Is it just me?

[Remianen]

I'm inclined to think it probably is, but...


What's the real point in trying to level a new tanker with I5 and its wholesale changes looming? I'm at the point where I don't even want to log in, knowing that my efforts may all be wasted in just a couple weeks. That is, I know I won't be able to level a tanker to 50 before I5 drops (unless I take time off work, which would be stupid) and the only perspective I've seen or heard from are those folks with level 40+ tanks ("It's not so bad.."). I usually discount or outright ignore those reports since they don't apply to me. It's like someone saying "I can get 3 levels a day through the 30s" when they play 8-12 hrs a day, which would be useless for a person who can barely play 4 hrs a week.

Anyway, I had a few tanks I made to group with friends currently playing other MMOs primarily. Now I find myself not even wanting to log them in with this dark cloud hanging over them. Seems that blasters and defenders are the only ATs not to have their abilities BTK'd and while I like those ATs (have a bunch of 'em), I don't like how squishy they are (blaster) and I don't DO support (defender) usually. "None of the credit, all of the blame" is very apropos when it comes to support classes in this and every other MMO I've played.


So has anyone played a tanker from scratch on Test and seen how the changes compare to the current Live environment? I don't really care what it's like in the 30s and 40s and at 50 since that's not where any of my tanks are. I just don't want to waste my time levelling a tanker only to find my time would've been better spent working up a defender or blaster or scrapper.


Anyone offer any insight?

[Sword]

Invulnerability is not killed. Hell, it's still overpowered. It's just that now it's no fun for me anymore.

Currently I have three heroes waiting at lvl25 for the new area in I5. A Defender, a Scrapper and a Blaster. I alos plan to start over my old controller now that controllers have gotten a re-vamp.

My tankers however, will be on ice indefinately. They're no fun to play now, so I don't play them. I have a hope that this will not last. Perhaps in I6 or I7 the Devs get hit in the head with a clue and fixes the set. Hell, they might fix it before then, once they see what the outcome on the Live servers are.
Until then, my tanking days are pretty much over. This is a game, you play it for fun. Invuln is not fun anymore, so find something else that is. I've found that in the three heroes listed above. If you can't adjust to playing another AT, I'd suggest you buy a X-box and the new Hulk game.

[Jade_Dragon]

I don't get it. You admit it was overpowered, you say it's STILL overpowered, yet you say it's not "fun". How can it be fun with no challenge?

Is it because Tankers are so defense oriented, and don't do much damage? Is it because you've gotten used to herding entire floors? Is it because Invincibility has become so important, and you see your strategies becoming more limited because of that? Is it debt? Getting debt AT ALL?

I seriously don't see what you mean by "fun". I can't think of anything that was fun about Tankers that won't be made more fun by making them tougher to play. You clearly aren't a person who likes to exploit the game, so it's not that. And you admit that Tankers are still tough, so it's not a case of being unable to level. What exactly has changed that you take issue with?

[Graphite]

His complain Jade, and please correct me if I'm wrong Sword, is that Inv is now a defensive set and a cookie cutter build. The heart of the set was its Resists. The attraction to the set was its passives. Both of those have been hit hard. Further more, the biggest problem with the set in most Players mind is Invinciblity, which instead of being changed has become the only one legged peg the set can stand on.

This has nothing to do with nerfs. Nerfs can be fun because they can be a Challenge. Tankers are not fun because they are almost impossible to kill, hence the changes. However that didn't happen with I5. Inv are just as unkillable, its just in order to survive the HAVE to herd. Not everyone likes to herd, not everyone want Invinciblity, some people want better than 30% resist. THATs the problem.

[Sword]

Well, let's see if I can sum this up in a coherent post.

The problem, is that the Devs sat down and asked themselves: "How do we change the numbers in this set to lower it to the level we want it?"
Instead of asking: "How do we change the numbers in this set to the level we want it while still staying true to the concept the set is based on?"

With this change, concept and RP didn't just take a backseat to balance, it had to get off the bus.

Quite a while before the I5 changes were revealed, most of the "big boys" in the tanker forum got together in the "Consolidated Tanker Concerns" thread and asked: How will Invuln be lowered? We knew it would be lowered, the question was how to curtail the set.
To sum it up, the Devs simply did the exact opposite of everything we finally agreed on. And let me tell you: getting all those guys to agree on anything of that magnitude was a frikking miracle only acchieved through the obviousness of the solution we came to.

The entire problem of the set was Invincible. That power alone shot our survivability thorugh the roof. Most of us hadn't realized how extreme it was until people started to test with the purpose of findinding the "flaw" in the set.
Capped Resist was nothing compared to just a little Resist plus Invinciblity.

So, we all pretty much agreed that Invincibilioty would obviously be hit pretty darn hard. Our Resists would probably also take a hit, but Invinciblity would be the main target.
We were fine with this for several reasons. From a pure meta-game perspective, the power was just totally out of whack with the rest of the set and the overall power level of the set compared to other sets.
From an Immersion and "feel" point of view, it was the power we were the least interested in. Allmost all tankers built for capped Resistances, even though we didn't really need them with Invincibility. Why? Because a tank is Resistance. It's taking hits and shrugging them off. Defense is by its very nature not tankerish, and part of the reason why Ice Armour is so disliked. Defense is static, solid and trustworthy. YOu allways know what it's going to do.
Defense, is gambeling. No matter how much you stack the odds in your favour, there's still the chance of instantly dying by an unlucky roll of the dice. A tank is supposed to protect the team and BE the survivability of the team. He can't gamble with his survivalbity, becasue then he's gambeling with his whole team.
Added to this, the game was never designed as Defense beign anything but Dodging. Selling Defense as attacks bouncing off armour is something the Devs seem to have thorugh of later to give the sets more meta-game flavour. But when the game was designed, it's obvious that Defense was considered dodging.
When you're shot at, you never see the shot bounce off your chest if your defense saves you. No, it says "MISS" and you do a dodging animation or the shot is fired at a wild angle.
Also, the Auto-hit attacks in the game aren't made auto-hit because someone thought: "This attack can't be deflected". No, it's becasue "This attack can't be dodged". For example Swarms. They're auto-hit because you can't dodge a bee-swarm. But, I have Tough Hide, which makes bullets bounce off me, but bees ALLWAYS manage to sting me anyway?

With these changes, Invinciblity has become MUCH more important. Before it was the power that let you do insane things. Now it's also the power that lets you do "pretty good" things. Like tank for a team. So, if you want to get anywhere close to utilizing the set you have to use this power. Which makes your Defense shoot up to SR-scrapper levels.
I allready play a SR-scrapper, and he's great fun, but I want my tank to be my tank. It plays and feels differently.

And, to add to this: Invinciblity got upped to max 14 mobs. So, you need more mobs around you to utilize the power. So, it REWARDS you for herding by making you god-like. Wasn't part of the idea with the I5 changes that it would limit herding? Not encourage it?
It scales to much. When fighting 3 foes, you can be taken down. If they get backup from another 10 friends, they have no chance at beating me. That doesn't make sense.

The set now centers around this power that we really didn't care all that much about to begin with. It has no basis in comic book lore. It's not a staple power of Invulnerable heroes. It's not what we envisioned when we made heroes with the Invulnerable set. Hell, if you look at the set without knowing the numbers you'd still assume the set was RESISTANCE based. Seeing as it has 6 Resistance powers, 2 Defense powers and a Heal.
It just feels like the Devs ran willy-nilly into our set with a hatchet and just chopped away until we were at the right height, instead of looking at what could be done with the set in a constructive way.

I am not a Defense-based tank.

I will not herd just to stay alive.

I will not play Invulnerability heroes until the Devs bother to talk to us again. Like they did back before I3. Hopefully that will happen once the dust settles. But until then, I'll just go on with other heroes.

Hopefully my MA/Regen scrapper won't be turned into a Resistance-based hero in I6.

[Jade_Dragon]

So it is Invincibility. Well, at least that's a good explanation, thanks.

I think you're overestimating the importance of Invincibility, though. Yes, you can probably get pretty close to what you had before with 14 foes. However, holding those 14 foes with only 5 taunts per attack will be much harder. And since Invincibility scales, if you take on smaller groups, or solo a lot, your Defense will be less than it is right now. So the Resists and the passives will be more important, since they'll keep those random hits that get through from killing you outright. (Since you play an SR Scrapper, you know how much you'd love to have Resists or Dull Pain)

So while I agree that the lynchpin of the "power build" is going to be Invincibility (I always throught everyone was underestimating it as it was) I don't think that was the devs intent. Invincibility was ALWAYS a herding power, (and it wasn't always limited to 5 foes) it's just by eliminating the redundant defense, it's become more obvious just how powerful Inv is, in the situations for which it was created.

Let's say that the devs changed Inv so it gave Res instead of Def. I don't think you would change your mind about it just on that. So it's not a concept thing. Unfortunately, it seems like the reason I'm happy with it is that it IS concept, I actually WANT my Tanker dodging. Clearly the real issue, though, is that Invincibility is simply really overpowered. The devs have tried to nerf it quite a few times in the past, and I'm guessing that they'll nerf it again. Hopefully they'll bring some Resistance back so you can be a little happier with it.

(And BTW, it bugs me when those bugs come right through my Defender's Force Field, too. :D)

[Sword]

Well, there is quite chance that they will nerf Invince in the future. In fact, many are counting on it. hich is why we're fighting tooth and nails to keep our RES. Because a nerf to Invince does not neccessarliy mean that we will get RES back.

Honestly, I wish they could have made Deflection stat or something. Would fit Tankers and FF Defender/Controllers a lot better than this "you're not dodging, it's actually bouncing off you"-crap they're trying to sell.

[Jade_Dragon]

Well, there is quite chance that they will nerf Invince in the future. In fact, many are counting on it. hich is why we're fighting tooth and nails to keep our RES. Because a nerf to Invince does not neccessarliy mean that we will get RES back.

Oh, SR Scrapper demonstrates that. ;)

Honestly, I wish they could have made Deflection stat or something. Would fit Tankers and FF Defender/Controllers a lot better than this "you're not dodging, it's actually bouncing off you"-crap they're trying to sell.

Well, on one level it makes sense. If it is bouncing off you, it ISN'T hitting you. However, it is hitting your armor, which means at some point your armor should decay. Plus, some damage gets through, blugeoning damage and so forth. So to say that blocking and dodging are the same thing is an oversimplification.

But they I guess they've got to simplify it. They could have at least had a "ricochet" animation to substitute for the misses, though...

[Sword]

I think a large part of why I dislike Invuln in I5 so much is simply what it represents.

Back when I3 was released, I knew the Devs had our backs. Reading over the list of changes, it was like I had stood over States shoulder and told him exactly what to do with the set. Back then my fiath in the Devs were at an all time high. That change pretty much turned my hero into exactly the hero I'd allways envisioned him being.

Later on, I realized that the set had become grossly overpowered as well, since the Devs had simply removed the drawback of the set without reducing its upsides. But the spirit of the change showed that the Devs had really listned and understood what we wanted.

Since then I've allways given the Devs a lot of slack. Allways saying "Relax guys. Test it out first. The Devs know what they're doing." whenever changed had come up that made people shout DOOM.

But these changed show that the Devs never actually "got" us. They just did what we told them to in I3. They don't seem to have actually grasped WHY we wanted those changes. So, this time they did it on their own without consulting us and just messed up completely.

What most of us want is, not surprisingly, what you find in the comics. The most archtypical tank of them all is "The Thing". He's big, strong and tough. You never seen him dodge. Why? Becuse he doesn't have to. He just takes it no matter if he could manage to dodge it or not because he can take it. He has no weak spots. You can only damage him through hitting him hard enough.
The perfect mechnic for this is the Invuln passives + Unyielding. Unyielding is the epitome of the Tanker mindset. You actually gain a -DEF because you're just standing there, trusting your resists to handle the damage.
If we could simply have high RES (not neccesarily capped, but still high) and not even have the "Dodge" animation while UY was on, many of us would be happy.

Defense doesn't make sense for this. No matter how many times you shoot the Thing, the result will be the same: he takes the shot and shrugs it off. With Defense one of those shots suddenly penetrate his armour and hit him for full damage. It just doesn't fit our wiev of a Tanker.
Resist on the other hand perfectly simulates this. No matter how many times you shoot the Thing, you get the same result. But if you pour enough shots at him at once, you can try to wear him down with the combined damage of all the individual hits.

Part of why i don't like the new Invuln, is because it represents the Devs not "getting" it and the unfulfilled potential I see in the set to have exactly the hero I wanted since day one. The Invuln we had wasn't perfect, but it was pretty close. The new Invuln is several steps AWAY from this. I can't get myself to invest more time in Invuln heroes when there's no indication that things will develop for the better.

It's ok for Fire Tankers, Kheld Dwarfs and DA scrappers to have decent Resists, why isn't it ok for Invuln?

[Red Nile]

Personally, I have a new tanker I made up who's waiting around for I5. Not invuln, but that's not because of the weakening of them. Decided to go fire in the hopes that the damage output can help to manage aggro with the weakened taunt. And going with stone melee so I can beat on people with a big flaming mallet. :D

I'm going to see if it's survivable without tough/weave...I really have no use for boxing or kick, and there are a lot of other powers I already want.

I'm looking forward to the challenge, and hope that the changes make it so that multiple tankers on the same team aren't redundant the way they are now. And that tankers and controllers won't be stepping on each others toes as much as cooperating with each other.

I do agree that invuln would have been better served to be focused on resistance and little to no defense. But the general weakening across the board I do agree with, if not the method of the weakening.

[Sword]

Heh, after being on an 8-man team with two fire tankers without the Leaping pool I've decided not to try one until they get soem inherent KB protection. Those poor guys were being bounced around like ping-pong balls. :D

[Graphite]

Quite a while before the I5 changes were revealed, most of the "big boys" in the tanker forum got together in the "Consolidated Tanker Concerns" thread and asked: How will Invuln be lowered? We knew it would be lowered, the question was how to curtail the set.
To sum it up, the Devs simply did the exact opposite of everything we finally agreed on. And let me tell you: getting all those guys to agree on anything of that magnitude was a frikking miracle only acchieved through the obviousness of the solution we came to.


Wow, that is an awsome accomplishment. I had no idea such a thread existed. Then to have the Devs completely ignoring it.... Thats like a Slap to the Face on top of a Kick to the Balls.

Just a thought Sword, but maybe your taking this a bit to personaly? I mean you do have alot slated in this, and I fault you none, but your arguements are aproaching "My way or the Highway, settling on nothing less." Nothing personal, just a concerned friend is all. Oh and I'm not entirely conviced that this wasn't just a half assed bug fix done by the devs. It seem to me that their first approach was to nerf everything. Then they realised that Inv was dying left and right. So they came up with the quickest fix so people stop yelling at em, namely put Inv back where it was in I4. Players could now solo the easiest difficulty and the higher ones were now a real challange. Problem solved right?

Maybe there is hope for the near future. I mean, the stackable armors didn't come until shortly after I3, just like surpression didn't come till shortly after I4.

Funny coincedence that the day before this post I was talking to Proletarian, who some of you might remember from Prebeta and the old boards, on this exact same issue and he had come to the same conclusions. He would like to see a small defense gain with a possible cap from Inviciblity and a maximum possible RES of 60% to everything. Pro told me the current max resist was around 32%, which imo is complete crap. I didn't begin to feel like a tank until I reached the 55% using a sloted Tough on Graphite. He also mentioned that this problem stems from the bonus given to tanker auras. As I understood it, all Tanker Primary Sets have one agro getting aura and each of these have some kinda proc. Ice has a slow, Mudpots has damage so the devs added defense to Tanker.

Have you guys seen Princess Bride? Maybe way to look at invinciblity and Inv tankers is Andre the Giant's character. I can't remember the exact qoute, but while being choked by (then losing to) the Man in Black he talks about how long its been since he fought only one person. That he had trained fighting multiple people, brute squads en stuff. The tactics that come out of this is different and I think he ment you use the fact that they are a group to your advantage. This of course would represent DEF in the coh world, its your skill as you watch out for that next punch. Later on Andre goes on to say, I don't think I could handle more then ten which certainly sounds reasonable for a man of that size but they bring any more friends and he wouldn't be able to handle it. Of course its his Gerth, or RES in coh, in the first place that allows him to even handle ten. So in this case, Andre the giant would be RES first, Def secondary. Def and invincible should be a nice complement to the set, not the other way around.

The whole "Deflection Debate" I think comes from AC and D&D. To make the math simple, all factors like natural evasion, skill, deflection, and armor are all made into one stat to be used as a target number. However, MMOs have never been that simple. I remember in Dark Age of Camelot, we called resistances "soak" which was the percentage of damage a physcial hit would be absorbed by a players armor. This wasn't a character stat based on your skill rather than a definded number by your armor. Better grades of armor had better assigned armor factors and thus better soak. Of course, all numbers were smaller in daoc, but for cloth I remember it being around 5%, leather maybe 15% and chain close to 30%. Now Inv tankers are ment to have the thickest hide and toughest armor out side of maybe Granite. So shouldn't the numbers represent that fact? Of course, I never understood why there were so few resistance toggles in the Tanker Sets. Rock and Ice armors are DEF, yeah I call that BS.

[Jade_Dragon]

Hold on a minute. Is The Thing Invulnerability, or Stone Armor? Sure, he doesn't have the ability to turn his armor on or off, or change its form. But what known superhero WOULD you call Stone Armor? Is there a SINGLE superhero out there that represents Stone Armor to you?

To me, there is only one choice for the canonical Invulnerability Tanker. Superman. He represents the extreme of Invulnerability, sure, but in his powers we can see, in a more limited form, what Invulnerability would be for a CoH hero. Tough skin, yes, high damage resistance. But also SPEED, speed and agility for dodging. Superman lets bullets hit him not because he has to, but because he doesn't want that bullet to miss him and hit someone else. Of course even a bullet that hits him could ricochet. But I assume he calculates all the trajectories and stuff (he does have advanced intelligence, after all) and makes his decision based on that.

The point is, if Superman's in a battle with a group of bad guys, he's got the agility to make sure most of them miss him. Not to mention the speed to strike before they can get too many shots off. If you don't like Superman, try The Hulk instead. The Hulk may be huge and lumbering, an easy target, but he's not slow. He's not going to stand there and soak up damage while the puny humans shoot at him, he's going to charge. And he certainly doesn't care what happens to the bullets, or even artillery shells, that miss him.

You did a good job of describing the Unyielding Tanker, but you're ignoring the Invincible/Unstoppable one. The immovable object is always matched by an irresistable force. The power of Invulnerability, and perhaps its drawback, is that it can be both. THAT'S why it was overpowered, and possibly, that's why the devs didn't listen to you this time. Quite frankly, I think they did listen, they just said no. Maybe over time, they'll decide to move back towards a balance between Unyielding and Invincibility, and let you pick one or the other again. But clearly you wanted them to dump Invincibility, which would have been just as bad for me as this is to you.

The fact is, Invulnerability Tankers DO have Resists. They have HUGE Resists, compared to Super Reflexes. Your Invulnerability Tanker isn't taking some hit that gets through a chink in his armor, and drops him, he gets a critical hit, every now and then, that hits a vulnerable spot. But even an Invulnerability Tanker's vulnerable spots are tougher than a Super Reflexes Scrapper's, or even an Ice Tanker's vulnerable spots. As I have said many times before, Res + Def is MUCH more powerful than Def or Res alone. And despite how much you want Inv to be Res only, the devs obviously intend for it to be BOTH. That's a strength, not a weakness.

[Jade_Dragon]

Maybe there is hope for the near future. I mean, the stackable armors didn't come until shortly after I3, just like surpression didn't come till shortly after I4.

The stackable armors ALSO messed up the Tankers. The devs never intended UY to stack. But when it became obvious that status protection was far too important to a Scrapper or Tanker to just keep it up SOME of the time, they had to fix that. It messed up Granite, and Dark as well. So clearly the defense HAD to be adjusted. If it had been adjusted then, instead of now, what would your reaction have been?

The whole "Deflection Debate" I think comes from AC and D&D. To make the math simple, all factors like natural evasion, skill, deflection, and armor are all made into one stat to be used as a target number. However, MMOs have never been that simple. I remember in Dark Age of Camelot, we called resistances "soak" which was the percentage of damage a physcial hit would be absorbed by a players armor.

It is also important to note that as a D&D character's level went up, his hit points increased, but his damage did NOT. He gained some additional damage due to gaining more and more powerful magic weapons, but for the most part, a sword did the same damage at level 1 as it did at level 20. It just hit more often at level 20.

Of course, some spells, such as Fireball, did scale to level, but those usually were auto-hit, or had a saving throw to avoid the effect, which followed a different progression than to hit. At any rate, damage in CoH, not to mention other MMORPGs, DOES scale, and increasing damage resistance is one way to compensate for this.

[Graphite]

Very true Jade, and I don't think anyone will agrue with your points.
A mix of Defense and Resistance goes a long way. Our beef is that the set should be less defense, more resistance. Currently a Tank with 14 minions and Invinciblity has just as much Defense as Super Reflex gets from 3 toggles. Thats just wrong. 30% resist is not "huge." The number is big, not the effect. That still means you'll be two shot by a boss since less then 100% goes to soak. Also, Resist starts from a base of 0 while Def starts from a base of baddy Acc. A little Def goes a long way compared to alot of Resist.

Heres some sample numbers:
30% Max Resist, 3.5% Def from unslotted Invinciblity (10 baddies = 35% Def)
Damage Migation: (1-.3)X[1-(.35+.50)] = .7 X .15 = .1
60% MaxResist, 2.0% Def a possible unslotted Invinciblity (10 baddies = 20% Def)
Damage Migation: (1-.6)X[1-(.20 +.5)] = .4 X .3 = .12

So whats wrong with giving Tankers a better Max possible Resist and hiting Invinciblity hard with maybe a 1% or 2% Def boost or outright capping the bonus?

And quickly on your other points.
Thing is Inv, so would of Graphite if Granite didn't sound so cool.
Superman does dodge in combat but thats as much afactor of his flying in combat which is a movement power.

[Akamaz]

And quickly on your other points.
Thing is Inv, so would of Graphite if Granite didn't sound so cool.
Superman does dodge in combat but thats as much afactor of his flying in combat which is a movement power.


don't forget his super sewing and basket weaving powers... let's face it, Supes is a munchkin Red Mage if i Ever heard of one.

[Jade_Dragon]

Superman does dodge in combat but thats as much afactor of his flying in combat which is a movement power.

Actually, Superman dodges often even when on the ground. Again, Supes is usually hit because he wants to be. How often does he dodge a magical attack or missile? At least once he knows it's magical? How often does he simply "zip" to the foe and punch him? And not flying, on the ground...

As Maz said, though, Superman is by far more than any Inv Tanker could ever reach. He is pretty much maxed Resistance and max Def. I'm talking about the style of his combat, though. He's not a juggernaught. Neither, for that matter, is Steel, Luke Cage, Wonder Woman, Thor, Hawk, Captain America, or Conan the Barbarian. Any of those could be an Invulnerability Tanker or Scrapper.

[Jade_Dragon]

I should also add that it's not fair to compare the defense of an Invulnerability Tanker to Super Reflexes, since by definition a Tanker should have more defense. If there were a Super Reflexes Tanker, it would obviously have much more base Defense.

Compare an Inv Scrapper with 14 foes and Invincibility to an SR Scrapper. It would probably still be better defense (since the Inv Scrapper has Res to fall back on and SR doesn't) but at least compare apples to apples.

[Sword]

Wow, that is an awsome accomplishment. I had no idea such a thread existed. Then to have the Devs completely ignoring it.... Thats like a Slap to the Face on top of a Kick to the Balls.
Yes, a while before I5 more and more threads popped up in the tanker forums discussing the same things. Will Invuln be nerfed? How will it be nerfed? Should it be nerfed? So, CuppaJoe made a "Consolidated Tanker Concerns"thread that was stickied at the top of the forums. This thread is where allmost all the testing and debating was done that in the end ended with allmost everyone agreeing on a set of changes. Sure, we could never agree on exact numbers but we were all in the same ballpark.
I think it was the same day as I5 went up on test that the thread was deleted. Sure, we knew it wasn't a Dev response thread, but it wasn't exactly the most gracious way to introduce the I5 changes to the tanker community.

Just a thought Sword, but maybe your taking this a bit to personaly? I mean you do have alot slated in this, and I fault you none, but your arguements are aproaching "My way or the Highway, settling on nothing less." Nothing personal, just a concerned friend is all.

Hehe, yes I realize this. Actually I've had several moments where I've allmost managed to convince myself that it's not so bad and I'm just being stubborn. I spent a lot of time trying to look at this from different angles. For example that our increased HP allready represents our resistance to damage. But I allways end up at "No dammit! This is just dumb!" I can't maintain the illusion in my own head :D

Have you guys seen Princess Bride? Maybe way to look at invinciblity and Inv tankers is Andre the Giant's character.
Yes, I've run into that comparison a couple of times. And I can pretty much agree with it. Problem is that the way the set is set up now, all Invuln tanks HAVE to be like him or be a lot less than him. If you could choose to build in another direction it would be pretty cool, but the way it is Invulns are all Andre, no matter what concept you have for your hero.
The concept of Invinciblity working like that is ok to me. It's just that it gives you too much. You're so laughably more protected when you have 10 guys around you tht you can refer to them as your armour.
"No please, don't kill these guys wailing away on me, they're my armour."

The whole "Deflection Debate" I think comes from AC and D&D.
Yup, it does. And that's a lot of the reason why I pretty much instincitvely disliked the entire concept. I've dabbled in D&D/AD&D from about age 12. That basic inconsitency has allways irritated me. It's something that has just hung on with the system since it was concieved. I consider it extremely sloppy for a game that's about 90% based on combat to have flaw that obvious.
So, suddenly seeing an allmost identical flaw in a game created in 2004 is something I'm really not tolerant of.

Hold on a minute. Is The Thing Invulnerability, or Stone Armor? Sure, he doesn't have the ability to turn his armor on or off, or change its form. But what known superhero WOULD you call Stone Armor? Is there a SINGLE superhero out there that represents Stone Armor to you?
Nope, I don't think I know of a single stone armour hero. To be honest, I can't think of a sinlge non-Invuln tanker hero atm. The Thing is just a Invuln/SS tanker who created his hero with the Rock Skin look and coloured it orange. Same as Colosseus is just an Inv/SS who uses the Metallic Skin look. The other Armour sets are pretty much added as flavour to not make the AT so dull, and because Cryptic doesn't need to just copy existing powers, but can make their own. Which is cool, but have led to some odd sets. Like Spines :D

To me, there is only one choice for the canonical Invulnerability Tanker. Superman.
Most of us tankers have learned to just not discuss Superman in any way that has any relevance to the game. He's just THAT overpowered :D
But yes, Invuln tankers shouldn't be just the Thing. They should be Superman-esque types as well. Problem is that I think they've designed themselves into a corner. They don't seem to be able to give us both. I blame it a lot on the whole Mez-system of the game. UY would have been perfect for Thing-type tankers if it was stronger, but had more of a downside. So, closer to Granite Armour with -Move Speed -Recharge. People who wanted to avoid that type of hero, would concentrate on Invincible instead (perhaps exclusive toggles or high end-costs? Or Invince being a click that you could perma, but not if you used UY?) But then Invince would need its own status protection and the Devs seem to like us haveing one "status-armour".

The stackable armors ALSO messed up the Tankers. The devs never intended UY to stack. But when it became obvious that status protection was far too important to a Scrapper or Tanker to just keep it up SOME of the time, they had to fix that. It messed up Granite, and Dark as well. So clearly the defense HAD to be adjusted. If it had been adjusted then, instead of now, what would your reaction have been?

Oh we were ready for adjustment back then, and were pretty surprised that there wasn't any. I was expecting UY to be at least halved in RES, if not loosing the RES completely. Back then, I didn't even consider Invince much, since I wasn't a Tele-Tank, so couldn't use it to herd. But removing such a massive penalty as not being able to move and not reducing the up sides was just inviting overpoweredness.

I should also add that it's not fair to compare the defense of an Invulnerability Tanker to Super Reflexes, since by definition a Tanker should have more defense. If there were a Super Reflexes Tanker, it would obviously have much more base Defense.
Well, it's not so much a matter of Invuln having the same Defense as SR as Invincibility having the same Defense as SR. It's just dumb to have on power be the same as getting an extra power set, even if it is a secondary set.

[Jade_Dragon]

Most of us tankers have learned to just not discuss Superman in any way that has any relevance to the game. He's just THAT overpowered :D

Well, I believe I gave plenty of examples of Invulnerable heroes. Outside of Superman.

And yeah, Andre was a good example, too. :D

Basically, what it comes down to is this. Either Invulnerability gets the same defense as Stone or SR (comparatively, not in terms of form) or it gets to scale. One or the other. You can't have both. You want to dump scaling? Fine.

[Jade_Dragon]

You're so laughably more protected when you have 10 guys around you tht you can refer to them as your armour.
"No please, don't kill these guys wailing away on me, they're my armour."

Also, don't forget that if you have more foes around you, you have a greater chance to be hit. To a point, scaling compensates for the fact that more attacks are aimed at you.

The perfect balance would be if the defense exactly compensated for the additional damage, so you would take the exact same damage with one person next to you as with ten. Then there would be no need to say "don't kill these guys, they're my armor". (You still want them in melee range, though, and note that you can die a lot faster from an AoE knockback than an AoE kill)

[Remianen]

*shrug*

Well, I don't care about Superman or Batman or any other lame DC character. What I do care about is the feel that's lost from the Invulnerability set. I agree with Sword. I didn't make my tanks to be dodgers. I made them to take the brunt of shots and then ask, "Is that all you got?". It's like punching some guy in the face and having it have no effect. The guy who dodges the swing doesn't instill the same "Uhhh, what am I gonna do now?" feeling that the guy who takes the shot and doesn't flinch does.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

[suburbanhell]

*shrug*

Well, I don't care about Superman or Batman or any other lame DC character. What I do care about is the feel that's lost from the Invulnerability set. I agree with Sword. I didn't make my tanks to be dodgers. I made them to take the brunt of shots and then ask, "Is that all you got?". It's like punching some guy in the face and having it have no effect. The guy who dodges the swing doesn't instill the same "Uhhh, what am I gonna do now?" feeling that the guy who takes the shot and doesn't flinch does.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I'm going to agree with Rem and Sword on this as well, the whole concept for Major 0 is loosely based around The Thing, where I would prefer to confront head on something and not have an inkling of fear behind it. Tanks are to be fearless because they ARE invulnerable, to take away invulnerability...brings fear. Case in point, Superman wasn't brave he was indestructable -- how can you fear pain or death if you cannot be destroyed?

[Sword]

BTW, I did some thinking on Superman and other "Supermanish" heroes after I made my post yesterday.

The difference between Thing-type tankers and Superman-type tankers is:

Both are Invulnerable. Both types CAN just stand there and take it. However, Thing-type tankers generally don't have much of a choice. They're generally not expert fighters. They just rely on their strength and durability. Superman-type tankers however, are Invulnerable but also use skill in a fight.
So, the Invulnerability of both types is the same. You shoot either one, you get the same effect (not counting different power-levels of course). However, the Superman-type has the skill to dodge the blow if they so choose, while the Thing-type often couldn't dodge it even if they'd wish to.
Superman-type tankers are Invuln tanks with the Fighting Pool. The Pools are supposed to represent the Heroes abilities that aren't represented in his Prim/Sec sets. Invuln represents the ability to take a blow and shrug it off. There's no dodging or fighting skill involved. You take Fighting on top of that, and you have a Invulnerable hero who also knows how to fight beyond the basic of "HULK SMASH!".

[suburbanhell]

That makes sense. Bad use of Supes on my part.

[Greblaja]

In response to the original poster, I, too, can't seem to play my tanks on Live right now. I wish they'd just go ahead and release the I5 build, broken or not, because they are just not going to understand what they've done to Invulnerability until they do so.