Let's talk about pre-20 endurance management.

[Pippy]

Okay, so I know that this comes up pretty regularly, but usually in the form of "GIEV ME STAMINA NAO 4 FREE!!!" threads. I'd like to stay away from that, and instead look at the possibility of making the 1-19 game a little easier on the blue bar. As has been pointed out ad nauseum, there are tons of ways to mitigate endurance usage: accolades, Stamina and other +recovery/+end powers, slotting for endrx, IO sets, etc.

However, most of these tend to be much less effective in the early game. Consequently, I find that when I'm soloing, I am continually having serious endurance problems -- generally seem to have to stop and wait to recover about every other fight, fighting on tenacious or rugged. (I like my bosses to be bosses, thank you.) While one could maybe make a case that there's nothing wrong with this, or that I should lern2playn00b, I doubt I'm the only one that has a problem with the status quo.

(Along similar lines, waiting around for the green bar to regenerate is also pretty aggravating. Quite simply, the downtime that seems to be a necessary part of the pre-20 game strikes me as an unnessecary time-sink, and is for me at least something of a barrier to leveling up lowbie alts. At least for me -- YMMV.)

So, with that said, here are a couple possibilities for ways to make the early game a little more endurance friendly for your average soloist:

1.) Reduce (or eliminate) the recharge on Rest.

I have a hard time with arguments that this would enable exploits, simply because it's impossible to contribute to XP-gain while you're in Rest. Similarly, the long activation time enforces a non-trivial amount of down-time -- to go from blinking-red to full health generally takes 15-20 seconds. I'd argue that this is close to the maximum amount of downtime you can have before boredom sets in.

A short (<30-60 s) recharge on rest would be balanced by your vulnerability while resting. In general, regardless of the recharge on Rest, you're always better not resting, except when not resting would lead to a trip to the ER. So I can't agree with the argument that balance requires a long recharge on Rest.

2.) Zero endurance use for Brawl (and possibly the origin inherents.)

Other MMOs have a free "auto-attack" that you can always use, regardless of whether or not you have any "mana" or whatever left -- WoW always lets you take a normal swing with your basic weapons, for example. One of the reasons why running out of endurance is so problematic in CoX is the fact that you absolutely can't do anything when the blue bar is empty. Making Brawl an endurance-free attack would allow you to maintain at least some offensive output even when you're out of endurance, albeit at a greatly reduced level. While making CoX like other MMOs is not a desirable goal in and of itself, I think this is one area in which it could be useful.

3.) Longer duration on toggle pulses.

Along similar lines, suppose that toggles continued to provide defense for, say, 4-5 seconds after they shut off -- perhaps at a reduced level. (I'm pretty sure there are straightforward ways to implement this with current game mechanics.) In this way, you'd have a few seconds to respond to endurance drain before your defenses shut down.

4.) Endurance discount at low levels.

Basically just like doing for endurance what they already did for accuracy. Pretty straightforward in concept, not sure how easy it would be to implement.

I'm not suggesting that all of these be added -- that would probably be overkill. If it were entirely up to me, I'd use some form of 1 and 2, as I'm sort of less enthusiastic about 3 and 4.

What do y'all think?

[Jibikao]

1. Don't do anything at relentless or even ruthless and waste a lot of endurance by missing.

2. Don't bother with +dmg. Just +acc and -end if endurance is such a big issue.

3. Just don't waste attacks if you don't need to. I've seen people wasting heavy hits on a target that only has 5% health left. Just wait for the tier 1 to cycle back. It doesn't take that long.

Rest often. :)


I really don't see a big issue with endurance before stamina. The +acc newbie buff is already so good.

[YuriFoxfirega]

I find that most of my End issues are solved at 12 with the introduction of DOs (and thus the slotting of EndRedux and Accuracy into my attacks and most frequently used powers), personally.

And I find that, even Redside, one good, solid team can take me to 12 in just a few hours at the absolute worst, and that generally it's not an issue for me.

That said, shortening Rest's recharge rate wouldn't be a bad thing, but I'd say also that I'd be willing to sacrifice some of it's overall effectiveness to compensate for it.

End discounts, I'm not so much in-jive with, because it helps teach newer players proper endurance management (that is golden later on), and teaches old players trying new things how to balance stuff out with their new combination

Regarding Brawl and Toggles... Eh. I don't really find them that big of a drain on my overall endurance, and don't think adjusting either is really necessary, or helpful to the greater problem as a whole (endurance management).

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
1. Don't do anything at relentless or even ruthless and waste a lot of endurance by missing.

[/ QUOTE ]

In general, missing doesn't become a major endurance drain with sufficient accuracy slotting. Which isn't too hard to get.

[ QUOTE ]
2. Don't bother with +dmg. Just +acc and -end if endurance is such a big issue.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's not necessarily entirely good advice. Damage increases dpe exactly as much as -end does, but it also increases dps.

In general, I'd slot accuracy first, damage second, then endurance as needed, with the rest going to recharge. The problem is that at the low levels, you don't necessarily have the slots (or the money!) to get that much benefit past the accuracy slotting.

[ QUOTE ]
Just don't waste attacks if you don't need to. I've seen people wasting heavy hits on a target that only has 5% health left. Just wait for the tier 1 to cycle back. It doesn't take that long.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is true, but I really don't think that pre-20 endurance problems can be entirely chalked up to using Cremate instead of Scorch.

[ QUOTE ]
Rest often.

[/ QUOTE ]

See #1 in the OP. :)

[Miladys_Knight]

I agree with your point here and I want to approach it a bit differently.

The view point of a brand New CoX player. You don't know anyone so getting inf assistance is unlikely. You don't have a super group. You have no clue how to use the market much less gain inf rather than lose inf through it. You may not have (or want at least until you can run the basic controls well enough not to look like a total n00b) a team and your first impression of the game is the make it break it of whether you enjoy it enough to continue playing past the trial.

When you are a brand new player running out of end continually may be the make it or break it of whether you want to switch from trial to paying.

If you use the inf you get to continually up date your TOs (which makes sense if you read any of the tutorial information) you won't have enough at level 12 to buy more than 1 or 2 DOs.

Even on Heroic about 1/3 of spawns in missions are +1 critters. You can use an entire end bar (not to mention health bar) trying to defeat a single +1 lieutenant and you can spend that end in less than 1/3 of the recharge time of rest.

Keeping all that in mind I would suggest.....

1) Cuting the recharge time on rest by 50-75%. I have to rest every other to every third spawn with a non-twinked toon prior to DOs. I generally only slot what TOs drop and I sell all my salvage drops at the market at inflated prices to be able to afford a complete set of DOs at level 12.

2) Tweak (weigh) the TOs that drop. Yes I know that they are all ready weighted but even as it is it's not weighted even close to the reality of what you need. I can't remember a time ever on any alt (I have many) that I ever was able to have an unexpired acc and/or an unexpired end red in every power that I had from slotting drops but that after a couple of missions I have an entire tray full of stuns, ranges, defense debuffs, to hit debuffs, to hit buffs, etc. At this level it is a total waste to slot for anything but the basics. More priority on the RNG dropping acc and end red might even steer the newb in the right direction for slotting powers.

3) Adjust the costs of TOs and DOs. In this day of inventions is it really over powered for a newbie to be able to have unexpired TOs in each and every slot? Is it even over powered to allow them to be able to afford a full set of DOs at level 12 or 13? I don't think so. I'd cut the cost of TOs by 90% and DOs by 50%. If you slot carefully in the early levels you still should have enough influence to slot a complete (or nearly complete) set of SOs at 22 the same as any veteran player that can use the market or transfer influence from an alt. Do we really want to put the new player off? Not being able to fill a slot with an enhancement takes much of the excitement out of getting new slots as you level.

[BrokenPrey]

[ QUOTE ]
This is true, but I really don't think that pre-20 endurance problems can be entirely chalked up to using Cremate instead of Scorch.


[/ QUOTE ]

maybe not Cremate but don't use a AoE to kill one guy that is almost dead, and yes it does wates a lot of end. AoE have higher End cost then ST attacks and also I would do that post 20 too.

[Vox Populi]

[ QUOTE ]
The view point of a brand New CoX player. You don't know anyone so getting inf assistance is unlikely. You don't have a super group. You have no clue how to use the market much less gain inf rather than lose inf through it. You may not have (or want at least until you can run the basic controls well enough not to look like a total n00b) a team and your first impression of the game is the make it break it of whether you enjoy it enough to continue playing past the trial.

When you are a brand new player running out of end continually may be the make it or break it of whether you want to switch from trial to paying.

[/ QUOTE ]
I understand the point, but this isn't really different than any other game. When you start a new game, you usually don't have a very good idea of what you're doing, and you're not very good at the game. A game without a learning curve would have to be incredibly shallow.

Balancing Endurance in the early levels is a tricky issue. On one hand, yeah- sometimes it can be not very fun. On the other hand, you're supposed to weaker in the early levels and become progessively more powerful and self-sufficient. You're not supposed to be buzzsawing through enemies on your own early on.

It's a tricky balance between not making the early levels too frustrating, and not making them a cakewalk.

[Sailboat]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The view point of a brand New CoX player. You don't know anyone so getting inf assistance is unlikely. You don't have a super group. You have no clue how to use the market much less gain inf rather than lose inf through it. You may not have (or want at least until you can run the basic controls well enough not to look like a total n00b) a team and your first impression of the game is the make it break it of whether you enjoy it enough to continue playing past the trial.

When you are a brand new player running out of end continually may be the make it or break it of whether you want to switch from trial to paying.

[/ QUOTE ]
I understand the point, but this isn't really different than any other game. When you start a new game, you usually don't have a very good idea of what you're doing, and you're not very good at the game. A game without a learning curve would have to be incredibly shallow.

Balancing Endurance in the early levels is a tricky issue. On one hand, yeah- sometimes it can be not very fun. On the other hand, you're supposed to weaker in the early levels and become progessively more powerful and self-sufficient. You're not supposed to be buzzsawing through enemies on your own early on.

It's a tricky balance between not making the early levels too frustrating, and not making them a cakewalk.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah -- how would you know you'd become more powerful if you started out fully capable?

[AprilShade]

Sometimes I wish we got more blue inspirations in the early game.

That'd solve lots of endurance problems without fidgiting with the mechanics.

[Miyabi]

[ QUOTE ]
1.) Reduce (or eliminate) the recharge on Rest.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's already pretty quick. I drop a recharge in it, to make it come back even quicker. With hasten and 1 recharge IO, it's up just about every minute.

[ QUOTE ]
2.) Zero endurance use for Brawl (and possibly the origin inherents.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Geeeeeeaaaargh no, for one reason, two words; PROC PUNCH

[ QUOTE ]
3.) Longer duration on toggle pulses.

[/ QUOTE ]

Could just have the shields tick their cost less frequently. But shields don't have as adverse an effect on end usage as ANYTHING ELSE. Attacks/buffspam/debuffspam > shield for endurance leeching.

[ QUOTE ]
4.) Endurance discount at low levels.

[/ QUOTE ]

That'd be nice.

I suggest something like Beginner's Luck for Endurance. You're hella energetic and rip-roaring to go on your new hero/villain trout chucker head bopper. I mean, who wouldn't be if you just busted out of jail/learned you can create/control/trow trout at people?

Then you get old. And tired. At like, clearance level 20. And you can barely wake up in the morning without groaning and trow trouting the alarm clock, muttering how everything tastes like fish.

...

[Luminara]

[ QUOTE ]
Okay, so I know that this comes up pretty regularly, but usually in the form of "GIEV ME STAMINA NAO 4 FREE!!!" threads. I'd like to stay away from that, and instead look at the possibility of making the 1-19 game a little easier on the blue bar.

[/ QUOTE ]

We just got that not very long ago. Beginner's Luck. Less missing, less endurance wasted on missed attacks, more endurance available to attack more frequently or with heavier hitters, and since it scales down slowly, it gives the player time to acquire DOs or IOs to enhance accuracy, thus compensating for the gradual falloff of BL and continuing the endurance preservation when it's needed most.

Since BL was implemented, I've only had low level endurance problems with one character, a dominator, and that AT has its own endurance supplementary option.

[Supernumiphone]

Well I'm one of the people who has massive end troubles at the lower levels. Rest doesn't recharge nearly fast enough, so once I'm out of end and rest isn't recharged, I tend to go AFK for a while, or Alt-Tab and do something else for a while. IMO no game should force frequent periods of inactivity on you, especially at the lower levels where newer people will first experience the game.

Yes, I slot accuracy. I know better than to waste big attacks and AOEs when they're not necessary. I like to keep moving, and usually one or two spawns is it, and if rest isn't up, time for a break.

I see the long recharge on rest as a legacy of old game design that hasn't been rethought in the modern gaming environment.

As for brawl and the origin temp power, maybe it would be going too far to make them end free, but at least lower the end cost. Brawl has a much worse DPE than any standard attack. Same for the origin temp. Why, of all things, would the powers that are used almost exclusively (aside from Brutes) at the lowest levels, pre-Stamina, have such unusually high end costs? It's completely backwards. If anything it should be flipped, so they cost less end than regular attacks to help through the lower levels.

As for an end discount at the lower levels, along the same line as beginner's luck, I'm all for it. When we first got beginner's luck I figured it would take care of most of my end troubles, since I wouldn't be missing as much. It did help, but is not nearly enough. Being able to rest more often would have a similar effect, but an end discount would remove the need to constantly pause every two spawns.

[_Laxx_]

QR

I'm not going to break your post down point by point. Rather, I'm going to point out that I frequently take my characters from 1-27 without using a single enhancement. Granted, my play experience probably lends a great deal to my ability to handle my blue bar for 27 levels without any kind of endurance management tools (outside of Stamina at 20 on some of them). Taking this into account, I'm going to talk specifically about the 1-20 section.

It's as simple as not speeding around as fast as you can to kill as quick as you can. Honest. Knowing that you have few powers, either to keep yourself alive or to defeat your foe, should key you in on a pace you may want to play at if you want to move through missions with minimal breaks. While I personally have no issue stopping every 3-4 spawns to take a knee, I'm aware that some people just don't want to have to stop. In order for them to not stop, though, they need to slow down and most aren't willing to do this (or think they shouldn't have to).

That's my take on it. If the player just slew down in their "pre-Stamina" days, they'd find that their blue bar is much more full than they'd expect. Taking a shift from a fully-enhanced character to a not-enhanced character can have this kind of "I don't have enough Endurance!" backlash.

[PSI_lence]

it depends on the AT im useing (really only have end issues with tanks and brutes at low lvs and to a much lesser degree trollers and doms) if a willpower or fire tank this is solved pretty early by quick recovery or consume

always turn of sprint of course (and not just for the fight and turn it back on to sprint to the next on 1/2 a blue bar but when you enter the mission turn sprint off unless your ends nearly gone and you have to excape)

if you dont mind either "wasting" your second build by making some odd choices for slots early on or if you have a vet respec try putting 2 or even 3 recharges in rest maybe one or more in haste also sure that means less slots for things you want but its really not that much and you can have a slot in it and one in a power youd normally slot
(once you get higher just /respec and sell all the enh you got pick your powers the way you want and go slot them as you would with only 1 slot in rest etc

(for tanks eraly on i also do nothing but slot my toggles for end red since if the toggles drop i have0 dmg resist or defence so better to have .17/s drain with lower def then .26/s with only slightly higher def or dmg resist
and just because you have a toggle doesnt mean it needs to be on ALL the time you dont need to have energy shields on for fighting snakes and if your surounded by 4 hellion slammers and one buckshot kill the damed and drop your energy defence and keep your smashing active)

not sure how all that works (never put more then one slot in rest myself) as for making rest not have a recharge though i think that whould be a bit overkill especially in teams where 7 members could cover for you drawing agro from the GM or AV while you rotated so eveyone had full end all the time you want rest to come up faster sacrafice slots to it (hell even slot interupt reduction in it to rest 'n' run without waiting as long for rest to take effect

[Warkupo]

My first thought when I joined this game was "holy crap, that guy is flying.' and 'holy crap, I can jump!' rather than 'what is the best way to min-max my endurance bar so that I can acheive the greatest desired dps over a period of time.'

Point being, new players don't know that their endurance is a problem yet. Especially coming off a slower MMO, it's probably entirely acceptable to them. It's only later, when you know what you had, that you begin missing it.


That being said, I don't have many endurance issues at the lower levels anymore. When at the 'TO stage' I stick mostly to acc for all my powers, and endredux for any toggles. I typically hold off on most toggles until DO's, but always take my status resistance (when applicaple) as soon as possible. I mostly build toward getting any useful passives, a quick 3 power attack chain, and a travel power and stamina.

Far beyond anything I can do to ease my stamina use, however, is using inspirations. I save every blue inspiration until I need it, and convert every inspiration into a blue as soon as I get three of them. Just doing this, I rarely find myself needing to rest at any level, nevermind 1-20.

[imported_CrazyCorsaire]

[QR]
I play a ton of alts, and I had played twenty characters past 10 before I had one hit 20. I never hit end problems except when scrambling in a life or death situation. Then when I got my first character to 20 and got stamina, all my other alts started having end problems.

Stamina and EndRdx SOs let you button mash continuously. Most any other MMO I've played, I had to pace attacks to manage mana or stamina or whatnot. I did that here until I learned it could be better. A half second or so delay before mashing the next button would make a huge difference.

Now I'm back to fine (barring a few ATs that have poor End early attacks, like tankers seem awful for DPE) I just pace the attacks, take a small breather between fights and save the blues for LT fights. And I aggressively manage toggles, almost never sprint between fights, if minions aren't hurting me much I turn off defense toggles, etc.

However, I could totally see rest being on a much shorter recharge. It has enough other burdens built into it.

[Psyonico]

(QR)

I think the real key is greatly reducing the recharge in rest (probably in the neighborhood of 60-75%.) I see no reason for it to take 3 mins to recharge. other than a blatant time sink. I know of other games that have an out-of-combat buff to health/endurance recovery for the entire game, I don't see why rest, a power that makes you incredibly vulnerable, shouldn't be available nearly all the time.

As for brawl... I could see it costing 0 endurance only if the devs removed the ability to put sets into it, otherwise, lowering the end to 1 or 1.5 would probably be sufficient.

[MasterGabriel]

[ QUOTE ]
Okay, so I know that this comes up pretty regularly, but usually in the form of "GIEV ME STAMINA NAO 4 FREE!!!" threads. I'd like to stay away from that, and instead look at the possibility of making the 1-19 game a little easier on the blue bar. As has been pointed out ad nauseum, there are tons of ways to mitigate endurance usage: accolades, Stamina and other +recovery/+end powers, slotting for endrx, IO sets, etc.

However, most of these tend to be much less effective in the early game. Consequently, I find that when I'm soloing, I am continually having serious endurance problems -- generally seem to have to stop and wait to recover about every other fight, fighting on tenacious or rugged. (I like my bosses to be bosses, thank you.) While one could maybe make a case that there's nothing wrong with this, or that I should lern2playn00b, I doubt I'm the only one that has a problem with the status quo.

(Along similar lines, waiting around for the green bar to regenerate is also pretty aggravating. Quite simply, the downtime that seems to be a necessary part of the pre-20 game strikes me as an unnessecary time-sink, and is for me at least something of a barrier to leveling up lowbie alts. At least for me -- YMMV.)

So, with that said, here are a couple possibilities for ways to make the early game a little more endurance friendly for your average soloist:

1.) Reduce (or eliminate) the recharge on Rest.

I have a hard time with arguments that this would enable exploits, simply because it's impossible to contribute to XP-gain while you're in Rest. Similarly, the long activation time enforces a non-trivial amount of down-time -- to go from blinking-red to full health generally takes 15-20 seconds. I'd argue that this is close to the maximum amount of downtime you can have before boredom sets in.

A short (<30-60 s) recharge on rest would be balanced by your vulnerability while resting. In general, regardless of the recharge on Rest, you're always better not resting, except when not resting would lead to a trip to the ER. So I can't agree with the argument that balance requires a long recharge on Rest.

2.) Zero endurance use for Brawl (and possibly the origin inherents.)

Other MMOs have a free "auto-attack" that you can always use, regardless of whether or not you have any "mana" or whatever left -- WoW always lets you take a normal swing with your basic weapons, for example. One of the reasons why running out of endurance is so problematic in CoX is the fact that you absolutely can't do anything when the blue bar is empty. Making Brawl an endurance-free attack would allow you to maintain at least some offensive output even when you're out of endurance, albeit at a greatly reduced level. While making CoX like other MMOs is not a desirable goal in and of itself, I think this is one area in which it could be useful.

3.) Longer duration on toggle pulses.

Along similar lines, suppose that toggles continued to provide defense for, say, 4-5 seconds after they shut off -- perhaps at a reduced level. (I'm pretty sure there are straightforward ways to implement this with current game mechanics.) In this way, you'd have a few seconds to respond to endurance drain before your defenses shut down.

4.) Endurance discount at low levels.

Basically just like doing for endurance what they already did for accuracy. Pretty straightforward in concept, not sure how easy it would be to implement.

I'm not suggesting that all of these be added -- that would probably be overkill. If it were entirely up to me, I'd use some form of 1 and 2, as I'm sort of less enthusiastic about 3 and 4.

What do y'all think?

[/ QUOTE ]

One accuracy, one Endurance, and one Damage in each of my attacks before I hit 20 pretty much eliminates my endurance problems on anything but the lowest damage of Archetypes. If you are running a Defender or Controller you have to slot your heals, buffs, and debuffs for endurance for a little while. 1 endurance redux for every 2 other enhancements is a good rule of thumb. on defenders and controllers you may have to choose between healing, debuffing, and attacking but that is why you are playing a team oriented AT.

[Nethergoat]

[ QUOTE ]

I really don't see a big issue with endurance before stamina.

[/ QUOTE ]

ditto.

There are a tremendous # of options available to circumvent annoyance.

My current favorite is slotting cheap set IOs that give +rec bonuses.

My fire/axe tank breezed through to 20 thanks to slotting for end redux and +rec...if he can do it, anyone can.

Options are there for those who choose to seek them out.
No need to spoon-feed players everything.

[Pippy]

(QR)

[ QUOTE ]
I really don't see a big issue with endurance before stamina.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, but lots of other players do.

I'm certainly not going to come out and say that everyone has problems with endurance management pre-20 -- that's manifestly not the case. By the same token, the fact that some people do not have problems managing their endurance in the early game does not necessarily imply that the status quo is perfectly fine. Enough people do seem to have problems with it, and it's a sufficiently unfun form of challenge to those that do have to deal with it that it seems pretty clear to me that it could use a little bit of attention.

My own experience is that I'm generally fine on endurance -- i.e., I don't run dry before Rest recharges -- when I'm teaming. When I'm solo, though, I either have to spend time standing around between individual attacks, or spend more time standing around between fights. Either way, I personally find it to be an irritating time sink rather than a challenge. (I don't think I'm alone in that opinion.) So I guess I would be curious as to how much those that are not having end problems are running solo vs. teaming.

I'd also have to ask who would be hurt with a shorter recharge on Rest. The 1-20 game is a comparatively small fraction of the total 1-50 game, timewise, so reducing down-time here isn't going to suddenly make people zip to 50 five times quicker. (In fact, I'd probably roll even more alts if the lowbie game were more enjoyable to me.) I've heard that it would make regen, empaths, and other stuff that can provide +regen/+recov less attractive, but I don't think that argument holds water: rest is (except in some extreme corner cases) useless in combat, and takes a pretty long time even to activate in the first place.

So what arguments are there against lowering the recharge on Rest, other than that wouldn't be necessary for some characters who are okay on endurance already?

[Pippy]

Regarding lowering/eliminating the endurance costs on Brawl:

I for one wouldn't see endurance-free six-slotted Brawl with a bunch of procs in it as particularly unbalancing. That might seem strange on its face, but I think you have to look at this in the context of the opportunity cost of such a power.

First of all, most lowbies aren't going to be able to pick up a bunch of procs -- they're not cheap! Secondly -- and stop me if I'm wrong here, I'm not checking this too closely -- since Brawl is just straight-up ST damage with no slottable secondary effects, there aren't too many procs you could use. ToD+Hecatomb, and then the chance for KD from Kinetic Combat (I think) would be about all you could add, right? Compare that to what you can do with, say, Gambler's Cut, Neutrino Bolt, etc., and Brawl as a proc-mule doesn't look quite as good. Furthermore, by the time you get far enough in to have collected all of this stuff, you're probably well past the point where endurance management is an issue for most builds. Also, you have to look at the opportunity cost -- 5 slots in Brawl is five slots you can't use elsewhere. I think it might be interesting to make Brawl sufficiently attractive that slotting it up could be a worthwhile choice. It would add more choices, more diversity, and I'm having trouble imagining any particularly game-breaking scenario that would arise as a result. (I'd be very interested to be proven wrong on this though...)

Be that as it may, it's completely unclear to me why Brawl should have a DPE which is so much worse than just a normal attack. At the very least, given Brawl's weakness, it shouldn't be an end-hog as well.

[Nethergoat]

[ QUOTE ]


Yeah, but lots of other players do.

[/ QUOTE ]

Options are available for anyone who cares to use them.

Back in the day, when options were fewer and the gaming environment was harsher, there were valid complaints to make.

Now, with xp smoothing and IO sets and temp travel powers and all the other amenities that have graded the highway of the lower levels to a relatively flat plane, heaven forbid you have to spend a few hours of your character's life paying attention to your endurance usage!

My advice to anyone who feels persecuted by the first 20 levels of the game is suck it up.

Failing that, try slotting some end redux in key powers.
Don't run your toggles 24/7.
Grab a couple of cheap set IOs that give +rec.
Store endurance inspirations for big fights- turn other insp drops you get into endurance.
Buy medium end inspirations on the market- I regularly pick them up for less than 100 inf (I turn them into something else, but if you need end there they are).


The burden of the first 20 stamina-free levels doesn't need further lightening, they've already jettisoned most of the weight.

[Aura_Familia]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


Yeah, but lots of other players do.

[/ QUOTE ]

Options are available for anyone who cares to use them.

Back in the day, when options were fewer and the gaming environment was harsher, there were valid complaints to make.

Now, with xp smoothing and IO sets and temp travel powers and all the other amenities that have graded the highway of the lower levels to a relatively flat plane, heaven forbid you have to spend a few hours of your character's life paying attention to your endurance usage!

My advice to anyone who feels persecuted by the first 20 levels of the game is suck it up.

Failing that, try slotting some end redux in key powers.
Don't run your toggles 24/7.
Grab a couple of cheap set IOs that give +rec.
Store endurance inspirations for big fights- turn other insp drops you get into endurance.
Buy medium end inspirations on the market- I regularly pick them up for less than 100 inf (I turn them into something else, but if you need end there they are).


The burden of the first 20 stamina-free levels doesn't need further lightening, they've already jettisoned most of the weight.

[/ QUOTE ]

qft. The days of having no other option but stamina are long gone.
Hell the days of having no other option but to slot end redux are long gone.

I don't understand how any can complain about end management nowadays at any level.

[Neogumbercules]

Anyone else remember when Rest had a 20 minute recharge? I think I had it like 4 slotted back on my first character when I started playing in I4.

[Nethergoat]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone else remember when Rest had a 20 minute recharge? I think I had it like 4 slotted back on my first character when I started playing in I4.

[/ QUOTE ]

Indeed.

It used to be something that was available every other mission.
Now....I can't remember the last time I needed to rest and it wasn't up.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone else remember when Rest had a 20 minute recharge? I think I had it like 4 slotted back on my first character when I started playing in I4.

[/ QUOTE ]

At release it was a 10 minute recharge. Not quite as bad as a 20 minute, but still pretty bad.

Nethergoat's "Back in my day we had to run through the snow uphill both ways to our missions and by God we were grateful for it" notwithstanding, I'd still be pretty interested in hearing any argument for why lowering the recharge on Rest would be bad. The only argument I've heard is that there are enough alternatives to using Rest that lowering the recharge is unnecessary, which is a completely different situation.

Not to mention that said alternatives are in general less viable at lower levels, which is precisely the situation I'm whining about.

[Jibikao]

[ QUOTE ]
(QR)

[ QUOTE ]
I really don't see a big issue with endurance before stamina.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, but lots of other players do.


[/ QUOTE ]

Says who? The people on the forum?? I would consider people spending time here all the time pretty "hardcore". Yes, that means you and me are one of them.

Hardcore players tend to want everything in their way. They want stamina-free, 100% hitting rate, or maybe i-WIN button if they can get it.

I consider having a bit of endurance problem and not having much problem a "progress". I create a character that actually "grows". Yes, this means I go from resting often to not resting at all. I buy sets so I rarely rest. I carefully plan my build so I don't rest much. I do that because my character actually GROWS.

I think Beginner's Luck is very sufficient. I don't do missions that are too hard before SOs (so I miss even less). I try to team more (I find teaming between lvl 1-20 much easier for some reasons). I try not to waste attacks when I don't need to (like don't waste your Knockout Blow on a dying enemy or use an AoE to finish off a dying enemy). I am still amazed by how many people leave their Sprint. Sprint costs quite a bit!


I think what you want is Endurance-free right?

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
Says who?

[/ QUOTE ]

Per Castle, "lots" of characters take Stamina. Exactly what percentage this entails I don't know, but it's safe to assume it's pretty high. Since Stamina obviously doesn't provide any benefit to a character that already has enough endurance, I would consider taking Stamina to be reasonably compelling evidence of endurance issues.

Given that (a) non-Stamina options for endurance management become more powerful post-20 and (b) taking Stamina at 20 requires a substantial investment in character development (3 powers out of 12 total powers available at level 20) I would further contend that taking Stamina at level 20 is a very strong indication of endurance issues pre-20. I don't have hard numbers for you -- I wish I did. But I'm fairly confident that the number of characters that take Stamina (or a comparable power, like Quick Recovery) as soon as it becomes available is not small.

[ QUOTE ]
Hardcore players tend to want everything in their way. They want stamina-free, 100% hitting rate, or maybe i-WIN button if they can get it... I think what you want is Endurance-free right?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure where you're getting this from. Since I've not asked for free Stamina -- in fact I explicitly said that I DON'T want free Stamina -- I can only assume that this straw man is a result of frustration stemming from previous discussions of endurance issues. Be that as it may, it's pretty clear that it's not a fair criticism of anything I've propounded here.

[ QUOTE ]
I consider having a bit of endurance problem and not having much problem a "progress". I create a character that actually "grows". Yes, this means I go from resting often to not resting at all. I buy sets so I rarely rest. I carefully plan my build so I don't rest much. I do that because my character actually GROWS.

[/ QUOTE ]

Non sequitur. Designing a game in such a way that character progression is obvious and satisfying does not demand forced down-time in the early game. Also, I'd be perfectly happy to progress from resting often to not needing to rest at all. Unfortunately, its long recharge precludes the possibility of resting often.

Once again, I'll ask how anything you've said shows why reducing the recharge on Rest is a bad idea.

[KidDiscordia]

I think that this issue has less to do with new players having trouble learning how to manage their Endurance bar and more about players who are use to having SOs/IOs and Stamina and don't want to have to pay attention to their Endurance bars.

You keep asking for reasons why reducing the timer would be bad, but I haven't seen a good reason why the current system is broken. There is no risk in using Rest unless you do it in the middle of a fight, so the current debuffs are trivial. Your reduced timer idea also does not address the fact that it also is a self heal.

Finally if all else fails and none of the other options given for End Bar management works for you, you can always put more than the default slot into Rest to reduce Recharge time. Afterall Respecs area about as common as Costume tokens these days.

[Twisted Toon]

[ QUOTE ]
Per Castle, "lots" of characters take Stamina. Exactly what percentage this entails I don't know, but it's safe to assume it's pretty high. Since Stamina obviously doesn't provide any benefit to a character that already has enough endurance, I would consider taking Stamina to be reasonably compelling evidence of endurance issues.

[/ QUOTE ]
You're making an assumption from a faulty premise. The reasons for people taking Stamina are not shown in the data-mining of how many people take it.

I would bet that many people take Stamina because they were told to take it when they first started playing, then that became the "way" the game was "supposed" to be played. There are very few character builds that I have that "require" Stamina, and those only because I have a certain play-style with those particular characters.

Sorry to hi-jack this thread...

//Hi-jack

[imported_CrazyCorsaire]

Though I like the idea of reduced rest because I run a ton of alts and on those that really feel the end crunch or lack self healing would love it. However, I can propose a couple of arguments against:

1) Rest provides a punitive function in the game, sloppy health and/or endurance management is never "beaten" out of new players and will eventually catch up with them.

2) An easy out for endurance issues early devalues tough decisions on slotting (should I take dmg or recharge or end redux.)

3) If rest recharge were shortened, I'd never get my wife to stop using brawl on every fight.

4) The change would overly favor high damage oriented archetypes, because they can play as fast at a higher level of risk for more reward if they have constant easy out for damage taken and endurance spent.

Example on #4: I've started a fire/mind blaster. He runs about as fast as my claws/wp new character. If he had rest after each encounter, he would open with fireball and firebreath every time and likely raise his notoriety and still move through mobs faster than the claws/wp character.

[Psyonico]

[ QUOTE ]
I think that this issue has less to do with new players having trouble learning how to manage their Endurance bar and more about players who are use to having SOs/IOs and Stamina and don't want to have to pay attention to their Endurance bars.

You keep asking for reasons why reducing the timer would be bad, but I haven't seen a good reason why the current system is broken. There is no risk in using Rest unless you do it in the middle of a fight, so the current debuffs are trivial. Your reduced timer idea also does not address the fact that it also is a self heal.

Finally if all else fails and none of the other options given for End Bar management works for you, you can always put more than the default slot into Rest to reduce Recharge time. Afterall Respecs area about as common as Costume tokens these days.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are arguing toward the fact that we should have to stand around waiting for our hp/end to return at a rather low rate while rest is recharging...

That is rather strange.

Look, here's the deal, give me *one* good reason why standing around for 2 minutes after a fight is better than standing around for 15 seconds after a fight. I can give you a compelling reason for the opposite... it means I can spend more time actually playing the game and less time waiting to play the game.

[Pippy]

I understand there may be a certain amount of devil's advocacy in your post. That said, a few thoughts:

[ QUOTE ]
Rest provides a punitive function in the game, sloppy health and/or endurance management is never "beaten" out of new players and will eventually catch up with them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Debt does this rather well. Sloppy health management is just as likely to send you to the ER as it is to leave you needing to wait around for Rest to recharge.

[ QUOTE ]
An easy out for endurance issues early devalues tough decisions on slotting (should I take dmg or recharge or end redux.)

[/ QUOTE ]

This probably the strongest argument. However, the ubiquity of IO sets seems to indicate that the devs are moving away from tough decisions on slotting, at least for those who can afford to have it all. (Which is pretty much everyone who's willing to wait for it.)

It's also worth mentioning that using Rest, even with instant recharge, imposes a penalty: you can't possibly do any damage when you're resting. And if there's anything around you that might be hostile, you'll probably have a long run back from the ER. (Of course, that's a full health/end heal -- clearly the "Go to Hospital" button needs a longer recharge!)

[ QUOTE ]
If rest recharge were shortened, I'd never get my wife to stop using brawl on every fight.

[/ QUOTE ]

I got nothing on this one... :p

[ QUOTE ]
The change would overly favor high damage oriented archetypes, because they can play as fast at a higher level of risk for more reward if they have constant easy out for damage taken and endurance spent.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your example notwithstanding, in general this isn't true. Low damage ATs have to spend more endurance per point of damage that they inflict, and therefore are more likely to be hurting for endurance than higher-damage ATs.

[ QUOTE ]
I've started a fire/mind blaster. He runs about as fast as my claws/wp new character. If he had rest after each encounter, he would open with fireball and firebreath every time and likely raise his notoriety and still move through mobs faster than the claws/wp character.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm going to assume that your fire/mind plays similarly to my fire/fire. In general, the problem with (fire) blasters isn't kill speed, it's survivability. My AoEs let me throw out orange numbers that are far beyond what my DB/WP was doing at a similar level (with DB and claws being actually pretty similar in damage output). He runs through mobs super quick. He's also way more likely to get debt than my scrapper would be, if I weren't more likely to try stupid stuff on my scrapper.

Actually, I take that back. I try plenty of stupid stuff on my blaster too. Especially if I've been playing my scrapper a lot...

[Bosstone]

[ QUOTE ]
I would bet that many people take Stamina because they were told to take it when they first started playing, then that became the "way" the game was "supposed" to be played.

[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed. I've noticed several recent threads in the specific AT forums where most of the posters take Stamina as a given, even on Willpower and Regen builds.

[JD_Gumby]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I would bet that many people take Stamina because they were told to take it when they first started playing, then that became the "way" the game was "supposed" to be played.

[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed. I've noticed several recent threads in the specific AT forums where most of the posters take Stamina as a given, even on Willpower and Regen builds.

[/ QUOTE ]

Only because they're being constantly told by people like those in this thread that it's mandatory, not because they actually need it. "Oh, stick it out and don't worry. Once you hit 20 it's smooth sailing." seems to be the common refrain whenever anyone asks for help with their Endurance management. It seems to translate into "Oh, don't bother learning how to manage your Endurance early on since you won't have to once you hit 20."

[Iannis]

An endurance discount like Beginner's Luck could be...nice.

Take the example of the brute. Brutes suck without Stamina. Huffing and puffing even with endrdx and crying a little inside as the rage bar putters out.


Stamina is mandatory for a majority of players. Some powersets or ATs don't need it (my claws scrapper doesn't have it, for example, but does have IO Recovery). My WP has stamina, but at 49. But, I run a fairly ridiculous amount of toggles (Leadership, Fighting..giggity) and can run myself dry in extremely long fights. That's mostly just being too lazy to bother Insp combining blues, of course, and me not considering the very last pick you get and very first you lose exemping down to matter THAT much. Could've taken TP other to haul people around the Shadow Shard, I guess. Not that I particularly feel like doing a godawful Dr Q again for a year or two, unless the Merit reward is bumped up to 245 or something. Worst TF with cut and paste mission maps ever.

[Johnny_Butane]

Castle and Positron pretty much summed up the endurance situation not long ago.

They know that people have endurance issues without Stamina. That includes before 20, and on buids that don't take it.

They know people are annoyed by endurance. How could they not. It's the most complained about mechanic in the game.

But they alllow the problem to exist, because in Castle's words, there's a number of buffs that eliminate the need for Stamina.

In other words, the endurance mechanic exists to "encourage" players to team, much in the way electric cattle prods "encourage" animals to move where you want them to.

So as far as the devs are concerned, Accelerate Metabolism, Speed Boost and Recovery Aura are how we're supposed to manage endurance. The alternative being, wait until 20 and lock yourself into three powers and use a pool choice.

I don't agree with this line of thinking, exactly the opposite. But it's why you likely wont see very much done about player endurance issues. The devs want players to have these issues and to team or pay with reduced build flexibility to have them taken care of.


.

[Barata]

I enjoy those early levels, even with the endurance restrictions, because that's what I expect in an MMORPG.... to have a character start out basically as an average person, and then gradually work up to be powerful. To manage endurance, I do a few things....

1) I concentrate on accuracy in attacks. Missing wastes more endurance than anything. Beginner's Luck is helpful, but I still slot up accuracy in powers first, followed by damage. I could slot for endurance, but having more damage also saves endurance too.

2) For toggles on tanks and scrappers, I slot for endurance first. The boost of resistance or defense is negligible for TOs, so endurance makes those sets much much more friendly.

3) Like others have said, use your attacks intelligently. Don't fire off an AoE fireball at a minion that only has a few points of health left. Plan your attacks with endurance usage in mind. I've been on my blaster where I've run low on endurance, so I just kept using Chillblain on a boss or lieutenant. It would root them, damage them, but was easy on endurance and I'd win even when my endurance was empty as I was able to fire it off with every tick on my endurance bar.

4) Pace yourself. It only takes one minute for your endurance to fully replenish if it's empty. Taking just a few seconds to look at the next spawn and size them up, rather than just jumping in and spamming attack buttons, gives you another tick or two of endurance.

5) Coordinate your endurance with your health. That is, your health is going to replenish much much more slowly than your endurance. By pacing yourself and saving Rest for when your health is low, you won't get stuck with low health and having to wait a few minutes for health to come back because you blew the Rest on endurance just a minute earlier.

6) When you get to the teens, start looking at DOs for endurance reduction in heavy powers. Also check out IO sets for frankenslotting. IOs for Acc/Dam may cost a lot, but there are cheaper ones that help too. For example, you have an attack that does defense debuff, look for an IO belonging to the Defense Debuff set that has Acc/End, or End/Rech or any other number of IOs that may apply to that set. I've found that using the IO sets as early as you could really makes a difference on your character.

[Twisted Toon]

[ QUOTE ]
Take the example of the brute. Brutes suck without Stamina. Huffing and puffing even with endrdx and crying a little inside as the rage bar putters out.

[/ QUOTE ]
That's your opinion and opinions are subjective.

My Elec/Elec Brute doesn't suck. Of course that's my opinion and opinions are subjective.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
To manage endurance, I do a few things....

[/ QUOTE ]

All the following suggestions are excellent, and should be required reading for new players. I'm not a new player, though, and everything you suggest is part of my normal playing style. (Except for early IO-set slotting -- I've not generally had good luck finding low-level IO sets at good prices, but I haven't been looking that hard.)

The reason that I started this thread in the first place is that for a significant number of characters, you can employ all of those strategeries and still suffer from what is, to me, an unacceptable amount of down time due to endurance burn. (As you allude to in number 5, health-related downtime is potentially a factor of 4 larger. That doesn't really affect the argument, except insofar as it provides further support for the idea of reducing the recharge on Rest.) This is especially the case when soloing.

Basically, if I have to sit around doing nothing for more than about 15-20 seconds, I'm going to get bored and start doing something else -- maybe browse the forums, maybe mess around on youtube, who knows? Perhaps my attention span is too short. Using Rest enforces 10-20 seconds of down time due to activation time and then the time letting the bars refill. So the down-time associated with Rest is, as far as I'm concerned, close to the maximum that I find tolerable before my enjoyment starts to wane. As far as I'm concerned, then, the ideal situation would be to go with instant recharge on Rest and be done with it. If you have a longer attention span than I do, or team more, or, for whatever reason, you're okay with the status quo, then you lose nothing by having Rest recharge faster. Those of us that aren't happy with the amount of downtime we experience in the low levels -- and I'm quite sure I'm not the only one with this problem -- would, however, benefit from a faster recharge.

[socioalchemist]

I was wondering when the stamina/endurance debate would arise again.

Doesn't seem to have anything new either.

Oh well, here's for hoping the next one does!

[Willowpaw]

If you really want to experience low level endurance frustrations, try running a Fire/Kin Controller that is not Tech Origin (meaning the ability to slot Yin Talisman Endurance Reduction SOs starting at level 10).

My FIre/Kin is Magic Origin and she has been sitting at 15 for the past couple months. Even with an endurance reduction enhancement in each of her powers, she still runs out of endurance nearly every fight or every other fight.

I'm surprised anyone has ever managed to get a Fire/Kin up high enough to actually be viable without giving up in frustration due to endurance usage.

[Jibikao]

Inspiration management is also a "skill" in itself. Newbie players probably just carry "greens" when "blues" and "purples" probably matter more than green.

You can rest more or you can carry more blues at the expensive of less red/yellow.

Or you can carry more yellows because you'll be hitting more often against early CoT ghosts.


CoX is already a very fast pace game.


Some characters suffer from "resting" too much? Exactly which sets are you talking about? Radiation?

Like I've said, you need to watch your endurance bar. It's part of the game. Some sets' secondary effect (like Claw) is costing less endurance. And endurance is not that big of a deal once your character grows higher lvl.

And some fights are tougher because you start with less endurance than before (Rest is still recharging). Do you go in or do you wait or do you share blues with teammates? That's all part of the strategy.

[Jibikao]

[ QUOTE ]
If you really want to experience low level endurance frustrations, try running a Fire/Kin Controller that is not Tech Origin (meaning the ability to slot Yin Talisman Endurance Reduction SOs starting at level 10).

My FIre/Kin is Magic Origin and she has been sitting at 15 for the past couple months. Even with an endurance reduction enhancement in each of her powers, she still runs out of endurance nearly every fight or every other fight.

I'm surprised anyone has ever managed to get a Fire/Kin up high enough to actually be viable without giving up in frustration due to endurance usage.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you run Hot Feet all the time?

[Willowpaw]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If you really want to experience low level endurance frustrations, try running a Fire/Kin Controller that is not Tech Origin (meaning the ability to slot Yin Talisman Endurance Reduction SOs starting at level 10).

My FIre/Kin is Magic Origin and she has been sitting at 15 for the past couple months. Even with an endurance reduction enhancement in each of her powers, she still runs out of endurance nearly every fight or every other fight.

I'm surprised anyone has ever managed to get a Fire/Kin up high enough to actually be viable without giving up in frustration due to endurance usage.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you run Hot Feet all the time?

[/ QUOTE ]

She isn't getting Hot Feet until 26. Here is her build so far:

01 => Transfusion - ACC/HEAL(2)
01 => Char - ACC(1)/HOLD(3)/END-R
02 => Fire Cages - ACC(1)/END-R(2)
04 => Siphon Power - ACC/END-R
06 => Combat Jumping - Karma -KB Protection
08 => Hover - Winter's Gift Slow Resistance
10 => Siphon Speed - ACC(1)/RCH(3)
12 => Flashfire - ACC(1)/RCH(1)
14 => Fly - Flight Speed(2)

Okay. So one attack doesn't have an endurance reduction yet (been a while since I had looked at her build at the time I posted previously). But then again, that one has such a long recharge, endurance reduction is not too big an issue.

Also, with the exception of the accuracies and one flight enhancement, everything is DOs. The Accuracies are Yin SOs and one Flight Speed is an IO. I'm just not sure what else I could do to manage her endurance any more than I already have.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
CoX is already a very fast pace game.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's way faster at 50 than it is at 10.

Heck, for most of my toons, it's considerably faster at 21 than it is at 19. What's wrong with making the low-level game as dynamic as it is at high levels? It's entirely possible to maintain the same pace (i.e. by eliminating pointless downtime) while still providing a sense of character growth. It's not like the game's over when I get stamina and SO-strength endrx slotting.

It's really more like the game's finally started.

[ QUOTE ]
Some characters suffer from "resting" too much? Exactly which sets are you talking about? Radiation?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not entirely clear what you're saying here. My point was that lowering the recharge on Rest doesn't hurt anybody, and that it's better to avoid resting unless you need to rest in order to ensure that you'll survive the next fight. The second of these is a matter of mathematically provable fact, and the first strikes me as fairly non-controversial.

Also, you pointing out ways to manage your endurance in the early game. I appreciate that, but I don't really need advice on this. I've been playing for close to five years now, and I know how to manage my blue bar at any level as well as it can be managed. My point is simply that, for a lot of builds, particularly if the focus is solo play, the options available for managing endurance in the early game are insufficient to prevent endurance management from being an unpleasant chore, and that the unpleasant nature of this chore could be easily mitigated by very simple steps such as lowering the recharge on rest.

[imported_CrazyCorsaire]

[ QUOTE ]
Here is her build so far:

01 => Transfusion - ACC/HEAL(2)
01 => Char - ACC(1)/HOLD(3)/END-R
02 => Fire Cages - ACC(1)/END-R(2)
04 => Siphon Power - ACC/END-R
06 => Combat Jumping - Karma -KB Protection
08 => Hover - Winter's Gift Slow Resistance
10 => Siphon Speed - ACC(1)/RCH(3)
12 => Flashfire - ACC(1)/RCH(1)
14 => Fly - Flight Speed(2)

...
I'm just not sure what else I could do to manage her endurance any more than I already have.

[/ QUOTE ]

Shelve a few powers for now: Siphon power and Flashfire. If you are soloing, adding dmg IOs is going to have a better payoff than other options.

So without removing skills:
01 => Transfusion - ACC(1)
01 => Char - ACC(1)/HOLD(1)/END-R(1)/DMG(3)
02 => Fire Cages - ACC(1)/END-R(2)/DMG(3)
04 => Siphon Power - ACC(1)
06 => Combat Jumping - Karma -KB Protection
08 => Hover - Winter's Gift Slow Resistance
10 => Siphon Speed - ACC(1)/RCH(3)/END(1)
12 => Flashfire - ACC(1)
14 => Fly - Flight Speed(1)

But I'd replace Siphon Power with Hasten and move a RCH from Siphon Speed over to Hasten. Of course it really depends on what role you have for your character (team vs. solo; if team then buff vs. control vs. dmg.) and what environment you like to play (TFs, missions, hazard zones, etc.)

[gec72]

[ QUOTE ]
One accuracy, one Endurance, and one Damage in each of my attacks before I hit 20 pretty much eliminates my endurance problems on anything but the lowest damage of Archetypes. If you are running a Defender or Controller you have to slot your heals, buffs, and debuffs for endurance for a little while. 1 endurance redux for every 2 other enhancements is a good rule of thumb. on defenders and controllers you may have to choose between healing, debuffing, and attacking but that is why you are playing a team oriented AT.

[/ QUOTE ]

I take a similar approach. In fact, I just bought DO for my Plant/Thorns last night (I was level 14 going around with expired TOs...oops!) and that's what I'd put in most of my attacks - a blue, a red and a yellow. If I happened to have a 4th slot, a gray. EndRdx and judicious use of AoE powers makes things pretty manageable.

[Pippy]

Replacing Siphon Power with Hasten is counterproductive from an endurance standpoint -- each attack will do less dpe, and you'll be attacking more often. The major culprit here is probably Fire Cages -- from the damage slotting, it looks like you're using it as one of your damage dealers. It's a real end hog, and does pretty piddly damage. You'd actually probably be better off dropping it in favor of Hot Feet. Or better yet, a high dpe pool attack. (Flurry is a surprisingly good choice here -- it's got a really long activation time, so it's lousy dps, but it's the best dpe of any pool attack. At least it was when last I checked.)

[Willowpaw]

I think you are right about Fire Cages. From what I can recall, I slotted it because I felt I needed at least one attack for damage (not realizing at the time just how little damage it was doing). I may go ahead and do a respec to reallocate 2 of those slots (and still put in a third END-R in Fire Cages). I don't want to get rid of it completely though, because of Flashfire. AOE Immobilize+AOE Disorient=AOE Hold more or less. :)

As for Siphon Power, I am definitely not dropping that for Hasten (which comes at 28). I learned my lesson about that on my Mind/Kin. That is her big damage boosting power until 38.

Next real attack she gets will be Air Superiority at 30. Until then, she will just have to make do with what she currently has (plus the Hammer/Slammer/Blammer temp power trio and her Sands of Mu) for her attacks when soloing.

*** EDIT ***

FWIW, here is her current plan (the numbers beside each power are simply the levels at which they get their slots...That second slot in Hover and the Second one in Speed Boost are for additional KB protection. May change that bit of the plan though.)

Name: Twinkle Bat - Justice
Level: 50
Archetype: Controller
Primary: Fire Control
Secondary: Kinetics
+---------------------------------------------
01 => Transfusion ==> 1/3/9/17/19
01 => Char ==> 1/3/5/7/9
02 => Fire Cages ==> 2/5/7/23
04 => Siphon Power ==> 4/15
06 => Combat Jumping ==> 6
08 => Hover ==> 8/40
10 => Siphon Speed ==> 10/11/11/13/19
12 => Flashfire ==> 12/13/17/27/34
14 => Fly ==> 14/15/23
16 => Hurdle ==> 16
18 => Health ==> 18
20 => Stamina ==> 20/21/21
22 => Speed Boost ==> 22/37
24 => Cinders ==> 24/25/25/31/31
26 => Hot Feet ==> 26/27/37/37/40
28 => Hasten ==> 28/29/29
30 => Air Superiority ==> 30/31
32 => Fire Imps ==> 32/33/33/33/34/34
35 => Transference ==> 35/36/36//36
38 => Fulcrum Shift ==> 38/39/39/39/40
41 => Fire Ball ==> 41/42/42/42/43
44 => Fire Blast ==> 44/45/45/45/46/46
47 => Fire Shield ==> 47/48/48/48/50/50
49 => Increase Density ==> 49

[imported_CrazyCorsaire]

I introduced the damage slotting in my variant. Still not sure if you are teaming or not. I put it together as I would for solo hazard spawn levelling. Time and again I've found pulling Siphon Power out of my cast cycle did more for end management than anything else but YMMV.

Even with a plan to 50, I would use the free respec and make a plan only to 24, then respec off of that one into your 50 plan.

If you are solo missioning, it's a different build. I would then slot Fire Cages pre-24 only for accuracy and immoblize to establish group containment, and I would add Ring of Fire primary slotted for damage (Acc/End(2)/Dmg(3)) because of its 4 sec recharge with Char slotted for Acc/Hold.

[Willowpaw]

She does a mix of solo and team capers actually. I think this is going to be one of the few characters for me that makes use of the secondary build. The primary build shown was geared toward teaming and very occasional soloing. When I get around to actually playing her again (this is one of my very very off servers), I'll see what I can whip up for a viable solo build.).

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
All the following suggestions are excellent, and should be required reading for new players. I'm not a new player, though, and everything you suggest is part of my normal playing style. (Except for early IO-set slotting -- I've not generally had good luck finding low-level IO sets at good prices, but I haven't been looking that hard.)


[/ QUOTE ]
The trick is to grab endurance reduction from the IOs that aren't as much in demand. For example, if you look for Acc/Dam, that's going to be very popular because accuracy is important, and who doesn't want to increase their damage. But other ones from the set can be VERY useful. Look at, for example, Fire Cages. You can slot not only targeted AoE sets, but immobilize too. Dam/End from the targeted AoE will go for less than Acc/Dam. If you choose from an immobilize set, you can add Immob/End or Rech/End. An Immob/End IO will go for much less than an Acc/Dam.

Dark attacks defenders use also accept to-hit debuff, so you can get good pricing on to-hit debuff/end. All those separate IOs, even at early levels like the teens, do make a difference.

Pre-20, unless you have some power that gives you endurance recovery (like Accelerate Metabolism), you don't have much choice other than slotting.

[Vox Populi]

[ QUOTE ]
The trick is to grab endurance reduction from the IOs that aren't as much in demand. For example, if you look for Acc/Dam, that's going to be very popular because accuracy is important, and who doesn't want to increase their damage. But other ones from the set can be VERY useful. Look at, for example, Fire Cages. You can slot not only targeted AoE sets, but immobilize too. Dam/End from the targeted AoE will go for less than Acc/Dam. If you choose from an immobilize set, you can add Immob/End or Rech/End. An Immob/End IO will go for much less than an Acc/Dam.

[/ QUOTE ]
Acc/End is my favourite for early levels, but not every set has them.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
The trick is to grab endurance reduction from the IOs that aren't as much in demand.

[/ QUOTE ]

In principle, this is a good idea, and makes life a lot easier for a lot of builds. But it's by no means a universal panacea. I'm finding right now that most of the characters I'm leveling don't have slottable secondary effects on most of their attacks, or at least the attacks I've taken (fire/dark scrapper, storm/sonic def, fire/fire blaster, although not as much end trouble with this last if I use the ST attack chain, because the damage is so sick). So IO's make it easier for some builds to manage endurance, but others are left out in the cold.

Reducing the recharge on Rest establishes a baseline below which nobody can fall.

[Miladys_Knight]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If you really want to experience low level endurance frustrations, try running a Fire/Kin Controller that is not Tech Origin (meaning the ability to slot Yin Talisman Endurance Reduction SOs starting at level 10).

My FIre/Kin is Magic Origin and she has been sitting at 15 for the past couple months. Even with an endurance reduction enhancement in each of her powers, she still runs out of endurance nearly every fight or every other fight.

I'm surprised anyone has ever managed to get a Fire/Kin up high enough to actually be viable without giving up in frustration due to endurance usage.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you run Hot Feet all the time?

[/ QUOTE ]

She isn't getting Hot Feet until 26. Here is her build so far:

01 => Transfusion - ACC/HEAL(2)
01 => Char - ACC(1)/HOLD(3)/END-R
02 => Fire Cages - ACC(1)/END-R(2)
04 => Siphon Power - ACC/END-R
06 => Combat Jumping - Karma -KB Protection
08 => Hover - Winter's Gift Slow Resistance
10 => Siphon Speed - ACC(1)/RCH(3)
12 => Flashfire - ACC(1)/RCH(1)
14 => Fly - Flight Speed(2)

Okay. So one attack doesn't have an endurance reduction yet (been a while since I had looked at her build at the time I posted previously). But then again, that one has such a long recharge, endurance reduction is not too big an issue.

Also, with the exception of the accuracies and one flight enhancement, everything is DOs. The Accuracies are Yin SOs and one Flight Speed is an IO. I'm just not sure what else I could do to manage her endurance any more than I already have.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not getting hot feet early could very well be your problem. It's the best DPE available at low level and it's radius is quite nice too.

I had the very same problems until I picked up hot feet early.

Flash fire to stun the spawn, Cages to keep them in place, move into Hot Feet range, Char and Ring of Fire on targets missed by Cages, season with vet attacks. A fight done that way uses up about 1/3 of an end bar and I usually don't have to apply cages more than once per spawn.

[Willowpaw]

Taking Hot Feet any earlier would open up other problems. The earliest it is available is at 8. At that point I need to take Hover (unless I put off Combat Jumping, which I won't since I will not go without immobilize protection for that long.)

If she was a super jumper instead of a flyer, then yeah, I could take Hot Feet earlier.

[Fulmens]

I would like to give points to Pippy for repeatedly specifying "while soloing" or " as a soloist" or any of the other repeated disclaimers.

But everyone else is ignoring the "form a team" option. Seriously, in my experience, once I get three or four people together and pointed in the right direction, endurance is pretty much not a problem for me. Once in a LONG while , usually when we're fighting things way too tough for us (at level 8, invincible IS too tough, I don't care who you are) we have to rest every once in a while. But usually at that point we're having more trouble with HP than END anyway.

So there's an encouragement to team early on. So there are ways around it OTHER than teaming early on. So I will tend to hold my current position... the 1-22 game is FINE.

While we are bringing up the good old days when we had 10-minute Rest timers... ED came with something like 17% off the BASE cost of all powers- because you couldn't 6-slot stamina any more, they set it up so that "new" 6-slotting worked like "old" 6-slotting, which meant that the sub-20 game because 17% less end-hungry.

When I was a kid, uphill both ways, in the snow, etc.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
While we are bringing up the good old days when we had 10-minute Rest timers...

[/ QUOTE ]

To be fair, they've also made a number of changes to individual powersets, which have almost all been in the direction of reducing endurance costs. Dark Armor for sure, and I want to say SR and maybe a couple others have gotten some love. On top of the across-the-board discount that came with ED.

Hmmm... so... if I were going to disingenuously use this to support my position, I'd probably say that they've been moving in the direction of easier end-management, and that doing what I'm saying here would be further progress in that direction. Or something like that... :p

[Miladys_Knight]

[ QUOTE ]
Taking Hot Feet any earlier would open up other problems. The earliest it is available is at 8. At that point I need to take Hover (unless I put off Combat Jumping, which I won't since I will not go without immobilize protection for that long.)

If she was a super jumper instead of a flyer, then yeah, I could take Hot Feet earlier.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well that does bring up another question. If you are hovering why are you even taking hot feet at all? Hot Feet only works when you are on the ground.

Hot Feet - While active, you heat the earth in a large area around yourself. Enemy movement is Slowed as they attempt to flee the immediate area. All foes in the affected area suffer some damage over time. You cannot fly and must be near the ground to use this power.

Paragon wiki - Fire control (http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Hot_Feet#Hot_Feet)

[Willowpaw]

Just because I have Hover doesn't mean I'm always using it in combat. In fact, I rarely ever hover while fighting on any of my characters. Hover is mostly for more controlled vertical movement, since I tend to overshoot with actual flight.

[Cyreen]

I think I am going to take a different angle to this one, should anyone care about the opinion of a lurking old vet. First believe me when I say I absolutely mean no disrespect here Pippy, but perhaps it is your attention span. I am sure I like many others could regale you with stories of other long lost games in which downtime was measured in minutes not seconds. And yet more than 15-20 seconds is too long?

Many others have offered lots of ways to mitigate the issue. Some builds are luckier than others when it comes to the blue bar, at varying levels. And while yes newer players don't have that knowledge right out of the gate, isn't learning that part of the point. Not just from both good and bad experiences but also the coming here to get advice, asking their friends in game, or even just the random people they happened to team with. Isn't that also a part of the game?

I know others have voiced the same, that part of this is helpful to teach those who are new. And I agree, but I will concede that I am not looking at this from a pure mechanical standpoint. Part of the issue and part of the game in my thoughts is the psychological effects. I don't imagine there are many players that would not look at a group of Malta, or even Skulls, in a different light if they knew they could just hit the rest button after every single fight.

So I feel its more of a question not of management really but this: What does the change in downtime really mean? Would less downtime really make the game that much better for everyone? Overall I think the devs have said yes at least to the second part, but I think that they do have to draw a line somewhere. With debt being downgraded to the level of a buzzing fly, there really isn't much left other than downtime.

Side note: I have to agree with the brawl thing though. I always thought it silly that its equally draining to light some poor fool aflame from 40 yards away as it is to punch them in the jaw.

[Ehina]

I totally agree with the OP point.

The pre-20s end management issue is one of the thing that can make me stay away from leveling new alts, and sometime from the game.

It's not a really clever game design choice either knowing that people who try and discover the game will only see this aspect of CoX (trial accounts stop at level 14).

Some people will say : why do you want to make everything too easy ? That's a point, but I would answer I dont want things to be easy, but I'd prefer them to be smoother in the lower levels, and more challenging in the later. At the moment, paradoxically, it's the opposite.

Note that mostly tankers, scrappers and brutes are concerned by this issue, many people who play controllers or defenders think there's no problem and it's fine.

I like the idea of having improved endurance (and life) regeneration pre level 20, and I like the "no cooldown rest" either.

However I think there's an issue with Stamina and the way it works actually : the "most powerful power in the game" as some people stated, the one you cant skip (or very rarely). I'd like to see stamina slightly reduce in power (maybe cut from one third), and the natural recovery of a character improved so in the end a 3xslotted stamina character would have exactly the same recovery before the change and after (the end game wouldnt be changed). The difference would be :
- better recovery pre 20
- stamina less needed for non melee or non intensive endurance characters. It would be a choice, right now it's most of the time a "no-brainer".
- same recovery with the new stamina 3 slotted as with the old one. Nothing changes for characters already leveled and slotted.

[milehigh77]

I don't claim to know what the Devs have in mind with respect to endurance and the fitness pool but I will offer an opinion.

It is my opinion, meaning I speak for no one but myself, the reason the Devs created endurance for their game universe is that in the game universe they conceived, heroes or superheroes and their counterparts should not be able to take one swing after another for all eternity. Maybe they feel it is logical that even the most powerful superhero/supervillain can become physically exhausted.

Now this you may not agree with. It may cause you to enjoy the game less pre-Stamina. It may cause you to cancel your account. Sorry but that seems to be fine with the Devs and it is most certainly fine with me.

To those who feel the fitness pool is manditory I'll say this: if your character concept is one of a person who's extremely active, constantly firing off one powerful attack after another.....why would your character never have had to work on being at the best physical condition he/she can possibly attain?

So your character is Magic origin. Well in most roleplaying settings Magic spells are something that must be learned and perfected over time by any caster. Most magicians cannot cast spells from here to eternity because the process of casting a spell is not without some sort of effort, be that physically or mentally.

Think of endurance and stamina this way: Stamina means your character has learned a technique that makes using his fire blasts less taxing as opposed to another fire blaster who has yet to learn a similar technique.

I don't have any problems with endurance management pre-Stamina. You have to understand the pre and post Stamina existence of any character involves different tactics. Pre-Stamina means slotting your power for accuracy and endurance reduction. It means carrying nothing but endurance inspirations.

In closing the pre-Stamina grind for me isn't such a big deal. At times it may get frustrating but I know it won't be like that forever. Once my character reaches level 20 he will have learned better control over his "powers" that allow him to use them more efficiently.

:D

[Bosstone]

[ QUOTE ]
The pre-20s end management issue is one of the thing that can make me stay away from leveling new alts, and sometime from the game.

It's not a really clever game design choice either knowing that people who try and discover the game will only see this aspect of CoX (trial accounts stop at level 14).

[/ QUOTE ]
The only reason you think there's anything wrong with pre-20 is because you're used to post-20. Newcomers have no preconceptions about how the game should work and won't know any different until they get to SOs and Stamina. Pre-20 is perfectly viable and not nearly as difficult as folks make it out to be, otherwise nobody would ever even get to 20.

[ QUOTE ]
However I think there's an issue with Stamina and the way it works actually : the "most powerful power in the game" as some people stated, the one you cant skip (or very rarely).

[/ QUOTE ]
It's perfectly skippable. It's just the end management option that requires the least amount of effort.

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The pre-20s end management issue is one of the thing that can make me stay away from leveling new alts, and sometime from the game.

It's not a really clever game design choice either knowing that people who try and discover the game will only see this aspect of CoX (trial accounts stop at level 14).

[/ QUOTE ]
The only reason you think there's anything wrong with pre-20 is because you're used to post-20. Newcomers have no preconceptions about how the game should work and won't know any different until they get to SOs and Stamina. Pre-20 is perfectly viable and not nearly as difficult as folks make it out to be, otherwise nobody would ever even get to 20.


[/ QUOTE ]
This is what I believe too. Pre-20 is very simple, goes by very quickly, and only requires that you pace yourself. It's no more grindy than any other part of the game. If anything, it's the least grindy period because you level up so quickly.

This thread was supposed to be about tactics and playstyles to help the pre-20 crowd before they get Stamina, not a debate on endurance or stamina itself. We've had plenty of those. This is finally a thread that is useful to everyone in that nobody can get Stamina before level 20.

Pre-stamina, you have two options to manage endurance.... pacing and slotting. Both should be done in tandem. Damage is usually fine and doesn't need much slotting as pre-20 mobs aren't nearly as resilient as later ones. Make sure you're accurate enough to hit them (and beginner's luck helps in that you get an accuracy boost early on that dissipates and is gone by level 20, so you can gradually work on accuracy), and add in some DO endurance reductions here and there when you hit level 12. Pace yourself properly and endurance shouldn't be a problem.

Look at it like this, if you use up 1/3 of your endurance bar per spawn, that endurance is back in 20 seconds. You don't need to wait a full 20 seconds though, you can pause for five or six seconds to get somesome of the endurance back, then jump into the next spawn. After three or four spawns, you'll probably need to rest for at least health reasons.

Some archetypes do have it harder. For example, a blaster has only his attacks. All of his endurance is used to cause damage. A tanker does less damage though (meaning he has to attack more and use more endurance) and he also has to run shields. Defenders have their defensive powers, but if soloing still need to attack. So yes, some archetypes have it more difficult. But pre-20, don't worry as much about to-hit debuffing or adding defense or resistance, spend some slots on endurance reduction.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
The only reason you think there's anything wrong with pre-20 is because you're used to post-20. Newcomers have no preconceptions about how the game should work and won't know any different until they get to SOs and Stamina.

[/ QUOTE ]

Let me rephrase this: the only reason I think there's anything wrong with pre-20 is because I've found out how much better it is after 20.

You can live perfectly well on peanut butter sandwiches. (And I have, although mixing it up with bologne or ramen noodles on occasion...) You might even think peanut butter sandwiches are perfectly good. But if you get the chance to eat a really good steak, you suddenly realize what you've been missing all that time.

I'm not saying that steak is required -- clearly there are other options, like lobster or a really good lamb roast. I'm not saying everyone should get steak at level 1. And I'm sure not saying that everyone should get steak for free. I'm just saying, maybe upgrade from PB&J to, say, meatloaf. Then, when you finally do get to go out for a real meal, it's less likely to ruin your appetite if you have to go back to the pre-20 food for a bit.

[Nethergoat]

[ QUOTE ]


When I was a kid, uphill both ways, in the snow, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, this is probably why I'm so dismissive of the whole thing.

I remember the "good old days", and what we have now is like an all expense paid vacation to Candyland in comparison.

[Supernumiphone]

Seems like most of the people who don't like the idea are voicing some variant of "I'm ok with it, so you should be too." Yes you can "pace yourself" at the lower levels. But is it fun? Let me ask you this, after you get your end usage under control, be it through Stamina, slotting, or whatever, do you continue to pace yourself? If so and that's fun for you, fine. I'm guessing most people don't.

Pacing at the lower levels means either standing around during a battle not firing an attack when you have one recharged, or pausing or moving more slowly than necessary to get to the next spawn. The alternative to this approach would be to move at full speed, but pause as necessary between battles to regain health and/or endurance. If the first approach works for you and you enjoy it, great. If it's not fun for me and I can't enjoy it, I'm supposed to suck it up and learn to have fun your way? If rest recharged faster I could enjoy myself the way I prefer, and you could keep doing what it is you enjoy. I see no one being harmed.

Since pacing myself just doesn't work for me, when rest isn't recharged and I'm low on end, it's time to go AFK. There really is no other option for me. Pacing myself is boring for me. Trying to do that would make the lower levels a horrible grind for me. That other people can enjoy it is great. I can't.

I'm not asking for free Stamina or anything like that. I just want an option that will allow me to enjoy the lower levels without requiring constant AFKs to regain end. That's not fun either. When I log on I want to play, not play in short bursts with frequent breaks to do chores while I regain end.

Endurance problems at the lower levels are why it takes any new toons bloody ages to get to 20 for me. They tend to take off like a rocket after that.

[Groota]

I'm used to the way it is but I honestly can't think of any purpose at all served by limiting the use of rest. I think it's recharge is an artifact of some of the floundering, clumsy design of time sinking early in the game's history, like the "run all over the city for 20 minutes between missions at level 5" legacy contacts almost no vet will touch any more in favor of sewer teams, the MA, or, IMO much worse, PL'ing every toon they make to at least 20.

They've given us many many tools to reduce or bypass most of that mess from temp travel powers, vet attacks, radio missions, etc., since there are a million and one more ways for us to spend time in the game now that are actually fun instead of artificial make work. I think rest's recharge is an artifact of obsolete thinking.

[Fulmens]

Taking the biggest END destroyer I've ever played- a Spine/Dark scrapper- as an example:

At level 10 I had Dark Embrace and Death Shroud going. That's a lot of END, true, and I threw in Spine Burst when I could.

But at level 22 I had Dark Embrace, Death Shroud, Quills, and Obsidian Shield, with Spine Burst and Dark Regeneration as my "you have too much END" buttons.

The reasoning behind having Stamina, at least in my head, is that you have a lot more ways to burn END in the upper game, and you need something to help you get it back.

More AOE, more toggles, more end consumption.

[Ultra_Violence]

I agree with some of this, at low levels Enhancements, etc don't help much and for the most part no one has access to powers to offset the increased END burn rate (if 22+ your power uses 10 END with a 33% reduction vs at level 2 it uses 10 END with an 8% reduction). This is complicated by lack of Stamina and reduced damage (no SOs for you) for a 1, 2, 3 punch to the gut.

Typically until around level 14 I don't even turn Defenses on unless I am forced to because they are just unmaintainable in most cases. This allows you to put all your END into attacking. Also I rely heavily on Nemesis Staff/Wand and Sands of Mu. These powers do a TON of damage at low levels much more than you can do with any of your abilities.

FYI slotting attacks with END reduction doesn't work any better than slotting it with Damage unless you are missing a lot. Doing X% more damage or using X% less END leaves you in same place more or less. Sometimes with damage you will have overkill sometimes with END Reduc you would just barely miss a kill the have to attack 1-2 more times to get a hit. It evens out. The reason it works at higher levels is that you can max out one or both of them.

My suggestion if they wanted to do something is to have a Temporary ability you get at level 1-5 either automatically or via a mission that gives you an END boost for say 60 seconds on say a 90 second timer with no Refresh increases. Then have the power drop at level 20 or after X hours but the later has the ability to be abused.

[Barata]

Is "The Power whose name can not be mentioned" some kind of bizarre mystical force where simply mentioning it forces all who read it to engage in debate as to its merits? Considering the purpose of the thread was to discuss the pre-20 levels, a debate on a power you can't get until 20 is horribly off-topic.

And seriously, what is it with the "Fun" trump card? Anytime anyone wants to enforce their argument about why certain things should be done certain ways, they pull out the Fun card and go "it's simply not fun that way". If we add up all these Fun cards, we'll find the game only becomes "fun" when everyone starts out at level 50 at full power and never have to engage in any kind of challenge or be forced to think or use strategy. "If I have to actually strategize or pace myself or in any way think, then that's simply not fun!" :p

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
Is "The Power whose name can not be mentioned" some kind of bizarre mystical force where simply mentioning it forces all who read it to engage in debate as to its merits? Considering the purpose of the thread was to discuss the pre-20 levels, a debate on a power you can't get until 20 is horribly off-topic.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point. The viability of slotting choices/IO-sets/playstyle as means for pre-20 end management and the merits or demerits of reducing the recharge on rest would seem to me to be the most relevant to the thread. Or at least to what I originally intended the thread to be. (The other 3 choices are probably harder to balance and wouldn't really accomplish anything that reducing the recharge on rest couldn't, so I'm just as happy that those have fallen by the wayside.)

[ QUOTE ]
And seriously, what is it with the "Fun" trump card? Anytime anyone wants to enforce their argument about why certain things should be done certain ways, they pull out the Fun card and go "it's simply not fun that way". If we add up all these Fun cards, we'll find the game only becomes "fun" when everyone starts out at level 50 at full power and never have to engage in any kind of challenge or be forced to think or use strategy. "If I have to actually strategize or pace myself or in any way think, then that's simply not fun!"

[/ QUOTE ]

Look, reducing the recharge on Rest doesn't enforce my idea of fun on anyone else. It's the pro-status-quo faction that is trying to enforce its idea of fun by preventing rest from being up when I'd like to use it. There's nothing keeping you from waiting as long as you want to use rest, there's nothing that's stopping you from, well, not using it.

As far as the "slow pace = challenge" straw man, I've already discussed that, and don't want to belabor the point too much. Suffice it to say that the faster pace in the mid-to-late-game in no way diminishes the necessity for strategery or planning, and in no way diminishes the overall challenge. I consider the "you just don't want the game to be on easy mode" argument to be extraordinarily ill-posed; in fact it's really more of a baseless assertion than an argument. Unless, of course, you could defend the proposition that tedium implies difficulty.

[Groota]

Has anyone got an actual argument for a high recharge on rest?

[Pendix]

[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone got an actual argument for a high recharge on rest?

[/ QUOTE ]

Dont know how sound an arguement this is, but it's the first thing that jumped to mind: Rest has a high recharge so as players do not learn to rely upon it.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone got an actual argument for a high recharge on rest?

[/ QUOTE ]

Dont know how sound an arguement this is, but it's the first thing that jumped to mind: Rest has a high recharge so as players do not learn to rely upon it.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's a fair argument. The counterpoint is that Rest comes with sufficient other penalties -- long activation time, defensive vulnerability, elimination of any offensive output -- that a high recharge is unnecessary.

It's also a question as to why relying on Rest (given its negatives) would be worse than relying on Stamina or endrx slotting (given the absence of any negatives other than opportunity costs). As I've said before, you're always better off not resting except in those situations where not resting makes a trip to the hospital likely.

[Groota]

I can't think of a situation where rest would prevent a trip to the hospital any way, unless you were forced to attack the next spawn in 30 seconds ready or not. If you have aggro of any kind it's either impossible (interupt) or suicidal (high def can prevent interupt but then you have -10000 def and resist).

[Pippy]

The scenario I was basically thinking about is when you've just finished a spawn and are thinking of going on to the next spawn with less than full health/endo. If you have enough to make it through the next fight, you're always better off not resting.

[StratoNexus]

[ QUOTE ]
It's the pro-status-quo faction that is trying to enforce its idea of fun by preventing rest from being up when I'd like to use it. There's nothing keeping you from waiting as long as you want to use rest, there's nothing that's stopping you from, well, not using it.

[/ QUOTE ]
There is one thing stopping me from not using it. It would probably be stupid not to. Telling me I can choose to play stupid and not use rest when it is recharged is not very compelling.

If I can use rest after every fight (even if I only need to use it after every three or four), I can fight all out; use all my attacks without any thought towards which ones cost more endurance; toss that AoE out at one target rather than wait for a single target attack to recharge. I can slot all damage/recharge enhancements and probably skip a lot of other end management powers and/or forgo other end management techniques. I can just take a knee between fights whenever I want.

Currently, I have to think about how to manage the blue (and green) bar (even at higher levels). I try to squeak out one more fight before I need to rest, pop a blue, hit Consume, etc. I look at a blue bar that is 15% full and I have to figure out how that is going to carry me through the next 4 minions and 1 Lt. or if teamed I need to think about how to best use that last bit of end before I run out. If I can just hit rest without worry about its recharge, it would probably be stupid to risk running out of blue while a Lt. is at half health and cranky. I currently enjoy managing my end and worrying about trying to stretch it out and trying to push my limits. If rest has no recharge, I have no reason to stretch out my endurance, because I can always take 16 seconds to fill up.

[PSI_lence]

[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone got an actual argument for a high recharge on rest?

[/ QUOTE ]

as i already said on page 2 lol

as for making rest not have a recharge though i think that whould be a bit overkill especially in teams where 7 members could cover for you drawing agro from the GM or AV while you rotated so eveyone had full end all the time.
if you want rest to come up faster sacrafice slots to it (hell even slot interupt reduction in it to rest 'n' run without waiting as long for rest to take effect

[Groota]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone got an actual argument for a high recharge on rest?

[/ QUOTE ]

as i already said on page 2 lol

as for making rest not have a recharge though i think that whould be a bit overkill especially in teams where 7 members could cover for you drawing agro from the GM or AV while you rotated so eveyone had full end all the time.
if you want rest to come up faster sacrafice slots to it (hell even slot interupt reduction in it to rest 'n' run without waiting as long for rest to take effect

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry missed that one, but it's a rare AV fight when anyone needs to rest in my experience, and any team that needed to do that would be far from efficient, much less overpowered. As for and slotting rest, that would be silly; by the time slots have a real effect on anything you have stamina and rarely ever use rest again. We were taking pre 20.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
If I can use rest after every fight (even if I only need to use it after every three or four), I can fight all out; use all my attacks without any thought towards which ones cost more endurance; toss that AoE out at one target rather than wait for a single target attack to recharge. I can slot all damage/recharge enhancements and probably skip a lot of other end management powers and/or forgo other end management techniques. I can just take a knee between fights whenever I want.

[/ QUOTE ]

And taking a knee between every fight would add about 20 seconds to each fight. If you're spending, say, a minute on each spawn (and that seems to be a reasonable estimate for the lower levels) then your end-hog playstyle still results in a 33% increase in mission completion time. Not to mention the fact that playing like that would quite possibly cause you to run dry in the middle of a tough fight. While you could use the strategery you just outlined and ignore end management options, it seems pretty clear that you'd be running slower than someone who did use a more endurance-friendly build and/or playstyle.

[StratoNexus]

[ QUOTE ]
If you're spending, say, a minute on each spawn (and that seems to be a reasonable estimate for the lower levels)

[/ QUOTE ]
If you spend one minute to kill each spawn, that means even without enhancements, you can use Rest every 3 spawns. Is end management truly so onerous in your experience that you drain your end in one or two fights regularly?

[ QUOTE ]
While you could use the strategery you just outlined and ignore end management options, it seems pretty clear that you'd be running slower than someone who did use a more endurance-friendly build and/or playstyle.

[/ QUOTE ]
It is not clear in the least. It might take me an extra 20 seconds to Rest, but it could take the guy using end management tools and equips an extra 20 seconds to fight (stressing their green bar more as well then).

You seem to be talking out of both sides of your mouth. "I want Rest to recharge faster, so I can use it more often, in order to be active more often, but rest recharging faster will actually increase my downtime, so there is no benefit to Rest recharging faster."

Pick a side.

Rest on a fast or zero recharge will increase my speed through missions and thereby my fun and it is a good idea because of that.

Rest on a fast or zero recharge will increase my speed through missions and lessen my need to manage my end bar by killing slower, and I'd rather face that dilemma so I prefer the status quo.

[Pendix]

Welcome to this weeks installment of "Pendix-once-listened-to-the-developers-comentary-on-a-game-and-now-thinks-he-is-some-kind-of-game-development-guru Island"

I think, the reason we face the kind of Endurance issues we do in the 1-20 game has a lot to do with the 'learning-curve'. The 1 to 20 period is where new players are first really taught about the game's central mechanics. If they didnt run out of end periodically they wouldn't learn about the importance of 'endurance managment', and wouldnt, later on, look for the (many & varied) tools avaliable to better 'manage end'.

Further to this is the Idea of 'Progression'. The early levels of most RPGs (PnP, Single Player & MMO) have to strike an important balance between 'Suk' & 'Awesome' or 'Suk' & 'Fun'. A low level character has to feel like he both is haveing fun, but could be having more fun if certain things were different, for instance if he were doing more damage, hitting more often, or being better at taking hits, that way he will feel compelled to strive for the higher levels where he will (presumably) have those things. If the game were as 'instantly' as fun as the player could imagine it being, he will likley not feel as compelled to play it will lack any relevant/tanigable reward to complement the 'fun'. Concenquently he will be further likley to be drawn away buy other games (or passtimes) that do induce a compulsion to play.

The very existance of this disscussion is evidence of the game being very successful in inducing in the player a need for certain things, in this case, better 'End Managment'. Feeling that 'End Managment at the low levels sucks' is not only understandable, but INTENDED. It is suppose to make you want to get to a higher level where you have access to many more better & varried 'End Managment' tools.

AND. . . this is why improvements to low level 'End Management' are unlikley.

(I have also more Ideas about the 'Rest-recharging faster' that I may come back to but I feel it's best to stop the Wall-o-Txt now).

[JeetKuneDo]

Hee hee...

I love the "I don't have a problem with endurance pre-Stamina" posts. To those posters, I would ask: "Why do you take Stamina then?"

I've been playing my 50s so darn much that I haven't had to think about this one for a while. And my last two alts "skipped" to lvl 20. It just happened...I looked up and they were lvl 20! Wow! ;) I have no idea why they stopped at lvl 20...hmmm..what could it be?

I've yet to see a logical reason why Rest has any recharge at all. How can you possibly be too tired to rest? Because you were just resting? Sprint has no recharge and it should logically require some effort to run faster. You could make a logical case that Sprint should have a recharge.

You aren't able to do anything while resting....you are more vulnerable....it takes a while to kick in...and you have to wait for it to work. All these things are reasonable and are a great "penalty" for using it.

But a recharge too? That screams "time-sink...just because". Frankly, it sounds like it came from the mind of an infamous former Dev and needs to go the way of the dodo. It's just not logical.

[JeetKuneDo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I would bet that many people take Stamina because they were told to take it when they first started playing, then that became the "way" the game was "supposed" to be played.

[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed. I've noticed several recent threads in the specific AT forums where most of the posters take Stamina as a given, even on Willpower and Regen builds.

[/ QUOTE ]

Only because they're being constantly told by people like those in this thread that it's mandatory, not because they actually need it. "Oh, stick it out and don't worry. Once you hit 20 it's smooth sailing." seems to be the common refrain whenever anyone asks for help with their Endurance management. It seems to translate into "Oh, don't bother learning how to manage your Endurance early on since you won't have to once you hit 20."

[/ QUOTE ]
They are told that because that IS the way the game is played.

Deny it all you want...claim we don't "need" Stamina (true)...that we don't "need" a travel power (true)...that we don't "need" enhancements (true).

You can play the game without all those things. But you won't be playing it the way (almost) everyone else is playing it. This is a fast-paced game...and is in fact proud of that and uses it as a selling point. It doesn't take long to figure out that we play at a quick pace. You can lag behind with "omw to mish" and "resting". No one is going to kick you off the team for that. But you aren't going to have teammates thinking "wow...he/she is a really good player" either.

Because that's just the way we play the game.

You may now console yourself by claiming the playerbase are all "lazy".

[JD_Gumby]

Meh. If you move so fast that your Endurance isn't back up by the time you've gotten to, and scouted (or do you just run in blindly and start flailing away?), the next spawn - not to mention any delays caused by chatting (this *is* a social game, after all, and that doesn't just mean teaming!), checking the enchancements, recipes and salvages that dropped in the last spawn (or do you notice every line in the chat box and know what every enchancement and recipe does just by the icon and name?), etc. - perhaps you need to slow down a bit, not to mention stock up on blues (contacts sell them for a reason :)) between missions.

Personally, I've never felt even the slightest urge to use Rest to get back Endurance between fights, saving it instead for the more important job of getting back Health in a timely fashion.

[Wicked_Wendy]

What I normally do is use one slot of enhancement for an end reduction. I do this with any attack, toggle or whatever that seems to be the biggest end drain. That helps the situation until I hit 20 and can take Stamina at which point I simply go back to the store and replace those End Reduction enhancements with damage, heals, defense enhancers.. what ever the power requires.

I also carry a number of Catch a Breaths, Take a Breaths, or Second Winds to help out if the team I am on gets into a long battle and the end drops dramatically. This is possible becaue the SG I belong to (well run actually) has 8 inspiration bin and each now had 100 tier 3 inspirations available so find a good SG that can assist you.. I do love the merit system! :D

Depending on the character (AT) and what enemy we may be facing I also turn off certain toggles that drain end. On my WP/DM Tank if I was facing a villain group that was primarily all mellee I would simply shut off the toggle for ranged defenses. Against a group like say Council that combine ranged and mellee both need to stay active of course.

I also avoid using powers I KNOW tend to miss frequently and use a lot of end. I have several Vet reward attacks iincluding Sands of Mu .. does good damage when it hits but misses more often that it actually connects. Since Vet rewards are considered temps and can not be enhanced there is no way to increase the accuracy or lower the end drain so I only use that sparingly .. when I don't have any other power available.

I am a good soloist but enjoy teaming and at those levels finding a good team usually isn't that difficult and speeds the process toward hitting 20 and solving the problem completely. Also on teams while there are more critters to defeat there is also a lot more damage available and I don't need to attack and defeat everything myself so that helps save end as well... usually :eek:

Easiest way I know to resolve the problem.. Sewers to level 6 or 7, Radios in KR to levels 10 or 11, Positron TF followed by Synapse TF. With a good 7 or 8 man team that can get you to level 20 or 21 in a very short amount of time.. Problem sloved LOL :D

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
If you spend one minute to kill each spawn, that means even without enhancements, you can use Rest every 3 spawns. Is end management truly so onerous in your experience that you drain your end in one or two fights regularly?

[/ QUOTE ]

Depends on powersets, I suppose. My two current lowbie alts are Storm/Sonic and Fire/Dark (scrapper), who don't seem to be particularly easy on the blue bar. Using half a bar in a fight isn't uncommon. I run on Tenacious so I can fight actual bosses, and so if it's one of the big even-con spawns, then using more than half a bar isn't uncommon either. Of course, these fights also take a bit longer.

Also note that if you spend less than a minute per spawn and still rest after every spawn, then the fraction of your time spent resting goes up.

[ QUOTE ]
It is not clear in the least. It might take me an extra 20 seconds to Rest, but it could take the guy using end management tools and equips an extra 20 seconds to fight (stressing their green bar more as well then).

[/ QUOTE ]

My experience has been that the most efficient use of slots and powers, long term, is one in which you need to rest as rarely as possible. YMMV, but the opportunity cost to endurance slotting is very low, particularly with IO sets. It's not all that uncommon for a power to have >90% damage, >90% recharge (just from slotting), more than enough acc and still have >60% endrx. So no, I don't believe that ignoring endurance management options in the late game is sufficient to negate the slowdown that comes with having to rest after every fight.

And if it is that way in the lowbie game, I don't necessarily see it being a problem, as long as one style doesn't have a huge advantage over the other. Ideally, there would be some situations where it's advantageous to blow through the endurance bar -- maybe a fight with a dangerous boss -- and others where the slow-but-steady approach is better. That is the case now, I'd just argue that the penalties attached to the high-endurance-use situation are too high.

[ QUOTE ]
You seem to be talking out of both sides of your mouth. "I want Rest to recharge faster, so I can use it more often, in order to be active more often, but rest recharging faster will actually increase my downtime, so there is no benefit to Rest recharging faster."

Pick a side.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again with the straw man. Seem to be a lot of those running around this thread. I didn't say rest recharging faster would increase downtime. (Or, using more precise language, that using rest more often would increase my downtime.) I said that excessive use of rest, i.e. using all of your endurance on every single fight without using the endurance management tools that become available as the game progresses, increases downtime.

It seems pretty self-evident that having rest up when you need it will lead to less downtime than having to wait for it to recharge or for your bars to recover naturally. It also seems evident, although maybe less so, that it will minimize downtime if you build your character in such a way that you end up having to rest as rarely as possible, since Rest itself is downtime.

As to overall killing speed, well, it's a lot harder in the heat of battle to say "oh, that fight took 40% longer than it would if..." than it is to say "oh, look, I'm spending a third of my time standing around." So I'd argue that most players are more sensitive to downtime than they are to non-optimized long-term damage output. That may well account for the tendency to use end-heavy powers in situations that don't call for them: "Why am I standing around when I have attacks ready to use? FIREBALL!!!"

[Fulmens]

JeetKunDo said
[ QUOTE ]
I love the "I don't have a problem with endurance pre-Stamina" posts. To those posters, I would ask: "Why do you take Stamina then?"


[/ QUOTE ]

... because I have more AOE's, more toggles, and a full attack chain? Just a thought.

I like Power-that-shall-not-be-named, but I often end up waiting till 22 or 24 to get it. Blues, I can carry; it's a lot harder to carry some sort of substitute for your level 16 or 18 power. Like, oh, Whirling Sword, Integration, Blaze, Invincibility, Siren's Song, Build Up, Force Field Generator, Shadow Fall, Focus, Practiced Brawler... perish the thought that you should want TWO of those more than Stamina.

(Admittedly, since I can let the travel power slip now, I don't do as much "wait till 24 for Stamina" building.)

[StratoNexus]

[ QUOTE ]
I didn't say rest recharging faster would increase downtime. (Or, using more precise language, that using rest more often would increase my downtime.) I said that excessive use of rest, i.e. using all of your endurance on every single fight without using the endurance management tools that become available as the game progresses, increases downtime.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
and that it's better to avoid resting unless you need to rest in order to ensure that you'll survive the next fight. The second of these is a matter of mathematically provable fact, and the first strikes me as fairly non-controversial.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
The counterpoint is that Rest comes with sufficient other penalties -- long activation time, defensive vulnerability, elimination of any offensive output -- that a high recharge is unnecessary.

It's also a question as to why relying on Rest (given its negatives) would be worse than relying on Stamina or endrx slotting (given the absence of any negatives other than opportunity costs). As I've said before, you're always better off not resting except in those situations where not resting makes a trip to the hospital likely.

[/ QUOTE ]
You keep saying that you are better off not using Rest due to its drawbacks. You also guarantee that a playstyle where Rest is always available and used often is going to take longer to get through a mission than one that does not rely on Rest. You speak of the 20 seconds of Rest used after every fight (and claiming use of Rest after every fight instead of after every two or three is making your position look stronger than it would be in reality) and yet do not write about any potential speed up in play due to not worrying about end management. There is little balance in your statements and thus I find it hard to be convinced by your points.

[ QUOTE ]
It also seems evident, although maybe less so, that it will minimize downtime if you build your character in such a way that you end up having to rest as rarely as possible, since Rest itself is downtime.

[/ QUOTE ]
While that may seem true on the surface, I do not think it should be dismissed as true so easily. Spending 20 seconds recovering full health and endurance every one to two minutes may indeed work well enough for most folks to strongly consider using Rest often and lead many people to not worry about needing other end management solutions. I think it should be considered what one can do with a build when you can feel free to let the blue bar go down much quicker than you currently tolerate. More endurance spent over less time almost always translates into more damage produced in less time which might translate into more enemies dead faster which often translates into less health lost which can translate into more difficult challenges being reasonable. It may be true that using Rest more often is a detriment, but I'd prefer to be convinced as opposed to having it dismissed as true.

The following is just a start and is not final proof, in case you thought it was:
[ QUOTE ]
And taking a knee between every fight would add about 20 seconds to each fight. If you're spending, say, a minute on each spawn (and that seems to be a reasonable estimate for the lower levels) then your end-hog playstyle still results in a 33% increase in mission completion time.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Twisted Toon]

[ QUOTE ]
I love the "I don't have a problem with endurance pre-Stamina" posts. To those posters, I would ask: "Why do you take Stamina then?"

[/ QUOTE ]
On the vast majority of my characters, I don't.

[ QUOTE ]
They are told that because that is the way THEYare told to play the game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fixed that sentence for you.

They may play that way, but that doesn't mean that someone without Endurance management powers can not keep up with them. Stamina isn't THAT good.

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
...
As far as the "slow pace = challenge" straw man, I've already discussed that, and don't want to belabor the point too much. Suffice it to say that the faster pace in the mid-to-late-game in no way diminishes the necessity for strategery or planning, and in no way diminishes the overall challenge. I consider the "you just don't want the game to be on easy mode" argument to be extraordinarily ill-posed; in fact it's really more of a baseless assertion than an argument. Unless, of course, you could defend the proposition that tedium implies difficulty.

[/ QUOTE ]
I was merely responding to multiple instances where someone invariably brings up "that's not fun" as if the argument is over as the final trump card has been played. You find the early game tedious. That's OK. Many people don't. It's a very subjective topic. I personally enjoy starting out kind of weak and building up to be a powerhouse. It's why I play MMORPGs. In any case, there's things that could be done that were mentioned here I fully agree with.

Rest, for instance. I personally think it shouldn't even have a timer. If a person wants to rest every 10 seconds, that's fine with me. I also wouldn't mind if the preliminary wait before it kicked in was shortened too.

I also suggested once that we get an endurance discount for the first 20 levels. An overall endurance discount is a buff built into the game (you can see it listed in the Power Attributes window), so I was thinking something along the lines of the Beginner's Luck that we currently have where all players get an accuracy boost that gradually diminishes. Give everyone a good endurance discount that gradually dissipates. This, I'll admit, isn't perfect since the biggest discount occurs when you have the least endurance-hungry powers, but it could help, especially when you exemp down to run an early task force or flashback arc.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
Rest, for instance. I personally think it shouldn't even have a timer. If a person wants to rest every 10 seconds, that's fine with me. I also wouldn't mind if the preliminary wait before it kicked in was shortened too.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, I'm not sure why I've been arguing with you then. :p

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
You keep saying that you are better off not using Rest due to its drawbacks. You also guarantee that a playstyle where Rest is always available and used often is going to take longer to get through a mission than one that does not rely on Rest.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've said no such thing.

I've said that you're better off not using rest more often than is absolutely necessary. If your health is at some fraction X of its maximum and your endurance is at some fraction Y, then you are better off jumping into the next spawn than you are resting, unless X or Y are low enough that you would not be able to defeat that next spawn before being defeated yourself. (The actual determination of what X and Y are, of course, varies from one build to the next, and is also made a bit fuzzy by the wiles of the RNG.)

I've said that about six times now. It's completely different from saying "you're better off not using Rest at all," which I've never said, and is obviously not a position I take seeing as I'm asking for Rest to made available more often.

As to what I've "guaranteed," I've simply said that a character who's sole means of endurance management is Rest is, because of Rest's inherent downtime and other drawbacks, will take longer to get through a mission than one who also has other means of endurance management. (Actually, what I've said is that such a character will experience more downtime, which is a bit different from saying that he'll complete missions more slowly.)

Neither of these contentions strikes me as particularly controversial, nor are they in any way contradictory. The only reason that you can claim that my argument isn't self-consistent is that you're ascribing to me two contradictory positions, neither of which actually bears more than a passing resemblance to the things I've said.

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Rest, for instance. I personally think it shouldn't even have a timer. If a person wants to rest every 10 seconds, that's fine with me. I also wouldn't mind if the preliminary wait before it kicked in was shortened too.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, I'm not sure why I've been arguing with you then. :p

[/ QUOTE ]
Maybe because I haven't advocated some of the recommendations people had where they wanted Stamina to be inherent. I'm all for decreasing downtime, but I just like it when I see my character progress from one that's rather weak and clumsy to a wonderful powerhouse.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Rest, for instance. I personally think it shouldn't even have a timer. If a person wants to rest every 10 seconds, that's fine with me. I also wouldn't mind if the preliminary wait before it kicked in was shortened too.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, I'm not sure why I've been arguing with you then. :p

[/ QUOTE ]
Maybe because I haven't advocated some of the recommendations people had where they wanted Stamina to be inherent. I'm all for decreasing downtime, but I just like it when I see my character progress from one that's rather weak and clumsy to a wonderful powerhouse.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, yeah, it sounds like we're pretty much on the same page. I'm not entirely happy with the way endurance management is implemented in general, but inherent Stamina is overkill.

I see character progression from needing to rest every couple of spawns to being able to cut through whole missions without taking a knee as pretty legit.

[Miladys_Knight]

You know Pippy, I was thinking about this today amidst all of the X spots left for AE farm team broadcasts and it suddenly dawned upon me that the devs HAVE given us unlimited health and endurance just now in I14.

All it costs is a tad of debt (nothing prior to level 10) that is elliminated after killing a mob or 2. Just play in the AE from 1-20. The hospital is right next to the mission entrance no matter what kind of mission you are running.

Just play till you run out of health and end, click the go to hospital button, Poof full bars, and back in the mission without the tedious wait for rest to recharge.

You are back in the mission and right back to the spot you died in taking it back to the baddies usually in less time than it would have taken you to use rest let alone wait for it to recharge.

Wipe out a couple minions, debt is gone, repeat until Stamina.

Problem solved, thanks devs :p :confused: :p :( :p

[Ultra_Violence]

Actually Rest DOESN'T have a long refresh. Once you get SOs it is almost always up. If you get SOs and Haste is it up practically before you can fire off your next attack.

IMO that is poorly thought out designing Rest to be useful after 22 when you rarely need it anymore.

What everyone seems to be talking about is an unevenness in the game. 1-19 most ATs are driven by END considerations, then at 20 Stamina and 22 SO's eliminate the driving force of the early game.

It should also be pointed out that you level FAST from 1-20 even solo and/or on Heroic. Even with travel times and END issues that experience bar just shoots up. Post 25 unless you increase the difficulty you will be forever leveling at Heroic, until in the 40's you are crying big super tears.

So the increase END availability post 22 ends up leveling the leveling so to speak. The main issue is that it is like playing a different game which is a definite problem for the mad key punch crowd ("Tactics? Never heard of it. Sounds boring.").

[Pendix]

[ QUOTE ]
Hee hee...

I love the "I don't have a problem with endurance pre-Stamina" posts. To those posters, I would ask: "Why do you take Stamina then?"



[/ QUOTE ]

What Did I Just Say!

(durn interwebs, too easy for peoples to ignore me. *shakes fist impotently*)

I dont have a problem with pre-stamina endurance because I do have a problem with pre-stamina endurance & I AM SUPPOSED TO!

Also, if we want to modify Rest we would have to ensure it doesnt become too good. If it were up after every fight we would start to see two things, we sould see new players using it all the time, after every fight (sure that would be sub-optimal, but that wont stop people from deciding that it's 'better' to go into each fight with the most possible HP & End). The second thing we would see is it competing with Stamina & other 'End Managment' tools in the post 20 game, primairly because Rest has a very significant advantage over those tools: it's free! you dont have to sacrifice power selections, slots or anything else for Rest. People would become reliant on Rest, because it is 'good enough'.

So what's bad about that? Well, Rest slows people down, and while slowing yourself down is an internal judgment, slowing any team you are on is not. (ok, stopping now, running out of steam)

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]

You know Pippy, I was thinking about this today amidst all of the X spots left for AE farm team broadcasts and it suddenly dawned upon me that the devs HAVE given us unlimited health and endurance just now in I14.

All it costs is a tad of debt (nothing prior to level 10) that is elliminated after killing a mob or 2. Just play in the AE from 1-20. The hospital is right next to the mission entrance no matter what kind of mission you are running.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're a genius!

I'd still like to have a quicker recharge on Rest. But I think this will do just fine. :)

[EinValentine]

[ QUOTE ]

Well that does bring up another question. If you are hovering why are you even taking hot feet at all? Hot Feet only works when you are on the ground.

Hot Feet - While active, you heat the earth in a large area around yourself. Enemy movement is Slowed as they attempt to flee the immediate area. All foes in the affected area suffer some damage over time. You cannot fly and must be near the ground to use this power.

Paragon wiki - Fire control (http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Hot_Feet#Hot_Feet)

[/ QUOTE ]


Not sure if this bit of misinformation has been addressed earlier. If not:


Wiki and the power's text are wrong (or at least deceptive) and have been since the beginning. Hot Feet works perfectly well while airborne. You can only activate it while grounded, but once it's active, it's active and it works just fine as both my level 50 hovering Fire Controllers can happily demonstrate.

[StratoNexus]

I am not totally opposed to making endurance management easier than the current state. I am not convinced it is good idea, however.

[ QUOTE ]
I've said that you're better off not using rest more often than is absolutely necessary.

[/ QUOTE ]
So you are not actually saying anything.

If you want to speak about using Rest more often in order to help a low level player, it is reasonable to start from a point where you use Rest with a moderate degree of brainpower. Instead, you want to make it clear that if you use Rest all the time, even when unneeded, then you would be lowering your speed through missions. I think that is pretty clear. I'd rather not bother discussing times when one's health and end bars are at 75%, but instead actually start the conversation where we conclude that one needs Rest. I thought that is where we started, but you have now backed all the way down to this ludicrous position.

[ QUOTE ]
I've simply said that a character who's sole means of endurance management is Rest is, because of Rest's inherent downtime and other drawbacks, will take longer to get through a mission than one who also has other means of endurance management.

[/ QUOTE ]
Your statement is irrelevant. Will someone who has Rest on a three minute timer and uses other means of endurance management take longer to get through a mission (several missions) than someone who has Rest whenever they want? Will teams who have Rest on a three minute timer and use other means of endurance management take longer to get through a mission (several missions) than a team who has Rest whenever they want? If so, then you have improved speed and activity by shortening Rest's recharge (your stated goal, so I am unsure why you keep trying to downplay it). How often will players use Rest in that scenario? How much will Rest with no recharge eliminate our need to worry about end/health concerns?

Perhaps I team more than you and have a different perspective. I can see using Rest almost all the time with nothing but benefit. Tanker runs in, Blaster / Scrappers unleash hell, repeat. When attackers are low on end, they can Rest while Tanker gathers spawn. If Tanker gets low on health, he can pull out and let the team take remaining aggro (since all AoEs are usable at whim because endurance is a non-issue, taking aggro from a lowbie tanker is even easier than normal, and with enemies dying faster less of a problem) and Rest while the team finishes that spawn. You can also choose to cease Rest early without any real penalty when needed. "Hey, I am up to half end and the Tanker got an extra spawn he didn't count on, I'll get in there now." There are more concerns like these that should be taken into consideration, IMO, before simply declaring that Rest with low to zero recharge is not over the top and would be lower performing than other end management techniques.

I use Rest pretty frequently right now on almost every character I play, even in the higher levels. I can use it and have no one notice in many, many cases (my teammates can occasionally handle the last 10 seconds of a spawn and the first 5 or 6 of the next spawn while I am kneeling) . If you give it to me with zero recharge, you better believe I can and will use it to much greater effect than you seem to believe is possible.

[SpittingTrashcan]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

You know Pippy, I was thinking about this today amidst all of the X spots left for AE farm team broadcasts and it suddenly dawned upon me that the devs HAVE given us unlimited health and endurance just now in I14.

All it costs is a tad of debt (nothing prior to level 10) that is elliminated after killing a mob or 2. Just play in the AE from 1-20. The hospital is right next to the mission entrance no matter what kind of mission you are running.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're a genius!

I'd still like to have a quicker recharge on Rest. But I think this will do just fine. :)

[/ QUOTE ]
Heck, it's even easier than this. Create a mission on a large map with an easy built-in enemy type, and a rescuable boss-level ally with basic Earth Control and extreme Empathy placed in the Front area. Tada, you've solved end management, as well as HP management, accuracy issues, mitigation...

Unless, of course, you're not a high-damage AT. Because while a damage AT can build a support ally to cover their weaknesses, adding a damage ally to a support AT will rob you of XP.

[Miladys_Knight]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Well that does bring up another question. If you are hovering why are you even taking hot feet at all? Hot Feet only works when you are on the ground.

Hot Feet - While active, you heat the earth in a large area around yourself. Enemy movement is Slowed as they attempt to flee the immediate area. All foes in the affected area suffer some damage over time. You cannot fly and must be near the ground to use this power.

Paragon wiki - Fire control (http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Hot_Feet#Hot_Feet)

[/ QUOTE ]


Not sure if this bit of misinformation has been addressed earlier. If not:


Wiki and the power's text are wrong (or at least deceptive) and have been since the beginning. Hot Feet works perfectly well while airborne. You can only activate it while grounded, but once it's active, it's active and it works just fine as both my level 50 hovering Fire Controllers can happily demonstrate.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is indeed. I tested it after posting (none of my fire trollers ever took flight, I have a jumper, a teleporter, and a speeder) using a jet pack. You can't toggle it on while flying but it works fine if you toggle it on and then fly.

I wonder if that is unintended but is not repairable. For instance rooted prevents you from being affected by group fly and if you are group flying you can't turn rooted on (though you should be able to and then drop like, well a stone.)

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
Because while a damage AT can build a support ally to cover their weaknesses, adding a damage ally to a support AT will rob you of XP.

[/ QUOTE ]

Haven't tested this, but isn't it like the Confuse code, where the damage they do is weighted less? I.e., if they do 50% of the damage, they only steal (making numbers up) 25% of the xp?

If so, it could be advantageous to use an Elite Boss ally for damage as well.

The MA buff-bot brings up an interesting question: since it's trivially possible to use the MA for endurance management, wouldn't it be reasonable to add quickly recharging rest to encourage people to go through the non-MA early-game content?

[SpittingTrashcan]

[ QUOTE ]
Haven't tested this, but isn't it like the Confuse code, where the damage they do is weighted less? I.e., if they do 50% of the damage, they only steal (making numbers up) 25% of the xp?

[/ QUOTE ]
Good question.

[ QUOTE ]
The MA buff-bot brings up an interesting question: since it's trivially possible to use the MA for endurance management, wouldn't it be reasonable to add quickly recharging rest to encourage people to go through the non-MA early-game content?

[/ QUOTE ]
You're assuming here that the MA buff-bot ally is working as intended, and that the devs really meant to give us allies with tier 9 Defender powers at level 1 (and conversely that MA custom enemies should have access to tier 9 powers at level 1). I have my doubts about this, and I certainly wouldn't use it as a base for any argument to otherwise improve low level endurance management.

I'm mostly just saying that if you personally have difficulties with low-level endurance management, right now there is a phenomenally effective way around this. However, it's not really relevant to the key concern, which is that low level end management might be driving away new players, because it's unlikely that a new player knows to rush straight to the AE building and write himself a farm (and, indeed, this would be a terrible way to experience the game's content for the first time).

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
However, it's not really relevant to the key concern, which is that low level end management might be driving away new players, because it's unlikely that a new player knows to rush straight to the AE building and write himself a farm (and, indeed, this would be a terrible way to experience the game's content for the first time).

[/ QUOTE ]

I wouldn't necessarily underestimate how quickly people can find out the most advantageous possible situation: witness how quickly FotM builds spread, or how thoroughly so many new players have been convinced that stamina/hasten/<insert power here> is "required" without actually understanding the arguments.

But it's not that hard to imagine a fairly robust response to widespread broadcast in AP along the lines of "MA team forming, 1-20 in only 2 hours!" Doesn't take that long for newbies to find out about sewer teams, and I don't see why it would take any longer in this case.

[EbonyPhoenix]

I didn't read the entire thread, but I'd like to chip in my opinion anyway. I just came back, and am having terrible endurance problems as a Katana/SR Scrapper. I know how to play the market, I know how the game mechanics work, you just run through END pretty quick if you chain attacks effectively. DO's from Architect Tickets help alot, but they aren't the end-all I'm afraid.


I like suggestion 1. Being out of END before Rest is back is depressing.

As an aside, who actually MANAGES END past 20-ish anyway? I know on my Brute I slotted stuff as I needed to make sure I could run all 4 of my toggles and do whatever I wanted attack wise, and would never have to think about END in the slightest. It feels like it's just tacked on to make low levels more aggravating.

[Nethergoat]

I've been levelling a ninja blade/willpower stalker the past couple of weeks. He's 23 now and never had any problems with endurance. I slotted for end and he needed to burn blues exactly once, during a protracted fight with an EB.

Never played any of my previous stalkers past 10th level, maybe they're some sort of end-light AT. But mine was smooth sailing, endurance wise.

[UberGuy]

[ QUOTE ]
I've been levelling a ninja blade/willpower stalker the past couple of weeks. He's 23 now and never had any problems with endurance. I slotted for end and he needed to burn blues exactly once, during a protracted fight with an EB.

Never played any of my previous stalkers past 10th level, maybe they're some sort of end-light AT. But mine was smooth sailing, endurance wise.

[/ QUOTE ]

Stalkers are sort of endurance efficient in normal solo missions. I'm not sure if you're soloing or not, but being able to obliterate one foe every spawn does wonders for your endurance needs.

[Fulmens]

Basically, yeah, Stalkers have "First and last guy free" in every fight. Makes soloing pretty crisp.

[UberGuy]

[ QUOTE ]
Haven't tested this, but isn't it like the Confuse code, where the damage they do is weighted less? I.e., if they do 50% of the damage, they only steal (making numbers up) 25% of the xp?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, it's significantly a stronger effect than that.

One hit from X-Ray Beam from an AV onto a boss, accounting for something like 10% of the bosses life took off around 20% of his net worth in XP/inf. Those were estimates, but it looks like it's around a 2:1 ratio of reward lost to percentage damage dealt by the ally.

[Meltzzz]

Well for my brute when leveling up he basically didn't have his toggles on till I got Stamina around lvl 20 or 22 as his damage output was goode enough and he had the hitpoints to survive what was being thrown at him most of the time.

[El_Corvo]

In reply to the OP's original suggestions.

1) Reducing the recharge of rest would be great. I wouldn't reduce it any more than 30-50%, because its pretty close to being available almost every time its truly needed.

2) Reducing or eliminating the end cost for brawl and the origin attack would be superb.

I'm not so sure about the other suggestions, although I don't think they'd be particularly game-breaking either.

[Hyperstrike]

It's not that I'm against buffs to some of the low level powers. I'm greedy enough to go "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!"

However, there's the fact that at lower levels, you're NOT supposed to be able to attack like a madman, and a continuous pace, throughout a mission. It's good training for end management that should serve you well later in in the game when your enhancements allow for a bit more leeway. THEN you can blast away like a maniac for the duration of your missions.

As has been said, your best bets for conserving end are as follows. And more or less in this order of importance.

Accuracy (assures less end wasted on missed attacks)
EndRedux (directly lowers your end utilization)
Damage (killing enemies faster means you attack less, and expend correspondingly less end)

As noted, you're STILL going to have to rest on occasion, and you'll periodically drain your end bar. Just carry a few blue inspies to tide you over.

[EricHough]

[ QUOTE ]
As has been said, your best bets for conserving end are as follows. And more or less in this order of importance.

Accuracy (assures less end wasted on missed attacks)
EndRedux (directly lowers your end utilization)
Damage (killing enemies faster means you attack less, and expend correspondingly less end)

As noted, you're STILL going to have to rest on occasion, and you'll periodically drain your end bar. Just carry a few blue inspies to tide you over.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have to disagree with this order of slotting - accuracy does come first but until you hit the damage cap, slotting damage and end reduction is of equal value as far as improving DPE and since more damage means killing faster (and taking less damage yourself) it is always better to slot for damage, once you are at the accuracy cap.


The exception to this is brutes - who generate so much damage bonus through fury that they are actually better off slotting for end reduction first.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
However, there's the fact that at lower levels, you're NOT supposed to be able to attack like a madman, and a continuous pace, throughout a mission. It's good training for end management that should serve you well later in in the game when your enhancements allow for a bit more leeway.

[/ QUOTE ]

How is having endurance management suck early in the game good training for anything in the late game, where endurance management is dramatically easier because you have so many more options, all of which are more effective?

Endurance management in the lowbie game isn't good for anything except making me not want to play my lowbie alts.

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
However, there's the fact that at lower levels, you're NOT supposed to be able to attack like a madman, and a continuous pace, throughout a mission. It's good training for end management that should serve you well later in in the game when your enhancements allow for a bit more leeway.

[/ QUOTE ]

How is having endurance management suck early in the game good training for anything in the late game, where endurance management is dramatically easier because you have so many more options, all of which are more effective?

Endurance management in the lowbie game isn't good for anything except making me not want to play my lowbie alts.

[/ QUOTE ]

This, a thousand times over.

Something seriously needs to be done to fix this problem in the early levels. It's to the point I don't even want to play anything lower than level 25 any more, because the early game sucks hairy donkey balls. I haven't played a character under 50 with any regularity for probably 9 months now. Considering that much of this game's replay value comes from alts, this is NOT A GOOD THING.

Fix the frigging early levels and you wouldn't have seen such a huge problem with Mission Architect powerleveling either. There's a reason everyone wants to skip those levels.

[Bill Z Bubba]

I don't understand this discussion at all.

Before stamina, end management is a pain in the backside unless you use regen. Or a tank with WP.

It sucks. It makes the game dull and annoying. I've fully fallen into the camp that powerlevels to 22.

I am Jack's disgust towards downtime.

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't understand this discussion at all.

Before stamina, end management is a pain in the backside unless you use regen. Or a tank with WP.

It sucks. It makes the game dull and annoying. I've fully fallen into the camp that powerlevels to 22.

I am Jack's disgust towards downtime.

[/ QUOTE ]

There is no discussion possible. There is the correct position, which you support, and there's any other position, all of which are wrong.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't understand this discussion at all.

Before stamina, end management is a pain in the backside unless you use regen. Or a tank with WP.

It sucks. It makes the game dull and annoying. I've fully fallen into the camp that powerlevels to 22.

I am Jack's disgust towards downtime.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't disagree with any of this, and I'm a bit mystified that there seem to be so many people who do. Different strokes for different folks and all that, I guess. I just wish that the "everything is fine" crowd would be less hostile to making (relatively minor) changes that would make the early game more palatable for the "everything is not fine" crowd.

[Miyabi]

I still say Beginner's Luck for Endurance. Give it a cute name, like Wippersnapper, or Too Many Energy Drinks Last Night. One through twenty, you get this bonus, and it diminishes slightly every level. Or maybe every five levels...

[El_Corvo]

[ QUOTE ]

I don't disagree with any of this, and I'm a bit mystified that there seem to be so many people who do. Different strokes for different folks and all that, I guess. I just wish that the "everything is fine" crowd would be less hostile to making (relatively minor) changes that would make the early game more palatable for the "everything is not fine" crowd.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think part of the reason for this can boil down to a couple of things. There are those players who would feel slighted by changed that would make lowbies easier to play from an endurance standpoint. Its the whole "I ran the gauntlet, so you need to do that too" mindset.

Then you have those who sincerely, for whatever reason, feel as if things are absolutely fine the way they are. They don't mind the grind, and see no reason to change it.

I don't support either mindset. This game needs players. The game needs to be fun to keep them, and even with the XP and other changes to make leveling a bit easier, the game can still bog down and get really repetitive.

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
However, there's the fact that at lower levels, you're NOT supposed to be able to attack like a madman, and a continuous pace, throughout a mission. It's good training for end management that should serve you well later in in the game when your enhancements allow for a bit more leeway.

[/ QUOTE ]

How is having endurance management suck early in the game good training for anything in the late game, where endurance management is dramatically easier because you have so many more options, all of which are more effective?

Endurance management in the lowbie game isn't good for anything except making me not want to play my lowbie alts.

[/ QUOTE ]
It's not that endurance is supposed to be really bad in the early levels, just that when you create a character, you should start out relatively normal. That's one of the defining traits of MMORPGs, that you start out more or less as a normal person, but gradually gain experience and abilities and become stronger and stronger. The devs have implied a couple times over the years that they wish they had handled endurance differently, but it was too finely ingrained into the game mechanics to just do away with it. They've done a lot to address many of the issues, but those early levels are still left.

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
I still say Beginner's Luck for Endurance. Give it a cute name, like Wippersnapper, or Too Many Energy Drinks Last Night. One through twenty, you get this bonus, and it diminishes slightly every level. Or maybe every five levels...

[/ QUOTE ]
That's what I was thinking. Some kind of endurance discount that gradually decreases. I'd do it differently than the Beginner's Luck though. I'd probably have a flat out 35% endurance discount at level 1, leave it untouched until 15, and then gradually disappear over the next 10 levels.

[Fulmens]

[ QUOTE ]
I'd probably have a flat out 35% endurance discount at level 1, leave it untouched until 15, and then gradually disappear over the next 10 levels

[/ QUOTE ]

I still hold to my original position. 35% endurance discount is almost exactly the same as 50% more endurance recovery. As, for instance, you get from Stamina.

So my level 10, with one toggle and gaps in his attack chain, is going to handle endurance MORE efficiently than my level 28, who also has to run three toggles and a 100% full attack chain, and took three powers for the privilege.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Really makes people want to get to the "good levels".

[Oedipus_Tex]

Endurance issues between levels 10 and 20 are an albatross for this game. Levels 14-19 are the worst. I've had Tanker characters in these level ranges where literally all I could do after throwing 5 or 6 punches was stand in melee and twiddle my thumbs. I've had Scrappers stuck doing the same. It's silly.

[Supernumiphone]

[ QUOTE ]
Levels 14-19 are the worst.

[/ QUOTE ]
My experience mirrors this. Once I hit the early teen levels it gets so bad I'm just done. Time to PL the rest of the way to 20.

It is a bit baffling that those who feel it's fine are often so vehemently opposed to changes that would help those of us who don't feel that it's fine. I can only guess it's a combination of them feeling they are more skilled and if I would just "lrn2ply" it would be fine, combined with a knee-jerk opposition to anything that doesn't benefit them directly.

I've done the frankenslotting of low-level multi-aspect IOs for end redux. I've used the SG base +recovery empowerment buff. I've still had to wait for end with Rest not recharged.

Getting Stamina at 20, or even SO-slotted Stamina at 22 doesn't magically make end problems disappear. Not for me anyway. It's usually over the course of the next five to ten levels after getting Stamina, and getting my powers fullys slotted, that end usage is truly put under control most of the time.

What Stamina does do though is improve things enough to make my toons playable without AFK time while my bars refill.

[Miyabi]

[ QUOTE ]
That's what I was thinking. Some kind of endurance discount that gradually decreases. I'd do it differently than the Beginner's Luck though. I'd probably have a flat out 35% endurance discount at level 1, leave it untouched until 15, and then gradually disappear over the next 10 levels.

[/ QUOTE ]

/signed :D

Definite QoL improvement there.

[Miladys_Knight]

[ QUOTE ]
I still say Beginner's Luck for Endurance. Give it a cute name, like Wippersnapper, or Too Many Energy Drinks Last Night. One through twenty, you get this bonus, and it diminishes slightly every level. Or maybe every five levels...

[/ QUOTE ]

ADHD Adolescent.

[Pippy]

I kind of missed this earlier. Not sure if StratoNexus is still following the thread, but here goes anyways.



[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I've simply said that a character who's sole means of endurance management is Rest is, because of Rest's inherent downtime and other drawbacks, will take longer to get through a mission than one who also has other means of endurance management.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your statement is irrelevant. Will someone who has Rest on a three minute timer and uses other means of endurance management take longer to get through a mission (several missions) than someone who has Rest whenever they want?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, obviously, because if you have enough endurance that you don't need to rest then you can spend the time that you would spend resting killing stuff and earning xp. This seems sufficiently self-evident as to be axiomatic.

[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps I team more than you and have a different perspective. I can see using Rest almost all the time with nothing but benefit. Tanker runs in, Blaster / Scrappers unleash hell, repeat.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is how high-level teams already run, at least in my experience. Except the scrappers don't generally wait for the tankers to jump in to unleash hell. And sometimes the blasters have killed everything before the tankers or the scrappers even get there. Generally not too much need or opportunity for resting.

[ QUOTE ]
When attackers are low on end, they can Rest while Tanker gathers spawn. If Tanker gets low on health, he can pull out and let the team take remaining aggro (since all AoEs are usable at whim because endurance is a non-issue, taking aggro from a lowbie tanker is even easier than normal, and with enemies dying faster less of a problem) and Rest while the team finishes that spawn. You can also choose to cease Rest early without any real penalty when needed. "Hey, I am up to half end and the Tanker got an extra spawn he didn't count on, I'll get in there now." There are more concerns like these that should be taken into consideration, IMO, before simply declaring that Rest with low to zero recharge is not over the top and would be lower performing than other end management techniques.

[/ QUOTE ]

First, I think you have an overly optimistic appraisal of how easy it would be to use rest in the middle of combat during the low levels -- it just takes one or two stray hits to send you to the ER if you're resting.

However, even if we concede that you're right and it becomes possible to rest literally whenever you want, a group that needs to rest on average once per spawn will be going slower than a group which can defeat an entire spawn and be starting in on the next spawn with close to full health/end in less time than it takes to rest -- which is the normal situation for nearly every high-level team I've been on.

Rest would speed the game up for lowbies, and for sub-optimal teams and sub-optimal builds. In a more optimal situation, it wouldn't really make much of a difference.

[ QUOTE ]
I use Rest pretty frequently right now on almost every character I play, even in the higher levels. I can use it and have no one notice in many, many cases (my teammates can occasionally handle the last 10 seconds of a spawn and the first 5 or 6 of the next spawn while I am kneeling) . If you give it to me with zero recharge, you better believe I can and will use it to much greater effect than you seem to believe is possible.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not to belabor the point, but every time you rest, you are spending 10+ seconds not doing anything to contribute to your team. I'm sure that you would be able to find a way to get a great deal of benefit from insta-rest. But you'd still be going slower than a team that's built not to need rest except in exceptional circumstances.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
However, there's the fact that at lower levels, you're NOT supposed to be able to attack like a madman, and a continuous pace, throughout a mission. It's good training for end management that should serve you well later in in the game when your enhancements allow for a bit more leeway.

[/ QUOTE ]

How is having endurance management suck early in the game good training for anything in the late game, where endurance management is dramatically easier because you have so many more options, all of which are more effective?

Endurance management in the lowbie game isn't good for anything except making me not want to play my lowbie alts.

[/ QUOTE ]
It's not that endurance is supposed to be really bad in the early levels, just that when you create a character, you should start out relatively normal. That's one of the defining traits of MMORPGs, that you start out more or less as a normal person, but gradually gain experience and abilities and become stronger and stronger. The devs have implied a couple times over the years that they wish they had handled endurance differently, but it was too finely ingrained into the game mechanics to just do away with it. They've done a lot to address many of the issues, but those early levels are still left.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure if the "starting out relatively normal" is appropriate to the genre. I didn't spend all that time flailing around in the vat of toxic waste to wait 20 levels before I could use my new superpowers without sucking wind, thank you very much.

FWIW, I'm not particularly enthusiastic about a gradually-disappearing endurance discount, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, if it were phased out by level 20, then it would be diminishing in the very levels where it's most necessary. It also runs counter to the idea of progression as you level up -- you spend the first 20 levels becoming less accurate and less endurance-efficient. (I dislike Beginner's Luck for much the same reason. They could've had exactly the same mathematical effect on accuracy without the conceptual problems by imposing a defense debuff on NPCs prior to level 20.)

I think my first choice would be reduce the recharge on rest. I've yet to hear a convincing reason for it to be longer than 60 seconds.

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'd probably have a flat out 35% endurance discount at level 1, leave it untouched until 15, and then gradually disappear over the next 10 levels

[/ QUOTE ]

I still hold to my original position. 35% endurance discount is almost exactly the same as 50% more endurance recovery. As, for instance, you get from Stamina.

So my level 10, with one toggle and gaps in his attack chain, is going to handle endurance MORE efficiently than my level 28, who also has to run three toggles and a 100% full attack chain, and took three powers for the privilege.

Yeah, that's a great idea. Really makes people want to get to the "good levels".

[/ QUOTE ]
Like getting to the "good levels" is anything but inevitable?

Then knock it back down to 25% or so. Whatever. I just thought it would ease some of the problems certain archetypes have with endurance at the early levels. They do it now with accuracy, so I can't see where there's no precedence to do it for endurance. Many people support slotting for endurance reduction. You hear it all of the time when someone posts that they have endurance problems. Get stamina and slot for endurance reduction. You can't get stamina until level 20, and slotting for endurance reduction with TOs has almost no noticeable benefit since the enhanced value is too small. With damage, you're directly adding on damage in a proportion equal to the enhancement value. Accuracy directly adds to your to-hit chance. With endurance reduction though, the discount is less, requiring 100% of enhancements to bring down endurance usage by 50%. TOs just don't cut it, but that's all you have access to until level 12. That's why I prefer that the endurance discount not start to dissipate until you're high enough to start using DOs.

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
However, there's the fact that at lower levels, you're NOT supposed to be able to attack like a madman, and a continuous pace, throughout a mission. It's good training for end management that should serve you well later in in the game when your enhancements allow for a bit more leeway.

[/ QUOTE ]

How is having endurance management suck early in the game good training for anything in the late game, where endurance management is dramatically easier because you have so many more options, all of which are more effective?

Endurance management in the lowbie game isn't good for anything except making me not want to play my lowbie alts.

[/ QUOTE ]
It's not that endurance is supposed to be really bad in the early levels, just that when you create a character, you should start out relatively normal. That's one of the defining traits of MMORPGs, that you start out more or less as a normal person, but gradually gain experience and abilities and become stronger and stronger. The devs have implied a couple times over the years that they wish they had handled endurance differently, but it was too finely ingrained into the game mechanics to just do away with it. They've done a lot to address many of the issues, but those early levels are still left.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure if the "starting out relatively normal" is appropriate to the genre. I didn't spend all that time flailing around in the vat of toxic waste to wait 20 levels before I could use my new superpowers without sucking wind, thank you very much.


[/ QUOTE ]
It's standard for all of the MMORPG genres. You start out at level 1 and grow stronger as you progress. And my early suggestion for an early endurance discount addresses that issue of "sucking wind". I generally don't like the concept of early buffs that disappear, meaning you get weaker as you progress, but the fact is that the game was designed with endurance usage interwoven into its mechanics. It's incredibly unlikely it will go away, unless the devs totally rewrite the mechanics and redesign all of the powers, so we have to work with not only what's possible, but what's feasible and can be executed with a reasonable amount of work and time.

As for reducing the recharge of rest that you mention..... I find no problem with that suggestion. If that would help people, then I'd happily go along with it. Personally, I don't think Rest should even have a recharge at all. I think the long delay for it to kick in is "punishment" enough for using it.

[Nethergoat]

Just played a new stalker up to 30, ninja blade/willpower, toggle heavy, scrapped it out quite a bit, never really noticed my end usage.

Made a mace/invulnerable brute last night, got him to 6th street-sweeping Mercy, the only pauses in his path of carnage were imposed by defeats and leveling breaks.

end at the low levels just isn't a big deal for most ATs. if you don't like the low level game being different & in some aspects more difficult than the high level game, recruit your friends to help you skip over it (which is what I do most of the time).

I think it's good for new players to experience an organic growth in power from the low levels to the mid levels to the high levels, and experience 'landmarks' in their own time. Getting stamina is one of those landmarks.

Presumably, by the time you've gotten burned out running around Atlas or Mercy you've made enough friends to opt out of the experience if you want.

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
...
I think it's good for new players to experience an organic growth in power from the low levels to the mid levels to the high levels, and experience 'landmarks' in their own time. Getting stamina is one of those landmarks.
...

[/ QUOTE ]

This is exactly why I play MMORPGs, and why I have no problems with starting out relatively weak. I like watching my character grow. I feel it's very organic like NG just said, and hitting the landmarks lets you appreciate the characters and the work you put towards them.

[El_Corvo]

[ QUOTE ]

As for reducing the recharge of rest that you mention..... I find no problem with that suggestion. If that would help people, then I'd happily go along with it. Personally, I don't think Rest should even have a recharge at all. I think the long delay for it to kick in is "punishment" enough for using it.


[/ QUOTE ]
^This. I concur.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

As for reducing the recharge of rest that you mention..... I find no problem with that suggestion. If that would help people, then I'd happily go along with it. Personally, I don't think Rest should even have a recharge at all. I think the long delay for it to kick in is "punishment" enough for using it.


[/ QUOTE ]
^This. I concur.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll third this.

[StratoNexus]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Your statement is irrelevant. Will someone who has Rest on a three minute timer and uses other means of endurance management take longer to get through a mission (several missions) than someone who has Rest whenever they want?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, obviously, because if you have enough endurance that you don't need to rest then you can spend the time that you would spend resting killing stuff and earning xp. This seems sufficiently self-evident as to be axiomatic.

[/ QUOTE ]
It does not seem self-evident to me. That might make me blind, but I do not think so. Having enough endurance so that I do not need to Rest comes with the cost of taking powers that manage endurance, sacrificing powers that help kill faster or survive better, although Stamina comes bundled with Swift/Hurdle/Health, all of which have a big impact on speed through missions. The Fitness pool is pretty amazing, but it is not Stamina alone that makes it that way.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps I team more than you and have a different perspective. I can see using Rest almost all the time with nothing but benefit. Tanker runs in, Blaster / Scrappers unleash hell, repeat.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is how high-level teams already run, at least in my experience. Except the scrappers don't generally wait for the tankers to jump in to unleash hell. And sometimes the blasters have killed everything before the tankers or the scrappers even get there. Generally not too much need or opportunity for resting.

[/ QUOTE ]
Of course we do not need to Rest currently in the higher levels, we take Stamina, QR, Energy Absorption, Transference, etc. If I could rest every 30 seconds (even though I would probably only need it every minute), skipping some of those powers is much more feasible. Rest also comes bundled with that nice heal aspect, which means blasters could go all out for three or four spawns and then take a knee for 18 seconds. Having rest available removes some of the thought process, why not use Fireball or Fire Sword Circle when nothing else is recharged? Why not keep all my toggles up? You may find those questions annoying, but some people like the part of the game where you have to consider those questions. I am not of the belief that the preference to manage endurance with thought, instead of just powers, is a bad or even unpopular preference. Sure, people will [censored] about end management, but many of the bitchers probably enjoy it as is anyway. That is to say nothing of all the people who do not [censored] and who feel fine with the current set-up.

[ QUOTE ]
First, I think you have an overly optimistic appraisal of how easy it would be to use rest in the middle of combat during the low levels -- it just takes one or two stray hits to send you to the ER if you're resting.

However, even if we concede that you're right and it becomes possible to rest literally whenever you want, a group that needs to rest on average once per spawn will be going slower than a group which can defeat an entire spawn and be starting in on the next spawn with close to full health/end in less time than it takes to rest -- which is the normal situation for nearly every high-level team I've been on.

Rest would speed the game up for lowbies, and for sub-optimal teams and sub-optimal builds. In a more optimal situation, it wouldn't really make much of a difference.

[/ QUOTE ]
First, you keep bypassing the heal aspect of Rest as if everyone in the game is a regen scrapper. Second, needing Rest every spawn would definitely cause some slow-down. However, even without Stamina, most builds in the mid-higher levels can go three or four spawns on a 3 or 4 man team before needing Rest. My experience in the low levels is similar and in some cases better. Solo, some builds have issues, but solo is not the only part of the game one should consider, IMO. Third, learning how to use Rest during a fight is not hard and is much more possible than you believe. I do it all the time now, because I do not build my characters to be endurance management free. If my blue bar is perpetually capped, I am wasting a resource that could have been spent on more damage, control, or survivability.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I use Rest pretty frequently right now on almost every character I play, even in the higher levels. I can use it and have no one notice in many, many cases (my teammates can occasionally handle the last 10 seconds of a spawn and the first 5 or 6 of the next spawn while I am kneeling) . If you give it to me with zero recharge, you better believe I can and will use it to much greater effect than you seem to believe is possible.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not to belabor the point, but every time you rest, you are spending 10+ seconds not doing anything to contribute to your team. I'm sure that you would be able to find a way to get a great deal of benefit from insta-rest. But you'd still be going slower than a team that's built not to need rest except in exceptional circumstances.

[/ QUOTE ]
You have no idea how fast 15 seconds can go and are very much discounting the massive amount of corpse beating that goes on at the end of fights. Trust me, your damage contribution at the end of every third or fourth battle is not going to make the mission speed up by 3 minutes. Those other people on the team are generally capable as well, no matter how good it feels for you to get a bunch of kill shots (and I am not belittling you personally here, believe me, I play a Fire/Fire/Flame blaster for a reason).

A tanker, brute, scrapper with a taunt aura can contribute massive amounts to a team on minimal endurance. Rad defenders seem to operate under 10% endurance quite frequently and still help. There are tons of ways to work in a current spawn with minimal endurance for a lot of builds, and then take a knee after, while the rest of the team moves gets into position for the next fight. Using Rest totally stops a soloer. Using Rest lowers (if I Rest with my Emp or Bubbler, but Fort, CM, or Bubbles are up, I am still contributing, even though I am currently kneeling) or stops 1 part of a team, but does not necessarily have any impact on speed through missions for that team.

[Not_Rhino]

They need to just make DOs and SOs available via random drops from level 1. One thing that's always bothered me about CoH is how difficult the early game is compared to how easy the late game is (with the exception of Task Forces and other certain missions).

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
It does not seem self-evident to me. That might make me blind, but I do not think so. Having enough endurance so that I do not need to Rest comes with the cost of taking powers that manage endurance, sacrificing powers that help kill faster or survive better, although Stamina comes bundled with Swift/Hurdle/Health, all of which have a big impact on speed through missions.

[/ QUOTE ]

After you posted this, I thought it might be worthwhile to run through the math... I think I ended up using approximate numbers, but taking 15 seconds as the time to go from zero to full endurance under rest, it works out that to have Rest provide an average endurance benefit equal to (slotted) Stamina, you'd need to be spending about 1/6 of your time resting. Solo, that's a pretty substantial slow-down. As you point out, the situation on teams is a little more complicated, but at first glance, I'd guess that your time investment for each rest goes up by at least a few seconds, since you also have to make sure you've shed any aggro and are parked someplace where you're not likely to pick any more up.

As you point out, for characters with long-duration click buffs -- FF, for example -- taking the time off to rest isn't as big a deal as it would be for a blaster or a scrapper who has to stop dealing damage. I'd argue that endurance use for such characters is generally not as much of an issue in the first place, and therefore making it easier for them to manage their endurance would be a bit like handing Bill Gates a twenty.

[ QUOTE ]
The Fitness pool is pretty amazing, but it is not Stamina alone that makes it that way.

[/ QUOTE ]

No argument here. It's not all that rare for me to take, and slot, all four powers.

[ QUOTE ]
Of course we do not need to Rest currently in the higher levels, we take Stamina, QR, Energy Absorption, Transference, etc. If I could rest every 30 seconds (even though I would probably only need it every minute), skipping some of those powers is much more feasible.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't see why that's a bad thing. If a large proportion of players take power X, then adding alternatives to power X seems like a perfectly reasonably course of action. (Not of course, that I'm saying power X is "required" or should be made inherent or anything like that.)

[ QUOTE ]
Rest also comes bundled with that nice heal aspect, which means blasters could go all out for three or four spawns and then take a knee for 18 seconds.

[/ QUOTE ]

And would they go faster or slower than if they played a little smarter and didn't need to rest? I don't consider myself a blaster expert by any means, but my experience thus far with my fire/fire has been that adding fireball and/or firebreath into my attack chains doesn't do anything to increase my single target dps. In fact, it probably hurts it, although I haven't worked it out. And if you're hitting multiple foes, the AoEs are more endurance efficient than the ST attacks. (I forget if the break-even point is 2 enemies or 3, but it's not that big.)

As far as the heal aspect is concerned -- all of the arguments I've made about endurance-related downtime being unfun apply equally to health-related downtime. Sitting around doing nothing between fights waiting for either bar to come back is boring, and to enforce such downtime is poor design. (Furthermore, it's entirely possible to design a successful MMO where out-of-combat recovery is rapid without introducing balance problems. I didn't like much about WoW, but this was one thing they got right, IMO. At least in the early part of the game, which was about as far as I could make it.)

[ QUOTE ]
If my blue bar is perpetually capped, I am wasting a resource that could have been spent on more damage, control, or survivability.

[/ QUOTE ]

The only real resource in this game is time. And using Rest involves a substantial time cost. (A cost which is much less than just sitting around waiting for stuff to come back -- hence my desire for a lower recharge despite Rest's sizable disadvantages relative to other means of managing health and endurance.)

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
end at the low levels just isn't a big deal for most ATs.

[/ QUOTE ]

So very very false. End at the low level isn't a big deal for SOME POWERSETS. For most powersets across all ATs, it IS a big deal.

[NightshadeLegree]

End isn't that big a deal if a) you slot some end red in your attack chain and toggles, and b) you don't try to play like you're already level 22.

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
End isn't that big a deal if a) you slot some end red in your attack chain and toggles, and b) you don't try to play like you're already level 22.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's exactly the point.

You're just reinforcing the argument that the system is flawed as it currently exists. At level 1 the game ought to play like 22. The game doesn't even start to become fun until after 22. Downtime is bad. Downtime is boring. Forcing downtime on the players is not good design.

If the end redux were actually effective it might be a different story, but until you reach SOs, you might as well not even bother with enhancements; the difference they make is negligible.

Eliminating TOs and DOs entirely and starting with SOs at level 1, as has been proposed by others, would go a long way towards fixing the problem, but it's still not sufficient because there simply aren't enough slots available to a pre-22 character to make a significant difference. Something like a universal reduction in end costs to every power in the game, or something easier, like a universal boost inherent regen and recovery, is needed in addition to that.

[UberGuy]

[ QUOTE ]
You're just reinforcing the argument that the system is flawed as it currently exists. At level 1 the game ought to play like 22.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's important to understand that the above is an opinion, and not a fact.

While I'm not a fan of being weak and slow, it's not an opinion I agree with. I beleive we should start weak and grow stronger. I absolutely do not believe we should start the game at level 1 as strong as we are at level 22.

Do I think there's no room for change? I wouldn't say that. I could agree with the notion that we don't have to be as weak and slow at level 1 as we are. But everyone's degree of tolerance for how we do function at level 1 is different, and your particular lack of tolerance for it is not a hard-and-fast proof that the system is "flawed". It just means you really dislike it.

[NightshadeLegree]

[ QUOTE ]
The game doesn't even start to become fun until after 22.

[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree. I often find the post-22 game less fun. The slowest levelling I've had on my higher level characters has come at points when they are trouncing just about everything they meet.

[ QUOTE ]
If the end redux were actually effective it might be a different story, but until you reach SOs, you might as well not even bother with enhancements; the difference they make is negligible.

[/ QUOTE ]
Do you solo much?

The reason I ask is that I solo a lot, and if my TOs or DOs go red I will notice. On a team... not so much, if it's a reasonably competent team, but then a lot of carelessness can go unnoticed in a team.

[ QUOTE ]
Eliminating TOs and DOs entirely and starting with SOs at level 1, as has been proposed by others, would go a long way towards fixing the problem, but it's still not sufficient because there simply aren't enough slots available to a pre-22 character to make a significant difference. Something like a universal reduction in end costs to every power in the game, or something easier, like a universal boost inherent regen and recovery, is needed in addition to that.

[/ QUOTE ]
Are you seriously proposing that the upper two powers of the Fitness pool should become an inherent? Why not make the Tier 9 an inherent as well? What's the difference?

[ QUOTE ]
Downtime is bad. Downtime is boring. Forcing downtime on the players is not good design.

[/ QUOTE ]
Handing everything to the players on a plate isn't good design either.

[Bill Z Bubba]

I don't recall who all may have proposed it, but I am more and more sliding into the opinion that doing away with TOs and DOs completely is the answer.

Then there would be no need of the current Beginner's Luck function, nor would there be any need for an endurance version of it. There would be no need for inherent health/stamina. No further changes would need to be made to the game engine at all.

Would it mean a lot of work anyway? Oh absolutely. Drop tables would need to be fixed, all the stores would as well. Something else would have to be done with Mr. Yin's(?) store in Faultline.

But what would it fix? Well, everything that sucks about the low game. The question would be whether we'd become too powerful.

I don't believe so. We'd still be very limited in our slots. We'd still have all of the various AT mods and Level mods in place to keep us in some semblance of check. EDIT: Granted, low level enemies may need to be adjusted accordingly as well, and that may be the killing point.

I honestly believe that this course of action should be considered by the devs.

[Fulmens]

Supernumiphone said
[ QUOTE ]
It is a bit baffling that those who feel it's fine are often so vehemently opposed to changes that would help those of us who don't feel that it's fine. I can only guess it's a combination of them feeling they are more skilled and if I would just "lrn2ply" it would be fine, combined with a knee-jerk opposition to anything that doesn't benefit them directly.


[/ QUOTE ]

... so wait. I'm selfish because you want a buff? Huh?

[Pippy]

Okay, another idea I've been kicking around, which may end up with its own thread at some point. This would be separate from any other possible adjustments like changing the recharge on rest.

One of the problems (as I see it) is the binary nature of endurance. Either you have endurance and can do anything you want with no problem, or you don't have endurance and you're helpless: no attacks, no defense, no nothin' until your endurance comes back. (With attacks, this just slows your attack rate. Defense is more problematic, as your toggles all drop.)

My suggestion would be to make it possible to execute powers -- and keep toggles running -- regardless of whether or not you're out of endurance. However, if you're below some value -- I'm thinking 5 or 10 -- you would be in a fatigued state, and all your powers would be reduced in effectiveness by some significant amount -- here I'm thinking a 50% reduction in effectiveness. So, a 10-second hold would become a 5-second hold, a 200-point attack would only do 100 points of damage, Mag-10 mez protection would only give 5 points of protection, etc.

Alternatively, it might be easier to implement to make Fatigued into a status effect, involving large debuffs to movement speed, damage, control durations, etc. I think the other way would be preferable, but I have no idea how easy it'd be to implement.

This would eliminate the complete helplessness that comes with running out of endurance, and is consistent with other MMOs. Thematically, it makes sense -- if you go until you're exhausted, you can still run, just slower. You can still punch someone, just not as hard. There's still a substantial penalty for not managing your endurance, but it introduces more choice into the matter -- do I keep fighting even though I'm really tired and not going at full capacity? Or do I regroup until I can hit harder again. And it would eliminate that gosh-awful, "You Suck!" "Out-of-Power" thing, which I really, really hate.

[Twisted Toon]

[ QUOTE ]
You're just reinforcing the argument that the system is flawed as it currently exists. At level 1 the game ought to play like 22.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fascinating. o.0

I find that I am able to defeat foes much faster at level 1 than I can at level 25. Generally, 2 hits will take down any minion at level 1. 1 shot from the Vet ranged attacks. At 25, 1 shot from the Vet attacks will take half, maybe more, of their health and leave the rest to me.

I am also able to run (with sprint on) from mob to mob to mob to mob to mob to mob to mob, with out having to rest, at level 1. That is with most of the powersets from all of the ATs. Yes, even the Tanks can do so, although a little slower.

Seems to me that I'm using less End per mob at level 1 than I am at 25. Of course, I may be "doing it wrong".

[Zem]

No, the first 10 levels or so are easier than ever thanks to "Beginner's Luck". Now you can mostly ignore Acc enhancement in the early levels and either slot damage or endurance. Even with TOs, 3-4 in a power will make a noticeable difference. I prefer damage first. The faster they are dead, the less time/insps I spend putting myself back together after a fight. Even before Stamina, endurance still comes back faster than health.

But by 10, I can already feel things slowing down. Mob hitpoints are scaling up. Beginner's Luck is fading, and enhancements aren't doing much more than they were at 1. DOs help, of course, but it still becomes a chore until Stamina and SOs. I generally find levels 10-22 the least fun of anything in the game.

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
End isn't that big a deal if a) you slot some end red in your attack chain and toggles, and b) you don't try to play like you're already level 22.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's exactly the point.

You're just reinforcing the argument that the system is flawed as it currently exists. At level 1 the game ought to play like 22. The game doesn't even start to become fun until after 22. Downtime is bad. Downtime is boring. Forcing downtime on the players is not good design.


[/ QUOTE ]
That's really just an opinion. All games I've played have had some sort of downtime. All of them. Every. Single. One. By your definition, all of those games had bad design.

The thing is that games need to have the "bad" things that you can overcome. For instance, if you died and were able to just click a button and have full health with no penalties, there'd be no feeling of challenge. It'd be like if you had a god mode and couldn't be hurt. Dying is bad, but lack of dying would be boring and not challenging.

Downtime for endurance recovery is not a good thing, but having it gives you something to aspire to through slotting and choosing powers and endurance-saving strategies. Because of this, I don't believe the game should play the same at level 1 as it does at level 22. What would the point of progressing be? I want my character to feel stronger as he gets higher, not just have a few more power choices.

[ QUOTE ]
If the end redux were actually effective it might be a different story, but until you reach SOs, you might as well not even bother with enhancements; the difference they make is negligible.

[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with this. TO endurance reductions are just about worthless. DOs are somewhat effective. SOs are when you can really make a difference. Though I think using IOs from sets is the best way to do it.

[ QUOTE ]
Eliminating TOs and DOs entirely and starting with SOs at level 1, as has been proposed by others, would go a long way towards fixing the problem, but it's still not sufficient because there simply aren't enough slots available to a pre-22 character to make a significant difference. Something like a universal reduction in end costs to every power in the game, or something easier, like a universal boost inherent regen and recovery, is needed in addition to that.

[/ QUOTE ]
The thing is that endurance reduction is so tightly woven into the mechanics of the game, universal changes would be excessively disruptive as everything would have to be adjusted across all of the various levels the player could be. Hearing the devs talk in the past about endurance management, I've gotten the impression that they really wish they did it differently, but accept the fact that it's such a rewrite of the game mechanics, it's best to just live with it and address it in specific areas.

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You're just reinforcing the argument that the system is flawed as it currently exists. At level 1 the game ought to play like 22.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's important to understand that the above is an opinion, and not a fact.

While I'm not a fan of being weak and slow, it's not an opinion I agree with. I beleive we should start weak and grow stronger. I absolutely do not believe we should start the game at level 1 as strong as we are at level 22.

Do I think there's no room for change? I wouldn't say that. I could agree with the notion that we don't have to be as weak and slow at level 1 as we are. But everyone's degree of tolerance for how we do function at level 1 is different, and your particular lack of tolerance for it is not a hard-and-fast proof that the system is "flawed". It just means you really dislike it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I did not say "as strong as". I said "plays like". Big difference.

The game is set up so it is physically impossible (or programmatically impossible if you prefer) for a level 1 to be as strong as a level 22. However you could easily make a level 1 PLAY MORE LIKE a level 22, and that would only be an improvement.

[SablePhoenix]

Holy cow.... I can't recall the last time I have seen so many assumptions or so many words put in my mouth.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The game doesn't even start to become fun until after 22.

[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree. I often find the post-22 game less fun. The slowest levelling I've had on my higher level characters has come at points when they are trouncing just about everything they meet.

[ QUOTE ]
If the end redux were actually effective it might be a different story, but until you reach SOs, you might as well not even bother with enhancements; the difference they make is negligible.

[/ QUOTE ]
Do you solo much?

The reason I ask is that I solo a lot, and if my TOs or DOs go red I will notice. On a team... not so much, if it's a reasonably competent team, but then a lot of carelessness can go unnoticed in a team.

[/ QUOTE ]

I solo almost exclusively, and am an excellent player when on a team (since I have been playing for five years with a few extended breaks).

Fun isn't about slow leveling, it's about action. The more constant the action, the more fun. I find it very strange that you would equate fun with fast leveling.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Eliminating TOs and DOs entirely and starting with SOs at level 1, as has been proposed by others, would go a long way towards fixing the problem, but it's still not sufficient because there simply aren't enough slots available to a pre-22 character to make a significant difference. Something like a universal reduction in end costs to every power in the game, or something easier, like a universal boost inherent regen and recovery, is needed in addition to that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you seriously proposing that the upper two powers of the Fitness pool should become an inherent? Why not make the Tier 9 an inherent as well? What's the difference?

[/ QUOTE ]

Oy. Where did I say that the Fitness pool should become inherent? Where?

Reading incomprehension+straw man argument=epic fail

I am not proposing that. I merely said one of the simplest solutions would be to increase the inherent regen and recovery rate. Nothing about movement or jumping speed, nor did I imply it should be a boost up to the level of Health and Stamina. *sigh*

Try to present actual arguments if you don't agree, rather than just attack opposing positions, mkay?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Downtime is bad. Downtime is boring. Forcing downtime on the players is not good design.

[/ QUOTE ]
Handing everything to the players on a plate isn't good design either.

[/ QUOTE ]

Another straw man... (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html) I was going to refute it but it's so patently ridiculous on its face that I don't really need to bother. Except for this...

... Where did I say anything about "everything"?

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You're just reinforcing the argument that the system is flawed as it currently exists. At level 1 the game ought to play like 22.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fascinating. o.0

I find that I am able to defeat foes much faster at level 1 than I can at level 25. Generally, 2 hits will take down any minion at level 1. 1 shot from the Vet ranged attacks. At 25, 1 shot from the Vet attacks will take half, maybe more, of their health and leave the rest to me.

I am also able to run (with sprint on) from mob to mob to mob to mob to mob to mob to mob, with out having to rest, at level 1. That is with most of the powersets from all of the ATs. Yes, even the Tanks can do so, although a little slower.

Seems to me that I'm using less End per mob at level 1 than I am at 25. Of course, I may be "doing it wrong".

[/ QUOTE ]

All of what you say is true, except for the running with sprint on from mob to mob to mob. I have yet to see a powerset that can make it through an entire mission without Rest at those levels. In fact, many (I would posit most) powersets have to Rest after fighting ONE SPAWN, two at the most. Try doing it without the Vet weapons to one-shot one of them first, remember that not everybody has them and we can't rely on them as an equalizer.

Your end comes back comes back far slower than at high levels, and I would doubt you are using less end per mob as well, taking into account all the EndRedux you probably have slotted by that time. I do not have hard numbers on that however, but functionally, you're going to hit Rest a lot in the early levels, and most likely never once you get to 32.

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
No, the first 10 levels or so are easier than ever thanks to "Beginner's Luck". Now you can mostly ignore Acc enhancement in the early levels and either slot damage or endurance. Even with TOs, 3-4 in a power will make a noticeable difference. I prefer damage first. The faster they are dead, the less time/insps I spend putting myself back together after a fight. Even before Stamina, endurance still comes back faster than health.

But by 10, I can already feel things slowing down. Mob hitpoints are scaling up. Beginner's Luck is fading, and enhancements aren't doing much more than they were at 1. DOs help, of course, but it still becomes a chore until Stamina and SOs. I generally find levels 10-22 the least fun of anything in the game.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is my experience as well. Very correct.

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
End isn't that big a deal if a) you slot some end red in your attack chain and toggles, and b) you don't try to play like you're already level 22.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's exactly the point.

You're just reinforcing the argument that the system is flawed as it currently exists. At level 1 the game ought to play like 22. The game doesn't even start to become fun until after 22. Downtime is bad. Downtime is boring. Forcing downtime on the players is not good design.


[/ QUOTE ]
That's really just an opinion. All games I've played have had some sort of downtime. All of them. Every. Single. One. By your definition, all of those games had bad design.

The thing is that games need to have the "bad" things that you can overcome. For instance, if you died and were able to just click a button and have full health with no penalties, there'd be no feeling of challenge. It'd be like if you had a god mode and couldn't be hurt. Dying is bad, but lack of dying would be boring and not challenging.

Downtime for endurance recovery is not a good thing, but having it gives you something to aspire to through slotting and choosing powers and endurance-saving strategies. Because of this, I don't believe the game should play the same at level 1 as it does at level 22. What would the point of progressing be? I want my character to feel stronger as he gets higher, not just have a few more power choices.

[/ QUOTE ]

Let me ask you... do you truly, honestly not feel any more powerful at 50 than you did at 32? At 22?

Is there seriously so little to look forward to, at level 1 no less, that you have to cripple the player just so he can heave a sigh of relief at 25?

If you admit that it's bad, why not fix it?

The thing about the downtime in later levels is that it is much more malleable to the player's choice. Does he wish to mow through a mission nonstop (and if he's a Brute or a Dom, he'd better, because the game mechanics themselves demand it)? He can. The downtime comes either from making bad decisions, or because the player wishes to take a break. This is the key disparity between the level brackets. At level 1, or 10, the player has to take downtime not because he wishes to, but because the game mechanics give him no choice.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If the end redux were actually effective it might be a different story, but until you reach SOs, you might as well not even bother with enhancements; the difference they make is negligible.

[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with this. TO endurance reductions are just about worthless. DOs are somewhat effective. SOs are when you can really make a difference. Though I think using IOs from sets is the best way to do it.

[ QUOTE ]
Eliminating TOs and DOs entirely and starting with SOs at level 1, as has been proposed by others, would go a long way towards fixing the problem, but it's still not sufficient because there simply aren't enough slots available to a pre-22 character to make a significant difference. Something like a universal reduction in end costs to every power in the game, or something easier, like a universal boost inherent regen and recovery, is needed in addition to that.

[/ QUOTE ]
The thing is that endurance reduction is so tightly woven into the mechanics of the game, universal changes would be excessively disruptive as everything would have to be adjusted across all of the various levels the player could be. Hearing the devs talk in the past about endurance management, I've gotten the impression that they really wish they did it differently, but accept the fact that it's such a rewrite of the game mechanics, it's best to just live with it and address it in specific areas.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with everything else you've said here, although I don't think the problem is as insurmountable as you seem to.

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
Okay, another idea I've been kicking around, which may end up with its own thread at some point. This would be separate from any other possible adjustments like changing the recharge on rest.

One of the problems (as I see it) is the binary nature of endurance. Either you have endurance and can do anything you want with no problem, or you don't have endurance and you're helpless: no attacks, no defense, no nothin' until your endurance comes back. (With attacks, this just slows your attack rate. Defense is more problematic, as your toggles all drop.)

My suggestion would be to make it possible to execute powers -- and keep toggles running -- regardless of whether or not you're out of endurance. However, if you're below some value -- I'm thinking 5 or 10 -- you would be in a fatigued state, and all your powers would be reduced in effectiveness by some significant amount -- here I'm thinking a 50% reduction in effectiveness. So, a 10-second hold would become a 5-second hold, a 200-point attack would only do 100 points of damage, Mag-10 mez protection would only give 5 points of protection, etc.

Alternatively, it might be easier to implement to make Fatigued into a status effect, involving large debuffs to movement speed, damage, control durations, etc. I think the other way would be preferable, but I have no idea how easy it'd be to implement.

This would eliminate the complete helplessness that comes with running out of endurance, and is consistent with other MMOs. Thematically, it makes sense -- if you go until you're exhausted, you can still run, just slower. You can still punch someone, just not as hard. There's still a substantial penalty for not managing your endurance, but it introduces more choice into the matter -- do I keep fighting even though I'm really tired and not going at full capacity? Or do I regroup until I can hit harder again. And it would eliminate that gosh-awful, "You Suck!" "Out-of-Power" thing, which I really, really hate.

[/ QUOTE ]

I love this suggestion. I think this, combined with SOs dropping at every level, could be the big answer we're looking for.

[NightshadeLegree]

[ QUOTE ]
Fun isn't about slow leveling, it's about action.

[/ QUOTE ]
In your opinion. Personally I spend enough time in the higher levels running through hordes of unthreatening enemies that I find the slower, more cautious pace of the low level game quite refreshing.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Eliminating TOs and DOs entirely and starting with SOs at level 1, as has been proposed by others, would go a long way towards fixing the problem, but it's still not sufficient because there simply aren't enough slots available to a pre-22 character to make a significant difference. Something like a universal reduction in end costs to every power in the game, or something easier, like a universal boost inherent regen and recovery, is needed in addition to that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you seriously proposing that the upper two powers of the Fitness pool should become an inherent? Why not make the Tier 9 an inherent as well? What's the difference?

[/ QUOTE ]

Oy. Where did I say that the Fitness pool should become inherent? Where?

Reading incomprehension+straw man argument=epic fail

I am not proposing that. I merely said one of the simplest solutions would be to increase the inherent regen and recovery rate. Nothing about movement or jumping speed, nor did I imply it should be a boost up to the level of Health and Stamina. *sigh*

[/ QUOTE ]
Alright, then we'll call them Health Jr and Stamina Jr. If they were significantly lower than the two pool powers would they actually have that much of an impact?

Also, I said nothing about movement or jumping speed. I added some bold to my original comment to draw that to your attention, so please don't make remarks about my 'reading incomprehension' when you're demonstrating that you didn't read what I said.

I've noticed that most of the suggestions about making the low level game easier and/or faster come from vets of several years. Did you ever think that maybe it's not down to the mechanics of the game that you don't enjoy the low levels so much, but rather that you've been playing it for a very long time, and have, presumably, ran through those stages so often that you've exhausted your interest in them?

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Fun isn't about slow leveling, it's about action.

[/ QUOTE ]
In your opinion. Personally I spend enough time in the higher levels running through hordes of unthreatening enemies that I find the slower, more cautious pace of the low level game quite refreshing.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Eliminating TOs and DOs entirely and starting with SOs at level 1, as has been proposed by others, would go a long way towards fixing the problem, but it's still not sufficient because there simply aren't enough slots available to a pre-22 character to make a significant difference. Something like a universal reduction in end costs to every power in the game, or something easier, like a universal boost inherent regen and recovery, is needed in addition to that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you seriously proposing that the upper two powers of the Fitness pool should become an inherent? Why not make the Tier 9 an inherent as well? What's the difference?

[/ QUOTE ]

Oy. Where did I say that the Fitness pool should become inherent? Where?

Reading incomprehension+straw man argument=epic fail

I am not proposing that. I merely said one of the simplest solutions would be to increase the inherent regen and recovery rate. Nothing about movement or jumping speed, nor did I imply it should be a boost up to the level of Health and Stamina. *sigh*

[/ QUOTE ]
Alright, then we'll call them Health Jr and Stamina Jr. If they were significantly lower than the two pool powers would they actually have that much of an impact?

Also, I said nothing about movement or jumping speed. I added some bold to my original comment to draw that to your attention, so please don't make remarks about my 'reading incomprehension' when you're demonstrating that you didn't read what I said.

I've noticed that most of the suggestions about making the low level game easier and/or faster come from vets of several years. Did you ever think that maybe it's not down to the mechanics of the game that you don't enjoy the low levels so much, but rather that you've been playing it for a very long time, and have, presumably, ran through those stages so often that you've exhausted your interest in them?

[/ QUOTE ]

If that were the case, why wouldn't we be tired of running through all the states after 25 repeatedly? Or breaking out the level 50s, where there's literally nothing to do besides what you've already done before?

Maybe it really is the game design that's the problem. If the late game can keep our interest, the early game can too. It doesn't. That's a problem.

[NightshadeLegree]

[ QUOTE ]
If that were the case, why wouldn't we be tired of running through all the states after 25 repeatedly? Or breaking out the level 50s, where there's literally nothing to do besides what you've already done before?

[/ QUOTE ]
That's a fair question. I don't have enough high level characters to be really able to comment on the replay value of the post-25 game, except to say that the levelling speed may be a factor - meaning that if I roll a new alt then I'll go through AP or Mercy in a single night, but unless I'm really going fast it takes longer to do the later zones, so you're less likely to revisit the same stuff as quickly. Just a theory.

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe it really is the game design that's the problem. If the late game can keep our interest, the early game can too. It doesn't. That's a problem.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't disagree that the early game could use some work - red is too linear, blue is too bitty (go here, now go here, now go back there etc) I just don't think that making low level characters more powerful is the answer.

Oddly enough the character of mine who currently has the most end issues is my lvl 35 scrapper, who I respec'd last night and is now running 5 toggles. Combining that with a non stop attack chain and she runs through End in a manner that makes my lowbies look like godmode.

And she does have Stamina :o

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
End isn't that big a deal if a) you slot some end red in your attack chain and toggles, and b) you don't try to play like you're already level 22.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's exactly the point.

You're just reinforcing the argument that the system is flawed as it currently exists. At level 1 the game ought to play like 22. The game doesn't even start to become fun until after 22. Downtime is bad. Downtime is boring. Forcing downtime on the players is not good design.


[/ QUOTE ]
That's really just an opinion. All games I've played have had some sort of downtime. All of them. Every. Single. One. By your definition, all of those games had bad design.

The thing is that games need to have the "bad" things that you can overcome. For instance, if you died and were able to just click a button and have full health with no penalties, there'd be no feeling of challenge. It'd be like if you had a god mode and couldn't be hurt. Dying is bad, but lack of dying would be boring and not challenging.

Downtime for endurance recovery is not a good thing, but having it gives you something to aspire to through slotting and choosing powers and endurance-saving strategies. Because of this, I don't believe the game should play the same at level 1 as it does at level 22. What would the point of progressing be? I want my character to feel stronger as he gets higher, not just have a few more power choices.

[/ QUOTE ]

Let me ask you... do you truly, honestly not feel any more powerful at 50 than you did at 32? At 22?

Is there seriously so little to look forward to, at level 1 no less, that you have to cripple the player just so he can heave a sigh of relief at 25?


[/ QUOTE ]
I do feel stronger as the game progresses. I don't just have more attacks, I can attack longer without getting tired, I move faster, my powers recharge faster. That's part of the joy of MMORPGs that I like.

[ QUOTE ]
If you admit that it's bad, why not fix it?

The thing about the downtime in later levels is that it is much more malleable to the player's choice. Does he wish to mow through a mission nonstop (and if he's a Brute or a Dom, he'd better, because the game mechanics themselves demand it)? He can. The downtime comes either from making bad decisions, or because the player wishes to take a break. This is the key disparity between the level brackets. At level 1, or 10, the player has to take downtime not because he wishes to, but because the game mechanics give him no choice.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If the end redux were actually effective it might be a different story, but until you reach SOs, you might as well not even bother with enhancements; the difference they make is negligible.

[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with this. TO endurance reductions are just about worthless. DOs are somewhat effective. SOs are when you can really make a difference. Though I think using IOs from sets is the best way to do it.

[ QUOTE ]
Eliminating TOs and DOs entirely and starting with SOs at level 1, as has been proposed by others, would go a long way towards fixing the problem, but it's still not sufficient because there simply aren't enough slots available to a pre-22 character to make a significant difference. Something like a universal reduction in end costs to every power in the game, or something easier, like a universal boost inherent regen and recovery, is needed in addition to that.

[/ QUOTE ]
The thing is that endurance reduction is so tightly woven into the mechanics of the game, universal changes would be excessively disruptive as everything would have to be adjusted across all of the various levels the player could be. Hearing the devs talk in the past about endurance management, I've gotten the impression that they really wish they did it differently, but accept the fact that it's such a rewrite of the game mechanics, it's best to just live with it and address it in specific areas.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with everything else you've said here, although I don't think the problem is as insurmountable as you seem to.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, it's not that the problem isn't insurmountable, it's that to execute it properly would require major overhauling of the endurance system, and that type of work may not be acceptable to the devs. Over time, I've learned that it's not just a queston of whether something can be done, it's a question of if it's worth the dev's time to do it, and you can convince them of that.

I don't think the early game is as crippling as you imply it is. I think there's room for improvement, but (with the exception of a couple archetypes/powersets) not as bad as some people say. Listening to them, they want the equivalent of six-slotted Stamina as an inherent from the start because otherwise "it's just not fun". I don't want it quite the way it is, but I do want my character to feel like a slightly-better-than-normal person at first, and then gradually build up to a superhero powerhouse.

I say get rid of the timer on Rest, letting us use it whenever we want. The fact it takes seemingly forever to activate is punishment enough. I also think we should get some kind of endurance discount at level one, it should stay unchanged until around level 14, then dissipate by the time you hit 24. I don't like doing that because I don't like the idea of having a buff that disappears, meaning you get weaker over time, but some sets do have some problems until they get Stamina and access to SOs or SO-level IOs. :p

[Twisted Toon]

[ QUOTE ]
Your end comes back comes back far slower than at high levels, and I would doubt you are using less end per mob as well, taking into account all the EndRedux you probably have slotted by that time. I do not have hard numbers on that however, but functionally, you're going to hit Rest a lot in the early levels, and most likely never once you get to 32.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, on many of my characters, the Endurance recovers at the same speed regardless of their level. I don't take Stamina on the vast majority of my characters. Now, what were you saying about making assumptions?

Let's see. 1 minion at level 1 defeated with 2 hits, 3 max. Endurance usage would be somewhere along the lines of 15 (rough estimation, I could go find the exact numbers if you're too lazy to find them yourself.) 1 minion at level 25 takes around 4 or 5 hits. Endurance usage would be somewhere along the lines of...30 (again, a rough estimate.) Takinginto account End Redux, (if I have any slotted) the adjusted usage would be maybe 20 Endurance per minion. Seems like I'm using more Endurance per mob at the higher levels because I'm having to attack more to defeat them. Its really simple math.

And yes, I am able to fight several mobs in succession while having Sprint on at the low levels. Because I defeat them so fast and use little Endurance in the process. I never said that I ran missions at the low levels. I don't start running mission until I reach level 5 and start on the scanner mission in KR (or the paper missions in PO). Up to that point, I'm sprinting from mob to mob in the streets.

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe it really is the game design that's the problem. If the late game can keep our interest, the early game can too. It doesn't. That's a problem.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is your opinion. Please, don't speak for me. You don't do it well enough.

I quite enjoy the game at all levels. Otherwise, I wouldn't have 70+ alts and only 3 50s in my 4.7 years of playing.

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Maybe it really is the game design that's the problem. If the late game can keep our interest, the early game can too. It doesn't. That's a problem.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is your opinion. Please, don't speak for me. You don't do it well enough.

I quite enjoy the game at all levels. Otherwise, I wouldn't have 70+ alts and only 3 50s in my 4.7 years of playing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Where did I say I was speaking for you? Where does "our" mean "you"?

Maybe you enjoy being weak and slow, but the majority of players don't. You are the only player I've talked to or heard mention this subject who has ever said that the low game is enjoyable on its own, much less more enjoyable than the higher levels.

And maybe, just maybe, the fact you don't take the opportunities available to mitigate that endurance usage at higher levels could be contributing to the fact that you find higher levels slower. Well, that's your own fault. But don't saddle the rest of the players with your poor choices. Your view of the game is not normal (i.e., shared by the majority).

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
Well, it's not that the problem isn't insurmountable, it's that to execute it properly would require major overhauling of the endurance system, and that type of work may not be acceptable to the devs.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd be curious to see what you thought of my suggestion for an endurance-system overhaul a few posts back. On its face, it doesn't seem like what I'm proposing would be a huge project, but Standard Code Rant, etc.

[Miladys_Knight]

You are pretty much an outlier as a data Point Twisted. Yes I'm sure it's possible to do. I would be willing to bet that less than 5% of the total CoX population does so and it's not my experience in the pre-22 game.

If they were data mining your data point would most likely be discarded as an outlier.

Congrats on being able to do so but that is not the norm.

[Soulcapacitor]

<QR>

Sloooow Doooown. Match the speed the NPCs use powers, you almost never run out of end, this only really works well for ATs with Armour Sets though. Tag Team/Leap Frog with a friend, let you team mate get into one mob then when they are out of end you hop in and vice versa. Hit and Run with High Damage Low survival ATs. Pull, a lot, like all the time, seriously.

[Twisted Toon]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe you enjoy being weak and slow, but the majority of players don't. You are the only player I've talked to or heard mention this subject who has ever said that the low game is enjoyable on its own, much less more enjoyable than the higher levels.

And maybe, just maybe, the fact you don't take the opportunities available to mitigate that endurance usage at higher levels could be contributing to the fact that you find higher levels slower. Well, that's your own fault. But don't saddle the rest of the players with your poor choices. Your view of the game is not normal (i.e., shared by the majority).

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't play weak and slow. I can keep up in a team of 8 very well, thank you for asking. In fact, while I'm keeping up, my Endurance bar is rarely ever at full, even when the fights start. Yet, I still contribute nicely to the team's efforts and don't rest very often.

Then again, I may be "doing it wrong".

[Fulmens]

Kitten said:
[ QUOTE ]
You are the only player I've talked to or heard mention this subject who has ever said that the low game is enjoyable on its own, much less more enjoyable than the higher levels.


[/ QUOTE ]

The very low game (1-10, say) is a lot of fun for me- maybe because I'm barely there for any length of time. The scaling of mobs and such means that these things work:

Level 1- you can 1-shot a guy in Outbreak with Hack.
Level 8- you can 1-shot ten guys in Kings Row with Frost Breath

You ding five times in your first hour of play. You're running through the streets hitting everything you see. It's very Calvin-esque.

There is still an awkward hitch around level 16-21 for me, but that's not really a big deal.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Twisted_Toon,

There is no right or wrong. However, if you're not capable of fighting non-stop with an attack/buff/debuff/control animating every moment that a enemy is within range, then you're not contributing to the team effort as much as I would want you to.

OTOH, I've been told before that the pace I run at is "excessive."

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Well, it's not that the problem isn't insurmountable, it's that to execute it properly would require major overhauling of the endurance system, and that type of work may not be acceptable to the devs.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd be curious to see what you thought of my suggestion for an endurance-system overhaul a few posts back. On its face, it doesn't seem like what I'm proposing would be a huge project, but Standard Code Rant, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]
It's interesting and has quite a bit of appeal to it. I don't think I heard that suggestion before, and I do like it. Not being intimately familiar with the code in the game engine, it does seem like it'd be easier to implement than overhauling every power. It makes running out of endurance not crippling, but still something very undesirable, maintaining a good portion of the value of endurance buffs.

The only thing I can think of that would be a major consideration is the effect it would have on quickly the servers can process attacks. When it comes to implementing something, it's more than just how much time is needed to code it. I can't remember what mechanic they were talking about recently, but one of the devs said that while they liked the idea of a implementing a suggested change in a certain way, the calculations done by the server for every attack would increase. It's things like that that sometimes prevent certain changes from going in. As an example, there's a run speed cap. The cap is very close to the limit that the servers can process the character's movement. So while increasing the run speed cap is VERY simple, the servers wouldn't be able to process and supply information fast enough to the client, making rubberbanding prevalent.

The change you recommended has a lot of merit. I'd be interested in hearing what the devs thought about that, and if it would be feasible to code and execute.

[Pippy]

Okay, as bad as I feel about starting another endurance thread with this one still on the front page, I might go ahead and put this idea in its own thread. I think that's pretty legit.

[Twisted Toon]

[ QUOTE ]
Twisted_Toon,

There is no right or wrong. However, if you're not capable of fighting non-stop with an attack/buff/debuff/control animating every moment that a enemy is within range, then you're not contributing to the team effort as much as I would want you to.

OTOH, I've been told before that the pace I run at is "excessive."

[/ QUOTE ]

That is where the "problem" is. not with Stamina or Endurance, but with the players' play style, perception and standards. Not everyone "has" to play at warp 9 every second they are in the game. Unless, of course, they play with you BillZ. :D

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Twisted_Toon,

There is no right or wrong. However, if you're not capable of fighting non-stop with an attack/buff/debuff/control animating every moment that a enemy is within range, then you're not contributing to the team effort as much as I would want you to.

OTOH, I've been told before that the pace I run at is "excessive."

[/ QUOTE ]

That is where the "problem" is. not with Stamina or Endurance, but with the players' play style, perception and standards. Not everyone "has" to play at warp 9 every second they are in the game. Unless, of course, they play with you BillZ. :D

[/ QUOTE ]

Warp 9 (whatever that is) isn't necessary. However, being able to run from one spawn to another within a mission with no down time is. Regardless of AT and powerset, any player at any level ought to be able to run a mission from entrance to completion without stopping if they want to.

The game doesn't permit this. There is no reason for such restriction.

[Bill Z Bubba]

[ QUOTE ]
Warp 9 (whatever that is) isn't necessary. However, being able to run from one spawn to another within a mission with no down time is. Regardless of AT and powerset, any player at any level ought to be able to run a mission from entrance to completion without stopping if they want to.

The game doesn't permit this. There is no reason for such restriction.

[/ QUOTE ]

The game permits it after level 22 for specific powersets from specific ATs.

This is why I don't play certain powersets. Sometimes changes are made when powersets or ATs are shown to be too slow or weak or unacceptable for the job they are supposed to do. (See upcoming dominator changes.)

However, as the game and the devs so often remind us, some ATs and/or powersets will solo better than others since some are designed to be team only.

This is why I finally decided to give up trying to get the 1-22 game changed. Some people like the slow ride up. Some people would be negatively impacted if they didn't have the low level weakness to compare to the high level power we get.

And I don't wish to take that away from anyone when I've been given the tools necessary to skip that part of the game.

I thank the devs for allowing me the tools to powerlevel my characters from 1-22 in less than 2 hours. While doing so, I get to play my high level characters as I enjoy them.

It's a good design.

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Twisted_Toon,

There is no right or wrong. However, if you're not capable of fighting non-stop with an attack/buff/debuff/control animating every moment that a enemy is within range, then you're not contributing to the team effort as much as I would want you to.

OTOH, I've been told before that the pace I run at is "excessive."

[/ QUOTE ]

That is where the "problem" is. not with Stamina or Endurance, but with the players' play style, perception and standards. Not everyone "has" to play at warp 9 every second they are in the game. Unless, of course, they play with you BillZ. :D

[/ QUOTE ]

Warp 9 (whatever that is) isn't necessary. However, being able to run from one spawn to another within a mission with no down time is. Regardless of AT and powerset, any player at any level ought to be able to run a mission from entrance to completion without stopping if they want to.

The game doesn't permit this. There is no reason for such restriction.

[/ QUOTE ]
That mechanic is prevalent in ALL of the MMORPGs. It's a basic part of the genre. Whether it's called mana or endurance or powerpoints or whatever, all players start out at a base level and build up from there. No MMORPG I know of lets you go continuously without stopping right from the beginning. You say there is no reason for that restriction, but all of the games do it. The reason is to let you experience that character growth that I just mentioned. If you want a game where that doesn't happen, then you'll have to look outside the MMORPG genre.

[SablePhoenix]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Twisted_Toon,

There is no right or wrong. However, if you're not capable of fighting non-stop with an attack/buff/debuff/control animating every moment that a enemy is within range, then you're not contributing to the team effort as much as I would want you to.

OTOH, I've been told before that the pace I run at is "excessive."

[/ QUOTE ]

That is where the "problem" is. not with Stamina or Endurance, but with the players' play style, perception and standards. Not everyone "has" to play at warp 9 every second they are in the game. Unless, of course, they play with you BillZ. :D

[/ QUOTE ]

Warp 9 (whatever that is) isn't necessary. However, being able to run from one spawn to another within a mission with no down time is. Regardless of AT and powerset, any player at any level ought to be able to run a mission from entrance to completion without stopping if they want to.

The game doesn't permit this. There is no reason for such restriction.

[/ QUOTE ]
That mechanic is prevalent in ALL of the MMORPGs. It's a basic part of the genre. Whether it's called mana or endurance or powerpoints or whatever, all players start out at a base level and build up from there. No MMORPG I know of lets you go continuously without stopping right from the beginning. You say there is no reason for that restriction, but all of the games do it. The reason is to let you experience that character growth that I just mentioned. If you want a game where that doesn't happen, then you'll have to look outside the MMORPG genre.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not true. I can even name one I have personally played; Guild Wars. No matter what level you are in that game, once you get out of combat, after a short delay, you begin rapidly regenerating both health and energy until you are full in a few seconds.

Enforced downtime is an unnecessary restriction.

[Talen Lee]

Such games have very slow movement, and a very clear idea of what does and doesn't constitute 'in combat,' because getting out of combat can lead to such large bonuses. With such a dynamic game as CoX, such metrics are not directly comparable.

[Barata]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Twisted_Toon,

There is no right or wrong. However, if you're not capable of fighting non-stop with an attack/buff/debuff/control animating every moment that a enemy is within range, then you're not contributing to the team effort as much as I would want you to.

OTOH, I've been told before that the pace I run at is "excessive."

[/ QUOTE ]

That is where the "problem" is. not with Stamina or Endurance, but with the players' play style, perception and standards. Not everyone "has" to play at warp 9 every second they are in the game. Unless, of course, they play with you BillZ. :D

[/ QUOTE ]

Warp 9 (whatever that is) isn't necessary. However, being able to run from one spawn to another within a mission with no down time is. Regardless of AT and powerset, any player at any level ought to be able to run a mission from entrance to completion without stopping if they want to.

The game doesn't permit this. There is no reason for such restriction.

[/ QUOTE ]
That mechanic is prevalent in ALL of the MMORPGs. It's a basic part of the genre. Whether it's called mana or endurance or powerpoints or whatever, all players start out at a base level and build up from there. No MMORPG I know of lets you go continuously without stopping right from the beginning. You say there is no reason for that restriction, but all of the games do it. The reason is to let you experience that character growth that I just mentioned. If you want a game where that doesn't happen, then you'll have to look outside the MMORPG genre.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not true. I can even name one I have personally played; Guild Wars. No matter what level you are in that game, once you get out of combat, after a short delay, you begin rapidly regenerating both health and energy until you are full in a few seconds.

Enforced downtime is an unnecessary restriction.

[/ QUOTE ]
What about when you're within combat? You say you start regenerating energy faster after a delay, and it regenerates rapidly. That says to me that you still have an energy meter, it still runs out and can run out while you're within combat, and there's still a delay after a fight. Since you have to stay out of combat for several moments before it kicks in, your example still doesn't sound like you can just move from mob to mob to mob without stopping.

I personally don't think there should be any recharge at all on Rest. Since it takes several seconds to kick in, and because you're VERY vulnerable while doing it and it's not instantaneous, I think it should be usable at any time.

[Fulmens]

Kitten said [ QUOTE ]
Regardless of AT and powerset, any player at any level ought to be able to run a mission from entrance to completion without stopping if they want to.


[/ QUOTE ]

That's a premise disguised as a conclusion.

[Nethergoat]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
end at the low levels just isn't a big deal for most ATs.

[/ QUOTE ]

So very very false. End at the low level isn't a big deal for SOME POWERSETS. For most powersets across all ATs, it IS a big deal.

[/ QUOTE ]

no it isn't.

i mean if you're looking for something to whine about, you can whine about anything.

I've played everything in this game to a respectable level, and the number of ATs that breeze through the pre-stamina game vastly outnumber the ATs that make you pay close attention to your endurance.

[Fulmens]

The original post did specify something about soloing. 3+ people on a team, I don't find endurance to be a problem, period.

[Supernumiphone]

[ QUOTE ]
The original post did specify something about soloing. 3+ people on a team, I don't find endurance to be a problem, period.

[/ QUOTE ]
This I can certainly agree with. My experience with low level teams is that they manage to keep moving most of the time. There's still a good bit of resting but the team as a whole tends to keep moving. Quite different from soloing at those same levels in my experience.

[Pippy]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The original post did specify something about soloing. 3+ people on a team, I don't find endurance to be a problem, period.

[/ QUOTE ]
This I can certainly agree with. My experience with low level teams is that they manage to keep moving most of the time. There's still a good bit of resting but the team as a whole tends to keep moving. Quite different from soloing at those same levels in my experience.

[/ QUOTE ]

This also squares with my experience, even on end-hogs like stormies.

[Bill Z Bubba]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The original post did specify something about soloing. 3+ people on a team, I don't find endurance to be a problem, period.

[/ QUOTE ]
This I can certainly agree with. My experience with low level teams is that they manage to keep moving most of the time. There's still a good bit of resting but the team as a whole tends to keep moving. Quite different from soloing at those same levels in my experience.

[/ QUOTE ]

This also squares with my experience, even on end-hogs like stormies.

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And it makes perfect sense why this would be so. If 3 of the 4 are fighting, it's easy for the 4th to take a knee.

As you progress through the mission taking turns in this manner, it practically negates the downtime.

Soloists are still screwed, of course.

[Fulmens]

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Soloists are still screwed, of course.

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Well, relative to teamers. But people have repeatedly said "low level characters..." when they meant "low level soloists..." through this thread. Every few pages I have to post the same thing because every few pages people start drifting into implying that it's a universal problem - that everyone, at all times, has this problem between level 12 and 20.

[Bill Z Bubba]

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Soloists are still screwed, of course.

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Well, relative to teamers. But people have repeatedly said "low level characters..." when they meant "low level soloists..." through this thread. Every few pages I have to post the same thing because every few pages people start drifting into implying that it's a universal problem - that everyone, at all times, has this problem between level 12 and 20.

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I have a bad habit of assuming everyone knows I solo most of the time so I'm probably guilty of that as well.