Johnny_Butane

Tankers, like all the melee ATs, pretty much only do two things: they hit things and they get hit by things.

Tankers get hit by things better than anyone. Improving that isn't really going to help them. That only leaves one other option.

Unless you want to invent something entirely new and turn Tankers into something they're not.

I'm against that.

I don't want my Tanker to become a melee buffer-healer, or a walking force multiplier that's just going to make any Brutes around me even more brokenly OP.
Tankers already increase the survivability and damage of everyone around them. They already give more than they get from many ATs, that includes all the other melee ATs.

Don't try to turn Tankers into something they were never intended to be. I'd rather they were more like their official AT description: "an irresistible force," a "devastating hand to hand combatant" that can "dish out all sorts of damage".


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That's the problem. The devs don't appear to want to improve Tankers. Not in a meaningful way to bring them in line with Brutes.

And there's a vocal group of players that just keeps mindlessly repeating "increase Tanker survivability further to distance them from Brutes and Scrappers". This ignores the fact that Scrappers and Brutes aren't fragile at all. They'll still be surviving just fine and doing better damage, even if they made Tankers utterly unkillable; that's not where the bottleneck is for Tankers.


Bring Brutes and Scrappers down or Bring Tankers up. Those are the options.

The devs wont do either and you have noisy players against both.

Since Brutes are more popular than Tankers, they win.
They go on having their cake and eating it too with high survivability and high damage, and Tankers get ignored or they get a pointless token buff to survivability. The problem remains.



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I think it's fair to suspect him. Sato shows that the Equalists have a reach inside the most powerful members of the city. We don't know how far the conspiracy goes, but it's clear now it's old and deep and far more than just one renegade's crusade.


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Brutes have the same survivability caps as Tankers. They are only shy 10% max HP of a Tanker at the caps.
Brutes have much higher damage caps than Tankers. Tankers aren't shy 10% of Brute damage at the cap, for AoE or ST.

If it's OK for Brutes to have potential for high survivability and high damage, it' would be OK for Tankers.

If it's NOT OK for Brutes, it shouldn't be allowed.

Allowing it for one AT and not the other, as the situation is now, is not in anyway fair. It's a blatant double standard.

You say Brutes are fine as they are.
So then you can not object to having the Tanker damage cap increased to bring them in line with Brutes. Because it's either that or gut Brute survivability.


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Even I'll admit that Blasters need it first.

Very true.
But the problem existed long before the Incarnate system. Incarnates just highlight how absurd it's gotten.

Then you've got Hybrid, the upcoming Performance Amplifiers, even purple IOs going on the market. Tankers get the least from power inflation because most of that inflation has been aimed at increasing survival. Even level shifts.

A Brute with a level shift is tougher against all the enemies in the game, which is what counts. He goes from being able to survive against 90% of anything in the game to let's say 95% of anything in the game. A Tanker with a level shift...does the same damage relative to a level shifted Brute as they both did without one. To point to an extreme: almost nothing in the game would be capable of killing either a 50(+8) Tanker or a 50(+8) Scrapper, but the Scrapper's damage will still be just as superior.


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It's muddier than that. Scrappers and Brutes can be tough enough to get by just fine and do more damage. If you have three ATs, all of them can survive most of the time, why would you play the one that has the least damage by far?

Most content doesn't require Tanker level toughness. If it did, Scrappers and Brutes wouldn't be the best soloing ATs in the game. Well built Scrappers and Brutes can get enough survivability to do pretty much whatever they want AND have better damage on top of that. The fact that Tankers get more survivability than that is is largely irrelevant if the other two don't die either.


The facts of the matter:

-There are more survival improving buffs, temp powers, Incarnate abilities, level shifts, performance amplifiers and inspirations in the game now than ever before. Capped defense on even squishies isn't uncommon. Everybody got tougher, but nobody really sacrificed any damage for it.

-Everyone being tougher means tanking isn't as much of a necessity as it used to be, especially when you now have four ATs (that can now be on the same side) intended,at least partially and in theory, to share tanking duties.

-Tankers do sacrifice damage and damage potential to survive, but everyone is allowed to survive better than ever without really being forced to take a damage hit, including Scrappers and Brutes.

-Brutes have the same survival potential as Tankers, but much more damage potential. Brute resistance and defense caps are identical to Tankers, and they only have 10% less Max HP. But their damage cap is much higher. Tankers at their damage cap don't do 90% of Brute damage at their cap, for either ST or AoE.

-Even though Scrappers have lower Resistance and Max HP caps than Brutes and Tankers, they're not exactly fragile when well built or buffed. Upcomming stuff like Hybrid Melee just makes them even tougher.

Making Tankers tougher won't change any of these things. They're already the toughest and it really doesn't afford them any real advantage since Scrappers and Brutes aren't exactly dropping like flies.


What needs to be done is Tankers have to have their damage cap increased and brought in line with Brutes.

OR Scrappers and Brutes need to take a sizable survivability hit.

I don't expect any nerfing for Scrappers and Brutes since that will only P.O. a large number of players. It's easier for the devs just to ignore that there's a double standard that screws over Tankers. From the looks of things that's just what the devs have been doing and plan to continue doing.

Hell, if they did do something, I wouldn't be surprised if it was idiotic like give Tankers inherent Absorb to "distance them" from Brutes; completely ignoring the fact that both ATs can already be made nigh unkillable while Tanker damage would still be crap even if they were literally unkillable. Go on, completely flag the Tanker to ignore 100% of all damage for all the good it would do. It really wouldn't matter because survival is not what's kneecapping them.


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But they have it. Period.

CoH doesn't, never will and the devs probably wouldn't add it if they could because throwing cars isn't found in DnD.

I agree with you nobody has done it very well yet, but we don't even try. The End.


Beyond environmental interaction and object weaponization, there are other aspects of SS that put ours to shame. Without naming names:

-A cone attack that 'sweeps the room', knocking enemies to the horizon and killing them is better than our Jab, Punch or Haymaker any day.

-If our Hand Clap disoriented enemies and dealt damage to them, it wouldn't be such garbage.

-I wouldn't mind for one second if KO Blow was a straight punch that actually looked powerful and wasn't a slow animating Popeye punch. Kind of like here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...YYzJwCA#t=144s. That clip is how KO Blow should look and behave like, not like something from a 1930's rubber hose cartoon.

-Not to mention CoH has a complete lack of a backhand attack in SS.

Lastly, our combat is slow in general, and SS can feel especially so. You'd notice this if you play all the games like you say. We don't have the proper effects or animation to convey power, and if you're not a Brute, you don't have the damage to convey it either. I'd take the SS of the other two any day over CoH's eight year old plodding dinosaur. Drop either of them into this game and I wouldn't look back. Considering our SS only has 3 decent powers in it, there wouldn't be much to miss.



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Pretty sure it didn't when I tried the set in Beta. And it just goes to show how arbitrary it is, considering Eye of the Storm and Burst look just as stupid in the air. I'd rather they let me choose, rather than the devs deciding what "looks right" and slapping me with unnecessary restrictions because they don't want to do an animation.

And still, that's one attack compared to two in SS, and Arc of Destruction isn't the only AoE attack in its set like Foot Stomp is.



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And that would be for what, the laughable piece of crap that is Hand Clap?

Or the stunningly mediocre Jab, Punch and Haymaker trio?

Or the joke that is Hurl, which outside of PvP is a waste of a pick except for flavour.

Two-thirds of the set is mediocre or skippable. It has literally three good powers and one of those (Rage) has taken a big hit with recent +Dam buffing powers added to the game making stacking it rather pointless.


I'd be so bold to say Super Strength fails as a set:

It doesn't let you pick up, throw or utilize heavy things or demonstrate in any meaningful way that you are, you know, super strong.

It's performance is propped up by three good powers and the rest of the set is forgettable and also has what is generally thought of as the least useful power in the game, Hand Clap. The set is made up of mostly recycled animations, most being over eight years old at this point. Two of the set's powers needlessly force you do be on the ground, restricting you from using Fly or Hover in combat (Castle confirmed this was not for any balance reasons, just because it was easier to not fix than to do anything about and it should be noted that no melee attacks sets added since SS have had such a silly restriction).


SS is a poorly executed, outdated power set that gets by only on Rage+Foot Stomp and being iconic. And it's only iconic if you don't look at other superhero games that do super strength more justice; at this point that's pretty much all of them that feature it, including the two other competing super hero MMOs.
Yes, even Cel-shading Online's Might powerset puts our SS to shame.


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It's not just Brutes. On average, we're just more powerful now than we used to be. Teams steamroll though mobs, and there's not a lot of reason have a dedicated tank AT.

And when you try to force it, like the BAF and Keyes encouraging a "puller", it just comes off stupid and contrived.

The role itself is very forced and artificial. It's an artifact of bad AI and it's not terribly interesting or demanding. It's also very silly and illogical. Think back to the Avengers. Nobody was the "tank". 'Tank and spank' with one person being attacked while his buddies sit on the sidelines and do the damage just isn't how fights work.


OK, here's the thing. Nowhere in public did Synapse say he was going to do anything about Tankers. All we had was secondhand from someone who had claimed to have had a PM conversation with Synapse. There's lots of room for misinterpretation.

IIRC, he was asked about it on a uStream and he was non-committal at best. He said he had "some concerns" about Tankers. What those concerns were, if he still has them almost a year later and if they're strong enough to do anything about was not said.

Considering that nothing ever came of it and there has been no word since, I wouldn't hold my breath on anything happening. And personally, if something did happen, I don't expect anything good to come of it based on the devs typical handling of Tankers.


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The true purpose of Energy Blasters' copious knockback is revealed; to clear out what's under the sofa.


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Players still find ways to die. Especially new players. Who are maybe trying the game for the first time as F2P. And if something as simple as changing the defeat pose can help even a little with retaining them so they'll stick around and maybe spend some money, I'd explore that. Presentation, even the presentation of defeat, counts.


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Her current incarnation has been powered up considerably. They're probably running with that.

A thought: You can probably rule out Hulk, Ms. Marvel and Thor as being replacable by Skrulls.

If they could duplicate their abilities to the same degree as the originals, why bother with an infiltration? Just send 50 Hulks in.

It's probably why all the confirmed Skrulls so far were only duping trained humans.



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Maybe this'll help:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...O9SXto0Q#t=23s



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What I found interesting was that compared to 616 Cap, the effects of the serum were greater in the movie. Yet at the same time, I got the impression that movie Cap's training was a mere shadow of his 616 counterpart's. We didn't see that he had the best martial arts teachers in a dozen different styles. Or that he learned to operate everything from tanks to submarines (except that he could crash a plane). From the looks of it, this cap got standard, maybe a bit more intensive, Army training before getting the serum, and nothing much afterward.

So he's running mostly on the serum, guts and luck. Probably to emphasize how green he is for his origin movie.

In a way, that's closer to the Ultimate universe version of Cap. There the serum did give him low-moderate level super powers that do exceed normal human limits. Example: Ultimate Cap is in the 'small car tossing' range of super strength. Except Ultimate cap was implied to have received similar levels of training as the 616 version on top of his powers.

I hope in Cap 2 that SHIELD gets him some additional training between then and the Avengers film. Because it's not the 40's anymore and he's not going to be going up against just normal people with slightly better guns. If he's getting by on the serum now, you're going to see a repeat of the Blondsky vs Hulk fight when he goes up against some super humans or see someone with a Black Widow-level of martial arts training utterly destroy him.


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Your Tanks can attack while moving without suppression and rooting?

With ranged energy beams?

That aren't underpowered and don't look like bubbles?

Before level 40?



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I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm going to take a stab in the dark here:

Unless the scene you're referring to involved the Avengers going to an empty warehouse/office, encountering stationary groups of enemies and then standing next to them, repeating the same attacks over and over until they fell over, we can't do it with this game.

Want to throw a truck at someone? Forget about it. Get knocked through a building? Nope. Fastball Special? Can't do it. Aerial dogfights like Iron Man 2? You must be kidding. No chair fights. No grappling. No archers or pistol wielders that are also competent hand to hand fighters.

We'll never be as cool as a movie because our eight year old game and combat system is so slow and primitive we can't even move and fight at the same time. Comparing CoH to a superhero movie or animated series is just depressing. It only highlights how limited and outdated we are. And this is as good as it will ever be because CoH 2 isn't going to happen.


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