Cheli

Most of the name standardizing makes sense but "Weapon Mastery" sticks out like a sore thumb. The other weapon/munition etc. themed pools are NOT at all close in flavor or execution to Ninja Tool Mastery. Would suggest revising. I also feel like Soul Drain, as usual, is being specifically targeted because it's a good and frequent choice for corruptors/defenders, and the dev team seems dead-set on killing builds that rely on actual good power choices, but it is what it is. It's way more useful imo to look at whether or not we really still need to balance pool powers around extremely long CDs or area/duration penalties. I am a lifelong, hardcore RPer. As such I am very, very tired of people drawing this false dichotomy. You are not better at *making characters* because you choose to play suboptimally. Especially not in this game, where everything is visually customizable and an entire UI feature exists for you to explain how you roleplay your power selections. Especially not with epic/ancilliary or even regular pool powers, which are intended to be fairly generic to fit any and all varieties and combinations of primary powersets for gameplay purposes. Many, many of my builds take powers for theme purposes that aren't great. I do not think that makes me or my *characters* better, and I don't think "it exists for theme" is a reasonable justification for keeping powers weak.

I had a similar idea to make sleep powers more attractive, maybe tying the sleep status itself in with a strong but brief -dmg in a similar way to fear powers often imposing -tohit even if the fear isn't effective. We all know it's inevitable anytime anyone brings up that the vast majority of sleep powers are skipped by the overwhelming majority of players that 'well there's [very minor use-case]!' will be used as justification for sleep continuing to function the way it does so adding some kind of partner-effect to it would really help. I like your idea for Tear Gas Cannister. And in general I don't mind the devs' idea for a set that relies on a lot of ground patches, and I'm not even fully opposed to a set that leans in to sleep... but yeah, it has to have some other component to go with it. I think the -dmg is a good one.

So the reason folks were given for why the devs can't just copy-paste an AOE immo from another set with a different animation over to Arsenal Control is that the set is just too far along development to make that change, but not far enough along that they can program in a conditional immobilize effect that then requires them to go through and flag who knows how many dozens of powers as triggering a 'wet' condition? Or was this already in the code not being used or something? None of this makes very much sense. I understand not wanting to play to the meta, or add a set that's just copy-paste of the other control sets with a few minor tweaks. I LIKE sets that are a bit weird and different, and I like the idea of power combos (preferably ones you can trigger yourself) but the "immo -> containment" loop for controllers isn't going to go away because you just stubbornly refuse to add any more aoe immo powers. If you're dead-set on killing the reliance on aoe immos, either add something significant to sets without one to compensate for the lack of consistency on containment or change containment.

I'd love to see your thugs/traps build if you're willing to share it; I've been trying to branch out a bit and MMs seem like a lot of fun, and I have a character I've been wanting to get back into playing that thugs/traps fits perfect thematically. Generally, though, I feel like any MM can fit in well with a team considering their support secondaries and the pets providing an incentive to take team-boosting powers like the leadership pool. The teensy bit I've played with necro/therm and necro/dark I've certainly always felt like I was contributing when teamed.

The set lags on account of long animation time, lack of an aim power, and lack of a 'real' nuke. Swap ammo is a neat idea but most of the time as a blaster you'll just use incendiary, and even with the extra fire damage it doesn't really compare to an aim'd and built up t9 from a more traditionally-balanced set. Even so, while the long animations make the powers generally weaker, I love them and their cool factor and punchy sounds. I also like that the set's AOEs feel easier and more consistent, and it's a nice change from just running in and nuking with your cooldowns up. I also tend to enjoy grittier and more realistically-grounded character concepts from an RP perspective, and a pistols set really fits with that. The most fun I've had with the set is taking a strong secondary and going blapper style, using the pistol AOEs and the secondary melee attacks (and executioner's shot, since it hits hard and fast enough to fit well into a single-target attack chain). DP/martial is fun.

This was the extent of your "constructive" criticism. It does nothing to actually address anything OP suggested about the specific mechanical weakness and inconsistency of the inherent, his specific idea, or offer any alternative idea other than the "go play another AT" thought-terminating cliche. The point you offer doesn't even make sense; if the AT was only about "control" the inherent wouldn't have the containment x2 damage bonus anyway, and there wouldn't be some sets that can do nearly as much damage as a "damage-focused" AT by taking advantage of it. Nothing about altering the damage scalars takes away that many powers are mezzes, or that the inherent also provides a bonus to mez magnitude. The suggestion seems motivated not by "play a blaster NNNRRGGG" but by a desire to bridge the gap between powersets created by the inherent and alleviate some of the problems developers might face in implementing new powersets because of the inconsistency immo powers introduce to how useful or useless containment is. More than anything I'm floored by the tone of this forum, and the constant barrage of fairly weakly-argued posts and very, very combative attitudse evinced by the same handful of people everytime anyone makes a suggestion the game is not mechanically perfect the way it is right now. It makes me curious if this forum actually exists for suggestions, or for the toxic, visceral satisfaction a few people get out of very loudly shouting down other peoples' ideas. If feeling uncomfortable about that cycle makes me a "junior forum moderator", I'm not really feeling too guilty about it. Thank you for making an actual point. Tbh, I feel like the original devs had an idea for kheldians/VEATs about powersets and then when it came to an inherent that would provide a bonus to characters that could be played in as many different ways as the powersets they designed, just kinda blanked and threw in whatever they could come up with. I think the weakness of those inherents is also something that could be addressed (though VEATs at least do get something out of their inherent) for consistency reasons, but kheldians are such a mixed-bag of disaster design-wise that's a whole other bag of marbles. I don't think powersets should necessarily benefit across-the-board equally from their AT's inherent - but I think the inconsistency with which containment applies is a bit of an outlier. I also think the inherent could actually be focused more on enhancing "control" if the x2 containment thing was changed and another 'half' of the inherent was added, one that maybe synergized more with their support-focused secondary sets. (I don't have a ton of ideas; like I said, I think changing containment is low-priority, but this is the suggestions forum after all, so if people want to propose ideas it's way more interesting to discuss potential changes than to shriek like banshees about them.)

Disagreeing in a constructive manner, with an argument other than "that's not how it is right now, grrrr how could you even" is probably what they were aiming for. Like I said, I don't necessarily agree with the solution proposed, I think it could be something more interesting and in-line with an AT focused on CC, but an AT where powersets cannot consistently take advantage of an inherent *is* a potential design issue that creates degenerative play/power design. And there's nothing wrong with mentioning that or proposing a change. Again, there's no scrapper primary that can't crit, or crits for less than other sets. There's no corruptor primary with a lower scourge curve.

Whooole lot of people being honestly kind of rude and combative to a simple suggestion in here. Controllers don't need blaster-level damage scalars to compensate for the loss, they could just have slightly-more-consistent damage overall. Control sets being weaker, stronger, or design being hamstrung by the presence/absence or magnitude of the set's immo powers, since immo is one of the only consistent ways to set up containment damage, is definitely a design problem that could use addressing. Every other AT has an inherent that enhances core functionality regardless of powerset choice. Having some powersets that flat-out can't set up containment is like a scrapper having a powerset that can't crit. I don't necessarily agree that changing it is a burning concern or that the AT is underpowered for it, but "that's not the way the GAME IS, go play a blaster grr rahh" is a pretty immature way to respond.

I am a diehard RPer which means I'm self-aware enough to recognize that the RP-related reasons a lot of people in this thread cite - the nature of the story, or the writing, etc - have basically nothing to do with why more people play blueside. The overwhelming majority of people play blueside because... it's where the majority of people play. That isn't really a helpful answer but at this point in the game's life it's the one with the most explanatory value. You can cite various reasons for why blueside hit this 'critical mass' at some point in time - people want to play 'good guys', the game launched as COH and most people who played it started blueside and feel more at home/nostalgic playing blueside - but the reality is that by now the reason is purely utilitarian. People want to be able to play with other people. Even people who don't necessarily want to play with other people -have- to, and there aren't dozens of groups for weekly TFs or itrials or whatnot forming redside with regularity. I prefer redside for a WIDE variety of reasons - I always find the faction of monster-people, moral ambiguity, darker-and-grittier more attractive aesthetically - but my roster is overwhelmingly bluesided simply because they have to be for me to get anything done. It's not all that different from asking 'why do megaservers form' in other games with fairly small player populations: because those servers sustained a stable population to play with for long enough that people from other dying servers want to be there to do stuff. If you're looking for something beyond that, my feeling has always been that the majority of people who play the game do view it as city of 'heroes'. That's the version of the game that released originally that most people were familiar with, or that attracted them to the community in the first place. I get the sense from most people I talk to that playing redside is an occasionally-fun detour or tourist-trap you take every once in a while, but not something they invest in seriously or full-time.

TW wasn't nerfed based on evaluation of intangibles about support or usefulness while leveling, it was nerfed because its damage output in high-level builds far outclassed other sets. I'm just applying that criteria to other sets, and by that metric, fire blast, fire manip, claws, DB, etc. significantly outclass "pay-to-win" sets.

You'd have a point if the majority of paid sets were "pay to win". Many of them were decidedly not. Fire significantly outclasses water, dual pistols, beam; with a good build claws or high-rech dual blades beats purchasable melee sets outside TW pre-nerf. Support is a different story because I think the variety in what support sets can do differentiates them more than can be expressed by simply tiering them, but kin and sonic are some of the stronger sets imo, easily comparable in their own ways to time which everyone thinks is busted. (Was time purchasable? I think it was? Memory foggy, lol.) There's always this assumption of nefariousness in these situations, particularly TW, where I think it's far simpler to assume otherwise; TW was only the huge dps outlier on builds that essentially allowed you to ignore its wind-up mechanic, which required serious investment and system mastery, something even developers of games often do not have. If you want to argue there's some objectivity to nerfing ROP I'm all for it, but I haven't seen any of that in several threads worth of discussion beyond "the devs just think it's too strong", which by definition is subjective. Which, like you said, it's their server. But by its use rate it was not meta-defining by any stretch, at least, particularly considering it exists inside of a system where a large number of players have simple ways to completely ignore the effects ROP grants temporary resistance to. This is a "warriors flying breaks the rules of reality! Meanwhile, wizards conjure giant fireballs and rain cats over the plains" situation.

Yes, this is the obvious answer, but I'd prefer if people just said this instead of pretending "what devs say" is always equivalent to "overpowered". The nerf to TW is already a large deviation from the state of the game at shutdown, so anything beyond that is just subjectivity people are pretending is some objective standard of "balanced".

"In line with design visions" =/= "overpowered" Also "power-creep-heavy" using what as a baseline? The game at shutdown, or some imagined point where you think the "power creep" started? If you're talking about the framework of the game at shutdown, then why was TW nerfed? If some earlier point in time, who gets to arbitrarily decide what that point is, and why?

There's no amount of repeating the same line that's going to convince me a power ONLY becomes "broken" when used by a buffer on themselves and not on the other 7 members of a team. Silly argument.

You haven't provided any support for this statement, and others who have done so have more or less not made a very strong argument. A defender being able to cast Fortitude on herself because she's playing alone to still be worse at everything than a damage dealer does not a broken game make. A lot of this just feels like the "it's not how the game is supposed to because it's different from [time when I thought the game was the best]," which is a weak argument. Regardless, I still disagree with ROP change, and with the implication in the rework that damage-dealing pool powers necessarily need to be weaker. All this really means is that taking one will always be a) an aesthetic choice with an acknowledgment it's not a good power and you probably won't use it much or b) a prerequisite pick for later powers in the pool with an acknowledgment it's not a good power and you probably won't use it much. I take the fighting pool on most of my characters for Tough/Weave and aside from it occasionally being a useful defensive set mule, I've never used boxing/kick even on my character who's a literal kickboxer and it makes me sad. Considering pools generally only have at most 2 attack powers, if they have any, and you can only pick 4 of them, I dunno why it seems like the only use devs think you should ever get out of a pool power is as a power tax for later powers, or as something to fill an attack chain while leveling. I know these assumptions are more or less entrenched in the game design for better or worse, but I think if we have a discussion about the prevalence and nature of mez in the game, it's worth taking a look at some of the other built-in assumptions, too.

Speed Boost has a 2s cooldown and 120s duration, meaning it's pitifully easy to maintain 100% uptime on an entire team. 7 people other than the kin having it isn't overpowered, but the kin having it is? Kin corruptors can already fulcrum shift+soul drain too, putting them well over +dmg% cap, something that isn't gonna change unless you now want to start targeting good synergy between power choices. Is that something we should be looking at?

How is a defender or corruptor using these on themselves any more "overpowered" than using them on the team's scrapper or blaster? Is it going to break the game if a controller or defender can use Fortitude on themselves in order to still do less damage than everyone else while playing alone? Why does it seem everyone is religious dedicated to ghettoizing these ATs? I just don't get it.

The change to RoP is still silly, but if it's going to happen regardless, this is better I guess. Gives you better things to use your slots on. I'm still not happy about having to respec all the characters I took it on, though... This along with the reasoning given and the TW changes has me really fearful that the dev team has an axe to grind with high recharge and it has me a little uncomfortable about the future of builds and mechanics in general that benefit greatly from high-recharge builds or strategies. I'd rather not see hasten or permadom, perma-lightform or high-end regeneration builds get tossed to the breeze in future patches.

I'm also incredibly mystified by the logic that squishies "just aren't supposed to have mez protection". Why? Because their primary/secondary powersets don't have +status protection toggles? Do we need to remove +KB protection IOs because they give sets like Fiery Aura that have no native KB protection the ability to protect against knockback, because "those sets just aren't supposed to have knockback protection"? Should we be restricting incarnates or inspirations that provide the same or are those exceptions, and by what logic are they exceptions? Feels like a very silly train of thought overall.

Changing a power to the point that it breaks the builds of the vast majority of players who take the power (which is, according to stats, not that many), is not what I would call a conservative approach.

Completely mystified how pages and threads of comments on ROP led the team to decide the solution was to make it worse than a high-tier breakfree. It seems sorta like spite honestly.

A little surprised at the results, this might be the only online game I've ever played in the history of forever barring maybe the first 3 months of SWTOR where I'm wealthier than the majority of the playerbase xP

I'm a lifelong hardcore RPer and outside of primary and secondary sets, I rarely make build decisions based on RP reasons. And as I mentioned in one of the other threads on this, when I do make very specific build decisions for RP reasons, it's usually with the grudging acknowledgment that I'm purposefully making my character perform suboptimally for the theme. I'd much rather feel like I have more room for builds to breathe for RP reasons, tbh, but the solution to that problem isn't "nerf ROP/hasten/tough/weave to make all choices equally unappealing" imo.

Ultimately the sum total of this context/explanation is "we think it's too strong", which is essentially just the opinion of a very small and specific group of people (devs). It's also a direction that makes me shudder to think of what else they personally think is overpowered and are planning on changing. Is hasten on the chopping block? I personally have a very strong aversion to changing the effectiveness or functionality of a power so drastically in a patch that I feel compelled to completely respec a character I picked it on because now it doesn't do anything for their build. That's the kinda crap you have to do in World of Warcraft; it shouldn't be a thing in COH. I'm also a little confused why, if squishy mez protection is a "system issue," that system issue isn't being discussed and addressed before or in conjunction with how we're .. erm, "addressing" powers that help solve the problem of making these ATs playable in solo or small-group situations.

There isn't some mystical variable that "testing" is going to prove; if your anti-mez rotation as a defender or controller relies on 90s of uptime on RoP, the ability being reduced to 60s means you've lost 30s of mez protection with nothing to make up for it. Builds that previously had no worry of being mezzed, now have 30s of worrying about being mezzed. Break frees also don't stop your defensive toggles from dropping and the 6-8 attacks/more mezzes launched while you reactivate them from hitting you 😞