Goldbrick

[ QUOTE ]If you want an offensive melee toon, play a scrapper. You seem to want the tank to be as indestructible as they are now, but to have the power of scrappers or blasters.[/QUOTE]

I don't think of a comic book tanker as Superman or Thor. Those guys are over the top powerful; they both occupy and transcend all of the traditional MMO roles.

A comic book tanker is Power Man (lower end), Dynamo (mid-range) and the Thing (top end). These guys can take lots of punishment and hit back hard. They aren't fast hitters, but a single punch goes a long way.

A comic book scrapper is the Wolverine/Daredevil type of character, they get hurt if they get hit but they are still extremely effective. Lots of accurate strikes with lots of skill.

CoH gets both of these ATs a little wrong. Scrappers do more damage than tankers while also hitting faster with less endurance cost. Tankers are slower, endurance-heavy hitters but their punches aren't show-stoppers. I would fix both of these design problems by slowing tanker attack recharge way down and making the attacks twice as devastating, maybe more, than they are now.

Scrappers would stay the same, tankers would move way up in burst damage like in the comic books, with whatever recharge and accuracy penalties that might be necessary for balance.

Alternatively, I would add for tankers just one thing: a brute-style fury bar that fills up slowly and only while the tanker is being beaten on and while the tanker is not attacking. The fury bar empties completely after the tanker unleashes the stored energy via a single gigantic punch. Then the fury bar can start to fill up again. If the tanker doesn't want to wait for the fury bar to fill, he or she can just attack normally, just the way things are now.

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Them to complete the back slot for the costume and a wide and varied array of rigid and animated costume items comparable in theme and scope to other costume elements.


Been wanting this for 3+ years now.

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5+ years for me. Costume jetpacks, can't believe they've been left out this long, along with quivers, backpacks, etc. Even WoW lets players sling their weapons/shields on their backs.

Another QoL issue is the ability to invite your own alts to your own personal SG without bringing in a third party to help.

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*Hands Goldbrick a tinfoil hat* There's a reason conspiracy theorists are viewed as loons.

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Media propaganda?

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What I'm asking for is for either the goal posts to stop moving, or for a mechanism to compensate for the head start if they won't.

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That's unfair to me. I would like the vet rewards to continue indefinitely, and I don't think a vet reward system should be un-veteranized in some way simply because there are people who feel left out.

A vet reward system is SUPPOSED to be non-inclusive, that's why it's called a vet reward system and not a "we're giving all the rewards to everyone at day one just because you stamped your feet and complained" system.

I'm way behind every other MMOs vet reward system, should they have one, and if I should ever join another MMO with a vet reward system, I'll just ignore it.

Grousing about the "unfairness" of the vet reward system comes up every once in a while, and thankfully the devs ignore it every time.

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I'm annoyed that, by the time I do, there will be nine-year rewards that I still won't have.

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Stop being annoyed. End of problem.

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Because I didn't subscribe to the game from the day it launched, I will never have all the veteran rewards, no longer how long I play. I will never be able to "show the dedication and earn them" enough, because there will always be four years of rewards that I will not have.

Why is this so hard to understand?

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It isn't. It's just a bad, unconvincing argument.

Here, I will hand you all of the vet rewards right now, but you must also age five years overnight.

Veteran = time spent. Why is this so hard to understand?

Go to work for a company and ask for a 20 year pension on your first day. Go into the military service and ask for an honorable discharge on your first day.

Vet rewards are not about money, they're about time. So you won't ever get all of the vet rewards, so what? In my workplace, there are people who started here a lot earlier than I, who will eventually get a 30 year retirement package. I will never get that much, I worked a few other places. I'm not in a snit about it, that's just the way it is.

Also, the later vet rewards are not must-haves, they're cute little things that are nice little gifts. You don't need them.

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Wouldn't the problem be fixed if they would just offer a button to recieve only from friends on your friendslist and SGmates with the button defaulted to be on?

How hard can that possibly be to do?

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/e conspiracy theory

Possibly the devs are reluctant to shut off the gold spammers entirely, because like other games that offer only lip service outrage to the practice, it seems to be more beneficial than detrimental for new players to be able to buy "gold" in whatever form it takes. Frustration is bad for any game.

Nonetheless, games must appear to be up in arms against the practice, lest they be seen as abetting the practice.

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What Im concerned about is that new payers are taking advantage of this are power leveling and are missing out on what this game really is. It took me over a year it hit 50 for the first time.

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I started at the beginning of closed beta, and yes it took quite a while to get to 40 (then to 50 after they added ten levels) way back when. There was really only one way to get there, grinding missions. Alt-itis was not a prevalent disease yet because most of us were focused on getting that first character to 50 asap.

Here's my point: New players also want to get their first character to 50 asap, they just have an easier option: the MA system. Most likely they'll do what we early players did, get to 50 and experience the "endgame content" while proceeding to level other toons.

A fair number of people, once they've satisfied the ego's requirement to be Number One (i.e., level 50), can then slow down and experience the rest of the game the old fashioned way, secure in the knowledge that they can break out a 50 if the situation calls for it.

The psychology of MMO players is probably starting to be better understood, and I would not be at all surprised to learn that the devs are not "fixing the broken game" simply because the game isn't broken at all. New players are getting their "50 fix" quicker and getting invested in the rest of the game at their own pace.

Even the Biggest MMO is doing this same sort of thing: smoothing down the learning curve despite the outraged cries of the long-time players who had to level uphill both ways in the snow.

I have an archery/devices blaster, and imho 60 seconds is too short for gun drone, ten minutes or permanent would make me remember to use it.

I didn't even bother with Time Bomb on my archery/devices blaster, it's that worthless in team play. Scrap this power and put something useful in. How about Exploding Shurikens instead?

No, not in more than five years. Possibly they could consider taking the email function completely out.

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What def caps do you aim for? S/L/E/N? No positionals? Since most Psi is ranged (and some AoEs), I figured some ranged def would be good too, but it's hard to mix that in when focusing on S/L def. Then again, if you can hit the S/L resist cap, do you really need that big a S/L def number?

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It's hard not to get positional defense in the mix as a matter of course with IO set bonuses, and weave, combat jumping, the +3 defense IO all add to positional defense as well.

The s/l defense number is important primarily because most non-s/l attacks have a s/l component, and the game picks your highest defense type to roll against. The s/l defense simply covers more bases.

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For instance, w/o gimping my build, I can get to a bit over E/N def cap, over 40% S/L/F/C and still get to a bit over 40% ranged def, 25% AoE, all along w/capped S/L resists. That's of course w/just 1 in range of Invinc. Is it really worth it to get the last 5% of S/L defense when your resists are that high?

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I've found that 40% typed defense across-the-board vs a single foe is more than sufficient for just about any challenge, and I have decent positional defense for psi and toxic.

I suppose some one will make a slotting breakthrough one day and display their 70% defense tank that can floor even Lord Recluse's tower-buffed to-hit, and the nerf gods will be heard from in short order.

Learn when to quit when you're ahead, folks. It doesn't have to be about whose johnson is longer every single time.

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So, I've been playing my new Force Field / Dark Blast Defender for a little over a month now, and I ran into this the other day.

"Don't bubble me, please. And turn off your big bubble. I don't like the way they look on my toon. Nothing against you personally."

Now, I've been playing the game off and on for four years. I've heard of people asking not to be speed boosted, and asking Thermals not to buff them. This is the first time I can ever recall someone asking not to be bubbled, and for Dispersion Bubble to be turned off. WTF?

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Haven't ever seen this myself. The buffs people usually don't like are Group Invis and the cold armor, because both obscure costumes.

As a tank, I personally don't like Group Invis because I have trouble judging my location.

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It seems like it is just a bunch of teens, seeing how many toons they can get to 50 before going back to school!!!!

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Quite possibly. I'm no teen, but I've used the MA to get a few new characters up to level 22 and SOs. After more than five years and dozens of characters I'm kind of tired of the pre-SO levels.

Leveling is the point of almost all MMOs, and like natural forces, people in general follow the path of least resistance. I'm of the opinion that the MA will get "modified" (nerfed) eventually to make it less effective for leveling up toons (e.g., xp earned will get cut in half). Maybe many people expect this too and are grinding xp while the grinding is good.

When the MA xp nerf happens, people will go back to farming in Peregrine Island. By then, however, there will be quite a storehouse of player-created material.

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Whats a girl to do? Does anyone know of a server I can go to that actually plays the old way? or has it all gone to hell?

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Virtue seems to have room for both the MA and regular teaming.

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Why can't granted free respecs stack?

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Like everything else in human existence, it was a choice made by someone. I'm sure whomever it was had a reason for just one freespec slot per character, but they could just as easily have gone with six or twelve.

Whatever the reason for pretending to bottleneck the respec supply, it doesn't seem to matter. Over the past five years my main character has been through 23 respecs and still has two left over. They give out freespecs nearly every issue, you will get vet respecs, and you can buy them now.

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Although there may be some merit behind the complaining, I can't help but think that people usually complain that AV's are nothing more then "whack 'em down". However once they encounter an AV where that doesn't work and you might have to use some kind of stratergy, they chalk it up to a stupid and broken encounter because they can't auto win. Amazing. ;-)

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They aren't the same people.

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from what I could tell on my invul from test server - Reichsman is basically going to pwn tankers in 2-3 hits and there isn't alot we can do about it.

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Hm...I ran thru the new TF on Goldbrick last night with a PUG and we had no troubles. Reichsman didn't so much as nick me, I thought maybe there was a bug, but then I saw he was inv/ss, so no worries.

We had a second tank and she off-tanked the other AVs as they were released, the team beat them down, and then they all came back to where Reichsman and I were doing the fish-slap dance.

Reichsman had ~226,000 hps, but they dropped fast whenever his unstoppable power wasn't working.

Goldbrick is fully IOed, with 40% typed defense against a single foe and the usual 90% s/l resistance. Perhaps Reichsman's to-hit % is fairly standard. I guess the big stun never landed.

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Do I think they're necessary? No, not really, but I think it makes for a good discussion and may bring out better ideas from the community at large.

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I would like to again mention one of the first points I made when opening this topic thread. This is about having a conversation to see if an armor set that I do like very much, can be made better. Some believe it can be, others not so much. It's nice to read some of the different thoughts and ideas that folks have thrown out. Even to the level of detail that Starsman went to.

I appreciate the feedback, even if at times I feel like I need to clean off the bottom of my shoe.

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Over the years there have been threads advocating "change" to stone armor, and thankfully they've been ignored by the devs. Hopefully yours will gain no traction as well.

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Because it "works" doesn't mean it's "fine".

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Sometimes it does, however. Stone tanks work and are fine. No nerfs to granite, thanks.

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Obviously enough players have complained about the power drawbacks and aesthetics to make this an issue.

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That just means that the usual vocal minority would like to have granite without the penalties, and multiple granite forms to choose from. <shrug>

Multiple granite forms to choose from would be nice, but otherwise the powerset is fine. I still use the defensive toggles on my stone tank for soloing, so they're not made obsolete by granite. IO sets also partially compensate for the granite penalties.

The OP seems to want change for change's sake. /unsigned.

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Animation "Fix"?

What's the issue that needs to be "Fixed" with the current awesometastic animation?

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It's a tiresome, ugly animation. I don't mind balancing the damage by increasing animation time, but I do mind that it's now a two-handed attack.

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I mean I feel like I was misled when I signed up for the powerset. In the description it says it gives you incredible abilities to resist damage and that it is superior to resist physical damage, but offers no resistance to psionics. Which is fine, I can live without psionics resistance. However comparing it to the stone tanker, which is descripted as having superior defense, also grants far better resistances than the invulnerability can get. They should just change Invulnerability's name to "Durability" and the description to something like: You get decent resistances and can withstand more damage than the normal person. However you have no protection against psionics.

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The description for the invulnerability powerset is five years old. Way back in the Very First Days invulnerability could actually be built to reach 100% resistance to all but psionics. Resistances were monkeyed with a lot in the first year or two but it wasn't noticeable because Invincibility provided a lot more defense than today (and there was an overlapping bug that really put the invince in Invincibility).

The Invincibility power got redesigned a couple of times, and for a couple of years thereafter Invulnerability was a slow-bloomer, getting really strong by about level 40 and then getting weaker post-45 as more elemental/energy damage appeared in missions. Imho, the defense component just wasn't strong enough in those days. I turned away from my invuln tanks and built granite and willpower tanks, which were much stronger.

IO sets appeared, and the typed defense bonuses helped invulns a fair amount, but then with Issue 13, IO sets that already had defense bonuses were modified to include additional minor typed defense bonuses, and that's when Invulnerability came roaring back to life. Now invuln tanks can be built to hit the defense "soft cap" of 45% with just a few foes nearby, but it costs hundreds of millions to get there.

My willpower tank with just basic SOs or IOs was quite effective lvls 1-50, and benefited a lot from adding Tough (Weave too, if you like, it didn't seem necessary to me). IO set bonuses can be focused on adding HPs, and with accolade bonuses and HPT a willpower tank can have tremendous toughness and capped HPs both, and without spending hundreds of millions.

I have three lvl 50 invuln tanks, and only one is loaded with IO sets such that he has enormous typed defense and moderate positional defense, and he's just about as good at tanking as he was pre-Issue 4.

My other two invuln tanks are decent enough without the expensive IO sets, but I did add what defense I could to them by slotting up Combat Jumping, Weave, and adding the 3% global defense IO. They can get to the soft cap, but it takes a large crowd of foes, and I rely on secondary powerset mitigation a bit more.