Frosticus

Fair enough, but the devs are devs and they tend to look at things from their perspective. If you want to understand changes that aren't glaringly apparent then it is helpful to look at it from their viewpoint.

I could full-well be mistaken, lord knows I've spend far more time butting my head against them than anything else.

I'm trying to look at the issue from both sets of shoes having farmed a whole bunch myself. This change indeed barely affects my farm setups, but manages to be pretty annoying on my more conventional toons. I'm not a fan of it the mechanic, but I do like equality. From a farming perspective a 2ish second unaffected period would hit me a lot harder, while currently hitting my normal toons about the same as the current system.

I'm fairly sure they gave self rezzes to npcs for a reason. A short unaffected period would promote that reason better than the current no-target system imo.

It's not fun, I wouldn't claim it to be. The current system isn't much fun either. As to which is less fun I say flip a coin, but unaffected period accomplishes the task with more equality and to a more complete extent. I guess I'm an equal opportunity no-fun kind of guy.

Depending on how long the "no xp" period lasted you run the very real risk of fully reversing the initial problem. Now you have people spending time defeating things and getting no reward whatsoever (in the case where aoe splash damage isn't vaporizing them)

I can't say it with absolute certainty, but that would also defeat the purpose of the original design intent behind enemies self resurrecting, which is namely to add another layer of difficulty to the encounter. You'd still have the same issue of players using aoes to defeat the target before it had an opportunity to serve the purpose of being resurrected.

While it seems fairly clear to me that the devs were spurred to make these changes due to rewards being earned with minimal effort/time I'm sure a tangential goal was to ensure resurrecting enemies are allowed to fulfill their purpose from an encounter difficulty standpoint.

A "no xp" period, would pass the criteria of preventing the earning of extra rewards, though run the risk of actually punishing players. But it would fail at preserving the encounter purpose of rezzing enemies.

The current method of "no target" sometimes passes and sometimes fails the extra rewards criteria as pets and non-target damage powers are not affected. And it sometimes preserves the purpose of adding depth to the encounter and it sometimes fails for the same reason as the reward portion

Applying a 2 second "unaffected period" would pass the criteria of disproportionate reward rates and ensure enemies survive long enough to return to the fight.

All three methods have "anti fun" factors compared to how it used to be, but in my mind it is best and most fair to go with the one that affects everyone equally in all circumstances while also best succeeding to achieve the secondary goal of resurrected enemies increasing spawn difficulty.

If I had a choice I'd probably return it to how it was before. I actually like curb stomping them before they can even get up. I find it fun and funny.

Not survive, you are looking at it in the wrong way. Look at it from a dev standpoint.

It has been postulated by others that one of the main reasons for this change was because you could earn double rewards from self rezzing enemies with out double the effort. Some of things you could do with regard to AE farming highlighted this.

Basically if you looked at something like the jellybean farms the enemies (other than the gm) all had a self rez. Those ones in particular only rez to about 3/4ths health, but that isn't the case for all rezzes. Anyway, they would usually be killed before they had fully stood up resulting in nearly 100% risk free rewards. Double rewards for minimal effort/time.

It has also been happening with freaks for years, though not as obvious as those mobs I'm talking about had a 100% rez rate. But the devs did notice the issue with freaks awhile ago and lowered their xp. I don't have the quote handy but the dev (castle or posi) specifically talked about the propensity to earn double rewards off of them.

We know how the devs feel about earning extra rewards without extra time invested.

I've also said that while this was targeted at reducing this issue/exploit/problem (w/e you want to call it) the mechanic they have utilized is not equally affecting all PC powers.

*Of course allowing them to attack while untargetable is certianly promoting the idea of the npcs getting their licks in before being defeated again... hopefully that isn't deliberate though as that isn't the issue, or rather it swings part of the issue in the opposite direction. The issue is earning double reward without extra time investment.

Now this change may have gone through to minimally impact the pvp IO farming. Or it may have gone through to address earning double rewards with nearly no extra investment and just happen to minimally impact pvp IO farming. Then again most (all?) player rezzes already have an immunity period already and I don't see them going through all that effort to singularly prevent auto targeting a player with a single attack when afk farms make use of other factors that allow them to happen far more than that factor. (ie using the oro tf settings to weaken one of them, pets, and non-target damage powers).

I can't say with absolute certainty, but I think an attack on afk pvp IO farming would have come in a far more obvious format.

I've seen motorists not realize an emergency vehicle is approaching and they continue merrily on their way, oblivious to their surroundings. Doesn't mean the ambulance wasn't there.

The current setup affects some more than others from a technical standpoint. Generally an attempt is made at avoiding mechanics like that.

Ideally they would have just left it alone, but they have identified an issue that needed resolution: self rezzing enemies going splat before having a chance to interact with the players resulting in extra rewards disproportionate to the time/risk invested.

I'm well aware that "unaffected" isn't a fun mechanic for many people, but it is the only one I can think of that will equally impact all player powers while still resolving the issue stated above.

If we can get over not cutting a hellion in half with headsplitter we can get over not denting a tank with haymaker.

I'm all for any new enemies. I recently created an arc for myself that has a bunch of enemies that I rarely encounter (ie those scorpion-creys) and had fun facing something a bit different while not being ridiculously OP'd like most custom enemies in MA.

/signed.

The pets have very good resistance. One of the teir 2 pets has a pbaoe heal and a single target heal. Not something that will keep them alive in a bleeding edge battle, but could easily supplement a weaker healing set like storm or poison, or compliment the regen of traps. Looking over the powers and their numbers the only secondary I personally wouldn't see it playing that well with is TA. But only because TA is so good at maintaining range while DS is a up close and personal set. It could still work though.

If you read what I said to completion you would not have responded in this manner. Assuming of course you had any idea what is being talked about.

thx bai!

ok, this was really funny.

Well seeing as how I have the set open right now.

Tier 1 Hellfire demonling (1 of the 3 little guys) gets:
corruption: 20.71 dam, 1 sec cast, 4 rech. -15% res for 5 seconds
hellfire: 25.69 dam , 2.03 cast, 6 rech, -15% res for 5 seconds
hellfire breath: 30.36 dam, 2.67 cast, 16 rech, 30 degree cone, -15% res for 5 seconds

Tier 2 Hellfire Gargoyle (1 of the 2 medium guys) gets:
corruption: 26.63 dam, 1 sec cast, 4 rech, -20% res for 5 seconds
breath of hellfire: 36.71 dam, 2.67 cast, 10 rech, 30 degree cone, -20% res for 5 seconds

Should be pretty fun.

*someone said ingame that the damage aura the gargoyle gets also does -res, but it isn't shown at the character creator as doing that, just toxic damage. So proly not.

You should take a look at his test results if you haven't. I agree it is a nice bonus, just not nearly as large as most people believe (myself included prior to him conducting the study).

I just added the 30% dam bonus onto vigilance in my mids. Looks really good for the traps/son I've got loaded.

I really doubt people are suddenly going to be satisfied with the solo speed of their FF/elec's, but offender builds should be noticably stronger. I mean it is the difference of 70.5 vs 81 damage for something like charged bolt (3 SO's). But for something like my storm/sonic that easily puts out 100% -res it is the difference between - 118.4 and 136.6 on shriek. That is definitely going to be tangible.

Yes, one of the tier 1 pets applies -res and so does one of the tier 2 pets. The numbers they apply it in are very high too. They are fairly short duration though so not too much stacking from looking at the numbers.

Looks like at any time though the target will have -35% res (at least) before lvl scaling of the pets. With bursts of double that or more. Easy enough to keep another 18%+ on target with your whip too.

The other thing that looks like will push their damage to insane levels is how fast they can attack as many of their attacks have very short cast times when compared to things like bots/mercs/thugs/zombies.... Well all of them aside from ninjas, who have pretty fast attacks too.

Glancing through the powers we have the highest potential dps toon in the game just introduced. Pair it up with a -regen debuff and I bet we'll see some easy AV's dropping in under 2 mins. No wonder they drop bosses so fast!

I'm not complaining, I will definitely be playing this set.

The nice thing about them is I just hit them with a mez (that does a bit of damage) and then head to the next spawn. When they self destruct a short while after being free I get full xp for the kill and really did nothing and they rarely catch back up to me so risk free.

They also don't seem to attack before they are targetable (iirc), they spend the rezzing time casting their ice armor. Compared to a freak tank rezzing and trying to two shot you before he becomes targetable. Despite it being the same mechanic I think hordlings are working well, but other rezzing npc's not so much.

On life support might be more accurate. Though it has arguably been on the donor recipient list for quite some time.