BellaStrega

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Had the devs actually done any serious testing, and not just listened to complaining from blasters, they would have seen that the global defense reduction was a bad idea, and no one would've asked that the devs look into removing toggle droppers because melee defenses had taken two substantial hits in previous issues.

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Actually, it may have been wiser to put the GDR and ED right in with I4, since they were obviously already working on them back then. I imagine they chose not to for two reasons: 1) It would have been undeniabley hailed as a major nerf because of PvP (which happened a bit anyway, but less than if it had come concurrent with the Arena) ; 2) They were still fiddling with exactly how big the nerf needed to be in order to get the difficulty where they wanted.

Had they done any serious PvP testing, a lot of things would be different, but they are doing that testing now to the best of their ability I imagine, and thus we will have many changes over the next year. The fact that they reverted PvE hurricane should be heartening to all those who worry about PvP changes harming PvE.

After some more testing with my Kat/Inv scrapper, I am getting very concerned that melee dominance will be too strong once again. I haven't felt this good about that scrapper in PvP since I4. That isn't really a good thing in the long run. More testing will need to be done before I can come to firmer conclusions.

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I wasn't making a serious comment on the reasons for GDR and ED. I was turning Estrella's point around to make a point of my own.

Predictably, Estrella completely missed the point and took my statement literally. Gotta love those "melee players are the devil" blaster players.

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Had the devs actually done any serious testing and not just listened from complaining from people, they would have seen this.

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Had the devs actually done any serious testing, and not just listened to complaining from blasters, they would have seen that the global defense reduction was a bad idea, and no one would've asked that the devs look into removing toggle droppers because melee defenses had taken two substantial hits in previous issues.

Or are the devs only incompetent when it's your ox getting gored?

Just to be clear: I'm not assigning incompetence to the devs. I'm trying to make a point.

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Ah, so Blasters were responsible for the global defense reduction. I suppose it had nothing to do with melee toons being neigh indestructible in PVE, herding, or powerleveling. I suppose you'll tell us next that we were responsible for ED, and every single nerf that Regen has had since the inception of the game.

Anything else you'd like to blame on blasters? Global warming, perhaps? High gas prices?

My point is that even with toggle dropping, things are not rosy for all blasters who arent Fire/Ice /EM, and that powersets like Elec, Archery, Assault Rifle, /Fire, /Ice, /Dev are having trouble enough competing WITH toggle dropping. So now we're going to go from having a 50/50 shot at winning to having next to nothing.

Congrats.

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You completely missed my point, but I think it's funny that you can believe that:

- The melee nerfs were completely justified

and

- The toggle-dropping nerf is the result of rank incompetence

The truth is, from issues 2 through 4, blasters burned a huge amount of bandwidth whining endlessly about tankers and scrappers, even to the point of blatantly lying about what scrappers were capable of. It's just as reasonable to conclude that the global defense reduction in issue 5, plus the individual nerfs in issues 3 and 4 came from that whining as it is to conclude that the only reason toggle-dropping was reduced was due to melee complaints. I don't really see how it makes sense to claim that changes you like are balanced and fair, but a change you hate is solely due to an incompetent decision based on nothing more than whining.

You can't have both assumptions. Or rather, you can, but it undermines your basic argument.

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Its not like it couldn't use some improvement, but the overall tone is very like the one regarding EA. And now I don't hear those complaints about EA. It just feels like everyone going its horrible... when the reality is more it perhaps, and thats a perhaps could use some tweaking.

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If there were such complaints (I don't recall either way), I suspect they were posted because the set was still in testing. Now that it's live, people who were unhappy with it just play other secondaries, and are probably not invested in it.

I can tell you, though, that the complaints about the KB hole will outlast /Elec's time on test.

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Had the devs actually done any serious testing and not just listened from complaining from people, they would have seen this.

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Had the devs actually done any serious testing, and not just listened to complaining from blasters, they would have seen that the global defense reduction was a bad idea, and no one would've asked that the devs look into removing toggle droppers because melee defenses had taken two substantial hits in previous issues.

Or are the devs only incompetent when it's your ox getting gored?

Just to be clear: I'm not assigning incompetence to the devs. I'm trying to make a point.

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I've entered quite a few team PvP matches and it's more of the same. Scrappers and Tankers will invariably go after squishy controllers and defenders and take them out the equation, dividing the team and leaving a blaster like me isolated. A simple attack chain and the blaster is often toast. Even if I do manage to cause some serious damage to a scrapper or a tanker, usually a self heal will change the tide and give them the advantage again.

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This highlights an imbalance in PVP, but it's not something toggle-dropping really covered up. It's not unlike my experiences in team vs team PVP prior to issue 7.

Unfortunately, for a lot of people who primarily play ranged ATs, any solution that does not weaken or punish melee is unacceptable. So when a change like this comes about, it suddenly becomes how melee ATs have wronged you all, and that does nothing for discussion.

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I started playing around with a DM/DA stalker last night, and:

Shadow Maul is very powerful.

Several times, I found two enemies standing close to one another and was able to shadow maul them both. I nearly always got a crit on one, and often got a crit on both.

The ability to line up shadow maul without anything seeing you or moving around in reaction to you is pretty nice.

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For Shadow Maul crit, does each "tick" crit?

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For Shadow Maul, you get (for example)

four ticks of X smashing + X negative

After all four ticks, you get 8x negative crit damage.

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I'm sorry, but if you're going to lower toggle dropping, then you better cut down scrapper and tanker damage too, considering the fact that scrappers can inflict some kind of status effect (knockdown, knockup, immobilize stun, fear), AND 2-3 most squishies all the while shrugging off mez effects long enough to finish their opponents.

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Wait, scrappers and tankers were already nerfed in issue 5 and 6, when the global defense reduction and the change to mez shields was introduced. You want them to be nerfed again?

On teams, you might find that you'll do a lot better against melee, unless you're teamed with incompetent controllers or defenders.

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It's convenient for you that your thread in Archetypes and Powers was deleted yesterday.

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Not really. Would be easier than delving through the three pages of stickies looking for this. And I liked Centerfire's quote in there, I really should have saved that.

What, you think showing me playing along with the stupid song thread-jack would suddenly cause a change of heart? That responding in kind to Foo's 'What logic' statement and eyeroll would somehow make me feel really immature compared to someone who ignores arguements simply because they don't like the first sentence?

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I recall a couple outbursts from that thread - and honestly, CenterFire's post was pure whine.

As for why I stopped reading, your first sentence was basically "you're wrong" and an eyeroll.

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I'm tired of going over exactly the same arguments over and over again. I'm tired of having my integrity attacked because I wanted toggle drops to be reduced.

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Then refute them or completely ignore them. Give a reason, rather than this bull of "You're wrong" or "Your example aren't enough or aren't good enough", or "I've answered this one before"?

I've yet to see you answer why Hurricane's current PvP kludge is acceptable. I've yet to see a single Tanker forumite comment on knockback suppression. Or Break Frees invalidating Dominator primary sets.

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I never said Hurricane's current PvP kludge is acceptable. If you consider me a "tanker forumite", I've already said before that knockback's suppression might be too much.

To be honest, as far as Hurricane goes, that's not really my gored ox. The biggest balance issue that I was personally aware of has finally been corrected - making the range debuff work on all ranged attacks, regardless of AT, and not work on all melee attacks, regardless of AT. I know that hurricane was altered to be, as the patch notes said "less abusive in PVP" but I haven't seen it in action since that change, so I couldn't comment on it with any kind of authority, because I don't know how it works.

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Kali, very mature. Really. I guess I shouldn't have expected more.

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It's convenient for you that your thread in Archetypes and Powers was deleted yesterday.

I didn't flame you. I didn't attack you. I'm tired of going over exactly the same arguments over and over again. I'm tired of having my integrity attacked because I wanted toggle drops to be reduced.

I started playing around with a DM/DA stalker last night, and:

Shadow Maul is very powerful.

Several times, I found two enemies standing close to one another and was able to shadow maul them both. I nearly always got a crit on one, and often got a crit on both.

The ability to line up shadow maul without anything seeing you or moving around in reaction to you is pretty nice.

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Reducing the toggle-dropping doesn't really make things all that much worse for them, and might put /energy into the same ballpark.

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So... many... bad... assumptions.

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I stopped reading right here.

The point is that 45% defense is equal to 90% resistance. So, something with 45% defense will be hit 1/10th as often...so no, the +3 AV shouldn't have a 7.5% floor, as that's 10% of an even-level AV's accuracy.

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It was when Castle was explaining that Darkest Night was 18.75% debuff, which through us all for a loop until we realized that it was a -18.75% from the base 50%.

Anything pre-i4 that was stipulated at "percentage" of a defense or accuracy was always against the 1-100% scale, but they have switched over to affecting the base 50% accuracy now.

So Lucks at +25% were against the 1-100% scale. But now with the way math is working out, it's actually a -12.5% against the base.

It's still 25%, but 25% of *50*, the default base.

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This is inaccurate. 25% defense is approximately equal to 50% resistance, in terms of mitigation. Using the formula given for the new defense scaling, 25% defense - one small luck - will halve anything's chance to hit you, up to +5 or +6. It'll reduce an AV by 37.5%, a minion by 25%, and so on.

Two lucks will floor all those things at 1/10th their to-hit - 7.5% for the AV, 5% for the minion.

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Having to wait until 32 to be about equal (not even beat) to the other sets' burst damage, and having the attack that guarantees a crit be a DOT with the crit happeneing at the end of the DOT is a significant disadvantage, imo, and making melee cones 100% for the actual target, and 50% (or less) to others caught in the aoe would be a perfect solution for this problem, and incidentally, also to Spines/ and Claws/'s cone type powers.

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I'm not disagreeing with your general point, but I want to mention that Scrapper MG crits when the attack hits, not at the end of the dot. I would expect Stalker MG to be similar.

Also, there's always Siphon Life!

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These posted numbers make me extremely happy as a regular PVP'er. ED is the exact reason why toggle dropping wasn't necessary to the degree it currently exists in. Damn straight.

Yes maybe a few powers could be raised slightly, I'll give you that. But I've got no problem with these numbers staying as they are.

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I am honestly not surprised that Melee PvPers are happy about this change. It once again gives them the solid advantage in PvP. No, I have my Brute in PvP now and it is an even fight between myself and an Ice/EM blaster. After this change? Well, I guess I'll rack up another 400 rep point badge even faster with my Brute now. There isn't much blasters are going to be doing to me. I am somewhat upset that the challenge is being taken out of playing a melee character, but I guess most people that pick a melee character are not looking to play on a balanced playing field anyway. Hell, they had the advantage BEFORE the toggle drops were nerfed, now the advantage is so clear even an idiot can't fail to benefit. Which is what the whiners want of course.

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Because, of course, everyone who dislikes the toggle-dropping mechanic a) does not want balance, and b) is whining.

This is completely unlike blasters and defenders, who make heroic stands to explain why their ATs are flawed in PVE or PVP and never whine.

Toggle-dropping is broken on live, anyway, because it's unevenly applied. Some powersets get huge doses of it, and some get hardly any at all, despite not being comparable to the former sets in other areas. It's also a kludgy mechanic designed to get around capped resists and 15-point mez protection shields, neither of which really exist anymore thanks to the combination of ED and the global defense reduction. Keeping TDs at their former numbers does nothing to help /fire blasters, who along with other not-energy blasters were doing fairly poorly in PVP already. Reducing the toggle-dropping doesn't really make things all that much worse for them, and might put /energy into the same ballpark. This will also make it easier to balance blasters as a whole to be more functional in PVP than they are now.

Toggle-dropping itself is an arbitrary mechanic grafted onto PVP to reliably deprive (at the time) two ATs of their defenses. It was probably necessary short of nerfing the heck out of those defenses at the time. Not surprisingly, the heck was nerfed later.

Also, I doubt these are going to be the final numbers. They're on the test server, and these things can change. I would expect to see the percentages get tweaked to match developer expectations. I would also like to see the sets that toggle-drop be examined and balanced so that one set doesn't have such a huge advantage over another set (like blaster /energy over /fire).

But, I don't think this is the tolling of the DOOM bell for squishies in PVP. I think this does alter the balance of 1v1 PVP, but trying to make that balanced is dumb anyway. The balance should be team vs. team, and I suspect this won't really interfere too much with that.

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The monitors of Recluse and his speech are my favorite part

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Mine too. It dawned on me last night: Anyone else remember the old commercial, I think it first aired during a superbowl, of a room of drone like people watching a Big Brother type guy on a large screen. This woman runs in, a jogger, with a big hammer and she smashes the screen. It made me think of that. Don't ask me what the product was, could have been sneakers or a computer (Apple?), I can't remember everything.

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It was Apple. I believe you can find it online somewhere.

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i honestly think DA will be the worst like it is for scrappers. All it was put there for was to make ninjitsu stalkers realize that they dont have it so bad afterall

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I was going to call you mean names, but then I saw that you already had a mean name above your avatar.

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4) Taunt, the effect, is not the same system as “Hate”. Quoted because “Hate” doesn’t even exist as a system; it’s really a formula that is a combination of Threat Rating, Damage, and Healing.

5) Taunt, the effect, will always override “Hate”.

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I am happy to have something to point to in response to claims that blasters can easily steal aggro from tankers.

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It sounds like that if a Tanker just taunted a group of 5 (does not matter the means of the taunt) and all 5 are 'taunted', then a Blaster should be able to AoE them all to 1 hit point left of life in 1-shot and the Tanker still keeps aggro. Is that right?

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Yes.

This is how it's worked for me when tanking or blasting, too. Stuff that isn't taunted is easy to piss off. Stuff that is taunted keeps hitting the tanker until taunt wears off.

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4) Taunt, the effect, is not the same system as “Hate”. Quoted because “Hate” doesn’t even exist as a system; it’s really a formula that is a combination of Threat Rating, Damage, and Healing.

5) Taunt, the effect, will always override “Hate”.

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I am happy to have something to point to in response to claims that blasters can easily steal aggro from tankers.

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Will Brutes' Fury not building properly in PVP get fixed?

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I've not figured out a way to get it working yet. It's possible I *can't* get it to work as described, in which case, we'll have to have a pow wow around here (complete with Tee Pee's and Peace Pipes, hopefully) to figure out what to do.

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"Puff puff pass. That's the rule." -- Tauren Chieftain

Sorry, sorry.

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ROFL
I think he means take any team with a Tanker in a PvP situation.
Remove the tanker and replace him with a Scrapper, Blaster, Controller or Defender and your team will perform much better.
Didn't think the wording was that confusing.

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I dunno. Tankers have pretty good burst damage - Stone, SS, and EM at any rate.

Even so, this doesn't make tankers gimped in PVP, just flawed. Does anyone remember the initial post I disagreed with, or are you all caught up in the fallacious claim that I'm saying tankers are uber?

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The real reason is that the Tanker performs like a less efficient Scrapper without any real additional contribution in terms of team effects.

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Which can still be fairly potent in PVP. Scrappers are often described as gods in PVP (IMO, they weren't all that against my tanker, but hey), so a watered-down god is what, exactly?

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Ice/EM shoud be nerfed with the quickness. It is one of the many broken builds in PvP and doesn't paint the proper picture of how bad tanks are outclassed in PvP.

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I don't have an Ice/EM tanker. I do have an Ice/Stone tanker.

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Are you serious Kali?? You must have turned blind if you think tankers do ok in PvP.

Remember that devs balance for teams. Just exactly what do a tank contribute with in a PvP team that no other AT can do better?

Damage, no. Buffs, no. Protecting team members, no. Debuffs, no...

So perhaps a tank can take a bit more beating due to more HP but since a tank is not really that big of a threath WHO CARES!

Master Minds and Dominators at least have tools that make a difference in PvP. Tanks just hang around.

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Say that after a tank comes and slams his energy transfering palm into your eye and follows it up with a double fisted total focus off the top rope.

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And someone immediately whips out the one attack set that is good in PvP. Congratulations for rolling a FoTM. Yes, a EM does quite alright in Warburg. Go try that combination in Sirens and see how you do.

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Stone Melee does pretty well, too.

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That is just BS Kali, tankers do not have 30% unresisted damage so there is no way they do 80% of blaster damage. Take your stupid illusions elsewhere.

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Yeah, the fact that every blaster and non-storm defender or controller I targeted was either defeated within a few shots or running away after popping inspirations to survive was completely an illusion.

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I have played a tanker and have played against a tanker and that's why I say tankers just hang around. When you say you attacked a tank I have to ask why? Did the tank pose a threath to you or your team?

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The tanker was one of the targets that wouldn't fold like a house of cards when I attacked him. Scrappers, too. I didn't bother with most of the scrappers because they'd just hit elude when they saw me coming, and my six-slotted buildup + three to-hit SOs in each attack wasn't enough to overcome that.

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Replace tanks with any other AT in a PvP team and you perform much better, that's a fact you cannot argue about.

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Depends:

If you mean the other ATs can fulfill their intended roles better than a tanker can fulfill its intended role in PVP, I'll agree. If you mean tankers are impotent and worthless in PVP, I'm going to have to say that you're the one carrying illusions.

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While I agree with your general point that tankers manage quite well in PvP as uber-scrappers, their damage isn't 80% of a blaster's. Their AT scalar is, but their actual damage dealt isn't anywhere close. Don't give people the wrong impression.

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How you can post that, and at the same time not see the problem with that statement I'm not sure.

If Tankers operate as anything other than Tankers at any point in the game then at that point in the game they're broken, despite if they're functional.

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It's possible to see that tankers can function in PVP and are not impotent while also seeing that tankers are unable to fill their intended role in PVP.