UberGuy

Actually, the change to the Schedules is already live. Which stinks, but there it is.

I don't quite know what to think of the schdule change covolved with the mob toHit change. Net, net, I think it won't do much to my characters who use toHit debuffs, partially because I play at the "sweet spot" that doesn't change much (+2 mobs) and because I play Dark Miasma, which retains a large ability to stack debuffs.

Storm and Rad, and I guess Trick Arrow, seem to be just plain worse off with the change unless they're fighting +3 foes, which is nice if they are and kinda lame if they aren't.

Note that in my debate with Stormbringer, I don't neccessarily advocate what happened to Hurricane, as such. I contend only that something needed to happen in PvP. I don't contend that the power was too strong in PvE, and I certainly am not convinced that it needed a double-whammy (schedule change and repel tick change).

Personally, if it had lost the ability to debuff for 10 seconds I think I would have been satisfied with the change. That would have been a PvE nerf too, but one I think which would have been more manageable.

Hurricane provided all of these things.

*) A significant toHit debuff. Given the base toHit of PvP is 50%, and toHit debuffs are subtracted from this base before accuracy is counted, this is a very powerful tool. Hit rates plummet in a Hurricane.
*) The debuff from Hurricane lasts 10 seconds after last application. A smart storm summoner uses this to advantage. When threatening foes approach, a smart stormer would charge them, attempting to joust them with the toHit debuff. For Super Jumping stormers, this is very effective.
*) The repel effect. This is somewhat useful for tormenting squishies you could trap in the Hurricane, but primarily I suspect the biggest benefit of this was to interfere with Stalkers' Assassin strike.

In other words, in Siren's Call PvP, the biggest benefits of Hurricane were the debuff, the debuff's duration (still broken, IMO), and the protection from AS.

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it is NOT THE CASE that "no one much could bother them there" in the hurricane simply because of the hurricane. if no one could bother a team in that formation it is because of the composition of the team, the synergy between various (storm, empathy, kin and melee) sets, the tactics employed by the hero team and the various degrees of skill of each of the players.

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How conveniently you ignore the debuff. A debuff that can reliably drop a Brute with Rage running to a 25% toHit chance. (Less now, of course.)

Again and again, I have agreed that Hurricane has weaknesses. You keep pointing to them as though there very existance balanced out Hurricane's strengths. I feel they did not. There was one reliable way to defeat Hurricane. Attack the caster from range. This is what I did to counter storm characters. You're not telling me anything I don't know.

Most attack powers have a maximum range of 80'. Sniper shots more like 100-120', depending on powerset. More powerful ranged attacks and some sets mez powers tend to have shorter ranges.

Sometimes I held them. Heck, sometimes I held them over and over, running out and deliberately making opening s for the villains to try and kill the stormer. Usually I was pig-piled by the stormie's allies when I did this, meaning the stormie was free to act again, worst case, after the duration of my hold. If someone else didn't kill them by then, the first thing to go up was always Hurricane. You act like the very fact that they can be held and damaged at range is enough to ensure their cancellation. It's not. It depends on a lot of factors. And if you can't line up those factors, the stormie is right back in action again.


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the situation you describe above is not one of a single power unbalancing the game, it is one where a well-organized team is supporting each other and compensating for each others' weaknesses.

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Do you think that team tactics are absent in the absence of a stormie? That people don't cover up for one another unless they've got a Hurricane on their side? I've seen excellent teams in operation without one. My very point is that, without Hurricane, even well organized, clearly communicating teams were vastly more vulnerable without Hurricane in the mix. Hurricane added a disproportionate benefit to any team, whether they had their heads on straight or not.

Edited to say some things with less hyperbole.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, Strombringer.

I like SC because it has a purpose, and most of the really powerful melee survival powers aren't available (IH for /Regen being an obvious and well-noted exception). There's a goal on two fronts. Win the zone, and get bounty. Most other actual PvP holds little interest for me. I go to Warburg to get nukes. The fact that I sometimes have to fight other players there is just something that I have to deal with, not something I seek out. I dislike Bloody Bay with a passion, because I dislike the power level of characters at level 15.

My assessment is based on having been in SC against many sorts of heroes. Some have worked well as teams (even if they weren't literally all on the same team). Some have been more random. Same with the villains.

Healers and buffers of all sorts are always a priority target, as are any control characters. They add a great deal to their team and, compared to melee characters, are easy to kill.

I've fought heroes plenty with no storm summoner around. I've also fought them plenty with one around. I've fought as a hero with no storm summoner. I've fought as a hero with one around. In my experience, the differences are night and day.

Yes, if you have a bubbler (either variety), it behooves mez-vulnerable and perhaps low HP characters to loiter in things like Dispersion Bubble. It's rarely worth keeping the melee characters bunched up in there too. I've never seen an overriding notion that, when things get tough, you can retreat to a Dispersion Bubble and expect it to provide the defensive boost you need to regroup.

On the other hand, Hurricane did do that. Everyone would form up on the Hurricane, knowing full well that no one much could bother them in there. You get an empath or other mez-prot/heal spammer and a stormie and you surround them with melees, and suddenly you've got the CoX equivalent of a shield wall. You've got a formation that can advance into some of the most withering attacks of a massed villain team and achieve success. Not always. Not every time. But with more consistency and more likelyhood of success than any other single power I have seen available in Siren's Call.

When I was on the hero side, I did it too. I was usually in there with a Blaster. I would rush out from the Hurricane, strike foes, and retreat to it. It was like having a forward base to strike from.

That's all I'm saying. Anything that stands on its own as a singular power that is a consistent contributer to success is going to get "balance" attention from the devs in any game. Yeah, you can point to healing and other debuffs and control powers. But lots of people have those, on both sides of any PvP conflict. Hurricane stood on its own as a unique and powerful tool. Possibly too unique and too powerful

If it had been available to both heroes and villains, maybe, just maybe, it would have been less likely to be targeted, but I don't think I would have betted on it.

Resistance and this almost certainly are completely different code legs. I see no reason why this would be resisted.

In fact, this probably counts before resistance is factored in.

Another point is that you seem to be including a lot of Raid or Arena play here. My focus is on Hero vs. Villain PvP, such as we have now in Siren's Call. I rarely see team HvV in places like Warburg, and today, no one in any HvV has access to epic pools.

I find it possible that Hurricane was less powerful in HvH PvP such as in the Arena, if for no other reason than that it would at least be available to both sides. There is nothing even approaching Hurricane's functionality on the villain side of things.

Stormbringer,

I have faced storm summoners with a Mind/Psi dominator, an Ice/Dark corruptor, and a Dark/Dark corruptor. Of the three, I am most pleased with the performance of my Ice/Dark in PvP.

I already mentioned that I could hold the storm summoner. Once at a time. Sometimes that was good enough for someone to bum rush them. Sometimes they died. Sometimes the villains could then drive off the hero force that was using the storm summoner as a team anchor. I've said in every post that I am well aware that Hurricane can be dropped, and I did it just as you describe. Usually I would dive bomb the storm summoner from stealth and mez them as I approached, well outside the Hurricane.

Except, when they have mez protection from an ally. You know, when the Empath is lingering in the Hurricane. Or when there are two empaths, or someone with mez shields using Stimulate. Or even just a ranged support character squatting in the hurricane.

I'm well aware that any Empath on a team is a high priority target because of the longevity they can provide to all their teammates. The problem comes in when you can synergize that priority with a Stormer.

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next time put your spines scrapper on the storm. or your spines stalker.

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Let's see, what other powerset in the game requires lmited, specific powersets to counter it? Hmm. Not coming up with much here. Oh, wait, TP foe! Something that anyone can get and is, despite that, much reviled.

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sonic defender/controllers/corrupters, ff defenders/controllers, empaths, kinetics, ice/nrg blasters (on certain teams) and, if you're a storm guy...spines scrappers or stalkers. seriously, if you're prioritizing the storm above these other sets (and the sets are well-built) you need to question your tactics first.

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You aren't answering my question. Perhaps it was not clear.

Lets say you've got a mix of random heroes and villains. They are relatively evenly matched. Now add any one character to the hero side.

I contend that there is no other powerset in the game that you can add to the heroes that will affect their survivability and will reshape their team dynamic as much as a stormer will (or at least did). The effects of Hurricane on the battlefield are so powerful that any heroes that do not form up on it as the center of any massed action against villains are simply foolish. Correspondingly, the villains must muster a concerted effort to defeat the stormer to counter this. Thus, the appearance of that power on the field of battle completely changes the dynamics of play.

I have seen this many times. I consider it an indisputable fact. Every time Hurricane has appeared in ongoing play where one was not already present, it has single-handedly defined the lines of battle. There is no other power for which I have ever seen this be true.

TP foe comes close, but TP foe is limited by the rate of activation. Unless you count using it to cripple key assets of the opposing team, TP foe has limited ability to affect a full team of people.

Any such power in any game inherently draws attention to itself from people responsible for balance.

Numerically, the toHit change should have been a 19% drop in effectiveness. What that means vs. PvE foes sadly is variable with both foe rank and level. However, against the same foes, before and after, it simply means that, whatever Hurricane did to a foe's toHit, it now only does 81% as much.

I think that the change on the repel effect may actually make the toHit change seem worse than it is, since foes can now get in more closely and hit more often. Either that or Hurricane was stacking itself on people with pulses, and now the pulses being less frequent means that no longer occurs.

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Why I should care how a set performs in PvP is beyond me.. that's like telling me that it's OK that my computer suddenly crashes all the time because "It's very efficient at heating the room".

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Please understand that you have my full and complete understanding about the annoyance of PvP-driven changes affecting PvE.

However, I'm a little surprised that anyone is taken off guard by this. There have not been any PvP-only power changes in quite some time.

Stormbringer,

You just spent a fair amount of time saying not much.

I mentioned you need a travel power. That implies clearly that you need the prerequisites. Please don't tell me you need two. I've never once faced a storm user with two, and they all did fine. Super Jump was normally more than sufficient.

Mez protection is far from required for a Stormie to be effective. I know. Do you know why? Because all of my PvP experience is with characters that have holds, and I made it my mission to disable the Hurricane casters I saw.

Remember that my post was about team tactics. Only very poor teams leave the storm character alone while someone like a Dominator picks on them. Yes, I usually disrupted the stormie. Yes, it had meaning or I wouldn't have kept it up. But it was virtually always suicide for me. It involved sacrificing myself over and over just to nullify that one character for 20 or so seconds.

Any hero team smarter than a sack of rocks protected the Storm defender. Anyone who could had mez protection cast on them. Anyone who could immediately healed them. Anyone who could immediately tried to kill anyone who threatend the Storm Defender/Controller.

What other character in PvP warrents that kind of attention? What other powerset in play is a huge red flag of "defeat that character or we are screwed?" Can you name one that even comes close to the urgency of Hurricane?

Most Storm characters are far from helpless. Controllers have a wide array of counter mezzes to use on you. Some of the Defender blast sets are very effective against other Squishies in PvP - I can only wish I got the full Psionic Blast set that Defenders do on my Dominator.

Again, let me restate what I said in my post. Hurricane was not perfect. Hurricane users were not invincible. However, the singular effect of that power on the battlefield overshadowed everything else. The arrival of no other hero powerset could change the course of events to the degree that Hurricane could. This is why it was changed.

If you want to see a Hurricane player who could kill you dead as a Squishie, I recommend you look up Blunt on the Justice server. His character was Storm/Psi. And, in fact, he could kill Dominators and Corruptors with tremendous facility. Psi Blast contains some excellent, fast activating blasts that include such wonderful side effects as sleep, disorient and immobilization. Combining this with the knockback effect of Hurricane, the slow and -fly effects of Snowstorm, and Hurricane's lingering toHit debuff, Blunt could catch other squishies, disable them, prevent them from getting up, and kill them at leasure.

So understand that appealing to my notion that somehow Hurricane users are helpless targets simply isn't going to carry much weight with me. Do I think they were godly? Certainly not. But they weren't some walking target, just waiting to die.

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In PvP, almost every other AT uses a lot their powers. Stormies? Most just click on Hurricane and use that and that alone. That right there says it's been overpowered. Instant Healing was overpowered for PvP.

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Can't remember when I've ever killed someone with hurricane. Granted I really never PvP, but last I checked it caused 0 damage, I actually have to use a few other powers if I hope to actually defeat someone. Thats like saying tanks rely on their shields in PvP. Of course they do! But they have to attack to kill stuff. Same with stormies.

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I agree with KidQuick. Any Tanker who's relying on anything but their level 38 power is, in fact, relying on three or four powers minumum to survive. In fact, Invulnerable Tankers are likely to use both Unstoppable and their toggles.

In contrast, all a Hurricane user needed to completely reshape the battlefield was a travel power and Hurricane. At present, I can't think of any other power that had this affect on team PvP play. The arrival of a stormie on the battlefield immediately shaped the hero's tactics and formation, and typically shifted favor to the hero side.

Were stormies invincible? No. Did they make their team invincible? No. Did they provide a disproportionate advantage? In my opinion, they did.

Yes, Tankers have shields, and perhaps one shield matters more than others. And I'll agree that the same is, indeed, true of may other ATs and characters. But I have never, ever seen the arrival of any single other powerset shape the battlefield the way Hurricane has.

Were the changes made what was neeeded? I truly am not qualified to say. Should the changes have spilled into PvE? I wish they didn't. But I do feel very confident that something needed to be done to the power's performance in PvP.

Even without the understanding of the exact progression that foe HP follow, the fact that the enhancement system is ... odd ... due to its inverse sawtooth performance curve was pretty obvious. In particular, foes pretty clearly could not be assumed to have discontinuities in their HP, accuracy/toHit, or defense/DR that matched the way enhancements see-saw for being over- and under-level.

Why was that intuitively obvious? Well, mostly because there's a broad range of foes you can be fighting relative to your own level, but also because you could blow the cash and keep your enhancements ++'d.

I never bother to ++ enhancements unless I get lucky drops, and even then I'll sometimes sell those. After all, greening up one damage when all the rest are yellow doesn't feel worthwhile to me - often the cash is more relevant.

All that said, while I don't think the sawtooth performance of enhancers makes any good sense, I also don't think it causes any serious problems. The game has enough upheaval in it - I'm not sure I want them screwing with enhancements again anytime soon.

Edit: Hey, when did our reg date appear in our post header?

Corruptors don't have more HP than Defenders....

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CoX will be a better place with EM adjusted.

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It would also be better if all Controler and defender toggles required per hit chances rather then being Automatic like so much of Rad is.

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All toggle debuffs are like that. Toggle debuffs are trivially easy to break though, since you can just move 300 ft and they drop.

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I agree with the exception of Snowstorm. An automatic, almost universially unresisted debuff to speed and flight. If you aren't a SJ user, this power is pretty ugly. Note that this is not a request for nerfage (there are lots of ugly powers); I'm just pointing it out as an obvious outlier.

2/3 isn't exactly miniscule. If they have and have slotted up Health it's more like 5/8. That's not exactly a small part of it.

If you can't kill a /regen who's detoggled, it's not his regen rate you're having problems with. It's his overall HP, any DR he might have, or your own low burst damage.

I see a conceptual problem with what they did in PvP with both Blaster and Stalker powers. Briefly, they took the biggest frontload damage, which also tends to come with a strong mez, and added toggle dropping.

This is a three way overkill. It allows one power to deliver two or three of the things one needs to win in PvP.

*) Burst DPS
*) Mezzing
*) (Multiple) toggle dropping against armored targets

My guess is this was done for thematic reasons. Big, bone-crushing attacks seem thematically approprite to also disorient you and knock off powers you're maintaining.

From a balance perspective, by combining all these features into a single power they're allowing these ATs to do in one massive shot something that other ATs - even other primary damage-dealers - have to use two or three powers to attain. This is what allows these AT/powersets to solo so well. Other people need a team to either assist in the DPS or at least interfere with the ability to flee.

My suggestions for fixing these problems:

*) Keep toggle dropping far, far away from mez powers. Require that to be a two-hit combination.
*) Consider making toggle dropping hard to obtain for sets (or ATs) that already deal poorly resisted damage. For example, sets that deal primarily/only lethal/smashing damage would get vastly more mileage out of detoggles than energy-based or elements-based sets would.

I do maintain that I do not see an issue with Energy Melee outside of Blasters and Stalkers. I have just as much respect for a SS Tanker or Brute as I do for an EM one. I may resist the SS Tanker/Brute more, but he still hits damn hard, and has other tools that help make up the difference (Rage). But the combination of high-burst damage, high mez frequency and guaranteed toggle dropping is an over-the-top combination of features useful in PvP .

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I third it. EM so far outperforms other blaster secondaries, it's not even remotely close. Try logging into the Test server on arena PvP nights and just try to find a blaster without the EM secondary.

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Try Electric Manipulation sometime. It's becoming just as common as EM. among Blappers. Larger BIs, sooner, and just about as much stun. For Siren's Call, it's arguably better than EM.

Bear in mind that you are also laboring under the toHit debuff enhancement schedule change. While there is a complex interaction between this change and another coming in I7, making it a nerf against weak foes and a buff against strong ones, currently it is just a plain nerf. You are debuffing foes toHit about 81% of what you were previously, while their toHit calcualtion is unchanged.

Dark works if you do the following:

*) Have a team
*) Use your Shadowfall often
*) Ignore Darkest Night. It's too hard to apply and to easy for them to get out of.
*) Use your fear cone constantly. Fearing Tanks, most Scrappers and Brutes people in bubbles, and just about anyone you can think of is incredibly powerful. With good communication to a team I have directly lead to the defeat of entire squads of foes.
*) Use Tar Patch to prevent foes from fleeing and speed their defeat. Dropping a Tar Patch under foes recently feared aids those squad defeats mentioned above.
*) Use Petrifying Gaze to surgically disable other buffers, such as Hurricane users.

So as others have said, I tend to aid my team in killing. I don't kill much by myself, though my Ice/Dark Corruptor can certainly get a few kills in with Ice's burst damage.

Certain team compositions can nullify the above tactics, but then if Dark could always reshape the battlefield on its own it would probably need looking at.

After a few runs of acting like the above I am clearly prioritized as a serious threat, and foes try hard to kill/disable me on sight. If my team can actually threaten our foes, though, I can usually come in on their coattails and wreak havok.

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OK, I've got a question. In the build you posted you've got Fluffy slotted with 3 recharges. Is that required in order to perma him or is that just so you can have him out more often if he dies or to use him as alpha absorption?

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Not only that, but at high levels when you can slot him up, he's a pretty significant toHit debuff on his own. Since he has ranged attacks, he likes to stop at a distance from foes. If you can recast him more often, this improves how often you can drop him smack on top of people for the double benefit of soaking the alpha and stacking another debuff on them.

The effect of the -regen effect on high-HP foes (AVs, giant monsters) is obvious and well-known. Spamming TG on such a foe is an excellent aid to those attempting to defeat it. It is also incredibly obvious in PvP. Debuffs to regen rate are against the base value, meaning that no matter how much +regen a character has you can floor their regen rate if you stack enough of this on them.

I believe you are correct about the rank modifier. I think it was added with the I7 changes. And if you set it to zero and run some calculations, you'll see why. Powers like RI and DN would absolutely hammer a +0 AV's accuracy. A set like Dark Miasma, with multiple tools on hand, would crush it to the floor.

I hate to say it, but they needed to add the resistance. Whether these are good values or not I don't know.

I have to run out so I only skimmed your reply, but I'll toss out there that the math for the "before" case is different. Several of the terms that will be multipliciative are currently additive. I'll check back in later!

I can get the "after" math to line up. I did not try to check the "before" math.

I did this programatically rather than as a spreadsheet. Here's what I am using. For the curious, this is Python code. Hopefully it's reasonably easy to read for anyone with even minor background in CS.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>BaseToHit = 0.5
LevelAccMod = {0:0, 1:0.10, 2:0.2, 3:0.30}
CombatMod = {0:0, 1:0.10, 2:0.2, 3:0.35}
RankAccMod = {Minion:0, LT:0.15, Boss:0.3, AV:0.50}
RankResist = {Minion:0, LT:0.10, Boss:0.2, AV:0.30}

def getModifiedToHit(rank, level, buff, debuff, defense):

debuff = debuff * (1 - CombatMod[level]) * (1 - RankResist[rank])

toHit = BaseToHit + buff - defense - debuff

toHit = min(toHit,0.95)
toHit = max(toHit,0.05)

return toHit

def getAccuracy(rank, level):

return (1 + RankAccMod[rank]) * (1 + LevelAccMod[level])

def getToHit(rank, level, buff, debuff, defense):

toHit = getAccuracy(rank,level) * getModifiedToHit(rank,level,buff,debuff,defense)

toHit = min(toHit,0.95)
toHit = max(toHit,0.05)

return toHit</pre><hr />

The function of real use there is the last one, "getToHit". I broke out the accuracy and inner toHit calculations to improve legibility and so I could calculate those two things independantly for arcane analysis reasons.

Using this math matched Statesman's "after" numbers to +/- 0.01.

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And no bad patch notes aren't game breaking, they are morale breaking, causing customers to think "yep..there they go again with the 'stealth nerfs'". I can log in and play, do I enjoy it as much as I did in I3? NO. Now when I respec a toon instead of doing it quite quickly, I sit there with my steno pad and my pencil, just thinking about what I am going to do, where should I slot, and will this power be nerfed anytime soon?

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This I agree with you on. I hate the seemingly endless nerfing. I really do. I have argued vehemently in the past that, in terms of what we've lost, we've been nerfed far more than we've been buffed. That the things buffed were usually significantly sub-par, and the things nerfed have fallen very far.

I do feel far less super than I did when this game started. Look at my sig and you'll see powersets that were once gods among the others (and I made most of them before I knew that). To be fair, you'll also see some that were once (and in one case still is) fairly gimp, and that were fixed or are about to be.

I still enjoy this game. Most of my playing friends have moved on not because they are disgusted with nerfs (even if they were) but because they got into new games or Real Life™ took their gaming time or access away. I still play it. I still love my characters. I am pleased to say that my favorites still kick a lot of rear. They may not be gods among heroes, but they still stand tall.

If you look back at just about every nerfed powerset, there were one or two anchor powers an 'uber' powerset could hang its hat on. Nowadays, the most heavily nerfed ones have had to spread out and rely on more powers. More clicks. You can still rock out, but for shorter periods - you have to sort of save up your real coolness for the really tough fights.

This particular nerf I am looking at and thinking I mostly understand, given that perspective. Look at the mitigation numbers I posted. With some power spamming, a Dark Miasma character is going to be able to mitigate from 92-72% of the average damage output of a +3-+0 AV. That's with the nerf. My guess is that the devs looked at this and realized that a player who really used all the tools at his disposal could crush the average damage of an AV if they didn't make this change.

My concerns are that they may need to do other things to make up for the nerf in other ways. If Rad Emission really needs to run all three anchors to reach strong mitigation, maybe the toggles should be made a little cheaper, and all given fast activations (like EF has). I have no experience with Trick Arrow, but if it lacks strong stacking, maybe it's base debuff number needs to rise.

I look at every nerf based on the current state of things, not based how things were at I3 or even release (I've been here since CoH pre-release, and had 6 friends in beta). Overall, I don't think this nerf is very strong. I'm here to raise the issues I do see and hope that, if they have any merit, the devs will look into it before it goes live.

Oh, and I am disgruntled that this nerf goes in before I7. That is just plain dumb. I don't have much faith in Cryptic's code deployment process. From the customer perspective, it seems to stink.