MTeague
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Posts posted by MTeague
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9 minutes ago, FrauleinMental said:
I have to use my primary for damage. My secondary doesn't do damage.
There's power pools too. Boxing/Kick/Crosspunch, all three taken together, can be quite nice on a controller, when you have Containment going.
Arcane Bolt is also a fairly solid option.
Would those make flavor-sense for your character? Maybe, maybe not.
There is also the damage Proc option. Holds that do damage (like Dominate) can take a LOT of procs. Now, I'd be leery to add too many, because I wouldn't want to savage my hold duration too badly in the name of slotting damage procs. But they're an option to sprinkle into various powers. A non-damaging secondary like Poison can benefit quite a bit from procs. Others like Empathy or FF, not so much.
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I suspect "Why the game is so loud" may often come down to individual hardware that people have on the machines.
Generally I'm running at 25% volume, and it's not bad.
Whatever the cause though, there are cleary issues for a number of players.
I think more controls being provided for players to tweak how sounds work / don't work on their own personal devices, is all to the good.
No one should have "a god-given-right-to-commit-ear-rape" on other players.
But I also don't want sounds that a player truly enjoys to be yanked away from him.
Options. That's all we need. You hear what you want, I'll hear what I want. We can both think the other guy is a nut (And hey, we might both be right). But we don't need a back-and-forth about who's a jerk and who is being unreasonable because of what they like. We just need to identify the kinds of control options we'd need to let players do it their way.
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40 minutes ago, Wavicle said:
I think that advice is wrong. I find both holds and the cone slow handy. The heal, antimez, and rez are the more situational, but fine at what they do.
Antidote can be interesting purely for slotting purposes. It comes with +RES (Toxic), and because of that, takes Resistance IO sets.
You can use it to slot your +3% defense uniques, if for other reasons you chose not to take Tough.
And hey, I've never hated it when a teammate breaks me out of mez. I'm sometimes shocked to my toenails 😄, but it's nice when it happens.
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Solo, I don't think I'd change anything. The flat 30% boost is quite nice. Not required to get the job done, but nice.
Teaming.... Vigilance to me says your're watchful over your teammates, ready to act.
- If Global Recharge wasn't as stupidly OP as it already is with IO's, I'd consider that.
- If the buffs weren't already so strong, I'd consider something like having the defender BE a low-grade Leadership toggle. Maybe +1.5% defense all, +3% res all to all teammates within range. Small yea, but mass defenders together and it could grow large. Except, a cluster of defenders are already crazy good.
- I guess I'd probably go with some +Perception Range. Something that's nice, make stealthed enemies a bit less annoying, and still mindful of the theme of being watchful.
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In terms of lore, I'd like to see them finish reconstructing Boomtown, or at LEAST have Boomtown advance to something like present-day Faultline.
Original Faultline was just a complete wasteland of destruction.
Now, the northern end has been rebuilt, and there's donut shops, apartment complexes, parking garages, offices, etc.
The middle area is still being rebuilt. Some areas more than others, but signs of progress.
I'd really like to see Boomtown get more of that. I mean, sure the devatation was pretty bad, but they've had Decades now.
That said, I get that a Boomtown revamp is quite a project.
By contrast Galaxy City, is already *there* in the Echo zone. It could, in theory, be plopped back into regular existence at any time. Some minor work to re-establish the connecting highways / open the War Doors, etc. It would probably be vastly simpler to put Galaxy City back in, and maybe transplant a few contacts / trainers here and there. And there's a great deal more nostalgia for it, I would guess, among most players vs Boomtown. So from a practicality / reward for effort, maybe Galaxy City wins.
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4 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:
I was thinking again about Vigilance, and didn't want to post a new suggestion about it when this one is only a few months old...
But, what if we got Vigilance wrong from the start. What if Vigilance caused defenders to have a chance to roll a critical heal, buff, or debuff similar to how a scrapper gets critical damage? Defenders are so vigilant to their cause that whether through sheer will, luck, desperation, or divine/diabolical intervention occasionally their buffs, debuffs, heals, etc. will proc an extra 20% modifier to boost that effect being used.
The scaling bonus damage based on team size can stay, but this would give defenders a little extra flourish to help them cement their place as the best buffer/debuffer in the game.
Is 20% too much, too little, just right, or am I being completely outlandish with this idea?
I respectfully dislike / disagree with this plan, too
My rationale:
- Defenders are already factually the best buffers/debuffers in the game. Flourish is not required to make this so.
- Their buffs/debuffs are already Crazy Strong. Letting them proc a 20% even stronger buff / debuff would make them even more overpowering vs Corruptors.
- You'd also have to figure out when that extra 20% buff/debuff/heal kicks in for things like Toggles. Dispersion Bubble? Snow Storm? Radiation Infection?
- I have trouble getting past your use of the phrase "scaling bonus damage based on team size". Defender damage levels in teams, is in fact, intentional. Vigilance as it eixsts now, gave them a flat 30% damage boost to help them solo. Damage is not nerfed when you join a team. It is boosted when you solo. I never saw any opinions from the Devs saying that defenders needed the ability to contribute more damage while teamed. Nor do I personally feel this is true. (And yes, I have several defenders).
- Is Vigilance the most amazing Inherent? No. Not by long shots. I rarely even notice when endurance discounts happen. Honestly the "meh" factor is right up there with Opportunity. But part of that is I don't think the devs felt that Defenders particularly needed anything more.
All of that said, you have every right to argue for your desired changes, and who knows? Maybe the HC devs will agree with you and not the naysayers.
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I actually prefer clicky status protection, because it can STACK. Toggle on a status protection and that's your status protection, for the duration the toggle is on. Click protection and if it comes back fast enough you can have double the status protection for a significant period of time. Can be very nice against a massed group of mobs that like to use Holds / Sleeps / etc.
Is there a slight DPS loss because of Practiced Brawler firing? Yea, maybe. Have I ever noticed or cared? Nope.
But, your mileage may vary.
To the original idea. Debuffing them to only your primary method of attack... makes Sentinels less team-friendly. Right now everyone who shoots it benefits from the -RES a Sent applies. Now if you want to do a large debuff to a damage type ON TOP OF what teams already benefit from, sure. Still. I do like the idea of not having it married to the T1 or T2 power, I do like the idea of triggering it when is tactically best for me.
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When City of Villains first launched, I tried a Ninja/Poison mastermind.
This experiment ended.... badly. The character got deleted around lvl 15. It was just too painful. This was before IO's even existed (pretty sure, anyway, if not it was before I could afford to think about them much), and at that time, Poison was truly single-target only. Lowbie ninjas had no noteworthy defense and no good way to buff it, and groups kept expecting my pets to tank purple mobs (spoiler: they couldn't) while all the corruptors who focused on their primary and had no support skills to speak of tried to act like blasters.
At that point, I was willing to say Poison needed help.
Today, with IO's, with the splash-area on poison effects, and with the ability to STACK the primary target / splash target effects, I'm quite content with Poison as-is. My Earth/Poison controller does quite well for herself. Is it a roving-murderball-friendly set? Yes and no. It won't help tons on trash fights. But when you're up to the AV, you kittenize it completely. Can other players TELL that? Not necessarily. Do I care? No. It's enough that I know I kittenized it and that's why it died so fast and whiffed vs everyone it attacked.
Also, Rad Emission your debuffs are tied to the anchor mob.... and if things move away, you have to decide whether to de-anchor/re-anchor. For Poison, they were debuffed at the moment of the impact / splash, and they STAY debuffed for it's duration, no matter who moves where. I think that makes up the difference plenty well.
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Just now, Marshal_General said:
I've had sone venomous gas I have tried to stealth.
what, look over at the golden retriever, and say "Bad Dog!" 😄
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I vehemently dislike Combo systems, and have NEVER created a Dual Blades character for that reason.
In particular, my objections are:
- sets become balanced around assumed use of the Combos
- That would mean I would have to take every power involved in a Combo to be most effective. Maybe I don't LIKE every power, or completely loathe the animations on a few of them. "Just don't take the powers" is fine, so long as balance of the set doesn't assume use of the combos. But we both know it will.
- I prefer making my own combos by experimenting for myself what powers can synergize with what, not having the game invent an arbitrary synergy because I mashed button X and then Y and then Z.
I would not want a combo system proliferated willy nilly across powersets.
Granted, I do not have veto power here. It may happen regardless.
But I would loathe it greatly.
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20 minutes ago, Rudra said:
....
I'm not against booting Longbow out of the Isles, but since Longbow is supposed to be the active deterrent force of Freedom Corps and the Rogue Isles are still technically US territory or unclaimed territory adjacent to the US in the eyes of the world nations in the game from my understanding, it kind of makes sense for them to engage in expeditionary actions against Arachnos. (Now, the missions in the Isles where the PPD invade? That makes no damn sense.) How they managed to take Mercy for you to have to give back to Arachnos or maintain such an open presence in Nerva though, I have no idea beyond plot armored mobs for the PCs to fight.
Rogue Isles are not US Territory. The HCWiki has quite a bit of material from original City of Villains sources.
https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Rogue_Isles
Points of note: (bolding is mine)
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The main cluster of the group, home to Spider City, is at the 50 mile marker, outside US. jurisdiction. From there the smaller islands string toward the US coast.
- MTeague note: Nerva is at the far northwest of the Rogue Isles and clearly outside any such official jurisdiction
- When Statesman appeared in Paragon City, many of the villains there decided they needed a new home. The Rogue Isles was an obvious choice. Many already had connections there and the little nation’s “friendly” attitude made it a perfect choice. President Oakes was no fool. He knew that if he resisted these newcomers with their gangs and occasional superpowers things would not turn out well. But at the same time, he had bargaining chips – citizenship, diplomatic immunity, and other protections from American justice. And he had friends in the high places of America who were happy with the Rogue Isles just as they were. Deals were struck – in exchange for “playing nice” and taxes, the government turned a blind eye – and the Rogue Isles became a haven for the super-powered and evil.
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The main cluster of the group, home to Spider City, is at the 50 mile marker, outside US. jurisdiction. From there the smaller islands string toward the US coast.
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I do agree with some of the thread's general frustration that many of Mind Control's powers are less useful to mass roaming murderblast teams.
But honestly? ALL CONTROLLER POWERS are near-useless for mass roaming murderblast teams.
If everything dies in 5 seconds or less, your immob's don't make you great for team play, either. Nor does your pet.
Your proc-bomb stuns, maybe.
There's a lot of things I would change about the game. and most would be hated.
I do kind of question what the point even is for purple triangles anymore. All they seem to do now is make AV's even more annoying when soloing a controller, while not presenting any problems for blast-heavy teams anyway.
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On 12/13/2021 at 7:47 PM, Mezmera said:
Mind Control has no pet. Mind Control needs no pet.
This needs to be said more often, in Boromir voice.
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Ignite can still be decently useful on an AR / Martial blaster. Bosses can get shoved into a corner with Ki Push, and Ignited. A couple kicks to knock them down some, maybe a 2nd Ki Push. Admittedly, there's often better / safer ways to handle a boss for a blaster. But something about shoving them into a corner, setting them on fire, and keeping them there.
I do of course, have the Winter chance for immob proc in it, though.
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I'm all for pushing Arachnos out of Galaxy City and Faultline and anywhere else, SO LONG AS, we also round up Longbow and kick their white-and-red suited butts out of Mercy and Nerva. At LEAST move them to a base at the fringe of each zone, so anyone who wants to go hunting can still do so. But it's long past time they got squashed like a BUG from having giant bases setup without being smacked silly.
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Personally,, never. If someone has things I consider sub-optimal, I assume it's for theme / character concept and it's entirely not my place to tell them that they're doing it wrong. (even if, maybe they are).
That said, if they give me an opening ("Why am I so squishy!?", "Why am I running out of END so fast?", etc), I may chime in on a few suggestions. I try not to overdue it though. I can be overly verbose on a good day, and no one wants to read six paragraphs of tells to a random perhaps-rhetorical question.
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Never had a problem with Psi Blast. I mean, I try to pick up one or two non-Psi damaging powers along the way, whether Air Superioity or Boxing / Crosspunch, or whatever, for sake of dealing with Robots. Because though most things have low Psi resistance, the ones that do, have a LOT of Psi Resistance. But the set has always had good range, a snipe, mix of single target and AE options, an Immob, even back when it was Defender-Only.
The recharge debuffs are meaningless on trash that dies fast enough, but can stack nicely on some targets.
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I think this is something that might be a good idea as the unique power for a new MM set.
Same way Necromancy gets Soul Extraction, or how Thugs gets Gang War.
A new MM set could get something like this.
An across the board option for existing sets.... doesn't make sense to me.
Thugs are .... well... thugs. Most of them can't exactly join forces into Captain Planet.
Maybe most people don't care about whether it breaks theme or not. Or maybe more people are willing to simply handwave it in, and make it work for their headcanon, or simply don't care because Rule Of Cool.
But I think it'd be cleaner to make it the new special of a new MM set.
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2 hours ago, TraumaTrain said:
What does it mean to "balance the game around IOs?"
And how would it be implemented?
That was what I tried to ask.
There is what they have done for the Challenge Modes.
However, I am not 100% certain I really see that as the answer to "what does it really mean to balance around IO's"?
Now, as a practical matter, Challenge Modes may be the only thing that's likely to be implemented in foreseeable years.
But philosophically, people are going to have different opinions of how, in an ideal world, you'd balance it out, whether it should involve tweaking some numbers or adding entirely new mechanics.
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3 minutes ago, srmalloy said:
I'm not talking about the hostages you rescue in missions and have to lead out, although a position check frequency increase would probably benefit them, too. I'm talking about the civvies you rescue outside in the zones -- for example, in PI near Portal Corp southwest of the water tank, if you're in the air when you rescue a scientist there, he'll turn and run up the hill to the northwest, and run most of the way up to the top even if you land immediately.
Ah. Those civilians. I admit, they barely exist to me.
I blame the respawn rate. You can only save the same people from purse-snatchings about 320,948 times before you stop caring.
Same with the ones being menaced by CoT on King's Row rooftops.
Or the PI scientists being threatened by possessed ones.
Or the people being harried by Lost. Or Tsoo. Or Devouring Earth. Or Family. Or.... you get the idea.
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7 minutes ago, Rudra said:
Have them not run over to other mobs... "Save me, hero!" "You saved me! Thank you!" *runs over to mobs at far end of room player has not reached yet* "Save me, hero!" Save yourself! You're obviously working with the <insert enemy faction name>!
So, every escort mission in every game, ever?
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There is enough existing content that is simple enough to do with only SO's, that I don't think it would be Beyond the Pale for the devs to experiment with a few story arcs that assumed you are kitted out with IO's and Incarnates, if they so choose.
However, keep in mind, some people say "kitted out character" to mean "Blaster with softcapped defenses and massive +Recharge"
Also, what does "designed for that character" mean?
- Does it mean,"the mobs have so much +To-Hit that you're not even close to capped defenses anymore and are dying left and right"? I suspect this would not be popular content. People avoid Rularuu for a reason, and it's not just because the shadow shard is big.
- Does it mean "the mobs have CC effects that entirely ignore Clarion and Mez you ANYWAY?", like a kind of "Reverse Purple Triangles", where for X seconds your mez control is worth something and for Y seconds it might as well not be there? Again, I suspect this would not be popular content.
- Does it mean the mobs are just big giant bullet sponges that take more hits? Um.... boring? Surely we can do better than just that for challenge?
- Does it mean so much incoming damage such that anyone trying to solo it, even your best kitted out Tank, is GOING TO DIE, unless they are accompanied by squads of support and controllers?
What kind of enemies would you WANT to see in these situations?
What would be fair and challenging?
What would be just annoying / unfair / fliptables territory?
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I still want the ability to grab them in a fireman's carry.
Particularly for redside kidnappings! I mean, come on! Even if I'm forced to put them down before I can use any combat powers.
However, I suspect the coding work for that would be .... "non-trivial".
So yea, having them not get stuck on doorways, or running laps around the room to find you, would be nice.
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My picks.
Option #1: Willpower / Staff FIghting Tanker:
- You'll get a good AoE cone attack at level FOUR, far before most tanks have any AE. And that attack, Guarded Spin, is a Parry-like attack, giving you +Melee/Lethal defense.
- Quick Recovery for less End issues.
- Staff Mastery / Form of the Soul gives you Endurance Discounts, too.
- Plus, Spinny fighting is FUN.
- I'm somewhat hedging on Willpower though, because I don't know how well it's mix of mitgation methods gel how fast with only SO's. I've only ever used it tricked out with attuned IO's.
Option #2: Fire Blast / Super Reflexes Sentinel:
- Skip your T1 blast, take your T2 blast. With only SO's, you're going to want every use of Opportunity to be a Defensive Opportunity for the endurance recovery. The heals don't suck either, but really the endurance recovery is what I'm going for here.
- You can hoverblast with mez protection. That alone can allow you to pull off some tricks melee can't always do.
- SR will take awhile to mature. It does need some slots devoted to it before your defenses will mature. But hey, it'll still beat the hell out of the days when you had to slot Training Enhancements and Dual-Origin Enhancements, and your defense simply wasn't good enough for the entire first half of the game.
- Most importantly, by covering Melee / Ranged / AoE positionals, you won't have to care much about Damage Types. Most tank sets have a big hole to at least Psi, and without IO's to patch that, that can become.... painful, in places like First Ward (Awakened, anyone?). There are a FEW damaging attacks that have no assigned position, but *very* few.
- The Sentinel version of SR gets an absorbtion shield to go with it, allowing for some soaking of hits you don't dodge.
- The Sentinel version of SR also gets some +Recovery in Enduring that melee version of SR does not yet. This plus Defensive Opportunities, I'm hoping would cure the End woes most other SO builds might face.
That said, even for both above, I would avoid Defend the Midnight Mansion unless you have your heart set on soloing absolutely every mission.
If you must do it solo with only SO's, at least go to Bloody Bay first. Earn yourself a Shivan Shard from the meteor collection. You'll need it.
Support characters in CoX Homecoming?
in General Discussion
Posted
It depends what you mean by "are they impactful?".
For the vast majority of content, Nobody is necessary to a team. Not the controller, not the defender, not the tank, not even the blaster.
And nobody should be necessary to a team.
Now, are many players focused on kill speed? Yes. Do some contribute more directly to that in more observable ways? Yes.
There are entire sections of content (lvl 45+ Radio Missions, a few task forces) where I generally don't join on my controller, because i don't want to feel like a 5th wheel, or be like "woo, I helped!!" by casting a few immobilizes right before everything got nuked. But there's also quite a bit of content where it can be verrrry handy to have a controller on the team. Particularly in the Wards and any other Going-Rogue-And-Later content.