jab has a 4 second cooldown lets say. The bonus damage goes on cooldown for 15 seconds.

He punches the target doing 50 + 50, it has a 8 second cooldown plus 20 second cooldown bonus damage.

He jabs the target again for 25 damage (No bonus) still 10 seconds left on bonus damage cooldown for this power.

He KO Blows the target, 100 + 100 bonus damage, 25 second cooldown, and a 35 second bonus damage.

The Tanker then gets 100% damage buff, and Haymakers a target for 75 + 75 Bonus damage + 150 from the damage buff, Haymaker goes on a 12 second cooldown with a 18 second bonus damage cooldown.

The bonus damage cooldowns are uneffected by recharge modifiers hence it encourages to take a lot of different attacks.
That's an interesting idea, although I don't think it particularly encourages one to take more attacks vs specializing the ones you can min/max with.

I like the mindset of the idea though...make Tankers seek more attacks, even redundant ones, to improve their offense....

Just a thought to modify your idea:

-What if the attacks didn't do 2x damage from this bonus, but a static [X] amount of damage, like a proc? The proc could be tailored to the Tanker primary (Fire armor does Fire dmg, Ice armor does ice dmg, Willpower psi, SR lethal, Inv smashing...) or just a certain damage for all...

-Rather than the extra damage being tied to a timer of it's own, each attack has it's own timer...that is, you can use Brawl+Armor Strike > Tier1+Armor Strike > Tier9+Armor Strike > Flurry+Armor Strike > Brawl+Armor Strike > Tier 1...

-The mechanism would be like the defiance system in that, every time you use an attack, that attack's icon appears in your buff bar and that attack will not disappear until 2x (or whatever might work for balance) the *base* recharge of the attack. If Brawl recharges in 2sec (?) then it won't proc for extra damage until after 4sec after the first time you use it so if you use Brawl once, then again after 3sec, it basically refreshes that 'debuff' on you, doesn't proc for extra dmg and you restart that 4sec timer.

-This means, rather than wanting to stack up those attacks like Defiance, you want to *wait* for that attack to disappear before using that attack again. Now you can use more attacks so that you have a heightened span of attacks you can proc with or you can simply leave your smaller attacks to 'charge' and use them for proccing (although that'd probably lower your DPS) while chaining the bigger, slower attacks without a proc.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimus View Post
Right I didn't quote what he said because its against the forum rules I believe. However, he did reply that he would have a meeting regarding them.
*shrug*

Even if they came to a (favorable) conclusion and put it on a normal priority track, it'll be a year or so before we seen anything of it, if it doesn't get vetoed for one reason or another in the meantime.



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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultimus View Post
No offense to premium or frees but the developers have stated themselves the majority of their income is from VIP players. You shouldn't balance a game around the players that contribute the least to the game.

On top of that, an IO license is only 2 or dollars a month. Not to mention Frees and Premium are already inferior once they hit 50 since Incarnates come into play.
But the rest of the game and ATs ARE balanced around SOs, so if they suddenly start balancing one AT around IOs then you have to redo EVERY AT as well. And, unlike most of the forumites, not everyone who is a VIP goes hog wild with IO builds.

Throwing darts at the board to see if something sticks.....

Come show your resolve and fight my brute!
Tanks: Gauntlet, the streak breaker and you!
Quote:
Originally Posted by PapaSlade
Rangle's right....this is fun.

 

Posted

Buff tanker agro so that in the agro list it will go tanker > brute > scrapper.

Give them an agro boost if a brute or scrapper is on the team or sumin. 30% maybe for a brute and 15% for a scrapper?

Add an ability to link agro so that a tanker will get additional agro based on an allys dps.

Reduce damage they take on Itrials from things that are % based and reduce the same thing by half that amount for brutes.

And if not buffing their damage, let them at least help others with their abilities, a small def or res buff to team mates or a short temp buff for damage after a taunt.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect View Post
Okay, say the scrapper and tank are both using an attack that deals 100 damage. The tank's damage scalar of .8 will make that 80 damage, while the scrapper' scalar of 1.125 will make his damage 112.5.

Multiply that by their respective damage caps and you have:

Tank: 80 x 400% = 320 damage that attack will do at the cap, 384 with Bruising.
Scrapper: 112.5 x 500% = 563 damage that attack will do at the cap.

Fighting an enemy with 10,000 HP, it will take the tank 27 attacks to kill it if you count Bruising, while the scrapper needs only 18 (brutes need the same amount as scrappers at their damage cap). With that many attacks, odds are one of them will be a critical for the scrapper, reducing the effective number of attacks to 17.

Now, for the survivability difference.

A tank's HP cap is 3534, and their resistance cap is 90%.
A scrapper's HP cap is 2409., and their resistance cap is 75%

Now, if the enemy that both ATs are fighting deals 1,000 damage with each attack, the respective resistances will work out to the tank taking 100 points of damage with each hit, and the scrapper taking 250.

Now, with the respective HP caps, it will take that enemy 36 hits to drop the tank, while the scrapper can only take 10 before it's dead.

Why is that a big deal? Because the scrapper needs 17 attacks to win the fight, while the tank needs 27. The scrapper requires more hits to win than it can take, while the tank can take more hits than it needs to win.
Out of curiosity, can you run this same scenario for a brute?