Umbral

Which is why I don't really see much point in completely rebuilding the power around the attempting to appease players that will never be appeased because they will never be unless they're allowed to keep Granite as it is now. I'd much rather just do what is simple: either treat it like a standard god mode power (as I am) or give it the PFF treatment (as was suggested earlier). Attempting to create entirely new designs for a power just to try to prevent pissing people off that will be pissed off no matter what you do is pointless as I see it.

The power was never intended to be used at all times and to completely eclipse the entire rest of the set. Even Jack would have realized that was completely broken. Part of any redesign is going to involve either modifying the power to account for the new usage paradigm or modify the power so that it now works with the intended usage paradigm. You're going to piss people off either way because modifying the power so that it's now used all the time will generate a very steep reduction in power or modifying the power so that it will only be used in a restrictive manner is going to anger people that want it all the time. There isn't a way to get it both ways while still being balanced. People should just suck it up and realize that.

Actually, I've known about that one since before Dual Pistols. Nectanedbo's Curse Breaker demonstrated that to me a while ago.

And yet, even though those situations have existed for as long as the game has been around (Nem lts stacking veng), it hasn't caused the devs to weep blood for any of the purely defense oriented sets that are affected in a much more negative manner.

Your argument here might actually bear some weight if it weren't for the fact that they're not exactly common and that Stone Armor isn't solely reliant, much less reliant in the majority (EE is probably the single strongest mitigation tool available aside from Granite Armor), on defense in order to survive. Arguing that just because one of the entire suites of mitigatory tools that Stone Armor has, the set needs to be given even more power doesn't really add up. If that line of logic actually worked, the other sets that rely on defense in their entirety would have gotten large scale increases to performance to make up for it. As it stands, those situations are probably considered to be situations that are meant to be overcome with buffs.

That's debatable. The cottage rule says that a power will not change the basic functionality of a power. The basic functionality of Granite Armor is to provide a high level of resistance and defense. The enamantor concept would still do this, so there's no real breaking of the cottage rule. The Cottage Rule was given that name specifically because it referred to making Build Up create a cottage rather than increase your damage and accuracy. If the cottage still increased your damage and accuracy, or increased it in a different way, then it wouldn't be breaking the cottage rule because that same functionality is still present within the new version of the power. Just look at the change from Conserve Power to Energize: the end redux got pushed almost completely to the side, but it's still there so the Cottage Rule isn't broken.

That's pretty simple to explain. You summoned it so you're the only one attuned to it (or it's attuned to you, either way). You might as well ask why the Protector Bots only buff the other bots or why the CoT crystals don't effect the CoT.

Yea, I just started looking at that, though compare Stone Armor to Invuln: the level of defense is higher, but the level of DDR is still only slightly higher. The only sets that have substantial DDR (i.e. enough to completely negate defense debuffs) are those that rely on it almost entirely. Stone Armor doesn't: it has +hp, +regen, +res, and +defense. Stone Armor is all over the place, so it doesn't really have a reason to have substantial DDR.

Remember that Granite Armor has some massive DDR so you're going to get some friggin' insane resistance to those effects while it's on, considering you still have all of your other effects to fall back on.

Plugging those values into Arcanaville's spreadsheet seem to indicate that it would be just a bit too strong. Using 5 targets in melee as the point of comparison, it's going to survive roughly 10% stronger than Invuln. Considering the loss of the primary mitigating factors concerning its use, I would wager that those changes might need to be reigned in a bit.

Personally, I prefer the changes that I made because they make Stone Skin a power that actually contributes noticeably towards your survivability, even at level 1, something that the power doesn't really do now. I doubt anyone really thinks it's a great power pick as it is. Right now, it provides the same amount of resistance as Resist Physical Damage (which actually has a place in Invuln because it's already packing huge amounts of s/l resist so that paltry sum is actually providing a lot more mitigation comparatively) while not providing any DDR. I don't really think that "it can be used with mutually exclusive Granite" is a particularly good reason for not buffing an otherwise uninteresting and otherwise useless power, especially since I believe that it's doubtful that, after the comprehensive changes to the set that this thread has been espousing, Granite Armor would remain mutually exclusive with the rest of the set. I expect that Granite Armor will probably have its base values reduced and the mutual exclusivity to be removed, at the very least.

Also, my changes attempt to diversify the individual mechanisms to allow Stone Armor to be less allergic to specific situations than other armor sets, which, as I see it, would be a major advantage: unlike some other tanks, a Stone Armor tank with my changes would be able to comfortably tank virtually all enemy groups thanks to a diversified suite of mitigation tools.

Eh, I would be reluctant to say that the Dual Pistols changes (which I was under the impression only allow them to modify chances for certain effects to occur rather than outright attribute changes) would be certainly able to change such base attributes as endurance cost, recharge time, and root time. I'm not entirely sure that those values are part of the same entries and there might not be the same permissions and accessibility with that additional functionality.

It might be possible, but I would be reluctant to say that it is likely without a redname weighing in on the matter.

It seems like a very interesting idea, especially since I've always liked the idea of players summoning the DE emanators (I actually pitched an idea, way back when, for Hami merits or a Hami accolade to summon a DE emanator to buff your team).

The only problems I can see with this is that the area might be a bit too big (I would err on the side of caution because the idea is to prevent players from never leaving it) and that, as some have already stated, they like the visual effect that Granite Armor provides (though I doubt it would be impossible for the visual effect of the effect granted by the emanator to turn you into the giant rock thing). If I were to do something like this, I would likely have the area of the effect be roughly 10-15' around the emanator, but have the duration of the effect itself last between 5-8 seconds so that you can manage short forays out of it before the benefit drops off.

Another problem would be determining how to adjudicate downtime: if it's a click power, it would be pretty easy to simply stay in that area until the power recharges if the emanator itself lasts an exceptionally long time (which I think you're suggesting). That issue right there presents me with some problems because I think it would probably be better to simply force the power to start recharging after the emanator dies rather than after the emanator is created, though the only way I can imagine doing this would be to make the power a toggle that somehow keeps the emanator it summons alive (something that I'm not even sure is possible; though, if it's possible for a toggle to summon the pet upon initial activation, I can imagine putting together some kind of mechanism where the pet attempts to deal enough damage to kill itself every few seconds and the toggle simply gives it 100% resistance to this suicide damage type in order to generate that functionality).

Also, bringing up this concept has reminded me of an idea for and "Earth/Rock/Crystal Support" set I came up with long ago wherein a majority of the functionality of the power was built around summoning emanators to buff your party and debuff your enemies (like using both CoT crystals and DE emanators as 4-5 of the powers in the set). I might start trying to put that together again...

Yes. Keep in mind that Toxic isn't a defense type, so that 0% doesn't really mean anything.

My bad. Thanks for bringing that typo to my attention, correcting it now.

I don't think you're understanding how that mechanic with Granite Armor would likely work. The cottage rule is going to prevent removing the +res/+def effects from Granite in its entirety so its substantially more likely that the values would be coming from Granite Armor. Essentially, you'd have a series of different linked effects that would provide the +res/+def contingent on modes that the "base" toggles activate with every tick. If it were to go this path, I'd probably make only the effect linked to the base toggle in question rather than the magnitude of the effect in question.

I could actually see capping max end as being a reasonably good balancing factor. I prevents even the most insane buffing from overcoming it, but, then again, it would also make playing in Granite Armor without those same buffs rather painful. With stacking a crapload of end redux in virtually everything, you'd run out of endurance so fast it's kinda pointless to have it without unless you're that heavily buffed at all times.

An inherent power that provides no benefit in combat yet still consumes endurance. Your metaphor is flawed.

Because they fundamentally alter the role of the AT in question and provide entirely different functionalities and have a specific suite of powers that they are allowed.

You can keep attempting to make incredibly flawed and inappropriate comparisons between other powers and Granite Armor but they're never going to give you anything approaching a logical basis for having Granite Armor both available at all times and as powerful as it is now. You're not even making much ground within the context of the debate by attempting to draw similarities between Sprint (omg powerful!) and Granite Armor.

I can agree it would probably be unpopular, though you're never going to convince me that it is both unnecessary and unattractive. I'm pretty sure that you might actually consider it the preferential option if you had to choose between my version and a PFF version that actually has penalties commensurate with the benefit.

It can't be. If you're intending to make it apply in a manner proportionate to the current endurance cost of the power rather than the base endurance cost pre-modification, it's not possible. The devs have told us before that it's impossible for a power to apply an attribute modification to a specific power exclusively. It's possible to add or subtract base values, but, if that occurred, the difference between having no end redux, standard end redux, and heavy end redux would generate highly different end values (because it would need to be linear and end redux operates in a proportionate manner).

That's an interesting concept and not that hard to implement either (give each armor toggle a non-exclusive mode that Granite Armor then detects and provides mitigation for based on whether that mode is active). I'd probably change it so that each toggle simply provides both types of mitigation rather than just the mitigation type that the basic power provides (i.e. having Rock Armor on would have Granite provide +res(s/l) and +def(s/l)).

I would still question whether it solves the issue of there not being a reason to turn Granite Armor off for whatever reason. I doubt we wouldn't see an increase in the penalties even with these modifications, and I similarly doubt there wouldn't be some attempt to fix the endurance costs of the rest of the set as well. It's an interesting schtick for a tier 9 (and one that I've thought would be very interesting for a new set), but it's not really something that fixes the major problems with the set overall.

No matter what happens to the power, if anything is reduced to make it more balanced (it's not even an argument any more that it might not be), nerdrage is going to happen. Nerdrage is one of the biggest reasons that Castle hasn't touched the set yet. If it gets touched, nerdrage is going to ensue so it's not like it's really going to be factor when fixes to the set are actually applied.

If it's more applicable to make it a toggle akin to a click power (such as I've suggested), then that's likely to happen regardless of whether people think it should have happened or not. There was massive nerdrage when IH was turned into a click power that wasn't even perma-capable. I remember how massive it was. I was there, and I was one of the people joining in it. Of course, now that I've had a few years to consider it, I can see that it was needed and, although I still bear a bit of animosity towards the Cryptic devs, I can respect them a bit for doing it.

Eh, the problem I see with this is that you'd really have no reason to run Granite Armor then. At the same time, it would be a tier 9 that, rather than acting as a capstone to the set, acts as a separate powerset entirely. The mutual exclusivity of Granite Armor is one of the biggest problems with the power. Mutually exclusive tier 9 powers are just poorly designed, in my opinion. This was quite easily the biggest problem with old MoG: it rendered the entire rest of the set useless while it was active. You might as well not have the rest of the set if you were using it. As I see it, it's just bad design to make a set wherein the pieces within work at odds rather than together. It would be as if we had friendly fire in game so that Blasters would end up shooting the Tanker that's protecting them.

I still don't agree with this. If making it a click power or click power equivalent is the simpler solution to balancing the performance of the set, then that option should still be viable. Just because some people want the power to remain available at all times rather than having to gauge the situation to determine whether you want to use the power in question doesn't mean that it shouldn't be an option. If anything, it should be an option because otherwise there's no playstyle variance in the performance of the set and the effectiveness of it just becomes a question of your build rather than your abilities.

As I've said before, that was one of the integral changes to Granite Armor that I suggested. The problem I see with allowing the power to have a non-limiting recharge time is that, unless the recharge time is long enough to discourage simply waiting between spawns for Granite to respawn, there isn't really going to be much reason. Without a long recharge timer commensurate with old school IH's (90 secs, iirc), you're going to find players simply forcing small amounts of downtime between each spawn.

One of the reasons that I went with my version being both time limited and a toggle was specifically so that it would provide effectiveness of a crashing tier 9 (Invuln w/ Unstoppable active is substantially more survivable than WP w/ SoW) with the utility of a non-crashing tier 9 (i.e. no crash). Rather than having a crash occur at the end, the crash occurs for the entire duration of the power (rather than crashing your offensive capabilities, it crashes your ability to move) and you have the ability to end the effect prematurely if you need or want to (rather than having to wait for the power to end, like with Unstoppable or old-MoG, if you're out of combat and you want to deal with the crash now rather than in 15 seconds).

Well, from what I remember from years ago, Stone Armor was designed to be the friggin' unbreakable set, but it was also supposed to be balanced against being an utter ***** to play (i.e. lower offensive ability and lower mobility). There was also the issue that there wasn't really much need for that much survivability back then. You could build FA to be tough enough to handle virtually anything, so the additional survivability granted by Stone was largely unneeded. Many of the changes that people are proposing encourage making Stone Armor substantially easier to play without removing the intended limiting factor on the performance of the set (playability). If the intent of a rebuild of Stone Armor is to make it more playable, it's got to similar pay with the additional capabilities that were given to it in exchange for that.

Coming from you, I'm not entirely sure that what you said really carries much weight. The problem here is that we're not debating, or, at the very least, we're not debating using the same rules.

Whenever I enter into a balance debate, I operate under the assumption that numbers are the most important thing under consideration and that opinion and theme come second. Whenever others enter into a debate wherein they not only abandon numbers but they outright ignore them in order to provide their opinions and thematic choices with greater weight, I get irked because it's rather obvious that they're not entering into the debate with the same rules that I am. If I've already given numbers have already been given that demonstrate reliably that the thematic choices and opinions of others are fundamentally at odds with balance, then there's not really much that I, or anyone else for that matter, can do to alter that because, at that point, it's no longer a balance discussion and rather a discussion of opinions.

Contrary to what you might believe, I have no problem entering into debate with individuals like Arcanaville without resorting to insults (though I do find snark entertaining enough that I generally add substantial bits of it here and there) because we operate using the same rules of debate concerning balance (i.e. numbers trump all). I do, however, have a problem with entering into debate with people that, almost always due to lack of expertise or intelligence, decide that numbers don't matter when the numbers are supposed to be the attribute of primal import.

Actually, it was largely because I wanted to use the forums as a sounding board for my ideas while I get it ready for Castle. I posted because I wanted to get people like Arcanaville and Sam's opinions concerning my changes. I also did it because I legitimately love a good argument, though that doesn't mean that I'm going to coddle people that have no reason taking part in a numerical balance debate thanks to inability to actually make arguments using numbers. If you can't think with numbers, get out of the numerical debate.

It would be more apt to say that it is impossible to create a power that can be on at all times that provides the level of survivability that players expect from powers of that kind that does everything that players want. The existing armor toggles are balanced because they're not attempting to be as strong as Granite Armor. There is also the design issues that, unlike a tier 9, normal armor toggles are intended to provide baseline functionality rather than extreme functionality for extreme situations. The powers that Granite Armor is supposed to be the equivalent of are not intended, or even capable, of being on permanently, much less more often than half of the time.

I actually like this idea somewhat, though mainly because one of your fundamental design requirements is that it provide lesser survivability and greater penalties than the power currently has. It also has the added advantage of playing together with Stone Armor's "slowness" theme. The only problem I can imagine is that the ramp up and ramp down times would only have much balancing effect if you're going to be turning it on and off while in combat.

Of course. Being able to trade offense for defense is a fundamentally balanced design concept that is integral to virtually all RPGs. The problem is determining where the equivalence between offensive and defensive capabilities exists and whether there should be diminishing returns for deviating from what is considered to be the norm to balance out additional capabilities attributed for specialization (i.e. whether trading 50% offense for 150% defense is balance or whether it need to be something more like 50% offense for 130% defense).

Rock Armor doesn't have an endurance cost of .73 end/sec. You input the activation time rather than the endurance cost. For the endurance reduction, you're calculating the effects of it wrong. Endurance costs are calculated in much the same way that recharge reductions are: you divide the original cost by the total endurance reduction values plus one. 2.5 end/sec with 50% +end redux would reduce the cost to 1.67 end/sec. To achieve the reduction in endurance cost by half, you would need to have 100% end reduction. The other problem with this is that you're similarly applying a reduction in endurance cost to all of your attacks and other powers as well, which makes it even more powerful, especially when you consider that your attacks and click powers use up more endurance than your toggles do by a very large margin.

The primary problem with your suggestion is that you're forcing an even more crippling reliance on Granite Armor than there already is. You're also not addressing the problems of the set being too weak outside of Granite Armor, which is a major problem with the set. Rather than making the set less reliant on Granite Armor, you're making it more reliant. It would be much better to simply play with the end costs of the toggles themselves to arrive at a more balanced endurance cost because you're not forcing players to use Granite Armor just to be endurance sustainable along with being survivable. Of course, you're similarly doing nothing to mitigate the level of survivability that Granite Armor allows you to maintain indefinitely or the largely token penalties that are rather simple to work around.

I'd like to know how I was offensive to anyone in my first post. Please, point it out to me. As far as I can tell, the only time I ever reference I ever make to everyone else is simply saying that my proposed changes to Granite would piss off a lot of people (which is pretty obviously true), though I'm not sure how that would be construed as insulting. The first post that I actually make any non-factual reference to an individual or line of thought was where I stated that changing the entire focus of the set from primarily defense to primarily resistance simply because the poster didn't like the fact that the set would be weaker in the three or four situations where defense is useless and native resistances are.

There is a difference between a difference of opinion (which I can accept) and making blatantly false or fundamentally flawed judgments and then simply assuming that they're correct without any evidence or consideration beyond what one believes and wants.

First off, my changes would actually make Granite add more end/sec recovery than it would take away so, rather than costing anything or being free, it's actually a net endurance gain for the duration of its run, just like MoG is a net endurance gain (costs 2.6 and provides 100% +recov for 15 seconds, which, with standard endurance, amounts to 22.45 net endurance whenever you use it).

Secondly, one of the big reasons that Arcanaville suggested the progressive -recov penalty was because it would be difficult to work around. Of course, I don't see it as being that difficult to work around when you look at powers that provide massive overkill +recov, such as Adrenaline Boost, Recovery Aura, Heat Exhaustion, but it's substantially harder to work around than outright end cost would be. My personal suggestion to accomplish this (that I actually considered, until I decided that it would simply be better overall design to have an enforced maximum uptime) was having the power apply a slowing increasing reduction to your endurance reduction (i.e. builds up to be reverse Conserve Power)

End cost is simply problematic for the simple reason that, if you load too much endurance cost into a single power (which you're advocating), it's too simple to mitigate that. It's for the same reason that the recharges of OwtS and SoW are unaffected by recharge times: both effects are reduced by enhancement values and outside buffs proportionately. Basic enhancement reduces the value of either by roughly half. Further enhancement and augmentation can reduce the values of these to one-third and one-fourth. Putting so much endurance cost into a single source simply allows you to avoid the endurance costs by slotting that power with more endurance reduction than you would normally allow. You're attempting to apply the same logic that has already failed (Instant Healing).

The problem with this is that powers that are supposed to be baseline to the functionality for a set are not supposed to be available only at level 32/38 and above. Tier does not have any specific effect upon the magnitude of a power, though, by the devs actual admission, they design and redesign sets so that powers that are baseline functionality are available first and higher tier powers are intended to be progressively less necessary at all times and more necessary in specific situations. Turning the tier 9 into a baseline functionality power goes completely against this. At that point, you're changing nothing about how the set operates now except that now Granite Armor is no longer mutually exclusive with all of the other armor powers. The same problem as exists now (Granite Armor all the time) still exists.

Except that the entire balance problem with the power is that it's a tier nine toggle. If you don't think there is a balance problem with that after all of the discussion point out just how broken that is, nothing is going to diminish that. The discussion will likely always devolve into balance minded folks pointing out Instant Healing (and */Regen's movement from a regeneration based set to being a click/healing based set), and Granite lovers simply pointing out that any change to the power that prevents it from being up at all times would break the set. You're never going to convince use that being able to be both unkillable and able to kill at all times is balanced and we're never going to convince you that the set isn't entirely based around the ability to turn on Granite and laugh away anything the game throws at you.

Because I've tried to educate you as to your incredibly flawed viewpoint throughout this entire discussion, and you still haven't even gotten the slightest grasp of what I'm talking about. You're still insistent that the ability to maintain Granite Armor grades survivability at all times is not only balanced but also necessary, and, in the same note, that the penalties to the power should be no worse than they are already regardless of the fact that they're laughably simply to get around.

I am mean because I was reasonably polite for our first few exchanges but it did nothing to correct your incredible lack of knowledge that would actually allow you to contribute to this discussion. Being polite did nothing to mitigate your obvious ignorance and it, apparently, made you think that you were actually intelligent enough to have an applicable viewpoint on balance of any kind. When, even after explaining how you were wrong and why the things that you are stubbornly insistent are both necessary and balanced are required for any change to be balanced and acceptable (when it is obvious to anyone with half a brain and the ability to do basic algebra that is isn't), you are still incapable of realizing that the fundamental logic behind your ideas is both hideously flawed and horribly imbalanced. Hell, you still believe that the devs have an obligation to design sets that allow you to overcome any weakness that is designed into a set while still allowing you to do even more with the remaining resources that you believe you should have left over.

I demean you because you're in a balance conversation though you're completely incapable of even recognizing what balance actually is. Even with math, you're incapable of realizing that it's imbalanced. You are somehow impervious to facts and logic.

Holy crap! You might actually be capable of learning!

Which is where the set has always been without Granite Armor. Seriously, the set does not exist entirely on the basis of Granite Armor.

Yet, if you actually look at each of the powers of the set, you'll realize that there are more defense based powers than resistance based powers and that, other than Granite Armor, the defense powers are more powerful. Granite Armor does not follow the standard design of the set. It is not the foundation that the set is built around. You're imagining that the set is based around resistance more than defense because Granite Armor is. It isn't. Look at the actual powers.

Which pretty much proves my point.

Okay, let me do some math for you. The change to Stone Skin increased the resistance from 10%(s/l) to 11.25%(all). That's granting 11.25% +res(f/c/e/n/t/p) and 1.25% +res(s/l). The +def changes amount to 4% +def(all but psi). Using the simple exchange of 2% res = 1% def, the resistance is still increased more overall. Please. Learn what you're talking about. Please.

And how is that problematic from a balance perspective? Your entire problem here is that you want the devs to make it easier for you to be stronger while in IOs regardless of whether it makes sense for the set to do so. For the set to have resistances that would make you happy, the powers that grant +def exclusively would need to have +res added to them, which generates some very amusing complications with having too many different attributes of numerous powers competing for a very small number of enhancement slots. Try imagining this if you can: every power in the set requires both defense enhancement, resistance enhancement, and end redux in order to be both effective and playable. Unless you want to force players to frankenslot to be effective, you're going to have a horribly designed set.

I can comment on your inability to actually look at the set without operating under the pretense that Granite Armor is the entire set.

The point of the thread was less that Shield was too hard to kill but rather than Shield was doing too much damage for the decreased level of survivability the set manages.

Just use the survivability charts that I linked in the very first post. They're right there so that you can even do it yourself and possibly learn something.

Where does anything in that state or even infer that anything is being transferred out of Granite Armor? What you quoting is me stating that the level of survivability as a whole (not the levels of defense and resistance independently) was remaining roughly the same. You can have the same level of survivability amongst two different sets without having to transfer anything around at all. Hell, even if you just did some basic math and compared the reductions to Granite and increases to the other powers you'd be able to see that it didn't work that way.

Yet anyone that has actually done any respectable degree of analysis concerning survivability would disagree with you completely. If you have ever played a */Regen, you'd realize that MoG is simply another click power that contributes to your survivability while IH is the actual God Mode. Simply compare the use of any of the other God Modes to the use of each independently and it's rather patently obvious.

Do you honestly believe that Unstoppable only ever receives +rech from the standard slotting? Even with SOs, you get Hasten. Yes, SoW has better uptime than Unstoppable (which actually has an uptime of 35% rather than 33%) however the uptime of SoW can never have better uptime than 40%. Unstoppable, with only Hasten (using averaged +rech contribution), manages 43.2% uptime. The changes to disallow the reduction of recharge time was done to enforce a low maximum uptime ratio than is possible with the traditional god modes.

Why? */Regen is naturally allergic to -rech and -regen debuffs (along with being painfully allergic to -def thanks mostly to not having any substantial native mitigation and complete reliance on damage recovery). There isn't a way to work around those weaknesses so why should there be any reason that any weakness of a set should be able to be worked around with IOs? If anything, there is less reason because otherwise, as I have said before, the weakness is pointless.

Actually, it's entirely relevant. Your point was using a flawed metaphor in an attempt to describe the relationship between the different god mode powers. The relationship that you are suggesting (insofar that the difference between Fire Imps summoning 3 pets and the others summoning a single pet) is not appropriate if you're attempting to use it to describe how Granite Armor should be allowed to be permanent while all other god mode powers are forced to be temporary.

Just as all pets deal a different amount of damage and provide different degrees of additional functionality, so do the various god modes provide different degrees of additional survivability along with different extraneous benefits (greater mobility, mez effects, greater recovery, etc). Damage that pets provide would be a commensurate comparison to the survivability contributes that the god modes provide, and the control and debuff functions that the pets provide would be commensurate to the secondary attributes of the god modes.

However, the biggest problem with your comparison is that you're attempting to draw similarities between a power that summons 3 weaker pets compared to those that summon 1 pet and a power that provides a level of survivability all the time compared to those powers that provide that same level of survivability part of the time. Your metaphor is fundamentally flawed because it's assuming that 3 pets that deal roughly 1/3rd of the damage all of the time is supposed to be fundamentally different from 1 pet that deals full damage all of the time. A comparison that would have actually been appropriate would be attempting to find a power that deals triple damage part one third of the time so that you could compare it to a power that has the same fundamental average contribution but operates on a different uptime and use ratio.

If some players allow themselves to find themselves in situations when it is unneeded to detoggle Granite Armor they are similarly handicapping themselves because, unlike every other set, they're fully capable of ensuring that they're unkillable against specific groups because they have a reliable and constant grade of survivability that doesn't vary substantially. You're honestly assuming that players have no control over what enemies they face. This is fundamentally untrue.

Why wouldn't you simply make sure that you are facing large numbers of enemies that would allow you to leverage your increased survivability and the incredible efficiency of AoEs? We've got the capability to control spawn sizes and levels as we see fit. Hell, this is the exact reason why Scrappers solo so well compared to Blasters. If survivability had no effect upon the ability to generate rewards, the only thing that people would increase would be damage.

You honestly think they won't care that, while Hasten is active, they get to ignore the -rech of Granite completely? If you honestly believe that the only reason people take Hasten is because they want to have it up all the time, try looking at 99% of the builds out there. A vast majority of them don't really care about getting them permanent. In fact, most builds can't even manage it without completely screwing up the build. Most builds care about getting a decent uptime on Hasten and that's what would matter. In the case I stated, the Granite Armor tank would be running with 20% -rech 44% of the time and 50% +rech 56% of the time. Even with the 56% uptime, the degree of "penalty" suffered by 20% -rech at worst is minimal, especially since you spend more time with a net total +rech benefit rather a penalty.

Also something to remember is that the 20% -rech isn't applied at the end: it's applied at the same time as all other +rech or -rech values. Assuming decent IO grade enhancement (~70%), the 20% -rech penalty is only increasing the recharge on a power by ~12%. On an attack with a recharge of 4 seconds (a standard tier 1 attack), you're talking about the difference between the power recharging in 2.35 seconds and 2.66 seconds.

I'm going to bring this up again because it's important to me. Why do you believe that any problem with a power or set should be able to be completely mitigated with IOs and even then not having the entire build focused on mitigating those problems. You just admitted that it's impossible to build around the limitations of the god mode power. Why should Granite Armor be any different?

Ask anyone and they will tell you, right now, that the reduction in offensive capability now is largely token. By your own admission, the reduction in damage is virtually negligible. The recharge penalty is similar easy to get around, especially if you're willing to go with a suboptimal attack string rather than the best one. It's not like that -rech is going to stop you from saturating your attack string if you have more than 3 attacks.

If Granite Armor is allowed to remain permanent, it is not going to remain the same penalties. The penalties are laughably low right now compared to the increased survivability the power provides. You can survive through the situations that are only possible otherwise with PFF or Phase Shift and yet unlike them, you can actually attack and deal damage. You're not going to get to be unkillable (i.e. maintain the same level of peak mitigation) while being able to attack and keep the power perma. Pick two of those because you're simply not getting all three.

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P.S. I realize, Umbral, that I might not have been explaining things clearly enough; however, I would appreciate it if you would lose some of the snarkyness.

I will lose the snarkyness when you start actually becoming knowledgeable enough in the topic of discussion that I'm not having to constantly explain things to you that you are either unwilling or incapable of understanding. I have no problem treating people with respect when they are actually deserving of it, and I don't have to speak down on their level just so that they'll understand.

If you want me to stop treating you like you're an idiot, stop acting like one. Unlike some people, I don't suffer fools.

This is the explicit reason why I have been saying, from the very beginning, that, if Granite Armor were to ever be rebalanced, one of two things would happen: either it wouldn't be perma and it wouldn't have any particular crippling weaknesses except for a crash or a crash analogue (taken care of with loss of nearly all mobility in my version) or it would be perma capable but have penalties so severe that it would be largely unplayable. No penalty to a god mode that provides survivability as high as classic god modes like Unstoppable is supposed to not have a drawback that you just can't get around: the classic hp and endurance crashes are something that kill you quite often, and the fact that you're likely to die when it drops is one of the mitigating factors to its use (rather than prevent death, Unstoppable and others like it tend to simply delay death). Because you can't enforce a crash on a toggle without making it a temporary toggle, the only reasonable penalty for it (which would, by the very necessity of it being up all the time be worse on average than the penalty of a power that is only up part of the time; it's for this reason that defense is weighted less heavily in balance calculations than resistance and for good reason) is going to be something extreme that would force players to have significant reason to not do so.

Change your difficulty to +2/x8 (or whatever increased difficulty you choose) and get with the fighting. There. It's that simple. You can easily increase your difficulty to the point where you're actually leveraging your higher survivability to generate improved rewards. It's pretty obvious, honestly.

The risk:reward ratio is tied explicitly to the concept that, if there is no risk, there is no reward. It's for this same reason that beating up on greyspawning enemies doesn't give you any experience. If your opponent isn't a threat to you, you're being presented with no risk and achieving an infinite reward ratio, compared to the risk.

The question is not whether there is a specific level of survivability that should stop the ability to recieve rewards. The devs have already functionally stated that there is a point for this by preventing you from attacking while you're in Hibernate or PFF: if you're unkillable, you don't get to attack. Granite Armor doesn't use any specific mechanism to state that you're unkillable. It uses outright mitigation mechanisms.

Please, I beg of you, point out anything that can be taken in even remotely the same way as Granite Armor. Find anything that could possibly be used as a precedent for what Granite Armor does that isn't Granite Armor. Look for it. I will bet you anything that you're not going to find anything in game that proves this true. I dare you. Anything.

It depends entirely upon how you describe the risk:reward ratio. There is a very substantial difference between what Granite Armor can accomplish and what any other set can accomplish. Seriously. Just look at what any other set can survive with just SOs compared to what Granite Armor can survive. Granite Armor completely removes the risk. The other sets aren't nearly that survivable. You might not see much difference between a 1% risk of death and a .1% risk of death because they're both low, but anyone that understands balance would realize that it's an entire order of magnitude of difference. You can make anecdotal commentary stating that Granite Armor is no stronger than what any other set can accomplish because you find the higher survivability largely redundant (I would readily disagree because you can increase the challenge to match your ability to survive), but it doesn't change the fact that according to every model that has ever been put together along with the experience of virtually everyone who has ever compared the performance to others Granite Armor is substantially stronger. It's not a question of only being slightly stronger. It's several times harder to kill.

There's also the issue of whether one set should have the ability to toggle between utter unkillability with slightly lower damage output and normal grade survivability with normal grade damage output when no other set has anything even remotely close to that capability. The devs have readily demonstrated that they don't want sets to be able to be god mode survivable at will while maintaining the ability to do anything. Just try and find anything even approaching precedent for what Granite Armor does. Anything.

As I have continually said, either Granite Armor is not going to be permanent or the penalties that you're going to experience for having it on are going to be so extreme that you're not going to ever want to use it. Don't expect it to be both permanent and playable. There isn't anything approaching a point of balance that had both of those while still being effective.

I've always found Full Auto to be a bit... weak... when you compare it to Rain of Arrows.

I think the devs honestly assume that the two powers are balanced against each other though, if you look at the numbers, there are definite disparities.

For animation time and timing, RoA doesn't draw attention until right before the damage is dealt. Full Auto draws attention immediately deals the damage over the entire animation. Point for RoA.

For area of effect, RoA has nearly twice the area of effect and, rather than being a thin cone effect, is a targeted AoE. Both in ease of use and area of effect, RoA gets points.

For the number of affected targets, RoA can hit 16 while Full Auto can only hit 10. Big point for RoA.

For accuracy, RoA has a base accuracy of 1.6 (iirc, I'm pretty sure the attack info listed for the pseudo pet is wrong on the accuracy). Full Auto has a base accuracy of 1.35. Point for RoA (unless the pseudo pet is wrong, upon which FA gets a point, albeit a largely useless once since higher base accuracy doesn't really mean much since you're going to be operating at 95% chance to hit almost regardless).

Most importantly (right after the max number of targets, imo), for damage (level 50 Blaster base numbers), Rain of Arrows deals 225.2 lethal. Full Auto deals 178.6 lethal. Massive point for RoA.

The powers have the exact same recharge time. The only place that FA actually beats out RoA is endurance cost, which isn't really a major concern for most people since it's not even by an amount that would actually limit performance (FA costs 15.6 while RoA costs 20.8).

I'm not entirely sure which power is supposed to be the "normal" power, but there is obviously a very large difference between the two. At the very least, I'd increase the number of targets for FA to 16 targets and widen the arc so that you can hit more targets more reliably.