Super Strength Compared to Other Sets and Balance

I wrote this for another post but I just wanted to share. Someone was asking what I meant by as Super Strength gains more buffs it DPS potential compared to other sets begins to decrease and in some cases (like TW) significantly decreases.

Foremost, let me state at 50 your footstomp does not deal over 600 damage. It does 59.22 damage to an even con enemy at 50 with no smashing resistance. At damage cap that would be 7.75 X 59.22 = 458.955. This would decrease when fighting a +2 enemy (you stated 52) or still be decreased fighting a +1 assuming you are alpha shifted. You could deal that much assuming a 35% resistance debuff and that the enemy had 0 smashing damage to begin with. However, for simplicity sake I am not going to factor that in as I would have to do it for every equation although I will nod to resists and how they factor later on. You also stated ITF which means Cimerorans which do indeed have smashing resistance.

Additionally, you mentioned Fire Melee which can have more AOE potential then Footstomp. (Note: Potential) -- Fire Melee's AOE while it has less AOE radius deals more damage. It deals 64.64 damage upfront (Which is more damage then footstomp to begin with) followed by 80% chance of 4 ticks of 4.17 damage. 32.64 + 4 X 4.17 of this damage is fire damage which is less resisted then smashing. Moreover, it also has a cone which deals 56.72 damage with 4 ticks of 4.17 damage too. Depending the amount of recharge, (Especially if we are factoring in perma double stacked rage) Build Up can be up for nearly 33% of the time. Assuming you factor in one round of that under buildup followed by movement to the next spawn, it could almost have buildup up each spawn.

Here is where players tend to get narrowly focused and look at only Rage and double stacked Rage. At point A in time, yes rage is superior. (Or in this case, at damage buff A in time) However, if you look at how Super Strength factors as more and more buffs are factored in you see there is eventually a crossing point where damage becomes equal and then surpassed. Allow me to elaborate.

Imagine a X - Y chart. Super Strength would be graphed as a line that has a positive slope that increases and continues to increase. X could be the damage buff while Y would be the DPS potential. Super Strength starts very far along X because it gets an advantage of Rage. However, after that advantage point its slope of Y (Slope is represented by MX + b) is low. In layman terms, this means that for every percentage of damage added to Super Strength, its Y increases by only a small amount compared to other sets. In fact, its one of the smallest.

I am going to use the biggest outlier for Super Strength which is SS/FA/Soul which has the best possible chain of KOB > Gloom > Burn > Gloom > KOB. (For AOE the best chain would be something like FS > Dark Oblit > Burn, etc) and compare it to the other biggest outlier which is Titan Weapons.

TW and SS are tied in single target potential in pylon tests. I am not sure if this factored in -Res procs (Which if it didn't that would put TW slightly ahead) and while AOE DPS is harder to measure they are pretty much tied given TW has a 1 sec animating AOE and two very hard hitting cones).

Going back to our X - Y chart the lines for Super Strength and TW would be intersecting at Point A. However, for SS point A is a combination where X/Y where X is VERY high (given the extra 160% damage buff from double rage) and Y is lower. Though in this case Titan WEapon's Y = SS's Y.

Past this intersection, as you go down the X part TW's Y SIGNIFICANTLY increases due to every percentage of damage buff added significantly directly effects the amount of Y due to TW's slope being MUCH higher then Super Strength's. This means past this point, TW will begin dealing more and more damage then Super Strength. This is what I mean by how SS diminishes when more buffs are added.

Lets look at some not so great sets because you mentioned them:

Energy Melee (You didn't mention this but I would like to use it since so many people state it sucks) -- Energy Melee's best potential chain is ET > Gloom > Burn > ET. Knockout Blow actually suffers a 5 sec penalty due to having 10 range (Seismac Smash, Total Focus, Energy Transfer all have 20 second recharges compared to SS's KOB having 25).

The calculation here becomes more difficult because in the above chain you would have to factor build up into it and how often depending on the recharge. However, I do not want to bombard you with tons of numbers so I will explain this in layman charts with our chart again. NOTE: Energy Melee's AOE is fairly weak but I don't think trying to compare the weakest AOE set in the brute primary to anything is fair, thats something that needs fixing.

Going back to our chart, EM's chain actually deals more DPS then SS but with rage factored in SS's X is higher which puts it at a higher slope. However, since EM's Y is MUCH higher then SS's as EM's X increases its slope becomes larger and larger. At a certain point MUCH before the Brute damage cap they intersect. (I believe this point comes around 200% damage buff possibly 160%, this if factoring in max fury 200% for each set and double stacked rage). Past this point EM pulls away and begins dealing more and more damage until they both cap out which SS will hit first.

The same occurs for Stone Melee as the above with a few exceptions. Stone Melee's best possible chain is Seismac Smash > Gloom > Burn > Seismac Smash. Seismac Smash has an insane DPA and pulls ahead much sooner in the above scenario. While its AOE is less DPS due to a longer animation (But does have the same 15 foot AOE) it does gain a better AOE crowd control power. If all we are factoring in is simply damage then yes SS is superior in AOE. However, AOE crowd control does have merit otherwise Doms and Controllers would have no use. Is that a fair balance trade off? The developers seem to think so or the trade off isn't so imbalanced that it warrants a change quite yet.

Fire Melee even with its best chain does less then Super Strength's even when at the damage cap. Its AOE potential though is greater when factoring in the X - Y chart. However, Fire Melee gets an endurance bonus on all of its attacks. Fire Melee's chains typically cost a fraction of the endurance compared to other sets. An example would be Incinerate vs KOB Incinerate is literally 1/3 of the endurance cost of KOB. Players though tend to get narrowly focused ONLY on DPS because they look at extremes such as ALWAYS having 100% endurance and never running out. The truth is you are never always at full endurance and there are times you run out. If we are looking at balance in terms of ONLY DPS then Fire Melee is inferior to Super Strength. However, if we look at balance as several factors (Which is how the developers look at it) then Fire Melee is balanced because its attacks cost way less endurance.

If you have more questions, or still do not understand feel free to ask. I hope this explains and illustrates things better.

Ulimus,

This might have been better if you had taken the references out to whatever other post you were referring to. Without seeing the whole thread, this is really confusing.

Disclaimer: the following numbers ignore the post-GR sets (Kineticks, Titan Weapons, Staff, Street fighting)



Here is the issue: what keeps Super Strength "in check" is design defects of the set (that you may consider features today.) The average attack has poor DPA, and although the set has one excelent DPA attack in KOB, it suffers a 25% recharge time penalty.

Another thing keeping the set in check is that as strong as Foot Stomp is, it's just one AoE that happens to have a convenient larger than normal radius. Any set with just one AoE can be considered to suffer AoE damage output issues, (at minimum a melee set should have a BPAoE and a cone) however Rage makes sure that one PBAoE always counts basically for one and a half, making up the lack of a secondary AoE tool.

The problem with Rage and SS comes with external sources of AoE. These sources can be plenty. It may be your secondary (Fire>Burn or Shield Charge) or it may be epic pools. I have found the nastiest combo can come with SS/Fire/Mu Mastery (my current SS/Inv is also running Mu Mastery and it is, indeed, insane.)

Proliferating the set can also be a huge issue. For one porting the set to scrappers suffer another issue: they would be disproportionally stronger since for them Rage would be working at 100% damage buff, not 80%. That is on top of KOB's insane critical under perma rage.

This is off-topic, but I just want Spines ported to Brutes. At least then there will be something new to compare/argue about.

I think you guys found the context but it was from:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=293977

I was replying in regards to:

SS is really only considered strong because of the effect Rage has on non-SS powers such as Burn, Blazing Aura, and Gloom. Your "SS chain" consists of 4 attacks, 3 of which are non-SS (Gloom/Burn/Gloom).

TW's successes on pylons have come primarily from the primary itself (though perhaps some have run TW/Fire and used Burn, and some have run TW/ELA and used lightning field). It's not really a fair comparison primary to primary.

My TW/SR Brute was getting really great pylon DPS due to stacking -RES, procs, and insane recharge (thank you 20% quickness) -- all from the primary itself. You couldn't do that with SS. You could do it with StJ and/or DB and maybe KM and, of course, if you are Night Widow using Shatter Armor.

You worry overmuch.

That graph makes Ice Melee look balanced, but it feels pretty weak to me; perhaps due to its lack of burst?

Thankfully, that situation would never happen.

The OP was a result of a thread I started in the S&I section regarding adjusting Super Strength.

I was looking for a way to reduce the overpoweredness of non-SS attacks buffed by Rage without gimping SS in the process.

The way I proposed was to reduce the amount of damage buff Rage gives, while simultaneously buffing the base damage of SS to keep it about where it currently is, but less dependent on Rage to be a good set (which will be a boon for /SS Tankers =, since they don't get Rage until level 28)

It would actually be a net buff to SS, as the higher base damage will translate to more damage once you hit the damage cap. It would also mean that SS would not be so dependant on Rage to be a decently damaging set. I've always found it distasteful that ONE power in a set is so absolutely vital that you are gimped if you skip it. I feel that way about all sets that have such a power.