Dr Causality

I'm hoping no one would argue for buffing every set to match the overperforming outlier sets. Would be a lot more reasonable to just buff underperforming sets up to where they are roughly on par with median sets. I'm biased and didn't try to hide it. Personally, I'll be annoyed if my PPM builds, and my /Time, /Darkness Affinity and TW characters are all nerfed, but my Ninja/TA and Ninja/Storm characters still suck. I'm hoping that with limited volunteer development resources we prioritize doing balancing buffs first instead of nerfs. And I created this thread to see how other people feel. But it's also important to note the volunteer developer aspect. If developers happen to personally only interested in outlier nerf balance projects, well then honestly we have to be thankful for what they're willing to do. But if they're choosing development projects in part based on what the community would enjoy and prefer them I think this thread and others like it will be relevant (even if it shows I'm outlier and unlike me most players want the nerfs first and foremost...)

Not really. Even with Homecomings changes to the -1000% KB Resistance in Immobilizes, without the KD proc you still have to keep casting Fire Cages every 12s or Bonfire Knocks enemies out of it's patches causing it's mitigation to stop working. Also back when Fire Cages did full -KB I recall skipping Bonfire on tight builds because for damage alone it's not that impressive. But with the mitigation is provides now, you'd be crazy to skip it now, and it's mainly what I used to level my Fire/Time controller. But if anyone cares, we should start a separate thread about Bonfire rather than losing sight of the overall Big Picture discussion.

Well if we're looking at out of balance game breaking powers, then Bonfire with KD proc is high on my list. My jaw dropped the first time I saw it in action. It completely changed the way Bonfire works, transforming it into a top tier mitigation power that's now better than what used to be set defining KD patch powers like Oil Slick, Earthquake, Ice Patch etc. Why bother with /TA's Oil Slick with it's massive cooldown? Or why choose Earth Control over Fire Control, when you can get that much mitigation from Bonfire AND do tons more damage....? Or how about having Controller level mitigation from a single power that Blasters and MM's can get from their Epic Pool? Edit I'd rather see /TA's Oil Slick buffed or get reduced cooldown more in line with Bonfire. Buffs to Earth Control and Ice Control etc. But if we're Nerfing instead or Nerfing first, then Bonfire should get the Nerf bat.

I see this as an argument for buffing underperforming but not clearly for nerfing overperforming. I think the changes to Stalkers are a perfect example of what I'd like to see prioritized. It used to be that you often couldn't get team invites especially on TFs when playing stalkers. But I haven't seen the reverse problem where team leaders are demanding teams be composed of entirely of just overperforming sets like TW/Bio or /Time. If anything over performance has made it easier to get team invites because you no longer have to worry so much about team composition. It's now hard to imagine being on a team that couldnt' finish the ITF. And on full teams things are melting so quickly it's difficult to tell whose carrying most of the weight. The biggest game play enjoyment issue I've seen is that someone in full on "scrapper can now really ignore the team splitting off to solo the TF by themselves. But I'd argue that's more a lack of teamwork and antisocial behavior problem, rather than a game balance overperformance problem.

My personal take is we should prioritize whatever increases player enjoyment and excitement. For me that would mean prioritizing buffs to underperforming sets and making quality of life improvements. Whereas, I feel nerfs instead tend to undermine, and lessen player enjoyment and game enthusiasm. So if we were too enact large nerfs, I'd want them done only if they were done at the same time as buffs and included a roadmap of all the overperforming powers and sets we intended to rebalance with the nerfs... PVP is obviously a different situation. But for PVE the question I have for people arguing for prioritizing nerfs is "How are out of balance overperforming powers ruining the fun or game?" You aren't required to use or play those "broken" powers or AT's: Is it that people who use them can solo or do things you can't? Or that teams with composed of them can have faster MoITF speed times? For PVE I seriously, not understanding how it's a problem that needs to be a priority to fix? How is the out of balance Powerboosted Def, insane mitigation from Bonfire's with Overwhelming KD, shear power of TW/Bio monsters, or PPM abusing Defender a bigger more important balance problem than the under performing sets that need to love?

In the recent discussions about "rebalancing", bug fixing and nerfing the PPM proc system, /Time, /Darkness Affinity, Powerboosted Def, etc. we've been mostly been caught up on discussing the relative merits, details and balance of those powers. Before embarking on major game changing overhauls I think it would be wise for us to take a step back, and think about the big picture impact and our priorities. We've been having a great time for the roughly year the Homecoming servers have been public....with powers and sets working largely as they do now. There's no immediate need to make major game changes and we'd do well to take a breath and think more carefully about what we as community want and how those changes are likely to impact excitement and enjoyment of the game. I would have liked more poll questions than the allowed two, but hopefully this poll will shed some light on players big picture priorities and this thread can be a discussion to fill in the nuances and gaps left out in the poll. Poll was edited to add "content/story arcs" in question #1 and "bug fixes" in #2. Only 4 people had taken the poll when the edit was made so hopefully shouldn't disrupt the results as much the better nuances will improve quality of answers...

Definitely a weird solution. But it's weird problem. Yeah. The level of development effort to my mind obviously needs to be heavily considered. But that assumption also doesn't make sense of the situation because then why would Devs not have immediately patched it back on Live? I'm not sure original Dev intentions would, or even should change our decisions. But I am definitely curious to know why original Devs never did patch this back on live. It does seem like an accidental bug, that they could have patch right away with practically no complaints. Not patching it seems intentional. So why didn't they?

Ha. Yeah that's what I suspected too. I think the issues is that Ninjas don't have good aoe dmg, but even weak aoe is still enough to ruin sleep. And they have plenty of weak aoe: Genin (T1) - Exploding Shuriken which they like to use with before running in... Jenin (T2) - Have long cooldown Caltrops, with the DoT acting as recurring wake up. Oni (T3) - Has Rain of Fire, which is another long cooldown DoT. Even so, Poison Gas Arrow is much better than I remembered or anticipated. But it's just a Mag2 sleep that doesn't seem to stack with itself and unlike Holds or Confuse there are no procs that let you stack a chance for extra mag of sleep. So the sleep doesn't work on Bosses. But something along the lines you're suggesting does work. If you can leave henchmen around a corner so they don't attack and wakeup minions, then you can Poison Gas and Glue Arrow a mob, so that you pull just Bosses and some Lts around the corner. But like you said it's slow going. I ran a ranged soft cap, S/L res provoke build against some +1/+8 Crim, Council and LongBow misions all with bosses on Beta. All went reasonably smoothly (now that I've accepted that Ninjas are entirely expendable 😋 ) I bumped up to +2 and had a much tougher time. In fact a doublespawn cluster of Longbow Bosses actually managing to kill me 3 times on the 'Defeat All' mission from Ghostwidow. Seems like it was a combo of getting mezzed and henchment simultaneously getting taunted by Phantom Army. I'll hopefully have some time to try versus AV's once I unlock the Epics I actually want....

Looks like we failed to take this solutions discussion over to @Bopper's new thread. 🙂 Out of those (2) would still be preferable to me. But it seems like you might be overlooking possible solutions. For instance ould we use psuedo pets to split the Def and Res components, so that the Res alone didn't take external buffs, but the Def could still be Powerboosted? *Edit* My hope is @Bopper has some ideas he'll share in that other thread.

Yes, rolled just because of the Worst MM combo poll results. Which since then, oddly has other combos slowly catching up, so by the time my Nin/TA is fully Incarnate a different combo might have taken the lead as worst. 😏 But on my take /TA and /Trap are not very comparable. In additional to good debuffs and mitigation /Traps also has a significant +Def buff, Mezz protection, and an aoe Regen Auro. /TA has no buffs for self or pet. There's no way for /TA to fill the missing buffs /Traps gets. And the cherry on top is as you mentioned /Traps even has some clearly better debuffs, for example to -Regen.

I think this is the link to @Trickshooter's post:

Nerfs can be unintentional. Requiring us to know about intentions, is too narrow a definition of nerf to be useful. You need a word like nerf to be able to describe situations where you don't know what the intentions were... Nerf is best thought of as simply describing reduced power. But let's leave the semantics aside, they're a distraction from the important point: The important part is we should be able to fix, mitigate or work around the bug portion without also hurting the Def portion of Fade. It's a choice to fix the LOOONG overdue bug in a way that also significantly reduces the amount of the Def /Dark Affinity has. We should discuss and think about that choice, rather than thinking of this as simple no brainer bug fix.

Fallacy here. There's nothing mutually exclusive about a nerf and bug fix. A game change can easily be both. After this change to the game there will be many Fade builds that have been at or over soft cap defense, and/or that have been able to soft cap pets, including Lore pets, since Issue 22 and for the entire time Homecoming has been public that will now no longer be at softcap. That's a nerf. It also be a bugfix, but doesn't change that it's a nerf. The reason it's important to point out that it's a nerf is there should be ways to mitigate the underlying Dmg/Res bug issue without also nerfing Fade's Powerboosted Def. Nerfing the Def portion is a choice. We should discuss and think through a game change choice that is that substantial build breaking game play change for a set. Agreed, but there's also no need to rush into a knee jerk fix that also nerfs and significantly changes game play for a set. The bug has been live since issue 22, March 2012. The bug has been live the entire time Homecoming servers have been public. Has the game been ruined that whole time? We can take some time to think about how best to fix, mitigate or workaround this bug issue without also nerfing Fade's Def. And if it is decided that instead of just a bug fix we actually do want to nerf Fade's Powerboosted Def, then that should come as larger game rebalancing project that impacts other sets equally. No one's complaining about /Poison because there's not much comparison to the game play impacts between a /Darkness Affinity character that's built around using Powerboosted aoe Fade for Def and a /Poison chacter's Powerboosted single target heal. Powerboosted Alkaloid was just 15s of a much larger single target heal, that couldn't be used on yourself. While nice to have since it didn't directly impact your character itself, and wasn't even a permanent boost it isn't all that game changing. Whereas using this bug fix for the Res/Dmg bug on Fade, also means any Fade builds designed around Powerboost now no longer have soft capped Def for the character itself and/or for the character's pets. This completely breaks builds that have worked the entire time Homecoming has been public and worked on live all the way back to Issue 22, March 2012. You'd need to see powers like Farsight also being nerfed to get a similar level of game impact to builds. My point here is to draw attention to the fact that there are a bunch of incredibly bright people in this game, we can surely find a way to fix, mitigate or workaround the bug without also singling out a set for a significant build breaking nerf. Nerfing is a choice, and if we make that choice then I think it should be part of a larger rebalancing project that effect the overall game, rather than a knee jerk bug fix. For instance here's an idea for how we might temporarily fix the Res/Dmg bug without nerfing Fade and ruining Def builds: Could just the Res portion of Fade be moved to a psuedo pet summon, as a way to separate the Res and Def portions preventing Res from getting getting buffed by external sources like Powerboost, Buildup and Insp, but still allowing Fade's Def portion to be Powerboosted?

The main thing is, being a bug or not, it feels bad to be singled out for a nerf of something that has worked this way going all the way back to issue 22. Original Devs knew how the "bugged" work yet left in for the last 9 month of the Live through all of issue 22, issue 23 and as far as I know didn't work in a correction in the portion of issue 24 they were working on. Nerfs to things that have worked one way for that that long, should ideally be bundled together with general rebalancing so that certain sets or powers are not, or do not feel like they're being single out. I'm not against out of balance powers being adjusted, but I'd like the pain of that nerfing to be shared with other broken out of balance Archetypes, Powers and even some underperforming power or sets getting a boost. Doing it this singled out way instead, doesn't feel good.

I think you're right that will be the best possible Nin/TA build for Team play and maybe even the best build for soloing standard mission content. I took Bonfire at 35 while leveling up y NiN/TA and it was a massive performance boost. I had a similar experience to you with Bonfire being great on my Bots/Kin. It's sad that Bonfire is enough better than /TA's signature T9 power, that the best way to make /TA more powerful is by counting on an Epic non /TA power as your core strategy. 😛 I guess it's equal parts that Bonfire with the KD proc is a bit broken, and Oil Slick's has a punitively long cooldown that's way out of balance against other sets. Bonfire can be made perma with little effort, but Oil Slick is still not perma on builds that stack Ageless ontop of already perma Hasten. (Oil Slick would require 500% total Rech to be perma. 70% from Hasten, 95% from Enhancements and you'd still need 335%....) But at least with /Storm you have some Res and Def from Steamy Mist, plus a single target heal. And with my Bots/Kin I have an aoe heal and some Res buffs for pets. But /TA gets none of that so it's even more painful to give up the Epic Resistance or Def shields for Bonfire on /TA when it already has absolutely no heal, Res or Def to offer. I was able to solo the ITF at +2/+8 on my Bots/Kin using Bonfire for mitigation and the heal for sustain. But bots have more Res and Def than Ninja and TA has no heal. Doesn't feel like Bonfire is going to work out well against AVs. So what I'm wondering is, "Even if Bonfire is better in general, for soloing AV's and TF's will Bonfire be better than softap ranged Def (with one small purple), plus 75% hard capped S/L Resistance?" The other rough part is to get even that modest 33% Ranged Def, w/ 75% S/L resistant I had to skip Hasten and make serious sacrifices to global Recharge bonuses, meaning huge gaps in Oil Slick being available.

Good clarification. Def and Res are a core part of what makes for overall sustain, but the math is complicated and as you point out you can't simply add the two totals together for comparison of the overall sustain between different builds. But the complex math becomes easy if you can hit the caps. My solution to the complexities of the math is generally to aim for soft cap Defense by planning to fill in with small purple inspirations and then get hard capped S/L Resistance with the Epic shields.

Bullets in your Ninjas, is exactly why you don't bring Ninjas to a gun fight.....Much better to put bullets in your gun. 😋 But I'll give it to you the Ninja/Time guide is probably the best possible version of Ninjas, getting them respectably close to on par with many other combos.

Not to step on any toes, but if I'm being honest Ninja/Time is good basically just because /Time is so good, that's it's still good despite the (min/max) fail of choosing Ninjas. 😋 Ninjas were my first MM and thematically still my favorite. Enough so that they still break my ❤️. But after playing other sets, there are only two reasons to play Ninjas: theme or you want a challenge. It's literally like taking Ninjas to a gun fight.

If it's wasn't for the new KB->KD in Bonfire, I'd say that if you're skipping Hotfeet, then why bother with Fire? Without Hotfeet's extra dmg, you might as well pick a set like Earth with more control and mitagation. But Bonfire is so broken with the KD proc that it can probably justify Fire all on it's own. And there's that you're recreating a toon from live... But seriously Hotfeet is an insane amount of basically free dmg since it happens while using other powers. As for things running in fear....you're a dominator, not even AV's can run from you for very long....

If it doesn't proc that would be a very recent change. But the Guass slotted into Enforcers will proc on the Enforcers from their Tactics power. The way it works in Tactics is a chance to proc for every teammate or pet Tactics buffs. But Enforcers Tactics only works on Thugs, so you won't get your best results in Enforcers until you have all your pets to increase the proc chances the Enforcers have. Until then I'd go with either a Dmg or maybe Achilles proc instead. *Edit* Don't have access to mid's to see what purple IO's your asking about. But my suggestion would be to plan a separate leveling build using attuned IO's, with a plan to respec into the other build one you hit 50 or even 47. At lower levels your IO's will have lower enhancement values, so you'll need more of them to reach desired levels of enhancement. That means at lower levels frankenslotting to reach desired level of Dmg, Acc and End will often be better than chasing set bonuses.

Lol. Pretty sure I won't find anything notably different. I'm just curious what even admittedly underperfroming sets can do with Incarnates and unlimited IO's. I'll try to post some results later, so you can (hopefully) laugh at my suffering. *Edit* but I am in a good position in that my expectations were so low, that so far I've been pleasantly surprised. 😋 This is exactly my experience with Ninjas. But the first times I leveled up Bots and Thugs, it was immediately painfully clear that no slotting or playstyle shift was going balance or even significantly let Ninjas catch up.

I've never had very good luck building a sturdy Tankermind with the Epic Def shields like Mace or Ice Mastery. My sturdiest Tankerminds all use Res based Epic shields. Mu probably being the best like BGSacho is saying, but I often end up using Soul because I prefer the Cone Immob that doesn't have a -KB component. For Tankerminds: 'Epic Res shields are almost always going to be superior to Epic Def shields' because they will typically let your MM reach higher overall sustain by reaching a higher amount of combined Res and Def. I already argued this earlier in the thread as quoted below, but it's much easier for a MM to get close to soft cap defense from Non Epic sources, whereas it's pretty much impossible to get to hard capped Res without using a Res based Epic shield. Epic Res shields are the best always up source Res in the game for a MM, and it turns out it's much harder to get Res then Def for the MM themselves. Soft Cap defense is a lower goal to begin with, than hard capped Res is. But the following make the situation worse for Epic Def Shields: The MM itself has more non-Epic sources of Def, then Res available. There are many always up Def powers in the Power Pools, but only one always up Res power, Tough. But the biggest issue probably is the best Res powers like from Sonic or Thermal don't buff the MM themselves. The two pet sources of Def or Res that buff the MM are Demons and Bots are out of balance. The Def from Bots fully enhanced gets your MM almost 1/4 of the way to soft cap on it's own. Def and Res inspirations are also out of balance making it much easier to build around needing to fill missing Def from Insp, then it is missing Res. A single sm Purple is more than 1/4 to softcap Def, whereas a single sm res is only a 1/6th to hard cap. But when it comes to Epic's the Res Epic shields can get more than halfway to the higher bar of hard cap, whereas Epic Def shields don't even get halfway to the lower bar of soft cap Def. Taken together this means it's possible to reach a much higher overall amounts of sustain through Def and Resistance combined by choosing Resistance based Epic Pools.

Thanks for posting with your build! Interesting to see and impressing looking ITF results.

I agree with all of your reply except that quote. The ITF is what I typically use as a proving grounds for testing builds. I've solo-ed the ITF at +2/+8 on what I consider Tankermind builds with Thugs/Time and Thugs/Nature. [But let's not talk about how long it takes me on those MM builds....] The Crystals, the Computer and last AV fight you mention are the parts of the ITF that I struggle with on MM's. But Tankerminding actually helps the last AV fight, because I have a very tough time keeping pets alive while the Nictus are still there. So being able to make pets stay at range attacking while my MM taunts, ends up being very helpful. Also, the other two biggest problems I have in that fight are Romulus trying to run away and dealing with the ambushes on top of the AV fight. Being able to Taunt pull the AV's helps with both of those two issues. On the subject of Bonfire, with the Overwhelming KD proc: it's brokenly good. For MM's the only thing that makes it feel even mildly balanced is that Fire Mastery at least has to give up an Epic shield for Bonfire. But even as someone with MM and Controller builds based around Bonfire as a core power, I think Dev's at the end of Live made a clear mistake and that Bonfire with Overwhelming should be nerfed. You shouldn't be able to get a permeable damaging power on MM's, Blasters etc that does more KD control than control powers like Earth Quake, Ice Slick etc. Definitely upsets the game's class balance. To give you an idea of how broken it is, it let me solo the ITF at +2/+8 on a Bot/Kin that I'd built to be a support character. (And no the Bot/Kin is not a Tankermind build. It and a /storm are the MM's I have that don't have Provoke. Bonfire goes particularly poorly with Tankermind builds because pets in Defensive will routinely stop attacking while enemies are bouncing like helpless fish out of water in the Bonfire.) [The other trick for the last AV fight is, if after trying you find you have trouble taking the fight head on, then reset the last mish because: Imperious is an aggro spazz, but he makes a pretty damn good MM pet against hard targets....some builds might be able to do the last fight just with him and their Lore pets. I've got it down to a science now, but keeping him alive all the way to the AV fight is chore of it's own. Imperious was enough of boost that I finished the ITF with Ninja/Storm. I plan try Ninja/TA next, which I'm not sure even an Imperious pet will be of enough of boost too handle....]

I should let SpiritFox tell us what was meant, but on my read of these quotes it's not explicit and not even clear that it's the primary or core strategy for the MM to tank the Alpha: and here where MM tanking the Alpha is mentioned it's still doesn't read as the primary strategy to me, and instead seems more like an option: I would say the playstyle difference between Spiritfox and myself appears to be: Spiritfox is saying, as a general rule pet tanking is better, but use BG mode in situations where you need--so pet tanking is the Default. Whereas, my playstyle is use Tankerminding as the default, but once it's clear there's no danger and pets dmg have stopped doing much dmg, then use aggressive or attack my target as needed. But instead of putting words in someone else's mouth, I'll should just defend the position myself. Despite my personal preference for Tankerminding, from a min/max perspective I think that if you can get pet Res (and/or Absorb) up high enough, combined with decent pet defense numbers, then Pet Tanking should significantly outperform Tankermind in overall DPS. The MM itself can now do a lot of damage, between Incarnate powers and procs. With high overall Res/Aborb pets will only rarely get one or two shotted, and won't die that often. Given that DPS wise it's more efficient for your MM to be using damaging powers, rather than Provoke spamming and then just re-summon any pets as needed. Since pets die more rarely, the DPS loss downtime between pet death and re-summing them (and eventually rebuffing them) shouldn't out weigh the DPS gain from focusing on MM dmg. On that point, not Tankerminding frees you from needing to build so much Def into your MM, letting you chase proc dmg, and damaging powers in your build. I definitely think this will be the most efficient MM strategy overall. I'm not saying, you should never use BG mode, there certainly could be situations where it would be helpful. But the game has changed and Provoke is probably not going to be found in the most efficient high DPS MM builds going forward. I'm just a dinosaur stuck in a previous playstyle, who feels like I failed when henchmen or pets die on my watch.