Stormfront_NA

I like the idea, but instead of being a defense or resistance based, it should be a heal based instead. Or have several different based IOs, I believe knock back protection can be obtained in as a travel power, defense and resistance flavors.

With regards t recharge, make it the same as the other player classes rez powers, what ever they may be.

Hugs

Stormy

I hate to say this, but I have already reacted to the limit in tickets, and found a diffeent way to deal with it.

I frankly design a very short mission, which at best gives you 750 tickets during play, that is half of the max per map. You complete the mission, get your 750 as you did the mission and get the 750 bonus. You exit map, reset and go at it again. Sure you do a lot of wash, rinse and repeat, but you keep tickets and exp maximized.

As I have said, during so many other similar threads, fix the root-cause of the problem not the symptons. There are good reasons why people are farming, go after the reason, not the sympton (farming).

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I was looking at flight and teleport, they get a 4 tier power which provides a team transport ability. So how come Jump gets acrobatics instead of team Jump? Why does leap gets so favorely treated with a very useful capability?

I would suggest give the other travel powers, speed, flight and teleport and added choice for 4th tier powers with it being Acrobatics, there is such a thing of acrobatic flight, and when running you could be acrobatic as well. Perhaps its a bit of a stretch for teleport. And in the case of jump pool, give jump pool a group jump, that in itself would be awesome!

Hugs

Stormy

Was also thinking, Fighting gives you boxing and kicking, they both seem kinda redundant, why not replace one of them with Acrobatics?

Mmm, interesting thoughts, but a bit way too self serving, I think

Lets start with the if Defenders were to self buff, that would be way too unbalanced, but buffing a tank would not result in an over balance as well? Or that is ok, its ok for my tank to be over balanced, but no way would be fair if you benefited from your power!

Since buffs are basically multiplier of the base ability, Defenders attacks are the weakest in the game. So if we were to multiply this comical effectiveness, we would unbalance the game, right? but when we buff the Scraper who has incredible DPS, oh that would not result with over balance, right? Its aweful for a Defender damage of 1 being upgraded to a 2, but its perfectly fine taking the Scrapers damage of 4 and upgrading it to 8, that makes perfect sense?

Oh I see a poster saying there are 2 combos of defenders choices which has reasonable defense against status effects, what are you implaying, that because there is an exception, therefore there is no problem? What point are you trying to make?

A Defender, even an emp defender, can do ok in very special situations, but with far more care and attention than any other AT. I have an EMP/PSI Defedner and I can solo, but I have to play far more carefully than when on any of my melee ATs, and it takes me much longer for there is a huge list of what not to do, and what you have to do, just to survive; a list practically un-existent for melee. So I find my poor defender experiencing much greater risk than the melees, and receiving the same reward as melees do while experiencing no harrasment nor risk, where is the justice in this?

While Umbral is correct, this was a post for a new power pool, it was for a power pool that would provide for the dev binary use of status effects, which is an over burdened weakness to the non-melee and have most devastating effects on the Defender. Ergo the reson I brought in the Defender plea. I think perhaps a fair correction would be, since the melee were given good range attacks through the epics, a major departure from the original power set dogma, then the support should also receive a similarly effective upgrade in their defenses. In the case of the Defender, they can buy damage resistance through their epics, why not do the job correctly as opposed to half made, and provide through this armor power set in each epic pool a MAG 4 status effect protection. Once more MAG 4 is not invulnerability, the MAG 12 of the Tanker is much closer to that.

Hugs

Stormy

Claw:

You have some very good points, but...

You must agree that Defenders now how to observe a lot of little specials "must do's" ( I can not enter the mission until somebody else does, I must wait to enter the elevator until somebody else does, I must stock and pay for much more break frees than someoen else, etc) that other classes does not. I believe this actually robs the "fun" part of the class.

Defenders do have some weak status control effects, and reasonable debuffs. Unfortunately the status effects are pointless in a surprise situation for they are mag weak, and short of a critical will never affect a LT or Boss in the same round, while the minion's mess level will automatically stick.

Your point of a tanker ensuring to keep aggroe is a great observation, but one it makes the Defender absolutely dependent on the tanker's taunt (if the player even bothered to get taunt), and the taunt has only limited range and how many it can captivate as well. In the case of ambushes coming from behind, even if the tank has taunt and really, really, really wants to keep his healer alive; he just can't for the ambush is dev coded to come from the rear and at times spawn right at were the defenders would be standing at.

You also make an interesting point, classes are balanced from a team perspective, and not from a solo perspective. I have two observations from you:

1) Why not balance to allow "all" clases to be reasonable solo capable as well?

2) How come melee classes, are quite solo capable, should they have not been given weaknesses as devastating as the non melee were given? As well so they could not solo any better than the other classes?

Consider this, before I3 and the introduction of spam mes, all classes were quite capable of soloing with comfort. Agreed, some still could solo better than others, but the difference was not as pointed.

Sue

Mmm, removing auto sk...

Removing auto-sk, will not solve it, it would simply increase the inconvenience. That is, level 46s permas are back in business as a result of this, and the time to put a team together increases as you try to balance the numbers of high levels (workers) and low levels (leaches/PL babies).

On the other hand, you will find me an avid supporter for auto SK, and most of my feelings come from the developers original intent for having SK in the first place. Sk was instituted so friends with lower leveled characters could play with friends with higher level characters, and together have a good time. I have always like this feature; auto sk, is for me, the next evolutionary step of the standard sk. I say next evolutionary step, for it no longer force a balance of lows and high characters; as we know each lowbie has to have a mentor in contemporary CoX, also lowbies have the furhter restriction to make sure they remain close to their mentors or real bad things happens to them. Auto Sk, does two nice things for us: 1) I don't have to find mentor for my other friends; 2) If I go too far away from them, go to hospital, Disconnect, I don't negatively impact them, or at least not much.

So while I see and issue with auto-sk as some folks have mentioned, I also have seen some player friendly benefits from it.

If we feel PLg is been abused thru SK and auto SK, perhaps there is a way to mitigate the damage. Have them auto SK to the same level of the highest level character in the group, that in itself has two interesting results: 1) maximises their contribution (a level 50 fighting a 51, as opposed to a 49); 2) Exp is greatly decreased, to a point that the lowbie has no great benefit to be a nurfed 50 fighting stuff, while he could be a full whatever level character fighting mobs tha has been designed to be challenging for his level.

Hugs

Stormy

I would like to see hero side TFs be re-tooled and made more player friendly and considerate.

The first change is get rid of inter-zone travel, inter zone travel seldom adds to the interest of the thread.

Get rid of hunts, always are below the players' level, so they are a pure waste of time, and has no challenge either.

Auto Sk players to the group's highest player level, so all can contribute in a more even level, and we don't have trully weak links either. Also it does not force to have as many high levels as low levels for pairing purposes.

As I said, make TFs and SFs more player friendly

Stormy

I love this suggestion, but frankly I still believe kill all missions need to be phased out all together, they make no sense in general.

let me explain:

Seek clues at %th Column Base:

Come on, it should be a glowie mission, not a kill all, what you trying to tell me, that 750 minions in there is carrying one letter of a message, and thus you have to kill them all to get all the letters of the message? or we have such perfect bad luck at it always happen that the 750th is always the one who had the clue? Come on, give me a break!

I can see exterminate or clear a place of certain pests, such as clockwork dismantling the republican party headquarters, mmm, do I want to prevent that? But I would see it difficult to see exterminate after exterminate missions, these should be the exception, not the norm, and it better have an intelligent story line to back it up, such as a deadly virus has infected the workers at FuChu's Dely, we can't afford to let any escape and spread the plague, kill them all" that makes snese for a kill all.

Getting back to original topic, the radar screen is good, because many missions are bugged with mobs stuck inside a wall with a toe or pinky sticking out of the wall, the radar would greatly assist with this.

Hugs

Stormy

There are issues with AE, there are issues with farming, there are issues with PLg, in all cases they are different from each other.

It is important to search for the reason that brings these behaviors about.

Lets start with AE, why do we create an AE farm for? The real reason under neath it all, the one that causes the effect.

For myself, I find the prices at the market totally absurde, and my luck at getting good drops also totally absurde in the bad way. So by default I am forced to purchase my IOs, or get them via merits. I don't roll for IOS, all I get is the super rare, no one ever gets, legendary scarce: "Crap of the Hunter", "Pace of the Turtle" or "Call of the Sandman"; are they any other droppable recipies besides these?

So I want the darn Obliteration recipe! I need 80M to get it. Yhe only way I'm going to do it is do mission after mission, after mission and perhaps next year I might almost be able to afford it. So, I have to do many missions, agreed? Now I could a mission that takes me 30 min and make 50K influence, or I can do another mission in 30 min and get 250k influence, which one would you chose to do? Now what if I could find a mission, that gives as much influence as possible in 30 minutes, and has mobs that my class build is best suited to fight against? Would my giving preference to it, be really considered evil? Am I really exploiting the game? Now lets take it the next step, AE, what if I could design a mission in which it maximizes the benefits of my clas and build, and minimizes my weaknesses? Is that, once more, evil? Is that an exploit?

Now lets talk abut PLg, sure some newbie players may use it; but truthfully many of thsoe doing the PL have many 50s and are likely PLg themselves and being kind enough to let otehrs enjoy the ride as well. So rampant, blanket accusations of people being PLd and thus creating a huge pool of inept players, is simply false. Truthfully, thenumber of inept players is rather small, and when you do come across these players is a noticeable event, it is noticeable because it is not common.

One may ask, why are the level 50s PLg their lowbies, well there are many reasons, but mainly the content is the same ole thing, much content in blue side requires stupid amount of travel and inter zoning; while the devs considers travel the most possible fun a player may experience, the truth is: they are wrong, the 250,457th time going across SC from train station to train station is just as boring as the 50th time.

So we complain at the effect of things, but what we need to complain at, is the reasons these activities are done as a result.

Stormy

ha ha ha

This is too funny, I am still laughing, you jest right?

Stormy

I agree with a previous poster, the idea is to have fun.

Sure Defenders can gulp break frees like drugs, and then convert sets of 3 inspirations to make more breakfrees, but is that really necessary? It is now, because how the devs set it up, but truly, is this needed? I find it to be more annoying than anything else.

I see some players telling those who play Defenders "learn to play the game", "be more attentive", "depend more on your team mates", "ask your team mates for inspirations", etc. That is all well and dandy, but not always a possible thing, or even reasonable.

Let me illustrate some serious, thankfully not often, situations: I call these incidentally Dev game exploits:

1. Zone into mission, mobs right at the door, before you can even get a screen to see what is going on, you are already slept, held, and bombarded. You finally get an image of yourself entering, you are getting pounded, you try to punch a break free, followed by a heal, and what not, but you are dead before you can get the break free off. Oh yeah Mr. Scraper, guess I should as a habit take a break free before zoning into a mission as a very astute practice?

Exit an elevator, same as zone into mission, mobs ready to hit the helpless Defender, death before a break free can occur. Do note that despite taking all those pools so often thrown at my face, not one prevents sleep, they at best reduce the length of sleep. What is the problem? Many mobs initiate attack with dual effect mez attacks, often is a sleep followed by hold. What this means is that the sleep detoggle you, and then the other mez effect which you would have protection otherwise is not there. Final effect, Defender is helplessly murdered.

Ambushes, they are commonly from the back, often spawning in place, not comming from a distance. Defender is at back, trying to stay from AOEs that have status effects and damage; next thing they know they are in the middle of an ambush, before inspirations can be taken, they are slept, stunned, and murdered.

Lots of us can say, learn to play, while there may be some truth to it, the game is also set up that regardless of how good you are, game exploits will cook your goose. Of course melee types have nothing to worry about this, since they have such good defenses versus status attacks and their exploits. But non-melee have to endure these conditions and have no practical recourse. So why not let the Defenders have some status effect protection, and I said some, they don't have to be tankers or scraper grade tough; but some. A MAG-4 may stop the first attack of a boss stun, but if a boss and LT targets the same Defender; its curtains for them, right there and then. No need to say if Defenders can take some abuse, the status effect powers in the game are now useless. By giving the Defender some resistance, the binary effect of the mez is not so absolute. I suggest Melee types should think of it like this, if the Defender can shake some stun attacks, it means they are supporting "you" better and longer. A mezzed or dead Defender is of little good to you, right?

I have found puzzling that tankers which are supposed to be supported, can self rez. While the supported can rez someone else, but not themselves. Odd ah? Should it not be that tankers and scrapers should not be able to self rez, and thus depend on a Defender to rez them? and thus the Defender should be able to both be able to self rez and rez others? Odd ah?

I would querstion the balance here, if melee are supposed to be supported and others are support, should not the powers be balanced in such way?

Hugs

Stormy

I think all corruptor damage in general is too low, in fact at times is really insulting. I thought Corruptors were supposed to be the blasters of the villain world, what happened?

Speaking of corruptors, could they get the blaster benefit when mezzed?

Stormy

Hi:

It happens at times, we form a group an enter the mission only to find out its not the one we thought it was, or somehow the levels are messed up, or what not.

Could it be possible to do a reset of the mission, with out the need for all the players to disband and be re-invited.

Also would be nice if leadership within the mission could be transfered once the mission is set?

Please?


Stormy

Seems you personally have a problem with what you call power leveling.

I feel so sorry for you, for being forced to be power leveled or forced to power level a perfect stranger, that must be aweful; don't yuo wish you had a personal choice?

Wait, you do have a choice! Just say no to that blind invite that might PL your lowered leveled character! Oh my goodness! Just say no that blind invite that might have you PL someone elses lowbie!

Mmm, that sounds like freedom of choice to me, why should you feel the right to deny others their freedom of choice?

Stormy

Umbral

Somehow I am finding you simply opinionated and perhaps quite arrogant. I do find in your words some amount of truth in fact, and unlike you, I am willing to give you credit for your knowledge and expertise; would be nice you could see that on others.

I will no longer try to explain my case, for its pointless.

stormy

Oh my Umbral, you need not to be so condescending...

Your cure all Acrobatics is not nearly as good as advertised, it does not help with stun which is the prvalent status effect used, the hold protection of Acrobatics is not that admirable, a boss will lock you down in one try, acrobatic or not. Acrobatics does not help with sleep another all too common status effect. So Acrobatics while it looks great, in practicality does not do much against the commonly used status effects.

I can solo with my Defender well enough, it just is boring when each encounter takes forever to complete. Status effects normally can be dealt thru hurricane by making the ACC of badies be really bad, but some status effects are sadly auto hit. I don't think mag-4 status effect makes me immune, you are exagerating there, by quite a large margin; it does make me much more resilient; there is no way at mag 4 a defender can be immune to any status effect when playing in say difficulty 3 level of mission, at that level yuo will have so many LTs and Bosses slamming you, that the puny 4 is mostly decorative. I will agree with you, at level 1, the most simple and supposed to be not challenging, the Defender would likely not have to worry much about status effects.

Once more, I challenge you to not think in black and white, but shades of grey.

Incidentally, originally when the game was created, Defenders were supposed to be a compromise between blasters and tankers, and ironically were given hit points in between the two. In time, that was taken away, and interesting changes done to the class. All I seek is some status effect protection, mainly for defenders. Blasters have been semi-fixed by being able to still combat despite of their status, controllers can get a status resist ability thru their epics; so whats so wrong to get a little status effect resistance for defenders?

Stormy

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The Defenders got a mediocre smash and impale damage resistance, but no help in defense and absolutely none for status effects; really bad rebalancing here.

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Coming from a Scrapper, I wouldn't call 40% res(s/l) and 30% res(psi) mediocre. I similarly wouldn't call 40% res(s/l) and 22% res(neg/tox), 40% res(s/l) and 30% res(nrg), or 45% res (s/l) mediocre. Those are huge amounts of resistance from a single toggle, especially considering that you're paying less than 25% more for it than a Tanker would for that same amount of resistance. You're actually paying less for each point of resistance than a Scrapper would. Defenders and Controllers got awesome APPs, so don't try to claim that Tankers and Scrappers, which both got very mediocre and generally anemic APPs thanks to their scalars, got awesome APPs and the disparity needs to be made up.

Something else to keep in mind, Defenders and Controllers were never meant to be taking punches to the face so they don't get the tools to resist facepunchery. Mez protection is one of the primary tools that exists to actually allow melee types to stand around in melee. Giving it to everyone would pretty much negate the vast importance of that.

And don't try to bring up the low damage of Defenders as a reason every AT should get a pool for mez protection (re: useless to Scrappers and Tankers). Defenders and Controllers already get better scalars or use out of the existing power pools. They don't need to get one added to address an issue unique to them.

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Help me here with your assertions, but what single power you are talking about that give defenders all those high levels of damage resistance, against so many different types of damages? I thought it was a choice of pairs at best.

I don't understand your use of "scalars" on their powers, can you please clarify or expand? And can you clarify the word "APP" I am thinking application, but not sure that is what you meant. What I can tell you, is that when I am trying to kill something with my Storm/Dark Defender, it takes me forever to drop a boss, my damage is nearly insignificant. I have never experienced such an issue with my Scrapers, bosses drop within 6 hits or less, not nearly thirty something hits as it happens with my dark/storm defender, maybe it just dark set of powers that have puny damage Defenders wise and gives a wrong appearance.

Also I would like to suggest if we could stop thinking binary here, that is all or nothing. Tankers get MAG-12 status ressitance, that is a controller's largest MAG attack being 3, would have to hit you (12/3=4+1) 5 times before they can even affect you. In practicality that is fair enough, Tankers gonna go get the entire aggroe and thus need it. But why should Defenders have "0"? They do draw aggroe too, why not give them the same mag resistance that a boss has (MAG 6), so it takes 3 applications of a mez to hold them down? This does not mean a defender is immune to status effects, it only means that they can also be heroic and take the periodic aoe status effect that hits them while they are trying to keep the tanke alive, also it means they could solo (when the player choses to) that they are not so totally helpless.

As a clarification, when I said it takes 3 applications to bring down the defender if they had a mag 6 resistance to mez, it still could happen in the same round if multiple mobs attaked the defender simultaneously, which is pretty common during ambushes which is always from the rear, where the defender would be.

Thank you

Stormy

I support the idea, this is why

Originally Tankers had pathetic melee attacks, and no ranged attacks. To compensate for the "in your face" form of life, they were given great damage resistance, great defense, and nearly absolute status effect resistances.

The Defender on the other hand, had weak ranged attacks and allegedly could boost herself. Truth is the boost that worth the effort are only for other players, obviosuly Defenders are too stupid to use powers on themselves. As a result of their puny ranged attacks, Defenders were given less hit points, no armor, no defense, and no status effect resistances. In fact a minion mob has more status effect resistances than the mush brained Defender.

This so called balance changed with the introduction of epic powers. Tankers now have availabel good ranged powers to include ranged AOEs. The Defenders got a mediocre smash and impale damage resistance, but no help in defense and absolutely none for status effects; really bad rebalancing here.

Because this balance has been done so poorly, I tend to agree with the poster that something needs to be done to help the semi-hero classes often refereed as "support" classes be heroic as they used to be before spam status effects were introduced. Going the pool route is acceptable, but actually not enterely fair. What needs to be done, is for the Defenders to be able to affect themselves, that would be much more simple an fairer. Melee classes gets to use 100% of both their power sets, Defenders gets severely short changed in their secondary power set.

Now for you smart ones out there, I know, Kinetic types don't have this problem as bad; They are the exception not the norm.

Hugs

Stormy

A better change might be, to get rid of knock back, and replace it with knock "down"

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I don't know about you, but I have experienced aweful luck in those darned random recipe rolls. It seems the most common golden roll is pacing of the turtle, I thought you were supposed to have an equal opportunity to get something else, and thus getting pacing of the turtle so commonly, seems simply wrong.

This issue was also true with the reward merits, but at least the system was set up to let you pay a high price in merits for the right to choose what you want. That is the specific recipe and the level of the recipe.

MA tickets, does not let you choose the recipe type, nor the level of the recipe as well. So instead of making a whole new construct to allow this in MA; why not have the MA vendor "convert" MA tickets to rewards; thus the player can actually choose the recipe and level of the recipe as well.

If we can buy into this suggestion, the challenge would be to define how many tickets is needed to get 1 merit. I would suggest 100 tickets = 1 merit; thus 9000 tickets would be worth 90 merits. Although if we have the rule of thumb, of 1 merit per 5 mins played, then the excahnge value of the tickets may be much less, perhaps 10 instead of 100.

What do you all think? and please, provide constructive criticism, and avoid the valuless lone "unsign" replies. Lets have an intelligent dialog here.

Hugs

Stormy

I much rather see both Oro and MA, if PLg is the issue, to auto level to the highest member of the group; that will end PLg proper.

But truthfully, the whole idea of "Sk" is to let your friends play with you, why not have your friend auto sk to your level? It would be much more convenient all together.

Hugs

Stormy

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ps: Since tankers have effective ranged attacks now, should not blasters, defenders and controllers have the opportunity to have decent armor, defense, and status effect resistances too? it should also be true for red side... Giggles

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Sigh...okay, let's do this again.

Tanker ranged attacks have not changed much since issue 1. That's when the Ancillary Pools were released, giving Tankers the ability to do ranged damage and control, the thing that they were lacking.

At the same time, the 'squishy' ATs were given armors, in the same place that Tankers could grab ranged damage.

[/ QUOTE ]

They got mediocre armor usually against impale and smash, but got nothing in the world of defense and absolutely nothing in the status effect arena, which is way over done...

Stormy

Hi:

The concept of tankers not having ranged attacks, has to do with the game's initial concept.

The initial concept was tankers had little offense all together, no range and the melee was supposed to be mediocre; but, they could really take a pounding!

Because of this concept, the Blaster, Defender and Controller wer given less base hit points, no status effect resistances, mediocre armor at best, and also mediocre defense if any. But this was a compromise, tankers needed armor to go melee, and others (now humbled to be refered as support) have range to make up for their built in weaknesses.

as the game evolved, tanker damage has noticeably increased, and also the availability of ranged attacks also gained. Super Strength for instance has "Hurl" as an attack, and is in fact now a very effective and devastating range attack. By the time you get to your epic powers, Tankers can gain more ranged attcks, for instance my Brute chose the energy package, which gives her a lightning bolt, and a Lightning ball which is a range AOE attack to boost. Just as my Brute plainly now has 3 ranged attacks, which recycles around quickly enough to be able to do consistent ranged attacks, you can thru vet rewards gain one more rangd attack as well for a total of 4 ranged attacks, not bad in my opinion. All that armor, defense, status effects and 4 very good ranged attacks, is nothing to sneer at.

Hugs

Stormy

Ps: Since tankers have effective ranged attacks now, should not blasters, defenders and controllers have the opportunity to have decent armor, defense, and status effect resistances too? it should also be true for red side... Giggles

Hi:

Maybe the OP has a point, despite so many of us seems to try to make his suggestion pointless, and at times we may come across insulting by saying such things as use planning tools, etc.

It seems to me, a different way to let players really customize their powers and really make our characters more unique rather than template would be to do away with the power pools as we have now, and have the power pools separated into three categories: Low, Mid, and High.

The "low" category contains all the power pool's first choice, in the case of flight, hover, would be available for example; hurdle/swift woul be available from the fitness pool. The second pool category "Mid" would have the third power choices of all pools such as Stamina, flight, teleport, weave, etc. Finally the High power pool would have all the fourth tier power pools such as Acrobatics.

By pooling the powers, players can choose and match any ancilliary power as they desire, with out having to buy powers which do not meet "theirs" (not ours) character concepts. Such as the OP blaster reference, that is the concept is to be a true ranged character, and has no "personal" reason to have melee powers, thus can get weave and tough with out having to get kick for instance. A character who flies, can still be acrobatic, so why have to buy all the jump pool powers?

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I don't think putting TF teams together being impossible due to MA, but it has become a bit more difficult depending on server, but mostly what time you try to do it. I usually play around 3pm central for about 4 hours and then my motherly obligations takes over. At 3pm central, putting together a TF is possible but difficult and at times time consuming and plainly boring with the waiting at hand.

So reducing the requiremetns to start a TF makes good sense, and the missions should be scalable based on the team size; this is specially good if you have team members leaving your group.

I also would like for TFs to auto SK as it is done in MA missions, I think the developer who did this for MA to have experienced a moment of genius.

Hugs

Stormy