UberGuy

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Depends on your style. I always take the armor no matter the set - but players choice, obviously.

Going Dark epic puts you INTO melee. If you like that play style, you'll love what the dark epic does for you. Oppressive Gloom stuns minions/lts around you (making you safer), you can Souldrain and Nuke - wheee - and then recover end from anything left standing (after a tasty blue candy) using Dark Consumption.

If you like to flavor your dark/dark towards controlling, Psychic might work best for you - it is full of wonderful controls... a (better) hold that you can stack with, sleep, confuse, and TK which is always fun.

Electric I personally don't feel the synergy. A little more stun if you are looking to stack it with Howling/Dark Pit, but it is lackluster. The ST immob can stack with Tenebrous if you have a particularly pesky AV, but I would rather let Fluffy do the stacking... Powersink is sweet, don't get me wrong, but I rarely need end that badly.

I went Power, because the PBU is supersweet for fear, healing, holding through to upping the damage. I also have a tendency to end drain myself in LONG fights (ie AVs, with no high damage AT on my team), so Conserve suits me very nicely. I prefer to use my cones, which requires a distance outside of melee to catch everyone but if you really, really just HAVE to smack someone around, total focus is a nice finisher :-)

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Quited for agreement. I have characters with both Power and Psychic, for the reasons stated. I play my Darks at range, so Dark Mastery wasn't for me, but it's very effective if you don't mind getting in things' faces (or them getting in yours).

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I know that I won't be a blaster. Do I want to put Acc Debuff in things like Dark Blast/Tentacles/Nightfall?

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Honestly, I don't advise this. It's just not that great an effect over and above what it does normally when stacked with itself and all your other toHit debuffs. If you absolutely don't want to slot these powers as attacks then I'd recommend instead focusing on recharge and maybe end reduction so that you can spam them faster to stack their inherent debuffs higher.

I'm most comfortable advising that you treat them as attacks. It's not like doing full damage with them is a bad thing. On that note, Gloom is your best single-target attack. If you ever imagine that you might be solo, having all four of Dark Blast, Goom, TT and Night Fall and slott them as attacks is going to be your most comfortable offensive arrangement. Dark/Dark does solo well among Defenders, IMO.

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How do you use Fearsome Stare nowadays? If I'm going to use other cone powers & Darkest Night, is it best to include it toward the end of an attack chain?

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Putting FS at the end of the attack chain denies you its primary benefits. It causes foes to only attack in retaliation to being attacked, but it causes them to do so at a lower rate than normal. (They don't attack back every time they're attacked.) It's a decent toHit debuf, meaning they're more likely to miss when they do attack. Finally, it allows foes to be left for later, as a foe that isn't molested won't attack at all. Sometimes they will flee, however, if low on health or otherwise debuffed, depending on the particular foe's AI.

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Is Blackstar worth it now that you can use it in conjunction with something like Dark Consumption?

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You won't be able to trigger DC, because you'll be out of end. You can always pop a blue to get enough end to use it. I'm not a fan of nukes on Defenders in general, even though I play "offenders". I don't like being sapped of end, since it stops me from doing anything else. However, if you think you can use something like DC to meaningfully counter the sap, or you just really want to debuff the bejesus out of stuff in a big PBAoE, Blackstar doesn't suck. Just don't forget that it doesn't just drain your end, it also applies a massive -recovery debuff for a short time.

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What's the recommended slotting for Dark Servant now? I'm assuming +Rech is a big one.

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Dark Servant is "perma" with no recharge slotting, and recent global pet changes mean his own powers cannot benefit from any recharge buffs. The only reason to slot him for recharge is if he dies (or you zone) before the normal expiry. His most potent ability is his toHit debuff. I second the recommendation to slot him for toHit first, and either hold or heal, as your preference. It tend to slot him for mez, as I don't usually rely on him being in range to heal me. His AI has been changed recently and he is more prone to run into melee. This is a mixed blessing, as he is now better about debuffing foes, but also somewhat more prone to bite off more than he can chew.

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Do I want hasten? Do I want Recall? I'm not sure about extra power pools. I think Tactics would be handy, but I'm not sure.

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I am a huge fan of Hasten, but it's not required. Dark Miasma is made very much more effective with more recharge, since a lot of its main powers are clicks and not toggles. Getting those clicks back faster is always better.

I also have Tactics. The Leadership pool's benefits are strongest in the hands of a Defender. Dark Blast has no "Aim" or similar power to boost toHit, so Tactics is a manageable substitute. Either Maneuvers or Assault are reasonable to take as prerequisites. Maneuvers' +def indirectly stacks well with your many sources of -toHit, but Assault can be run with no investment in slots.

I don't have Recall, but there are times it would be nice to have for positioning Fluffy or getting a defeated ally in place for a rez. I think it's a good choice for a Dark Miasmist, even though I don't use it.

I do recommend the fitness pool for Stamina. Even though Defenders get an inherant that makes their endurance costs lower if teammates are harmed, the way I usually play Dark Miasma on a team is proactive and essentially mitigates the benefit of my own inherent by preventing lots of potential damage to my team.

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I think we can ignore it once scrapper health, def/res caps, and aggro mitigation is within 3% of brutes.

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Queue every Blaster vs. Scrapper argument that's ever graced the boards.

Game balance != numerical equality. What you're asking for simply is not needed.

That's fair.

Now think about what that means that the price as a function of level for outfitting yourself with common IOs at table prices.

"They've gone to plaid!"

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I've actually got a more concrete method, but I'm a bit busy atm. I'll post it when I get 30 minutes to go over it.

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Are you still busy?

Common IO recipies' price progression is ... strange. It is a piecewise function that isn't very smooth, and may have heavily rounded values, neither of which is making the fitting tools I have on hand very happy with analyizing exactly. However, it does look essentially exponential.

(Edit: I originally said it wasn't monotonically increasing, but it is. It's just a jerky line and I thought it jogged down at one point, but it was just a trick of the eye.)

The price of level 25 common IOs is just plain odd.

I used damage recipies to do the analysis.

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It's exponential. Increasing by 30 each time is a linear increase. Increasing by 30% each time is an exponential increase. To make the example more obvious, assume that every 5 levels is goes up by 900%, which is the equivalent of x10. So at level 5, it's 1, at level 10, it's 10, at level 15, it's 100, at level 20, it's 1000. Exponential.

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Except that's not what the price of SOs does. Look at the tables. The price of a damage or heal SO (the most expensive type) is level * 1200 inf. That is linear. I guess my wording was poor given what Fulmens said, but the problem is that what Fulmens said isn't correct. Because I knew how SO prices work, I thought he meant constant slope, not constant scaling of current value.

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One person said it can happen if any of you text is exactly at the limit. So I made sure none of it is. Some is within one character. I'm at 99% and some change for file usage.

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You probably need to shrink the file. That number is an estimate, and it's possible that the real storage size for your arcs on the servers is being exceeded.

As a test, back up the arc and chop out something like one custom critter or a single objective. See if it then lets you publish. If it does, you know that either it's too large or that there's something in the thing you deleted that's preventing the publish.

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Or does someone getting a drop from a mob exclude someone else from getting one?

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This. This is one of the reasons that serious farmers like to run their maps solo, or at least with only characters they control.

Note that this appears to only be true for recipes and salvage. There are some cases (DE Monsters) where multiple people can get inspirations from the same mob. Probably not very useful knowledge, I know, but hey, I like completeness.

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Every 5 levels your cost of SO's goes up by about 30%. (number of slots goes up, cost of SO's goes up.)
They're both exponential but they're not even remotely matched. So you went from utterly starved for cash to totally rolling in it, in the good old days.

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What you described is not exponential. Going up by a (basically) consistent factor of 2.5 or 1.3 is a linear increase. The scale factor for IO recipies does not follow a linear progression. It is either geometric (the scale factor used increases by level) or exponential (the price is a function of some constant raised to a scale factor of your level).

When IOs came out I studied the progression in that table conlcuded that it was exponential, but I don't actually recall what I did (and I'm not free to check it right now), so I won't swear to the correctness of that now. Maybe this evening.

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I made my first widow today on virtue, and made it to 10 ten so far. It's fun but survival is a risky game, having to pop greens and rest often. Does this ever improve? I was hoping it would be more like a brute or scrapper.

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As others have said, once you're in the upper end of the game, you'll wish more of your Brutes and Scrappers felt this way, at least with a Night Widow.

You start to turn the corner in the 22-24 level range.

I'd like to add that I read into both Positron's and Synapse's posts that their intent to address these badges is specific to the Mission Architect. I do not mean to say they they won't carry this practice forward in future (non-MA) badges, but they are specifically stating that they do not want the Mission Architect to be about grinding. They seem to be intent on getting to a state where people to play it because it's compelling on its own merits, not because they have to run 5000 missions to get an array of badges.

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Good point. That would mean that, against AVs healing is actually a better form of mitigation than debuffs. Oh that's gonna rankle some folks.

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That depends on the debuff. AVs have no special resistance to damage debuffs. Unless they have damage buffs, which is very rare, heavy use of powers like Darkest Night and Enervating Field can neuter their damage output to the degree that no healing is required. I won't claim this is the typical case, but it's certainly not outrageous to achieve. Level differences still count, of course, but only certain TF AVs are over-level. Damage debuffs are less effective, for example, on the RSF and STF.

In my experience, calls for debuffs in AV fights are so they fall faster more so than so they kill slower.

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Look specifically the "resale" column and how fast it scales up. Perhaps the "resale" column needs adjustment. That would put a significant hit in Inf generation and mostly take Inf out of 50s pockets... the players who get Inf rained on them from the sky.

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It would make 50s earn at something a little over 2/3 of their current rates, at least outside the MA. While that's a real and significant effect, I don't think it's significant enough to cause a major dent in things. Unfortunately, it would likely make market life harder on the "Jonses", since they seem to insist on using the market like a store. You can successfully treat the market like a store on raw L50 PvE earnings, even just playing on large teams. It's just not the most efficient way to do it. I think chopping it down by 1/3 would have a pretty negative reaction from those people, while not doing much to the marketeers and active sellers.

I'm not sure why they made it exponential like that. I don't object - it's just curiously different from the previous rewards.

[*] Many people enjoy playing the game for its own sake, at level 50[*] Level 50 characters can make a lot of money[*] Other people get stuff level 50s want, and can sell it to them at high prices, because level 50s make a lot of money[*] If the sellers sell stuff to level 50s often, they make a whole lot of money, concentrating inf earned by different 50s on themselves[*] People with lots of concentrated wealth sometimes also enjoy tricking out their characters. Or somtimes people who enjoy tricking out their characters decide to concentrate wealth to do so.

Voila - How people are able and willing to pay 100M inf for something. It's not like they had to sell their soul or work in a salt mine to do it.

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There's also no evidence to the contrary so it's just as valid as any conceptualization of yours, especially since I'm already admitting to using a supposition based on lack of manipulation as a basis of normalcy.

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No, we have been told that this is the general approach to how they do things. I may not know the numbers, but my understanding of the general approach is not supposition. It was generally explained in the discussions on the changes buffing Blasters.

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Once again, you're using a vague argument ("acceptable target") without ever giving a definition for it and using it as a counterargument for my own. You're simply inhibiting any potential debate by refusing to actual give a concrete definition for what you think the appropriate term would be.

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The reason that ranges are used for balance is because it would be too difficult to account for disparate functions. Scrappers and Brutes don't have significant enough disparate functions between the two of them to make numerical comparisons unnecessary.

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I disagree that their similarity dictates that their balance should be calculated in this way. There are still too many variables. For example for the time being, they still have significantly dissimilar primary powersets. Even under the supposition that they will eventually have the same powersets, they still do not operate in the same ways. Finally, the devs still aren't likely to balance their performance at their respective caps. One reason for this is that, in general, the way we approach the caps is linear. Setting a balance in the middle of our operating ranges may mean we are at different places at the extrema.

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Would it be a compelling argument to bring up human psychology and the strong tendency for people to choose the most powerful of multiple tools available to them if the differences are readily obvious and the functions are identical? Ask a random person on the street whether sun screen with SPF 35 or SPF 40 is better. They'll tell you SPF 40. If the two sun screens were available for the identical price and from the same company, they'd also buy the SPF 40. It's a basic tenet of psychology and has a strong enough correlation to be consider an effect unto itself.

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And yet, people play Defenders and Tankers both. It does not matter if more people prefer the other options. It only matters that a healthy number of people choose all of them. I don't know for sure what the minimum for "healthy" percentage is, but it seems to me that all the AT except Stalkers, Dominators and maybe Tankers had them last we were given data. Notably, Stalkers were buffed since then and Dominators are being buffed soon. Both buffs affect the ATs in the middle and the extremes of the AT's operating range with respect to caps, except for near-recharge-capped Doms and possibly for Regen Stalkers (who did not recieve the full proportional buff the other powersets did).

If that observed pattern is correct, Tankers are due for a buff, not Scrappers.

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There will be a shift from Scrapper to Brute. I assure you there will be, especially among the power gaming crowd. I'd rather the reason to switch between the 2 ATs be play style and concept choices rather than the fact that Scrappers are demonstrably inferior.

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I think you are far too concerned with this. I think your focus on numerical analysis is too great. I think you overestimate how many people will do this, and how important it is that some will do so.

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Actually, I never said it would ever be a dominant factor. But it will be a factor in the decision. It shouldn't be.

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I disagree. I disagree because I believe the following statement is false.

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Brutes are demonstrably better in all functional respects than Scrappers.

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This is a fallacy. Yes, they are demonstrably tougher, because they have more HP. Yes, they are deomonstrably better to buff, because they have higher DR and damage cap * AT damage mods. That is not "deomonstrably better" in "all functional respects".

Remember when I said that I play both ATs but prefer Scrappers? That's relevant. I don't find having to build fury "demonstrably better", even though I don't find it hard to do. I find it a task I have to keep up with, something I must be aware of in my tactics and strategy, and how I interact with a team. I have no such concerns with a Scrapper. I simply am what I am, and I never have to worry about stoking my inherent to keep my performance where I want it. There's a difference between this and claiming doing so is hard. I find a Scrapper superior because it takes no effort to maintain its baseline. In exchange I get a far flatter baseline. When discussing comparisons in two ATs who both do more damage than is required, I'm perfectly satisfied with that.

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The problem with datamining is that it's notoriously unreliable. Datamining has shown that Scrappers are the most played AT on CoX, but, if you actually go and check who is online, you'll find more controllers than anything else. The reason that datamining is used is because it is solid and confirmable data.

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I'll be the first to claim I distrust the devs to use their datamining correctly, but I have a big problem with the assertion that they got something this fundamental that wrong. I'm curious what evidence you have to support that claim.

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You can state, without question, that this many Scrappers have been made since CoX went live. You cannot, however, say how many of them are still active or even played regularly.

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The devs recently posted exactly about that. They told us that though more Scrappers were created, people tended to player their Defenders and Controllers longer and to higher levels.

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Datamining is in no way the wonder tool you make it out to be. The devs have even stated that datamining is simply a necessary sin.

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I never made it out to be a wonder tool. I made it out to be a better tool than your approach. There's a difference. Please be careful with the strawmen. Also, I'm curious where that was said by the devs, as I don't remember that quote.

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How do you (not the devs) define "healthy" in this context? A certain minimum percentage of created or played characters of the AT? A certain amount of play time across all character? I'm very curious as to where you as a player, exclusively within the confines of this debate, would define it, especially since you're so gung-ho at determining intent and need for rebalancing in any way (which is by no means a requirement for any rebalancing).

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Bear in mind that this is said in the absence of thorough analysis of what's being discussed. I'll take a stab at it, though. There are 14 ATs. Perfect parity would suggest that each made up 7.14% of the population. However, the level gating of the EATs keeps them from being as common as the others. Let's say all 4 EATs count as 1 "core" AT. That's 11 ATs, or 9.1% distribution for parity. As a guess, in a world where we were past the statistical freakout of GR's release and we assume everyone who plays CoH/V buy's GR, I would say that anything under 4% of ATs online at a time, averaged over something like a week, would be indicitive of a problem with keeping an AT from being sufficiently attractive.

Of course there are all sorts of crazy assumptions in that number. Not everyone will buy GR. It will be a long time before the proportions settle into visible patterns. But you asked me to produce a number, so I did.

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The only time you will actually get Controllers replacing Tankers and Defenders is when you get enough Controllers to create redundant overlap and are not fighting enemies that are not mez protected (AVs, Cimerorans, etc).

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I don't know who you play with or don't, but this is false. Truly, provably false. My nearly daily play experience shows it to be false.

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I'll concede that the two effects are related, but neither is going to replace the other completely.

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Again, you seem to miss out on the whole "we're better than we need to be" part of the equation. If you kill fast, are incredibly hard to kill, and can toss a bit of crowd control around, you don't need aggro management. And I'm sorry, but lol needing a Tanker for AVs.

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You wrote...

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I do not believe that a significant part of the playerbase will behave in the way you describe, because if they did, there would already be fewer Defenders than there are now.

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The implication of this bolded statement is that there is already a smaller than expected number of Defenders than their should be, if all things were equal. The semantics of your statement suggest that the uncommon would be even less common under the effects of the condition. That's where I was getting it from.

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I didn't intend to imply that, but I see where you are getting it, though. Yes, there are fewer Defenders than Controllers, and my semantics were meant to acknowledge that. My point is that Defenders are still very common despite being less commmon than Controllers. When they become rare, I'll accept that the imbalance is creating an issue.

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First off, it's only common for teams to be as buffed to the gills as you imply when the teams are specifically built for such.

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Again, false.

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Most teams are not, in fact, hyper optimized like this.

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I won't disagree with this part, though. However, I my understanding is that we're talking about things at the upper end of performance. This is how a team at the upper end operates in my experience, consistently.

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The only support set that could feasibly protect this well under normal team make up is FF/* and that's simply because it can layer huge quantities of +def which will contribute more to a group's survival than -dam or +res.

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Um.. no. Mix in Cold, Thermal, Sonic, Villain Epics, and the occasional Kin and you're absolutely good to go.

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Secondly, it takes a lot more control than you imply to make up for the aggro control that a Tanker has thanks to the low uptimes of Controller AoE mez powers. Under SO circumstances, it would take multiple Controllers cycling through their controls as quickly as possible to make up for the aggro that a single Tanker could maintain.

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How did we get from Brutes running at constant 90% Fury and the 90% DR cap to SO circumstances?

Do you really think that people running at SO power levels are going to discriminate on what ATs they bring? Unless they're doing something like running an "All SO STF" or something?

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Lastly, as an addendum to your "Tankers are completely superfluous" comment, every AT is completely superfluous. There is no "required" AT, though, for some challenges, there are required "roles" (tank, support, damage) that need to be fulfilled in order to achieve it (STF for one). Trying to make it look like Tankers are unique in their capacity for easy replacement is an argument destined for failure.

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I'm not sure if it's you or me, but you clearly are not following my argument. First, I never once made the claim that Tankers were unique in that. They are just a stellar example. The actual point was that they are still played, still common. You can wander into Wentworths or Portal Court on any given day and expect to find some there.

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Which is an issue of buff contribution and force multiplication more than it is any innate weakness in the design of the Tanker, Scrapper, or Blaster ATs. Scrappers and Blasters could easily be just as threatened by buff compilation as Tankers are. Defenders and Controllers have been demonstrating this since the beginning of the game, though, before ED it was less important because everyone was already performing near cap capability. Teams of 8 Defenders are some of the classic super teams (and still are).

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And people still play Tankers. [color=yellow]People will not stop playing Scrappers because they can play Brutes. Playing a Scrapper is still going to be compelling.

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Dominators and Stalkers were never 10% of the villain side population. In fact, IIRC, Stalkers were actually the most populous AT red side

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They weren't even close. They and Dominators were bottom of the barrel. IIRC. The most populous ATs were Brutes, Doms and MMs.

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Their population numbers were fine so they shouldn't have been fixed. Dominators would be in the same boat as well, but they're getting their damage increased. Funny that.

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No, they were both bottom of the barrel.

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To use a couple metaphors, you'd prefer to see sea levels rise 12 feet before doing anything to solve global warming. You'd want a species to become fully endangered (and probably in dire risk of extinction) before putting forth any effort to rescue the species. That's the difference.

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No, the difference is that you see a hint of a problem and have decided that it will be one. I see a hint of a problem, and don't think that's enough to incur the cost of change to correct a possible problem.

However, I laud your effort to paint me in a negative light by choosing examples that make me look unreasonable.

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I see imbalance and want it to be addressed because a serious problem could arise. You'd rather let it sit and become a serious problem before doing anything to fix it, just in case it didn't become one, even though you do admit that it could easily become one.

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The word "easily" is yours, not mine.

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Actually, I do understand the significance of those numbers. It's pretty obvious. It's the difference between requiring 14 minion equivalences shooting at you for 22 seconds to kill you and requiring 17 on a softcapped */SR. It's the difference between 60 hp/sec and 75 hp/sec regeneration on a */WP. It's an extra 2 seconds of reaction time when you've got 75 dps penetrating your preferred method of mitigation. That's pretty significant.

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Way to miss the point completely. You accuse me of having no numbers, yet you have no idea how those statistics will translate into player AT migration. None. Zero. Zip. Despite that you're asking for change on that basis. Scrappers < Brutes, thus people will play Brutes more, and we must fix that before it happens.

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If it's inappropriate to compare 2 ATs then why are you so adamant concerning the Tanker-Controller comparison?

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Because they illustrate the point. People complain about this "problem" all the time, and yet people play Tankers. Plenty of people play Tankers. They're not a vanishing breed, despite how "unneccesary" they are.

And you think that meaningful numbers of people will migrate from Scrappers to Brutes on the basis of how many more seconds a Brute can live at SR's soft cap?

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As to the inability to bring forth any numbers or even solid definitions because, as you point out, we're not devs, the devs are also omnipotent. It's methods like these that Arcanaville (who I know has Castle's ear and has a significant effect upon his final considerations) uses to point out inequities. The numbers are useful and are used. You're assuming that just because the devs don't show calculations like this, even though they're one of the best tools at their disposal for determining differences that they aren't done.

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Arcanaville has on multiple occasions told us that the devs explicitly have minimal interest in these sorts of analyses, exactly because they are not representative of real gameplay. If I am not mixing up posters, she has stated that she has largely ceased to use these sorts of analysis to make cases with the devs for this reason. I'd be happy for her to clarify.

I want to post something out of sequence here.

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Interestingly, I doubt any AT would get examined by your definition (and not the easy, cop-out "dev metrics" definition that doesn't even answer the question).

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As we've discussed this, you've taken an increasingly hostile approach with me, and I'm getting tired of it. I'm sorry you don't like that I can appeal to a methodology different than yours without being able to specify its boundaries. You can take the ad-homenim claim that doing so is a "cop out" and stick it.

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I'm honestly curious where you think the upper bounds come from then, if not from arbitrary design assignments of desired roles.

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Upper bounds are exactly that. They are the upper bounds for an AT. You don't necessarily choose those bounds in relation to everyone else except in the sense that you choose a baseline for all ATs and then decide that some either operate above or below that baseline for some other reason, which can be completely internal to the AT.

For example, it's not reasonable to conclude that Scrappers have a 500% damage buff cap because they need that to do more damage than Tankers. They already do more damage than Tankers without that. This can be viewed as a feature that is purely there because it's more in line with the vision of what the devs thought Scrappers should be good at.

Originally, no one had a DR cap. One was put in to keep characters from being literally invulnerable. It just so happened that, at the time, Tankers were the ones easily achieving 100% DR. When caps were put it, 75% was chosen as the universal value, with exceptions for Tankers. (I can't remember if Khelds were in yet when we got DR caps.) That's not necessarily explicitly to keep Scrappers from competing with Tankers, but reasonably because it fit the idea that Tankers are a lot tougher than everyone else. Honestly, this was even more likely back in those days, because this sort of conceptual approach was explicitly how the devs approached game design.

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I'm not sure lack of precedence indicates a requirement for review. Performance in excess of acceptable targets would, however, and if that performance excess were found to be a result of the combination of caps the AT sports, then that would be a possible course for change.

That consideration, if warrented, exists outside any question of comparison to Scrappers in shared play.

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This begs the question then of what the "acceptable target" is. Thanks to the virtually very minor changes that have happened to Scrappers over the course of the game, I'm reasonably sure that Scrappers are very close to, if not the definition of, the acceptable balance target.

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There is absolutely no evidence there in support of that conclusion. All you can deduce from that is that Scrappers exist inside the boundaries of those targets. More importantly, being "very close to if not the definition of" implies that the balance target is a single number or line. It's not. It's a spread.

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Once again, you're using a vague argument ("acceptable target") without ever giving a definition for it and using it as a counterargument for my own. You're simply inhibiting any potential debate by refusing to actual give a concrete definition for what you think the appropriate term would be.

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I don't give a firm definition of it because the devs do not tell us what they use. They only have told us that they consider some things too good and some things too poor, and when things wander outside those boundaries, they are eligable for change. I can't specifiy those boundaries, because the devs have not explained them to us. Despite that, I think it's critical that you understand that this is the sort of approach that they take, because I think it's relevant to understanding why your approach, which seems to be based on either a much narrower range or even a single line, isn't going to set off their alarm bells. Unless, that is, Brutes wander outside the upper boundaries or Scrappers wander below the lower one.

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One of the primary reasons that this discussion has been brought up now is because of GoRo.

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That is not what I meant. There is no proof that mixing Scrappers and Brutes on the same side is going to have any deliterious affect on the game.

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There isn't any proof that there wouldn't be either, so it's not exactly a foolproof argument, especially since, assuming that people would go with the "best" (re: most powerful) option between the two if they were given all of the information and all else was equal (re: they have access to all the same content), people would side with Brutes over Scrappers.

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't make a change in a working system because of something that could happen unless you think there is a very good reason for doing so. You have to either believe that the purported problem is unlikely but potentially severe, or highly likely. All you have presented is a set of mathematical evidence that Brutes can operate at higher levels than Scrappers. That is not compelling to me as an indicator of either a highly likely or a highly severe problem.

[ QUOTE ]
The fact that you prefer one AT over another doesn't really mean much, just like my own preference for Scrappers over Brutes doesn't really mean much, especially from a balance standpoint. Because we play the game for fun, we'll go for whichever AT is more entertaining to play for ourselves. However, balance shouldn't factor that in, especially since it is heavily dependent on the player rather than on the game itself.

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When you're talking about a "problem" defiined as who will play more of what AT, you have no choice but to factor that in. You apparently refuse to acknowledge that this performance gap you've identified does not clearly indicate that people will migrate from the Scrapper AT to the Brute one. That is an assuption than necessarily assumes that performance is the dominant indicator of what AT will be played. But we have copious evidence to the contrary.

[ QUOTE ]
You can never account for the player.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which is why the devs datamine to find out what most of the players are actually doing.

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Balance should however be a factor in design because it means that every AT is going to have as similar as possible performance levels allowing players to pick according to their play style choice without being penalized for having a play style preference that is most comfortable with an innately weaker AT.

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I agree, to an extent. What we apparently disagree with is that the gap in performance under discussion is severe enough to warrant meaningful concern.

Remember, "balance" is not necessarily defined as "what you can survive" or "what you can defeat", but just as often by "how fast you level". If the two ATs don't level radically differently, I will be surprised if anything changes.

[ QUOTE ]
Personally, I would see a 1 point disparity in performance between any 2 ATs on that scale (as long as the performance is review across all conditions and weighted for the AT's designed preferred role) as something that needs to be fixed. It may not seem like much, but it is a quantifiable and noticeable difference if you're actually paying attention.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would not.

[ QUOTE ]
Actually, I could quite easily point you to something quite simple to illustrate this. Look at the number of controllers regularly played and then look at the numbers of defenders regularly played. I can almost assure you that there will be more controllers than there will be defenders. A simple way to do this would be to take a few population datapoints on multiple servers at multiple times. Do a quick search for defenders and another for controllers. I am more than confident you will find a statistically significant difference between the 2 populations.

[/ QUOTE ]

We were given those numbers. But again, I consider your methodolgy in analyzing those numbers flawed. The goal is not parity in player selection of the available ATs. The goal is that any given AT have a "healthy" population, a healthy playtime, and a health leveling rate. Everything else is secondary, in my opinion.

[ QUOTE ]
However the Controller-Defender parity issues isn't quite as black and white as the Scrapper-Brute parity issue. Defenders are still (nearly) 33% more effective at support that Controllers are. Controllers beat Defenders on damage, but Defenders beat Controllers on support.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is usually described as far more stark a difference than this, because you left out the primary role of all Controllers - control. (Not all controllers are actually that effective at damage dealing.) The usual argument about the disparity in those ATs is that Controllers bring far more to a team because they bring nearly as good a force muliplication, plus control. In essence they can replace both a Tanker and a Defender with two Controllers and come out ahead.

And yet people play both Tankers and Defenders.

[ QUOTE ]
Aren't you showing that the player base is acting in the manner I describe by saying that there are already substantially fewer Defenders than there should be?

[/ QUOTE ]

Hardly, and I'm curious how you read that into my post.

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You imply that there should be more and yet, for some reason, there aren't as many as there should be.

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I implied no such thing. Among other things, I've made no statements about how many there should be.

[ QUOTE ]
Actually, I never used a straw man. I applied the same basis of conclusion to your argument that you attempted to apply to my argument. You were implying that, if the disparity were significant enough to merit a change, there would be a similar disparity in the number of players playing Brute and the number of players playing Scrappers. My counterargument, rather than ignoring your argument and putting a weaker argument in its place, simply stated that the current situation (re: Co-op zones) is not the same as a situation that is looking likely in GoRo.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is not what I am implying. I am have made no statement at all about the relative populations of the ATs. All that matters is that the AT has some "healthy" representation. I really see zero issue with a given AT having something like 2x the representation of another AT, as long as that AT with the lower representation is actually represented at a noticable level in the player base. If you see 2 of AT A for every AT B you see, I'm far less concerned than if you only see one of AT B every couple of days of play.

[ QUOTE ]
This has already happened with Defenders and Controllers (as I stated previously), so it's not unlikely that it will also happen between Brutes and Stalkers should a similar situation of exposure occur.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't doubt that some of it will occur. I just don't think it will happen enough to be a reason for concern. Just as I am not conerned today about the ratio of Controllers to Defenders, or even Controllers to Tankers.

[ QUOTE ]
If it's questionable as to whether an AT is outside of the arbitrary average, to determine how far it is outside, a direct comparison needs to be made to determine an accurate magnitude of "outsideness".

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe this is a symantical distinction. Yes, because the range exists to bound all the ATs, then by definition any AT outside the bounds is "overpowered" compared to its peers . I do not believe that distinction is important. I believe this is actually irrelevant to singling out any two ATs for comparison, because the performance bands to not exist relative only to those two ATs.

[ QUOTE ]
This is one of the primary reasons why I calculate according to scalars and caps rather than specific power sets and builds. Assuming that the power sets are themselves balanced, scalar would be the primary distinguishing difference between the ATs, illustrating any underlying imbalances between the 2.

[/ QUOTE ]

I beleive this is radically in error. I know that the devs do not balance in this way, and I would argue against it if they did. You are artificially limiting your scope in your definition for balance. For example, this would ignore any AT which had prolific controls in its attcks as a rule of thumb - something which is not visible in a consideration of scalars and caps alone.


[ QUOTE ]
I'd heartily disagree that a heavily buffed Scrapper is capable of replacing a Tanker on a team unless the entire team is so heavily buffed that aggro is no longer an issue (at which point it's not an issue of the Scrapper replacing the Tanker, it's an issue of the plethora of buffs rendering the Tanker redundant).

[/ QUOTE ]

I find this very strange, for two reasons. One, it's extremely common for a team to be exactly as buffed as described. Two, the more damage a team is capable of dealing the less relevant uncontrolled aggro is. Three, aggro can be managed with controls.

Tankers are completely superfluous. No team is required to have one. That said, I would never turn one away simply on the basis that it was a Tanker, and I take exception to people who optimize that way, because (again) we are all so suped up it mostly doesn't matter what we bring.

[ QUOTE ]
A Scrapper buffed to the extent you imply is only going to be able to serve as a Tanker if they've actually gone through the effort of acquiring the ability to obtain and maintain aggro on a a group. Blueside, Tankers are in no threat of being rendered irrelevant by buffed up Scrappers. Scrappers just can't keep aggro as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're missing the point. There's no need to buff up the Scrapper that level. You don't need anyone to play damage sponge. What Tankers are threatened by is the aggregate contribution of the rest of the team, not just Scrappers.


[ QUOTE ]
How bad does a disparity have to be between existing ATs in order for it to be of a sufficient magnitude to demonstrate a problem? You already admit that there is a disparity and that the disparity is readily obvious. How much worse does it have to get, in your view, before it becomes a problem that requires addressing?

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When it either a) exceeds whatever the metrics the devs have for upper performance or b) it causes a seismic shift in AT population. And I mean that we end up with something like 10% or less of all heroside characters being Scrappers.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd once again like to ask for some disambiguation of terms from you. You're a great fan of using ambiguous terms like "meaningful difference" and "noticeable disparity" without ever giving solid definitions for them. I've tried very hard to make sure that all of the terms that I've used in this argument have been as clear and concise as possible, which is one of the reasons I'm partial to using numbers. They're definite, quantitative, and capable of illustrating a difference without question.

[/ QUOTE ]

All you have is these numbers. You have no expression for the significance of those numbers. You seem claim the performance gap is "large". What basis do you have for that?

[ QUOTE ]
You're arguments, on the other hand, are completely without specificity. The definition of most of your arguments is completely up to interpretation, which is one of the reasons why we can't seem to agree. You refuse to pin yourself down so that the debate can actually take place.

[/ QUOTE ]

As I've said, I don't know what numbers the devs use or I'd apply them here. Hell, I don't know if the devs actually use hard numbers for this sort of thing. All I know is that there are some sort of boundaries, and the primary "balance" concern is whether the ATs and powersets are operating within them or not. I don't have to provide you with those values, because they're not germane to the point I'm making - you're comparing two ATs and the devs are not. If the two ATs are both inside the dev's boundaries, whatever those are, then it doesn't matter nearly so much how they perform relative to one another.. Similarly, how many more of AT A than B is played is less important than whether or not AT B has enough players compared to the total playerbase.

Edit: If I didn't quote someting, it wasn't because I didn't think it wasn't relevant or worth replying to. I was just trying to keep the quote parade under less than epic proportions.

[ QUOTE ]
The way I see it, 330% regen would regen 3.3 bars a second. +330% regen is a whole other matter.

[/ QUOTE ]

You seem to be stating it the way the attribute monitor states it, which is, unfortunately, not the way we normally compile the bonuses from things like IOs or Health.

If anyone has a non-/Regen, IO build that offere's 330% Regen the way the attribute monitor means it, I'd love to see it.

Edit: Damn that's a long post. Even for me.

[ QUOTE ]
Then why are the caps there in the first place?

[/ QUOTE ]

Please reconsider that answer in the context of the question that I asked. Specifically, it was asked in relation to comparison of Scrappers and Brutes at their top end of performance. Caps do not exist explicitly to enforce comparative roles, they exist to enforce stand-alone performance limits. A Brute's limits exist to bound their absolute performance limits as Brutes, not in comparison to the performance to Scrappers. Yes, it happens that you can then compare the limits of the two ATs, and you can choose those limits in ways that help define or refine their roles. They do not, however, fundamentally exist for that purpose. They exist to limit the absolute upper bound of what that AT can achieve.

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Brutes, thanks to their caps, don't follow any precedent of cap balance. That, in and of itself, at least brings up the consideration of a change.

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I'm not sure lack of precedence indicates a requirement for review. Performance in excess of acceptable targets would, however, and if that performance excess were found to be a result of the combination of caps the AT sports, then that would be a possible course for change.

That consideration, if warrented, exists outside any question of comparison to Scrappers in shared play.

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[ QUOTE ]
You need a reason for them to care about that symmetry. If it results in real, measurable problems for the ATs, such as a mass migration from players of one AT to players of another, then the devs can see that and perhaps choose to make some sort of change to improve on that.

[/ QUOTE ]

One of the primary reasons that this discussion has been brought up now is because of GoRo.

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That is not what I meant. There is no proof that mixing Scrappers and Brutes on the same side is going to have any deliterious affect on the game.

[ QUOTE ]
There is a reason to address the changes. It's not out yet, but the reason is there nonetheless.

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I'm not sure why you keep harping on this as though your readers don't understand that there's an expansion coming that's going to put Scrappers and Brutes on the same sides. We get that. I'm saying the Brute damage/mitigation math combined with the fact that they're going to be on teams with Scrappers brings me no angst. Yes, they can perform higher in both damage and mitgation. I agree. I simply do not see it as an issue for concern. And again, I remind you - I play both ATs and I prefer Scrappers, and nothing about this bothers me.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm curious as to what reasons you think exist for Tankers or Blasters to no longer see play. Tankers are still capable of better unbuffed mitigation and aggro control than any other AT in the game. Blasters are, arguably, the best AoE AT in the game (Corrupters are close because they can buff, but lose out because they have a functional scalar of .95 whereas Blasters have 1.125). There are still reasons to play them from a numbers standpoint.

[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree, though I realize that there's some personal opinion involved. Here's what I think is the difference in your viewpoint and mine.

Lets make up a scale. To be moderately challenged at most of the game, you need to be a 5 on this scale. To be challenged only by the hardest stuff in the game, you are an 8.

By the time they're 50, I think most Scrappers are a 6 or 7. I think most Brutes are a 6-8. By the time you add IOs on them, Scrappers are more like a 7-9 and most Brutes are like a 8-10. But for most of the game, you only need to be a 5.

When we need to be a 5 to succeed in general and an 8 to succeed against the hardest normal stuff available, I cease to be terribly concerned about relative balance in ATs who are operating in the levels above 7. It's not compelling to me that this is a meaningful concern even if it's a real phenomena. Meanwhile, you're very worried about a Brute being a 9 while a Scrapper is an 8. (Note: all actual numbers used are meaningless and for the purpose of example.)

[ QUOTE ]
However, if both Brutes and Scrappers are available for all content, there isn't much reason outside of specific play style concerns to go with a Scrapper rather than a Brute. If/when everyone learns that Brutes put out equivalent damage numbers as Scrappers while being significantly harder to kill, many fewer people will play Scrappers than do now.

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Queue every debate on Controllers vs. Defenders that has ever graced the boards. I flatly believe you are wrong. However, even if you are right, I do not believe the devs are likely to take the course you are suggesting as how to address it, if they choose to address it at all.

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Then what would you conclude from them? That, even though the numbers show a disparity that no such disparity exists? Care to show any kind of evidence for that conclusion?

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I really don't understand how you could come to that interpretation of what I'm saying, as I think I've said it explicitly several times, even in the post you are responding to. I conclude that there is a disparity and that it is not particularly important. I do not believe that a significant part of the playerbase will behave in the way you describe, because if they did, there would already be fewer Defenders than there are now.

[ QUOTE ]
A numerical disparity is a tool used to demonstrate a real disparity. If you'd care to use some other tool to denote a lack of disparity in capability and potential, then, please, bring it up. Don't just blow off evidence that is contrary to your opinion because you don't think that there is a reason for the change.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am stating that your facts are not proof of the conclusion you draw, which is that this will create a problem in the game. You are ignoring what I'm saying, and presenting a strawman in its stead.

Your evidence shows a numerical imbalance. That imblance is not proven to be unhealthy or to have the effect you predict of exodus from Scrapper players to Brute players. The two ATs have different playstyles and appeal to different players, just a Controllers and Defenders do.

[ QUOTE ]
Then how would you expect to denote a discrepancy in performance unless it's used in comparison with another? The point of comparing Scrappers to Brutes and vice versa (AT A to AT B) is that it illustrates the fact that AT A is operating outside of the band of "normal" performance.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is not illustrated at all. There is a radical leap there that implies that Scrappers exist at the boundary of performance, and that absolute performance above that of Scrappers is unacceptable. This is not proven.

[ QUOTE ]
However, when comparing 2 ATs that have an easy and direct association between their powers and functions, you can and should compare them directly along the numerical values of their performance.

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If this was how things are done, I think you would see much less variation in performance among the Scrapper powersets as we see here in this thread.

[ QUOTE ]
I do realize that there is also role blurring and has always been, and I've addressed the history and even the issues concerning this. Scrappers and Blasters have always had an interesting history because, when they're on a team, they're both doing the same thing but with different methods. Tankers and Scrappers less so because, on a team, they do completely different things. The only times I've seen Tanker/Scrapper comparisons is for solo performance comparisons wherein the Tanker wants to do more damage.

[/ QUOTE ]

And yet this nicely ignores a common theme in Tanker-related discussions: the question of whether a Tanker is even needed on a heroside team. Yes, if you have a Tanker and a Scrapper, they probably are filling different roles. However, a team, especially a high-end team, has no compelling "need" for a Tanker except in a few high-end situtions like the LRSF (and even then it's optional). And so the question stands: why have a Tanker when you can have a Scrapper instead, buff him/her to levels where their total mitigation across all types is sufficient to withstand anything but a tower-buffed Lord Recluse, and then back them up with force mutlipliers that will go further on their higher damage cap?

This is far more relevant at the peaks of performance that this thread is focusing on, and yet there is no mass migration away from Tankers. It's true the AT isn't wildly popular, but there are many reasons often cited for that.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't really have to be, and I don't think that I've ever said I was. I've always thought that Brutes were too powerful. The entire issue is that the numbers, which are completely objective, agree with me. I don't have to be objective whenever the numbers agree with me. In fact, that would be deleterious to my position because then people like yourself would continually ignore the numbers.

[/ QUOTE ]

The numbers do not "agree with" your position. Your can point to the numbers as defense of your argument. However, they are not proof of your argument. This is important: I do not claim that the numbers are your argument. You are presenting them as evidence of a (coming) problem. There is counter evidence that suggests that this conclusion is not well defended by numbers alone. If it was, there would be worse disparity among existing hero ATs.

[ QUOTE ]
How are you defining broken? Capable of soloing an AV or a pylon? Able to complete the RWZ challenge? I've seen every AT do every single one of those things.

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Yes. From a game balance perspective, this whole game is a "monty haul" video game. By level 50 and especially with IOs, nearly all of us can be "broken" in the sense that we can all do far much more than is needed. I'm not complaining. Its one of the primary reasons that I love the game - I've always loved that sort of gaming and I'm overjoyed that we have it here. But I also acknowledge that it creates scenarios like this, where A > B, and sometimes that's OK, where it probably wouldn't be in a more game with stricter PvE balance.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm absolutely certain that if they did this analysis they would bring Brutes down if they were actually concerned with numerical balance. I don't have a single worry that Castle would castrate Scrappers somehow like you suggest because I've yet to see any non-anecdotal evidence of Scrappers outperforming any other AT in that AT's designated role.

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That's not primarily how they balance, and never has been. I won't say they never consider it, but we know that's not what they look at. My concern is more that if you want them to start balancing things that are only meanginfully imbalanced at levels of performance no one needs to operate at, then you might not like what you get. The result might be that, to make the comparison meaningful, you get a reduction across the board. To be reduced, Scrappers to not need to be stealing anyone's role - they only need be performing to far above what's needed. Of course if everyone is performing above what's needed, there's also the chance everyone could be brought lower. I don't consider it likely, but I do consider it one of the only things that would make the devs care about the Scrapper/Brute comparisons.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd honestly like you to find a significant AT power disparity blue-side that I haven't address somewhere.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure what you mean by "addressed". Controller/Defender comparisons go far beyond just damage and buff/debuff scalars, just as Tanker/Scrapper comparisons go beyond damage/mitigation. "Imbalances", in the sense of trading off B to get more of A, where A and B define some role in a team, clearly exist and are sometimes quite extreme. And yet plenty of people still play the "less efficient" ATs, powersets and builds.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

And the question remains: why does there need to be, when the vast majority of the player base doesn't operate there?

Even if the playerbase did operate there, the devs don't (and arguably should not) balance on the basis of parity in this way.


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't agree with this sentiment. First, a large band of the player base *do* operate there. Those players can now create their own challenging content. Ignoring that band of players is short sighted. There is no reason that Castle can't design with both the normal player and the extreme player in mind.

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I'd love to see your data on how large that band of players is.

[ QUOTE ]
I am not having any problem moving IOs that sell for 50 million+. Whether it's purples, LotG Recharges, or Numina's Unique these IOs priced competitively sell well and sell quickly. The high end market is brisk. *Someone* is buying all of these high end IOs. That means that a certain subset of the game that operates at that level is active and it would be foolish for the devs to simply ignore them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Appropriately refusing to balance the average performance of the ATs around what is possible at the high end is not "simply ignoring" that subset of the game.

And again, I want to point out, that every character I know of who operates at their high end, nearly irrespective of AT or powerset, operates radically beyond what is needed to play this game. I want to ask - what is the value to the devs in strong focus on relative performance at those levels of performance? More importantly, what is it that makes you think that's how they'd focus their attention on changes in those operating ranges?

If the devs intend to address how things compare at those levels of performance, I think there's going to be far, far more involved than worrying about how Brutes and Scrappers compare.

[ QUOTE ]
I just think waving off high end balance will be destructive to the game.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you offered no justification for that assertion.

[ QUOTE ]
How hard should 10% more XP be?

[/ QUOTE ]

Ideally, 10% more hard (for however we define "hard" - time it takes to win, etc.). The challenge is quantifying that and making it somewhat consistent across powersets.

[ QUOTE ]
The entire point of my "some kind of parity needs to exist" is that, between Brutes and Scrappers, there isn't really any at the top end.

[/ QUOTE ]

And the question remains: why does there need to be, when the vast majority of the player base doesn't operate there?

Even if the playerbase did operate there, the devs don't (and arguably should not) balance on the basis of parity in this way. When both Scrappers and Brutes are arguably both more damaging and more survivably than they need to be to be successful in the mainstream game, why should they be convinced there's a need to ensure mathematical symmetry in their relative damage and survival?

That's not compelling on its own. You need a reason for them to care about that symmetry. If it results in real, measurable problems for the ATs, such as a mass migration from players of one AT to players of another, then the devs can see that and perhaps choose to make some sort of change to improve on that.

[ QUOTE ]
I take Brutes doing just as much damage while being 12.5% harder to kill at the very least, thanks to their higher hit points, with a grain of salt. This is something that many of you who currently see parity are missing.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't see parity. I see a lack of parity that doesn't concern me. If parity were all-important, I think no one would have played (or perhaps still played) either Blasters or Tankers, and I think no one would play a Defender when they could play a Controller instead.

I understand the math. I do not believe the math points to the same basis for concern.

[ QUOTE ]
Brutes and Scrappers do the same damage. They shouldn't be. Brutes should be doing less because they're harder to kill even excluding power sets. That's what parity is.

[/ QUOTE ]

See above.

[ QUOTE ]
Because of this obvious advantage, it screams to me the need for a change.

[/ QUOTE ]

Obvious numbers do not necessarily indicate obvious conclusions.

[ QUOTE ]
The only reason we're not going to see the changes to the AT to see some actual parity is because Castle doesn't want to rock the boat.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with this, but not for the reasons you probably hold it true. You believe that Castle should address imbalances simply because they exist. Castle (and the other devs) believe they should address things that operate outside possibly loosely-defined boundaries of minimum and maximum performance. Doing otherwise "rocks the boat" to little benefit to the game as a whole.

Only a few of the dev-checked boundaries seem to be relative measures. The devs are not especially concerned that AT A outperforms AT B. They are only concerned that both AT A and AT B perform within some band of "normal" performance for the metric in question.

Remember, it's not as if we don't already have some role overlap in heroside ATs already - see earlier references to the Defender/Controller comparisons and other ongoing threads on Tanker/Scrapper comparisons.

[ QUOTE ]
Which is all [censored] stupid.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which really doesn't cast you as objective in this.

[ QUOTE ]
Brutes are too strong as they are now.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would argue that the same can be said for Scrappers. Do you really want them to go fiddling with an AT that's more "broken" and hope they'll turn a blind eye elsewhere?

[ QUOTE ]
we've opened up the "AT power disparity can o' worms" and Castle is unwilling to put forth the effort to address it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you're conveniently ignoring that "AT power disparity" has existed among heroes for a long time, and it doesn't seem to have done anything unfortunate to the game or the ATs involved. You just seem particularly agitated that it's now going to exist for an AT that either didn't face it before, or was the commonly-accepted winner in a lot of previous comparisons.

[ QUOTE ]
Personally, I think one or the other should happen. My personal preference would be for Scrappers to simply get a damage increase.

[/ QUOTE ]

Edit: Late reply to an early post in the thread, but I just found this thread. Reading on I see this has been discussed already.

You lost me right here. Quite simply, this tells me that you're basing this heavily on "balance a mathematical symmetry."

Scrappers do not need more damage. I sit and stare at the screen sometimes when I see what I can achieve with Scrappers. I ponder what the devs were smoking when they moved us from 1.0 to 1.125 melee damage scale back during ED. (I cannot help but wonder if it was almost pure salve for our egos to lessen the psychological impact).

Fundamentally, at the levels of power we're talking about here, with 70-odd percent global recharge from IOs and all the other kit such a build is likely to be sporting, nearly every character in CoH is, frankly, more powerful than it needs to be. Any character able to solo an AV is also likely able to steamroll an inordinate amount of standard content without any help, probably spawned for anywhere from 2-6 players, if not more.

Mind you, I am not complaining about any of that. I'm an extensive powergamer, and I thrive on being able to pull stunts like that whenever possible. However, I still understand that what I'm doing isn't remotely reasonable as a consideration for how to balance anything. Well, except maybe to how to get things nerfed... (*talks more softly*).

Getting back to the point I was responding to, as soon as we're asking for more damage on an AT that already has more damage than it needs in order to bring it in balance with another AT that also has more damage than it needs, on the basis that they have more defense than us (but we have enough damage to do what's needed) I have to wonder if I haven't fallen down a rabbit hole.

I realize that the symmetric alternative to asking for more for Scrappers is to ask for nerfs to Brutes, but I also oppose that on the grounds that it smacks of some kind of "tit-for-tat" approach to balance. "I can't have it, so they can't either!"

I'm not saying nothing should happen, or that nothing will. I'm saying that I don't approve of it being either nerfs to Brutes or buffs to Scrapper damage. I expect that the devs will do what they seem to most frequently. They'll datamine for months, filter for certain views, and take action if they see skew that likes outside boundaries they think are good.

My bet is that we won't see problems worth fixing in this particular area. And for what it's worth, I say all this as someone for whom Scrappers is their favorite AT.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
We see mass migration

[/ QUOTE ]

My point is not that any of what you describe doesn't occur, but rather that my experience suggests it doesn't occur in as large a quantities as you're implying. Even in the case of PvP missions which awarded even *higher* rewards than radio missions ever did, there was never a mass-exodus towards them, and the risk of forced PvP when running them was extremely low to zeo.

[/ QUOTE ]

Any time I see a line of people outside the entrance to some new content, and the zone(s) where it is accessable is alive with broadcasts of "LF <fotm_name> team" or "<fotm_name> team with room for 3" at all hours of the day and night, I consider that a potential "mass migration". The clarifying indicator of this is when patch affecting the activity's reward causes these gatherings to vaproize within a day's time. If thes groups were playing the content en masse because it was new and/or raucous fun, that dissipation wouldn't happen.

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attack could do smashing damage but be typed energy, thus going against energy defense. This is rarely the case, but it apparently did occur in the past, and there may still be existing oddities although I can't think of any right now.

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Fireball deals fire and smashing damage but is defense typed only as smashing, if I recall correctly (no time to check at the moment).

There are also things out there that have no damage type (positional typed only) or no positional type (damage typed only).