Cyber_naut

It doesn't have more, but I'd say they're about on par with eachother thanks to FSC's faster recharge than LR (Chain induction is nice, but JL and TS are about on par with firebreath imo - ie, not so great, lol). As another poster noted, they compared pretty evenly on farm tests. I have both combos at 50 and io'd to the gills and I'd say they're pretty even in farming kill speed.

But theres a noticeable difference in single target damage, which is why I prefer fire.

NAILED IT.

Now does spin need to be nerfed, lol? Not to mention claws has some cones and shockwave too, and badly outdamages SS in single target damage as well. Again, if SS is broken, there are many sets that are hella-broken.

It has to be, since SS's powers do less damage than claws. Would rage be to powerful in the claws powerset? Absolutely, because it wasn't designed to go there. Despite claws inferior build up power, claws still outdamages SS by a fairly wide margin.

From the blog you cited:

"Eventually, the populace of the game will see that one class/ability has an advantage over everyone else. They too want that advantage so they reroll so they can have that ability as well. What we then get is “Flavor of the Month” builds that are simply put, better than everyone else. And what happens if everyone adopts the FOTM? Well, there is ridicule to those NOT using the FOTM, as well as a level of uniformity coming to your game world that you didn’t design for. Suddenly everyone in your game is a Cleric, because Clerics are overpowered. In that case, why develop anything but stuff for Clerics to do? Because that game would eventually become a boring world of just Clerics and die the death it deserves."

SS is not so good that it's FOTM, 'everyone' has not adopted it, and coh is not a world of SS'ers. This despite the fact that SS is probably the most popular super hero power in comic book history. SS is simply one of the better sets that players enjoy - so leave it the hell alone. When I see brutes and tanks running around, I see a pretty good mix of powersets. In fact the only set I don't see getting any play is ice melee, which would certainly seem to be a case where you could buff to bring balance rather than nerf.

In terms of your suggested fixes:

1)The to hit buff in rage is nice, but it's overkill in 99% of the game, and since rage only brings SS's damage up to par with competing sets, you're basically paying for this with the aggrivating end crash and ten seconds of impotence, along with the def bonus that's negated by stacking. I'd gladly give up some of the to hit bonus in exchange eliminating the terrible game mechanic of not being able to do damage for 10 seconds every two minutes.

2)Rages effect on non ss-powers - what's sad about this is that rage needs to use pool powers, with the rage bonuses, to compete on par with other sets damage wise. So to feel this is some sort of overpowered situation doesn't mesh with reality. I don't see SS brutes running around spamming sands of mu, and again, those that incorporate epic pool powers into their chains need to do that just to do damage on par with the competition - without pool powers, SS does subpar damage when compared with other sets.

3)Everyone that claims footstomp is 'overpowered' ignores the fact it's the sets only aoe power, and the fact SS goes without aoe for 30 some levels, depending on at. And aoe is the strength of this set, so if you nerf it, you need to improve the sets aoe or it's going to underperform here as well. But if footstomp is 'overpowered' as you claim, they're going to have to nerf a lot of aoe powers, and sets, to be consistent, because lots of sets give you similar aoe ability, just in different ways and with a variety of powers - SS simply packs all of it's aoe into one power.


But utlimately, I think most people have a problem with ss, and rage in particular, because they confuse different with 'more powerful', and the facts simply don't support the idea that SS is definitively more powerful than competing sets. Bills study showed SS to be mediocre in st damage, and those findings were duplicated in starsmans charts, along with superior aoe scores, yet still not the best in aoe despite the claim that footstomp is overpowered.

Damn, nice numbers man.

Grats wern. That's what I did with my fire. Sure there's some things that I can survive better with more defensive builds/set ups, but those things are rare and far between. It's a nice change of pace to just obliterate stuff with massive aoe's. Jump into a big group, let aao get juiced, then shield charge, FSC, fireball... so nice...

The OP was asking what is the 'best' primary to couple with SD. Obviously, that is going to be a matter of opinion, hell what he means by best isn't even certain, but I'm assuming he means what combo is best for the overall game.

And imo, the answer is fire, hands down. And I have 3 lvl 50 sd scrappers, all fully io'd up, a fire/sd, an el/sd and a dm/sd. The dm/sd is best for inspless av soloing, but that's about it.

Now I understand your 'synergy' argument, but even by swapping 'best' with 'synergy', it's still a matter of opinion, and I'd still argue fire. Why? Because fire adds more value to the combo. Sure dm adds more 'stuff', but most of it is less valuable than the primary thing fire adds. Damage. Specifically, aoe damage. This game is an mmo, and most people team a lot in an mmo. That means lots of enemies to kill at one time, which means aoe damage is of very high value. It also means teamates who may might heal you or give you endurance buffs. Then there are inspirations that can be used to heal or recover end. That lessens the value of siphon life and dark consumption (even solo, i rarely ever need to pop a green or blue insp). But no teamate or inspiration is going to give you more aoe damage. That's why fire is better than dm, both in terms of 'best' combo and which 'synergizes' better. Of course, that's just my opinion...

Ya, DA is a BEAST when it's pimped out. In groups (even with just 2 or 3 enemies), the heal alone makes you pretty invincible - pretty much a full heal every... i think i had mine recharging in 13 seconds lol.

Aw christ, what's the nerf to the numina and miracle uniques?

Ha, they answered my question!

To clarify the pvp argument in regard to the em changes, I'm not arguing they changed em to alter it's performance in pvp. I stated that ems performance in the old version of pvp, where it excelled, led to countless posts by players mocking other players for not taking em, as it was the only truly effective melee set in pvp. The devs saw these posts and mistook them for unanimous sentiment that em was overpowered in terms of overall gameplay, even though it clearly was not an overpowered set in pve. A dev specifically stated that these posts influenced their decision. This is not a myth but a fact - I was in that argument and recall without question reading that post with shock.

Your argument is odd in that you claim the idea that pvp influenced the change is a myth, then go on to say that maybe it was done to make the power useful in the new pvp? I don't know whether or not the new pvp influenced the change or not, but the end result is clear, the nerf to et made the power, and the set, an underperformer in both pvp and pve.

I think we seem to agree that the recent 'set designs' and 'set balances' have been on the underpowered side? People were playing dp because it was the new shiny, once the newness wears off, I doubt it will get much play with it's current stats and playability, at least in terms of performace (did I see something in the i17 beta that they're already buffing one of dp's powers...). I hope the new kinetic melee is not designed in a similar fashion, but I'm also pretty worried that it is.

I don't mind if sets are slow, but the negatives of slow animations should be compensated with more damage, certainly more than their current method allows, whether that method is via some formula or just pick and choose. The problem being that whatever method they are using is not taking into account the inherent negatives a slowly animating set has for a player, in terms of killing corpses on teams, getting stuck in long animations when you need to click a heal or defense power, etc. That's why I mock the 'magical balancing equation' I continually hear about - it clearly does not take into account enough of the variables that exist in this game. In fact, there are far too many variables in this game to create one simple equation to use for all sets.

Ultimately, i think the devs are missing the point of a super hero game. People want to feel SUPER. They don't want to struggle against three or four minions, certainly not at level fifty. They want to be able to get to the point of being able to defeat av's and gm's, even if it's very hard to do. And yes, I know this is all achievable in some ways at this point in the game, but recent moves seem to suggest they might be trying to weaken top end performance, and new sets seem to be aimed at 'really special' hero rather than 'super' hero. I'm not saying make sets 'auto win' deals, but there are no sets in the game right now that are ridiculously overpowered, so start balancing the underpowered sets to match the top sets that people like, rather than ruining the sets people like by 'fixing' them and balancing them to the lowly, unpopular sets. Same thing with creating new sets, make them comparable to the one's people like, not the pitifully underperforming sets players hate.

For the nems, if you're just farming for drops, your fire/sd scrap should be able to handle +0/x8 or +1/x8 with minimal difficulty.

And as someone mentioned earlier, with the sharing of epics, you could get more end help for your SS/SD brute, so that's good news for that set up.

Good point, these are exceptions to the rule.

I'm not sure how the rwz dummies work - do they attack you? I'm guessing no, which means your fury will go up much more quickly in regular gameplay, especially since even on the lowest mish settings solo, you'll have a few enemies firing off attacks at you, that also generate fury.

Really, the best way to do it is to simply make a brute and play it in missions. If you do that, you'll see how easy it is to generate fury, and keep it at reasonably high levels while you're playing. There will be a few instances where you're fury levels will be too low to do scrapper level damage, but there will be more instances where you will be doing scrapper level damage and above. But you'll ALWAYS have more health, and better defense and buff caps. That's why brutes are slightly more powerful overall than scrappers. It kind of pains me to say it, because scrappers are my favorite at, but it's simply the truth.

The dark melee/inv scrapper could be io'd up to do some crazy solo stuff, the rad/rad defender would be most valuable on teams.

No, both katana and broadsword get an attack that boosts your defense, katana gets divine avalanche and broadsword gets parry.

Only if its a new SS set that will be offered along with the old one. Too many players like the old SS, so to 'fix' it would be 'ruining' something many, many customers love, and since it's been clearly shown that SS does not blow the competition away in terms of performance, no 'fix' is needed.

This game has many things that truly are broken and require fixing, fixes that the vast majority of customers would actually enjoy. And if they get the urge to work on powersets, keep putting out NEW ones to keep the fans interested or buffing underperforming/underplayed sets, instead of tweaking old ones that people like, which only results in pissed off players.

To sum it up - SS is balanced to other sets with rage, I see it in having played all the melee sets to 50 at least once, and it's supported in two different spreadsheets put out by reputable players. If you want to think it was completely accidental, that's fine, but I disagree.

In regard to your rage points:

1)Of course rage does more than just boost SS's damage up to par with other sets - it should since you have to use a power pick to choose it, and then slot it up, I would hope it would do more than just allow the set to do damage on par with competitors. And despite the fact it boosts attacks outside of SS, the set still does damage overall on par with competing sets, again, as evidenced in play and in various spreadsheet tests. In fact, for SS to be one of the above average single target damage dealing sets, it's forced to use 'gloom', a power outside of its set, to compete with other sets. Without gloom, SS would be a mediocre single target damage dealing set in most comparisons (actually, the brute SS is below average in single target dealing damage in bills scrapper/brute powerset comparison).

2)Footstomp is not 'too good'. Is it a great power? Yes. Is it better than many other sets aoe powers? Yes. So why is it not 'too good'? For several reasons. For one, it's the only decent aoe power the set has. Some would argue the only other aoe power in the set, handclap, is more of a detriment to the set than anything else due to the horrendous knockback and scattering of enemies. Secondly, you don't get the only effective aoe power in the set until the end of the set/late game, where every other set gets some kind of aoe ability far earlier. That is why footstomp SHOULD be better than other aoe powers. But I can see why the City of Same folks would have a problem with it, it's not a clone of several other powers, and the set is balanced differently than many of the other sets. For the countless SS fans, it's ok to be different.

3)If it scales so good, you'd expect it to be the best single target set in the game, yet it's not. And any set can add gloom to their chain, the fact SS NEEDS it (and gloom has excellent single target dps) to compete near the top of the field in single target points to the fact the set is deficient in single target attacks. Again, when you take gloom out of the competition, SS falls to below average in single target competition. Of course that is why it has a really powerful aoe attack, to make up for that fact, which supports my contention that footstomp is not overpowered in this set. 'nuff said.

Great post again. And like you said, the chart princess posted was with about as much recharge as you can possibly get, AND it takes into account some stacked rage (which would probably create some end issues with all the crashes), and it's still not the best single target set, so I'm not seeing how people can claim it's 'overpowered'.

Truth - I keep hearing people expressing the misconception that SS is somehow overpowered but that simply doesn't mesh with the facts.

And as you noted, any nerf to rage would cripple SS and immediately make it non-competitive with other sets.

There are other sets that do much better single target and/or aoe damage than SS. But you can't look at popularity and assume that is correlated to performance. A big reason SS gets more play than fire or stone is because people grew up watching superman, spiderman, hulk, etc, not super fire guy and rock kid, lol.