New efforts!

[LaughingAlex]

Any announcement a short time ahead of time is all I would need to plan anything out.  A short time being a week or two(and I know it'd be likely a month ahead of time minimum).  I'll just continue wasting time on new vegas in the mean time.

[scope.creep]

I've been wondering lately about something of late.  Since the thread is running slow now, I'll go ahead and ask.

In a one-on-one battle, who wins: scrapper vs. tank?  This is the sort of thing that one or more people here may already know (e.g. Arcana).

Let's establish a few rules.  First, both combatants have identical powersets.  There are some powersets available to scrappers that aren't available to tanks, and vice versa; exclude those.  If the tank has Firey Aura defense set, so does the scrapper.  The idea is not to set up an obvious winner, but instead to see if a scrapper's higher damage is enough to overcome a tank's higher defense.

Second, for sanity's sake, let's exclude epic pool powers.  Characters are level 40 max.

Third, let's exclude IOs; no set bonuses.  It's not a Mids' test.  Slot using SOs.

Fourth... actually, I'm not so sure about the fourth.  I was thinking to exclude pool powers, but if something just really makes sense to have, then I guess I'm okay with that.

I guess that's it.  Given the same two powersets for a tank and a scrapper, who wins a fight?  Is it a 50/50, balanced sort of thing?

[MM3squints]

I've been wondering lately about something of late.  Since the thread is running slow now, I'll go ahead and ask.

In a one-on-one battle, who wins: scrapper vs. tank?  This is the sort of thing that one or more people here may already know (e.g. Arcana).

Let's establish a few rules.  First, both combatants have identical powersets.  There are some powersets available to scrappers that aren't available to tanks, and vice versa; exclude those.  If the tank has Firey Aura defense set, so does the scrapper.  The idea is not to set up an obvious winner, but instead to see if a scrapper's higher damage is enough to overcome a tank's higher defense.

Second, for sanity's sake, let's exclude epic pool powers.  Characters are level 40 max.

Third, let's exclude IOs; no set bonuses.  It's not a Mids' test.  Slot using SOs.

Fourth... actually, I'm not so sure about the fourth.  I was thinking to exclude pool powers, but if something just really makes sense to have, then I guess I'm okay with that.

I guess that's it.  Given the same two powersets for a tank and a scrapper, who wins a fight?  Is it a 50/50, balanced sort of thing?

Pre or post i13?

[LaughingAlex]

I've been wondering lately about something of late.  Since the thread is running slow now, I'll go ahead and ask.

In a one-on-one battle, who wins: scrapper vs. tank?  This is the sort of thing that one or more people here may already know (e.g. Arcana).

Let's establish a few rules.  First, both combatants have identical powersets.  There are some powersets available to scrappers that aren't available to tanks, and vice versa; exclude those.  If the tank has Firey Aura defense set, so does the scrapper.  The idea is not to set up an obvious winner, but instead to see if a scrapper's higher damage is enough to overcome a tank's higher defense.

Second, for sanity's sake, let's exclude epic pool powers.  Characters are level 40 max.

Third, let's exclude IOs; no set bonuses.  It's not a Mids' test.  Slot using SOs.

Fourth... actually, I'm not so sure about the fourth.  I was thinking to exclude pool powers, but if something just really makes sense to have, then I guess I'm okay with that.

I guess that's it.  Given the same two powersets for a tank and a scrapper, who wins a fight?  Is it a 50/50, balanced sort of thing?

For PVP 1.0:
It's harder to say.  Tankers have significantly more health, and a higher resistance cap as well as significantly higher base resistance values.  The powersets will make a huge difference.  Lets say both are staff fighters and both have electrical armor.  The tanker will have 90% resistance to smash/lethal assuming he also takes toughness.  The scrapper can at most have 75% if he takes toughness.

So the scrapper takes 2.5 times more damage from smash/lethal, it's looking very badly or the scrapper.  The scrapper has a higher damage rating, however, it's not that much higher. 1.125 on the damage scale, compared to the tankers .75 base.

Scrappers output vs tanker: 1.125 *(1- .9) = .1125
Tanker output vs scrapper:  .75 *(1- .75) = .1875

So scrapper does LESS damage to the tanker.  Anytime resistance is a dominant factor the tanker is much more likely to win simply cause he has a higher base and his higher health will make for a far larger increase in resistance than damage.

So lets change it up then, and give both shield defense(this will be more complicated).  We'll also give both of them kinetic melee.

Just looking at defense alone before I calculated SO's the tanker has 25% defense and a pretty hefty amount of resistance.  I went ahead and gave him SO's in mids.

The totals come up to around 36.2% defense vs melee/ranges/AoE with his resistance being 38.4% vs smash/lethal and 23.4% vs everything else except toxic.  The scrapper would only have a 12% chance to hit without buffing his to-hit without hitting combat readiness.

Now for the scrapper.  Remember I am giving both of them tough/weave.  The scrapper only has 27% defense vs melee/ranged/AoE and only 28.8% resistance to smash/lethal with 17.6% resistance to everything else except toxic.

Every tanker and scrapper generally always took tough/weave so I went ahead and fit them in there.  But basically because tankers have much higher resistance and a higher resistance cap, a resistance based tanker in pvp 1.0 would laugh against anyone trying to kill him through that resistance, especially his main resistance and scrappers with the same build wouldn't beat him at his own game.  But when it came to defense, both archtypes were pretty equal.

So it's not so clear cut anymore.  But the scrapper would still have to be pretty lucky, but the damage mitigated isn't so significant on the tanker end as to be clearly biased against the scrapper.

Course, pvp 2.0 changed that.  But pvp 2.0 tried to make it 50/50 regardless of class because they all played identically in pvp 2.0; a scrapper does the same damage as a tanker ect and everyone has the same soft-caps for both defense AND resistance which were rather low.  So I didn't really bother with it in this case.

[JanessaVR]

And this is why I play Controllers, almost exclusively.  8)

[LaughingAlex]

And this is why I play Controllers, almost exclusively.  8)

I mostly stuck to corruptors but had played defenders/controllers/masterminds to.  I just prefer having depth in my gameplay and enjoyed the support classes more for it.

[JanessaVR]

I mostly stuck to corruptors but had played defenders/controllers/masterminds to.  I just prefer having depth in my gameplay and enjoyed the support classes more for it.

From my perspective, why play the game of "keep trying to find bigger sticks to hit them with" (melee classes), when you can change the rules?  That's what Controllers did - a few clicks and now the enemy isn't hitting as hard (or at all) and their defenses are lowered as well.  Throw in some buffs to make your meatshields (Scrappers, Brutes, etc) hit harder, and it's all over.

[Waffles]

I've been wondering lately about something of late.  Since the thread is running slow now, I'll go ahead and ask.

In a one-on-one battle, who wins: scrapper vs. tank?  This is the sort of thing that one or more people here may already know (e.g. Arcana).

Let's establish a few rules.  First, both combatants have identical powersets.  There are some powersets available to scrappers that aren't available to tanks, and vice versa; exclude those.  If the tank has Firey Aura defense set, so does the scrapper.  The idea is not to set up an obvious winner, but instead to see if a scrapper's higher damage is enough to overcome a tank's higher defense.

Second, for sanity's sake, let's exclude epic pool powers.  Characters are level 40 max.

Third, let's exclude IOs; no set bonuses.  It's not a Mids' test.  Slot using SOs.

Fourth... actually, I'm not so sure about the fourth.  I was thinking to exclude pool powers, but if something just really makes sense to have, then I guess I'm okay with that.

I guess that's it.  Given the same two powersets for a tank and a scrapper, who wins a fight?  Is it a 50/50, balanced sort of thing?

Mirror match, i'd give it to the tank.

The tank would have no chance against regen, willpower or SR though, in PVP 1.0

[LaughingAlex]

Mirror match, i'd give it to the tank.

The tank would have no chance against regen, willpower or SR though, in PVP 1.0

I think it boils down to whether or not your looking at defense or resistance.  In a mirror match with the two both purely resistance based, as I mentioned above, the tanker has a very sharp advantage in that the scrappers resistance cap leaves him/her taking 2.5 times more damage than the tanker.  But with defense it's far less clear cut and course, tankers don't have the damage necessary to deal with a regen scrapper.  With willpower though, tbh i'm not so sure, cause willpowers health regen is based entirely on the number of enemies near him/her.  And willpower doesn't have that high a resistance or defense.  Without IO's willpower doesn't excel at anything.

[ivanhedgehog]

I watched a duel between 2 stone tanks once. they called it a draw after 30 min.

[brothermutant]

I think it boils down to whether or not your looking at defense or resistance.  In a mirror match with the two both purely resistance based, as I mentioned above, the tanker has a very sharp advantage in that the scrappers resistance cap leaves him/her taking 2.5 times more damage than the tanker.  But with defense it's far less clear cut and course, tankers don't have the damage necessary to deal with a regen scrapper.  With willpower though, tbh i'm not so sure, cause willpowers health regen is based entirely on the number of enemies near him/her.  And willpower doesn't have that high a resistance or defense.  Without IO's willpower doesn't excel at anything.

Don't Scrappers crit more than most? Isnt that 2x Dmg when that happens?

[Noyjitat]

Personally as far as controls go.... I preferred dominators so i Could mez a group and punch or blast them in the face simultaneousl. That and I liked how domination made it easier to mez bosses.

[JanessaVR]

Personally as far as controls go.... I preferred dominators so i Could mez a group and punch or blast them in the face simultaneousl. That and I liked how domination made it easier to mez bosses.

But if you have some handy meatshields with you don't even have to punch your enemies in the face - you have people for that.  :)

[Felderburg]

There was one other escape hatch for wishes like this.  Wishing to be another being by description - "I want to be the hero that eventually defeats so-and-so" - has a meta-catch: that entity might not be a player-controllable entity.  If you wish to be God, or A god, gods aren't player characters.  I would recommend telling the player that they begin to have the hunch that if they were to make that wish, they would cease to be themselves anymore and would in effect be wishing for their own self-destruction.  If they persist, that's what would happen: they would become the entity they wished to be, and be permanently not controlled by the player anymore.  In effect, since the character didn't exist anymore and what the character became isn't controlled by the player, they've effectively committed suicide-by-wish.

But... isn't the purpose of a game session to have the PCs defeat the bad guy? I have issues with a narrative set up expressly for that purpose suddenly saying "nope, it's not you" just to spite a player's wish.

Unless the whole game is set up to spite the players, in which case, getting to the bad guy only to find out "oh yeah, you need to find this god to defeat the bad guy" turns it into another quest to find this god (or be wished into becoming the god in question).

[Biz]

I watched a duel between 2 stone tanks once. they called it a draw after 30 min.

It took them 30 minutes to realize nothing would happen? I'm surprised they even agreed to a duel in the first place, haha.

[LaughingAlex]

Don't Scrappers crit more than most? Isnt that 2x Dmg when that happens?

They crit 5% of the time, but see even critical strikes are subject to damage resistances, and when your facing 90% damage resistance your damage is reduced to only 10%.  If it was 10% of the time even then thats not enough because the tanker is CONSISTENTLY doing more damage to the scrapper than the scrapper does to the tanker with the same powersets in the case of resistances.  Scrappers could only get up to 75% damage resistance, meaning they take two and a half times more damage total.  I showed the math in a post above. 

1.125 * .1 = .125
.75 * .25 = 1.875

Tanker does about 50% more damage than the scrapper with every hit, so even criticals are not going to make up for that.

Scrappers had the same problem when facing brutes before a balance pass lowered the brutes damage slightly, in that brutes were out-damaging scrappers simply cause they didn't depend on critical strikes to do their highest damage.

[Arcana]

But... isn't the purpose of a game session to have the PCs defeat the bad guy? I have issues with a narrative set up expressly for that purpose suddenly saying "nope, it's not you" just to spite a player's wish.

Unless the whole game is set up to spite the players, in which case, getting to the bad guy only to find out "oh yeah, you need to find this god to defeat the bad guy" turns it into another quest to find this god (or be wished into becoming the god in question).

If you were intended to be the hero that defeats the villain mentioned in the wish, then the wish would do nothing.  But that presumes the player wishing cast the wish specifically to be the hero that defeats the villain the actual campaign intended for them to kill.  Munchkins don't always wish for that; they sometimes wish to be extremely powerful heroes capable of defeating things the campaign didn't intend to be defeatable by the players.

[MegaWatt]

"i want to be bale to one hit perma kill the tarasque" 'alright you are now an orb of annihilation....bye !'

[Twisted Toon]

A friend of mine was playing a Stone Tank in one of the PvP zones once, and was attacked by a Brute. He never said what the power-sets the Brute had were. They battled for a while, and then decided to call it a draw. After they bowed to each other and parted ways, my friend noticed a circle of spectators had gathered to watch the fight.

[ivanhedgehog]

It took them 30 minutes to realize nothing would happen? I'm surprised they even agreed to a duel in the first place, haha.

they were both moderately drunk