Castle

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Ok after I've calmed myself down a bit, I'm wondering...
Mez resistance or mez protection?

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Protection vs. Knockback, Knock Up, Repel, Stun, Sleep, Hold, Immobilize, Confuse and Fear. Pretty much the whole suite.

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ok, Ive tested this numerous times, MoG ends BEFORE the warning timer even starts blinking. All the other tier 9 powers are working fine though. Devs, pls fix this, MoG already has enough trouble as it is.

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Technically, it's not a bug -- it works as designed. The problem is that MoG is the exception to that design. That doesn't help YOU folks at all, it's mainly me straightening out my thoughts on how to approach it. In order for this to be fixed, it will require a code change. So, I'll add it to the queue.

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I wouldn't rule out the possibility that a couple of the AVs have the ability to hit a phase shifted enemy. Afterall it is possible for the base defences to do it now so its not impossible from a coding side like it used to be.

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We haven't given this ability to any AV's or GM's.

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Will the proposed AV Regen rollback effect Mitos and Hami?

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The Hamidon and the Mitochandria were specifically exempted from the original AV/GM changes. As such, there is nothing to roll back for them, in this regard.

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The semicolon means that they are two separate effects. They stack.

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Correct.

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Let's see if I can beat Arcanaville to the reply on this one. Isn't the To Hit Buff of Aim ADDED to the Base To Hit, rather than multiplied, for 117.5% To Hit in PvE, 92.5% To Hit in PvP?

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Bah, it's been a long day.

Opening the handy spreadsheet to a random control power in the Dominator section, I see Cinders.

Cinders has 4 Hold entries.
1) Hold vs Critters. It is Duration Scale 8, which is affected by Enhancements, AT mods and Level Scale. It has a fixed Magnitude of 3. The Mag increasing in the Guide is erroneous.
2) Hold vs Players. It is Duration Scale 6, which is affected by Enhancements, AT mods and Level Scale. It has a fixed Magnitude of 4. It is subject to Suppression. The Mag increasing in the Guide is erroneous.
3) A second Hold vs Critters, which stacks with the first one. It is Duration Scale 12, which is affected by Enhancements, AT mods and Level Scale. It has a fixed Magnitude of 3. The Mag increasing in the Guide is erroneous. This entry only activates when Domination is active.
4) A second Hold vs Players, which stacks with the first one. It is Duration Scale 8, which is affected by Enhancements, AT mods and Level Scale. It has a fixed Magnitude of 4. The Mag increasing in the Guide is erroneous. This entry only activates when Domination is active.

WAY back on the original subject:
Aim is a scale 5 To Hit buff for all Aim and Aim equivalent powers (amplify). That Scale is multiplied by 0.1 * AT Mod. For a Corruptor, that is +42.5% or 142.5% * Base To Hit. In PvE, that is 106.875% To Hit. In PvP, it is 71.25% To Hit.
Aim is also a Scale 5 Damage buff. That's a +42.5% damage increase.

Build Up is a Scale 2 To Hit Buff, or +20% for a Brute, and a scale 8 Damage Buff, or a +80% damage increase.

Statesman, Jonyu and I all worked on translating the numbers in game to the Prima Guide. There are likely some typos and a transposed digit or two, but most of the numbers are accurate.

I think the pool powers values were all based on a fictional AT with all mods of 1.0 -- so if you apply your AT mod to the values, that should get you pretty close. Oh, and also, all the values are calculated at level 50. So, in many cases you'll get lower values at lower levels.

How many "alarms" can we check per day, while also generating and testing new content? I can guarantee we get more "alarms" than we have time to look at properly.

An easy reply to that is 'Hire more people.' Ok, so who do we let go to keep this in our budget, and isn't that just robbing Peter to pay Paul? Increasing the budget means either Cryptic or NCSoft loses income OR we increase the monthly charge for the game. None of these are really good ideas or feasible.

There is an old engineering adage to the effect of "You can have it Fast, Good, or Cheap -- pick two." It basically refers to the fact that time, money and quality are all inter-related. Time and Money are often fixed quantities ("We need this in three weeks! No, we aren't increasing your budget for it.") which means features are designed to, or cut to those parameters.

One last thing to consider, you as players represent thousands of times more manpower than we have here. No matter what, you will almost always find bugs that we miss here. Statistically, that is almost a certainty.

None of this is meant as an excuse. We have a lot of bugs, and as many get introduced each new patch as get fixed. So long as new content is being added, that will likely remain the case (although, since we have had a QA dept. here at Cryptic for the last 10 months or so, things are improving in that regard.)

We are trying to make CoH/CoV the best game possible -- we work on it every day, and constantly discuss ways to improve the various systems we have and how to prioritize changes and/or fixes. Sometimes, we screw up, but most of the time, we succeed.

I've added this to my buglist. I'll update the text and make a balance pass on Inspirations in the not so distant future.

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BRB = MOB - attacks - knockback resist + 100% dam resist

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That still means that only people with Knockback powers would move the ball, and it wouldn't have the physics aspects that you'd want, since it has to follow knockback rules rather than particle movement rules. It would not 'bounce' properly off of objects.

All of that said, it *could* be done, but I doubt we have the free time in the schedule anytime soon, and even at that it would be fairly low priority. My guess is you'll see it around the same time as the Giant Tape Worm.

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That was pretty much my reaction, too.

All the physics are client side only, and no information about them is passed from client to server -- so, it's strictly a visual on your machine. That means, there is no way for people to play volleyball, or kickball. We could put one in that only you, the player, would see, but I imagine that isn't what everyone would like.

Sorry, folks.

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I want A Big Red Name to post about A Big Red Ball.

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No. You don't. It'd be bad news.

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Agreed. I've PM'd Cuppa and Castle about it and am just asking for a straight up answer : "Are we going to see a fix for the base heal value of Healing Flames or not?"

EDIT : Per a PM from Castle, I believe there are further changes forthcoming. Do not deluge Castle with PM's.

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Specifically, I said "One step at a time." The animation time was, technically, a bug I could fix (a number in the animation file was set too high.) The value of the heal on Healing Flames is a balance issue, which has to be dealt with as a team. So, we're looking at it, but no change is currently being made.

An easy way to consider it is:

Without any modifiers, you go from 0 endurance to full endurance in 60 seconds. So, Temp powers or Accolades which increase Max Endurance are also, effectively, increasing Recovery rate.

Stamina, 3 slotted with +3 SO's grants 149% Recovery, or roughly 2.5 End/second if you have the normal Endurance maximum.

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Man, I really hope Castle takes a good look at electric/. All it takes is a couple changes to make the set great. Namely

1) Make Thunder Strike equal to the blaster version... but for brutes. Thunder Strike for blasters is comparable to Total Focus for Blasters. Thunder Strike for brutes is not comparable to Total Focus for Brutes. And it would not unbalance the set if it were.

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Not happening.

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2) Chain Induction. I am guessing that this power will not be able to stay the way it is. But the XP-leeching has GOT to go.

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We have a bug report in engineerings queue to do something about this, but there is no ETA on a change, and it is possible they tell us nothing can be done. In that case, we either redesign the power, or leave it as is and add the "Warning: May cause XP loss" into the help text. Obviously, a code fix is the best case solution.

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FYI: Melee AT Patron Power Pool Ranged attacks which cause damage will be changed to using the Melee damage scale.

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Follow Up:
Stalker Snipe PPPs are back to being Ranged damage. The changes I'd made to keep them balanced got nixed.

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FYI, Lightning Rod's Recharge Time will be being reduced.

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(tries to push luck)
can we get a dmg boost?

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No. I should say, "Not Likely" since anything is possible. Lightning Rod, with it's Area of Effect, does about twice the damage of any other Brute tier 9 power. Against a single target, its damage is comparable to Greater Fire Sword.

EDIT: Chain Induction: We're looking at options on this. The XP loss was not intended, but may be unavoidable with the current design.

FYI: Melee AT Patron Power Pool Ranged attacks which cause damage will be changed to using the Melee damage scale.

FYI: Electric Shields' Grounding Power will have Immobilize and Knockback Protection added. The set will still not have a Heal power or HP Buff power.

FYI, Lightning Rod's Recharge Time will be being reduced.

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If there were AT modifiers at work on that 0.5 (50%), then a defender, the buff/debuff AT, would have a higher value, not lower. Certainly not 70% lower.

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Actually, about 90% lower, assuming you're talking about the base. The Defender multiplier (the highest) is 0.125. The Controller/Corrupter multiplier is 0.100. A scale of 0.5 means that Controllers and Corrupters should be seeing a 0.5*0.100=0.05 final base debuff (5%), and Defenders should be seeing a 0.5*0.125=0.0625 (6.25%) final base debuff. The blaster multiplier is only 0.070, so Smoke Grenade from /Devices is only providing a 0.5*0.070=0.035 (3.5%) final base debuff, which is the reason why every time that I've read about it being tested it has never shown up above the statistical noise even in large samples. It's literally so small it needs special tools and large amounts of time just to detect.

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That's essentially correct.

A 0.5 scale would be:
Defenders = 6.25%
Blasters = 3.5%
Masterminds = 3.75%, etc

A Defender with 3 SO's would be ~9.6% to hit debuff.

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The problem is, the Night Widow's smoke grenade is much more powerful than the player version.

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The Night Widow's Smoke Grenade is exactly the same scale for both Perception (-90%) and To Hit debuff (-0.5) as Smoke Grenade (and Fire Controls 'Smoke' and Trick Arrow's 'Flash Arrow'.)

The issue you are describing of critters being aware of you even after you blind them is the same problem Stalkers have with Hide -- once you have Aggroed a critter, it always knows where you are, despite Stealth or Perception changes. It's how our AI has to work, currently. It is something I'd like to see changed, but it is 'difficult.'

HO's increasing Range was a bug.

The cone sizes for the melee powers is part of the Recharge/Damage/Endurance calculation. Increasing Cone sizes means reducing Damage & increasing End costs or increasing Recharge time to compensate.

In general, though, this probably will not happen.

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I find the absence of Red Name comments on either the Elec Armor or the Elec melee to be quite sad at this point. We know they are reading the boards, but their lack of comment to me at this point is that both versions of Elec are " working as intended ".

Given the potential for this set - not really looking for uber, but was hoping for par - in its current form it will be most likely relegated to theme/concept builds only.

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Can't really comment yet, other than to say I've read the thread and am making recommendations based on the feedback here.