Starsman

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If you see a lot of complaints about Stone Armour, it might just be that a significant portion of the people making the complaints are clueless.

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The entire opposite may be true, too. This is an argument where only the devs know who is really on the right side.

Of all things that would be the biggest one on my list. I run a teen female stone tank, she is very small and with very small proportions, every time I turn on the armor the thing is taller than her.

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Not sure where you're getting your end cost numbers from. I'm currently seeing in the game endurance costs of 0.26/s un-enhanced for the armors with mudpots at 0.78/s.

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Toggles don't actually use endurance per second, they use endurance per pulse. Most damage auras pulse every 2 seconds therefore the end they cost per pulse is actually double of their endurance per second.

Personal shields, though, tend to pulse every half a second so their endurance cost will look as if it was half of the endurance per second the game tells you.

The numbers I quoted were from the actual endurance per cycle.

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Something else I have always felt would have been a nice touch would be to have attackers take some damage when they attack you if your running brimstone armor.

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Not possible in the current game but if it was, this would be a toy reserved for fiery armor not for stone.

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Lol please quote the next paragraph where I say that I recall them saying it was not possible. I really do not need any more help to sound like an idiot, I have that covered on my own.

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My intention was not to correct you, but to note the second line about if it existed it being used as Fiery Aura's main toy.

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As to Castle using spreadsheets to balance this game. . . . . . . . take a look at pvp.

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PvP and PvE are two different beasts and as such they are balanced in entirely different ways. His PvP changes were precisely an attempt at doing that, giving PvP it's own rule sets and take it away from the spreadsheet balancing mechanics PvE are tied up to.

Even then the biggest issue with PvP is precisely that he has been overcompensating or under compensating numeric calculations based around those precise points. You can actually say the issue with his work on PvP is ignoring spreadsheets in favor of instincts.

Elusivity actually is perfect. The problem was how it got used. He, instinctively, added it to sets and let it run beta and live for a while to get a feel of it.

Proper way to handle Elusivity would had been to replace native defense with Elusivity while leaving pool, external buffs, and IO granted defense as plain defense. I can just pull spreadsheets showing how the values of Elusivity were over used and then under used, but I truthfully don't care about PvP* and any research I do on Elusivity options would be as means to bring it into PvE properly.

*The reason I actually don't care for PvP is not the PvP itself but the nature of kiting and jousting that goes on in this game's PvP where the chicken that jumps and occasionally hits hard is the one that wins. If there were ring-out rules where a chicken got penalized I may actually be more into it.

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Something else I have always felt would have been a nice touch would be to have attackers take some damage when they attack you if your running brimstone armor.

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Not possible in the current game but if it was, this would be a toy reserved for fiery armor not for stone.

Vicar, Granite would remain the king with my last sugestion.

Slotted, Granite yields 79.2% resistance to all (but psi) and 32% defense to all (but psi)

With rooted this nets a 3875% effective regeneration. It blows away the recomendation I posted above by a lot, and thats without using Earth Embrace. Click that and you get an effective 6161% regeneration.

Compared to granite, what I recommend is miles behind.

So whatever you experience now in granite, stone with my suggestions would still be about 1/3rd of that if not less.

As for trusting numbers or spreadsheets, the game is one giant spreadsheet, castle does his balancing on a spreadsheet and everything is based off how much damage can be taken. Off course pure regeneration will be much more susceptible to alpha, I noted that in my post. I am going simplistic here as I'm not going to set up a full website graphically displaying where each type fall.

However, there comes a point where the mitigation is high enough for you to take the alpha and keep going. Most WP i have seen die in such situations are just poorly build to be pure regenerative and ignore defense and resistance slotting. A decently built WP needs insane challenges to be killed.

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Was playing a bit with mids and refreshing my memory in game with my stoner, plus compared with willpower to get an idea of how far behind non-granite is and I came up with this potential list of things that can (together) result in quite an interesting buff:


Brimstone: Extend the resistances to all damage types but toxic and psi.
Crystal: Extend the defenses to fire and cold. Add 5% defense to lethal.
Stone Skin: Extend the resistances to all damage types but psi.
Minerals: turn the power from a self buff to a team buff (including self, off course)

Lower the end cost of all toggles from .13 to .104 (just as the one only other set that relies on so many toggles, dark armor)

On top of this the ones noted before:
Remove -speed from rooted
Lower Mud Pots end cost to 1.04


The results of this buff:

If this was implemented, the stone tanker that took every primary power:

A total of 55% smash/lethal/cold/fire/neg/eng resistance
A total of 25% smash/cold/fire/neg/eng defense
A total of 33% lethal defense

If you pondering why more lethal defense than smashing: because stone is harder to cut than to smash. It's a thematic addition.

Now, when you cumulate these stats with the formula I wont explain over but you can hunt Arcanaville's posts about it:

Mitigation = 1 - (1-resist) * (1-def*2) * (1-(1-1/(1+HPBuff)))

With Earth Embrace up stone will get:
Mitigation = 1 - (1-.55) * (1-.25*2) * (1-(1-1/(1+.59)))
=1 - .45 * .5 * .63
=86% mitigation

With no EE, it will get: 77% (leave the math to you guys to play with there)


For lethal damage, though, you get:

90% W/EE
84% W/O EE


Now, mitigation has a way of increasing the power of regeneration by a bunch of stuff that basically end up in the division of heal/mitigation. This means that the base stone build ends up with: Regen/(1-Mitigation)

Enhanced Rooted plus base healing = 295% regen so the result is:

W/O EE
Smash/Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative: 1297%
Lethal: 1885%

W/EE
Smash/Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative: 2063%
Lethal: 2996%



Now, do those look high? Well... lets compare to Willpower, shall we?

With just one foe in range, willpower gets 498% regeneration and it's smash/lethal mitigation ends up being 52% (if damage is pure, the fire/cold/neg/eng defs catch a lot of the mixed damage but I'll stay simple here) and it's f/c/n/e mitigation is of 48%

Divide the way I noted above and you get that WP's effective regeneration is:
S/L: 2244%
All Else: 2041%


Considering that willpower is using less endurance, less slotting and can get even more regen with more foes, I'd say Stone is still not reaching the full potential of a WP tanker, only keeping an advantage on higher mitigation that helps much more with alphas and stacking pools (should the stoner find any room to take those pools, that is)


On top of balance there is more these changes accomplish. For one, the set becomes much more fun to develop. Every power you get (other than Rock Armor) happens to make you slightly stronger to most attacks. Facing foes with gaping holes to your defense during your development is one of the biggest reasons why certain sets are just not fun to tank with until the high levels. This buffs the set and also makes it so that you never have huge holes.

From level one you would get a power that stands between True Grit and High Pain Tolerance in effectiveness.

<ul type="square">[*]At level 8 you get rooted to help against all damage types.[*]At level 12 you gain resistances to all types that are more reliable at these low levels than low defenses.[*]At level 18 you patch any remaining holes that were left by rock armor and show your new superiority against lethal.[*]At level 26 you gain a team buff that will protect them against confusion and grant them perception to fight off those blinding effects, plus, off course, you give them psi defense: this, in a way, returns to Stone it's original crown, best psi tanker. With the introduction of willpower, proliferation of granite and introduction of psi resist IOs, Stone has sort of lost this desirability. Now it would regain it by protecting the team against psi. It also makes perfect sense as certain minerals and crystals are already used by the CoT to heal, and the DE to buff.[/list]
And off course, endurance costs being lower are also going to make the set much more fun to develop than the insane endurance cost it goes through now.

At this point, if Granite was not changed into a timed toggle, instead I'd make it's debuff unavoidable by making them damage, speed and recharge cap debuffs that force you to stay at the intended debuff and never go over them. Such a version of granite would keep everything people note here they like about granite (mode switching to low damage) without allowing the low damage penalties from being circumvented.

I do play the set. As an Stone/Cold, talk about extremes! Unfortunatedly you won't ever read this and always think I'm just some noob hating granite's uberness (or you will read it, not sure how seriously you take such statements.)

I am very well aware of what the actual penalties of granite are and how easy IOs can entirely nullify them. I'm also aware of how weak the set is pre granite, it's not crap as you say, but it suffers heavy fragmentation (too many powers that individually protect you against too few things, not badly, but too few things still.)

Actually, the only armor set I have not played is Electric Armor. SR I have touched but not that far.

I have no hate-on anyone, I have hate on one of the worst designed sets in the game.

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Maybe if there was an improved set there. I saw a lot of nerfs based on the ideas of someone who doesn't regularly play the set.

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One nerf only to granite.
Loads of buffs to everything else.

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First of all, I really like having the option of running in with Granite and not being on top of your offensive game, or running in without and cutting loose (well, as much as a stoner can cut loose...) As it is, it plays nothing like any other armor set. As suggested it's a lot more homogenous, and I wouldn't enjoy that. I can't talk for anyone else but I would imagine a lot of other people feel the same way.

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I love when people use the "homogeneous" statement when anyone hints at any type of balancing. There is nothing in any set like I just described. Stone would still not play like any other set with these suggestions. If all you mean is "granite would be nerfed", well, that's another story all together.

Stone is one of those few sets out there (like Psychic Assault) that force players to go through hell to achieve an uber status thanks to one single power. That is plainly wrong. The set should not torture players until they get Granite, and granite should not make the rest of the set obsolete.

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There is more balancing I would do to alleviate the excessive fragmentation the set suffers now, but that I would have to sit down to actually toss ideas out on.

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Lol. Yeah, that'd be a very effective way to make me actually go through and create one of my possible unkillable WP or Invuln builds, because I sure wouldn't play my Stone after something like this.

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Interesting. You would not play an improved stone set? Do you play one now?

Rooted:
*Remove -speed
*Keep -jump, -fly but allow combat jump and hover to be used, they just will grant defense.

Granite:
*Make it auto de-toggle after 120 seconds.
*Increase the recharge to 320 seconds (enhanceable down, due to how toggles work it will never perma)

Mud Pots:
*Reduce endurance cost to 1.04

There is more balancing I would do to alleviate the excessive fragmentation the set suffers now, but that I would have to sit down to actually toss ideas out on.

As for cosmetics: I would make the full armor set scale with body as weapons do. Huge characters and tiny characters look extremely different due to how the thing does not scales from body to body.

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* The lame ranged attacks still exist and they're just as out-of-character as before, and are still extremely powerful. They need to be toned down to minor damage and be tossed into a pool for us to pick freely from rather than being forced a specific power.

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I am actually one of the advocates for the ranged powers to be there due to balance reasons, however I would like (and PMd it to Phosyb) if your selected melee set is a secondary set to allow the ranged attack to be customized out. The first set would always be the one with the ranged attack(s.)

This allow a player to pick, let's say, Martial Arts secondary with an Energy Blast primary and avoid the ninja star for conceptual reasons. You still would be forced to take ranged attacks but it would be more under your control what would it be.

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And I never suggested that we didn't have to pay for the last expansion. Again, Reading Comprehension 101 comes in handy. What I said was that we haven't been told anything that is coming down the pike except for the expansion (which, of course, we have to pay for just as we did the last one). That doesn't tell us anything about what we can expect in future issues, which is something this creative team has done several times over the last year or so.

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Positron stated in an interview he was working internally on Issue 18.

He also hinted at demonic summoning and dual pistol power sets coming in the future (happens to be the sets of the two characters featured in the CoHGR vid: a dual pistol blaster and a demon summoning master mind)

There was also a strange note about: "all I can say is that power customization was something we were not able to do while we were under cryptic, that's all I can say right now" (but I think if this comes it will be exclusive to people that buy the expansion.)

The Issue 18 being on the works is enough hint to know they are working on much more stuff to come, though.

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"You have not played this mission log enough to rate it.": Cuts down on legit ratings, and does not impact deliberate griefing.

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Griefing can go both ways. This opens up an immunity layer for an author griefer to work while avoiding player retribution.

Even worse: there is nothing in the game that dictates difficulty must be noted in the summary, so the player has no alternative than suck it in and walk away without rating because petitioning will do nothing against some one that "just made a hard mission"

Agree on Hudson Hawk, though.

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Please go and read the blaster forum. Most blasters are NOT satisfied with how the Psi blast set works, its considered subpar aoe damage.

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They love the mind secondary though, where their PSW lies.

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I'm curious as to why people are allowed to rate before spending, say, 5-10 minutes on a mission.

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Let's say i enter a mission. The very first thing I see in front of me is that every single foe in the mission is an Elite Boss (AV downgraded to EB, won't ever be less than EB even in heroic.)

Should I be forced to wait 5-10 minutes to rate that thing 1 star?

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Not sure if it's been mentioned before regarding EM, but the damage listed for ET in the ingame numbers ALSO includes the damage done to self, that's why the DPA looks alot higher than it should be

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I used city of data's numbers for all of my calculations.

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If you used the number in the front power summary (where the detailed effect list is not listed) then you counted the self damage as part of it done as CoD does that too.

ET does 4.56 ds, the front page lists 8.31ds.

Wow I think it took me about 4 years... not because of difficulty but altoholism that made me reroll characters all the time.

Right now i am close to have my first 50 villain and yet again I am deviating to a lowbie one... I guess i suffer from ADD...

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individual builds and player's relative skill?

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It is true that many arcs get a very limited play samples, but provided a large enough sample death per run can be a good representation of simple average player skill. Some are great players, some suck. My idea with this is not even to use it as a score just as a measurement of difficulty.

The only true number I care about is how many players finished the arc.

For the time being, though I have realized that 4 is the new 5. I ignore 5 starers and go straight for the 4 starers with loads of reviews.

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Personally I think most of the griefing could be cut out by simply not allowing anyone to 1-star an arc until they've finished it.

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Unfortunately (or fortunately,) the devs want players to be able to rate an arc poorly specially if the author made an impossibly hard arc.

There are also some horrendous arcs out there I have not been able to force myself through even if they were easy and the xp/tickets good, they were just horrible.

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Granted I wouldn't mind being able to see a percentage of teams that have finished versus how many have started.

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That is more exploitative, as another poster noted above. Just start/quit/start/quit as a form of griefing.

Stop injecting typos in my posts!!!

Prof, they already did a nice set of water attacks. Coralax have some and then there is the villain epics. Water spout specially is SWEET looking.

I think it would make a great blast set, but in the meantime i would be happy with a Coralax summon MM set that just mixed and matched the existing attacks with a mixture of coralax pets.

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Griefing would still be easy here. Simply start and quit to give bad ratings.

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The only way for some one to do that the way I noted is to die a lot before quiting. Some that just starts and quits makes no impact because I would not list who starts at all. Only who finishes and how many deaths have there been there (with an average of death's per completition, even if some of the death never finished)

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Check out Starsman's charts, even Castle says they accurately represent the powers ranking.
You'll notice axe and mace are pretty close to the higher end powers, but I think the redraw with weapons is a factor in why interest in either set is pretty low among Brutes.

And there also isn't really a 'wow' attack in either set like ToFo/KoB etc.
personally I have a mace tank and I love it, but I wouldn't make another weapon Brute/Tank just for the last reason.

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You think Crowd Control is not wow???

That power is amazing now that it hits 10 foes!