Frosticus

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Full disclosure of a fait accompli is a hollow gesture. The time for full disclosure was back when the powers in question were on the table being looked at. Full disclosure would have been a heads up to the player base, like "We don't consider this form of +recharge inheritance to be working as intended, so don't get too used to it. And don't blow too many hours of gameplay building for it."

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Given that this has been stated, repeatedly at that, as unintended behaviour that they just had no means of fixing, why does it come as such a surprise that they eventually fixed it when they found the means, or rather the motivation to fix? Specific powers were tagged to not accept specific enhancements, yet people still assumed that their being able to sneak that kind of enhancement despite the specific ban and despite what the developers were saying and have been saying was absolutely intended and would never be altered?

Welcome to I2. Your Smoke Grenade has just been fixed.

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Just the other day I believe normal Rech enhancements buffed LS's attack rate. This is because I haven't slotted anything other than set IO's (usually the ones that are cheaper than So'ing a toon) since they came out.

To say the least this change comes as a surprise to me. I had no idea I was haxxing the game.

Conversely, when I go to slot a pet and see it accepts a def debuff set is it expected for a player to make a logic jump that just because that set has a def/rech in it they aren't supposed to benefit from it?

I guarantee I'll get some tells from friends after this goes live asking why their pets aren't working the same.

I think the vast majority of people slotting their pets to improve performance had no idea it wasn't intended. I'm pretty up on the game and had no idea because I've also played buff sets like kin and always been able to buff pets.

what's done is done, but I can assure you most people will be surprised by this on live, your assumption of game knowledge and dev position by the average player is way off.

Not to leave some people out in the cold but:

Certain buff sets and one pet set had the unique ability to provide -rech protection to their pets/team pets, which was a unique design and fairly rare, but valuable protection.

Off hand they are:
necro (pets immune to -rech and -slow)
Poison - antidote
Thermal - thaw
Cold - Arc fog
Kin - Speed boost
Emp - Adrenaline

Is anything being considered being added now that everyone (pets) has these unique abilities. In particular I'm looking at necro as all MM pets are like it now and poison, which a MM could use to help pets in -rech situations. Not to say the other examples aren't pertinent.

I hope they aren't just going to be "part of the ship, part of the crew" in the quest to homogenize everyone.

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I really don't think I would be able to survive the level of stress some folks bring into their entertainment.

I have several Masterminds and Controllers, including an Ill/Storm. This will not affect my playstyle in the slightest. I hit the button, the cloud appears, bad guys go flying. It works like this now, it will work like this after I14. If there is a reduction in effectiveness, it just means that that following attack I'm already hitting won't land on something that's already defeated.

As a matter of fact, though I've been here since the end of I3, there have only been two power reductions that I ever really payed attention to. ED and the GDN. Even then, I ran a quick respec, and carried on like I always did.

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Q F Ever-lovin' T!!

I play this game (GAME!!!!!) to have fun and to take on the role of a comic book hero or villain. As long as I can beat up bad guys (or cause some mayhem), I'm happy. If something changes, I adapt and play on.

I have never believed that any "rebalancing" has "nerfed one of my characters into uselessness." I have never deleted thanks to any power change. I enjoy playing whole characters, and every single character is more than the sum of a few powers.

All this just seems like a silly thing to get one's undies in a twist about. It makes me wonder if the folks who obsess over every second of recharge and maximum efficiency have difficulty separating work and play. The things one does for entertainment are supposed to be fun. The things that are tedious or stressful should not be done for fun. If you are going to do something tedious and / or stressful, you should be getting paid for it in some way. I usually call this kind of activity "work."

Maybe it is just me, but I have never understood the value that so many people place in bringing "work" into what they do for entertainment.

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that's how you enjoy the game.

I'm mathematically and achievement orientated. I notice 3% differences in my performance in this game, in my work, and in sports. That's just who I am.

I've played all of the existing pve in this game and they killed pvp (for me) in i13 so one of the really enjoyable things I've found in this game is tweaking a build to the maximum point of effectiveness.

That's fun to me and their drive to homogenize everyone lately and their obvious regret of implementing so many IO's is frustrating to me.

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Hello Castle, here is a question for you then.....

How come you could fix Frostie's AI, even when SB'd, so he would shoot, then go into combat, when before all he would do is shoot, and you cannot fix all the rest of this.

Why can the recharge element of RIP's just not effect the power and not the pet......because you did manage to find a "FIX" when you found out SB'd Heavys in RV were causing havoc...but not the other way round....

In other words....is this just another sledgehammer to crack a nut going on, you have found a problem, but you HAVE managed to fix a pets broken AI before to ensure it cycles through its powers. Why not hold back and invest some proper time in fixing the real problem....IO sets inadvertantly having an effect they shouldn't, rather than giving all pets a blanket nerf.

Anyway, thats all I have to say on this....and before you all jump on me, I do not have a /kin troller...yet, and do not farm at all, but can see all us non farmer types been inavertantly penalised by the sly back door for this.

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check how long arcana's list of pets affected is and it isn't even complete apparently.

adding a flag to each power on that list is a lot more time effective than going through and fixing the problems provided they even had the capability to fix them. Given the wonkiness of ai and pets in general that is questionable.

We aren't getting the "best solution" we are getting the "best solution given time and resource constraints". Not much we can do about that unfortunately. If something was severely impacted and needs to be addressed I'd suggest bringing it up, but given that they didn't address each pet in a reverse fashion I doubt they'll address each pet to do a balance check in any timely fashion.

There is also the factor that this change is so very convenient to reel in IO's (think they regret adding lots of them) and to ensure that builds utilizing these pets all have relatively the same performance with tiny variation, which is the way the design team is moving.

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Is LS going to accept these problematic RIP IO's now as you are officially saying it is a pet?

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I think you're getting hung up on the word "pet".

When Castle is saying "Pet" here, he doesn't mean "creature that follows you around and does stuff", he means "a summoned entity".

Basically, what he's saying is "we don't want players to be able to increase the power usage rate of summoned entities". It doesn't matter what form that entity takes, be it a pony, a cloud, or an enchanted cucumber.

That is a position that I personally agree with, and fully support (at least when it's done with enhancements).

For me, the big question with this change has been if essentially giving "summoned entities" immunity to Recharge debuffs is a price worth paying for achieving this goal. It's definitely a downside, but as I've said before, I truly don't believe there are any entirely Good solutions at this point. The question then becomes if this proposed change is the "least bad" option (these options include "do nothing"), and I've come to believe that it is, especially since the devs have the *option* of making NPC-summoned entities exempt from this change if they believe it becomes necessary (by creating new versions of those pets).

It also helps that I believe that with the Recharge-inheriting out of the way, it's possible to improve some other oddities with pets and sets.


tl;dr;
I agree with the goal, and I'm ok with this change.

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gah, I just wanna move on and respec everything out of my fire/storm already!

If you read the rest of my post I'm basically asking him to turn LS into a real pet because right now it is an end of mission only power due to abysmal numbers if it doesn't shoot most of it's load.

I've extrapolated from his comments regarding domination and new powers like SoW/OwtS that "end of mission" or "too good to use" (which LS certainly isn't, more too crappy to use heh) powers is something he is striving to move away from.

Unfortunately this change puts LS square into that position (VS has mobility and also doesn't suck 1/3 of your end bar).

So rather than waste everyone's time with years of datamining followed by a trivial buff, I'm asking him to think about solutions right now. which is also why I ask him how he sees effectively using LS outside of "boss fights" and what his vision for storm is in tough encounters such as AV's now that it isn't bringing enough damage to offset the lack of other buffs/debuffs/heals (ie -dam, -regen, shields, stuff like that).

As I mentioned in another thread a perma hasten storm can now just barely summon enough damage to equal the -regen powers that its brethren can toss out and at a cost of 7x as much endurance (and assumes only the AV is left, or that everything is within 5ft). They also have other useful powers that tend to overshadow steamy mist. I realize AV's aren't everything, but they are a consideration, just like spawn to spawn play is which I also ask about.

Basically what is storms roll now according to Castle? (non Castle's need not answer as it is guesswork, just like my opinion)

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that would have been so much better, could have saved myself literally hours of going off the deep end trying to protect LS from the pet nerf. Only to find out LS "IS THE PET NERF" lol.

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Honestly, I think I and others had been trying to quietly and with as much compassion and understanding as possible explain that very likely Castle may not have consciously been thinking about LS, but while dealing with this other issue it might have effected his decision.

Of course, now we find he did know about it all along.

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I try not to pretend that they don't know "secrets" of the player base as they generally do.

I generally hope when they are corrected it isn't done at the expense of numerous other powers and sets like in this case, and I hope they take a holistic look at the set they are changing to determine if further buff/nerf is warranted, but I think the trap of falling back on 1-2yrs of datamining after each change might eliminate that possibility.

It is what it is.

Then again, by the sounds of his post they had no idea recharge affected pets until the put the RIP sets in lol. (which I'm sure was just a mis-statement)

So who knows.

edit: I think I'm done on this issue, I'm spent lol. Hope everyone enjoys the changes, I know I won't, but I understand it is for the greater good. What combo's are gaining largely from this so I might partake? bare in mind the lose of improving many MM pets is a lose in most cases.

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I never would have thought LS, VS and gun drone were too strong, especially given how many people lol@VS and I rarely hear people talking up GD. LS has always been considered pretty good, but there is another reason for that.

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I don't think it's that they're too good. Just that they were operating out side of what they were suppose to be doing. If they had tried to buff Lightning Storm, they might have way unbalanced it for the people who know how to game the IOs to get all their worth. But STILL just made it "kinda ok" for everyone else.

If you want to buff things up or nerf them down. You first must establish a baseline.

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fair enough, begin the 2 yr datamining process then hand out a 5% buff I eagerly await.

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If this change was instead to correct LS, VS, and the turret becoming too powerful, it would have been much better if you had just come out and said so. It would also have been nice if we had been notified that this was a bug and that a fix would be implemented when it could. Instead we were lead to believe that this was intended behaviour and slotted accordingly.

I am extremely unhappy with the change. But appreciate your forthrightness. LS, VS, and the Turret became too powerful and now been nerfed. This happens to fix some other pet's AIs as well.

I feel as if we were intentionally mislead by the patch notes inorder to stealth in a nerf.

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that would have been so much better, could have saved myself literally hours of going off the deep end trying to protect LS from the pet nerf. Only to find out LS "IS THE PET NERF" lol.

I never would have thought LS, VS and gun drone were too strong, especially given how many people lol@VS and I rarely hear people talking up GD. LS has always been considered pretty good, but there is another reason for that.

Personally I think it smells of backpedaling to cover his butt, but it makes no difference to the outcome, just helps to ensure continued developer mistrust .

Like I figured, it is good to go.

Is LS going to accept these problematic RIP IO's now as you are officially saying it is a pet? I could use it as an IO mule now and the RIP sets have way better bonuses than the ranged damage sets that this "pet" takes now.

Any playtips on how to use LS outside of once a mission vs the end boss now that it fires so slowly that is is horrible dpe unless it fires most of its bolts?

What in your opinion is storms' roll against difficult content as damage isn't it as it doesn't bring nearly enough damage to offset the value of other buff/debuff sets?

Any chance one of more of these aspects of LS can be changed?
1. Intangible (all agro onto caster, not very pet like of it)
2. Immobile (cya later pet, too bad you can't fight by my side like all the others)
3. Act independent of the caster (as in if I move away from LS it will keep attacking, cause it doesn't right now)
4. Attract its own agro (all agro is directed at the caster, which is not how ANY real pet ie imp, henchman, even gun drone behaves)
5. Can be interacted with after summon (+dam only affects it while active on me, so powers like assault don't do anything for it and I can't buff it with forge or anything after it is cast, which if it is officially a pet it shouldn't carry "aim" over on cast, but should be buffable after si?) I'm honestly surprised it is a "pet" it is so different than every real pet.
6. Accepts pet IO's
7. rate of fire increase so it isn't an "end boss" only power, which iirc you aren't fond of in the power "domination" so hopefully don't want to impart on any other powers.

In the spirit of "minimally impacting" everything is anything going to be done for powers that debuff recharge and are now coded to do nothing to pets? I expect a fair amount of MA content to be pet heavy tbh and there is always pvp to consider.

All well c'est la vie, I'll just wait for i15 when cold hopefully comes to trollers as it is storm + so much more now

thanks for the update at least.

well they normalized damage in i13 so base modifiers don't really do much anymore compared to cast time. Basically long animations hit harder regardless of AT.

This is why spirit shark spammers are so popular for brutes, stalkers and widows, the attack hits like a ton of bricks and does more damage than almost all melee attacks.

Now granted melee class ranged attacks are being reduced a bit in i14, but they will still be effective. Elusivity is being reworked a bit too though so SR, ice armor and widows won't be quite as overpowering in all likelyhood.

At any rate melee class using ranged attacks is very viable currently. Melee class using melee attacks - much less so.

Melee that use ranged attacks (even though they are being slightly reduced soon) are very strong in this game.

haha, ya it is an oxymoron, but there you have it.

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yeah, but a brute with fury maxed out hits pretty friggn hard.

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but that only really applies in fightclubzorz as your fury is generally flatlined (or close to it) during any pvp with movement.

/elec dom with thunderstrike, flurry, and kick and I'm not kidding in the least.

If all you want to do is fightclub then no travel power is a perfectly viable option. You didn't say that, so I'm guessing you actually want to run around and pvp in the zone, so you'd have a heck of a time doing it with just temps.

yes it does, but between free res, and WoP (no not the italian version) you end up close enough where tough isn't doing much. Same goes for the epic res shields.

In arena with DR off, then sure stack em up to 75% heh.

thank you, much appreciated.

I used to have a mob resistance spreadsheet that I dl'd from somewhere a long time ago, but never really gave it much attention. I do not have it anymore unfortunately, any idea if an up to date one is hosted anywhere?

thx

Significant portions of this post were removed for conduct violating the Message Forum Rules and Guidelines -Mod08

did you count how many times he missed with ice control? How many times Jack missed? What would the kill speed have been otherwise?

I did, because I'm not about to PM Castle and implicate a potential bug without first dotting my i's and crossing my t's.

It isn't about Jack vs Pooman in the least, he is just cited as an example of the ai glitch that Jack is suffering from because he was specifically reworked to overcome it.

Finally, Magicj's test wasn't about "builds" I'm not sure how many more times that needs to be said. We all know that some sets exhibit strong synergy and we all know that a purpled out toon will out perform a SO'd one. What he did was very fair: identical (or very close) slotting and equal amounts of recharge (none and moderate) and no secondary.

Maybe one more test with geas+hasten would satisfy people so they could see roughly how a heavily IO'd toon would perform, but I doubt you'd see any massive shifts because you can only summon one set of pets and you can only attack as fast as your animations allow.

Anywho, I've always felt that the family singy was more potent damage-wise than mine when I had a grav/rad, but that was some time ago. Very survivable pet though and pretty.

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Assuming it IS being accounted for, then the results are especially surprising to me given what my Ill/Rad does to hard targets.



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Hard targets often have higher res to smash thus hurting earth and grav a lot. And hard targets ofteh wtfpwn imps quickly hurting fire. Ill on the other hand has indestructible PA.

Additionally for grav to perform well it needs to constantly attack, whereas sets that generate more damage from their pets can work secondary powers in without negatively impacting damage output nearly as much before factoring in the benefits of those buff/debuffs.

While I did think ill would kill a bit faster w/ PA it isn't far from what is expected. The big surprise was earth, with pooman bringing down the house. While he isn't quite as indestructible as PA he is very durable and buffable and has a taunt factor similar to PA. He may not be pretty, but he is impressive.

Biggest disappointment was ice for me, but Jack really isn't working like he should. Working Jack may very well put ice into second place.

Really great test, I'm very glad Magicj took the time.

Not having looked closely at all, but does Ill suffer from the problem that some MM's do where they won't attack a target that is being kb'd? If they are waiting for the target to stand back up before attacking that could explain a lot.

At the very least you end up with PA chasing around the target that phant has kb'd?

My ill is /ta and I often entagle things for containment on blind and SW, so kb isn't really an issue with Phant. I was suprised at Ill's performace as well because of what I've experienced with my ill/ta and because of the legendary status of ill vs hard targets.

Hard targets don't get knocked around though and much of that reputation is garnered because of PA giving the user invincible status.

Just a thought.

I heard up MM's into the tram, saturate AAO and shield charge them all to death.

true story.

she's a dirty ****, I have pictures to prove it

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P.S. Rise of the earth/storm AV solo'ers?

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Maybe, I but I haven't been able to do it. The Smashing resists that so many AVs have make it difficult, at best.

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good point. Might be able to tag some of them, but the list might be so short it wouldn't be worthwhile for the time/effort of specializing the build.

Would make for an interesting post though in the troller forums.

My fire tanker w/ tough is at the numbers it used to be w/o tough (excluding fire of course)

w/o tough he has as much res as my fire brute used to have - bout 33-36%

Compared to the value that def+elusivity is bringing that is absolutely horrible.

Very nice work. Big surprises for me were earth and grav being 2 and 3 post 32.

Poor plant and PA-less Ill, at least they are amazing at other stuff heh.

plant and grav w/ propel seem to get faster w/o hasten, that is wierd and might be worth looking at why.

Can you post once more ranking all of the sets for each catagory? right now it is separated over two posts, with a lot of drivel (sorry bout that) inbetween.

I'd do it for you, but this is your great work and I don't want to infringe upon it.

Thanks

P.S. Rise of the earth/storm AV solo'ers?