Steampunkette

And CoH -has-?

Since CoV has launched it's had one issue basically devoted entirely to it (issue 7) and since then has received content at roughly the same rate as CoH.

Hollows Revamp? VEATs with a handful of crappy missions and a ton of awesome power.

The Faultline Revamp of Issue 8 was the biggest "Hero Content Only" change. And it's the only one I really consider worth noting, to be honest.

The Revamped Posi TF and changes to the level 50 content were small, and really don't count for a whole lot in my eyes.

Does this mean I don't want more Villainside content? No. Not by a long shot. I'd love to see three or five new Strike Forces and maybe another zone or two to house them.

But I'm not going to go to the forums and whine about how heroes are whiny and villains need more content than heroes do. The fact remains that City of Heroes is the big draw for new players, thanks to our societal structure and morality. As a society we're trained to have a love/hate relationship with villains and simply love heroes. It's understandable that CoH would have a greater overall draw to players. And thanks to that series of facts it's also understandable that the Devs would focus their talents on polishing and fixing that content in order to bring it towards the standards of the villainside content.

So while I agree there should be more villainside content I don't begrudge the Devs for polishing the older hero content when they can while adding new content alongside it. I'd love if they spent the next several issues after i19 polishing old hero zones and content while releasing new villain content and Praetorian content.

-Rachel-

This is the point most people in the thread are getting at. People who play ONLY CoV and nothing else are limiting themselves when they don't absolutely need to.

If it's a cash issue I totally understand and accept that. I get that not everyone can afford the new expansion... But it does make the discussion moot for the people who can. And judging by the server population explosions of last night, I think we can safely say that many, if not most, players have picked up GR.

Which makes the argument moot.

-Rachel-

Yet.

It's a fairly safe assumption that, at some later date, they're going to merge in Going Rogue as well, to maximize the utilization of their content and further provide for alternate character creation. This assumption is based on the game's design, previous history, and Developer statements about their intent -being- the creation of multiple characters rather than building one character to the highest level and grinding eternally.

You also can't have Going Rogue without having CoH and CoV. Buying the expansion auto-applies both games to a new account opened with the GR code.

Don't exclude content just because it doesn't fit into your argument.

-Rachel-

Then City of Villains, a paid expansion, shouldn't count, either.

Which means every piece of content, ever, is made for heroes!

-Rachel-

I agree and disagree... The only two paths in Praetoria which aren't Villainous are the Responsible Loyalists and the Warden Resistance. They both choose the lesser of two evils...

Though neither of them is particularly heroic, either.

-Rachel-

Wouldn't it make more sense to suggest the knife options for Katana or Broadsword with some alternate animations added in?

As for "Single Pistol"... /unsigned. i think that's just too silly. =-3

-Rachel-

Ahh... See... I always think of Darkest Night as a Damage debuff, rather than accuracy. >_< And I never got to the point of using Liquefy or Hurricane (always got annoyed at the sets) Don't know why Earthquake and Radiant Infection slipped my mind, though.

Thankies!

-Rachel-

Debuff resistances of the "Base" defense and resistance sets. Scrapper numbers.

Super Reflexes

Focused Fighting: Defense Debuff resistance of 13.84%, Confuse resistance of 103.8%

Focused Senses: Preception Debuff resistance of 60%, Defense Debuff resistance 13.84%

Agile: Defense Debuff resistance of 5.625%

Practiced Brawler: Mez Protection only.

Dodge: Defense Debuff resistance 6.92%

Quickness: Speed Slow resistance 40%

Lucky: Defense Debuff resistance 6.92%

Evasion: Defense Debuff resistance 13.84

Elude: Defense Debuff resistance 34.6%


Totals:
Defense Debuff Resistance: 95.585%
Slow Resistance: 40% (movement only)
Perception Debuff Resistance: 60%
Confuse Resistance: 103.8%


Invulnerability

Resist Physical Damage: Defense Debuff resistance 25%

Temporary Invulnerability: None.

Dull Pain: None.

Resist Elements: Resistance to Run/fly/jump/recharge debuff of 20%

Unyielding: Mez Protection only.

Resist Energy: Resistance to Recovery/Endurance debuff 25%

Invincibility: None.

Tough Hide: Resistance to defense debuff 25%

Unstoppable: None.

Totals:
Defense Debuff resistance: 50%
Slow Resistance: 20% (movement and recharge)
Recovery/Endurance resistance: 25%


These numbers are off of a PvP map. Notice that the defense based character has -no- resistance to recharge rate slows, end reduction, or recovery-killing powers. Which means that while they may hit less often, they affect the defense character more than the resistance character on a hit for hit basis.

The game is not balanced around the use of IOs, which are required for an SR character to hit the Softcap of defense to all vectors. Unless you're including teammates, in which case any discussion or argument is utterly moot due to the fluid nature of team make-up and examples running into counter-examples.

How about, instead, you look into buffing damage resistance sets instead? Though the original poster's intent wasn't balance, it was Bad**ery. He wants to feel more "Heroic" by never missing, which basically makes Defense utterly moot and in need of either a total revamp or to be removed from the game entirely, replaced by damage resistance and other mitigation forms.

Can you imagine how much outrage/nerdrage/ragequits would occur if defense were, this late in the game, nerfed so drastically? Wouldn't it be better to address the deficiencies of other sets to make them more effective?

I'd love to see, for example, giving every Control effect a damage type and linking it to both defense and resistance, rather than a strict control number, for duration resistance. Ice Character? Well your hold resistance against ice control effects will be greater than your hold resistance against psi control effects. What if we -just- key it off of damage resistances, instead? Straight point to point -addition- to the amount of mez resistance inherent in any mez protection power.

-Rachel-

I imagine it has to do with the set pieces involved and/or the set bonuses... They probably don't want the latter three sets getting even MORE damage (Cloud Senses, Chance for Negative energy Damage) or perhaps it has to do with the defense values offered by Siphon Insight.

Though I agree. I don't think those reasons are good enough, and honestly think "Tohit Debuff" sets should all carry an accuracy component, as all tohit debuffs need a tohit check, don't they?

-Rachel-

Excuse me, but I didn't "Knee Jerk" or "Flame".

You still have yet to answer how to handle the wide and varied issues I listed in my initial posts in this thread. Those being:

1. Marginalized Sets and Powers: Accuracy and Defense take a backseat to damage buff and resistance/healing
   
2. Enemy Balance issues: Players either wiping groups out en-masse or at far greater risk of two-shot kills and alpha strikes with higher damage values.
   
3. Controls and Debuffs: Duration mitigation? Strength mitigation? Both?
   
4. Changing the Game for Defense Built Characters: Players who make high-defense characters will have their normal defenses against low-threat enemies, but EBs, AVs (and I assume GMs) will bypass it? Changing the rules mid-game is kinda rude.
   
5. Monotony: You remove the challenge inherent to some enemies and turn everything into HP and DR with no variation whatsoever. No high Defense enemies dodging your attacks but taking full damage when you land a shot, for example.
   
6. Changing Attack Mechanics 6 years into the game's life: Yeah, I didn't bring that one up, but it -is- a valid point. Every Vet will suddenly have to relearn the defense system or ignore it completely and focus on Damage Reduction.
   

On top of all that you also have the issue of re-balancing and re-writing the invention system. And let's not forget about the issues of NPC inherent buffs and debuffs.

As for the idea of making Debuffs land on a miss... No. That's a horrible idea, it really is. Defense characters already suffer from issues of cascade failure against lethal-damage utilizing enemies (read: Most Enemies) thanks to the inherent defense debuff component to most bullet and blade attacks. Causing the debuff to land on missed shots would only hasten the cascade failure and demise of defensive players.

As it is, no single enemy can ignore Damage Reduction (Aside from Hamidon, who ignores EVERYTHING) and they're all forced to chip away at the self-healing DR sets (Dark, fire, stone, electric, and invuln all have self-heals) regardless of how much damage they're capable of throwing out. However -accurate- enemies (Overseers, Rikti Drones) or defense-debuffing enemies (Fifth Column, Council, Hellions, Skulls, Knives of Artemis, Shivans, PPD Kheldians, Kheldian NPCs, Positron/Antimatter, Family, Freakshow, Rikti, Warriors, Tsoo, Banished Pantheon, Circle of Thorns, Arachnos, Vahzilok, Rogue Isles police, Longbow, Cage Consortium, Cimeroran Traitors, Cimerorans, Lost, Sky Raiders, Slag Golems, Luddites, Malta, Contaminated, Nemesis, Outcasts, Vanguard, Red Caps, Wyvern, Mooks, Spetsnaz, Infected, Arachnoids, Crey, and others) can either ignore the Defense-based character's defense buffs in large part, or destroy them.

So I heartily disagree that further penalties be applied to Defensive powersets to satisfy those who feel DR sets underperform. I also disagree that Players should always hit their enemies, since it would skew the balance of the game, drastically, and require some fairly heavy alteration of enemy damage and HP calculations to balance things out (not even going into the control resistance increase required to handle auto-hits with Hold powers)

-Rachel-

The issue with putting both heroes and villains in the same zone is, as it always is. Co-Op content favors one side or the other (always heroes)

Hence why I suggest making a "Hero" and a "Villain" version of the zone as two near realities in what is, effectively, an accordion of potential versions of Dark Astoria. Reality, there, is a broken spring with pieces overlapping between the spirit realm and the living realm thanks to the BP's massive ritual. Whether it was intended or not is a different question altogether.

It would allow for two (or more!) completely different paths through the same content.

Honestly, I could go either way on this one. Maybe have the villain version of the zone be the one with decay? It could also be an interesting change to move all the contacts and zone spawns so that they are different on either side of the mirror held up between the two versions of reality.

How about an alternative to both options!

Four versions of every mission or, at least, every arc in the zone. Hero, Vigilante, Rogue, and Villain. From Paragon you can only access the Hero or Vigilante path, from the Isles only Rogue or Villain. Would that satisfy?

Heroes save the sacrifices. Vigilantes take down the cultists. Rogues kidnap the victims, saving them, but charging Paragon for the service, and Villains kill the victims.

I'm not trying to write the arcs in the thread, Bill. Just come up with a story-appropriate explanation for the changes I'm offering. That said I'd love to see Tub Ci and the Tsoo get some stuff done in DA, as well. And, perhaps, even run a mission or two with Ghost Tsoo, killed and bound into service by the BP or CoT!

-Rachel-

Love it!

How about adding in a few phantoms which don't -look- like phantoms? They look like normal people (solid rather than translucent) who are doing the crazy "Running away!" emote as they run towards the character, then shout something which makes no sense out of context, then vanish as they get close to the player?

-Rachel-

5% miss?

Where does -that- come from? Players don't have a 95% chance to hit even con minions, they've got a 75% chance modified by their powers (Some powers have higher or lower accuracy) Which means a 25% increase in hits, rather than a 5% one.

And that's not even tinkering with the Purple Patch. Bear in mind that you miss higher level enemies more often due to level scaling. You're talking about causing 1/5th damage on what could be most attacks made against higher level bosses, Elite bosses, and AVs.

Accuracy becomes less about ensuring you do damage, and more about ensuring you do -full- damage. And even then, it makes Controllers into -monsters- when it comes to crowd-control, which is now an auto-hit function. Or will auto-hit controls only last 1/5th of their normal duration? How will a player be able to tell that?

Regardless of whether they've got 1/5th duration or not, enhancing for accuracy becomes a moot point for controllers and dominator control powers, debuffs of any kind, or even "Accurate Healing" powers. Oh. And even if control effects last 1/5th their normal duration, that still completely stops an entire spawn (or however many maximum targets the controller can affect) except bosses, EBs, and AVs, who are suddenly far easier to hold/immob/etc thanks to the ease of applying short-duration effects which auto-hit.

-Rachel-

Gotta agree with this, one hundred percent.

As for "Self Affecting powers Only" you really only ever need/get 2-3 of those on most characters (Shield users and SR get their click mez and maybe hasten, Doms get Domination and maybe hasten...) So what's the point of having multiple "Self Affecting" auto-functions? Just put hasten on autofire and click your dom when it's needed, or put your mez on auto and click hasten between fights.

Really doesn't seem like a QoL issue, to me. More like a functional change from Click to "Toggle with spiked end cost"

-Rachel-

I think there is.

With players never missing all AVs, EBs, Bosses, Lieutenants, Minions, and Underlings would have to be reconfigured to deal with perfectly accurate PCs. They'd need to have different HP totals or Damage Resistance methods to keep fight length/effort comparable to what we currently deal with. Otherwise fights would just be over even faster than they are, now, making the game feel trivial.

If they didn't revamp the damage resistance and HP of all the enemies, they'd need to turn right back around and severely increase their damage output, so that they're more of a threat during their incredibly short lives. This could jeopardize the lower-HP squishies who might get killed off the bat thanks to the increased damage output. Again this would be implemented to keep the game's difficulty on roughly an even-keel.

And then you get into the issue of all enemies being sacks of HP and Damage resistance. Think of the variety you're missing out on! Rikti Drones, for example, have incredibly high Melee and Ranged defenses, but nearly no AoE. It makes me feel good to wade into the middle of a group of Rikti and toss off a foot stomp and watch the fireworks as I manage to drop every Rikti Drone in the AoE.

Paragon Protectors would become trivial, as well. Since the single most dangerous protector seems to be the /Regen protectors who pop the old Moment Of Glory that lasts -forever- and grants them insane defense for a short while. Instead of being hated, despised, and spiked with damage before they could pop MoG, they'd just be another sack of HP with a self-heal and nothing more.

-Rachel-

Love it, BBQ!

And there's no point six because I was playing off Memphis Bill's post in his "Revamp Crey's Folly" thread. It was sort of a holdover joke. >.>

-Rachel-

Congratulations! You've just slaughtered every Super Reflexes and Energy Aura scrapper or brute, Ice Armor tanker, everyone who's ever struggled to IO slot themselves into Softcap, and Force Field defenders utilizing Personal Force Field to escape from a big-bad's attention!

You've further marginalized the utility of Force Fields and Ice Shields, in general since the only thing they apply is defense and made "Healers" even more popular, since it's the only "Sure" mitigation against EBs and AVs.

With the "Flaming" out of the way, allow me to explain more clearly.

By removing the single "Awesome" point of Defense (Absolute mitigation on a "Miss" which occurs on 95% of attacks, roughly) you've removed the one and only lure of Defense. With Damage Resistance at 90% (the current cap) yuo take 10% of all incoming damage... That's amazing! You get hit all the darn time, but you take a tiny portion of what was once huge damage.

With Defense you take full damage when you're hit unless you have some resistances in reserve, so you get hit 1/20th of the time, but take unmitigated damage. Between these two situations you get -roughly- similar amounts of mitigation. By removing the ability for AVs to miss a target you make Defense useless. Every attack deals damage as if the player had 80% damage resistance instead of near impenetrable defense.

This means tankers or brutes with a 90% damage Resistance (the current cap) are better off than any soft-capped scrapper or even an actually-capped Tanker.

Suddenly, adding Defenses onto a blaster, defender, or controller is a moot point, since they'll still take a decent portion of the damage from an AV's AoEs. It becomes far more useful to just bring a Thermal/Sonic/Kin/Empath/Pain Dom and completely ignore defensive ability.

This is why it's a bad idea. You make Defense useful against large portions of the game, then completely ineffective against what (few/some/many/most) people perceive as the "Core" of the game, fighting AVs and EBs in high-end story arcs and task forces.

-Rachel-

Damage can be damage mitigation. Especially when it's AoE Damage.

Lightning Field and Death Shroud hurt entire groups of enemies, lowering their overall hit points for when the (scrapper/tanker/brute) turns to hit them. Meaning they survive less single target attacks and get to throw off less damage.

Both Electric and Dark armors are resistance based sets. A tiny bit of defense on top of not enough resistance can make them squishy.

Lucky lowers your AoE resistances a fair amount, which affects both melee and ranged AoEs, notably when you're not attacking in an attempt to hide and a nearby teammate who shall remain nameless grabs some aggro...

Though you're definitely right on the two sets with Quick Recovery. *nods sagely*

But that doesn't mitigate the other part of their low-survivability: HP.

I didn't feel the need to include it directly in my post since I quoted yours directly and began my sentence with "And" inferring that your entire argument was part of my next statement.

When you combine low HP with the lack of Lucky or an AoE damage aura or even Quick Recovery you get a fighter who can't survive a prolonged melee and can't lower the number of enemies attacking her with any alacrity (after, of course, Assassin Strike removes a Lieutenant or Minion). More incoming damage means a faster death. Very few, if any, AoE attacks hampers this even further (Thanks AS and Placate, for taking my AoE away from me!)

-Rachel-

And lose out on at least one power thanks to "Hide" which grants phenomenal AoE defense and good melee/ranged while hidden.

But the tiny defense bonus of an unstealthed Hide power isn't always equal to whatever power they might be missing out on.

-Rachel-

Sooo... How about the damage increase working on teams? Like a +10% per ally increase, sort of the inverse of the Defender inherent?

-Rachel-