UberGuy

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The mere fact that the devs decided to give an enemy, and a Lt-level at that, the ability to just utterly negate ALL defenses, no matter the AT...it's staggering. It's damn near terrifying in its implications: could it be the beginning of a trend?

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I thought the idea was to make make some of the mobs as much like PCs as possible. This is exactly what you face in PVP.

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Guess what?

PvP is optional.

Not everyone wants it. Not everyone plays it. Not everyone gives one flat damn what it's like.

Moreover, many who do want PvP despise toggle dropping there.

And finally, players have powers that are massively unfun to players when they are used on them. Huge damage, massive debuffs, and frankly mezzes top out the list. We fight hundreds upon hundreds of AI foes per day, and those powers are useful and fun for us to use on the AI opponents. But what's good for the goose is not good for the gander, because we have powers that can devastate our own characters. Facing that with any frequency is frustrating, not fun. It's what AVs and Elite bosses are for, not foes we meet from 1-50 of in a mission.

So sorry, but your argument doesn't fly even with a good kick.

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This is better for everyone, how the hell is it worse for you if the meleers on your team are no longer getting toggle-dropped?

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Because a detoggled Brute, at worst, gets himself killed. A corruptor that's spending their day looking as drunk as Ted Kennnedy, on the other hand, tends to kill the whole team.

And, of course, is still detoggled.

Try playing a squishy for once, and you'll understand what I mean. My Stormer spends more time retoggling than he does blasting.

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And you still have not answered my question. How does the reduction of the stun, which dropped toggles on even Brutes, make things worse for you squishies?

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Punchy has it right, I think. I think what was meant was that now the replacement Nullifier power is worse for squishies. Before it was a guarnateed stun that was very brief. Since most squishes don't suffer as badly losing their toggles as melees (I'm including Stalkers on the melee side here), the new power is arguably worse for folks who get no mez resist. Not it can actually mez them for an appreciable time.

At least that's what I'm getting out of it.

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There are extremely limited options for stopping a boss from actually executing attacks, and attacks like this can flat out anhillate 4/5ths of the ATs in this game on the basis of raw HP and damage mitigation.

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I'm not sure what to make of two entire ATs being labeled as extremely limited.

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I don't know what you're talking about.

To be clear, there are extremely limited ways for any AT to completely prevent a boss from firing their first attack. We have knockdown (which can miss and is guaranateed only on a few powers that cause it), toHitDebuffs (which bosses often hit through anyway), and Domination-powered holds (which doesn't work on all bosses, but is probably the most reliable of the ways) are among the most common tools used.

Or were you just not understanding what I meant we had limited ways to do?

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Last night, I had a Longbow Warden one-shot my 38 Nin/Nin Stalker. All of my toggles were up at the time. When I told my group what had happened, they didn't believe me at first. So I scrolled back a ways to see the damage -- it was over 1000 points (I only have like 850 or so hp).

Now granted, the mob was a couple of levels higher than me, and I have no real damage resistance. But that's just sick.

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It really gets to some of the core design issues with mobs in this game. Mobs are constantly being "upgraded" with new powers, I suppose in some drive to provide "challenge". But there are powers the characters have that critters should just never get. The 7+ Brawl Index attacks on a bosses and LTs are prime examples. These attacks don't add challenge, they just make players dead. There are extremely limited options for stopping a boss from actually executing attacks, and attacks like this can flat out anhillate 4/5ths of the ATs in this game on the basis of raw HP and damage mitigation.

Mez powers are another example of the same thing.

Is it any wonder everyone who pushed the envelope at all went for "max damage right away" or "longest mez as often as possible" slotting? We still do, in the limits ED puts on us. And the reason is that it's a survival mechanism. It's like some perverse arms race. But its one where the Devs actually produce all the weapons, and we can only have what they give us. They can give their guys anything they want. That's what I see Longbow bosses as. They give them some of the best toys we have, plus boss-level mez resists, boss HP, boss damage scale, and the inherent "toggleless" version of powers. I actually like the idea of Longbow (especially the variety among bosses), but IMO their implementation is over the top. Little or no attention appears to have been given to the actual level of power some of them possess. Sometimes I think an even level Longbow boss should con red.

I should point out here that I don't dislike hard foes. I have had my [censored] handed to me many times by Night Widows, and I like them. They don't win because they do 1000 points of damage. They win because they use -perception powers, toss in some soft mezzing, and are themselves exceptionally hard to mez (and that's rough on a Dominator, let me tell you). That's the right direction - not giving a mob an auto mez power or letting its opening move be trans-snipe-level damage with a mez stacked on just to insult the squishies.

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So that means that damage resist resists debuffs? Is this automatic? I know there are defense debuff resisting powers, but I did not know that damage resist automatically resisted damage resist debuffs.

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All indications are that, yes, this is automatic. Someone with very high DR strongly resists effects that reduce that DR. This has functioned this way for a long time - probably since release.

Buried in this thread, Pahbster, is the promise they are changing that. It was that way by design, and based on our feedback it's going to become a regular stun (with a regular duration).

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All of these have one basic thing in common, they take away in varying degrees the ability to play your character. From what I can see, people really don't mind seeing their characters health move at times.

But they *really* hate having no control over what is going on.

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Being able to do nothing in one of the most frentically inter-active games is thoroughly unenjoyable.

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This is an abosultely spot-on summary of my feelings on this matter.

I despise being held. I hate it. I want to break and tear things when I am defeated because of holds. It is not fun whatsoever. It's akin to being one-shotted. It offers you nothing to do.

But I'm not here in this thread asking for it to go away. As much as I hate it I've learned to adjust to it.

I do wish that people other than melees (in general) had recourse against it. I do think it's vastly too prevalent, and I really don't understand why. It doesn't do anything to the melees, and it leaves everyone else with 3 choices. 1) Alpha strike foes to death (very hard these days). 2) Mez them first. 3) Debuff the living daylights out of them so they can't hit you (and pray they don't get lucky). You can also pray for a teammate that can protect you, but that's rare in CoV.

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Wouldn't it be more reasonable - and in theme - to give the Nullifiers a power than renders all toggles non-functional for a short time? Still scary, but you don't get killed trying to retoggle six things at once.

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For heaven's sake; NO!

Read my post up higher about why anything that deprives us of our toggles needs to be far less scary than normal - including anything in the spawn with it.

A hero or villain without the toggles from their powersets are not the equal of someone at their level. I don't know about you people, but I play at levels of difficulty or on teams where a big spawn of bad guys or a boss is actually scary most all the time. Sure, some are wuss, but that's increasingly rare.

I don't want anything out there negating an entire powerset of mine (or anyone's) in any way unless it is then correspondingly unscary to go with how utterly lame a toggle-based character is without their toggles. It's bad enough that we have things like Psi damage that bypasses entire powersets for some people. Things that negate them for everyone are ridiculous, and I truly fail to see what's supposed to be fun about them.

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I fail to see what makes Rikti worth so much, sissy aliens

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Possibly the fact that they are abolutely thick with stun and knockdown effects from minions up to bosses, they have mobs that see through any stealth in the game, they deal energy damage which is poorly resisted, and their melee damage is some of the highest in the game - and it is significantly composed of energy damage.

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I'm going to be blunt here.

Do the people who come up with this stuff know how to balance games?

I'm serious.

I'm going to give you an example from a game system lots and lots of people are famliar with: Dungeons and Dragons. D&D is balanced on the idea of players making a certain income by facing foes of certain threat ratings roughly matched to their own team's rating. Part and parcel of the income won by characters is the idea that they will spend it on equipment. That ability to have equipment is factored into the threat rating of foes tossed at the PCs. It is understood that if you have level 10 D&D characters with no magic weapons or magic armor that they are very likely underpowered to face Challenge Rating 10 foes, because those foes will assume characters who bought such things by then.

CoH and CoV are no different. Foes are balanced in damage dealt per blow, HP, and mez capability on the assumption that heroes will have key powers (and will have lots of slots in them!). Melee heroes are given armors, and Critter melee damage is very high to balance it. Other crucial, non-armor toggles that can be expected of level 35+ heroes are ones that affect accuracy or prevent mezzing.

Toggle dropping removes these assumed capabilities from our characters. This means that the character is put in a state that imbalances the level of threat they can handle - they can no longer deal with threats appropriate to their level. Yet toggle dropping foes do not, in general, deal less damage, and certainly no allied critters they are in a group with do so. They lower the effective level of the player's character but have no compensating reduction of their own.

Stop with the PvE negation of our powers. As implemented it is blatant poor game balance in the favor of the critters. Powers are the only reward we get in this game. It is tiresome and frustrating for cancellation of them to be more than an occasional occurence.

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the same thing can be said about PVP... once some toggles go down you are basically dead in many cases... same thing with being held in a block of ice... once you are held its all over but the dying.. thats why Im getting bored with PVP here...its nothing but trying not to get mezzed.

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I agree, and it's something I figured would be the case in "City of PvP" from the get go. Status effects suck rocks, but we're stuck with them or entire ATs have no ability to PvP at all. So basically I accept it in PvP. In PvP I know it's there and that I have to deal with it. After all, in PvP I also have to deal with sniper shots and attacks like Headsplitter, Knock out Blow and Energy Transfer. PCs hit hard. I'm OK with that.

But we fight literally thousands of critters in the lifetime of one player character. Only the most penultimate of critters should bit as hard as players' top-end powers do. Yet the direction seems to give the NPCs more and more of the player character tools.

And I'll take this point in the discussion to mention that there are Longbow bosses who use Knockout Blow. One-shot city. (Also level 30+ Tsoo Ancestor Spirits use this, which is positively freaking insane).

And hey, while I'm on a tear, who the holy hell thought that Spectral Daemon minions needed a buff, for God's sake? They got a ranged attack in the last major patch! Gloom! What the blazes?

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However, I take it the spec ops having endurance draining power with the ability to attack while stealthed without suppression will not change

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Are you sure it doesn't suppress them? I find them visible but transparent while they're attacking me, and I can target them normally both with the mouse and tab key. But maybe you're describing a scenario I haven't encountered, since I've only faced the 35+ mobs occasionally so far (usually while LK'd up).

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The Longbow are fine. They are not too hard, they just present a different challenge than other mobs. Why is it that I play a necro MM (whose pets are very weak to fire) and I have never had a problem with Longbow Flamethrowers, even in multiples? Just plan your attacks, think about what you're doing and don't try to take on more than you can handle.

BTW, don't forget to play dirty, we're villains for cryin out loud.

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Bah, their Flamethrowers are an annoyance on their own, but not overpowering. The main complaint is with regards to the added mix of Sapping and the concussion effect. You likely don't have much in the way of toggles as a MM, and even if you are stunned, if you're playing smart you don't have much personal aggro. So basically I figure you are almost totally unaffected by either attack. Sure, depending on your secondary being Sapped might present some challenges, but you also have ways to avoid that.

Unfortunately for the rest of us (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), we aren't all Masterminds.

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4) The Sonic Concussion power blows through anyones Hold protection, but it only lasts 1/4 of a second. It is working as designed, however, I'll pass this to geko to see if it is too strong of an effect.


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I'm going to be blunt here.

Do the people who come up with this stuff know how to balance games?

I'm serious.

I'm going to give you an example from a game system lots and lots of people are famliar with: Dungeons and Dragons. D&D is balanced on the idea of players making a certain income by facing foes of certain threat ratings roughly matched to their own team's rating. Part and parcel of the income won by characters is the idea that they will spend it on equipment. That ability to have equipment is factored into the threat rating of foes tossed at the PCs. It is understood that if you have level 10 D&D characters with no magic weapons or magic armor that they are very likely underpowered to face Challenge Rating 10 foes, because those foes will assume characters who bought such things by then.

CoH and CoV are no different. Foes are balanced in damage dealt per blow, HP, and mez capability on the assumption that heroes will have key powers (and will have lots of slots in them!). Melee heroes are given armors, and Critter melee damage is very high to balance it. Other crucial, non-armor toggles that can be expected of level 35+ heroes are ones that affect accuracy or prevent mezzing.

Toggle dropping removes these assumed capabilities from our characters. This means that the character is put in a state that imbalances the level of threat they can handle - they can no longer deal with threats appropriate to their level. Yet toggle dropping foes do not, in general, deal less damage, and certainly no allied critters they are in a group with do so. They lower the effective level of the player's character but have no compensating reduction of their own.

Stop with the PvE negation of our powers. As implemented it is blatant poor game balance in the favor of the critters. Powers are the only reward we get in this game. It is tiresome and frustrating for cancellation of them to be more than an occasional occurence.

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I realize the engine isn't built that way. I just happen to feel it was a dumb way to build the engine.

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Not disagreeing. Past experience just indicates that changes of that sort are very unlikely, as opposed to various tinkering with powers to scale their magnitude, duration, frequency of use, etc.

I won't touch how out of whack I think 3/5ths of the CoH inherents are compared to their closest CoV equivalents. Wrong forum for all but one of them.

Offtopic: Holy simoley! Is your post count accurate? Woah! (Not a dig of any sort. This is actual awe.)

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Seriously Manticore, I mean Longbow have "bow" in their _name_ and they're not stupid enough to use them. Someone give these poor schmo's a real weapon.

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In a fit of true oddness, you will see Longbow operatives practicing with bow and arrow on the island they control in Nerva. It's pretty out of place looking, since they don't use those in everyday action.

Maybe they're studying Zen practice.

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I understand the sentiment, but I forsee a likely outcome I am strongly opposed to: that having a healer/buffer requires a counter aggro magnet for that character to survive.

I see nothing about current conditions that warrant even risking that outcome.

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I don't see why it'd be a problem, actually. I meanif tankers are going to need defenders to survive the aggro they draw, why shouldn't defenders need tankers to hold the aggro. If anything, it'll give tankers more reason to hold that aggro.

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Because right there you've created two thirds of the holy trinity. Add in your damage dealer and you've got the whole thing. CoH/V is the only MMO I play for specific reasons, Kali. When the City games go down roads that lead to other MMO-style play I'm done with them. Since I enjoy it today I vehemently oppose that outcome.

Basically I liken this to trying to cure a TB victim by giving them polio. Or worse, by given someone else polio so they can comiserate. Let try to get the problems with Tankers addressed by just working on Tankers, not obliquely nerfing other ATs.

It's possible it does draw something today. But remember that they recently did something to the AI - intial attack runs by large mob groups seems to devote some foes to nearly every person in your party (countless times now I've had stuff run past my Brute or scrapping Stalker in CoV to go straight for the rear ranks of the party before they did anything at all). This may make it hard to tell what the AI is reacting to. If you meant before I5, then I couldn't say. It never seemed anger lots of mobs to use Twilight Grasp, though it certainly annoys the target.

If there is some aggro component now I have no problem with it. I think the current situation is OK. Hell, I'm usually attacking - including AoEs - even with my Defender (certainly with my Corruptor) so I am used to taking heat.

But not all sets have the tools at hand that Dark Miasma and Rad Emission do. Kinetics and Empathy (chosen for being strong healers) are very weak at defending themselves, where as sets like Dark and Rad are good at defending everyone, including themselves.

As Kali mentions, perhaps making them able to buff themselves would help this, but it seems obvious that that's a tweak to the engine/interface - today no one can target themselves at all. Moreover, I suspect that the lack of self-buffage was intended as a balance factor. Some of the most powerful/useful buffs in the game are exactly the ones that cannot be cast on one's self. Examples that come to mind - Speed Boost, Adrenaline Boost, Fortitude, and the various Defense/DR Bubbles.

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Then almost all Defenders/Corrupters need better defenses, or possibly more HP (either of which would probably piss off Blasters!). Also, this is unduly unfair to healers as opposed to other Defender types. Should buffing draw aggro? What about buffs that you can cast before a fight. Should just being a Defender/Corrupter draw aggro?

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First, I have already stated that I feel that defenders should be able to target themselves for buffs.

Second, if healing/buffing drew enough aggro to make it dangerous in a fight, there'd be much more point to having an AT that's all about aggro management.

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I understand the sentiment, but I forsee a likely outcome I am strongly opposed to: that having a healer/buffer requires a counter aggro magnet for that character to survive.

I see nothing about current conditions that warrant even risking that outcome.

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Anyway, how about this:

Heals generating aggro.
Is that crazy?

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The only problem is that there is no way in hell that Defenders can survive that aggro. If we're talking Taunt level aggro here, no way. Not without some changes to the AT. Or unless you want this game to become one that requires the "holy trinity" style teams. IE: If you have a healer you must have a tank or the healer gets creamed.

There's a fine line between being useful and being required. Frankly, I don't want to see anyone be required.

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Healing should generate aggro.

If you come to a Tsoo spawn, who do you kill first?

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Then almost all Defenders/Corruptors need better defenses, or possibly more HP (either of which would probably piss off Blasters!). Also, this is unduly unfair to healers as opposed to other Defender types. Should buffing draw aggro? What about buffs that you can cast before a fight. Should just being a Defender/Corruptor draw aggro?

I think whatever is in place now works just fine like it is and categorically does not need to be changed. The PvE game opponents do not need to think that much like players do. If they did, in the limit, an entire mission would come running the moment one spawn got away from a group we attacked, no one would stand around while you sniped/TPed/held their buddies (even ones from another spawn 30 feet away) and lots of other things. I'm for smarter AI, but not so much in this form. I want to see the AI have access to more interesting powers and use its powers more wisely, such as activating TI at the start of a fight, not after losing 60% health. And we are starting to see this some since I6/CoV. But I don't neccessarily want to see them truly act more like human players do.

Edited to fix amusing typo.

Edited again to address my scrapper lock on the idea. I'm imagining the effect be like taunting the foes. If healing generated aggro similar to dumping damage on foes, I wouldn't be horribly opposed to it, but I still think it unfair to healers. It would encourage sets like Dark Miasma, Kinetics, and Radiation to skip their heals, and would make life rather hellish for Empaths who actually used the huge heals they have.

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Scrappers get a better chance at crits vs. Lts or Bosses. Opponent level doesn't factor into the critical chance equation.

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Oh ok, well then perhaps the same thing in reverse for Tankers? Better defenses vs. Lt's and Bosses? (and presumably AV's).

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You know, that's a pretty cool idea. I'd never thought of it, certainly, and never seen it posted before.

It'd be confusing as hell for those of us that number crunch, but could be quite cool. It would also tend to "uniqify" Tankers against Brutes in CoV (not that I'm saying Brutes are much better tanks than Scrappers, but they do get a single-target punchvoke, plus fury, where Tankers get 5-max punchvoke and vaguely higher defense values).

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Anyway, how about this:

Heals generating aggro.
Is that crazy?

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The only problem is that there is no way in hell that Defenders can survive that aggro. If we're talking Taunt level aggro here, no way. Not without some changes to the AT. Or unless you want this game to become one that requires the "holy trinity" style teams. IE: If you have a healer you must have a tank or the healer gets creamed.

There's a fine line between being useful and being required. Frankly, I don't want to see anyone be required.

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Hey guys,

Manticore funded *and* founded Wyvern. The rest of the Phalanx are not aware of that however.

Carry on...

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Clearly Manticore doesn't run in SG mode!

(Sorry, couldn't resist. )

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The thing that gets me is that I seem to recall a Dev saying that streakbreaker only worked in the PCs benefit, and not the other way around...

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I have long remembered thinking I was told it worked for NPCs too, so I'm not sure they said that. If they did, I missed it, which is hard, given the dev digest.

Now on to Armsman's comment, it's not quite that bad. Like for PCs it does depend on their final hit chance. If you're flooring their hit chance with Elude, they're not going to hit you one time in four.

That said, it does remove part of the point of defense. It's based on luck. The streakbreaker puts a cap on how much good luck you can have, but lets you have bad luck without limit.

Wierdbeard,

Thanks for that response. A lot of us love that sort of detail.

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Fairly certain they always critted.. just the word "CRITICAL!" and the double damage numbers didn't fly above the enemies head till I2 or I3.. but... it was viewable in the combat log before then..

and yea -- in I3 the chance on bosses and LT's was upped.

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No, at release Scrappers did not critical. They had attacks that could (almost always the level 32 attack). The random crit on all attacks was added later. Its chance to occur was always cumulative with the chance for the attacks that already had an innate critical chance.

At release the Scrapper role was "soloist". No one wanted them on teams because they were perceived as not adding much. Why take a melee damage-dealer when you could take a Blaster? Crits were added to morph their role to "boss killer" (somewhat successfully, I might add, at least in popular perception).

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Funny how easy it is to tell the difference between 91% and 95%, isn't it?

Accuracy against higher level enemies is less than 75%. With just one single-origin accuracy enhancement, you start to come back down to 95% pretty fast, and thus you are guaranteed less than perfect accuracy against +1 bosses and even lieutenants. +2 minions, you most definitely have less than 95% accuracy. This isn't even the purple patch kicking in, it's the fact that a single SO doesn't put you very far past the tohit ceiling with even mobs.

I suspect it's a combination of everyone still getting their slotting under control (thus having suboptimal accuracy), the cone attack bug, and mass hysteria.

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No, I actually noticed this with long-played characters in CoH. Characters who had not had any problems in ages hitting +2 foes started getting noticable streaks. In particular, most of my heroes have some form of toHit buff. In only two cases is this their only means of accuracy boost - a Blaster with Targetting Drone 3-slotted for toHit and a Scrapper with Focused Accuracy 3-slotted for toHit. All the others have powers like Invincibility (Tanker, Scrapper) or Tactics (Defender) mixed with one SO accuracy in all attacks.

None of their toHit slotting was broken by ED, as none had more than 3 SO toHit buffs in the appropriate powers.

These characters are all level 40 or more, and all have long histories of fighting all the factions in the game at level +2 or higher. I have, by now, an intuitive feel for what foes they hit "well" and which ones they have problems hitting, and at what level the problems kick in. In I5 this feel changed. On all of them.

I can't back it up at this point. I haven't run Herostats logs of sufficient length and of reasonable controls on what I'm fighting to make good comparisons. But since Castle created this thread, I figured I'd throw it out there.

I am aware of the exact numbers on how our base toHit drops with foe level delta. Note that my logged accuracy for all these characters, running Invincible missions (yes, even the Defender) was running in the 93-94% accuracy range for all single-target attacks. This was my aggregate accuracy against +2 and +3 foes, including the lumped in cases where I faced foes with defense powers or toHit debuffs.