I24: Switch Boxing or Kick with Tough

If you could hold down a button and cue up four attacks to activate in a slightly faster period of time than it would take them to activate them by hand (having animations that flow from one attack to the next without having to return to the default position), would that count as attacks stacking?

Edited because what I'd said didn't quite make sense.

That's the crux of my problem with Fighting. It's essentially designed such that it offers defensive buffs I've already been insulted numerous times for not taking on my melee characters, locked behind a prerequisite that even the people delivering the insults admit to not wanting. As far as offering meta-game items that aren't part of your AT, I'd honestly rather restrict this to Epics, just because those are AT-specific and can be tailored to what the AT doesn't have a lot of already.

I guess a large part of my problem lies with Tough and Weave, themselves, since they're essentially becoming the thing everyone takes regardless of overall build, much like how Stamina was, and I'm yet again caught in a situation where I'm "supposed" to take them. They are, when you get right down to it, pretty much Epic pool shields. Consider yourself a Blaster and being offered an Epic shield. What possible reason would you have to NOT take it? That's kind of why it seems to me that those two powers have become "the no-brainers." You don't see everyone raving about "You HAVE to take Whirlwind!" or "So just take Group Fly. Problem solved." At least, I hope you don't...

Why I levvy complaints against fighting is partly because I don't see it adding a meaningful concept to the game and partly because I really dislike the nature of the pool itself. I hope that as we get more esoteric "origin" pools and gain a larger pool selection in general, that this drive will lessen, but to be told to build every one of my SR characters with Weave is just... Weird.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You seem to have a lot of serious baggage with other people that you've somehow flipped onto this set. You might want to take a step back.

Normally, my "baggage" with other people wouldn't matter. In the seven years before it went Inheremt, I took Stamina all of once and never let people's criticisms get to me. It made asking for advise functionally impossible, but that's still not a problem. The problem THIS time is that the people who are implicitly telling me this are the developers themselves, and how they're telling me this is via Incarnate to-hit percentages. Let me explain:

A SR Scrapper just through his own powers can achieve right around 30% defence from everything positional. That's by far not bad, but it's also by far not amazing. Under normal circumstances, it's playable to a very comfortable degree. However, Incarnate critters have a base to-hit value of 14% higher, which effectively reduces my defence down to 16^, and that IS bad. And the thing is... There is no solution to this that SR can offer. There is, however, the solution of taking Weave that just about everyone I've spoken to has given me, and this seems to be literally the only way to salvage SR outside of strong Inventions builds, which even to this day are too expensive for me. I have built a few, but mostly through donated parts.

My problem isn't with what people say. "I'm rubber you're glue" or "sticks and stones." Take a pick. It's what the people in charge do that starts to concern me, and that's not as easily brushed off unless I simply admit that I won't be making my SR characters into Incarnates. My problem is that the old game was much, much easier, meaning that I could mostly succeed on mediocre builds that don't bank on pool powers too much, but with every addition to it, this gets less and less true. "Hard" spawns peppered throughout content are becoming increasingly common, such as in Night Ward and the Incarnate game is harder than that still. As the pressure on my build increases, those "no-brainer" power picks start becoming a problem since they start becoming less of a choice.

I have a problem with Fighting because it's rarely taken with the means of implying fighting and much more commonly taken as a meta-game extra defence and resistance buff. That's not what Pools should represent, at least not in my opinion. And honestly, the concept of "a good fighter" is more something to go into an Epic for ATs that don't have entire powersets devoted to this. That's where "stuff your AT doesn't have" is best suited for. As for pools, I've always seen those as the place to get esoteric powers. It is for this reason I'm getting less and less critical of "sorcery" as a power pool despite it implying an origin to a set of powers. It really is something that has no other place to go, it isn't AT-breaking yet it applies to concept before it applies to AT, so that's the perfect fit for a Pool. Fighting... Not so much.

Basically, Fighting has become Fitness, is the thing.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

IIRC, the self-mods aren't as clear cut as that. Dominators, SoA, Tankers, Controllers & Masterminds get 15% Sm, Le resist from Tough. Then the next in line is Dominators strangely enough, then everyone but Blasters, then Blasters.

Defense is a bit different with Controllers and MMs getting moved to the 'everybody but Blasters' category.

If it helps Sam, I've always used it as a means to show my characters are even better fighters.

But then *shrug* what does it really matter? In RP or no RP, most people would ignore that idea.

I remember a colourful character I used to team with back in the day. He was pretty eager to power-game, so when he figured out Stamina is good, he tried to get me to take it. Me, being famously stubborn, argued that the Steel Rook is just a guy in power armour who doesn't need to be fit since the suit does all the physical activity. In fact, the Rook's original bio had the man crippled and paralysed. My acquaintance then argued that "Just say it's better batteries or something!" Logical, yes, but this brings up one of the major stumbling blocks I have with justifying "even better at X" powers:

Better than what? Let's sidetrack a bit and go with the concept of a paralysed man inside a suit of powered armour, who has better batteries. What am I comparing them against? What he had before? That's arbitrary, since I can say he has better batteries even without Stamina just by claiming his previous ones only had a life span of around an hour. Now that he has Stamina by virtue of everyone having it, has anything changed? Are all of my characters in-character more fit than they were? Does the Rook have better batteries? Because honestly... It's just an RP excuse to explain why I took a power.

Mind you, I don't mean to argue with you. What you say is completely valid and I'm seeing people comment in a similar fashion, so there's that. It's just that... To me, that sort of RP argument has simply never held any weight. "Even better at X" implies a sort of ordering of my characters based on who's how good at what, and the game will simply never bear that out. Without Inventions against Incarnate critters, my SR Scrapper will never perform better than my Invulnerability Scrapper even though the former is supposed to be stronger. Unless I intentionally gimp my characters, how good they are at what kind of comes down to what AT and powersets I picked more so than what I picked from them, so I can just as well claim one is a better fighter than the other without needing to have a power that, essentially, serves only to say that.

The Steel Rook from above tool Fly because I couldn't "pretend" he was able to fly if he had to walk everywhere anyway. That's not a question of how good he is at it, so much as it's a question that I see him able to fly on-screen. That's what that power is for. But the Rook's flight has always been problematic just because his power armour is quite heavy. By contrast, Inna, my blue alien girl possessed of the Power of Creation, is capable of flight just naturally to her species, and is supposed to be considerably better. There's no real way to express this, especially now that unenhanced Fly caps flight speed, but even before... What was I supposed to do? Enhance Inna's flight more? Or, more appropriately, enhance the Rook's flight less? Why. They can both fly, and "how well" is a matter of percentages, and a good story isn't built on percentages.

Basically, I don't disagree with you and I'm definitely not telling you you're wrong to take Fighting as a depiction of a character being even better at brawling than... Others in your roster? Other people's characters? I don't have a problem with that. It just doesn't seem meaningful to me, and to illustrate, let me ask the following question:

If Fighting became inherent and all of your characters just magically had it, would any of your concepts (concepts, NOT builds) suffer? Honest question.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Just take Hover on the one who couldn't fly fast? Slotted, you can sprint about in it fairly well without being anywhere near Fly speeds.

Probably not. But the same is true for Leadership, Medicine and Prescence too.

In terms of "Even better at X", the comparison (for me) is the character itself, if they hadn't spent the time learning it. They can choose, rather than developing new uses of their main powersets, to spend time learning to be even better fighters(e.g. like the X-Men or Ben Grim do).

That's kind of where the metagame takes precedence, though. Yes, I could use Hover and Afterburner... Probably, but even at its fastest, Hover is still slow and it takes a lot out of my build to make it faster. Taking Fly is a simple way to gain basic convenience.

That actually brings up a related question: Do you always take a travel power?

Because I always do. SOMETHING will always make sense for the character. Basically, if the character can't teleport or fly, he gets Super Jump because... Well, he's good at jumping. Now, Sam Tow - my namesake - is supposed to be by FAR the best at jumping of them all. Through a variety of technological and scientific means, he's able to perform ridiculous leaps from a standstill, such as reaching high-altitude aircraft from the ground without actually having the ability to fly. He's supposed to be a lot better than all my other characters combined... But the game doesn't really make that much difference, so all he used to do was take and slot Hurdle. Now that everyone has it... Meh. I'll stick to pretending. I'll never team two characters on my account together anyway.

It's almost never Super Speed, too, because the slow running animation just looks goofy with the high movement speed, but Prestige Power Surge fixes that almost entirely. Woah... Sidetrack!

And that's kind of been my beef with pools, to be honest. There are almost none of them that DON'T make sense for nearly all characters to have them. Fighting, Fitness... I wouldn't go as far as to say "leadership," though. Remember the Mass Effect 2 final level? At one point, you're asked to pick a leader for a "second team," and if you DON'T pick one whose history is that of strong leadership, you lose a crew-mate. Shockingly, I neglected that Samara had spent the last few hundred years working alone and so wouldn't make a great leader.

But let's say Teleportation. To me, it simply doesn't make sense for, say, my namesake - Samuel Tow - to be able to teleport. That ability is nothing like anything I've ever written for him. Similarly, Leadership isn't something I'd give him, for the simple fact that he's your typical emo loner, to make a grand concept embarrassingly simple. I could probably reshuffle some of his background to account for it, yeah, but I wouldn't want to. It just doesn't make sense for the guy.

What I'm saying is... There are pools that don't just make sense to be present in every character, not conceptually anyway. But for some... Yeah, I can't come up with a character for whom "fighting" wouldn't make sense. Yes, even the Steel Rook. Power armour and all that.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I always see the power pools as making you better than an average human being. Steel Rook's power armor doesn't get "tired" as fast as an average human would get tired right? Bam, there's your stamina. From that point of view the fitness pool wouldn't represent the paralyzed man's physical state but rather the abilities of the armor compared to the average human.

Thank you m'am, wasn't sure what I was missing but (clearly to me now) I wasn't looking broadly enough. =)

Actually, that's not exactly true. While that's one way to look at the numbers, and it works for certain kinds of analysis, in your case when it comes to the question of how much damage mitigation SR has against Incarnate critters from a gameplay perspective, that's not correct.

30% defense against 64% base tohit would be 46.9% damage mitigation. That's roughly comparable to 23.5% defense.

The difference in perspective is due to the fact that 64% tohit doesn't just make things more difficult for SR, it also makes things more difficult for everyone with or without defense. We normally gauge defensive mitigation relative to having no defense. We don't consider the fact that non-defense sets take (64/50=1.28) 28% more damage than normal against incarnate critters "a problem to solve" that's just a measure of the increase in difficulty for incarnate content. We then gauge defensive strength relative to that.

Why the devs decided to do this is because, in their opinion, defense is more valuable than resistance in the higher and end game relative to the lower game due to the increase in non-defensive debuffing. They are using increased tohit to counterbalance that with a shift in efficacy away from defense slightly and in effect towards resistance slightly. I'm not sure I fully agree with the magnitude of the shift or the solution, but it is true that high defense gains significant ground over other mitigation verses end game critters due to secondary effect avoidance.

They are also aware of the fact that in the end game, building towards higher amounts of defenses is far more common than in the lower game. While the devs have said in the past they do not directly design content to be balanced around invention builds, they do balance content against "the average player" and what that statistical average player does. If the average player has more defense in the end game due to pools or inventions, the devs will factor that into their design mentality when it comes to content.

This is something of a tangent, but, the animation cycles faster with higher movement speed bonus, such as from Super Speed, doesn't it?

WHOA! Spoiler warning, man.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

Nope, unless you count stealth as a travel power. I do use the Ninja Run/Beast Run where appropriate. I do usually mix and match with Travel powers, things like Hover/Teleport, Hover/Super Jump, Combat Jumping/Superspeed.

Similarly, Darkspeed is fast. So he has Quickness and Swift slotted with run speed enhancers, so that he preety much never slows down. Yes, it means that the Gravity Geysers always throw him off course (I had to wait til they added flight packs in the game to explore the Shadow Shard), and that if he gets speed boosted in a mission, I have trouble not bouncing off walls. But its fun. To me.


Is it posible that might just be your choice of characters, though. Would a raging super strength brute really be trained in boxing(or some other martial art)? An old man who uses psionics? A girl who uses robots and gadgets? depending on their background and personality, some would, some wouldn't.

For Fighting, I'd think it would be thematically appropriate for characters if, in a situation where their super powers/weapons were disabled, would still be able to take some opponents down in a physical confrontation.

How does he get to the hospital then?

And yet, he does already have the innate ability to inspire his teamates. And to lead a team of less powerful teamates against much more powerful foes than they could normally face. Just like everyone is already good at fighting because they all have brawl.

I'd appreciate it if you could elaborate on that. As far as I'm aware, the final defence value of a critter before accuracy is "base - defence," to simplify it. So whether we're looking at 0.64 - 0.3 = 0.34 chance to hit, or at 0.5 - 0.14 = 0.34 chance to hit, it's still the same final chance to hit. Yes, I'm aware that other powersets are also hit by the Incarnate to-hit numbers, but that calculation shouldn't take into consideration other powersets, when what I asserted was that 30% against Incarnate to-hit produces the same chance to be hit as 14% would against normal enemies, which having played with that level, isn't enough by a wide margin. Again, please clarify.

Additionally, yes, other powersets not entirely focused on defence also suffer from the higher to-hit, but not in the same way. It's the difference between +cons getting accuracy vs. getting higher to-hit. As to-hit and defence are a direct sum, any increase in to-hit are equivalent to an equal decrease in defence, and since defence numbers in general don't swing wildly, it doesn't take much of a change to make a difference. Comparatively, resistance-based characters don't lose a direct chunk of their total resistance value.

The difference in perspective is due to the fact that 64% tohit doesn't just make things more difficult for SR, it also makes things more difficult for everyone with or without defense. We normally gauge defensive mitigation relative to having no defense. We don't consider the fact that non-defense sets take (64/50=1.28) 28% more damage than normal against incarnate critters "a problem to solve" that's just a measure of the increase in difficulty for incarnate content. We then gauge defensive strength relative to that.

On the flip side, I CAN see the hightened to-hit being incredibly lethal to regeneration-based characters, considering those tend to exist within a relatively narrow band of performance where the difference between a constantly full health bar and a shockingly fast and irreversible defeat can come down to just one extra critter at times. A significantly higher enemy base to-hit is liable to produce significantly higher incoming DPS and possibly exceed their regeneration threshold. I've yet to take a Regen anything to 50 (and that doesn't seem in the cards any time soon) so I can't really say, but this does have me concerned.

Could you be a bit more specific? What non-defensive debuffing are you referring to? Esoteric debuffs like to-hit, recharge speed, regeneration and so forth? I don't disagree that avoiding debuffs in general is a good thing about SR and defence in general, but I don't think the solution is to remove it. And, furthermore, remove it in the face of no real resistance debuffs in the game aside from Nullifier Sonic Grenades and... Vanguard claws, right? And even then, a high level of resistance is itself a high level of resistance debuff resistance, something that not very many defence-based sets can boast, especially with Shield Defence and Grant Cover "holding DDR hostage," as Venture put it, I believe. It seems to me that despite taking debuffs to the face, resistance-based sets still don't suffer as harshly in terms of their direct survivability.

Honestly, if the point of this whole thing is to combat high levels of defence as used by people who really shouldn't have as much (i.e. everyone that's NOT using a defence-based set) then why not apply this as a defence debuff? Paradoxically, low-level critters are already sporting absurd levels of defence debuffing, with a simple Hellion minion chopping off 8% with a mere fire axe swing, if my memory serves. If you want to combat defence outside of defence-based sets, then target the one thing only defence-based sets have - Dance Dance Revolution... Wait, no... I mean Defence Debuff Resistance. That way, you take a bite out of people's excessive defence... And indeed out of the excessive defence SR and Shield Defence and Energy Aura can gather, to an extent, but you don't actually screw the people who "don't get with the programme."

Because really, all this does - and that's been my complaint all along - is make certain powers and certain build options "no-brainers." Not only are they evidently better, but now if you don't do it, you fall behind. To me, this is the opposite of choice, and that's not a good thing.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Actually, you bring up a very good point here. If I insist that everyone might as well have fitness, shouldn't I have a problem with Super Reflexes having Quickness in there? And the truth is that... No, I don't, not really. I don't generally interpret my super reflexes characters as better sprinters, not in the "Flash" sense, but it does make sense that a character with SUPER REFLEXES would be faster than most. I'd actually have to ponder this particular point, because this really does bring up an example where my logic conflicts with itself, and I don't know how I feel about it yet.

If I may offer a cop-out: I don't consider Quickness (or Lightning Reflexes, there's an out-of-place power for you) themselves to be character-defining so much as I consider that just part of the broader concept of what Super Reflexes (and Electric Armour, respectively) bring. That's kind of like picking up Stone Armour and finding out my character is slower. I wouldn't make the slowness a separate character trait so much as just an aspect of using Stone Armour. This - and here's a revelation I hadn't spotted before - is actually a result of the rather... Un-diverse way in which specific powersets in this game are built. While I personally like having about as many power choices as I can reasonably take (18 powerset, plus 2 "travel," plus 4 "epic" out of 24), but I never really saw there being much of a choice in how I interpret that powerset to behave.

Let me give you an example: People often request a version of Fiery Melee that doesn't have swords or that's all sword or all breath or some such. When this is brought up, I see it, but because of how the game is designed... I never really consider that an option. If I actually could pick what to build SR for - whether it be expert dodging or extreme precision or precognition or what have you - then I might be more inclined to see those options, but as the game is... I guess I've trained myself to not see them.

Again - you make a very good point with your example.

Well... Consider other posts in this thread interpreting Stamina as something besides just basic human fitness. Zaloopa, for instance, makes a pretty astute re-interpretation of Stamina for the Steel Rook, as basically the representation of the power armour's greater staying power, which is a very fair point. But if we can interpret Stamina loosely enough to claim that, I'm sure it's simple enough to explain away how an old man who uses psionics is better at "fighting in close quarters" with special psychic techniques, as well as how a girl who uses gadgets can use those gadgets in close combat. It's not always necessary, but if it became so, it's easy to explain. Now, if you're very particular about "boxing" in general... Well, Super Strength's alternate animations are already kind of half-way there. In fact, they do a much better job of depicting boxing than the "Boxing" power.

What I'm saying is that, to me, that kind of "minor" aspect of a character is best done through visual customization of what your powers resembled without necessarily having "yet another attack" that's just named something else. That's actually my BIGGEST problem with a lot of pools - they're so boring to look at. A lot of them are pretty much just stats, and I can claim I have any stats I want. I can't claim I can fly unless I visibly and physically detach from the ground and stay airborne for long periods of time. That's why I value travel pools so much different than others - because they allow me to DO something a normal character couldn't. Throwing a punch or flailing a kick really isn't that special. I get that there's a broader idea behind it, but that set... And Leadership, kind of... Just doesn't let characters do anything remarkable. Again - if I want to see my character engage in fisticuffs, I can fire up Brawl. Hell, make that power worth using for anything but a Fury builder and I will never need Kick or Boxing again.

Yes, seriously.

That actually brings up another problem I have with the Fighting and Fitness pools in particular - they're built around a human character. I have a BIG problem with power suppression fields as a general concept, but the way they're used is more player restrictions than in-character concepts, because a power suppression field is not a power suppression field, it's a "humanising field" that forces all characters to behave like humans. Ghost whose normal stat is intangible? Tough, you're visible and you have to walk. Avatar of a lost goddess made of space matter and held together by nothing more than her power and her will? You don't fall apart, you just walk. That's be like walking into Studio B and having my robotic arm fall off and a human arm regrow in its place while I'm there, because having an arm with hydraulic pistons in it is kind of a super power.

Why I bring this up is to challenge the basic situation of "depowerment," for the simple fact that it just doesn't make sense for certain characters and how their powers work. If, for instance, your character is a Batman and is just usually tough and fast and smart and HIS powers are taken away... Does he get dumber? Does he get winded? Or are those not "super" powers? Because I bring up Inna again - her being able to fly and channel energy through her body is not a "super" power. It's part of what her species is able to do. It is, as I'm fond of saying about that particular character, "hers by right of blood." A focal point of her entire character is that her nemesis cannot use the power she wields while Inna still lives, basically. There are no circumstances that I can imagine where she would lose her power... And yet still be alive. Thus, for her, to take down opponents in a physical confrontation is achieved via energy-channelling punches.

I don't dispute what you're saying, not in spirit. But it's really only true for a subset of characters. And considering the dev team graciously re-wrote the Natural Origin description to include "or maybe you're not human at all," I do believe that's an aspect of the game that needs to be kept in mind. Do new powersets and/or power pools make sense for non-humans. And you don't even have to go wildly out of line to think of weird examples. Just consider - would it work for a robot? Would it work for zombie? Would it work for a wizard? More or less. You can throw in "ninja" and "pirates" for good measure, but it's not necessary. And I really don't think either Fighting or Fitness really work. Leadership, I'm kind of up in the air on.

Deus ex machina In my fictional world, people don't get transported to the dimension of non-death. If they get shot in the head, cut in half or shoulder-tackled at the speed of sound, they die. Hospitals are a great asset for an MMO where permadeath for the player means permadeath for the developing company, but they take much of the dramatic tension out of pretty much any story with the possible exception of Soul Reaver. That one had Raziel remark how he succeeds through an embarrassing series of death and failure, though I may be paraphrasing. That's good for some characters, but in general, it's best to keep the stakes high.

As I said, I'm on the fence about Leadership. On the one hand, it's kind of just stats, but you do make a good point - "leadership" IS something remarkable. That was kind of why I made the point - I have a number of characters that would specifically NOT make sense to have Leadership. I can't say the same about fighting. Maybe if I made non-combatants, but that ship sailed when the game stopped trying to make "team-only" ATs and let everyone have a slice of the Scrapper pie. Yeah, you CAN make the argument that maybe a character is an expert archer but is crap in a fight and will just get grabbed by the upper arm and dragged off to a dungeon, but... To me, "fighting" just isn't a super power.

Unless it IS a super power, in which case there's Street Justice and Martial Arts and Martial Fighting and - if I had my way - an Epic to do with this for every AT that doesn't already have one. Like I said before, if Fighting were an Epic pool and came with more than just "back alley brawling," then I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with it, since it would serve a point for ATs that don't have access to this, but ATs that already have "fighting" powersets would get a version of it that would be considerably more appropriate to their AT.

At the end of the day... I just don't want the game to ask us to choose between super powers and common powers. Common powers should, as far as I'm concerned, be implied. We don't need a power pool to be able to swim. We don't need a power pool to be able to use complex computers. We don't need a power pool to be able to run a marathon at sprint speed and never be winded. That sort of thing comes with the territory, and when "tired breathing" sound effects were added to running, people reacted so negatively it never made it off Test.

That's not to say I don't think "common" powers can ever have a place in this game. Hacking, detective skills, persuasion, being able to defuse bombs and so forth aren't native to all super heroes. But this is not something I'd cross together with a super power pick. The old abandoned SSOCwhatever - the skill system - was something I'd have supported because it made a very clear point to segregate the super powers and the common powers into separate systems. Because let's face it - right now, Fighting asks us to be good at brawling INSTEAD of shooting energy out of our hands or flying. That shouldn't be a choice in a super hero game. NOT being fit just isn't necessary for this type of game.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The run cycle does speed up with Super Speed, but up to a point. It's about as fast as Spring + Swift + Quickness and nowhere near enough to match the lateral speed of Super Speed. Moreover, our "running" animation is actually a jogging animation useful for running long distances at a fairly slow pace. It holds up more or less at Sprint speeds, yes, but at Super Speed, there really should be a running animation which feels more energetic. It feels as out of place as Hovering forward at the Afterburner speed cap - you may be able to do it (I think?) but it just looks goofy.

That's kind of why I use Prestige Power Slide. It looks even harder to believe, but the slide's slow, fluent movements actually enhance the feeling of sliding. If you want a decent "super speed" run, I wouldn't go to any of our competitors, but instead check out Saints Row the Third. That has a much, much better feeling of actually moving quickly both by sound and visual effects and with a much more energetic sprinting animation.

Spoilers: The ending of Mass Effect asks you to make choices on who to send on which task

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Ok, so thinking about it another way: If she faced off against someone else of her species/ someone who was given the exact same innate abilities, would you think she'd win in a fight? Just a straight up one-on-one fight with someone with the same powers? Is she better at fighting? If Superman fights another Kryptonian, it'll come down to level of skill at fighting.

Sure, magic/reality manipulation makes it happen. Or a nanovirus that reduces the physical capabilities of the robot to a standard level for a particular species. Or the robot is facing off against an identical model, only one that doesn't have the extra fighting subroutine.



Like, say, if they use a magic bow that makes them awesome at archery, and nothing else. Thats an inhetrently different character from say, Hawkeye, who is trained in martial arts.

Here is where I disagree (and this is in the case of everythimg except melee ATs), because its not asking you to choose brawling instead of doing those things, its asking you to choose to become better at fighting generally instead of becoming better at those other things things. If you can shoot energy, taking fighting won't stop you being able to do that, it will just be (at worst) a choice between picking a particular energy beam fighting move and a more physical fighting move.

So, i agree that the fighting attacks are problematic as they don't give benefit if you already have lots of attacks. Thats why I think some 'hybrid' style autobuffs associated with them would work, so training in fighting enhances all of your attacks. Even something simple like a dam buff for learning boxing and a to-hit buff for learning kicking (or vice versa) would be fine, like a set bonus from IOs. That way people who needed the extra attack still get it, and other people can become better at fighting using their own fighting style.

You're kind of not arguing the point you're presenting, though. Superman is kind of a bad example, since Kryptonians tend to not manifest their powers unless they're in the light of Earth's yellow sun and a lot of it comes to experience with those powers, but that's the clincher: Equal super powers don't cancel each other out like they do in Dragonball Z. If you have two characters of the same "power level," it doesn't just come down to who has better martial arts. Let me explain, and use Inna as an example:

Even were Inna's entire race not extinct (long story, involving the end of all created things, not relevant), were she to square off against another of her kind, the outcome would not come down to brawling any more so than two powerful wizards squaring off would come down to a grapple. Were Inna to fight another of her kind, what would decide victory is skill AT USING HER POWERS. What I'm getting at is that "fighting" in the sense of the power pool doesn't even enter into it, since what decides battles is the super powers.

I realise you can just as easily say "but that's just your concept," but my concept is informed by what the game presents me with. Let's ignore the Incarnate game for the sake of argument, as that's tied to nebulous canon and just stick to the basic level 50 game. At level 50, you fight power armour energy weapon space aliens, giant robots, platoons of heavily-armed soldiers, sorcerers of immense power and so on and so forth. This is typically the point where, in a Fantasy setting, a basic non-magical warrior kind of starts falling behind wizards who throw fireballs and kill people with a single power word. Basically, once you get past level 40, common human fitness just doesn't matter as much because you're never put in a position to really use it. Unlike in old arcade fighting games, you're NOT swarmed with club-wielding goons to beat up. Even basic enemy grunts have super powers and heavy weapons.

What I'm saying is this asks you to choose between a genuine super power and something that's not a super power, and that's just not a choice I find is appropriate in a game that's predicated on super heroes. I'd lump brawling as not-a-super-power in the same category as swimming very well or running without tiring or the ability to use any computer console that exists in the world. If it HAS to be a choice, it should be a choice made within its own context, which is the context of non-super skills that the game really could benefit from, if it weren't just a combat game.

Generally speaking, I've always had a problem when genuine super powers, like say Touch of Fear causing people to become terrorised, are mixed in with faux powers representing common effects, such as Spinning Strike causing people to be terrorise because... It's shocking? One is the power of the netherworld creating spectral fear that doesn't even take bravery into account. The other is just "you were startled" and yet robots and creatures made of rock will tremble in fear of your spin kick. It's why I have a BIG problem with Taunt in this game, as well - because taunting things and having them attack you for no reason should only work on intelligent but stupid creatures and expressly NOT work on mindless storm clouds, robots or highly-trained soldiers. I don't like when common powers are mixed in with super powers and given even a roughly even footing. It just makes the actual super powers come off that much less convincing.

And yes, I'm aware of the ******* Batman, but the ******* Batman plays it smart. He doesn't defeat giant robots by karate-chopping them in the back of the head 150 times and dodging bullets while he's doing it.

My own ideological differences aside, this should be enough. A power doesn't have to do much for me, just so long as it does SOMETHING. I have, for instance, taken Challenge (the single-target Presence taunt) on Brutes who already had and used their own in-set proper auto-hit Taunt, and I didn't feel like a fool for taking it. Sure, it's next to useless in the face of my much superior version of it, but it's good for single-pulling so I get at least SOME use out of the thing, and I get that use for no slot cost. That in itself makes me feel better about the power, and it will make me feel better still when it auto-swaps for a placate power that my Brutes don't have an alternative of.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You have to take into account the relative change between people with defense and people without defense because that's how we define and normally use and judge mitigation. Otherwise its misleading because when you say its "just like having only 16% defense" most people will assume that means they are only mitigating 32% damage. But that's not true: your damage mitigation is still almost 50%.

To put it another way, 30% defense against 64% incarnates is a much better situation than 16% defense vs normal 50% critters.

If you want to look at it the way you're looking at it, all sorts of things you probably take for granted and most other players take for granted you'll no longer be able to. For example, I say that defense is just as strong against minions and bosses since I7. You can't, because the net chance for a minion to hit a 30% SR is 20%, but its 26% for a boss. Which is "like" having 24% defense. We today consider SR's defensive mitigation to be the same for even minions and +3 bosses. But the way you're looking at it, a +3 boss would have a net chance to hit of 33.8% - basically identical to even con Praetorian minions. So +3 bosses "nullify" just as much defense as Praetorian minions.

But complicating that even more, +3 bosses hit things with *zero* defense more often than even con minions, so +3 bosses are actually nullifying defense that isn't there. Even more than SR: net chance to hit is 84.5%, equivalent to increasing chance to hit by 34.5 percentage points, compared to the 13.8 percentage point increase for SR.

*If* you only look at the final chance to hit and derive your perspective from that, to be logically consistent you have to start making statements that will confuse everyone else until they do the math. Like accuracy nullifies less defense the more defense you have. If you vary accuracy defensive mitigation changes while resistance mitigation doesn't, even if they both end up admitting the same amount of damage.

The "normalized" mitigation approach I strongly encouraged back in the day which most people use now is something I liken to the invention of arabic numerals over roman numerals. The math is the same regardless, but the non-normalized perspective makes it almost impossible to talk about defensive mitigation in a systematic way.

+Tohit does increase critter threat, and it does so far more verses defensive sets than non-defensive sets in general. But you have to be careful about equating an increase in tohit as being identical to a decrease in defense. In some cases that's true, but in other cases its not. In an absolute case its true, but in a relative case it can be misleading. When it comes to judging Praetorian difficulty, the relative perspective to me is much less misleading, because the absolute one doesn't separate the increased difficulty everyone is facing from the specific one SR is facing, and because it cannot be extrapolated to the normal game. Its not like having 14% defense exactly. Its like having 14% defense while all non-defensive sets are under a -30% resistance debuff that SR avoids automatically. Something weird like that.