UberGuy

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This morning, I had PMs in my box saying the Accuracy of Dark Melee, Energy Melee and Claws seem to be wrong. I've gotten similar PMs about Ninja Blade as well.

We've tons of data here which all support that accuracy is working as intended and players still have a base 75% to hit even level critters.

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Castle, has the to-hit chance vs. yellow and higher-con minions changed?

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Yes, I would like to know this as well. It's against higher-con foes that I have "felt" a difference since I5.

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You're wasting your time. Reason, fairness, and other silly things like that are foreign concepts to developers. Remember, such foes are the equivalents their characters, and they're not going to gimp their characters vs. the Enemy (players).

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I trust you'll be happy to learn that I changed Ballista based on feedback in this thread.

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Changed how? Made him an AV, gave him 120% Resistance, gave him build up?

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Don't be silly. Castle is the stalker rep. If I were him, I would have given Ballista placate, and assassin's strike.

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Hah! That would be sooo evil... Don't get me wrong; I would swear up a storm that would strip the paint off the walls of my apartment if I experienced this in play. But it still make me LoL to read.

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You're wasting your time. Reason, fairness, and other silly things like that are foreign concepts to developers. Remember, such foes are the equivalents their characters, and they're not going to gimp their characters vs. the Enemy (players).

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I trust you'll be happy to learn that I changed Ballista based on feedback in this thread.

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He didn't say how Ballista was changed. For all we know, he now drops toggles twice as often. Or toggle dropping was removed but his damage increased 10X so he'll one-shot you even with toggles.

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Wow, and I thought I was cynical!

Well, a tentative "thanks" out to Castle anyway.

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Or does your -valueless- post indicate acceptance with everything aforementioned, excepting of course that most trivial sentence?

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Not really, i just didnt think it was worth commenting on because Castle has already stated that they are changing the coding in game so that any PvP attack that would kill a player in one hit will instead leave them with 1hp. With that in mind almost the entirety of your post was better off ignored.

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Correction here. The 1hp threshhold is only one of the ideas being considered. We've still not determined exactly how we are going to deal with 'One Shot Kills' (and the final decision will almost certainly apply to both PVE and PVP -- so no more AV insta-kills.)

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Eliminating AV insta kills (if that's even remotely possible) I wouldn't have a problem with.

But Minion instant kills? LT instant kills? Taking that away I do have a problem with. One-shot kills on opponents like these are completely within the capabilities of other ATs. Scrapper criticals. Blaster Aim/BU/Snipes. My EM Tanker can one-shot kill an even level LT with Energy Transfer and Build Up. In that light, given the set up it requires, there's no way it's fair for a Stalker AS to not be able to kill off "little" foes like these.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. One shot kills with something called assassination strike should be the norm, not the exception. Otherwise it's not an assasination strike.

Either keep the PvP solution separate or make there be some sort of threshold for it to kick in.

EDIT: You beat me to this post with an answer. Thanks!

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Ballista is a Toggle Dropping *******!

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Yeah, he is. He was designed to be as close to a Player Hero as we could make him. How do you guys like the Toggle Drop on him? Is it too nasty or does it add a nice challenge?

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Last night I was fighting a lot of longbow and was constantly having my toggles dropped. Is this intended? Ballista was bad enough with the toggle drops but if this is something that even normal mobs is going to get the game fun level is going to plummet for me.

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Normally this only happens when you are stunned. Longbow do fire stun grenades. If you were fighting a lot of them so that their stuns overlap, or you were playing a character without mez protection, they could have been stunning you.

So far the only bad guys that have gotten through integration on my Stalker are Ballista-1 (duh) and four Tsoo Green Ink Men, who decided to all whirling hands on me at once.

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No, but it does mean that 0.999999999 is equal to 1.

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To be picky, only point nine repeating is equal to one. 0.999999999 is equal to ... well ... 0.999999999.

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This was the first elite boss I actually thought deserved that title in CoV and I personally hope that doesn't change... too much.

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Here's the thing. First, I don't think most of us here have a problem with him being hard. We have a problem with him being much, much harder (for a melee class, at least) than any other Elite Boss in the game. If he had more HP he would easily be as challenging as any AV/Hero I've faced, and I've faced a lot of them. That's a problem exactly because it's completely unexpected. The NPC ranking system system should mean something, at least loosely. Some people will say all Elite Bosses are too easy and should all be more like Ballista-1. I won't argue that one way or other but I will claim that the fact that he is so different is a problem.

Secondly, he can be made hard in other ways. What if he had a unique PBAoE Enervating Field or Radiation Infection? What if he used Force Bubble? Or Integration? Or (God help me for mentioning this) Instant Healing? Terrorize? There are a lot of powers out there we don't see on NPC foes that would be damn scary based on their HP and damage output, and based on our resistances to them (or lack there of). Instead, Ballista-1 nullifies us. We have no defense against it and he stacks it with high damage and mez effects... in a timed mission. I claim something there is broken.

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yarr.

base value of Build Up is 80%

scrappers and blasters get a bonus of 25% on top of that. Everyone else gets the base value.

so.
Scrapper build up = 80 *1.25 = 100% buff
Blaster build up = 80 *1.25 = 100% buff

Everyone else 80% buff

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SF, JB is saying he tested a Scrapper and got 80% bonus. I was saying I tested and got 100%.

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Also if I manage to get back into hide before this power effect finishes will they still have me on their aggro list?

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Based on how the current Placate mechanics work I think you should assume they will start hating you again even if you hide. (At least if you are solo - on a team they may go after someone else when they lose focus on you). Placate effects do not seem to make mobs forget about you - instead it seems to mark you off-limits as a valid "hate" target for a period of time.

I know that's not how placate has been described, but that's what practical experience shows.

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Castle,

I just went and tested buildup, or focus chi in this case.

It is only a +80% damage increase, not 100%. Was this another one of the many missed I6 MA changes. BTW this was on my lvl 50 MA scrapper.

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JadeBug, I can't replicate this. I tested my MA Scrapper as well as my Broadsword and Katana Scrappers, and Focus Chi / Build Up was +100% damage on otherwise unenhanced powers. I used Brawl and Boxing in my tests.

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Holy Crap, what a bunch of whiners. "Oh Bluto, we're afriad to go after him, he might drop our toggles! He does things that people do in PvP!". What kind of Villains are you?

Seriously, it's not that bad. Yes, it makes you do things, differently, and think differently when going up against the big, bad B. But that's not a bad thing. It helps to keep things fresh. Way too many players simply using the same attack chain out of rote memory. Time to start THINKING like a Villain. PLOT!

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Oh come on. What strategy does this take? Please enlighten us. What strategy stops your toggles from dropping at range? What strategy keeps you from being mezzed through a Break Free? (Yeah, you read that right.). Ballista-1 is broken becasue he is radically more effective than any other Elite Boss for his level. No other Elite Boss requires the approach that he does. Go read my initial post in this thread about the meaning of a character's toggle powers in relation to his challenge rating at his level.

Ballista-1 can ba challenging without being like this. He is wildly out-of-range of other mobs of the same rating and he uses a mechanic that many of us despise in any context.

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Based on my experience with the game, I describe what happens like this. The placated mob remains "marked" as aggro'd, but the placate prevents this.

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Thats also how i preceive the system to work. but according to Castles statement, Placate works by flat out removing you from their hate list, not suppressing it for the duration of placate.

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My guess is that's just a matter of his choice of words. Hopefully he'll clear it up for us.

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Condition C is the normal case. You are within aggro range or have refreshed aggro on the mob by killing his buddy (as we all know this sometimes aggros "same group" mobs and sometimes doesn't). He comes looking for you.

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each of these examples happens with at least tripple normal agro range between myself and mob 2. mob 3s death 'should not' be refreshing the aggro over that kind of range.

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Qualitatively I can agree with you on how this should work, but I'm guessing that the "link" between mobs that says they get mad when you wax their buddies has nothing to do with range. Consider the effect of TP foe. I've seen the enemy mob a) do nothing when the PCs obliterated their stolen buddy, b) come running the moment the buddy was stolen, and c) come running only after their buddy was smashed, even over pretty extreme range.

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a) sometimes --> stalker approaches remiaining hidden then AS's killing the 2nd mob

b) sometimes --> when the hidden stalker gains LOS with 2nd mob, then mob agros and launches attacks that break hide

c) sometimes --> the placated mob is passified for a while, wanders around, then decides to run after the the out of LOS stalker and attack him.

I beleive a) is the correct AI and that b) and C) are bugs that need to be fixed, but who knows.

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Based on my experience with the game, I describe what happens like this. The placated mob remains "marked" as aggro'd, but the placate prevents this.

Depending on how far away you got while fighting the "3rd" mob, the placated mob sometimes forgets about you (due to a mix of your stealth and the distance between you). This creates condition A. I find this condition very rare and never count on it.

Condition C is the normal case. You are within aggro range or have refreshed aggro on the mob by killing his buddy (as we all know this sometimes aggros "same group" mobs and sometimes doesn't). He comes looking for you.

Condition B is an edge case. You partially lost aggro on the mob - it's like when you get just close enough for a mob to see you, but not so close it attacks right away. Typcially such mobs turn and look at you for a bit, and then attack. I explain this as you getting far enough away long enough to almost lose aggro. This case may be a bug. I don't think the other two are.

I never run from guys like this anyway except to play hide-and-seek and refresh my hide status and kick them to the moon, so that's probably why I don't mind these conditions much.

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that's not really what he meant.

a build up value of 100% is apparently a damage buff of 80%. scrappers and blasters get 125% of 80, or a 100% dmg buf.

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Uhhh. My god that's perverse. Why would we/they ever refer to it like this?

While it seems thematically strange to me that Stalkers would share the BU effectiveness of Tankers and Defenders (again refering to Power Build Up for them), I can't say it is causing any problems.

I do find it a little wierd that no one in CoV seems to share the damage scale (Brawl Index) of Blasters. (Note my possibly incorrect information that Stalkers are 0.9, Corrupters and Dominators are 0.75, and Brutes are somewhere in the 1.1 range, all relative to a Blaster being 1.0).

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Castle,

A little off topic. But when did the BI for Thunder Kick change? It did probably did need to decrease, but it is a major change to the MA set for both Stalkers and Scrappers.

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It did. See this post.

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Ballista is a Toggle Dropping *******!

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Yeah, he is. He was designed to be as close to a Player Hero as we could make him. How do you guys like the Toggle Drop on him? Is it too nasty or does it add a nice challenge?

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Actually, I never had to worry about him as a Mercenary Mastermind grouped with another. I know this may not be the correct forum, but Ballista didn't provide much of a challenge for me.

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Which only serves to show it's a suck mechanic. It devastates the ATs that rely on toggles to survive but is more or less 'meh' to the others.

And as others have pointed out, toggle dropping made far, far more sense in the I4 world when Tankers and others could have 75-90% DR ratings. Honestly I don't think it makes sense in PvP anymore and it has positively no place at all in PvE.

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You have previously mentioned that placate removes you completely from a mobs hate list. for how long? will you build hate back up by being too close before you run away?

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I have never had the mob re-acquire me as a target while the placate icon was in my effects list. That is, unless I attacked it.

Is there some bug here I have simply never enccountered?

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The hide 'attribute' from placate, is there any plans to do something to stop mobs using a quick attack after you start to placate and nullifying the effect. (stalker placates mob -> mob attacks stalker -> placate effect hits mob, mob is now passive, stalker is now hidden -> mobs attack hits stalker, stalker is now unhidden, mob is now agroed)

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Again, the placated mob has never done this to me. Other mobs which were aggrod on you remain that way, but being revealed will not aggro the placated mob unless you attack it. At least it never has for me.

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Is it intended that placates (+hide) is near worthless when facing 2-3+ targets ?

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While it is risky, I use placate in groups of 2 or 3 mobs all the time to great effect. A typical cycle would be: AS a mob, pause to allow surrounding mobs (possibly including the original target) to alpha (beta?) strike me, placate, attack target of choice (not always the placated mob) while hidden. By pausing after I am revealed I let all the mobs perform their usually synchronized intial repsonse and then Placate + follow up attack in the resulting pause in their attack chain.

Clearly this is extremely hard to do in an extended group melee, after mob actions have become more randomized. In such cases I only placate mobs to get them off me or if I am off separated from the main battle and feel sure I won't be attacked. It also won't work well if foes use DoT attacks, since those will prevent you from using interruptable attacks like AS.

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Are there any plans to do something to stop mobs using a quick attack after you start to AS and interupting the AS, or just outright killing you before the AS lands. (stalker is hidden, approaches mob -> stalker begins AS of mob -> stalker is now 'unhidden'

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Woah, stop there. For 31 levels this has never happened to me. I am revealed when AS is resolved, not when it starts. If this is happening to you it sounds like a bug...

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Can something be done about how often AS interupts because of momentum/server lag.

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How I would love to see this. It also affects all sniper shots and the powers of the medicine pool, as well as clicking on mission glowies.

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Is this for real? I have to go test this out. That's a pretty big change, and I knew nothing about it.

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Not to single you out, but the fact that you didn't know about this proves the fact that it's an insignificant change.

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Or it could be that I've barely touched my CoH characters since I6 came out. About all I played was my Dark/Dark Defender and My Ice/Devices Blaster, neither of whom this affected.

Edit: And the change was to Blasters and Scrappers, not Stalkers. BU for them was 100% before. I'm not complaining about some nerf to Stalkers, but am startled about a potential stealth buff to Scrappers and Blasters.

It makes me feel for Tankers and Defenders, for whom (Power) Build Up is +80%.

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Stalkers are at a 100% value, while Blasters and Scrappers are at a 125% value. From your perspective, that really doesn't change things, but I wanted to be clear on what is going on.

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Is this for real? I have to go test this out. That's a pretty big change, and I knew nothing about it.

Edit: It's a big change to Scrappers and Blasters. Their Build Up used to be +100% damage.

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Ballista is a Toggle Dropping *******!

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Yeah, he is. He was designed to be as close to a Player Hero as we could make him. How do you guys like the Toggle Drop on him? Is it too nasty or does it add a nice challenge?

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It puts him well out of range of difficulty for other Elite Bosses. It drops three toggles at once, at least. I know on my Stalker it dropped Fly, Integration and Hide in one shot.

Personally, I'd prefer he got his challenge some other way. I utterly loathe the mechanic of toggle dropping. Why, you ask? Because, for melee characters, those toggles being on is the reflection of my challenge rating at that level. A Scrapper or Stalker without the toggle powers they've picked up over the first, say, 28 levels, are much, much less threatening than when those toggles are on. That means a detoggled character like this is suddenly massively underpowered for the threat they are facing. All the other balancing factors that went into what makes up an Elite Boss at that level (his toHit, how much damage he deals, any mez effects on his attacks) go out the window until the character can "re-toggle". In other words, the EB gets to spend that time handing the character his [censored] because their relative power levels are temporarily whacked.

I dislike that immensely. I would vastly prefer foes like this used more Defender or Controller powers to buff/debuff. As frunstrating as being affected by those things can be they are at least something you can actively struggle against. Detoggling is not.

I was certain we must be seeing an accuracy bug, but now I wonder if maybe it's some fluke of the random number generator. I played for about 6 hours last night and logged 94% accuracy on a MA/Regen Stalker using two +2 accuracy DOs in relevant attacks (in other words I only looked at my stats for the attacks I'd slotted. This was against mixed +1 and +0 foes, and there were no buffs or debuffs in play (aside from the inherent bonus to accuracy MA has)

Notably I'd had this slotting before and felt like I was missing horribly. Sadly I couldn't log stats at that time to back it up.

;shrug

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Scrapper Mez protection abilities were reduced somewhat by intent. I was not involved in the change, so I don't know the specific reasons behind it, so I won't comment further at this time.

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Please have someone (if not you) come back to us on this.

We (Scrappers) already suffered significant survivability decrease in the form of reduced global "defense" (in the generic sense of things that keep us alive, not just SR-style +DEF). We also suffered a decrease in peak enhancibility of those defenses and the offenses that are used to counter attacking foes. And finally, where appropriate, we suffered reduction in the effects of AoEs.

All of the above things (which of course have affected all ATs varously) already represent a significant reduction in any Scrapper's ability to, say, stand in the midst of "many" foes or in the face of a single powerful foe such as a boss. Scrappers, like all melee ATs, face the danger of the game's most damaging attacks - melee is, as a rule, vastly more damaging than ranged attacks.

So can someone please explain why, on top of all of this, it is deemed neccessary to expose us to increased risk such that things that are already now vastly more dangerous than before should now have an increased chance for an almost certain kill against us? (If it's not clear I'm talking about jumping in the middle of 3-5 minions who have stunning melee attacks, or - and this is very common - facing a boss that whips off multiple holds/sleeps/stuns.) I don't wish reduced mez resistance on any AT and feel incredibly strongly that of them all, the melee ATs need it the most because melee deals out the most mezzes.

In complete bluntness (directed to the powers that be, not you, Castle), mezzing is an absolutely crap balance tool. There is nothing that is not a bug, and I mean nothing, in this game less entertaining and more frustrating than being mezzed.

Being mezzed means you don't play the game. You watch all your toggles go away and get to watch as you die. So why this change? I really, really want to know.

If this is a PvP change then fine. Please keep in in PvP only.

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Well my question since this was finally cleared up, who will tank the psi avs now? Dark armor cant cap psi now without help. So who will we get to take that alpha for the team? Other than the stoney pet I dont see how anyone can survive that now?

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The Defenders. For example, it's possible that a DDD who's opening move is Darkest Night while shrouded in Shadowfall can survive the opening attack of foes like Psi CWK and Babbage. (Note that I've never met another psi foe who scared my tanker with raw damage on just the opening blow). Also inspirations here would be good - chowing on 4 oranges here would do a lot to absorb the alpha. I'm not one to fall back on inspirations as a way to do missions, but AVs and monsters are clearly cases where at least that degree of preparation is reasonable.

Once the defender(s) have foes like CWK and Babbage under debuffs they usually don't bother the Tankers much, especially if you can include healing in the equation.

_Castle_, I don't even have a Stalker and I think you rock. If the other devs would discourse with the players on issues like this (with the feeling of transparancy that you provide) they would suffer a lot less flaming by at least the more level-headed folks on the forums.

Keep up the good work.

EM/Dark. I know both work sets well independantly. I'm finding the teens a bit slow, but I'm pushing through for what the build will be like in the late 20s and early 30s, where I think it will really bloom. Other sets are good early, but I think this will work out nicely in the end.