docbuzzard

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No thanks, don't pigeon hole Defenders. My Kin/Elec/Elec is a damage dealing machine. Healing is a side effect.

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I thought he was a sapping machine.

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The problem I have is that if your are going to say stacked buffs/debuffs are overpowered, you need to look at teams stacking damage auras. Just as powerful and melt invincible missions just as easy.

Cheers!

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You need to work on your math Hobo. Additive damage auras are nowhere near competitive with force multiplying buffs/debuffs.



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Have you ever stacked 4 or more Spines/DA's? Much safer and just as fast as any all defender team I have ever been apart of.

Cheers!

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Then I guess the point would be that the multiplicative damage of the buff/debuff team is well over the top if a stacked additive team is so deadly eh? The truth of the matter is that few enough challenges in this game are really challenging to a competent team.

I will certainly admit that buff/debuff teams do have some time penalty is setting up debuffs and buffs.

Though I rather expect that if you took an extreme case, say a giant monster and used a buff/debuff team compared to your spines/dark team, the scrappers would be shamed.

Well Dug, you've opened a hornet's nest here. You see, the log you just rolled over shows the little inside secret that people don't usually want to admit. The fact is, GDN and Special ED didn't really change the high end of how powerful a team can be at all. It just cleared up who should actually be on that team. All rad teams existed from way back in this game, and steamrollered everything even back in the days of tankers as king. They were super then, and they remain super now. The only difference is that others were cut down to size. The buff and debuff caps remain the same. The only difference is that joe scrapper, blaster, or tanker is that much farther from them now than before.

Truth is, I'd say just join the buff/debuff overlords and accept the game as is. I don't see it changing. The devs don't seem to care about how powerful a team actually is, they only care about powerful individuals.

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The problem I have is that if your are going to say stacked buffs/debuffs are overpowered, you need to look at teams stacking damage auras. Just as powerful and melt invincible missions just as easy.

Cheers!

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You need to work on your math Hobo. Additive damage auras are nowhere near competitive with force multiplying buffs/debuffs.

In the former case each addition just pitches in damage. In the latter case, each addition not only adds damage, but also increases the damage of those before.

So if we have, say, a team of 8 blasters, they are pretty much just 8 times as effective as one in terms of damage output. This will be somewhat more effective in practice due to things dropping quickly, but still damage has only ramped up by an additive factor. So we can look at that as a damage factor of 8 (8 blasters at damage scale 1).

Say we take 8 storm defenders (since stacked rads are a cliche). They all lay down freezing rain on a target and blast away. Each storm defender adds in a debuff boost of 37% on top of the damage they contribute. Thus you end up with 8*.65 (defender damage scale of course) * 2.96 (8 debuffs of 37%)= 15.39 . This isn't even counting pets, or the far greater comparative safety those stormies will enjoy.

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I love it when this topic comes up...

Back before Issue 5, buffs were secondary, practically unnecessary. Tanks were king. The Devs make some changes that actually make buffs useful, and people cry foul, especially those who played Tanks.


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You're over simplifying history here. Buffs were always useful. They just weren't so necessary. Also, don't sell the "tankers were king" stuff too much. That's a 2 issue state of affairs. Before I3 tankers had some pretty serious issues. Many different ATs have been king of the world. Just because the one you favor happens to be on top now does not guarantee their ownership of that lofty height.

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This topic comes up at least once every few months, always by someone who played an AT that didn't need support back before the GDN and ED. And considering the OP started a thread in the AT General section about Tanks' usefulness in the post-GDN/ED world... color me not surprised.

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Of course now that the COH world is owned by the buff/debuff characters, of course those would not wish to upset the applecart. I have adapted and joined the buff/debuff overlords, but honestly people should not fool themselves into thinking this game is working in a balanced fashion or any other such nonsense.

Such claims that all buff/debuff teams are not invincible because of team wipes carries little weight. Team wipes on those teams come about because people screw up royally. Otherwise they are an unstoppable steamroller. Buff/debuff teams drop enemies faster than anything else, bar nothing.

Look at TopDocs list of superteams and find me any without any buffer/debuffer. You won't get far. Heck, he tried to make an all tanker one, but decided it had to have kinetics defenders.

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A fire tank with sonic shields and maybe Tough would have pretty solid resists and a nice self heal.



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A fire tanker with a sonic defender willing to keep close enough for the big bubble will be capped for lethal/smashing/fire(I know)/energy/neg energy. They won't need tough. Tough+ the distant shields will pass the cap.

We had an invuln tanker I kept buffed with my sonic shields and he had few problems.

Though if people catch on how well sonics boost damage against AVs, they are likely to be very popular in this TF. I mean just sonic primary on a defender will debuff resistance 60% on a single target. Nobody else comes even close. Add in sonic attack, and you will be capable of keeping up a 100% resistance debuff easily on that target.

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Stood around the boat and watched the various chat channels as well this evening and watched 8 different groups stream out of the helicopter. 6 were unsuccessful due to giving up after a 30 min to 1 hour fight with Mako. Of the two that were successful, one said they used shivans and yellows, the other seemed to have no idea why they were successful, said it was a tough fight but he eventually fell.

I noticed several of the toons had tactics in their build.

So I'm thinking shivans, tons of yellows or stacked tacics will get the job done and break through that elude.

Still think it's broken if these are the only ways to beat Mako, but at least its more information.

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Didn't need shivans for Mako, vengeance and Geas of the kind ones ftw, didn't have focussed accuracy, but suspect that's good too.

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We did have much trouble with Mako. I think we had two tactics running, then RI and I laid down Liquefy from my sonic. The liquefy doesn't even have any defense debuff enhancement in it. We were having trouble with him till I did the liquefy.

I just tried it and we just couldn't beat down the damn vines. That may seem pretty weak, but once a scrapper dropped out during the vines sequence, the leader gave up and that was it. We got down to 3 vines at one point, but that's as good as we got and the number just started climbing again. I think we were just to disorganized to pull off the weaken vine method. The team seemed balanced going in, but things just didn't work.

Not that this is the forum for it, but I noticed the same effect on my Brute. Given that brute attacks have single target taunt built in (plus I run the aggro aura), it is a comparable situation. Minions don't tend to run much, but lieuts and bosses will high tail it away if they are getting low in HP. If I didn't have AS, I would really be hating life.

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My fix for Tankers is roughly similar in concept as my fix for Blasters. Fix certain powers in each set.

For example the INV passives and the -DEF in UY, increase the healing value for Healing Flames, put knockback protection in Plasma Shield, give Burn a ratio on it's fear effect (a compromise between two Cryptic positions), get rid of Hibernation and ROTP for a real tier 9 defense, give Clobber the damage that Cleave can do, replace Frozen Aura with Ice Sword Circle, for example. And of course do something about the current AV/GM Taunt situation.

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Clobber would have to go all the way to Knockout Blow damage for War Mace to be competative. Upping it to Cleave level would be insufficient. Upping the BI to 9.8 would make the set pretty much comparable to Battle Axe.

I agree with the rest of the suggestions, though since it has been stated that fire won't be getting knockback protection, you're probably dreaming too hard. I can see passives getting some buffs since Castle did mention they saw a problem with passives in general (and the bonus Super Reflexes got in the passives may set a precedent).

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Poster: Liquid
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I have to ask: Why didn't the Tauntless tankers like Gideon and Panzerkatze notice this earlier? Are you folks playing other ATs? Not fighting AVs? Teaming with Tankers that do have Taunt? Teaming with groups where you are dealing the most damage? Did you just come back to the game recently?

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I've been playing alts mainly but i have been called in to smash AVs. Since I generally dish out dmg on par with the Blasters and Scrappers. They don't trump my aggro very often.

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Problem is, that's only possible for energy melee. Other tanker secondaries would be surpassed by blasters and scrappers.

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I have to ask: Why didn't the Tauntless tankers like Gideon and Panzerkatze notice this earlier? Are you folks playing other ATs? Not fighting AVs? Teaming with Tankers that do have Taunt? Teaming with groups where you are dealing the most damage? Did you just come back to the game recently?

I'm not trying to attack you guys or anything. I honestly thought this immediately after that Burkholder fight when I tried tanking him without Taunt: how did the people who were vocal supporters of not taking Taunt miss the fact that they couldn't hold aggro on AVs?

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Well I only have one tanker these days with taunt and that's my Invulnerability/Battle Axe. I've not played him since I reactivated at I7, since I expect all the energy damage AVs to tear him a new one, and I'd rather just have my memories. My fire tankers I consider too squishy to even play anymore, much less fight AVs. Then there's my icer who's not made it up to the AV range yet. As of this, he probably won't.

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That means we can only use our inherent on Minions, LTs, and Bosses and it is the ONLY inherent that is limited to targets of low consequence.

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See. Join the MeatSack(tm) bandwagon. All the cool kids are.

Damn, and I called it a sucker bet. Silly me, shoulda taken it.

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-regen is not needed to take down an AV. Taunt is not needed. Tanks in general aren't needed. Want an easy time as a tanker on an AV team? Take taunt.

....And have a Coke and a smile, and shut the f--- up!!

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Actually one could look upon this as a mercy overall. Given the casualty rate for many tankers fighting AVs these days, having them lose the attention of the baddie is a blessing in disguise. With the tanker's piddling damage, the AV's will regularly lose interest in them and the tanker will be spared the pain. Woo Hoo! It's a tanker survivability buff!! Really!! Dead squishies for the win!

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Can you take down a GM/AV without some form of -Regen?

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My SG takes down AVs without -regen all the time. In the demos I posted, nobody has -regen, and we don't even have full teams, just 5-6 people.

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Yeah, I don't know what people think you need -regen for. My sonic defender has been on plenty of AV killing teams without that ability. His ability to debuff resistance serves quite adequately.

The thing is about this screw up is that is basically says one power is completely mandatory for a tanker to be even vaguely useful against AVs. Of course you could instead just stack defender/controllers and skip the tanker altogether. You'd also do the job much more quickly.

Some people will simply take anything the devs dish up without complaint. This is really sad.

This has to be the most pathetic tanker development I have seen yet.

I mean wasn't there a long effort which Statesman supported to make tankers something other than taunt-bots? This completely obliterates this effort in one swipe. It also negates about the only real strong need for tankers unless of course they do have taunt. Well I don't see much of a future for my Ice/SS tanker since I wasn't going to bother with taunt on him, and this gives me even less drive to both taking him the rest of the way.

Just when you think the devs can't get any dumber...

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These were the days when tankers were considered gimp if they couldn't herd over 100 enemies, when ice armor could only have one toggle on at a time which was the same as rock armor with the exception that rock armor made it look liek you were encased in poo and fire tankers were considered gods.



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Nah, fire tankers weren't considered gods until I3. Back in I2 (the days of Mr. Hanky stone tankers, and teletanking invulnerability tankers) fire had ultra goofy status protection, and the builds had even less flexbility than nowadays (jumping pool, presense pool, fighting pool, health pool, do not deviate or you suck). You had to have healing flames on auto-fire or you'd get stunned, and you had to pre-burn to resist holds and sleeps. If you had holds stacked up on you when you hit burn again, the status protection had a gap, and you'd drop all your toggles. I collected quite the number of empaths on my friends list just for clear mind. This was the reason fire tankers stuck to fighting sky raiders and then nemesis. All they use is stuns, and that was your only good status protection.

Also back then ice armor's real issue was the lack of sleep protection in wet ice. They didn't need stacking armor after level 26 since energy absorption gave 14% defense per mob in range without enhancement.

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The only way to avoid gimpness is to force powers into the player that are granted automaticaly at levelups, and even then, the gimp may still not even use them :P

All in all, i ponder what SOE is planning to do with their DC comics MMO...

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That really is the question I am hanging on. Will they do superheros right? Will Sony screw the pooch again? I'm hoping for a free form system which accomplishes the former. Somehow my very cynical nature expects the latter.

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*Bricks comes from some Marvel Comics pen and paper RPG btw

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*Bzzzzt* wrong answer. Here's our lovely parting gift.

Champions is the origin, like most of the terms people use to describe superheroes from an RPG perspective.

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Yeah, Champions predates most other super hero RPGs. Personally I favored Villains and Vigilantees in the day.

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QA catches major bugs. Not piddling decimal errors.

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You mean like that "piddling decimal error" which lost the NASA probe to Mars a couple years back? That was only a few hundred million bucks.

Do you even know what decimals are? From this response you sound like you don't.

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Talk about piss poor design! So you have a set where if you take one power you need to take another power to get rid of the downside of the first.



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You are completely correct but understating the idiocy. The devs have made it a mandatory thing. You CANNOT function as a tanker without unyielding. It simply is not possible without a babysitter, and even then they better not lapse. Thus they have made two power selections mandatory and one of which is merely to make up for a penalty in the first. That is truly an asinine design decision.

Hmm, the "Devs are clueless" theory gains ground by the minute.

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I see. Thanks for letting us know, Gil. Should be a fun set up.

*waits for the nitpickers to start tearing apart Gil's post*

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I'm surprised there isnt a thread in the CoV forum tearing the CoV fiction apart!


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So are you saying the heroes are meaner than the villains?

The only ways I can see base costs being difficult are:
A) The prices are really outrageous
B) The supergroup has nobody in the 40s

Every one of my alts in the 40+ game is pretty much filthy rich.

Heck, you can nab about 3 million influence just running a rikti respec when you're 50th.