Starsman

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The logic behind buffing consume is that its in a defensive set, and specifically a defensive set that relies on high endurance output to reach comparable performance with its peers on average, both for tankers and brutes. In many cases, that is because many of its peers have significant endurance recovery and/or endurance management also.

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What about /Fire blaster's Consume? /Fire blasters fit into both of your justifications, as far as my experience goes. They suck down endurance to reach their potential and other blaster secondaries have endurance management powers as well.

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Fire blaster /Fire attacks aren't specifically designed to suck more endurance. There are more AoEs, which means they are only endurance-efficient when hitting multiple targets. Actually, giving endurance management to high-order AoE damaging things is counter-productive for balance. The devs can do whatever they want regarding /Fire consume, but it would be pointless to design AoEs to balance their endurance around a higher than 1.0 target-strike, then give out free endurance to sets with a lot of AoE attacks. That would be the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing, and shooting off its thumb with a pistol.

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I would also boost blaster fire consume, if simply because blaster /electric power sink also has a 60 second recharge timer. There is precedence that should this change happen, it should cover all versions of consume.

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Consume could get a buff, but then Dark Consumption would deserve one too. Buffing both of these powers would make Dark/Fire overpowered.

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Consume and Dark Consumption only "deserve" the same treatment if the presumption is that all endurance recovery powers everywhere have to be identical for balance purposes. But that is not the logic behind buffing consume (at least, it isn't mine). The logic behind buffing consume is that its in a defensive set, and specifically a defensive set that relies on high endurance output to reach comparable performance with its peers on average, both for tankers and brutes. In many cases, that is because many of its peers have significant endurance recovery and/or endurance management also.

Dark consumption does not specifically have the same issues as consume in that light. It does not underperform its peers just because its endurance management is inferior - almost the opposite.

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Although even if they buffed dark consumption the dark/fire brute would not get more endurance management utility, than a dark/energy does now.

The true issue by boosting Dark consumption is that the power actually does a decent amount of damage, about twice as much damage as Consume, and Dark melee is [supposedly] balanced around minimal AoE damage potential.

One thing to be noted about this whole normalization of Edruance Leach powers, is not only the recharge. Consume does has the obvious gigantic difference there, but most of the powers give drastic different endurance gains and at drastically different endurance costs, those are all aspects that would require looking at if you do shoot for normalization. The side effects of the powers are the part that should be different, with ice causing slow and self def, fire doing damage, and energy/electric simply lowering the endurance of the target.

I can see how some powers may get what may be considered nerfs under such a normalization, in one way or another.

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Can we fix Consume now that we're normalizing timers?

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There will be NO CHANGES to Consume at this time. Why? There are some essential datapoints I need to confirm which I have not had the opportunity to do yet. I *should* get my hands on the raw data after the Invention system hits.

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Thanks for the reply. I really don't understand why one endurance drain has to have 3x the recharge of every single other endurance drain that exist in armor sets, but I'm willing to be patient until after Inventions come out.

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We have to be careful what we ask for, though. Look exactly how they "normalized" burn. Sure, fire tankers got a buff, but what happened to other burns?

Thats what the entire community may get out of Consume Vs Energy Leach normalization.

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Something tells me you've been getting way too many PMs on this

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That, and I'm getting cranky in my dottage. :P

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And here I thought I was being original with that PM...

I was about to say what Talen just posted but in a less subtle way.

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Hmm. That is most definitely a bug! I love that animation!

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Considering that Coruptors and Dominators both get 85% resist and defense modifiers (higher than scrappers,) yes i have thought about it.

My dominator's are a bit too low level still, though.

Depending on your combo of pool powers, you can have one extremely survivable dominator that would easily go into melee range, but it may take quiet a few powers.

An extreme build i can think of is taking:

CJ or Hover
Tough
Weave
Scorpion Shield
Maneuvers

3 slot all but combat jump (just one slot there) and you end with a total mitigation of

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
S/L 79.6%
E 53.1%
N/C/F/P 26.6%
T 41.7%
</pre><hr />

Thats the highest Smash/Lethal mitigation i was able to get from any Patron Pool set combo, the others are at 75.4% with advantages in other types (Mu Master takes you to 75.5% in energy also)

But i think I'm derailing Arcana's thread a bit away from the Scrapper Secondary topic :P

Well, I do use Weave + Combat jumping for 8.1 defense on my Regen, that's about 16.2% damage mitigation, not much but i find it useful, but thats just me and would not recommend it to people in general. I did it mainly because with Quick recovery and just 1 toggle, i sort of felt i didn't need fitness at all so decided to boost my resistance and defense with the overflow of available power slots.

I can play with it all day long too! I like making my own toys!

Thanks you.

But i doubt they designed EA to be intentionally weaker than SR or EA.

Eventually I will get to the brute sets in my chain of proposals, since Fire Armor got half the survival love I wanted I'm now happy with how it stands. I still want to see Rise of the Phoenix and Consumption tweaked though.

The main issue those two sets suffer is complete lack of self heals, thats why they are flat lines, increments in the lines represent regeneration and heals.

Aid Self tends to help Energy Aura a bit more than Electric due to not getting hit thing there, and an Dark/Elec may work on the healing but thats forcing you into a primary, and nothing stops the Energy from doing the same.

Another curse the sets suffer is their pure nature. One is resist only, the other one is defense only (almost, the passives may help but are not exploited properly) and we seen over history how that affected Super Reflexes. Before you say Fire, remember fire also had heal to fall back on. SR got their passive resistances added, they may not always work as expected but I use Arcanaville's tested average resistance rating for simplicity.

There may be things coming on inventions that may help on those departments though.

I am working on many more things for that calculator, but am thinking of taking it into an offline application you can run on your own desktop and allow you to setup your own build, this may take a looong time though.

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But if you care at all, you should care enough to get it right. If the devs don't care about balance, they shouldn't shove balance in my face when they talk about changes. If they do care about balance, then the things they care about should actually balance.


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You're really going to have to open yourself up to the possibility that devs (not just our devs, devs in general) are full of poo sometimes!

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And with that, screw you guys...I'm going home.

(If anyone thinks I insulted them, watch more South Park).

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HEY!!! I RESENT THAT BOLD COMMENT!!!!

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I'd love to see a similar analysis for Brute secondaries. Guess what my favorite Brute secondaries are? Yes, Energy Aura and Invulnerability.

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I'm a fan of both sets myself, aesthetically as I can't say performance wise.

The saving grace of Energy Aura are not easily quantified, though. One, very ironic one, is the presence of powers that are so lack lusting that you can completely ignore in your quest to accommodate great tools like Aid Self.

Other is the benefit of Energy Drain witch once properly slotted may make sure you never have to truly stop fighting. Guess what my main brute runs?

I have intentions of adding endurance consumption to my analysis in the future precisely to show this aspect of the set (and also to demonstrate the downsides of dark armor)

You can look at my current charts on my signature, just keep in mind that there is a tiny bug on them with Stone's psionic survivability, i fixed it for tankers but still is wrong for brutes (it seems weaker than it is).

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Hmm. That is most definitely a bug! I love that animation!

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Castle, you may just had saved a life.

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ULTIMUUUUUUS!!!!!!

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*Goes into Granite Form*

Edit: And AFKs /tease

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Logs into his Mind/Psionic Dominator

ULTIMUUUUUUS!!!!!!

And this is why i think you will never see a boost to Vigilance:

Because the overall performance of defenders is not only where they want it, but perhaps even higher in many cases.


The only reason Vigilance was added was so that defenders were not able to say "we are the only ones without an inherent"

Talen, if this goes live it WILL make the set, survival wise, in line with non-granite tankers. Brutes equivalent are also similarly affected.

I know that is not the performance benchmark many would prefer, but i did ran my live build on test (witch runs CJ, Acro, and Tough on top of the norms) and was able to fight spawns of evens in the Crash Site without having to spam inspirations. This change to healing flames is a way more significant impact than many think, specially due to the recharge decrease.

Before, fully slotted, HF would heal 66.2% of your health per minute.
Aid Self would heal 116.7 per minute with a 3heal/3interrupt slotting and you know how everyone says it made a huge difference, right?

Well now fully sloted HF will be healing 141.86% of your health per minute.

My only insistence now is for the recharge of Consume to be made the same as Energy Absorption and then i can ignore Temperature Protection, Burn and Fiery Embrace sucking as makes my life easier on where to do sacrifices to get Tough and Acrobatics

Hmmm, recharge reduced to 40 you say? On top of the increase to the base heal? I wont complain but i don't get the logic behind making this power THAT better than Reconstruction and other similar self heals. Off course, a quick gaze at my calculator show that under the 180 second window this turns fire into just slightly inferior to non granite stone, so it seems well thought and intentional. I just keep thinking its odd to "break the pattern", even if Healing Flames had already broken it to begin with. I like how it sounds, will have to jump into test later to check it out.

And Castle, since you paying love finally to fire, how about reducing Consume's recharge to match Energy Absorption, Power Sink and Energy Drain? It requiring a to hit check i can live with but how about a recharge change to match like powers?

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Safe to say that won't be happening, but at least Gauntlet may be changed to work on some of the baddies in question again.

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I think its more likely that Gauntlet entirely disapears before it works again on AVs. Not that either will happen but its way more likely.


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Do you really think there is no equivalent of Taunt commonly seen in comics?

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There is, but it rarely works on anything with more IQ than the common street thug or minnion for hire.

It is true however than in RL taunting a street thug may make him take hostages or kill innocents faster though.

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Cryptic needs to remember that this is supposed to be a comic book game, and not EQ in tights.

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Then that means they should trash all taunt mechanics (even Gauntlet if you insist to think its not taunt) off the window.

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*hands out Circeus™-brand kewpie doll*

My point exactly.

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Bah! I wanted an Iron Vixen's!!!

Technically, the concept of ATs can survive a change of vision, but the way they are designed may change a bit. CoV ATs were actually designed under such vision.

Thing is, I'm serious.

It's not an attack or a joke, if the devs want this to be a super hero game they have to redesign a lot as it has never truly been one.

As long as there is taunting in the game this will never be more than EQ in tights.

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Cryptic needs to remember that this is supposed to be a comic book game, and not EQ in tights.

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Then that means they should trash all taunt mechanics (even Gauntlet if you insist to think its not taunt) off the window.

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I want to stess this:

We are NOT working on a Greek mythology game. Or an ancient history game. Just want to kill that rumour!

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AHA!!! ITS VIKING MYTHOLOGY!!!

This is what I expected from bases:

Transportation hub:

I wanted to be able to teleport from any point of the world into the base, not having to go to a specific spot on the map. That sort of felt artificial, bases should had granted every plaer that joined a SG a Teleport to Base temp power. Should had been part of the base, not a veteran reward.

Also wanted to teleport straight into a mission, see JLA, they do not teleport to New York City or any other city and walk from there. They usually get teleported straight to the building they were headed to.


Missions:


I expected the bases to have a huge super computer that would grant us missions that would go beyond 8 member teams. After all, this is Super Group content, and I know few super groups that are only 8 member large. I wanted to see generic, newspaper style missions that always had multiple AVs inside, with Elite Bosses galore and not a single minion anywhere. Tough content that required the collaboration of some 16 or 24 players.

I expected special huge task forces with cinematics and, again, multiple AVs throughout EACH map.


Customization:


I expected variation in geometry, not necessarily textures. I wanted to be able to pick a cavern as a map layout and build the base inside of it, or an underwater or outer space base built as a bubble. I expected to see a bio-organic geometry set that allowed me to live in a slimy-living base. I realize this is art intensive but it’s what I expected.

I expected trophies. A super groups should get their own kill count badges, unlocking each should yield trophies, Skulls masks to Banished Pantheon totem masks and Rikti inactive drones and broken Fake Nemesis. Special trophies should be also awarded from each Taskforce. Again, this should had not been part of vet rewards, but something the SG be proud of obtaining as a group.


Danger Room



I expected to get a controlled enviroment where there was no debt or experience, where we were able to jump in and be crazy and experiment strategies at, as the Xmen constantly do.

Data Center:



I expected to be able to build a database with information about every enemy repeatedly defeated by the super group. Similar to kill counts and badges, killing, perhaps 1000 skull smashers, would open up a database entry with a small lore about the specific enemy, along with known combat information (known powers).

Storage:
I expected this from the start, we got it now, thankfully.