Even with a DUC, Dex still doesn't change crit rating very much - you could stick a healing mod in there, except healing does nothing for DPS and the long term plan is to change how other SSes are weighted vs mods as well.
Stacking Str would have a negative effect on Severity as Pri. Str, which would reduce the value of Nimble Mind. Higher HP from other sources wouldn't compensate from getting 3HP per point, down from 15, and eventually something should be done about Wardicator to make Defense contribute less and Offense contribute more, to the point where Endurance's Power Overwhelming and Intelligence's Tactician become attractive alternatives to Juggernaut and Force of Will.
On my HW (str/con/rec) tank I get 24% crit chance, with a DUC, onslaught defender gear and justice with 1 r9 lucky Gem. On my MA (dex/str/con) build I get 40% crit chance, and that is with 2 healing mods in my primary offense and onslaught defender gear. With DEX SS you have the choice of squeezing just that tiny bit more dps out of things by adding crit rating mods, or go for much higher survivability, that is more than enough of a perk for dex already. And to compare that to other stats if I get 200 DEX I add the same crit chance as adding 2 Lucky Gems, then I can add two Sentinel mods that give me 60% heal bonus, which is equivilant of 600 PRE. So if you really want to look at isolated stuff like this, 200 DEX is worth the same as 600 PRE....
And if you switch from stacking CON to STR, that just means you have to switch specs to crit chance. Sure severity will be lower, but crit chance will be higher. And you were proposing to change things to give 8 health per 1 CON. So STR giving 3 health and a ton of secondary advantages, compared to 8 health and hardly any seconary advanteges from CON (when all the other things you propose are also implemented) is not something I can agree with.
Nimble mind needs to be looked into, like you already added to your first post. But changing other powers to try fix Nimble Mind seems a little odd to me. Nimble Mind can be fixed by changing Nimble Mind, you don't have to try change STR specs for that, and that will never really work well anyway.
Int specs do not need any help, if you make full use of the options in INT specs it is already one of the very best spec trees. Not for pure dps of course, but for a hybrid build especially if you use AoPM it's a very good spec tree.
And endurance/recovery just needs to be looked at seperately. They have to much interaction to be kept as two seperate powers. When going with REC SS it's completely silly you need to add END if you don't want to have your equilibrium higher than your max energy.
On my HW (str/con/rec) tank I get 24% crit chance, with a DUC, onslaught defender gear and justice with 1 r9 lucky Gem. On my MA (dex/str/con) build I get 40% crit chance, and that is with 2 healing mods in my primary offense and onslaught defender gear. With DEX SS you have the choice of squeezing just that tiny bit more dps out of things by adding crit rating mods, or go for much higher survivability, that is more than enough of a perk for dex already. And to compare that to other stats if I get 200 DEX I add the same crit chance as adding 2 Lucky Gems, then I can add two Sentinel mods that give me 60% heal bonus, which is equivilant of 600 PRE. So if you really want to look at isolated stuff like this, 200 DEX is worth the same as 600 PRE....
And if you switch from stacking CON to STR, that just means you have to switch specs to crit chance. Sure severity will be lower, but crit chance will be higher. And you were proposing to change things to give 8 health per 1 CON. So STR giving 3 health and a ton of secondary advantages, compared to 8 health and hardly any seconary advanteges from CON (when all the other things you propose are also implemented) is not something I can agree with.
Nimble mind needs to be looked into, like you already added to your first post. But changing other powers to try fix Nimble Mind seems a little odd to me. Nimble Mind can be fixed by changing Nimble Mind, you don't have to try change STR specs for that, and that will never really work well anyway.
Int specs do not need any help, if you make full use of the options in INT specs it is already one of the very best spec trees. Not for pure dps of course, but for a hybrid build especially if you use AoPM it's a very good spec tree.
And endurance/recovery just needs to be looked at seperately. They have to much interaction to be kept as two seperate powers. When going with REC SS it's completely silly you need to add END if you don't want to have your equilibrium higher than your max energy.
That 40% crit was reached with way, waaaay more Dex mods than 2 Gambler's gems. And saying your two Sentinel mods give the equivalent of 600 Pre again supports my point that stats do too little compared to Off/Def/Utility. Also, it's a fallacy to say that was done with 200 Dex; it was done with two Sentinel mods. You're just giving credit to the wrong place.
Also, crit chance specializations are worth less than severity specializations because of how specs are designed. It's not going to reach the same level.
For Nimble Mind, if you mean changing Juggernaut, Nimble Mind being more like Nimble Body is one issue. Having to take a defensive specialization that scales with a purely defensive stat to maximize DPS because of counter-intuitive specialization tree design is a separate issue that also needs to be addressed. They are two different things.
On my HW (str/con/rec) tank I get 24% crit chance, with a DUC, onslaught defender gear and justice with 1 r9 lucky Gem. On my MA (dex/str/con) build I get 40% crit chance, and that is with 2 healing mods in my primary offense and onslaught defender gear. With DEX SS you have the choice of squeezing just that tiny bit more dps out of things by adding crit rating mods, or go for much higher survivability, that is more than enough of a perk for dex already. And to compare that to other stats if I get 200 DEX I add the same crit chance as adding 2 Lucky Gems, then I can add two Sentinel mods that give me 60% heal bonus, which is equivilant of 600 PRE. So if you really want to look at isolated stuff like this, 200 DEX is worth the same as 600 PRE....
And if you switch from stacking CON to STR, that just means you have to switch specs to crit chance. Sure severity will be lower, but crit chance will be higher. And you were proposing to change things to give 8 health per 1 CON. So STR giving 3 health and a ton of secondary advantages, compared to 8 health and hardly any seconary advanteges from CON (when all the other things you propose are also implemented) is not something I can agree with.
Nimble mind needs to be looked into, like you already added to your first post. But changing other powers to try fix Nimble Mind seems a little odd to me. Nimble Mind can be fixed by changing Nimble Mind, you don't have to try change STR specs for that, and that will never really work well anyway.
Int specs do not need any help, if you make full use of the options in INT specs it is already one of the very best spec trees. Not for pure dps of course, but for a hybrid build especially if you use AoPM it's a very good spec tree.
And endurance/recovery just needs to be looked at seperately. They have to much interaction to be kept as two seperate powers. When going with REC SS it's completely silly you need to add END if you don't want to have your equilibrium higher than your max energy.
That 40% crit was reached with way, waaaay more Dex mods than 2 Gambler's gems. And saying your two Sentinel mods give the equivalent of 600 Pre again supports my point that stats do too little compared to Off/Def/Utility. Also, it's a fallacy to say that was done with 200 Dex; it was done with two Sentinel mods. You're just giving credit to the wrong place.
Also, crit chance specializations are worth less than severity specializations because of how specs are designed. It's not going to reach the same level.
For Nimble Mind, if you mean changing Juggernaut, Nimble Mind being more like Nimble Body is one issue. Having to take a defensive specialization that scales with a purely defensive stat to maximize DPS because of counter-intuitive specialization tree design is a separate issue that also needs to be addressed. They are two different things.
I wasn't giving credit to to anything for the crit chance, I was saying DEX allows you freedom to add stuff you wouldn't be able to without DEX. And that freedom to do others things with your offense mods and secondaries can make a huge difference.
Crit at this point is such a hugely important stat in CO, that it can't really be tied to DEX more tightly without causing huge balance problems. Sets that do not need energy stats for their EU like munitions or telekinesis would have a huge advantage over energy hungry sets that need to stack significant REC and/or END to trivially spam their attacks like Fire. Or MA would hugely pull ahead of the Brick and Bestial sets.
Let's keep in mind, that once you have 100%+ severity ( easily obtainable ), each 1% additional crit chance you get effectively increases your dps by 1%. Add 10% more crit chance, increase your dps by 10%. Add 20% more crit chance, increase your dps by 20%. There has to be trade-offs for that.
Severity's value isn't exactly 100% severity = 1% more damage per Crit Chance. When the Dex nerf happened, Offense was put in the same layer as Severity, so it's closer to 100% severity = 0.85% more damage per Criti Chance.
Anyway, bringing the conversation back to Con, HP at this point is also hugely important because some encounters have mechanics that randomly direct damage to a non-tank. If a glass cannon DPS gets OHKOed it's not too bad, but a support AT like the Radiant which gets doubly penalized by Support role's HP cut.
We can talk about other stats later, but can we at least agree that Con and a number of specializations and advantages that interact with Con, i.e. Nimble Mind and Juggernaut, need to be worked on?
NImble Mind, sure. Juggernaut needs to be handled much more carefully since that is (supposed to be) a spec that helps melee players survive the more dangerous situations they are placed in. And shifting the protection juggernaut provides from tanky to damage focussed builds, or just nerf it, can easily end up with bigger balance problems then we started out with.
We can talk about other stats later, but can we at least agree that Con and a number of specializations and advantages that interact with Con, i.e. Nimble Mind and Juggernaut, need to be worked on?
That seems to be pretty well agreed on... The main point of contention seems to be in regards to base HP...
So as it's been suggested a few times, perhaps boost base HP to 6k (5995 to be exact) rather than 8k... that still gives everyone enough of a cushion that they won't be instant killed by random target abilities from most bosses.
Reduce Con's effect per point to make it so that the total effect from CON stacking can't do any more than double your max HP when single statting CON.
Stacking Growth Mods should provide an upwards of 3k HP max
End result HP at Lv 40 should range from 6k to an absolute maximum of 16.5k by single statting CON, with Growth Mods, & Bulwark... as opposed to the current 5k minimum to 28k max (28k is the highest I've personally seen, if someone can push it higher then that's even more proof that something needs to be done about CON)
NImble Mind, sure. Juggernaut needs to be handled much more carefully since that is (supposed to be) a spec that helps melee players survive the more dangerous situations they are placed in. And shifting the protection juggernaut provides from tanky to damage focussed builds, or just nerf it, can easily end up with bigger balance problems then we started out with.
I'm not sure where the notion of shifting Juggernaut to damage focused builds comes from... considering the ffact that the initial suggestion about adjusting Jugggernaut was to make it be based off SUPER STATS rather than tied to any 1 stat in particular... thus making the defense bonus from Juggernaut more well rounded and available to all rather than tied to CON... though perhaps it should provide the same benefit as Ego's Force of WIll and be based off Secondary Super Stats.
NImble Mind, sure. Juggernaut needs to be handled much more carefully since that is (supposed to be) a spec that helps melee players survive the more dangerous situations they are placed in. And shifting the protection juggernaut provides from tanky to damage focussed builds, or just nerf it, can easily end up with bigger balance problems then we started out with.
I'm not sure where the notion of shifting Juggernaut to damage focused builds comes from... considering the ffact that the initial suggestion about adjusting Jugggernaut was to make it be based off SUPER STATS rather than tied to any 1 stat in particular... thus making the defense bonus from Juggernaut more well rounded and available to all rather than tied to CON... though perhaps it should provide the same benefit as Ego's Force of WIll and be based off Secondary Super Stats.
That's how it would be shifted to damage focused builds. I'll show you how:
Hi my name is George and I'm building a Strength Primary character. Currently on live, in order to get Juggernaught's benefit I have to invest heavily into Con.
Hi I'm Dave, I live in a rhetorical world where Juggernaught has been changed to scale off of SUPER STATS. I can now invest heavily into damage-based super stats like say, Strength, Dexterity, or Ego, to gain the defensive benefit of Juggernaught. I'm going to have much higher damage than George because of this. So that's a whole new balance issue that exists in my world, seeing as, thanks to Wardicator, Juggernaught was already causing player dps to over-perform... also I could still dump heavily into Con to get the benefits that George is getting ( super high damage + super high toughness ), so that problem also remains. Nothing has been solved, and there are more problems than before.
Hi I'm Carl, in my rhetorical world Juggernaut was changed to scale off of secondary super stats. I live in a strange world where I can get much more benefit as a ranged character from going Strength Primary than I can as a melee character, since I can't stack Strength to get the benefits. If I make a ranged Strength primary character, I can stack tons of Ego to get the benefits of Juggernaut. My world is in a similar situation to Dave's world, except that Melee characters get the short end of the stick when it comes to the super stat that is supposed to benefit them the most.
NImble Mind, sure. Juggernaut needs to be handled much more carefully since that is (supposed to be) a spec that helps melee players survive the more dangerous situations they are placed in. And shifting the protection juggernaut provides from tanky to damage focussed builds, or just nerf it, can easily end up with bigger balance problems then we started out with.
I'm not sure where the notion of shifting Juggernaut to damage focused builds comes from... considering the ffact that the initial suggestion about adjusting Jugggernaut was to make it be based off SUPER STATS rather than tied to any 1 stat in particular... thus making the defense bonus from Juggernaut more well rounded and available to all rather than tied to CON... though perhaps it should provide the same benefit as Ego's Force of WIll and be based off Secondary Super Stats.
That's how it would be shifted to damage focused builds. I'll show you how:
Hi my name is George and I'm building a Strength Primary character. Currently on live, in order to get Juggernaught's benefit I have to invest heavily into Con.
Hi I'm Dave, I live in a rhetorical world where Juggernaught has been changed to scale off of SUPER STATS. I can now invest heavily into damage-based super stats like say, Strength, Dexterity, or Ego, to gain the defensive benefit of Juggernaught. I'm going to have much higher damage than George because of this. So that's a whole new balance issue that exists in my world, seeing as, thanks to Wardicator, Juggernaught was already causing player dps to over-perform... also I could still dump heavily into Con to get the benefits that George is getting ( super high damage + super high toughness ), so that problem also remains. Nothing has been solved, and there are more problems than before.
Hi I'm Carl, in my rhetorical world Juggernaut was changed to scale off of secondary super stats. I live in a strange world where I can get much more benefit as a ranged character from going Strength Primary than I can as a melee character, since I can't stack Strength to get the benefits. If I make a ranged Strength primary character, I can stack tons of Ego to get the benefits of Juggernaut. My world is in a similar situation to Dave's world, except that Melee characters get the short end of the stick when it comes to the super stat that is supposed to benefit them the most.
And yet it's Juggernaut that causes the problems currently and NOT Force of Will which is exactly that... Juggernaut scaling off Secondary Super Stats... By your logic melee DPS should be building EGO PSS w/Str SSS to stack Force of Will for insane amounts of defense & damage... but that's not the case. It simply doesn't work that way. Every spec that scales off SSS tend to provide the best results when you keep both secondaries high rather than single stat stacking one of them.
"NImble Mind, sure. Juggernaut needs to be handled much more carefully since that is (supposed to be) a spec that helps melee players survive the more dangerous situations they are placed in."
If that's the case, then make Juggernaut a buff that gives defense based on con when you attack with a melee ability. Buff is refreshed as long as the player keeps attacking with melee abilities and blocks that do damage don't count.
"Every spec that scales off SSS tend to provide the best results when you keep both secondaries high rather than single stat stacking one of them."
So 500+100 does not equal the same thing as 300+300?
Juggy with 214 con = 64 def Juggy scaling with superstats at the same rate with 652 in secondary stats = 195 def Force of Will with 652 in secondary stats = 65 def
Normally, I wouldn't go into Grav rampage with less than 7k hp, especially on a squishy AT. So, that's what I'd suggest. How much hp per con? Meh. The only reason I have two con mods is more about dex not being worth taking to 500+ than needing more HP and def. Seems like the other "problem" with con, other things just aren't worth stacking high. So, changes here aren't going to do anything about people taking con.
I was suggesting Juggernaut should scale with Primary Superstat (PSS) i.e. Str, not all SSes.
The thing about Juggernaut is that it gives much more Def per point than Force of Will, so the possible ramification is that the current Str/Con/X with Con stacking meta simply becomes a Str/X/X Str-stacking meta, where Str powers Enrage, Juggernaut + Wardicator for Defense, Swole for 3HP per Str and 2pts Overpower for Crit Chance while enjoying the benefit of boosted base HP. That was where the convo with Aiqa left off.
IMO that's an acceptable evolution, because compared to the traditional Con build, that would entail a huge loss of HP and trades 30%-odd Severity for single digit Crit Chance which leads to a net DPS loss. Higher Enrage bonuses can offset the Severity loss and even create a slight net gain, as should be the case for investing into a DPS stat, so that fixes itself. At the same time it creates a distinction between the Str-focused survivable melee DPS, the Dex-focused glassy DPS and the Con-focused tank.
The main problem I see is whether Juggernaut scaling should be prorated when it's changed to work with Str, considering Str points as Primary Str are given out more freely than Con, but otherwise I don't think it's a big issue.
"Every spec that scales off SSS tend to provide the best results when you keep both secondaries high rather than single stat stacking one of them."
So 500+100 does not equal the same thing as 300+300?
Juggy with 214 con = 64 def Juggy scaling with superstats at the same rate with 652 in secondary stats = 195 def Force of Will with 652 in secondary stats = 65 def
You seem to furthar outline the problem with Juggernaut there... Jug vs FoW is 214 CON = 652 SSS... that is VASTLY overperforming... or FoW is vastly underperforming...
And it's been my experiance atleast when I was testing specs that 500+100 on a SSS scalling spec unfortunatly tends to inccorectly equal 550 rather than 600 while 300+300 does properly equal 600
You seem to furthar outline the problem with Juggernaut there... Jug vs FoW is 214 CON = 652 SSS... that is VASTLY overperforming... or FoW is vastly underperforming...
And it's been my experiance atleast when I was testing specs that 500+100 on a SSS scalling spec unfortunatly tends to inccorectly equal 550 rather than 600 while 300+300 does properly equal 600
Not really. Force of Will is more intended for ranged builds, while Juggernaut is intended more for the melee builds. More often than not, melee is often subjected more to attacks that will do more damage in melee versus range. It's a common misconception that things are even equal at this point. More often than not, ranged will out damage melee easily in that situation, regardless, due to those advantages alone.
I find it interesting that when implementing the "melee solution" to the fact that melee often have to spend time in close quarters where things are more dangerous, they went to Strength primary specs rather than the Melee role. I mean, what about players who want to be a Dex primary melee character? Notice that even if you consider the Dodge/Avoidance specs from Dex primary to be meaningful in helping a melee dps character stay alive, you have to give up some pretty hefty dps boosts... not the case with Strength primary where you get the "melee solution" of tons of defense that actually works, and also a whole lot of offense and severity. The only thing you have to give up with Strength Primary is being able to stack tons of Strength itself, which is heartily offset by the offense and severity. Throw anyone who thinks about making a Rec or End PSS melee character in there with the Dex PSS melee players too. Effectively, none of them got the "melee solution".
Personally I don't think melee characters should even have any sort of "melee solution" that addresses defense. In my opinion, the only thing that Melee need is to be guaranteed that their damage hits harder, to make up for the fact that they will have less up time due to their proximity to dangerous situations and the need to often dip in and out of effective range. When it comes to toughness, Melee also have the option to gear and spec for it - I don't think it should just be granted to them anymore than ranged dps or healers.
So the idea that "we have to be careful about getting rid of juggernaut because it strips away the defense that melee need" is a bit flawed, primarily because it assumes that all melee will be Strength primary. Yes, currently they most likely are, because why wouldn't they be considering it gives them a defensive passive and tons more damage to boot? There's probably still a whole lot of ranged builds that are as well. If it is decided that melee definitely needs to have a boost to their toughness, then attach that to the melee role directly so that it really is a "melee solution", rather than a "strength primary" solution. Then get rid of juggernaut, or at least drop its scaling down, maybe making it a 2 pt spec in the process( since if you don't somehow nerf jugg, then all you did was give melee more toughness in addition to what they already have, and gave nobody a reason to consider anything other than str primary ).
IMO that's an acceptable evolution, because compared to the traditional Con build, that would entail a huge loss of HP and trades 30%-odd Severity for single digit Crit Chance which leads to a net DPS loss.
It's actually 12% crit chance from Strength with good strength. (I'd have to go test again, but i seem to recall it was somewhere south of 400 strength achieved 12% crit chance from the spec, and I couldn't gain any more despite boosting strength over 850).
IMO that's an acceptable evolution, because compared to the traditional Con build, that would entail a huge loss of HP and trades 30%-odd Severity for single digit Crit Chance which leads to a net DPS loss.
It's actually 12% crit chance from Strength with good strength. (I'd have to go test again, but i seem to recall it was somewhere south of 400 strength achieved 12% crit chance from the spec, and I couldn't gain any more despite boosting strength over 850).
Is that with 2 points or 3? 3pts Juggy means only room for 2pts Brutality
Nice thing about severity and such is that since it lacks any diminishing return you can just calculate things in an exact way. On a build with 394 STR and 424 CON things are like this for me:
with two points in brutality Offense 20% Crit chance 30% (24% base + 6% from vindicator spec) Severity 112%
with two points in overpower Offense 20% Crit chance 37% Severity 86%
Switching to overpower would lower my overall dps by 1.1%
Of course this is all different when adding in the insanely high 50% crit chance bonus from Ego Surge.
True, but I still don't really agree that STR stacking should be rewarded more than it does now. STR has more than enough going for it already. Like protection against the single strongest crowd control effect in CO, and a huge bonus to that same thing.
My example build has almost perfectly balanced between CON and STR, when stacking higher STR the crit chance spec will quickly pull ahead (ignoring OP stuff like Nimble Mind for the moment). All that will do is change the optimal stat distribution slightly, and moves it away a little from tanky to dps. The only thing this will do is promote dps tanks even more than now.
IMO that's an acceptable evolution, because compared to the traditional Con build, that would entail a huge loss of HP and trades 30%-odd Severity for single digit Crit Chance which leads to a net DPS loss.
It's actually 12% crit chance from Strength with good strength. (I'd have to go test again, but i seem to recall it was somewhere south of 400 strength achieved 12% crit chance from the spec, and I couldn't gain any more despite boosting strength over 850).
Is that with 2 points or 3? 3pts Juggy means only room for 2pts Brutality
That was with 3 points of brutality. But i generally skip juggernaut as a brawler because if i'm going to do damage, i want to *do massive damage*. Even if i have a con stat. 5 points of crit and severity.
the difference in performance between my Ego/Dex/End elec build and my Ego/Dex/Con shadow build is stupid in this event, that single stat is the difference between being able to snipe the hell out of nightmare portals (and surviving long enough to escape) and shrugging off those whirling black tentacles the colossus summons that I thought didn't do anything, can we implement this change already that's more than a year old now?
Why not eliminate CON entirely? get rid of it as a stackable stat and give everyone the same base health, say around 10k HP. then buff the tank role HP bonus up to about 50% and the damage resist bonus to 25%.
And here's DaZee, once again trying to rip choices and options right out of the player's hands
Actually I'm adding choices by removing the source of a major imbalance. once CON is gone people will start trying more inventive builds instead of just using CON on everything.
That makes no sense. The exact same thing could be achieved just by adjusting CON's stat curve.
The choice to play without CON already exists. And you can do it feasibly for just about everything in the game. Just not if you want to solo one part of a mission/event intended for more than one person. It's feasible. People do it. I've seen completely badass Melee DPS builds team with me in TA that only had 6k HP and consistently would be able to outdamage me and also survive. Stuff like ADs and Threat Drops have made it much more feasible now than it has been in the past. That's choice. That was choice added by in fact adding content, not removing it.
I've attempted to type up at least 3 rants trying to explain how removing choices results in, as it turns out, less choices, but I just am really having a hell of a time trying to do it in a way that can be really understood versus the argument your posing? Like, I keep figuring it's something that should be intrinsically understood? So I think I'll leave it at that and trust you got it in you to realize how silly the suggestion to completely remove CON sounds, when again, much simpler and less disruptive solutions exist.
Actually I'm adding choices by removing the source of a major imbalance. once CON is gone people will start trying more inventive builds instead of just using CON on everything.
People are already doing that. I see glass cannons aplenty every time I go to cosmics or run TA. I keep wanting to say stuff like "I was doing it before it was cool!" but then I remember we're playing a trinity mmo.
Comments
And if you switch from stacking CON to STR, that just means you have to switch specs to crit chance. Sure severity will be lower, but crit chance will be higher. And you were proposing to change things to give 8 health per 1 CON. So STR giving 3 health and a ton of secondary advantages, compared to 8 health and hardly any seconary advanteges from CON (when all the other things you propose are also implemented) is not something I can agree with.
Nimble mind needs to be looked into, like you already added to your first post. But changing other powers to try fix Nimble Mind seems a little odd to me. Nimble Mind can be fixed by changing Nimble Mind, you don't have to try change STR specs for that, and that will never really work well anyway.
Int specs do not need any help, if you make full use of the options in INT specs it is already one of the very best spec trees. Not for pure dps of course, but for a hybrid build especially if you use AoPM it's a very good spec tree.
And endurance/recovery just needs to be looked at seperately. They have to much interaction to be kept as two seperate powers. When going with REC SS it's completely silly you need to add END if you don't want to have your equilibrium higher than your max energy.
Also, crit chance specializations are worth less than severity specializations because of how specs are designed. It's not going to reach the same level.
For Nimble Mind, if you mean changing Juggernaut, Nimble Mind being more like Nimble Body is one issue. Having to take a defensive specialization that scales with a purely defensive stat to maximize DPS because of counter-intuitive specialization tree design is a separate issue that also needs to be addressed. They are two different things.
Crit at this point is such a hugely important stat in CO, that it can't really be tied to DEX more tightly without causing huge balance problems. Sets that do not need energy stats for their EU like munitions or telekinesis would have a huge advantage over energy hungry sets that need to stack significant REC and/or END to trivially spam their attacks like Fire. Or MA would hugely pull ahead of the Brick and Bestial sets.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Anyway, bringing the conversation back to Con, HP at this point is also hugely important because some encounters have mechanics that randomly direct damage to a non-tank. If a glass cannon DPS gets OHKOed it's not too bad, but a support AT like the Radiant which gets doubly penalized by Support role's HP cut.
We can talk about other stats later, but can we at least agree that Con and a number of specializations and advantages that interact with Con, i.e. Nimble Mind and Juggernaut, need to be worked on?
So as it's been suggested a few times, perhaps boost base HP to 6k (5995 to be exact) rather than 8k... that still gives everyone enough of a cushion that they won't be instant killed by random target abilities from most bosses.
Reduce Con's effect per point to make it so that the total effect from CON stacking can't do any more than double your max HP when single statting CON.
Stacking Growth Mods should provide an upwards of 3k HP max
End result HP at Lv 40 should range from 6k to an absolute maximum of 16.5k by single statting CON, with Growth Mods, & Bulwark... as opposed to the current 5k minimum to 28k max (28k is the highest I've personally seen, if someone can push it higher then that's even more proof that something needs to be done about CON)
Hi my name is George and I'm building a Strength Primary character. Currently on live, in order to get Juggernaught's benefit I have to invest heavily into Con.
Hi I'm Dave, I live in a rhetorical world where Juggernaught has been changed to scale off of SUPER STATS. I can now invest heavily into damage-based super stats like say, Strength, Dexterity, or Ego, to gain the defensive benefit of Juggernaught. I'm going to have much higher damage than George because of this. So that's a whole new balance issue that exists in my world, seeing as, thanks to Wardicator, Juggernaught was already causing player dps to over-perform... also I could still dump heavily into Con to get the benefits that George is getting ( super high damage + super high toughness ), so that problem also remains. Nothing has been solved, and there are more problems than before.
Hi I'm Carl, in my rhetorical world Juggernaut was changed to scale off of secondary super stats. I live in a strange world where I can get much more benefit as a ranged character from going Strength Primary than I can as a melee character, since I can't stack Strength to get the benefits. If I make a ranged Strength primary character, I can stack tons of Ego to get the benefits of Juggernaut. My world is in a similar situation to Dave's world, except that Melee characters get the short end of the stick when it comes to the super stat that is supposed to benefit them the most.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
If that's the case, then make Juggernaut a buff that gives defense based on con when you attack with a melee ability. Buff is refreshed as long as the player keeps attacking with melee abilities and blocks that do damage don't count.
"Every spec that scales off SSS tend to provide the best results when you keep both secondaries high rather than single stat stacking one of them."
So 500+100 does not equal the same thing as 300+300?
Juggy with 214 con = 64 def
Juggy scaling with superstats at the same rate with 652 in secondary stats = 195 def
Force of Will with 652 in secondary stats = 65 def
Normally, I wouldn't go into Grav rampage with less than 7k hp, especially on a squishy AT. So, that's what I'd suggest. How much hp per con? Meh. The only reason I have two con mods is more about dex not being worth taking to 500+ than needing more HP and def. Seems like the other "problem" with con, other things just aren't worth stacking high. So, changes here aren't going to do anything about people taking con.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
The thing about Juggernaut is that it gives much more Def per point than Force of Will, so the possible ramification is that the current Str/Con/X with Con stacking meta simply becomes a Str/X/X Str-stacking meta, where Str powers Enrage, Juggernaut + Wardicator for Defense, Swole for 3HP per Str and 2pts Overpower for Crit Chance while enjoying the benefit of boosted base HP. That was where the convo with Aiqa left off.
IMO that's an acceptable evolution, because compared to the traditional Con build, that would entail a huge loss of HP and trades 30%-odd Severity for single digit Crit Chance which leads to a net DPS loss. Higher Enrage bonuses can offset the Severity loss and even create a slight net gain, as should be the case for investing into a DPS stat, so that fixes itself. At the same time it creates a distinction between the Str-focused survivable melee DPS, the Dex-focused glassy DPS and the Con-focused tank.
The main problem I see is whether Juggernaut scaling should be prorated when it's changed to work with Str, considering Str points as Primary Str are given out more freely than Con, but otherwise I don't think it's a big issue.
And it's been my experiance atleast when I was testing specs that 500+100 on a SSS scalling spec unfortunatly tends to inccorectly equal 550 rather than 600 while 300+300 does properly equal 600
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Personally I don't think melee characters should even have any sort of "melee solution" that addresses defense. In my opinion, the only thing that Melee need is to be guaranteed that their damage hits harder, to make up for the fact that they will have less up time due to their proximity to dangerous situations and the need to often dip in and out of effective range. When it comes to toughness, Melee also have the option to gear and spec for it - I don't think it should just be granted to them anymore than ranged dps or healers.
So the idea that "we have to be careful about getting rid of juggernaut because it strips away the defense that melee need" is a bit flawed, primarily because it assumes that all melee will be Strength primary. Yes, currently they most likely are, because why wouldn't they be considering it gives them a defensive passive and tons more damage to boot? There's probably still a whole lot of ranged builds that are as well. If it is decided that melee definitely needs to have a boost to their toughness, then attach that to the melee role directly so that it really is a "melee solution", rather than a "strength primary" solution. Then get rid of juggernaut, or at least drop its scaling down, maybe making it a 2 pt spec in the process( since if you don't somehow nerf jugg, then all you did was give melee more toughness in addition to what they already have, and gave nobody a reason to consider anything other than str primary ).
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
On a build with 394 STR and 424 CON things are like this for me:
with two points in brutality
Offense 20%
Crit chance 30% (24% base + 6% from vindicator spec)
Severity 112%
with two points in overpower
Offense 20%
Crit chance 37%
Severity 86%
Switching to overpower would lower my overall dps by 1.1%
Of course this is all different when adding in the insanely high 50% crit chance bonus from Ego Surge.
My example build has almost perfectly balanced between CON and STR, when stacking higher STR the crit chance spec will quickly pull ahead (ignoring OP stuff like Nimble Mind for the moment). All that will do is change the optimal stat distribution slightly, and moves it away a little from tanky to dps. The only thing this will do is promote dps tanks even more than now.
and CON superstat builds
and people who liked the CON spec tree
and the STR spec tree for that matter
and spirit reverberation
like that's a lot more work and upheaval than just slightly rebalancing a stat's numbers
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
The choice to play without CON already exists. And you can do it feasibly for just about everything in the game. Just not if you want to solo one part of a mission/event intended for more than one person. It's feasible. People do it. I've seen completely badass Melee DPS builds team with me in TA that only had 6k HP and consistently would be able to outdamage me and also survive. Stuff like ADs and Threat Drops have made it much more feasible now than it has been in the past. That's choice. That was choice added by in fact adding content, not removing it.
I've attempted to type up at least 3 rants trying to explain how removing choices results in, as it turns out, less choices, but I just am really having a hell of a time trying to do it in a way that can be really understood versus the argument your posing? Like, I keep figuring it's something that should be intrinsically understood? So I think I'll leave it at that and trust you got it in you to realize how silly the suggestion to completely remove CON sounds, when again, much simpler and less disruptive solutions exist.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.