Before the rumors start

But you gain a debuff on another power. So by that logic, it's also a debuff.

Starsman's point was that it's not always so cut and dry.

At least have the courage to name the people if you're going to say some people don't provide good input or have feedback you deem unworthy. Just remember, you invite the same criticism of yourself if you start bringing that kind of talk around. Don't worry though, I think you've made a couple of decent points.

You can see it in shades of gray or black and white...

Johnny Butane for one always brings up damage caps when this comes around and is convinced brutes run around hard capped out. Though he would rather see tanks buffed than brutes nerfed for the most part...(I feel odd we somewhat agreed on something...very odd)

Well, I'll agree that Johnny can dig his heels in the ground and insist on silly things sometimes (No offense, Jonny). But he's had a few nuggets of good input in this thread. Not always realistic, but considering his usual demeanor, I think he's done pretty well.

This is just history, does not change the current state of the game, but your statement is wrong.

During CoV beta, the devs attempted to clear that no villain AT was designed to be "tanker" in the traditional sense. The only AT they intended to work as a meat shield of any sort was Masterminds, via pet tanking.

Brutes have a version of tanker Gauntlet for a very simple reason: they are literally a copy and paste from the tanker AT. Once they went through the powers they just removed the AoE aspects without removing taunting capabilities. They justified it by the fact that brutes needed some aggro to generate furry, but that they didn’t have "the survivability" to actually tank. The higher HP was intended to compensate also for the fact that brutes would need to take damage to deal damage. Brutes were intended to compare (not be equivalent) to scrappers.

During GR beta, the devs fiddled with Brutes to nerf them. They tweaked rage generation (I attempted to convince Castle to make the formula less dependent on Aggro but I take it time constraints prevented that.) Resist caps were lowered a notch to 85%, and something else got buffed up... base damage? Cant remember exactly. At the end it was considered the change was not giving the result they wanted and it didn’t go live.

I found recently the damage cap got lowered in the next issue (I quit the game a week before GR launch so didn’t keep up.)

Point is: Brutes becoming tanks was never intended, and their damage dealing capabilities also have been considered too high. The fact that the devs fiddled with the AT in between GR and the next issue shows it was always a concern.

The game is 8 year olds now, though. The AT has worked as is for years. Other than minor changes, anything would be too disruptive to the most played villain AT. I would not be shocked if today it was considered the second most played AT.

Today tankers are paying the price of that mistake. Masterminds never suffered it because they did some considerable damage output with their pets, on top of having a buffing secondary set that secured a role in teams.

I repeat: that wont happen. But it's expected for that line of thought to show up in this kind of conversation, simply because that is the root of the problem. You can rest assured, no matter what anyone suggests, Brutes wont be nerfed for Tanker's sake. (If they get nerfed it's due to internatl AT issues, I have not heard anything on that line though.)

I agree completely with this!
I've been calling for a nerf to Brutes for reasons of balance as part of the discussion and I firmly believe that it's justified.....however do I honestly believe that they will nerf Brutes? No definately not!

On the subject of buffs for tanks, I've always considered Tanks more AoE centric, as such would either of these be possible?

Increase AoE target caps for Tanker versions of attacks?

Increase range/AoE?

Add splash damage to ST attacks for more AoE?

I'm assuming no, but just asking.

Possible? Yes. Plausible? That's a different story.


Giving Tankers some sort of AoE benefit would seem to fit, but how easily that is to do is a big question mark. Would it mean taking out a single-target attack out of sets? Would that mean that sets would lose higher damage ST-chains to gain this AoE ability? Would Endurance costs go up to compensate for potential splash damage? Target caps are likely out, but higher radii might not be.


Personally, I believe that the issue with Tankers lies in their DPE. They get significantly lower DPE than the other melee ATs with absolutely nothing to show for it. Unlike the difference between Defenders and Corruptors, where Defenders have lower damage values but (typically) have better debuff values on their attacks, Tankers share the same values with Scrappers, Stalkers, and Brutes on their debuffs. This means that while they are doing less damage, they get the same debuffs/effects from their attacks.

I would love it if Tanker attacks applied the secondary effect of single-target attacks to anything hit by Gauntlet. Though this would mean that the various secondaries would gain different benefits from this, for many sets I think it fits. Imagine a /KM Tanker applying the -Dmg debuff on 5 enemies instead of one. Or the KD from Stone/Battle Axe/War Mace/SS. /Fire doing slight AoE damage on each attack? Dark Melee applying the -ToHit? /Energy Melee with a bunch of basically AoE stuns (then even if you corpse-blast an enemy, the AoE could still go off at least)?

On the flip side of that would be something like Ice Melee, which has a dubious secondary effect anyways. Making that AoE wouldn't help much. /Elecs sleeps and end drains? Again, not quite as useful. Dual Blades has some ST attacks with no secondary effect at all. So it would be difficult to balance these sets, or it might make the Devs look into them a bit.

I just think that for most sets, it would thematically fit what a Tanker is doing. Sure, I hit you less hard than my friend here, but I hit you in a place that it's affecting your buddies as well! Imagine using Jawbreaker from /Mace and seeing five enemies go up into the air. Sure, you're only damaging one, but that would still be visually impressive.

But this is likely a pipe dream as well.

I realize that the endurance cost of toggles and whatnot is usually smaller than the over-time cost of attacks, but in the interest of fairness, it's worth pointing out that Tankers get a higher SPE (Survivability Per Endurance).

Right or wrong, it's always been the case that lower-damage ATs have lower DPE. The attack formula is based on attacks' damage scale, not on their nominal damage output.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

The concept was that the traditional tanker role would be split between brutes with aggro control and masterminds with high damage absorption capabilities (via pets).

This round-robin role splitting was an interesting idea, but in actual practice it didn't work the way the devs intended for any of the CoV archetypes (Blasters, for example, became split between Corruptors and Stalkers: corruptors were intended to be the ranged specialists and stalkers the burst melee damage specialists).

Agreed. However, usually the lower-damage AT gets something else in return. Look at the Blaster/Corruptor/Defender trio with their blast sets. Blasters do the highest damage, but have lower values on their effects (for the most part). Corruptors do middle damage, and have middle values on the debuffs. Defenders do the lowest damage, but have the highest values on the debuffs.

Now look at Stalkers, Scrappers, Brutes, and Tankers. It looks like I was wrong in some cases, and right in others. For some attack sets, Tankers actually have WORSE effects, some have the same, and some are better. It seems to be based on effect, too.

-Def and -ToHit seem to favor the higher-damaging ATs.

-Res and -Dmg seem to favor the lower-damaging ATs.

Status effects are the same across the board, for the most part.


-Res and -Dmg might be because these effects would be tied to the Res values of the AT, but that doesn't make much sense because the self buffing and target debuffing should be tied to different values. We may need to summon Arcanaville back to explain that. Anyone got one of those summoning stones?


But I do take your point on the Survivability-per-Endurance issue, but I still feel like the issue with Tankers is that they don't get much out of trading less damage per attack the way other AT exchanges do.

It hasn't always been the case that every archetype obeyed the same 1.0 dmg = 5.2 end formula. In the early days, there were archetype modifiers. In fact, I believe at the beginning of time Blasters had the best ratio, and the current ratio is close to their original one.

I don't think the rationale for setting them all identical was a valid one.

I'm not even sure the rationale for defensive toggles actually costing endurance even makes sense in the modern CoH, or even did at release. You have to take a step back and ask, for every game design element, what is its purpose. And toggles cost endurance today for what appears to be three reasons:

1. They are stronger than passives, so they should cost endurance
2. So if you run out of endurance you detoggle
3. So you can decide whether to run expensive toggles or not

All three reasons actually seem to have feet of clay: they don't make sense to be quantitatively or in a game design sense. We design defensive powersets to function as a whole. There is no specific choice offered to the players to take passives which cost nothing or toggles which cost endurance. They get a set of some passives and some toggles, and once they pick a set they get no choice as to how many of each to get.

We have also outgrown the notion that players will toggle manage. We know they won't, and in fact we no longer design defensive sets assuming they will. Endurance costs function more as a separate threshold to achieve before being able to use the power. The only real common exception to this is offensive damage toggles which cost a ton and can be managed. Except on tankers of course, where its often the taunt aura.

And this game has never been properly designed to make endurance drain detoggling reasonable or logical. Because toggles are stronger numerically *and* defense and resistance stack in an accelerating manner, detoggling is almost always a catastrophic event. Its not just a case of detoggling being just another combat event the player has to deal with: the probability of dying due to drain-induced detoggling is extremely high. Its nearly a binary event, and balancing around binary events tends to be ineffective.

Of course, this is a highly involved discussion topic on its own.

Should toggles cost no endurance, then why even have them as toggle at all, unless they offer some undesirable statistic like Stealth or self-debuffing?

Yeah, I remember a lot of talk early on about Defenders having their ratio adjusted to match Blasters'. Some took it a step further and demanded absolutely uniform DPE for all Archetypes, which at the time didn't make much sense to me, but I don't see any reason that DPE should be tied uniformly to the AT damage scalar either.

You make a lot of good points about toggle powers. And Starsman is obviously correct about "SPE." I wouldn't oppose a boost to Tanker DPE; hell, my INV/SS would be freaking ecstatic -- but I don't think it's quite fair to say that Tankers' DPE disadvantage (as compared to Brutes) is entirely unwarranted either.

Hypothetically, if (defensive) toggle powers were changed to have no endurance cost, then how much do you think the devs would have to tweak attack costs to compensate? Hm, you're probably right; maybe that is too expansive a question for this thread. Interesting thought though, for sure.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Looking at it in terms of cost is the problem. The difference between toggles and passives is that toggles can be turned off. But that can happen in two ways. The player can turn them off, and they can be detoggled by enemy action.

Question: do we design defensive sets on the presumption players will have random toggles turned off, or do we design them on the assumption their performance is balanced relative to the player turning everything on?

If you say we're balancing on the assumption the player turns everything on, and you *also* say we're going to give things costs that will force the player to choose what to run, you're on dangerous ground. You've just made your job a hundred times harder to balance things credibly. Fortunately, the players helped the devs out here. Most don't toggle manage.

Of theoretically greater importance is enemy detoggling. But for detoggling to be a viable in-game event the effects of detoggling must be controlled and within certain reasonable parameters. Its not because the vast majority of defensive strength in defensive sets is in the toggles. Detoggling is very close to taking your defensive set away completely. In fact, the devs have already started hedging detoggling: defensive toggles no longer genuinely detoggle on mez, they just suppress most - but not even all - of their effects.

How much defensive power should we allow critters to strip away through the act of detoggling. 50%? 25%? 10%? Its vastly more than that, because of the need for toggles to be stronger than passives, and then cost more.

Suppose we had a defensive set with just one passive and just one toggle. The passive offered 50% resistance to all. The toggle offered 15% resistance to all.

Crazy, right? That just doesn't make any sense. The passive is superior in every way: the player would be crazy to not take the passive over the toggle.

Except: we don't offer the player that choice exactly. Yes, the player will use their first power choice to take the passive. That's obvious. The question is what does the player do with their *second* power choice. They can choose to take the toggle to supplement their resistances, or not. They *don't* have the choice to take another passive and avoid the toggle.

In this game, some players will be running around with 50% res, and the rest with 65% res. A detoggle event will increase incoming damage by 50%, and decrease survivability down to the level of the former. The former is immune to detoggle events.

Now reverse those numbers. Some players will still be running around with 50% res - those who take the toggle - and some with 65% - those that take both. Theoretically some will have 15% - those that take only the passive - but we know that's not really going to happen and the powerset isn't balanced for that choice anyway: its exceptionally weak. Detoggling in the second case drops resistance from 65% to 15%: its a net increase in damage of 143%. It drops resistance from 50% to 0% in the first case, an increase in damage of 100%.

The choices offered here are qualitatively worse. You get the same strength for both versions of the set if you take everything. But detoggle events are easier to manage in the first version. And the options other than take everything are better in the first version. You can get a credible amount of protection with the passive-only choice. That's not true in the second version. But the toggle is still worth a lot in the first version: it increases survivable damage by 50%. In the second option the toggle-only choice is almost quixotic and the passive-only option is almost meaningless.

Once you start thinking about the passives as being the "base" strength of the set, and the toggles as being the "optional" part, the question of how strong they should each be and what they should cost has less to do with comparing them to each other, and more to do with seeing what each contributes to the powerset as a whole. Passives are always on. Toggles are not always on. That's the only important difference between the two, and its upon that mechanical distinction that the question of what each means to a defensive powerset should be determined. Comparing them to each other is like comparing power bolt to rain of fire.

That *was* true. Its not true any more because recovery is fungible. The moment the devs decided to ask themselves how much net recovery we should have, and then tried to give that to us (with global endurance cost reductions, and then inherent fitness) they made the question of managing endurance costs *of toggles specifically* basically moot, because toggle costs are constant and roughly similar across powersets.

Also, the devs made a design move that may look on the surface to support this design theory but actually shatters it. Willpower was originally conceived to be a passive-only set. That idea was eventually vetoed because of objections about a defensive set actually having to have toggles and actually supporting the passive/toggle pseudo-balance.

But when Castle was allowed to add quick recovery to the set with the specific intent of directly offsetting the cost of the toggles the fact that decision was supported completely destroys the idea of toggles being an endurance management metagame. Because Castle was allowed to eliminate the metagame in one way but not the other. And that means the meta game itself is not important. What was important was a stand-alone principle about the strength and cost relationship between toggles and passives.

Note: I'm specifically talking about primary and secondary defensive set toggles. Those are the toggles designed within a set intended for the entire set to have a particular set strength. This does not include things like power pool toggles which are optional toggles open to all players and have not been balanced as part of a defensive set. Whether Acrobatics or Weave should have endurance costs is a completely separate question (and the answer is yes, they should).

Defensive toggles and clicks are fundamentally different from a game design perspective because in City of Heroes, defensive toggles are up all the time: their endurance costs are fixed and can be normalized against. Clicks have variable usage and can more properly be said to scale effectiveness and endurance cost based on usage. You cannot use a toggle more and get more benefit at higher endurance cost: that capability is incompatible with toggle mechanics short of toggle management, which as I said is for defensive toggles no longer a relevant balancing context.

I'm sorry, I see that now, and you're right.

I should have said this thread is still rolling because some people just insist on Crying Nerf!

I can report that a Mastermind's personal attacks are grossly unbalanced on a End-per-Activation scale. Except for Demons. I'm not even considering DPE.

Regarding Tanker powers, I think the most useful areas for exploration are Area-of-Effect (not damage or number of targets, just Area/Radius/Range) and Taunt effectiveness.

On the other hand, I'm a bit disturbed by the idea of SS Tankers that could/would/should choose the Fighting Pool, instead of their Primary. I question the... correctness of Primaries that can be (apparently Easily) out-performed by Pool Powers.

Be Well!
Fireheart

First of all, I do agree with the general concept, but in your post I see no answer to the question: "Why should toggles still be toggles" if they cost no endurance?

You mention that they can be de-toggled by enemies. But currently, the only way for that to happen is by forcing you out of endurance. There used to be toggle dropping powers in PvP and the player base hated them. Few of those powers somehow leaked into critters and it was a huge uproar.

Unless you add a new mechanic, why would an endurance free toggle, that can't be turned off by Holds, exist as a toggle and not as a passive? So you can punish people that forget to turn them off the first time they train or after resurrecting?

Another concern, one I am not sure has been measured in any way: the first time I played a blaster years ago, after exclusively playing melee characters, I found I was able to deal more damage (at least at lower levels) not due to actual damage capabilities of the AT but because my entire endurance pool was focused towards damage.

Melee AT toggle's endurance burden also serves as an offensive limiter. Removing this endurance cost may in unexpected ways boost all melee damage by removing said burden. I think you said this yourself: "everyone has endurance problems", even the most happy players are actually limited by endurance at one point or another.

So two questions:
Why should toggles not then simply be turned to passives.
How would you address or justify the sudden offensive endurance budget Melee ATs would get?

Side question:
I agree pools should still cost endurance. I would argue all taunt/debuff/stealth and damage toggles should also cost endurance.
But what about Epic powers for ATs like blasters? Should a Blaster's Ancillary Shield cost endurance? What about their new sustenance toggles? How would they be justified to cost no end while the click sustenance powers cost endurance?

Masterminds have horrible damage modifiers, so they have very bad damage/endurance ratio, but on top of that I think every single power, regardless of source, cost more endurance for Masterminds due to a mastermind endurance modifier.

You may be able to argue about their damage being too low, but then you may also have to ask if their pet damage is too high, that is, after all, the reason for their low personal damage modifiers.

I always found it was a bit counter productive since other than secondary effect, the mastermind ended being discouraged to take part of the fight. He is better off standing back buffing the pets while they do the damage, an odd practice to encourage.

I assume you meant secondary since SS is a tanker secondary.

The only power that has an issue is Bruise but, at least for tankers, it happens to do something Fighting can't: land a 20% damage resistance debuff. I would never use any pool power over that (although before that patch I used Air Superiority and Jab was parked as an IO donkey.

Stop right there. Currently, toggles cost endurance. Currently, the game isn't designed around zero-cost toggles. But there's also no need for them to cost material end either. They could all cost 0.03 eps and still be detoggled by drain.

If melee had the right endurance burden before, didn't inherent fitness then cause that to break? Did it coincidentally fix a problem that just happened to be fixable with inherent fitness?

What if attacks just cost 5.5 end per scale instead of 5.2? 5.2 is a completely arbitrary number.

And there are other ways to differentiate archetypes in terms of their endurance management. Like, for example, giving all blasters almost unlimited endurance. Which is what they are going to get in I24 as part of Sustain.

Different defensive sets could still cost different amounts of endurance: the two biggest drains on endurance don't come from defensive toggles, they come from offensive damage auras and clicks. Dark Armor has below average defensive toggle costs. But its still considered a very high endurance costing set, for the obvious reason that Dark Regen costs a ton. Clicks are better endurance throttles, because as I said previously clicks actually present a real choice: each time you use me I will cost end, and deliver a certain benefit. That choice is blurry, if it exists at all, for defensive toggles.

You know something, the idea of toggles not being effected by endurance drain is a serious game changing idea. I personally have felt for a long time, that I had been one of a few that had pondered the idea of this. I personally think melee survivability should not be tied to endurance, because even if we manage it, factors outside our control can instantly impact survivability and cause a death. I am not sure you are advocating endurance drain not detoggling or if you are advocating reducing their cost to zero and still making them detoggle from drain, but either way, the proposal is very intriguing and I am curious to hear what your idea is completely.

I agree with this, and I know Synapse actually told me on one occasion that he doesn't consider the use of endurance to be a balance factor for a powerset, they have a rough idea of what they want defensive sets to cost, in terms of endurance to run...but...I don't know that the devs couldn't be convinced to see the flip side of the coin either.

Thats why I did not stop there and continued to mention the toggle drop mechanic that was universally hated.

Not to mention, it would require nearly all content to be redesigned to somehow do a form detoggilng.

And yes, I can see a very low end cost also still detoggling, but it goes back to the comments about endurance cost entirely killing your survivability, would not that retain some of the issues you noted at first?


My point is more about blasters always having all their endurance pool dedicated to damage, while melee are forced to dedicate some of their endurance budget to toggles. Would you denny that removing endurance from toggles would also result in increased damage potential?

Again, I agree with the core of the idea, I have thought of making a case for it many times. But these two points always stop me because I have no answers that would explain why those are not problems.

As I said, I'm not even arguing about MM Damage, DPA, or DPE. I'm talking purely the Endurance penalty they take for attacking at all.

If a MM is intended to 'tank' for his minions, then he needs to output 'threat' and if there are no good tools for that in his Secondary, then he has to use those Primary attacks.

Quite right.

Air Superiority is a bit of an outlier, but in general, if Tier 2, 3, 4 powers are being out-performed by Pool powers, then perhaps there is something wrong with those powers. I would not argue that the whole Tanker AT needs to be revamped, in order to increase damage output - there are many upper-tier powers that are frankly awesome. However, being able to replace those early-tier powers with Pool attacks and actually Improve Performance... that's just not right.

Be Well!
Fireheart

I'm not a mind reader, but based on design I'd say that it's not the intent. Mastermind pets were specifically given an increased aggro modifier so that they would keep aggro even if the mastermind is being active. That was made before bodyguard mode though.