Frosticus
-
Posts
2597 -
Joined
-
Quote:If you are a tru warrior and never use inspirations while leveling up then all the secondaries are probably better than shields. If you aren't afraid to use the occassional inspiration than shields levels as well as anything*Originally Posted by JeNeSaisQuoi
So, I was thinking that in order to be able to make alternate suggestions for those new to Scrappers, I'd get some pointers from the experts. Basically, what do you all feel that other secondaries do better than /Shield? I'd just like to have the best argument possible available so that I can maybe convince some people of reasons that they might play something that they find fun other than /Shield.
And thanks!
*Haven't leveled an invuln or an energy aura toon
Some of the other secondaries can be built for more survivability. So if your goal is to conduct extreme survivability tests than a set like invuln can surpass it.
Or course you have to wonder if the amount that some of the other secondaries can be built to out-survive shields is equitable to the amount that shields can out damage/speed compared to them? The answer is a resounding no.
Shields can eclipse ever other set in what actually matters in the game and the only way to progress a character - Defeats.
Not really looking forward to when it gets the EM treatment as I enjoy my bs/shield, but...it has to be coming. -
If Shield charge is any indication it may well be a new controller power that does more damage than a blaster nuke...
-
Ya it looks like you could 8-9 slot things now with the way the enhancement screen is being resolved.
Fix plz -
elec fence
telsa cage
elec fences
unique power
unique power
frequent aoe hard mez (ie aoe stun)
telsa cages
unique power
2 electric gremlins
-1 of those unique powers will likely be an aoe sleep
-Another will likely be a heavy sapping click power w/ secondary effects
-Another could conceivably be a modified version of blaster lightning field, so large aoe damage aura, end drain, and probably have a chance to sleep/stun added.
I doubt we are going to see another set as unique as illusion myself, but here's hoping the set is indeed more "unique" than I've listed (not that what I just drew up would be bad at all, it would perform very well). -
Not to be a debbiedowner, but if "half" is 4 of 9 then "half the powers are completely different from other sets" is true of pretty much every control set.
-
Quote:They likely used it to average out performance because that is way easier to (theoretically) balance around compared to widely variable values. It is exceedingly difficult to balance defense in an environment where people range from 0% tohit buff all the way up to ~180%. Accuracy is in a very similar boat, but more constrained by the base tohit value of 0.5 so that it is half as rewarding. That said you can generate nearly twice as much acc as tohit buffing so in actual practice it can still vary considerably.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Its not a problem for people to try to build to hit as often as they want to. The game only needs to make the costs reflect the benefits and the limits of the game. I think the biggest problem with DR is that the devs tried to use it to keep everyone in the "average" range, when they should have used it to make getting out of the average range expensive. That's a subtle, but important distinction. By making hyperaccuracy expensive instead of impossible, it could be balanced against the opportunity costs of buying other things, like more damage, rather than focusing strictly on the issue of whether it is absolutely fair to acquire such accuracy against an avoidance set.
They have done much the same thing with average resistance because it is much easier to balance expected defeat rates when people are taking on damage at a more predictable rate. A squishy with 0% res has a drastically different expected survival time than a tank with 90% res (even ignoring hp). If you apply a mechanic that adds res to the squishy and subtracts it from the tank you bring the damage mechanic into a narrower range and it is (theoretically) easier to balance.
Castle has done this with nearly ever mechanic in pvp now. And yet builds still emerge as definitively stronger than others because until you constrain everyone to a variance of nearly 0 it is inevitable that something will be better than something else. The nature of pvp mandates that the better option will be what survives.
Without being rude you aren't the first person to suggest that a magic pony would solve all problems.Quote:Short version: Elu + the right DR means *some* people will do as you describe, and buy accuracy to hit at all costs, but many others will do the cost/benefit analysis and decide its not worth it. If the game presents that choice in a way that people choose both ways, rather than everyone thinking that one of those choices is obviously the best one, that would act to help balance the PvP environment.
If something is even a tiny bit better pvp will flush it out and it will become more widespread than the choice that is a tiny bit worse. The more prevalent the slightly better choice is the more people start building to counter it. There is likely no way to avoid that cyclical evolution short of reducing everyone to the exact same abilities.
I agree, but this was for better or worse far more of a factor in i12 pvp than it is now. For a host of reasons that system did not flourish and in an attempt to average everything out through dumbing it down the only result has been explicitly an arms race.Quote:Usually, when it comes to PvP, the trickier but more important thing to balance is not the effects of things, but rather the choices presented to the players. That makes the "arms race" a diversity race, and not a magnitude race. Its ok to buy an edge against something if it also costs you a vulnerability (or less of an edge) to something else, as long as those strengths and weaknesses are moderate and within the ability for the game environment to counterbalance reasonably well. Its not necessary, and usually not desirable, to force everything to be exactly equal.
How this relates to elusivity: I'm not saying to do away with it as it is a layer in the balance equation that ironically is very elusive. I'm just saying that unless Castle throws his hands up in defeat like he did with tohit buffing and reduces everyone to a very narrow spectrum then elusivity is either going to be too good vs casuals, too weak vs experienced players and very rarely just right. I think we can all agree that the value assigned to it now of 10% is just a place holder while Castle waits for the magic pony to arrive and help him out.
My second point is that hitting it with a DR curve as restrictive as tohit is more of a sign that it can't be balanced than a sign of proper balance moving forward; unless proper balance is viewed as brawl+sprint and a total lack of diversity. -
Quote:If I can make a build (and I can, quite easily) that will hit you at the same frequency regardless of whether you have elusivity or not then it indeed does not matter from an end user point of view.Originally Posted by SkeetSkeet
The disconnect is this: If elusivity is properly implemented, building +acc into your toon will shift your net hit rolls a few % one way or the other but there's no amount of +acc you could IO with that would make elusivity not matter.
You'd need about 150% elusivity to prevent me from just building in global acc and hitting you like you have no elusivity. I don't mean "no elusivity" from a mechanical standpoint, but from an end user standpoint.
The build sacrifice necessary to do it is irrelevant, because if you are granted such a high value of elusivity that requires me to overcome that will become the new paradigm for pvp. You need look no further than i13 forts for evidence of that. People were rapidly constructing builds to counter them. If it was allowed to persist it would have happened too, however you'd have an even higher barrier to entry and a new paradigm for the meta game to counter.
At the same time that 150% elusivity would absolutely devastate lesser builds, which the devs seem really devoted to protecting.
edit: another example of a new paradigm where build sacrifice is irrelevant is kb protection. 41 points is ridiculous, but it is pretty much necessary if you want to compete. -
That was funny
-
hmm a 50% reduction (or w/e the number being discussed) on hoarfrost would probably have every other tanker up in arms. Rightfully so too considering a number of other armors would be getting a passive "improved" by this change.
Some controllers/doms getting a way faster cycling st hold, but others not probably wouldn't fly
Faster cycling tarpatch certainly blows anything the other defenders would get out of the water.
I'm sure there are even more egregious examples, but that is just off the top of my mind
If this were to happen I'd really want/expect attacks like flares/snapshot and fireblast/aimed shot to have there DS/end/rech increased prior to the change, they really don't need to cycle faster and already have cheaper endcost and rech requirements. The benefit those sets would get would be minuscule compared to the standard blast powers set at 4/8. -
You need 33.8% def to be softcapped once the pro-bot shields you (assuming two def IO's in it)
Each probot only gets one casting, but all others get two castings so they need 22.6% def to be softcapped
FFgen is good for 15-16%, pet IO is good for 5%, manuevers (if you go that route) is good for 4% -
Quote:I don't expect it to not make a difference, but Castle obvious does if we look at how tohit buffs have been altered.
It does not make someone with 280% accuracy no better than someone with 80% accuracy. I have no idea how to do that, or why you would want to do that, so I'm not prepared to even try to figure out the math for that.
There are toons capable of self capping their tohit (ie pb+aim+bu) and there are toons with no tohit (ie lots of troller builds). In such an environment defense can either be hugely overpowered meaning you never hit them, or it can be hugely negated.
In came the jar of mollasses and that blaster now hits ~20% tohit buff with those same powers. Now the haves are barely better than the have nots.
Acc is in a similar position though not as blatantly strong due to its multiplicative nature rather than its additive nature. Except in the case of elusivity where it is additive vs acc.
With a range possibiltiy of 0-200% acc you get vs 43% elusivity
(1-.43)*.5 = 28.5% tohit chance
vs
(1+2-.43)*.5 = 128.5% chance to hit.
How you are going to even out the haves vs the have nots without something as confining as the DR curve put on tohit I'm unsure.
The result outside of a paper analysis in actual implementation is that either I hit you and you die and go home crying on your defense toon ******** about how def/elusivity sucks and Castle stole your lunch money, or I don't hit you and I die and go home crying about how OP'd def/elusivity is.
I've never heard any sort of consensus among players about how often you *should* get hit, in fact the answers given when Castle specifically asked about some defensive scenarios varied wildly. -
There is a disconnect between what we are talking about, which is my mistake as I chose poor wording.
Whatever value of elusivity you have I'm going to build enough +acc into my toon for me to hit you however often I deem appropriate where I have no issues with your elusivity.
Just like whatever value of defense you have I'm going to build enough tohit into my build where your defense no longer prevents me from hitting you as often as I deem necessary.
If your answer is 43% elusivity and 15% defense, then I'm simply going to construct my build so that I hit you. I'm going to ensure I have 43% global acc and a persistent 15% tohit as a base so that you are naked ("make not matter"). I'm then going to combine addition tohit/acc/def debuffs so that I hit you as often as I want.
Hence the arms race and barrier to entry I was talking about. As long as it is possible for builds to vary from 0 to ~200%+ acc it is going to result in a situation where the have nots get wrecked and the haves do the wrecking with a very narrow margin of balanced encounters somewhere in the midst.
If I don't build for it you will wipe the floor with me just like forts initially were wiping the floor with people not specced for tohit and very high acc, while things like SS tanks running FA had no issues hitting them.
The window is very narrow where you'd have a balanced scenario, either I don't hit you enough and I die or I do hit you enough and you die. The range where it can go either way is tiny and then further complicated by adding in player skill and player perception of the issue.
PvP in itself is an arms race, that is the entire foundation of it. The goal is for my spec and skills to be greater than your spec and skills. Elusivity just adds another layer, but it is in no way above the confines of the environment and I'm a bit unsure why you'd suggest it is. -
Quote:Excellent. It takes way too bloody long (subjectively and objectively now that it is confirmed and I can stop thinking I'm crazy when I play my trappers) to lay down your pbaoe traps. It takes nearly 10 seconds at the start of any fight you wish to put out acid, pt, tb. Getting them down to their listed cast times will be a great first step in addressing many of the "traps is too slow for normal/fast teams" issues. A small trimming of cast times beyond that ala trickarrow which is similar in using multiple powers to layer its valuable debuffs would really take the set places.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Update: any power that plays the "place trap" animation (and there's a bunch) plays two animations in a row, both of which are apparently rooted animations. They take a combined 88 frames to play, or 2.933 seconds. That's equivalent to an ArcanaTime of 3.168 seconds: close to the measured 3.25 seconds.
I'm still working on two separate questions: why I didn't detect this issue before (a technical problem of my own) and whether the cast time or the animation time is in error. I'll let you know when I find out: my suspicion is that the cast time is technically in error, but the animation times are too long as configured and should probably be trimmed a little (which probably would not be difficult in this case). It might be a while before this is addressed, though, because the devs are currently in the mad dash to get I17 released, and will transition immediately (if not already) into the mad dash to take GR gold. But I'll try to stay on it periodically until the devs have a chance to give it a good look over. -
Quote:You haven't countered anything I said. Rather you have decided to pick a specific nit and go off on a tangent thinking I meant "make disappear" when I simply meant "make not matter".Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Its impossible to "erase" Elusivity. If you have two characters, one with 60% resistance to damage and one with 60% elusivity, then any increase in tohit or accuracy will affect both the same way - to a limit. Technically speaking higher accuracy means you get hit more often and you could consider that "erasing" Elusivity but then the same thing is true for Resistance: higher accuracy causes you to take more damage, which is "erasing" resistance as well.
This works to the limit of about +90% accuracy. At that point a zero defense/zero elusivity character is being hit 95% of the time (50% * 1.9 = 95%) which is the tohit ceiling. More accuracy can't hurt the resistance character, but it can continue to hurt the avoidance character. Under that limit, though, Elusivity reacts "smoothly" to increased accuracy and tohit.**
The real question is how to value debuff avoidance relative to damage stability and burst damage resilience against each other. If they are worth exactly the same qualitatively, then X% resistance is balanced against X% elusivity. If they are not, then one of the two would need to be adjusted. For example, if foe debuff avoidance is considered highly valuable in PvP (which it is) then 60% Elusivity is probably "more valuable" than 60% Resistance, even though the numerical damage mitigation is the same. In that case, you could decide that 60% Resistance should be balanced against 50% Elusivity, but that's less than ideal for a lot of reasons. A better option is some combination of Elusivity and Defense that has the same mitigation as 60% Resistance, but is more vulnerable to tohit buffs could be generated that balanced against 60% resistance (i.e. 20% defense/33% Elusivity has about the same 60% damage mitigation as 60% resistance). That way, the resistance character is vulnerable to all debuffs, while the avoidance character is less vulnerable to all debuffs, but more vulnerable specifically to defense debuffs and tohit buffs.
So if you compare to an attacker without very high tohit or accuracy, they will deal about the same amount of effective damage to both the 60% resistance character and the 20%def/33%elu character. If they have stacking debuffs, those would be more effective against the 60% resistance character. If they have tohit those would be a little more effective against the 20%/33% character. But usually, those advantages would be proportional, not runaway. Most PvPers would have at least a little of both, which would offset to a high degree. But avoidance characters would be stronger against some things and weaker against others, without being impossible to hit or trivially easy to tag in most situations.
Overall that's very possible to balance correctly, given a specific valuation target. Its not generally possible to balance this in a way that everyone will agree with because everyone has their own ideas of what different things are worth in PvP. But that's not a numerical problem: that's a "people can't agree where to go for lunch, much less what's important in PvP" problem.
** Above the +90% accuracy limit its a bit trickier to balance things. DR could be engineered to specifically moderate those extreme possibilities, or a hyperaccuracy critical system could be implemented in PvP that would eliminate the disadvantage completely.
But rather than go around in circles here's what I'm requesting of you. Pick a value for it that you believe works in pvp that doesn't just create a new minimum barrier to entry.
Since we are specifically concerned with acc lets ignore the difference in tohit that would also be present.
Pick a value that would allow for a toon with FA + 80% global acc+ 80% acc slotting = 180% acc to not be significantly better than a toon with just 80% acc slotting.
Specifically assign a value that you think would be balanced, if you think it should vary set by set then feel free to give an example for say SR and w/e else you like. I don't need an explanation of how it stacks up against resistance, I already know who it should work.
Extra points if you don't slap a cement shoes DR curve on acc like was done to tohit buffing or else it is just falling victim to the last thing I said in my previous post. Or is the 60% example you used your answer? -
Quote:Woe is you if you ever misspelled one of their birthday cards!Originally Posted by Hazygreys
I noticed this problem on Demons while doing open beta. I named my demonlings after my neices and nephew, fire = R, cold = K, hellfire = X, and whenever the fire would die the new one would become K and the cold would be R.
-
I heard traps defenders are the best way to hit 400 quickly, is that true?
-
Nothing my fire/traps couldn't handle. Implement when ready.
-
Quote:Yes definitely turn it up. If 2/8 is too much for now go 1/8. That's what I ran at until I put the two def procs in the pets and got them up to a bit over 40% def. Assault bot likes lots of enemies to burn down and freezing rain plus some nice packing with hurricane lets him do it.Originally Posted by SinisterDirge
Well... looks like I need to up my dfficulty a bit, mind you I am sitting at 39 on my Bots/Storm. I run at +2/5, and have to respawn a bot once a mish. Maybe. Hurricane is great for keeping the mobs pissed at me. I do agree it would be nice to have both options.
Just like it would be nice to turn all the aoe's on my spines/fire scrapper into harder hitting/less endurance cost single target attacks when I am fighting an +4 EB... Nice, but not very realistic is it?
If we have to pause a bit every couple of spawns to resummon and equip a pet, it only slows down the steamroll so much... even then, not by much.
You'll be able to run higher than 2/8 when the build is done, but like anything you have to decide between speed and challenge. I find +2 a nice mix. You might like it higher at that point if you are already using 2/5.
MM's are in no way in need of a buff that's for sure, but I just figure the devs have created such an extremely overpowered class they may as well just make it so buffing pets in combat is as easy as it is out of combat.
I sort of liked the old buffing style just because it was like "here is this OP AT, but at least it takes you a while to get prepared and then crush everything in sight". Now that pets zone and you can buff them all in about 4 seconds it just seems like they have thrown what little was keeping the AT under control right out the window. It's nice, they are way nicer to play, but wowzers. -
It has mixed results. If it misses one of them they are all alerted and can attack before the sleep affects them. If it hits them all then they seldom attack.
I've found if you jump back (ie cj+hurdle) as you cast it that can help a bit too. If you have hurdle slotted up a bit you won't lose much time jumping back toward them right after to drop slick as you sail into the pack and let arc air work its magic.
Not the best, but not the worst. -
That's fine, but you can pretty much get off all 4 st target attacks in the same time frame as the snipe and do about 2.3x as much damage.
Assuming you have at least a rech SO the only one that isn't coming back around for chaining is will dom.
Snipe is fine if you like it though. -
Quote:Not directed at me, but I'm in a similar position to the person this was asked to. I run at +2/x8 for most content on my bots/storm. It is very rare that I'll lose more than one pet at a time, but invariably one will wander out of my buffs range while I'm jumping around hurricaning everything and it will splat. Not every fight mind you, but a few times a missionOriginally Posted by SinisterDirge
What settings are you at that you drop a pet every spawn?
As a storm spamming efences+nado+LS all the time my endurance bar can't handle rebuffing that pet. Granted I'm usually running ninja run for the fast movement w/ hurricane which doesn't help, but it is faster than cj+hurdle and only the best will do. The only time I'll make the effort to rebuff is if it was Crushinator that drops (assault bot). Unless I have some blues drop which admittedly insps rain down on that setting, but I combine them all into reds to feed Crushinator so it can kill entire spawns in seconds...
Basically, life is tough on this toon that is easily solo'ing AV's, cakewalked the +4 RWZ challenge and solo's missions on +2/8 with little personal risk and I want it to be a little bit easier when I lose a pet...
All kidding aside, the suggestion of a variable cost aoe buff made earlier would be ideal for all MM's in all scenarios across all levels and would really put the finishing touches on the AT. -
Quote:Aim and bu? yes, must havesOriginally Posted by Substrate
I recently made Psychic Blast/Mental Manipulation blaster to toy around with and recently got him to 20. Hes a lot of fun but I skipped both build up powers Concentration from MM and Psychic Focus from PB. I've never really found Build ups all the useful But that could just be from play style. The question is with two 10s buffs can you stack them for one epic snipe to end all snipes? and is it really worth it?
The snipe? not so much. Just use will dom+tk blast on a problem foe. It will do more damage and if it doesn't kill it will take it out of the fight for a bit. Then you still have some buff time to use other attacks. The snipe eats up too much time for not very much damage compared to what you can do in the same time frame. -
For clarification as it looks like some different opinions on the matter:
Zoning to stack bubbles - good
Reapply bubble on top of a powerboosted one while in same instance - bad, it overwrites it with the lower value
I highly recommend using the zoning trick on any buffs it applies to (list provided in a previous post). It is very powerful and can really smooth out the early mission fumbles that often occur.
I don't hold up the team to make it happen, but hit whoever I can and try to make sure I get double buffs on the main people drawing aggro. -
I'll save you the time.
Level 1: 6%
Level 2: 6.3%
Level 3: 6.9%
Level 4: 7.5%
Level 5: 8.1%
Level 6: 9%
Level 7-20: +1.5% per level
Level 20-50: 30% -
Quote:Yep. And without it thorns would be one of the better sets. Well that an impale is ridiculously long animation... though shorter than Executioner's shot heh.Originally Posted by BrandX
Don't Thorns cause redraw?