Before the rumors start

Discussing saturation buffing is opening Pandora's box. Demanding the devs take action in situations where buffing easily sends people to the caps leads to only one place, and its not rebalancing the caps.

And as I keep telling people, warning them actually, you can ask the devs to look. You cannot control what they do once they see. To get what you want here, you have to convince the devs its worth looking at this situation, *and then* in rapid succession convince them that cap adjustments are the correct avenue to address them. Good luck with that.

I only said it was a suggestion worth listening to, not acting upon. Frankly, I don't know what the right answer will be, but keeping an open mind and considering all options is always ideal. In the end, I would hope it's the easiest solution that gets the best results is that one that is used.

If you're talking base damage, I don't think such a point exists.

Brutes are too well optimized for the game. They have high damage. They have enough survivability for most people. They have high potential for more of both. They are optimal for the game, as it is today. So, by definition, anything else would be sub optimal. Even if you bump up Tanker damage, anyone with half a brain will still look at them and say: "OK Brutes still have better damage. More damage is always better. Tankers still have superfluous survivability that doesn't even matter some of the time. Still no reason reason not to be a Brute."

I think what's ultimately needs to happen is two things:

1: Bring Tanker potential in line with Brutes. Give Brutes as little clear quantitative edge a possible. That means upping Tanker damage caps so their damage potential relative to Brutes is as good as Brute survival potential is to Tankers. So, if you're purely looking at the numbers, Brute vs Tanker is a coin toss; 10% better survivability potential or 10% better damage potential. In short, choosing Tanker versus Brutes should be down to concept, not numbers.

2: Play up the differences of the ATs via a fighting mechanic. Brutes are savage fighters like the Hulk. Fury fits Brutes. Fury defines Brutes. What can be done for Tankers that makes them play and fight differently, instead of being just slow, weak Brutes without Fury? Give enemies a reason for focusing their fire on the Tanker.

Tankers need better combat and a better image. If you pitch the truth of the matter to a random guy on the street, what is he going to pick: the powerful, unstoppable monster that smashes anything in his path, or a turtle that functions as a distraction above all else? A pimped out monster truck, or a dump truck? Slow and steady doesn't sell. Tankers are badly in need of an injection of 'badassery'. We all know what super hero the Tanker was intended to represent, even if some people loath to admit it. The fact that the premier signature NPC Tanker is/was a flying brick expy of him should clue you in. It's time Tankers lived up to their comic roots as powerhouses and not just decoys.



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No offense, Johnny, but this is part of the problem about attempting to discuss this with you. If I make any conession that tankers may need more damage, you automatically jump the gun and say they must match one of the best damage dealers in the game.

But I will give you the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it's past experience here clouding my view of this answer.

For balance sake, I think 85% of brute's damage works, but it must be uncompromising 85% in average. What do I mean by "uncompromising"? Well. truth be told, Bruise can boost your damage to about 80% of a Brute damage (running at 60% fury) in theory. It requires, though, for you to start offense with lower damage (since first attack is not buffed) and it forces you to use your worst attack constantly in an attack chain, effectively lowering your damage output for a slight net boost, that is only single target in nature.

Now there are many ways to boost damage, many that have never been thought off, some that have but never been implemented, etc etc. It may be possible to come up with a damage boost for tankers that is not consistent, one that makes Tankers better damage dealers during certain portion of a fight, but les effective in other parts of the fight. Not too unlike brutes (that, unless they are primary tank, start fights with low fury and slowly build it up.)

Look at corruptors, a potentially bad example but one none the less (they need work with damage too, in my opinion.) They have conditionally high damage later in a fight, not at the start of a fight, due to the way Scourge works. Imagine a tank with Scourge? Or potentially with nega-Scourge, a scourge mechanic that only triggers on enemies that are over 50% HP? This is flawed (for a few reasons) but it's an example of a way to bring an average of 85% brute damage that also grants the tanker special conditions to shine as damage dealers.

This is a heavy numeric game, but can be achieved.

For this to ever happen tanker survivability would need to be gutted down to Brute levels, keeping only the current HP advantage as the sole aspect that differentiates both AT's survivability. That's not going to happen, so it will remain a number choice.

Don't say I didn't provide fair warning. There is only one solution to the issue of saturation buffing creating imbalances at the caps. One. And once the devs decide its necessarily, it will no longer matter if its unpalatable.

Thematically I still like the concept of Bruising on tanks. I just think the devs could take the concept further. Add it in to all the attacks using a small percentage that stacks, not only from the original attacker, but from other tanks as well. Balancing it properly would help tanks do more damage, make them force multipliers even if in a limited sense, but without being considered OP or stepping on true debuffer's toes.

Originally Posted by PapaSlade Rangle's right....this is fun.

I smell what yer steppin' in.

When I say "the easiest solution with the best results," I mean the easiest to implement into the game. I would guess that the easiest way would probably be only touching one AT.

I just also believe in letting everyone say their piece and not wailing and gnashing teeth because you (generic) don't like what they said. But it's the forums, so I should just expect it.

Arcanaville is making a valid point. Last time the devs caved into the preasure of anyone mentioning "reaching the caps" (mainly defenders about tankers not needing them) we got GDN and ED.

If anyone complains hard enough about it not being fair that another AT can perform this way at x capped cap, they wont be fixing it by giving you the ability to do the same, but instead very likely by doing an accross-the-board mechanic change that makes 100% certain there will be no one reaching caps without a leage worth of buffing. (bit of hyperbole to add flavor.)

Besides, increasing tanker damage caps wont help most builds, it will mostly help Super Strenght with high recharge buffs and perhaps other sets that live in constant buffing like Shields, Dual Blades, etc.

You assume I'm actually remotely concerned about the consequences of promoting this topic. Actually, if I was in charge I would have done it years ago and taken the heat for it gladly. So by all means, continue.

And your recomendation back in the day is exactly the one thing is also floating in my mind.

Mind you, I am not sure I would be opposed to the idea in general, but the game has crossed a point in time where I think changing that would be too disruptive.

The only extremely disruptive "nerf" I'd LOVE to see in the game at this point in time is change every single primary/secondary defense buff in the game for Elusivity, retaining IOs and Pool powers as defense granting powers, oh and also Parry and clones.

The devs agree, which is why I would love for them to be convinced the players are equally perturbed about the side effects of not addressing the problem, so that cottage rule protection is significantly weakened.

Oh, I didn't assume that. I'm somewhat aware of your stance on things (I think). I know you're just telling people to be careful what they wish for.

I'm fine with swallowing the medicine I'm handed. I won't lie, I kicked and screamed when ED hit, but I'd like to think I'm a little wiser now. If a bitter pill is what we're handed, I'll just go with it. But I understand that not everyone is up for that.

Ok, assuming I think you mean what I think you mean (Diminishing Returns) I honestly don't see it working very well within the context of support sets as they currently exist. The problem you end up with is that it starts becoming necessary to start stacking not support sets but different support sets and that will get messy.

In a certain other MMO they had a similar issue. Buffs of the same type don't stack which for the most part works well. The problem is there was one particular buff that was only available to one class. The result? People wouldn't run content without having at least one member of that class along to provide the buff. The devs eventually realized this and did a major overhaul of buffs where each buff could be provided by multiple classes and every class had access to at least a couple of different buffs (often making them mutually exclusive to limit the number of buffs provided by a single character).

I think if a similar system was implemented here it would be necessary to do a MAJOR overhaul of the support sets to provide a similar distribution of buff types and handle the issue of support sets that are one-trick ponies (i.e. Forcefield) and deal with the issue of certain abilities being hard to find (i.e. Nature is the only support set with Absorb at the moment). Now I guess the devs could do it if they decided that it was necessary I just don't see them doing it.

A combination of diminishing stacking returns, plus buff stack limits. The latter actually exists now in a form 99.999% of the playerbase is unaware the devs could retroactively implement at any time (think: Hybrid).

Stack caps address superstacking the same buffs. DR addresses attempting to get around that by stacking different buffs. You can still stack different *kinds* of buffs, but that's not a problem: that's the reason different kinds of buffs exist.

Does it create problems? Sure. Are they worse than what we have now? That's a purely subjective call. If we had them to begin with, asking for what we have now would be equally insane.


Necessary to get the results you want? Probably. Necessary in the absolute sense? Ask the PvPers.

I don't see stack limits having much impact without also adding some form of diminishing returns or getting really complex. For example stopping two Force Fielders from stacking their defense buffs doesn't really help if a Force Fielder can still stack with Cold Domination, Traps or Time Manipulation. It wouldn't solve the stacking buff issue, it would just create team composition elitism (sorry, we already have a FF, we need a Cold or Traps for Defense Buffs).

You could probably do it but I think it would need to be more exclusionary than simply like cannot stack with like. So (for example) Deflection Shield doesn't stack with Ice Shield but does stack with Force Field Generator and Force Field Generator doesn't stack with Farsight, Dispersion Bubble or Mind Link but does stack with Deflection Shield and Insulation Shield. So you can get one buff of each general "type" (in this case two single target shields and one AoE shield).

Well yeah what we have now is insane. However if we are positing an alternate reality where we had stacking limits from the start I don't think that the various buff/debuff sets would exist in the form that they do now. Either they would have been design differently or would have been changed significantly by now.

Fine, it would be necessary to avoid people leaving in droves. Adding in DR now without revamping the support sets (and to a lesser extent the armor sets and Destiny powers) would completely screw with the balance of the game. Frankly I just don't see it surviving that (*cough*PvP*cough*).

If DR was introduced and accompanied by a significant revamp of the Support sets then I could see it having a strong benefit to the game.

First, let me declare the thread officially derailed!

Now: this is not true. Right now, if you get... lets say a sonic defender and a force field defender.

(Made up numbers ahead)

The Sonic Defender may give you 25% resistance.
The Force Field defender may give you 12.5 defense (equivalent to 25% resist)

To determine the effectiveness granted to a naked player (a blaster?) you would measure it this way (no won't go into explaining why now):


1 - (1-TotalRes) * (1-TotalDef/45)
1 - (1-0.25) * (1-0.25) = 43.75% (you avoid this amount of damage)

If you had 2 sonic defenders, though, you just sum them together: 25% + 25% = 50% less damage.

Right now, you are encouraged heavily to overstack a single stat.

The method for "Diminished returns" Arcanaville recommended back in the day, would simply mean buffs of the same type don't get added, instead they first get multiplied in the above fashion. Basically, it would now be measured this way:

1 - (1-ResBuff1) * (1-ResBuff2) * (1-ResBuffN) * (1-DefBuff1/45) * (1-DefBuff2/45) * (1-DefBuffN/45)

This would make two sonic defenders buffs stack the same way defense stacks on top of resist, meaning two sonic defenders will now yield 43.75%

With diminishing returns, in this fashion, you end up with a more "fair" stacking that removes bias towards stacking the same type of stat. Suddenly its the same to add defense or resistance or whatever new sat the devs come up with in the future.


I would not stop there, though. Healing still would be extremely powerful. I recall recommending to Castle another mechanic that many be considered rather draconian by many (in fact people flamed me for even mentioning it the time I did so openly):

Un-healable damage. Every bit of damage you suffer, a small percentage will never be healed back. Think of Marvel Vs Capcom. In that game, every time a character gets hurt, a chunk of HP goes red, and a chunk is lost. If you swap characters the hurt character can heal back but only the red chunk of health. In the case of Wolverine I think he had a move that also allowed him to regenerate on screen within the same rules.

The mechanic prevents immortality via healing or regeneration. It also allows the devs to design content that is not necessarily insanely hard hitting. They can make certain content that will eventually kill any tank. This does not mean all tanks become paper, but instead that the content can be designed to kill them slowly. The alternative (now) is to make content that one or two shots any non-melee character.

I been told "this would make healers useless" but you always will want to "heal back" that red bar, else you simply die faster.

And off course: the entire thing refills to full HP as soon as combat is entirely halted, so it's not like you must retain this lost HP all over the mission (unless you decide not to take breaks ever, and thats another part of the point.) Breaks don't have to be long either, just breaks.

My proposal of the mechanic, though, was not for PvE (although it would be great in PvE) but for PvP where healing and burst damage are kings (even after the funky resist based healing diminishing return they implemented.)

I am getting my feet wet in game development, have been doing small casual games to gain experience, but eventually I will pursue my true ambition and make an RPG. At that point I may be revisiting all these concepts and apply them there (should they be relevant, after all it's all about context.)

With the approach I noted above, stacking limits are not that big of a deal (caps are there to keep that in check.) The stack caps are needed now because the system is not diminishing, so it must be quickly limited.

The big issue about this mechanic is that it would break complete game balance if it goes absolute. By absolute I mean: If my self powers start diminishing instead of adding up.

A potential solution would be to apply the diminishing by source groups.

Example:

Group1 = Buffs from my primary
Group2 = Buffs from my secondary
Group3 = Buffs from Pool1
Group4 = Buffs from Pool2
Group5 = Buffs from Pool3
Group6 = Buffs from Pool4
Group7 = Buffs from EpicPool
Group8 = Buffs from IO Set Bonuses

These all then get super-grouped by character source, so Group1 from Player1, Group1 from Player 2, etc.

This would at least retain current isolated balance, that means an invuln tank with no pool powers would be exactly as effective as he is now, but one with Tough and Weave would be slightly weaker than the same thing currently is.

FF is broken in many other ways and needs a fix. I have many ideas for them but Buff sets are not my forte and I don't like to toss numbers without understanding total relative performance.

But that aside, check my other post that I likely posted seconds before you hit submit. In my example, the FF would only lose the capability to stack Maneuver buffs on top of their shields.

Two things to keep in mind:

1) This also would apply to debuffs.
2) One trick pony Defender sets are just broken by design (but other than Force Fields, is there any other set that broken? Empath is the only set I can think of that has no debuffs at all, but it has regen, recovery, heals and Fortitude that I can remember off the top of my head.

As long as it's not Pandora's cake.



Cause that'd be a major buzzkill.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

The alternative which works equally well for the mitigators is to simply use variations of the duration equation for magnitude stacking of defense and resistance.

I.e. Damage = BaseDamage / (1 + NetResistanceBuff)

How exactly? Yes, you can limit the ability of debuffs to stack with each other but I don't really see how you could avoid debuffs stacking with buffs.

Time Manipulation is a good example. It combines a strong Defense Buff with a strong To Hit Debuff. Now assuming you DR'd the Defense Buff int he manner you discribed the To Hit debuff is still at full strnegth and, effectively, fully stacking with any Defense buffs you have.

Sonic and Trick Arrow are the other two that spring to mind. While neither of them are quite as much a one-trick pony as Force Field they both have issues which make them fall behind the other sets.

Trick Arrow suffers from being a pure-debuff set which lacks any strong team survival tools. Most of the good sets use buffs for survival and debuffs for damage. Trick Arrow is trying to use Debuffs for both and suffers because of it (it's a lot stronger on Controllers where it can stack its control with that of the Controller's primary). Diminishing Returns wouldn't directly hurt it but I think that its Jack of All Trades, Master of None approach will get hurt by the fact that the debuffs it does have will lose effectiveness since at least some of them will be stacking with debuffs from other players.

Sonic Resonance is slightly better than Force Field in that it does provide some resistance debuffs along with it's resistance buffs but the fact is most Defender sets can pump out decent resistance debuffs and provide a wider variety of other tools (it doesn't help that Sonic has 4 powers with very questionable design decisions).

Overall I think DR would leave the top support sets relatively unchanged (Traps, Cold, Time, Rad, Dark) while lessening the benefit of lower tier sets to teammates. The only set I see really benefiting is Thermal since it's Resistance buffs get stronger relatively speaking and it's other powers are unlikely to encounter as much DR as some sets.

Only if the DR system was written by idiots.