UberGuy

[ QUOTE ]
Wow, Silver Gale is really off today. Then again, so are you, Uber.

[/ QUOTE ]

Err... How was I off in disagreeing with Gale, there?

I was disagreeing...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Powerboost wouldn't do much for a SR scrapper as it stands. It improves the secondary effects of powers, and defense is a primary power in the SR set.

[/ QUOTE ]

Tell that to a DM/SR

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually I don't think the sword guys would complain much either. But yeah, that would be really evil on DM.

<.<

>.>

>.<
\_/

On SR it would have the very odd effect of boosting the debuff resistance and the DR gained when hit.

[ QUOTE ]
From 110.25% AV damage to 73.5%?
O U C H !!!
That is a HUGE boost for defence sets!

[/ QUOTE ]

You have to remember, though, that they are coming from a distinct disadvantage. For ages and ages, the average mitigation of DEF vs DR has scaled down with foe rank and level. So putting them back in line requires a pretty significant boost.

Note I say this from the perspective of someone with virtually no DEF based characters. And there's a reason for that. The ones I played made the problems clear.

[ QUOTE ]
Um, WTH? This *is* the warning. From best estimates, i7 (which this will be part of) is over a month away.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, and what Futurias said.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
A while ago, peoople have requested something be done. Well, we've done a bunch of work and done this. Defense powers will now work equally well against critters, regardless of their rank or level. For instance, your defense powers will work equally well against a Boss or any critter up to 5 levels higher than you, as it does for an equal level minion. This change has no effect on a player who does not have any Defense.

[/ QUOTE ]

The devs get 20 points for listening to the playerbase, 10 points for giving a boost to SR Scrappers, and 10 points for the same to Ice Tanks.

...however, they get -50 points for making yet *another* fundamental alternation to their game engine without warning.

[/ QUOTE ]

That seems sort of strange.

One, they didn't change the engine at all. They just moved some values around in the existing engine. Maybe that's an overly technical point.

Two, and more importantly, would you rather they left something that was desperately broken alone? That part confuses me badly. I applaud a sweeping change when it's needed.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
But its really focused accuracy that is the real killer, since its tohit buff is lower, but continuous, and its base is also high enough that a reduction in slotting power to "just as strong as defense" still makes it pretty darned good against defense sets.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is exactly what I'm talking about. I in no way form or manner want to see this touched (edit: in PvE).

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, this change wont affect how players hit NPCs.

[/ QUOTE ]

If they nerf our toHitBuffs it will. That's what I'm referring to.

[ QUOTE ]
I agree with you, but only to a point. If the ToHit buffing powers are reduced, something else will need to make up foir the reduction. Lowered end cost on FA and Tactics, as an example.

[/ QUOTE ]

The thing is, I don't care about the costs. The costs are currently balanced against the (PvE) benefit these powers provide.

If their cost is slashed but their benefit is too, I consider them to cease to be useful. This has already happened, in effect, with Targetting drone. It went from something you could use in place of slotting accuracy in your powers to something that, honestly, you now seem to need to combine with accuracy slotting. All of which goes a huge distance in nullifying what was, for many players, the primary attraction of the entire Devices secondary (at least once Smoke Grenade was fixed). What would be the point in PvE of Focused accuracy in the world you propose? Self Tactics for melee characters? I'm not enthused by that idea. With their original values, these powers have a valid and design purpose that is muddied by the fact that it makes sense to do things in PvP that don't make sense in PvE.

[ QUOTE ]
I also wish to see Lucks reduced to be "equal" to Sturdies. At their current values, with this change coming down the pipeline, they are grossly overpowered. UNLESS they are only compared to the grossly overpowered ToHit Buff base values of FA, Aim and Buildup.

[/ QUOTE ]

No real argument here, other than, again, the tie in with the buffs.

[ QUOTE ]
I think 12.5% base buff for Aim and FA, and a 5% buff from Buildup sounds fair. Or even double those values for the non-constant buffs since their durations are so short.

(I know, I'm slightly exagerating how bad they need to be nerfed. Slightly.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Those values are ludicrously low.

5% for Build Up?

Do you know what Tactics is on a non-Controller, non-Defender (CoH ATs only)? It's around 7%. And, unenhanced, I can tell you, it's barely noticeable in today's world, fighting mobs with no +DEF powers. And that's mixing it with one SO accuracy. You do start to notice it with 2-3 SO toHitBuffs in it, but it's still not incredible.

If you want those values slashed in PvP only, I have zero problem with that. But I would have heavy disgust for a change like that in PvE. I don't want to have to slot my damn Aim for toHit just to get a useful buff out of it in PvE.

[ QUOTE ]
But its really focused accuracy that is the real killer, since its tohit buff is lower, but continuous, and its base is also high enough that a reduction in slotting power to "just as strong as defense" still makes it pretty darned good against defense sets.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is exactly what I'm talking about. I in no way form or manner want to see this touched (edit: in PvE). It is the only power in the game left besides Rage that allows you to stop slotting Accuracy in your powers. And you pay for it by facing a staggering endurance burn and taking a EPP that really doesn't offer a lot of interesting powers. (Conserve Power is pretty great, but not everyone needs it, and there are other more interesting pools out there, IMO).

There's no real benefit to ACC/toHit overkill in PvP. The purple patch intervenes in other ways, even if you can hit +5 and +6 foes, the heavily attenuated effects of your powers, and the massive damage they deal back, makes it a bad idea. So there's no real benefit to stacking powers and Accuracy enhancements. Getting a power like FA or Rage is enough.

Enter PvP and the scene changes. Now you regularly face people who have DEF as their mitigation. And no you get real benefit from stacking things that no one would stack in PvE.

I REALLY don't like the idea that FA could be gutted from its present utility in PvE to make PvP fair. Because while I want PvP to be fair for the people that do it, I don't partake of it enough to want to pay for that with a loss of something I like in PvE.

[ QUOTE ]
It also sounds, upon careful read of this, that tohit buffs themselves, separate from level and rank adjustments, are unaffected by this change, which is consistent with Statesman's original wording of the change.

Is there a different change to adjust the effect of high tohit buffs, especially (but not exclusively) in PvP? High tohit buffs were one of the things Statesman mentioned many months ago as being "looked at."

[/ QUOTE ]

I would like to see anything done here done with extremely careful consideration to the difference in PvE and PvP.

In PvP, high toHit can counter Defense based armors. But in PvE, toHit powers are a joy to the players. Missing is one of the most basic forms of frustration, and getting a power that cuts down on this is often paid for by choosing a particular power set, pool set, or epic set, and often comes with other considerable costs, such as endurance burn or some other kind of downtime. I would hate to see these powers gutted simply because they become onerous in PvP when someone decides to maximize them through both paying the cost of having/using them and slotting heavily for accuracy.

Basically this topic is a potential sticking point for me of the PvP game intruding on things that, for me at least, make the PvE game more fun. Because I hate missing frequently in PvE more than any other single thing, even more than pervasive mezzing.

[ QUOTE ]
SR didn't have an Achilles Heel, it had an Achilles Epidermis.

[/ QUOTE ]

OK, ROFL.

You know, I am now positively salivating to see I7.

Please, please, please, Devs, don't sneak in something we will hate with this one? Even if you have something cooking that we will hate, can it wait an issue? I'm tired to the bone of getting all excited about a new issue only to find that not only did it come with a huge wet blanket, but the blanket was soaked in mild acid. And made of fiberglass.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
We just received tech that will allow players to pass buffs onto certain powers (such as Blizzard).

[/ QUOTE ]
To me that means once something like Blizzard is cast and exists in the game world, then something like Fortitude or Fulcrum Shift may be cast onto it. Basically, they will now be AI-less, immobile pets. That means self-buffing powers such as Aim or Build-up still would not affect them.

And my money is on Burn NOT being one of the powers that gets this feature.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you're missing the context of previous discussions on the powers we're talking about.

I guarantee you it means buffs that affect the caster now will be inherited by place powers they "cast".

You use Build Up and then Rain of Fire, the RoF gets a +100% damage buff and a 62.5% toHit buff (or whatever the real value is), just like Fireball would.

That's what it means. Today, you can't do that, and it's been wished for by the players for a very, very long time.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
We just received tech that will allow players to pass buffs onto certain powers (such as Blizzard).

[/ QUOTE ] Um...what does this mean exactly?

[/ QUOTE ]

Place effects such as Blizzard, Rain of Fire, Burn, and Ice Storm (and, a few others you might not expect, like Twilight Grasp) are currently not able to be buffed by buffs to their owner/caster.

For example, Build Up will not improve Rain of Fire, and Power Build Up will not improve Twilight Grasp.

What he is describing allows that to be fixed.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And badge people, killing LT-grade Fake Nemesis in Heroic missions counts towards the badge, doesn't it?

[/ QUOTE ]

And how many heroic solo missions spawn more than 2-3 Fake Nems at Lt level??

You'd have to run 33-50 solo heroic Nemesis missions each with 3 Nem Fakes to get the badge...


[/ QUOTE ]

Why on earth are you even bringing that up?

The point is that the rank-shifting mechanic shouldn't affect whether the foes count for a badge.

[ QUOTE ]
And doesn't a 4 person group create a +1 level modifier anyway? Or is that 6 person?

Just Oi Oi.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's six, and that seems to have disspeared with I6. An 8-man mission does not produce a +2 foe modifier in CoV. Nor does a six man team produce a +1 modifier.

If they haven't done this in CoH yet, I assume it's coming.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Or simply, when a mission is completed, then the mission is marked as completed.

[/ QUOTE ]
But since this is the way it actually does work, there is no exploit there.

[/ QUOTE ]

I thought the idea was:

Person A has glowie mission, set to Invincible
Person B joins team, both enter
Person A quits
Person B stealths mission, gets mega XP

Person A's mission isn't marked as 'completed' because they weren't there - it was finished by someone who wasn't on the team.

[/ QUOTE ]

I cant say for sure, LS, but I have received "Mission Completed" for missions I was no longer in the team for as far back as Issue 2. I don't know if it's consistent, because I've only done things that can lead to it a couple of times (I let other people run one of my missions while I did something else in game), but it did work that way those couple of times.

I've actually used it to switch to another character to complete one of my own missions.

[ QUOTE ]
How is seeing an Archvillain with a full team *better* content than seeing the same character as an Elite Boss when you're solo or in a small, low difficulty group? I expect the difficulty of facing an Elite Boss solo is comparable to facing an Archvillain with the average team, especially the average team which is planning on facing an Archvillain.

I think some people are confused, with the idea that they won't see the character at all, but some other Elite Boss. I'm certain that that isn't the case.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed. This means that, solo on Heroic, you will meet Anti-Matter the Elite Boss.

And badge people, killing LT-grade Fake Nemesis in Heroic missions counts towards the badge, doesn't it?

[ QUOTE ]
And I know I can still get the AV's if I want to, Uberguy. My concern is that we'll have even more people rushing through content and then whining about not having anymore contacts until they reach a certain level. A lot of people I know that play solo all the time are already having this problem in CoV. Big team=more enemies=more XP, so if you team more you'll end up leveling without being as likely to run out of missions.

[/ QUOTE ]

I want you to really think about what you're saying here. You're saying that the only thing standing between people and "racing" to 50 is content that forces teaming.

Now, does that really prevent anything except for people who can't or don't want to form a team? I say it doesn't.

You're trying to make AVs be the thing that makes the whole game harder. They don't. They are just something big and hard to kill that often spends time one-shotting people. That's not hard. It's somewhere between boring and annoying.

I don't ever spend time in perma debt, either. I never have. I play smart, I build well, and I play on the highest difficulty I can as soon as I can. All my CoV toons were on the middle difficulty by level 6 or 8.

But given that slider I don't think the game is too easy. A +2 boss is a hard fight for most all my characters, of course depending on the boss. A +3 boss almost always requires liberal inpsiration use. An 8-man team can get really hairy - especially on those higher settings.

I don't want or expect every single fight to have a good chance to kill me. That level or mortality would annoy me. Maybe you prefer it. But if so you need to know that not everyone would.

[ QUOTE ]
AV's are the only type of forced teaming that I have any kind of approval of. Double and triple clicking glowies is tedious and I hate hate hate hate hate those missions. An AV that you can try to kill yourself and then have to call in the troops to help out? I think that's a good time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Almost no one these days can lay out the damage needed to overcome their HP and regen rates. If you are an AT/powerset that can do this, beware. The Nerfs are coming. In any case, the vast majority of players know they need a team to take on an AV, even if it's one of those AVs that doesn't do that much damage.

And again, needing a team != hard.

Soloing an EB without running to the inspiration store 3 times is hard. But it's possible. And that makes it fun. Soling an AV at all is basically impossible. And that, to me, is annoying to find in my missions more than a few times in a characters career.

[ QUOTE ]
Its a bait and switch because most people didnt see this as a problem to begin with and as such needed no solution. Now instead of just leaving it alone, we are happy it just not being nerfed like it was planned.

They can say they listen to the playerbase because it was suggested by a few that suppression be used instead of no clicky, but most people said just leave it alone.


[/ QUOTE ]

And I can see that they really want to fix something that they think is a real problem, be it an exploit or a risk/reward problem, or a mix of both. They are going to do something to fix it. Period.

What they came up with as an initial fix sucked eggs. We said as much, and they accepted it. That doesn't mean they still really want to fix something, and that we can convince them not to fix it (especially if it really is a problem).

I'm really damn cynical about this game, with some of the most nerfed powersets in the game well represented in my hero list, but even I can accept that this is the above and not some calculated bait and switch.

[ QUOTE ]
My concern with this is that you will not be able to manipulate the level of an AV anymore. For example when soloing a mission you would have an even lvl AV on villanous up to a plus 2 or 3 when on relentless. So now if you want to solo an AV the only way is to be set on relentless and have to fight a plus 2 or 3 guy? What if I want to try and solo an even level AV? that will no longer be an option with this new system.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think people need to just give up on this. The devs declaratively don't want anyone to have that capability. If you do have it, history tells us you've got a nice string of nerfs coming. For quite a while now I've only heard of one AT across the two games pulling it off.

I'm all for players being powerful and soloing lots and lots of content. But I can give the devs that they just don't want anyone doing this, and that, as such, I can't see arguing for anything that's related to doing it.

[ QUOTE ]
While the other changes you mentioned are fine and dandy, I want to go on the record as saying that I don't like the AV change at all. The game is too easy most of the time anyway, so removing the one thing that forces you to make some friends seems like a bad idea to me. Most AV's can be duo'd (how exactly do you spell that made up word?) and with a team of three or four, it's a guaranteed win for you (assuming you put together a decent group). How many people can't find another person or two to help them out? Sure, if it's 3 AM on a Thursday you're going to have issues, but otherwise who is really having this problem?


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure what forums you read, but this is posted about all the time. People's reasons for it range from not having a lot of time to not liking to team. Moreover, some AVs are really damn hard to kill, and require not just a team but a decently composed one.

If you want the AV-grade foes, you can still get them. I utterly fail to see why you would dislike that others can get by these with greater ease.

[ QUOTE ]
First...I confirm that we're working on right now (as in pohsyb in the next room) to add CoV costume parts into CoH if you own both games....

Then we repeal the hated stealth nerf. The reason why: many well reasoned posts. It's that simple. You guys pointed out the problems.

AND now...we're changing the way Archvillains spawn. A ton of forum goers disliked adding so many AV's into missions a while back...so we've come up with a solution. If the team size and mission difficulty are ABOVE a certain level, an Archvillain spawns. Below that, players will face only an Elite Boss. If the mission is set on the first two levels of difficulty, it takes 4 heroes or more to spawn an Arch Villain. On the third level, 3 heroes or more. On the fourth level, 2 heroes. On the highest (Invincible), a solo hero will spawn an AV. Note this works in BOTH City of Heroes and Villains.

In order to incentivize larger teams, Positron is going to add a bonus to AV rewards!

[/ QUOTE ]

I want to thank you guys for making use of forum ideas on these two things. Especially the AV one. On the face of it that sounds pretty darn good.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If you just want to relax and wander through on god mode, play a non-MMO game and get the cheat codes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Gee, and I thought the whole point of games was to have fun. Go find something real to be macho about.

We have nothing more to discuss. /ignore

[/ QUOTE ]

And here I was thinking something a bot could do would be boring as hell.

But, I guess that isn't a constant.

[/ QUOTE ]

Blue, I think you're missing a point here. Maybe you aren't, but just in case, here it is, stated explicitly.

Many, many posters on these forums don't mind hard foes. Elite bosses are a great example. Most of us loved getting all but one example of the elite bosses in our missions, because, for many ATs/builds, elite bosses were hard but not impossible.

Our problem is we don't want foes of that magnitude in every battle with every spawn. Each and every fight should not have that level of difficulty built in, yet with some enemies it does. Maybe not for you, but for many people that crosses the line and goes from challenging to frustrating.

Look around the boards, and you'll see that one of the reasons people dislike fighting AVs and Heroes is that they are hated for their near universal ability to one-shot many ATs. Yet this same ability appears on some bosses. Mez spam is not fun, yet it appears on some bosses. Bosses can appear in any and every fight on a team mission. There are missions where they appear in every spawn even when you solo. "Get a team" isn't an adequate response to such challenges because a team often can't protect you from the mezzing or even, at times, the one-shotting. Try getting most Brutes or Masterminds to keep the aggro off of you as a Dominator. I can tell you from real-world team experience that it just doesn't work dependably, and you end up the benificiary of a 200-700 point damage attack often combined with a mez. If that happens more than once every few battles it gets old fast.

Basically there is poor balance among the various groups, and most notably among their bosses. Being worth more XP is great, but I'd rather have non-frustrating foes. Again, most of the time I personally can solo these things with a minimum of issue/debt. But I also build very carefully considered characters, and even so the devs have started to nullify some of the tactics I have depended on. (Tried using holds on a Fortunata Mistress? My blaster got a lot of debt on the Holiday mission.) Just because I can often overcome doesn't mean I don't think some things are imbalanced. And it doesn't mean I think they're fun.

[ QUOTE ]

Quite understood, but you pretty much placed two Archetypes primary powers to be considered extremely limited. There are options available, sure they don't always hit, but then again your opponents attack options don't always work either, and with a diverse group you can tilt the odds in favor of stuff not hitting you and you hitting stuf.

I do understand your point, but it's still kinda stings when you say that 2 archetype's primary power sets are extremely limited.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, you do understand I'm saying they are extremely limited at doing something very specific - stopping a boss from getting off one attack. Almost no one in any AT can this reliably. The only reason I even bring such a narrow limitation up is that it can be so incredibly important, because that first attack from many bosses is, in fact a mez.

[ QUOTE ]
I must be fighting a different long bow because I have never seen them one-shot anybody.

[/ QUOTE ]

The "Tanker" ones have Knock Out Blow. One hit from that can easily equal a dead Corrupter/Dominator/Mastermind and somtimes Stalker.

[ QUOTE ]
I have never found the end drain to be more than an annoyance.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you mean from Longbow I can understand this, since it's not automatically full drain from one guy. Malta are a very different story. I have always found it terribly odd that the single-target malta attack is vastly less draining than the AoE version, which will drop most anyone's endurance to zero in one shot (Dark Armor and some Regen Scrappers excluded).

[ QUOTE ]
Like popping a break free for a hold all you have to do is pop a blue and problem solved

[/ QUOTE ]

Not if it drops all your toggles first.

You also seem to have some bizarre notion that we can use an inspiration in every fight. Maybe more than one. How many inspiration slots do you have, exactly?

[ QUOTE ]
They are no worse than Crey or Malta

[/ QUOTE ]

I gotta say, if you think Crey are anything close to Malta or Longbow we have to be playing different games. I respect some Paragon Protectors, but nothing like I do Malta Titans (missiles anyone), Gunslingers (ranged holds, knockback, big damage) Tac Ops Commanders (AoE stun of DOOOOOM), or any of the Longbow Wardens (Terrorize? Knock out Blow? Empathy healing? Flight?).