Johnny_Butane

I said 'well built'.

I'd wager any Tanker power set with Destiny, Hybrid Melee and smart Alpha and slotting choices is damn tough for just about anything, especially when played well on a team that works together.

Destiny, Hybrid and other Incarnate powers only apply to VIPs right? Thankfully VIP/Incarnate content is where most of this unresisted damage is showing up.

I'm willing to wager the average team/league is going to have Leadership buffs, misc other damage buffs, and now in Incarnate content, Hybrid support and the like. I can say for a fact every team I'm on has Call to Justice. I will also wager that they will only add more damage buffing powers (powers that buff everything for that matter) as time goes on. If you care to bet against me on that, just a few weeks ago I was making the same assertion and people said that it was unlikely...and then Hybrid was unveiled. So yeah.

The problem is compared to Tankers, Brutes get more FROM ALL THINGS. Damage buffs, survivability buffs, pretty much everything. They get nearly the same survival potential as Tankers but way more damage potential.

THAT. ISN'T. FAIR. OR. BALANCED.

And no, that's NOT their "schtick." That's the devs having a quantifiable and irrefutable double standard when it comes to Tankers and Brutes and them saying "f*** tankers" while throwing them under the bus.


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No.

Unresistable damage and autohit attacks were put in for a reason. All ATs should be in danger from something. Well built Tankers are already all but unkillable in 95% of the game's content. They don't need any less challenge than they already face or have even more risk removed.

If you get Marked for Death, learn to break line of sight.

Any Tanker will hit their cap with one Kin on the team. Don't tell me the cap only affects SS and shield because that's BOGUS. It makes Build Up and Hybrid Assault pointless for Tankers on most leagues. Why should Brutes be allowed get great benefit from Hybrid Assault AND Hybrid Melee and have high survivability and huge damage when buffed and not Tankers? That's not a cue for you to invent a reason for the toughest AT in the game to get more survivability they don't need in the vast majority of the game's content, because the majority of the game's content ISN'T unresistable damage and autohit.

Don't compare apples to oranges.
Defenders and Corrs are walking force multipliers. Four Tankers with a 500% damage cap couldn't buff each other AND ALSO debuff the enemy like a half team of Kin and Rad Controllers could. Not to mention, Corrs "defy" their cap a good amount with Scourge.

Warshades are an even stranger fruit with their form shifting and flexibility in role. I'm no expert on them, but I'd think they should loose some total potential for being so adaptable. But really, I'm not going to argue for or against them having their caps looked at too. All I can say is, maybe Khelds need a counterpart to myself to argue for them.

On the other hand, as fruit, Tankers and Brutes are way more comparable. They're both in the Tank AT catagory. They share most of the same power sets. They share the same goal, both want aggro: One to generate more damage and one to protect the team. I'd venture to say one is a Golden Delicious and one is a Gravenstein.


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I've got two responses to that:

1. Objectively speaking, those people are fewer in number. Damage dealing ATs are extremely popular and making Tankers tougher doesn't make them more appealing to the majority, especially given the most common complaint about Tankers I see by people who don't like them is their damage. If the goal is to broaden Tanker's appeal, you won't do that by doubling down on something they already do really well when they're already at a point where it can be superfluous and doesn't really give an advantage in many situations.

2. Increasing Tanker damage caps does nothing to harm or take away anything from the people who do like them for their tanking role. What it does do is:

-Increases their damage potential on teams and thus the value of additional Tankers.
-Allows all Tanker sets and combos to get the full benefit from damage buffs and things like Hybrid Assault or whatever they cook up in the future.
-Brings them in line for total performance potential with the other tanking AT, Brutes. Right now, when choosing between Brutes and Tankers for who is the better investment, Brutes are the clear winner.
-Allows them to be closer to their heavy hitting comic counterparts. If someone wants to argue that it doesn't and would require a special mechanic or something for that, I disagree. Stuff like Hybrid and future offense improving powers can do it; but the caps as they are currently don't permit them to.




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I agree, and will add that People are quick to suggest increasing Tanker survivability to distance them from Brutes and defeat my caps argument. Give them more (Max)HP, give them Absorb, give them high base regen, etc.

I ask a simple question: does this make Tankers more fun to play?

ATOs brought with them the Tanker +Res proc. This little beauty, I'm at capped S/L resists even when I'm exempted down to level 15 to run the new Steel arcs. Previously, these arcs wouldn't have stressed my Tanker, but now, my HP bar doesn't even move on them.

Did it make them *any* more fun to play on my Tanker? No. If anything, removing any danger or risk to them makes them more boring. It certainly doesn't improve Tankers' rep as slow and boring.

I ask another question: What would improving Tanker survivability do for them? I can already tank all the content in the game. I can already stand up to all the "soloing challenges" in the game like AVs and now Giant Monsters; survivability isn't even my hurdle in defeating them, it's damage. My Brute has a greater chance of overcoming BOTH of those hurdles compared to my Tanker and does.

Neither my Tanker, nor my high end Brute really sweat the new DA content on most settings. I still have to use my self-heal on my Brute, and my Tanker can for the most part ignore his HP bar. That doesn't make the Tanker any more advantageous or fun. The Brute can still survive the content and do so while dealing more damage. And that is the case for 95% of the content in the game. Even if you dropped his resistance cap to 85%, that wouldn't really change anything presently because he's not at the cap and doesn't HAVE to be for the vast majority of content in the game.

Increasing Tanker survivability further is nonsensical and pointless. People are so committed to not improving their damage that even if they can see and admit there's a problem with Brute and Tanker survivability versus damage levels, the only thing they can think of is to meaninglessly increase Tanker survivability or nerf Brutes when neither really improves Tankers and makes the more fun to play.

On the one hand you've got supreme survivability at the cost of a good deal of offense. On the other you've got survivability that's still plenty tough to get the job done and doesn't give up any offense. The answer of which most people are going choose is obvious. Making them 'super extra supreme' survivability won't change the answer and ticking everyone off by nerfing their beloved Brutes won't help anyone.

Bring Tanker damage caps in line with Brutes adjusting for the Max HP difference and Bruising, let Tankers get the full benefit from stuff like Hybrid Assault and team damage buffs and don't do anything in the future that gives either a serious edge over the other. Problem solved AFAIC.


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Because it's far easier just to say "eff Tankers" and roll a Brute than it is to wage a campaign for change. It's so easy even the devs did that.


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IIRC, all it says is his "dead man's switch" has been activated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man%27s_switch

It doesn't necessarily mean he's literally dead, just incapacitated.



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The feature may be bugged (it is a beta after all) but I tested it and the "criticals" from that branch of Hybrid Control only do about 14-17 damage to a Rikti in the RWZ. That's like, nothing. That's like 1/5th of an average Reactive DoT.

If it's bugged, it's bugged. If it's WAI, its a laughable alternative for a Tanker missing out on the Assault tree.

I see little reason to nerf Brutes. The devs have allowed the their performance since day 1 and I see little reason to upset the cart now. Brutes aren't the problem. The low Tanker damage cap is.

I don't think it's an even trade off. Without seeing exactly what Absorb does in practice, I can pretty much say more survivability isn't what my Tankers are seeking. The existing Tanker's Might proc and now Melee Hybrid slot are there as options to improve survivability on an AT that's already the toughest. What is absorbing going to let me do that I can't do now? Completely ignore tyrant's Flow Lightning spam? I doubt it. My Tankers all have plenty of avenues already available for more survivability, just like my Brutes. But what they lack compared to my Brutes, are offense increasing opportunities that are viable; Hybrid isn't viable with the cap as low as it is.



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Criticals would be cool. Where are they at? The ones that don't work off Containment?


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Hi. It's the future now.

My damage capped Tanker gets **** all from three of the four Hybrid threes, and nothing that improves him offensively.

My Brute will get plenty of improvement offensively and defensively from both Assault and Melee trees.


Pretty much exactly what I said would happen, did.

So will you admit there's a problem with Brute and Tanker caps now?



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Plus Deadpool, whether you like him or not, got pretty big in a relatively shot period of time. Even suggesting he get his own movie is more than one would expect with his roots as a forgettable New Mutants/X-Force 'parody' villain.

Also, as I hear it, that's part of the reason they pushed X-23 so hard over the last decade, because someone felt a 'female Wolverine' movie would be more viable in the wake of stuff like Alias. Because as much as fanboys love Wolverine, they love a chick in leather pants doing the same stuff even more.


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quack!



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Both, but this is just my opinion.

Look at the Avengers: Earth Mightiest Heroes cartoon as an example.

Out of all of their members, only one is 'magical'. Magical elements are treated as rare (to the point Tony Stark is *still* in denial) and magical threats got at most one two-parter to close the season, and the main theme was how much the other Avengers were out of their element.

Even if you look at a series like Justice League, where magic was more common it was still less common than everything else combined, and they really didn't have any "magic users" in the original roster.

Compared to that, CoH is drowning in magic. I'd say despite being only one of five origins, magic is found in more than half of the enemy and NPC groups, even the ones that don't have a magic focus has a major magic division like Arachnos.

DA, Rularuu, the Midnight Club, Darrin Wade, First Ward, arguably Ourobos (because we don't exactly know how they work) with their Pillar of Ice and Flame and resident Titan: It's not hard to make the claim that WAY MORE than 1/5 of the recent content has been magic related.

Magic very much has intruded into everything, and everyone's power coming from a magical font only underscores that.


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With very magical Portal Corp possessed scientists running around.

Also nothing concrete yet, but given what Prometheus said on the subject, it could very well turn out all these parallel worlds are all the result of magical Ascended beings.


Even the Rikti have been 'infected' with magic. Vanguard too is purposefully magic heavy because the Rikti were once very susceptible to it.

Also at 50:

Rularuu, Banished Pantheon, Knives/Talons of Vengeance (becoming progressively more magical), Arachnos (which is roughly 50% magic with their Mu mystics), Tsoo (more magical now than ever) not to mention the Midnight Club factoring into just about everything now.


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Yeah, I would have loved to hear what the devs were saying, because the guy clearly was getting some things wrong trying to relate them second hand.

Also I'd like to know where this rumor about the i23 beta opening this week got started. Considering today is Thursday, and tomorrow is Good Friday, that seems not so likely. Could still open today, sure, but seems way too soon.


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It's actually a terrible representation, as all that damage doesn't even come from his Tanker attacks, which from the video seem to be only Jab, KO Blow and Foot Stomp/Hammer of Zeus. Aside from him spamming all those [Flow Lightning]'s, his attacks in the fight proper look fairly ineffectual.

Not to mention he didn't manage to defeat anyone with that Tartarus Judgement attack.



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Yeah, not a lot to go on. I hope it gets a passing mention in the dev stream at MMORPG.com

I don't see how a Control or Support tree can work for all ATs. If you don't have buff powers, does it give you some for the Support tree? Or just affect your Destiny buffs?

Or the Control tree? I mean, it could improve your control durations like Power Boost, but what does that do for say a Fire/Fire Scrapper? Not much. And if that's all it does, how is that functionally different than an Alpha?


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I agree with all of these. Sadly, they're not gonna happen.

But have some more vanity pets, desperate horrible looking normal mapped faces clashing with decade old costume parts and endless variations on melee weapons and martial arts; this is the future of CoH.


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It doesn't really matter to me what the new IP is. All that matters is that CoH essentially has no future.

A new [insert 4 legged vanity pet] a month in addition to variations on melee weapon sets and martial arts plus whatever they can kludge together for issue content...from now until whenever they decide to shut down the servers, plus whatever more forms of downsizing (like loss of EU localization) that happens along the way? Yeah, no thanks. CoH deserves better than that. It deserves a proper sequel.

It's not being overly negative when the studio has apparently decided that something else is their future. Part of the reason I was willing to freely spend money on the market was because I thought it could only help the chances of a CoH 2. But Arcana makes good points; CoH 2 almost impossible, especially when they're apparently also working on two other projects. In light of that I don't see the point of supporting the game when it's really not working towards something greater.

All of this talk of other projects, the service downsizing for EU and the general direction the game seems to be going in post F2P (and to an extent post GR), has left a real bad taste in my mouth. Even the Pummit can't raise my spirits.


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*facepalm*

Tenzhi is Michael J. Fox.



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After, like, a whole month of dog reveals leading up to it, including a leak of a whole power set that was like 75% dogs.



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Black Spider, who also appeared in the YJ episode 'Infiltrator'.

He was voiced in this episode by Josh Keaton, who also was in the 'Spectacular Spider-Man' as...well you can guess.

Both YJ and SSM were written by Greg Weisman, so it was a bit of an in-joke.

Also note, fan speculation is that the reporter Black Spider was targeting was intended to be Bernell Jones and his daughter Cissie King-Jones(Arrowette).



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