I ask you again... is it balanced that the best damage buffs in game are not from offensive passives?
Yes. Passive forms are fire and forget, always active. Enrage and Focus have to be actively maintained with varying conditions to be effective and their damage bonuses have to be built up in combat.
While offensive passives always have full bonus right from the get go.
An example:
Form of the Master builds rely on dodge to build Focus. 20% chance per dodge.
Most effective to build when attacked by a group of mobs.
So, if you're in a team and have a dedicated tank, you're going to have a hard time ramping up Focus stacks.
Form of the Tempest - relies on crits. 20% chance per crit.
If you're under heavy attack, you don't fight back and Focus stacks don't build.
While Focus may be superior in raw numbers compared to an offensive passive, it's situational and not always effective. While passives are.
To build up Enrage, you mostly use Charge attacks, which can leave you quite vulnerable.
If not charge attacks, then quick and weak AoE attacks with a cooldown. Then there's the Enrage power, for which you have to have reasonable Strength and Con for it to be useful. Otherwise, it's only a placeholder when you're too lazy to charge a Roomsweeper or something. Making it a wasted "just in case" power point.
Enrage is trivially easy to build up and maintain with just the Enrage power and proper statting. Stats themselves are just an end to the means and which specific stats picked only truly matters because of what powers are chosen. Saying something is special because it requires specific stats becomes meaningless.
Build up of both Focus and Enrage is meaningless since it's possible to run to the next set of mobs in less than 20 seconds.
Talking about an electric build specifically, REC is not needed... at all. Ionic Reverberation supplies enough power on my INT/END toon to run Lightning Arc + Concussor Beams simultaneously. His total REC? 15. Hey, that means I can use STR for that slot now and pick Enrage... which makes my Electric Form offensive passive largely redundant as segma pointed out earlier. Additive buffs make less and less of an impact the more you have. The real damage difference between offensive passive + enrage/focus and defensive passive + enrage/focus isn't as much as those tooltip numbers would have you believe.
Talking about an electric build specifically, REC is not needed... at all. Ionic Reverberation supplies enough power on my INT/END toon to run Lightning Arc + Concussor Beams simultaneously. His total REC? 15. Hey, that means I can use STR for that slot now and pick Enrage... which makes my Electric Form offensive passive largely redundant as segma pointed out earlier.
Don't see your point here.
Doing that would mean you have to invest in both STR, CON and at least 2 advantage points to stack Enrage effectively.
Otherwise, you'd only get a single stack.
You'd gimp yourself more than you'd gain by that.
EDIT:
Also, the way i see it, gimping Enrage/Focus would basically split players into even more fixed roles.
Tanks and DPS.
Right now, we have viable options to make heroes that are both very durable, and have a decent offense. Everyone can do it. That was the whole point of Freeform, to trivialize such roles.
There also needs to be END GAME LAIRS. Several of them, at least. We've all heard the complaint: "the only thing to do in Champions when you hit 40 is roll a new toon..." - yes, but it would be nice to have some more end-game lairs. Of course, the reward system needs a good deal of re-work (not even going into Crafted Travel Powers).
There are curently 4 Endgame Lairs:
Mandragalor
Andrith Ruins
Nemesis Confrontation
Therakiel's Temple.
Of these, only Nemesis Confrontation is run regularly, and even then, it's just for the costume drops. The gear out of all four of these is all subpar compared to what can be aquired through UNITY or Serpent Lantern. It's not that there aren't endgame lairs, it's that no one runs them because there is no reason to. The biggest problem with NemCon is that it doesn't scale with difficulty.
Therakiel's Temple is a very, very fun instance that myself and friends run regularly just for the fun of it. However, the entire instance can take around 3 hours or more (around 2 if your team is well practiced), and the gear drops are subpar at best, lagging behind even what other Lairs drop, oftne times outclassed by leveling gear. You can upgrade these drops through multiple runs, but even then, you only get a total of 3 extra stat points, making all that extra effort worthless.
Mandragalore ios barely ever run because a longish Mission Chain must be completed before you can get the mission to enter. Even then, the Lair isn't very fun, mostly revolving around swimming around and fighting large groups of enemies. Plus, the instance is rather log as well, lessening it's appeal. The gear drop, although better than Therakiel's Temple and Nemesis Confrontation, only drop off the end boss. Again, this adds up to not being worth it on top of not being fun.
Andrith is probably run more often than any other Lair except NemCon, but suffered from crippling bugs for a very long time. Having an untargetable ball of lightning chase you through the whole instance, an unworking Lava Protection Device and a Boss that really screws over healers and non-Defensive Passive users made this Lair very, very disliked. The Gear that drops of the miniboss is crap, but the gear that drops from Vikorin can be good, IF you ran on Very Hard and IF you have the right stat combination for his drop.
So yes, there are plenty of Lairs, that you'd be hard-pressed to complete all of in a day if you really, really tried to grind it out. The problem isn't that they aren't here, it's that there isn't any real incentive to do them.
Doing that would mean you have to invest in both STR, CON and at least 2 advantage points to stack Enrage effectively.
Otherwise, you'd only get a single stack.
You'd gimp yourself more than you'd gain by that.
... your point being? Especially with an INT/END build it's easy to stack STR and just enough CON to make Enrage perma with just the Enrage power. Doing so would also free up my passive slot for something more useful (Aura of Primal Majesty anyone?) *and* I wouldn't be just tied to energy damage powers since Enrage buffs everything.
Pretty much. The fact that we can put together a vastly superior "offensive" build (and I mean superior in damage, survivability and efficiency) running in support role should be enough of a red flag about Avenger role. Also, a missing point, is the fact that Enrage and Focus can be used in Avenger role which largely negates an enrage vs avenger argument since they aren't mutually exclusive. Running in Avenger role is like running with leg shackles on while every other role is in a car.
Why do you guys always discuss/argue this crap? It seems to me like they're never going to actually change any of it, so nothing we say really matters (especially since the whole thing is pretty much split right down the middle opinion wise). Just deal with your pointlessly squishy offensive build or make a stupidly overpowered defensive build that does the same damage as the squishy build. They're basically the same in pve anyways, and if you're serious about pvp you wont care what powers you have to use anyways.
What we should be doing is uniting to help them to actually finally fix all the damn broken CC resistance that does little to nothing in pvp, and absolutely nothing in pve. I'd rather finally see my stacks of knock resistance stop the 2 viper commanders and rabid pack of ninjas and grenade-tards from chest beaming and nade spamming at the same time, blinding me and sending me flying over 500ft away and instantly dying than worry about whether or not i can dish out ~600 more dps than some guy with a defensive passive while i'm using an offensive.
On that note you guys need to review the mobs in the game and how they apply knock resistance as a first step, because at least half of them don't bother even following resistance application rules at all, the biggest culprits being the VIPER mobs in my experience.
Uh huh. Quarry/dodge builds. Offensive passive builds with as much defensive capability as LR (more in some cases when you throw in things like IDF, breakaway shot, Def Combo w/ surge of strength). And I'm completely fine with that because just like what I mentioned above your trading several powers, adv. points etc. to do the job of one. A fair trade to get offense and defense.
Right, so essentially there's exactly ONE specific build, built off Quarry which is sort of a "mixed" passive, who can be anywhere near the efficiency of the "defensive passive + offensive toggles" ones in the "I'm a tank/mage" department. Where does this leave all the purely offensive passives?
No it doesn't falchoin and you know that. Come on. Fact remains offensive passive is 1 power point, stat what you want, and you're done. Enrage/Focus you can't do like that, there's a bunch of other things you need. You can't just brush over that and act like it's the same investment thereby making one option OP'd.
The fact remains that I can pick any passive I darn well please, stat some STR w/ a bit of CON/INT and pick Enrage for the same or better effect as picking an offensive passive. None of those even need to be a super stat. Enrage maintenance is trivial.
As to Focus... it just takes DEX. You get damage buffs and energy returns scaling with DEX. Assuming you're not running from mob to mob in less than 20 seconds there may be some build up unless you build so you don't have to. Specifically with the crit focus (which you picked because you crit a lot due to high DEX right?) it's easy to maintain a full 8 stacks even outside of combat critting with any power... Empathic Healing being one of the best choices due to being able to move while maintaining on self and fast ticks.
Basically, build up only happens once after you log in if you don't let the stacks fall off. Even if you do lets the stacks time out, it's not difficult to get them back.
...And how much STR are you stacking when you need both INT and END? already? Not too much which means you aren't getting the full benefit of that enrage which brings it inline. What amount of STR are you stating since you said that slot? +94 at most?
I'll admit talking about just one slot a bit of a mis-type as it could easily be +34 STR x2 and +94 on top of whatever talents I need. My primary defense would supply more than enough CON alone given that INT is already a super stat.
[sarcasm]
Maybe instead of getting Enrage/Focus fixed I should be lobbying for a defensive toggle or clicky buff that's more effective than Defiance? Because if the highest of damage buffs aren't from passives why should defensive and support options be similarly limited? We totally need better than Defiance, AoRP, AoPM toggles or clicky buffs to balance the Enrage/Focus damage buffs.[/sarcasm]
EDIT: Btw, your 'this" link earlier didn't work so the effect was somewhat spoiled
What about having more Toggle Options similar to Aspect of the Inferal? Wouldn't non-scaling ranged-specific buffs somewhat help the ranged vs melee argument? Is that a viable option?
Defense stacking is already pretty incredible, especially with the addition of Inertial Dampening Field. I know that I stopped PvPing because it felt like everyone was just stacking so much defense that any fight just took forever. The defense stacking its own problem, too. You can really tell because of how much more we are seeing Dragon's Wrath becoming the Go-To attack in PvP and watching other attacks just disappear. I know DW has always been popular, but you at least saw the occasional Ego Blades or Single Blade PvPer, and those just don't seem to be around anymore. DW is quickly taking over as it's the only attack that penetrates defense.
However, I do see where you are coming from because Offensive Passives don't boost your ability to deal damage as much as Defensive Passives increase your ability to survive. However, I think this is more of a problem with Offensive Passives than it is with Enrage or Focus Toggles.
--Edit--
Kenpo's "Here" was in Bold, because he bolded a sentence in the Quote.
See what i dont get here, is you guys say that enrage and focus are so easy to maintain and use, and yet
you dont use them. sure, focus is melee specific, but if enrage is so easy to use and has no downsides, why dont you guys just go ahead and use them? If its so easy to get enrage going, uuhhhh why dont you just pick up enrage?
See i actually tried enrage in mixed builds, and you end up meleeing most of the time, you have to take a bunch of skills, and you have to move from mob to mob extremely fast, you have to use skills that build enrage, but arent really the most dps,
lets look at the enrage building skills Enrage Buff Self 8 long cool down, even with all points in rank, goes to like 24 sec while enrage lasts 22 second, you can use int for cast times, but thats no small investment, giving up the damage stats, strength dex or ego or straight up crit severity and offense
Havoc Stomp nice, but needs melee range, and knockback mobs, which seems good, except youd have done more dmg if the mob wasnt knocked far back in the time chasing it down. also, its just achance, i have had it fail on like 3 mobs and lost enrage stacks
Roomsweeper prolly the easiest way, still the fact it knocks away mobs reduces your dps, best when you root target and the spam up, but that requires more skills, and still needs charge times, Haymaker im just throw this out there, totally ineffient, needing two full charges 2 skills, the first of which is kind of weak, needs mobs and needs to be close. also the mob probably died from some ranged guys dmg before you landed it Iron Cyclone needs a full maintain, for a kind of weak skill, also only refreshes, or adds 1 Two-Gun Mojo requires full charge, not a high dmg skill, only refreshes 1 stack Gatling Gun requires full maintain same as above Unbreakable Buff Self 1 this is a nice one, but you need to be getting hit, solo your great, but if you arent main tank its hard to get enrage up quickly. Howl best average maintain without targets, its fast, but it only maintains, if you get hit Bite this is a good maintain, but requires a bleeding set up, and its not a max dmg skill, so your dps drops a bit.
all the quick uses require mobs, and close range, the ranged ones need a full maintain, the outside of battle ones need either multuple ranks and a decent amount of int, massive int and a rank or two. It aint that easy.
And really you ranged guys, do you realize that even with enrage or focus and massive stats, it still requires you to get close, melee aoe for decent dmg is either 10 feet only, and often conal. say what you want about being able to get to a mob fast with leaps, but it still only is effective at 10 feet, melee people get energy from getting close and doing something, you need to make something bleed, charge a skill or land a hit to get back energy, or use some specific skills.
And even with our great focus, and stat builds, and enrage, your dmg is right beneath it, without even using a offensive passive, look at force cascade or fireball, look at the aoe range of electrity and munitions.
far as the ranged can get base regen from a distance, im serious when i say, i had my friend who is a soldier shoot a mob so far away he is alble to get heal regen while doing dmg, with killer instinct he basically didnt need to get close enough to build energy for a long time, and if he was a freeform he would have had access to molecular self assembly or dark transfusion, the less loss from being below equilibrium comes into play here as well, because when your far enough to get hp, your far enough to degrade equilibrium faster. basically he was able to put out consistent dmg and if he turned the mob, only got hit like once, just stopped shooting for awhile and regened full. On melee if i want to get out range enough to heal fast, only tele is an option, and i definately cant do it while doing dmg.
see if your going avenger, you prolly want to go presence over con, and use shields, theres a reason they made it some stats are only in some places.
now if your talking about avenger solo (without someone to hold hate), you would of course have to get skills for survival, you can seriously spam force fields almost endlessly, and as far as needing stats to make them good, you need stats to make heals good too, the only heals ive seen that arent influenced by pre have long **** cooldowns, and dont seem like they ll keep you alive solo.
overall though, the brawler and avenger builds need really specific builds to be viable solo, but that makes sense, because guardian is supposed to be the balanced one, and you can use any role whenever you want..... welll if your freeform that is. But Ats are basically made with specific weakness, that you make up for with party type play, so what do you expect.
1) Lets not take away from the fact that roles (all but guardian) are MOSTLY boosted by the passive choices they enhance. Ranged offensive slotted passives are not up to par with defensive ones across the board.
2) Maybe increasing Avenger's damage above 20% is the real end goal.. make them hit harder but die easier.
3) I think the BIGGEST problem in balancing roles is that PvP wise, defensive passives will always win. Mostly because they don't really suffer from damage loss at a rate that makes a tangible difference.
4) Having Guardian role really undermines ALL the other roles in my opinion.. but that's something that should have been addressed at launch.. removing it now would alienate so many. Instead, just nerf it .. maybe 10% down from where it is in every stat.
There are other gameplay mechanics besides, DPS, Damage Mitigation and Healing too.. and I really wish that the role choices better addressed them as well.
back to the Bugs
BUG
Earth Splitter claims it will give enrage with 3 targets or more in the tool tip, but i am not seeing it happen at all, on fulll charge or not, on 3 or more mobs
Heavy Weapons has so many attacks, and I can find a use for them all. Imma hafta develop a new play style centered around combos. Really Need a gamepad now. Good work cryptic. Saving for the lifetime.
Exactly. I know and see few min/maxers flocking to enrage despite it buffing all damage indiscriminately which is one reason among many I don't buy the idea of nerfing it. It's patently obvious that it takes a larger investment to get the payoff it offers which is the whole point. To use Enrage effectively there are several things you have to give up and a lot of hoops you have to consistently jump through to maintain it.
It's interesting reading "I could do...". If it was really that simple, effective, overpowered, etc. I'd instead be be reading much more "Well what I am doing..."
If enrage doesn't get nerfed with this patch, i already stated what im doing....
/e finger on retcon trigger.
FINALLY a real discussion on ROLES:/snip
3) I think the BIGGEST problem in balancing roles is that PvP wise, defensive passives will always win. Mostly because they don't really suffer from damage loss at a rate that makes a tangible difference.
The yellow part is the thing i have a problem with. I also think that enrage is one of the first powers that comes to mind when building these high offense/ high defense toons. The people that disagree disagree.
For the sake of argument, lets say that enrage and focuses are fine and you only need to touch the stats on avenger role to correct the balance between all roles. How much of a damage boost are you talking about giving avengers? It just seems to me that if you start to restructure avenger role with offensive enrage tanks in mind, the damage could get out of control real quick.
The damage boost from Avenger could use a slight boost I think, but what really needs to happen is the penalties need to be flushed down the toilet of poopy ideas.
Lower health and weakened resistance to CC don't need to be tweaked or adjusted, they simply need to go away. Either that or meaningful penalties need to be added to Brawler, Protector, and Sentinel until the roles are balanced.
If enrage doesn't get nerfed with this patch, i already stated what im doing....
/e finger on retcon trigger.
The yellow part is the thing i have a problem with. I also think that enrage is one of the first powers that comes to mind when building these high offense/ high defense toons. The people that disagree disagree.
For the sake of argument, lets say that enrage and focuses are fine and you only need to touch the stats on avenger role to correct the balance between all roles. How much of a damage boost are you talking about giving avengers? It just seems to me that if you start to restructure avenger role with offensive enrage tanks in mind, the damage could get out of control real quick.
Why do you keep mentioning the avenger role in comparison with enrage and focus, they really have little or nothing to do with each other. you can get just as much dmg from enrage on avenger as when your on brawler or guardian. the % dont multiply, they up.
Why do you think a ranged charachter should do more damage in a melee range than meleer? ranged charachters tend to have better CC, more AOE range, and can strike from a farther distance, do you really expect that your AOE ranged Damage should be greater than single target melee damage? and we are talking a small difference here, fireball doing 2.4k to main target and 979 to area, from up to 50 feet, compared to haymaker doing 2.7k to one target. if you want to talk about dmg in a 10 foot range, for melee, its prolly, butchersblade 3.8k versus 3.5k for fireball maxed out. of course, the cost for butchers blade is 131 which requires some skill, or end, to ever use to its full potential, and fireball max cost is 89 which a basic charachter can use. also the next closest aoe for melee would probably be 1.5k for dragon kick or 1.6k for the new devestator skill.
now yeah enrage boosts the dmg further, but you can get enrage too, youll just have to go through the trouble of building it up
far as the hold, resistance, you do realize, that as an avenger you have an advantage on the move right? without being held, only a spike melee could beat a ranger. you may be in a hold slightly longer, but people still have to chase you down. It also feels like this is a pvp balance issue. i wouldnt nerf a whole 2 frameworks around pvp builds
First, this is a super hero game, in general they should avoid nerfing, people are supposed to be superhuman here, now in terms of buffing, sure its fine, but really looking at the numbers, ranged has still has comparable dmg to melee, and a lot more utility. People forget that meleers have to block aoe on the tank, or tank, which lowers thier damage greatly, wherease a ranged toon can just keep going, if you want to talk about solo builds, balance is key there, and i have avenger builds that have an easy time soloing as any brawler build has
BUG?
Brute strike has same stun length for rank 2 and 3, whether this is intentional i do not know.
Why do you keep mentioning the avenger role in comparison with enrage and focus, they really have little or nothing to do with each other. you can get just as much dmg from enrage on avenger as when your on brawler or guardian. the % dont multiply, they up.
Maybe im looking at this the wrong way, but it seems to me that when you look at balanceing roles, you would look at how much DMG/Healing/Defence you can get in each role. Enrage is one of the few ways that you can get big damage buffs without avenger role/passive. If enrage can let non avenger toons compete with avenger toons in damage, then how is that not related?
Why do you think a ranged charachter should do more damage in a melee range than meleer? ranged charachters tend to have better CC, more AOE range, and can strike from a farther distance, do you really expect that your AOE ranged Damage should be greater than single target melee damage?
now yeah enrage boosts the dmg further, but you can get enrage too, youll just have to go through the trouble of building it up
First of all, im not talking about range v. melee, im talking about role balance. I don't think i would have much of a problem with enrage if it didn't buff every thing
NOTE: I am not saying that enrage is the cause of the problem but i dont see how you can approach balancing the "high damage role" without looking at how people are doing high damage in other roles.
Lastly, you seem to be implying that if you boost the damage in avenger role to brawler levels then the damage will be to high. If that is the case, then we agree and there was no reason to ram that point down my throat. this is why i asked the question stated above.(post #123)
I'm trying to understand how you can how you can make the defense loss that comes with avenger role worth while without buffing the damage to overpoweredness and without changing the powers that let you get avenger level damage outside of avenger role.
See what i dont get here, is you guys say that enrage and focus are so easy to maintain and use, and yet
you dont use them. sure, focus is melee specific, but if enrage is so easy to use and has no downsides, why dont you guys just go ahead and use them? If its so easy to get enrage going, uuhhhh why dont you just pick up enrage?
See i actually tried enrage in mixed builds, and you end up meleeing most of the time, you have to take a bunch of skills, and you have to move from mob to mob extremely fast, you have to use skills that build enrage, but arent really the most dps,
lets look at the enrage building skills Enrage Buff Self 8 long cool down, even with all points in rank, goes to like 24 sec while enrage lasts 22 second, you can use int for cast times, but thats no small investment, giving up the damage stats, strength dex or ego or straight up crit severity and offense
Havoc Stomp nice, but needs melee range, and knockback mobs, which seems good, except youd have done more dmg if the mob wasnt knocked far back in the time chasing it down. also, its just achance, i have had it fail on like 3 mobs and lost enrage stacks
Roomsweeper prolly the easiest way, still the fact it knocks away mobs reduces your dps, best when you root target and the spam up, but that requires more skills, and still needs charge times, Haymaker im just throw this out there, totally ineffient, needing two full charges 2 skills, the first of which is kind of weak, needs mobs and needs to be close. also the mob probably died from some ranged guys dmg before you landed it Iron Cyclone needs a full maintain, for a kind of weak skill, also only refreshes, or adds 1 Two-Gun Mojo requires full charge, not a high dmg skill, only refreshes 1 stack Gatling Gun requires full maintain same as above Unbreakable Buff Self 1 this is a nice one, but you need to be getting hit, solo your great, but if you arent main tank its hard to get enrage up quickly. Howl best average maintain without targets, its fast, but it only maintains, if you get hit Bite this is a good maintain, but requires a bleeding set up, and its not a max dmg skill, so your dps drops a bit.
all the quick uses require mobs, and close range, the ranged ones need a full maintain, the outside of battle ones need either multuple ranks and a decent amount of int, massive int and a rank or two. It aint that easy.
And really you ranged guys, do you realize that even with enrage or focus and massive stats, it still requires you to get close, melee aoe for decent dmg is either 10 feet only, and often conal. say what you want about being able to get to a mob fast with leaps, but it still only is effective at 10 feet, melee people get energy from getting close and doing something, you need to make something bleed, charge a skill or land a hit to get back energy, or use some specific skills.
And even with our great focus, and stat builds, and enrage, your dmg is right beneath it, without even using a offensive passive, look at force cascade or fireball, look at the aoe range of electrity and munitions.
far as the ranged can get base regen from a distance, im serious when i say, i had my friend who is a soldier shoot a mob so far away he is alble to get heal regen while doing dmg, with killer instinct he basically didnt need to get close enough to build energy for a long time, and if he was a freeform he would have had access to molecular self assembly or dark transfusion, the less loss from being below equilibrium comes into play here as well, because when your far enough to get hp, your far enough to degrade equilibrium faster. basically he was able to put out consistent dmg and if he turned the mob, only got hit like once, just stopped shooting for awhile and regened full. On melee if i want to get out range enough to heal fast, only tele is an option, and i definately cant do it while doing dmg.
see if your going avenger, you prolly want to go presence over con, and use shields, theres a reason they made it some stats are only in some places.
now if your talking about avenger solo (without someone to hold hate), you would of course have to get skills for survival, you can seriously spam force fields almost endlessly, and as far as needing stats to make them good, you need stats to make heals good too, the only heals ive seen that arent influenced by pre have long **** cooldowns, and dont seem like they ll keep you alive solo.
overall though, the brawler and avenger builds need really specific builds to be viable solo, but that makes sense, because guardian is supposed to be the balanced one, and you can use any role whenever you want..... welll if your freeform that is. But Ats are basically made with specific weakness, that you make up for with party type play, so what do you expect.
That's a good post, but there's a way to sustain Rage without resorting to any of those attacks. All you really need is Aura of Majesty and the right stats. I break it all down in a build here: http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=127457
I've only tested it against Electric Form so far, but I dont see any immediate reasons why Rage of Majesty shouldnt replace most offensive passives. I need to test some more variations. At least this is going to make a great Thor when this set goes live.
Maybe im looking at this the wrong way, but it seems to me that when you look at balanceing roles, you would look at how much DMG/Healing/Defence you can get in each role. Enrage is one of the few ways that you can get big damage buffs without avenger role/passive. If enrage can let non avenger toons compete with avenger toons in damage, then how is that not related?
First of all, im not talking about range v. melee, im talking about role balance. I don't think i would have much of a problem with enrage if it didn't buff every thing
NOTE: I am not saying that enrage is the cause of the problem but i dont see how you can approach balancing the "high damage role" without looking at how people are doing high damage in other roles.
Lastly, you seem to be implying that if you boost the damage in avenger role to brawler levels then the damage will be to high. If that is the case, then we agree and there was no reason to ram that point down my throat. this is why i asked the question stated above.(post #123)
I'm trying to understand how you can how you can make the defense loss that comes with avenger role worth while without buffing the damage to overpoweredness and without changing the powers that let you get avenger level damage outside of avenger role.
/walks away feeling like a broken record.
ahh i see, but the thing is, the role, in this case is doesnt make or break any build, merely boosts them so they are slightly better than others at a specific task, skill selection has more to determine what "role" a job is rather than what role they select. the biggest effect of role is determing what passive they can select, so if you take a defensive passive, even on a guardian, you are going to do roughly 85 to 90% less dmg, this percent is of your base dmg, so it will translate into, for example, 666 dmg versus 931 dmg or 2.9k versus 3.5 k for the same skills, this is with enrage which makes the gap not as big, but still over the course of a long fight the difference in damage is noticeable
I think i see what your getting at, but enrage isnt the issue, enrage/focus exists more to bridge the gap in melee vs range rather than role versus role. as well as provide a interesting mechanic for meleers. I honestly think its good that a tank doesnt have to be trash at dmg, especially for solo situations, and i really think that brawler and avenger can also make builds that increase survivability greatly, while still having dmg. doing 20% -30% more dmg than another class with the same skills should put you in the im way better at damaging things than you category
I think the idea they had for avenger was your classic ranged charachter, who can do excellent damage from range, and ok damage up close. whereas a brawler is a guy who can only fight up close. I feel like they debuff ranged peoples survivability to make up for the fact they can strike first and keep distance.
sniper shot for example, can seriously wound or kill you before you could even get in range to leap. it has a stun effect, and works at 100 feat, you can actually get off 2 shots with the right stuff. then you look at force cascade, it has 100 feet range , and knocks back 100 more feet, not to mention you can advantage it to add a hold.
so yeah i think its debuffs are there to deal with the advantages of ranged attacks, however, i will admit you only see it on the avenger role, not ranged attacks in general.
That's a good post, but there's a way to sustain Rage without resorting to any of those attacks. All you really need is Aura of Majesty and the right stats. I break it all down in a build here: http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=127457
I've only tested it against Electric Form so far, but I dont see any immediate reasons why Rage of Majesty shouldnt replace most offensive passives. I need to test some more variations. At least this is going to make a great Thor when this set goes live.
Edit oh yeah i didnt get to mess with that yet, but yeah i imagined it would be pretty hax, the question then becomes though, how does it compare if some one went the other direction, say str with end/rec/end and built con on the side, with some enrage tools, and the offensive passive.
I dunno could be hax, but if your really right and it owns all offensive passives, then maybe sigma is right to some extent, and offensive passives need a buff, or enrage needs to be more limited in scope. But ehhhh long as what each player has can work, then maybe it isnt so important to nerf it up.
-Remove "cannot gain energy by blocking" from both Avenger and Brawler. Seriously. It basically makes blocking when you're losing a death sentence, instead of a chance to regroup and recover. Maybe half it or something, if it's really a problem.
-Drop the Hold Resist Penalty
-Boost its equilibrium by 50%
-Drop either the HP or Healing penalty. Preferably both, but I'm taking a hit in one of these for...
-Add damage resist penetration to all non-Energy Builder ranged attacks made while in Avenger role. If this is too much, make it scale with charge time on chargeable powers
-Active Offenses used by characters in Avenger role grant full stacks of all CC resistance for the duration of the Active Offense. The "character has a surge of power, breaks the restraints and can't be stopped except by death!" thing is pretty common.
That's a good post, but there's a way to sustain Rage without resorting to any of those attacks. All you really need is Aura of Majesty and the right stats. I break it all down in a build here: http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=127457
I've only tested it against Electric Form so far, but I dont see any immediate reasons why Rage of Majesty shouldnt replace most offensive passives. I need to test some more variations. At least this is going to make a great Thor when this set goes live.
:eek:
I have to keep it real and say that if enrage doesn't get nurfed, i will be rolling a Rage of Majesty soon.
I think i see what your getting at, but enrage isnt the issue
Enrage is not the issue with offensive/defensive stance. It's the issue with offensive/defensive passives, because what it mainly amounts to is a way to have Defiance be both an offensive and a defensive passive simultaneously.
I will say that enrage is annoying to maintain on a non-defiance build, but it's grotesquely overpowered. A good start would be just hacking the max stacks (on both rage and focus) down to 4 (which is the most you can get from a single application of enrage). It doesn't really hurt anyone who isn't based on perma-stacks, and it cuts the damage bonus down to less than an offensive passive.
:eek:
I have to keep it real and say that if enrage doesn't get nurfed, i will be rolling a Rage of Majesty soon.
i say, buff up before nerf, annnd it may still be that people can outdmg it, though, in all honestly all the other benefits to the stats looks hard to beat, although for like a dodge build quarry warrior or lighnting is the only option.
Point the first, to all those saying "why don't you use these grotesquely overpowered powers if they're so good": I do. My main pvp toon at the moment is an LR dodge tank with Form of the Master which can use Focus to great effect.
Point the second: if offensive toggles must give better offense than an offensive passive because they cost more power slots, I want a defensive toggle usable with electric form which coupled with 2-3 other powers with the right advantages is quickly stackable (and from that point on trivially perma-mantainable) to a point which gives me better mitigation than a superstatted Defiance.
So... in the end, why don't they just axe any penalty to ranged damage from Brawler, make the bonus damage affect ALL damage, rename it Avenger, and call it a day?
That's how it was before the melee pass added brawler.
#1 neither of them are thematically appropriate OR role appropriate to an offensive penalty. Avenger being less capable at melee than the guardian role is nonsensical. Get rid of that penalty to start.
That's how it was before the melee pass added brawler.
#1 neither of them are thematically appropriate OR role appropriate to an offensive penalty. Avenger being less capable at melee than the guardian role is nonsensical. Get rid of that penalty to start.
IDF? That is a defense toggle. Granted, it's not adding stacks or anything, but you toggle it on and *poof* defenses are boosted at a cost for energy (similar to forms).
I'd love to see the whole toggle/passive thing worked on, as most offensive passives are just not what they should be, or the defensive ones are too good. Problem is, once one starts monkeying with the math, it has a tendency to snowball into all other things, as well. That can be a lot of potential man-hours of development time that the devs likely do not have to spend on this.
IDF? That is a defense toggle. Granted, it's not adding stacks or anything, but you toggle it on and *poof* defenses are boosted at a cost for energy (similar to forms).
Yeah it is, and it's extremely strong at that. But it's still nowhere near what Enrage or the forms can give you in term of offense.
Now if there were 2-3 powers who could make IDF gain and perma-mantain multiple stacks so you could subtract 3k off each hit.... we could have some defensive equivalent to the offensive non-passive-slot buffs.
IDF? That is a defense toggle. Granted, it's not adding stacks or anything, but you toggle it on and *poof* defenses are boosted at a cost for energy (similar to forms).
I'd love to see the whole toggle/passive thing worked on, as most offensive passives are just not what they should be, or the defensive ones are too good. Problem is, once one starts monkeying with the math, it has a tendency to snowball into all other things, as well. That can be a lot of potential man-hours of development time that the devs likely do not have to spend on this.
-r0y
Instead of nerfing Enrage or Forms, I'd rather see interesting and useful toggles (in the vein of IDF) sprinkled throughout the ranged sets.
how about we fix the damage variance of ranged vs melee and add in the defensive versions of focus/enrage, get the best of both worlds no one loses there current builds and everyone else who isnt running the defensive/enrage/focus combos can now do so with an offensive passive and a defensive boost. wouldnt that make the most people happy?
and idf is almost useless in pve endgame unless stacking it and even then a 5 man team with idf ignoring 300 points of damage is almost meaningless when getting hit for 3-5k it might mean the difference between life and death but more often it doesnt matter.
as far as heavy weapons goes i posted earlier but ill say it again remove the requirements on cleave as it stands relying on dissorient on a power like that when no other comparable power relies on an outside debuff for its advantages innate or advantage point based is rediculous and needs to go.
the damage on heavy weapons seems kind of low not by much though maybe 15-20% and as was stated in other posts needs a good spike power. also the fact that the only single target power in the set with CC also does knockback is kind of lame maintiaining agro shouldnt include waiting for the enemy to come back to you or being forced to lunge/follow after them, while this may not be important when fighting lair boses or other being immune to knocks its going to get really annoying in pve. Suggest proliferation of CC and CS on more powers not just in this set but across all of the sets in the game.
actually, they have defensive skills in most sets, people just dont like em, let us not forget shields,
Force shield- adv, gives defense and energy for awhile after you block, as well the shield allows energy return in any role, based on ego
laser shield, laser knight highest defense, and defense while blocking adv, dmg reduction while attacking
Ebon void, stacks defense over time blocking and heals dmg
telekiniteic high physical defense, continues after block.
inertial dampening field in projector set
circle of arcane power
hmmm then there are active defences, i guess some one should try to build a survival offensive passive class, i know quarry and way of the warrior king of work, im guessing unstoppables flat dmg reduction might also be usefull, an intelligience build can use multiple active defenses.
that said you would probably have to cross into different frameworks, and you wouldnt be thematic, but ehhh if every framework has the same skills whats the point of frameworks.
the most deficient would probably be the projector sets most of thier defensive benefit is in the terms of elemental resistance, it might be interesting if they got some skill that turned a portion of the dmg recieved to elemental dmg, maybe it stacks, or they have to work to get it. That could synergize with thier builds, make sense thematically, and require some sort of active defense skill, of course they would have to tie its effectiveness to some ehhh stat, much like con
actually, they have defensive skills in most sets, people just dont like em, let us not forget shields,
Force shield- adv, gives defense and energy for awhile after you block, as well the shield allows energy return in any role, based on ego
laser shield, laser knight highest defense, and defense while blocking adv, dmg reduction while attacking
Ebon void, stacks defense over time blocking and heals dmg
telekiniteic high physical defense, continues after block.
inertial dampening field in projector set
circle of arcane power
hmmm then there are active defences, i guess some one should try to build a survival offensive passive class, i know quarry and way of the warrior king of work, im guessing unstoppables flat dmg reduction might also be usefull, an intelligience build can use multiple active defenses.
that said you would probably have to cross into different frameworks, and you wouldnt be thematic, but ehhh if every framework has the same skills whats the point of frameworks.
the most deficient would probably be the projector sets most of thier defensive benefit is in the terms of elemental resistance, it might be interesting if they got some skill that turned a portion of the dmg recieved to elemental dmg, maybe it stacks, or they have to work to get it. That could synergize with thier builds, make sense thematically, and require some sort of active defense skill, of course they would have to tie its effectiveness to some ehhh stat, much like con
Laser Knight is melee only.
Force Sheath is a tiny amount of mitigation.
And blocking is blocking as far as Ebon Void is concerned. Everyone has access to blocking. Lack of good blocks is not the divide between Avenger and everything else right now.
Circle of Primal Dom is nice, but thematically it's hard to work outside of a magical hero. Also, it requires you to not move, which isn't very fun or dynamic.
Ebon void can give you 100% resistance with the advantage dude. Its the number one reason why regen tanks work well. With ebon shield its possible to take quite a bit more damage than you normally would.
Whether it counts as a punishment depends on what you're wanting.
But imo, it'd be nice if it had some kind of tie to the existing difficulty slider. Or better, a separate 'team size' slider that goes from say -1 to +2. So you can run solo Elite instances at a 'team size' of 3 if you want, and Normal instances with 2 friends on a 'team size' of 2 total.
And I tend to run the other direction: if you have have sliders - ANY sliders - you've pretty much abdicated any sense of responsibility to creating a fair character creation system. All you are doing is eneabling the strong builds to get stronger and leaving the weak builds in the dust. Sliders ENSHRINE bad character options by saying "oh, well you can at least do it on weakling mode... never, ever seeing the rewards that would help you get back on par..."
And I tend to run the other direction: if you have have sliders - ANY sliders - you've pretty much abdicated any sense of responsibility to creating a fair character creation system. All you are doing is eneabling the strong builds to get stronger and leaving the weak builds in the dust. Sliders ENSHRINE bad character options by saying "oh, well you can at least do it on weakling mode... never, ever seeing the rewards that would help you get back on par..."
But given the exact same character, two players can have different levels of skill (for various reasons, age, eyesight, length of time played, whatever).
Shouldn't they both be allowed to pick a difficulty level that makes the game fun for them?
But given the exact same character, two players can have different levels of skill (for various reasons, age, eyesight, length of time played, whatever).
Shouldn't they both be allowed to pick a difficulty level that makes the game fun for them?
Then why is the "more skilled" player rewarded with tools that split the divide ever wider? Its a death sprial that seemingly every game feels the need to invoke.
Comments
Yes. Passive forms are fire and forget, always active. Enrage and Focus have to be actively maintained with varying conditions to be effective and their damage bonuses have to be built up in combat.
While offensive passives always have full bonus right from the get go.
An example:
Form of the Master builds rely on dodge to build Focus. 20% chance per dodge.
Most effective to build when attacked by a group of mobs.
So, if you're in a team and have a dedicated tank, you're going to have a hard time ramping up Focus stacks.
Form of the Tempest - relies on crits. 20% chance per crit.
If you're under heavy attack, you don't fight back and Focus stacks don't build.
While Focus may be superior in raw numbers compared to an offensive passive, it's situational and not always effective. While passives are.
To build up Enrage, you mostly use Charge attacks, which can leave you quite vulnerable.
If not charge attacks, then quick and weak AoE attacks with a cooldown. Then there's the Enrage power, for which you have to have reasonable Strength and Con for it to be useful. Otherwise, it's only a placeholder when you're too lazy to charge a Roomsweeper or something. Making it a wasted "just in case" power point.
Build up of both Focus and Enrage is meaningless since it's possible to run to the next set of mobs in less than 20 seconds.
Talking about an electric build specifically, REC is not needed... at all. Ionic Reverberation supplies enough power on my INT/END toon to run Lightning Arc + Concussor Beams simultaneously. His total REC? 15. Hey, that means I can use STR for that slot now and pick Enrage... which makes my Electric Form offensive passive largely redundant as segma pointed out earlier. Additive buffs make less and less of an impact the more you have. The real damage difference between offensive passive + enrage/focus and defensive passive + enrage/focus isn't as much as those tooltip numbers would have you believe.
Don't see your point here.
Doing that would mean you have to invest in both STR, CON and at least 2 advantage points to stack Enrage effectively.
Otherwise, you'd only get a single stack.
You'd gimp yourself more than you'd gain by that.
EDIT:
Also, the way i see it, gimping Enrage/Focus would basically split players into even more fixed roles.
Tanks and DPS.
Right now, we have viable options to make heroes that are both very durable, and have a decent offense. Everyone can do it. That was the whole point of Freeform, to trivialize such roles.
Mandragalor
Andrith Ruins
Nemesis Confrontation
Therakiel's Temple.
Of these, only Nemesis Confrontation is run regularly, and even then, it's just for the costume drops. The gear out of all four of these is all subpar compared to what can be aquired through UNITY or Serpent Lantern. It's not that there aren't endgame lairs, it's that no one runs them because there is no reason to. The biggest problem with NemCon is that it doesn't scale with difficulty.
Therakiel's Temple is a very, very fun instance that myself and friends run regularly just for the fun of it. However, the entire instance can take around 3 hours or more (around 2 if your team is well practiced), and the gear drops are subpar at best, lagging behind even what other Lairs drop, oftne times outclassed by leveling gear. You can upgrade these drops through multiple runs, but even then, you only get a total of 3 extra stat points, making all that extra effort worthless.
Mandragalore ios barely ever run because a longish Mission Chain must be completed before you can get the mission to enter. Even then, the Lair isn't very fun, mostly revolving around swimming around and fighting large groups of enemies. Plus, the instance is rather log as well, lessening it's appeal. The gear drop, although better than Therakiel's Temple and Nemesis Confrontation, only drop off the end boss. Again, this adds up to not being worth it on top of not being fun.
Andrith is probably run more often than any other Lair except NemCon, but suffered from crippling bugs for a very long time. Having an untargetable ball of lightning chase you through the whole instance, an unworking Lava Protection Device and a Boss that really screws over healers and non-Defensive Passive users made this Lair very, very disliked. The Gear that drops of the miniboss is crap, but the gear that drops from Vikorin can be good, IF you ran on Very Hard and IF you have the right stat combination for his drop.
So yes, there are plenty of Lairs, that you'd be hard-pressed to complete all of in a day if you really, really tried to grind it out. The problem isn't that they aren't here, it's that there isn't any real incentive to do them.
... your point being? Especially with an INT/END build it's easy to stack STR and just enough CON to make Enrage perma with just the Enrage power. Doing so would also free up my passive slot for something more useful (Aura of Primal Majesty anyone?) *and* I wouldn't be just tied to energy damage powers since Enrage buffs everything.
Boy are you going to hate my next build guide.
What we should be doing is uniting to help them to actually finally fix all the damn broken CC resistance that does little to nothing in pvp, and absolutely nothing in pve. I'd rather finally see my stacks of knock resistance stop the 2 viper commanders and rabid pack of ninjas and grenade-tards from chest beaming and nade spamming at the same time, blinding me and sending me flying over 500ft away and instantly dying than worry about whether or not i can dish out ~600 more dps than some guy with a defensive passive while i'm using an offensive.
On that note you guys need to review the mobs in the game and how they apply knock resistance as a first step, because at least half of them don't bother even following resistance application rules at all, the biggest culprits being the VIPER mobs in my experience.
Right, so essentially there's exactly ONE specific build, built off Quarry which is sort of a "mixed" passive, who can be anywhere near the efficiency of the "defensive passive + offensive toggles" ones in the "I'm a tank/mage" department. Where does this leave all the purely offensive passives?
As to Focus... it just takes DEX. You get damage buffs and energy returns scaling with DEX. Assuming you're not running from mob to mob in less than 20 seconds there may be some build up unless you build so you don't have to. Specifically with the crit focus (which you picked because you crit a lot due to high DEX right?) it's easy to maintain a full 8 stacks even outside of combat critting with any power... Empathic Healing being one of the best choices due to being able to move while maintaining on self and fast ticks.
Basically, build up only happens once after you log in if you don't let the stacks fall off. Even if you do lets the stacks time out, it's not difficult to get them back.
Talking about Enrage specifically, there is no reason to *not* have it at a full 8 stacks at all times.
I'll admit talking about just one slot a bit of a mis-type as it could easily be +34 STR x2 and +94 on top of whatever talents I need. My primary defense would supply more than enough CON alone given that INT is already a super stat.
[sarcasm]
Maybe instead of getting Enrage/Focus fixed I should be lobbying for a defensive toggle or clicky buff that's more effective than Defiance? Because if the highest of damage buffs aren't from passives why should defensive and support options be similarly limited? We totally need better than Defiance, AoRP, AoPM toggles or clicky buffs to balance the Enrage/Focus damage buffs.[/sarcasm]
EDIT: Btw, your 'this" link earlier didn't work so the effect was somewhat spoiled
What about having more Toggle Options similar to Aspect of the Inferal? Wouldn't non-scaling ranged-specific buffs somewhat help the ranged vs melee argument? Is that a viable option?
Defense stacking is already pretty incredible, especially with the addition of Inertial Dampening Field. I know that I stopped PvPing because it felt like everyone was just stacking so much defense that any fight just took forever. The defense stacking its own problem, too. You can really tell because of how much more we are seeing Dragon's Wrath becoming the Go-To attack in PvP and watching other attacks just disappear. I know DW has always been popular, but you at least saw the occasional Ego Blades or Single Blade PvPer, and those just don't seem to be around anymore. DW is quickly taking over as it's the only attack that penetrates defense.
However, I do see where you are coming from because Offensive Passives don't boost your ability to deal damage as much as Defensive Passives increase your ability to survive. However, I think this is more of a problem with Offensive Passives than it is with Enrage or Focus Toggles.
--Edit--
Kenpo's "Here" was in Bold, because he bolded a sentence in the Quote.
you dont use them. sure, focus is melee specific, but if enrage is so easy to use and has no downsides, why dont you guys just go ahead and use them? If its so easy to get enrage going, uuhhhh why dont you just pick up enrage?
See i actually tried enrage in mixed builds, and you end up meleeing most of the time, you have to take a bunch of skills, and you have to move from mob to mob extremely fast, you have to use skills that build enrage, but arent really the most dps,
lets look at the enrage building skills
Enrage Buff Self 8 long cool down, even with all points in rank, goes to like 24 sec while enrage lasts 22 second, you can use int for cast times, but thats no small investment, giving up the damage stats, strength dex or ego or straight up crit severity and offense
Havoc Stomp nice, but needs melee range, and knockback mobs, which seems good, except youd have done more dmg if the mob wasnt knocked far back in the time chasing it down. also, its just achance, i have had it fail on like 3 mobs and lost enrage stacks
Roomsweeper prolly the easiest way, still the fact it knocks away mobs reduces your dps, best when you root target and the spam up, but that requires more skills, and still needs charge times,
Haymaker im just throw this out there, totally ineffient, needing two full charges 2 skills, the first of which is kind of weak, needs mobs and needs to be close. also the mob probably died from some ranged guys dmg before you landed it
Iron Cyclone needs a full maintain, for a kind of weak skill, also only refreshes, or adds 1
Two-Gun Mojo requires full charge, not a high dmg skill, only refreshes 1 stack
Gatling Gun requires full maintain same as above
Unbreakable Buff Self 1 this is a nice one, but you need to be getting hit, solo your great, but if you arent main tank its hard to get enrage up quickly.
Howl best average maintain without targets, its fast, but it only maintains, if you get hit
Bite this is a good maintain, but requires a bleeding set up, and its not a max dmg skill, so your dps drops a bit.
all the quick uses require mobs, and close range, the ranged ones need a full maintain, the outside of battle ones need either multuple ranks and a decent amount of int, massive int and a rank or two. It aint that easy.
And really you ranged guys, do you realize that even with enrage or focus and massive stats, it still requires you to get close, melee aoe for decent dmg is either 10 feet only, and often conal. say what you want about being able to get to a mob fast with leaps, but it still only is effective at 10 feet, melee people get energy from getting close and doing something, you need to make something bleed, charge a skill or land a hit to get back energy, or use some specific skills.
And even with our great focus, and stat builds, and enrage, your dmg is right beneath it, without even using a offensive passive, look at force cascade or fireball, look at the aoe range of electrity and munitions.
far as the ranged can get base regen from a distance, im serious when i say, i had my friend who is a soldier shoot a mob so far away he is alble to get heal regen while doing dmg, with killer instinct he basically didnt need to get close enough to build energy for a long time, and if he was a freeform he would have had access to molecular self assembly or dark transfusion, the less loss from being below equilibrium comes into play here as well, because when your far enough to get hp, your far enough to degrade equilibrium faster. basically he was able to put out consistent dmg and if he turned the mob, only got hit like once, just stopped shooting for awhile and regened full. On melee if i want to get out range enough to heal fast, only tele is an option, and i definately cant do it while doing dmg.
see if your going avenger, you prolly want to go presence over con, and use shields, theres a reason they made it some stats are only in some places.
now if your talking about avenger solo (without someone to hold hate), you would of course have to get skills for survival, you can seriously spam force fields almost endlessly, and as far as needing stats to make them good, you need stats to make heals good too, the only heals ive seen that arent influenced by pre have long **** cooldowns, and dont seem like they ll keep you alive solo.
overall though, the brawler and avenger builds need really specific builds to be viable solo, but that makes sense, because guardian is supposed to be the balanced one, and you can use any role whenever you want..... welll if your freeform that is. But Ats are basically made with specific weakness, that you make up for with party type play, so what do you expect.
1) Lets not take away from the fact that roles (all but guardian) are MOSTLY boosted by the passive choices they enhance. Ranged offensive slotted passives are not up to par with defensive ones across the board.
2) Maybe increasing Avenger's damage above 20% is the real end goal.. make them hit harder but die easier.
3) I think the BIGGEST problem in balancing roles is that PvP wise, defensive passives will always win. Mostly because they don't really suffer from damage loss at a rate that makes a tangible difference.
4) Having Guardian role really undermines ALL the other roles in my opinion.. but that's something that should have been addressed at launch.. removing it now would alienate so many. Instead, just nerf it .. maybe 10% down from where it is in every stat.
There are other gameplay mechanics besides, DPS, Damage Mitigation and Healing too.. and I really wish that the role choices better addressed them as well.
BUG
Earth Splitter claims it will give enrage with 3 targets or more in the tool tip, but i am not seeing it happen at all, on fulll charge or not, on 3 or more mobs
You're Crazy, That's Crazy. Honestly Guardian is fine where it is, It can do everything, But Excels at nothing.
/e finger on retcon trigger. The yellow part is the thing i have a problem with. I also think that enrage is one of the first powers that comes to mind when building these high offense/ high defense toons. The people that disagree disagree.
For the sake of argument, lets say that enrage and focuses are fine and you only need to touch the stats on avenger role to correct the balance between all roles. How much of a damage boost are you talking about giving avengers? It just seems to me that if you start to restructure avenger role with offensive enrage tanks in mind, the damage could get out of control real quick.
Lower health and weakened resistance to CC don't need to be tweaked or adjusted, they simply need to go away. Either that or meaningful penalties need to be added to Brawler, Protector, and Sentinel until the roles are balanced.
Why do you keep mentioning the avenger role in comparison with enrage and focus, they really have little or nothing to do with each other. you can get just as much dmg from enrage on avenger as when your on brawler or guardian. the % dont multiply, they up.
Why do you think a ranged charachter should do more damage in a melee range than meleer? ranged charachters tend to have better CC, more AOE range, and can strike from a farther distance, do you really expect that your AOE ranged Damage should be greater than single target melee damage? and we are talking a small difference here, fireball doing 2.4k to main target and 979 to area, from up to 50 feet, compared to haymaker doing 2.7k to one target. if you want to talk about dmg in a 10 foot range, for melee, its prolly, butchersblade 3.8k versus 3.5k for fireball maxed out. of course, the cost for butchers blade is 131 which requires some skill, or end, to ever use to its full potential, and fireball max cost is 89 which a basic charachter can use. also the next closest aoe for melee would probably be 1.5k for dragon kick or 1.6k for the new devestator skill.
now yeah enrage boosts the dmg further, but you can get enrage too, youll just have to go through the trouble of building it up
far as the hold, resistance, you do realize, that as an avenger you have an advantage on the move right? without being held, only a spike melee could beat a ranger. you may be in a hold slightly longer, but people still have to chase you down. It also feels like this is a pvp balance issue. i wouldnt nerf a whole 2 frameworks around pvp builds
First, this is a super hero game, in general they should avoid nerfing, people are supposed to be superhuman here, now in terms of buffing, sure its fine, but really looking at the numbers, ranged has still has comparable dmg to melee, and a lot more utility. People forget that meleers have to block aoe on the tank, or tank, which lowers thier damage greatly, wherease a ranged toon can just keep going, if you want to talk about solo builds, balance is key there, and i have avenger builds that have an easy time soloing as any brawler build has
BUG?
Brute strike has same stun length for rank 2 and 3, whether this is intentional i do not know.
First of all, im not talking about range v. melee, im talking about role balance. I don't think i would have much of a problem with enrage if it didn't buff every thing
NOTE: I am not saying that enrage is the cause of the problem but i dont see how you can approach balancing the "high damage role" without looking at how people are doing high damage in other roles.
Lastly, you seem to be implying that if you boost the damage in avenger role to brawler levels then the damage will be to high. If that is the case, then we agree and there was no reason to ram that point down my throat. this is why i asked the question stated above.(post #123)
I'm trying to understand how you can how you can make the defense loss that comes with avenger role worth while without buffing the damage to overpoweredness and without changing the powers that let you get avenger level damage outside of avenger role.
/walks away feeling like a broken record.
That's a good post, but there's a way to sustain Rage without resorting to any of those attacks. All you really need is Aura of Majesty and the right stats. I break it all down in a build here: http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=127457
I've only tested it against Electric Form so far, but I dont see any immediate reasons why Rage of Majesty shouldnt replace most offensive passives. I need to test some more variations. At least this is going to make a great Thor when this set goes live.
ahh i see, but the thing is, the role, in this case is doesnt make or break any build, merely boosts them so they are slightly better than others at a specific task, skill selection has more to determine what "role" a job is rather than what role they select. the biggest effect of role is determing what passive they can select, so if you take a defensive passive, even on a guardian, you are going to do roughly 85 to 90% less dmg, this percent is of your base dmg, so it will translate into, for example, 666 dmg versus 931 dmg or 2.9k versus 3.5 k for the same skills, this is with enrage which makes the gap not as big, but still over the course of a long fight the difference in damage is noticeable
I think i see what your getting at, but enrage isnt the issue, enrage/focus exists more to bridge the gap in melee vs range rather than role versus role. as well as provide a interesting mechanic for meleers. I honestly think its good that a tank doesnt have to be trash at dmg, especially for solo situations, and i really think that brawler and avenger can also make builds that increase survivability greatly, while still having dmg. doing 20% -30% more dmg than another class with the same skills should put you in the im way better at damaging things than you category
I think the idea they had for avenger was your classic ranged charachter, who can do excellent damage from range, and ok damage up close. whereas a brawler is a guy who can only fight up close. I feel like they debuff ranged peoples survivability to make up for the fact they can strike first and keep distance.
sniper shot for example, can seriously wound or kill you before you could even get in range to leap. it has a stun effect, and works at 100 feat, you can actually get off 2 shots with the right stuff. then you look at force cascade, it has 100 feet range , and knocks back 100 more feet, not to mention you can advantage it to add a hold.
so yeah i think its debuffs are there to deal with the advantages of ranged attacks, however, i will admit you only see it on the avenger role, not ranged attacks in general.
Edit oh yeah i didnt get to mess with that yet, but yeah i imagined it would be pretty hax, the question then becomes though, how does it compare if some one went the other direction, say str with end/rec/end and built con on the side, with some enrage tools, and the offensive passive.
I dunno could be hax, but if your really right and it owns all offensive passives, then maybe sigma is right to some extent, and offensive passives need a buff, or enrage needs to be more limited in scope. But ehhhh long as what each player has can work, then maybe it isnt so important to nerf it up.
-Remove "cannot gain energy by blocking" from both Avenger and Brawler. Seriously. It basically makes blocking when you're losing a death sentence, instead of a chance to regroup and recover. Maybe half it or something, if it's really a problem.
-Drop the Hold Resist Penalty
-Boost its equilibrium by 50%
-Drop either the HP or Healing penalty. Preferably both, but I'm taking a hit in one of these for...
-Add damage resist penetration to all non-Energy Builder ranged attacks made while in Avenger role. If this is too much, make it scale with charge time on chargeable powers
-Active Offenses used by characters in Avenger role grant full stacks of all CC resistance for the duration of the Active Offense. The "character has a surge of power, breaks the restraints and can't be stopped except by death!" thing is pretty common.
:eek:
I have to keep it real and say that if enrage doesn't get nurfed, i will be rolling a Rage of Majesty soon.
I will say that enrage is annoying to maintain on a non-defiance build, but it's grotesquely overpowered. A good start would be just hacking the max stacks (on both rage and focus) down to 4 (which is the most you can get from a single application of enrage). It doesn't really hurt anyone who isn't based on perma-stacks, and it cuts the damage bonus down to less than an offensive passive.
i say, buff up before nerf, annnd it may still be that people can outdmg it, though, in all honestly all the other benefits to the stats looks hard to beat, although for like a dodge build quarry warrior or lighnting is the only option.
Point the second: if offensive toggles must give better offense than an offensive passive because they cost more power slots, I want a defensive toggle usable with electric form which coupled with 2-3 other powers with the right advantages is quickly stackable (and from that point on trivially perma-mantainable) to a point which gives me better mitigation than a superstatted Defiance.
That's how it was before the melee pass added brawler.
#1 neither of them are thematically appropriate OR role appropriate to an offensive penalty. Avenger being less capable at melee than the guardian role is nonsensical. Get rid of that penalty to start.
avenger and guardian both have same melee damage
Still, perhaps it can get both, and I think it did before the brawler role.
It might have. I honestly can't remember.
I'd love to see the whole toggle/passive thing worked on, as most offensive passives are just not what they should be, or the defensive ones are too good. Problem is, once one starts monkeying with the math, it has a tendency to snowball into all other things, as well. That can be a lot of potential man-hours of development time that the devs likely do not have to spend on this.
-r0y
Yeah it is, and it's extremely strong at that. But it's still nowhere near what Enrage or the forms can give you in term of offense.
Now if there were 2-3 powers who could make IDF gain and perma-mantain multiple stacks so you could subtract 3k off each hit.... we could have some defensive equivalent to the offensive non-passive-slot buffs.
Instead of nerfing Enrage or Forms, I'd rather see interesting and useful toggles (in the vein of IDF) sprinkled throughout the ranged sets.
and idf is almost useless in pve endgame unless stacking it and even then a 5 man team with idf ignoring 300 points of damage is almost meaningless when getting hit for 3-5k it might mean the difference between life and death but more often it doesnt matter.
as far as heavy weapons goes i posted earlier but ill say it again remove the requirements on cleave as it stands relying on dissorient on a power like that when no other comparable power relies on an outside debuff for its advantages innate or advantage point based is rediculous and needs to go.
the damage on heavy weapons seems kind of low not by much though maybe 15-20% and as was stated in other posts needs a good spike power. also the fact that the only single target power in the set with CC also does knockback is kind of lame maintiaining agro shouldnt include waiting for the enemy to come back to you or being forced to lunge/follow after them, while this may not be important when fighting lair boses or other being immune to knocks its going to get really annoying in pve. Suggest proliferation of CC and CS on more powers not just in this set but across all of the sets in the game.
Force shield- adv, gives defense and energy for awhile after you block, as well the shield allows energy return in any role, based on ego
laser shield, laser knight highest defense, and defense while blocking adv, dmg reduction while attacking
Ebon void, stacks defense over time blocking and heals dmg
telekiniteic high physical defense, continues after block.
inertial dampening field in projector set
circle of arcane power
hmmm then there are active defences, i guess some one should try to build a survival offensive passive class, i know quarry and way of the warrior king of work, im guessing unstoppables flat dmg reduction might also be usefull, an intelligience build can use multiple active defenses.
that said you would probably have to cross into different frameworks, and you wouldnt be thematic, but ehhh if every framework has the same skills whats the point of frameworks.
the most deficient would probably be the projector sets most of thier defensive benefit is in the terms of elemental resistance, it might be interesting if they got some skill that turned a portion of the dmg recieved to elemental dmg, maybe it stacks, or they have to work to get it. That could synergize with thier builds, make sense thematically, and require some sort of active defense skill, of course they would have to tie its effectiveness to some ehhh stat, much like con
Laser Knight is melee only.
Force Sheath is a tiny amount of mitigation.
And blocking is blocking as far as Ebon Void is concerned. Everyone has access to blocking. Lack of good blocks is not the divide between Avenger and everything else right now.
Circle of Primal Dom is nice, but thematically it's hard to work outside of a magical hero. Also, it requires you to not move, which isn't very fun or dynamic.
LolCripplingChallenge
But yeah. Ebon Void and Force Shield are both pretty good for ranged. Too bad the rest kinda...aren't.
And I tend to run the other direction: if you have have sliders - ANY sliders - you've pretty much abdicated any sense of responsibility to creating a fair character creation system. All you are doing is eneabling the strong builds to get stronger and leaving the weak builds in the dust. Sliders ENSHRINE bad character options by saying "oh, well you can at least do it on weakling mode... never, ever seeing the rewards that would help you get back on par..."
But given the exact same character, two players can have different levels of skill (for various reasons, age, eyesight, length of time played, whatever).
Shouldn't they both be allowed to pick a difficulty level that makes the game fun for them?
Then why is the "more skilled" player rewarded with tools that split the divide ever wider? Its a death sprial that seemingly every game feels the need to invoke.