oedipus_tex

There are still some balance issues being worked out with Electric Affinity but its a solid set. A few things really stand out. The set has a self heal, and mezz protection, and what is effectively bottomless endurance. One quite unusual aspect of it is it provides knockback protection to pets. The set it seems to pair most naturally with IMO is actually Dark Control. Dark has about the right number of pets, pairs excellently with Power Boost, benefits from but doesn't critically rely on mezz protection, and the ToHit and Fear STR bonus in Amp Up actually has meaning for the Dark pet. It's quite good paired with anything though. Just maybe a bit low damage.

Would it be easier to make Defib just a PBAOE, centered on caster, rather than fiddle with the different target types? Another headache you'll likely encounter with the current targeting is a person can be dead and rezz themselves and interupt whatever action is going on. I also didn't do any testing to see what happens if the dead person /hospitals mid Defib animation. That's a lot of possible avenues to have to maintain. Seems like it might make sense to eliminate all these variables just center the effect on the caster.

Sorry, I forgot to include something critical to build on what I was just saying about the "Lot of drain, small area" philosophy. Part of the reason this approach would fix cross-set issue is that when you move to a chance system, stacking endurance drain becomes less all or nothing. Let's look at the Dominator set Electric Assault. It has one cone power and a lot of single target attacks. Each single target attack drains 7-10% endurance. Pardon my French here. This is f#*&* worthless. The effect might as well not even be there. I'm not ripping the power designers. I know how hard it is to balance sets. But Paragon missed the ball here. Each power having endurance drain is fine--good actually, It means you can keep an enemy floored by continuining to punch. What's missing is any chance to put an enemy in that vulnerable position in the first place. Say that each attack in Electric Assault had a 10% chance to do 100% endurance drain per enemy within 10ft (maybe not literally all the powers, but some of them at least--lets say the heavy hitters). This could be either emanate from the caster or the target--doesn't matter really, just needs to be there. Now the whole game has changed. I can remove a couple of targets from play. Once I've got one, I can switch to punching it to keep its bar drained, and with each punch guess what, I have a chance to drain other enemies. The reason this fixes combinations so well is that let's say I roll and drain an enemy completely. Well, that enemy is drained for a while. If I roll again and happen to do another drain, I may just end up draining the same enemy. So I'm not pulling light years ahead. He was drained anyway. It would be very difficult or impossible to drain the whole mob this way, due to the way math works. But I could control a decent number. Mostly though endurance drain wouldn't just be worthless. Right now, on sets like Electric Assault it's just that. Completely irrelevant. The tie in with Defibrillate is, to keep it relevant for all combinations of sets it does indeed need to do a huge drain. Just to a more select area.

Yes it would have to be player only. This is fair, because unlike enemies, players have to manage toggles. Also, getting instantly endurance floored in PVP because of a bad die roll would completely suck. But what I particularly like about this philosophy is how it would fix the biggest issue with Electric sets right now: the way you need to pair primary and secondary up to make endurance drain work. I call this design philosophy "A lot of drain, but in a small area." How you control the "area" is up to the power designer: Power Sink and Power Drain already do this by being limited to a small radius (10ft). I see no change needed to these powers. You could limit area with a pure die roll (10-20% chance). You could limit area by only allowing the effect to apply a particular mob type (minions, lieuts, bosses, etc) You could combine these things. One thing I do kind of want to avoid is defining area using "combo mechanics" like Impact in the Gravity set or Energy Overload in Energy Assault. I feel like these combo systems do not combine well between primary/secondary and have led to a lot of issues. To stay on topic with Defibrellate: although we are still working out numbers, I'd like to see one of the following happen to keep with the "A lot of drain, small area" philosophy: Make the endurance drain huge and guaranteed to floor at least some enemies, but keep radius very small Make the endurance drain modest but have a chance to totally floor a percentage of enemies (for a power like this a 35% chance might be appropriate since drain is the main function of the power) Make the endurance drain huge but limit it by enemy type (minions and lieuts for example)

The anti-mezz buffs didn't get the AoE treatment. I personally do think that was the right call. Philosophically, the powers that got that buff were the ones that fell in a category where a player might be expected to go through the league manually casting at each player every 4 minutes. I have my own concerns about my suggestion. One is that instead of encouraging people to actually play Empathy, Pain, Thermal etc it may backfire and encourage "buff bots" who stand in zone buffing squishies. On any other kind of power, I'd be worried about power creep. On these powers, I'm much less worried, because armored archetypes already are nigh invulnerable to mezz. There's a downside, like there is to everything. It might make iTrials too trivial. One solution would be to keep the really strong part of the anti-mezz at 90 seconds, but then add a Mag 1.5 protection that lasts 10-15 min. That would, in effect, ward off "nuisance mezzes" without dramatically increasing the amount of mezz protection out there. In fact I may have talked myself into this idea and like it better than my origiinal proposal. You'd need to make sure the 1.5 mag protection didn't self stack from same caster, but that's flaggable.

Yes it is subject to the purple patch. Most endurance drain is a percentage, so the number of endurance points an enemy has is irrelevant from the perspective of draining. I mean, not totally irrelevant, it affects other things, but you know what I mean. An enemy with 100 endurance, drained by 50% = 50/100 endurance. Has 50% of its blue bar. An enemy with 200 endurance, drained by 50% = 100/200 endurance. Has 50% of its blue bar. An enemy with 800 endurance, drained by 50% = 400/800 endurance. Has 50% of its blue bar. I think part of the issue we've always had with endurance drain is it tends to be applied in ways that are very binary. Electric Melee is a great example. Each power has a 100% chance to drain a little endurance. What would be far more useful, especially in AoEs or possibly small radial effects caused by single target powers would be a 10-20% chance to drain a huge amount of endurance. That's the issue we've always had with endurance drain. Splitting up endurance drain evenly among 16 mobs does nothing. But totally draining 5 of the 16 has a very noticeable effect. If they changed it so Ball Lightning, in addition to its current effect, had a 15% chance to drain 100% endurance (as the base, enhanceable) the whole Electric Blast set would be far more attractive because you'd be very likely to drain at least one or two of the mobs completely. I have a lot more to say about this and how this should scale between archetypes but I'll save it for another discussion. Basically tho my feeling on fixing endurance drain runs similar to my opinion on knockback. For Defenders, there should be a higher chance not necessarily just a higher drain (and right now even the drain doesn't scale).

I think that's a bit of a philosophical question. I don't personally consider 2 minutes a long timer. That's around 1 min on an IO build and 35 seconds on a top build. The answer in a nutshell is that I can only compare it to other endurance drain sets. Electric Control, Blast, and Armor cannot drain an enemy dry instantly on their own. They can, with some effort, do it with some support from APPs, but they have to build for it and they are hedged in by power radius. Power Sink and Power Drain have a radius of 10 feet. So instant endurance floors are not really a thing for the whole mob even at top performance. For Electric Affinity right now I could charge up a bunch of charges of Static, run at an enemy group invisibly, and instantly floor their endurance with just Defibrellate. This is a new set,a buff/debuff set that specializes in electricity, so its hard to say whether that's in the zone that's allowable. But it does leave me asking if other sets need Power Sink to complete the puzzle and then can't get the whole mob at once, does this apply to Electric Affinity as well? This is always going to be a bit of a balancing act because endurance drain is so binary. Right now my distinct temptation is to roll a Gravity/Electric Affinity Controller. Wormhole the enemies to you, Defib. They're not fighting back in this century. I've got mezz protection, a self heal, an absorb shield, endless endurance. An amazing single target buff for Singularity. Only my damage is likely to lack (admittedly that's a big thing to lack). Too much? Depends I think on whether total control over enemies is still a thing of value any more. If it's not, the Dominator and Controller archetypes could use a revisit.

Sorry to keep replying with new data. I'm still working out how to properly account for Static stacks. Turned out I was underestimating the max number of stacks I could get from Static. Here's what I was able to work myself up to with medium effort: So, that's a 263% endurance drain. Against +4s, that would be 263 x0.48 = 126.24, which would instantly floor them. By the way I am curious why the power listed each enemy hit 4 times. I'm not certain but it seems like the Sleep Magnitude might be applying to every enemy for every enemy. In other words, it might be applying the Sleep 4 times to each enemy instead of once to each of the 4. This might explain why I felt like the power sometimes slept bosses. It's also possible I'm wrong. I need to look into it more.

Sorry, I underestimated in my last reply. I was able to slot Defib and test against same level enemies: That's with this slotting: So, with max Static I'm achieving close to a 200% endurance drain. +4 enemies resist end drain by 48%, so even against them I'm within a few points of instantly draining them dry.

So, the endurance drain on Defibrellate. I think we may need to talk about a recalibration. Endurance drain at top efficiency should probably come in at, or close to, Power Sink, a very good power for draining enemies. Power Sink starts at -35% Endurance, which with two IOs brings it to -58%. I could see Defibrillate topping out at about-50% endurance before IOs but not much more than that. It's hard for me to tell how much Defib is currently draining, but based on the screenshot below, it looks like a lot, lot more than Power Sink. The amount drained versus a same-level Possessed scientist was 87.99 points of endurance. This was unslotted with end mod IOs. So I'm taking that to mean slotted with 2 level 50 IOs would have drained 87.99 x1.66=145 endurance. Controllers, Defenders and Corruptors can take Power Boost to make this obscene. I imagine it would instantly floor even +4 elite bosses. Against an Elite Boss, Shock (-recovery for 30 seconds) would then virtually guarantee a fight against a mostly helpless enemy. It's hard for me to offer an exact perfect number here because of the somewhat binary nature of endurance drain. You may want to implement a rule that the power does different endurance drain to different tiers of enemies. Maybe this full strength drain is ok for minions and Lts but not bosses or EBs. That would make the power useful enough to completely take out the riff raff without worries about how it deals with big targets. Note that flooring EBs isn't necessarily a problem--Electric Controllers can do it with some work. But it's difficult to floor an enemy instantly without assistance from additional powers, mainly Power Sink. There aren't a lot of big, instant duration Endurance drains out there, other than the nuke and PBAoE in Electric Blast, and Power Sink/Power Drain.

Hasten is basically a grandfathered required power. I see arguments sometimes about builds not "needing" Hasten but IMO this is short sighted because eventually you'll run into enemies that have -Recharge (like Arachnos) and Hasten's +70 recharge is better Recharge Debuff Resistance than actual Recharge Debuff Resistance in most cases. Making Hasten inherent would likely to lead to all kinds of unintended problems, so its probably best it stay where it is, a defacto required power.

I'll go ahead and reply to my own topic with a counter proposal. If an increase to around 10-15 minutes at level 50 is considered problematic, please at least consider an increase to 4 minutes. I don't personally like the 4 minute duration as much. But, it would be much more useful than 90 seconds.

I think it's safe to say the current state of buff-heavy sets like Empathy, Pain, etc is not in a good place. I think this opens up some opportunities. The current duration of anti-mezz powers is 90 seconds. This is a very old school design, left over from issue 1. It was designed for a meta where support characters were intended to be occupied with lots of clicks/animation time. I think the duration of these powers could stand to be raised. Drastically. Specifically, I'm talking about an increase to around 10-15 minute durations at level 50. Probably that will make some eyes pop, but hear me out. Melee archetypes run around the game with that level of mezz protection at all times, so there's no boost to their effectiveness after around level 20. The only classes that benefit are the squishy ones. Of these, only Blasters are damage leaders. With a 15 minute duration, support characters like Empathy, Pain, Poison, Thermal, and Sonic Resonance would have a buff that has drive-by value. That's one area City of Heroes significantly differs from other MMOs. There are very few (no?) "community buffs" that encourage pro-social interactions in the general game world. Buff durations are too short for that. Mostly, that's a good thing, because too many buffs can make a character overpowered. But the effects of these powers are perfect for long duration, pro-social buffs. They mean having a level 50 Empathy character in Atlas Park handing out buffs has value. All of the support sets are currently struggling to be relevant. This would provide them something tangible. Keep in mind the only portion of these powers I think could do with the increase in duration is the anti-mezz portion. For the ones with extra effects, that portion may still only last 90 seconds. Also, I'd be 100% fine with some sets getting loner or shorter durations as appropriate. I could see Empathy and Pain having the longest durations and other sets falling into line according to where they should be in relation. IMO the only real downside is it makes "bubble" powers somewhat less useful. But, bubble powers already provide mezz protection to the caster where anti-mezz powers do not, so they're still useful.

Thanks for that clarification. I admit I didn't look closely at Melt Armor's recharge or radius. It just goes to show how radically different each of the AoE -Resist powers is even when they share a similar profile, like these two powers do.

It's maybe worth remembering that Freezing Rain originated with the Storm Summoning powerset, which was designed for mitigation-through-chaos. That's why Freezing Rain has such a short pet duration but long -Resist duration. The idea was that you'd cast it and then blow enemies out of its radius. I can't be sure, but based on patch notes it looks like the long duration feature may have been added in Issue 4. The long debuff duration was then kept in place when Sleet was proliferated. From i4 patch notes: Both Sleet and Freezing Rain are radically different from Tar Patch. Tar Patch was originally designed not as a clone of Freezing Rain at all, but actually as a power comparable to Snow Storm. Its original purpose was mostly to handle mobs who try to run away because of Fearsome Stare. It only became a -Resist power in Issue 4. From i4 patch notes: That leaves these other AoE -Resist profiles, but you'll note other than some very general patterns they are all radically different. Auto hit toggles (toggle duration) Sonic Disruption (Sonic, no other effects) Enervating Field (Radiation, also has -Damage) Venomous Gas (Poison, also has -Defense, -ToHit, -Damage) One time bursts combined with -Defense that roll accuracy (note, powers are mostly identical but Thermal's is slightly better) Melt Armor (Thermal, 40 seconds) Slowed Response (Time, 30 seconds) Unstackable auto hit Disruption Arrow -20% resist and just weird all the way around and generally much weaker than other AoE -Resist powers Weaken (Poison), however you classify it Acid Mortar (Traps), however you classify it Heat Loss (Cold), which stands alone as its own totally different thing So the takeaway is there is no "standard" AoE -Resist. The duration, delivery method, and secondary effects are all radically different. So its not really possible to extrapolate across the set, sometimes even within a set (e.g. Cold or Poison). What you should be able to do, though, is extrapolate across archetypes. In other words, the power should generally be stronger on Defenders than the other ATs. After the Dark change, the sets for which that isn't true are mainly Trick Arrow and then the sets where the numbers don't line up properly.

The Call of the Sandman proc change is actually pretty sweet. That turns several of the Control set AoE Sleeps into reliable 15% self heals. Mainly that's a boon for Dominators, since most secondaries lack any kind of self heal. For sure Electric Control and Mind Control will want to slot their sleeps with this proc.

I did my best to test Defibrillate. It works as far as I can tell, altho there is a lot going on with this power so I couldn't confirm everything. For example it's not clear to me how much endurance it should be draining per stack of Static. Do all components of the power work no matter who the initial target is? The end drain and sleep work correctly when the power is cast at an enemy target or at a dead player. What's the Mag of the Sleep supposed to be? Power descriptsays Mag 3 but It seemed to be Sleeping bosses (Warhulks), altho its not super easy to tell if that's what's happening. I don't think that enemy has a special weakness to Sleep. The resurrection effect seems to work if you cast directly on the dead player. When I used Defib on an enemy target, it failed to rezz the player consistently. Meaning it sometimes worked sometimes not. Here's the range the dead player was at when it failed, tho it seems like it should be within 20 feet: Possible discrepancy: the power is auto hit when used on dead players but rolls to hit when used on enemies. I can't tell if this is an actual issue in practice though. Overall: it might be a good idea to just make Defribrellate a PBAoE with no target at all and resolve any discrepancies with different target types. Do all components of the power work while exemplared? Didn't test Do all components of the power work if cast while you or the target is moving? As far as I can tell, yes Do all components of the power work in PvP? Didn't test

I don't think Dark Miasma needed an Accuracy buff to Twilight Grasp, but I won't complain. The power is only superficially similar to Kinetic's Transfusion. Transfusion had better Accuracy mainly because it needs to be used up close. Twilight Grasp gives the user more control over where to cast it. The risk of missing is (or was) an intentional limitation of a very strong set. The Controller version of Dark Miasma (Dark Affinity) is significantly different from any of the other versions. I don't know how a Link Minds style AoE +Defense power (Fade) was considered a suitable replacement for a weak-ish single target Hold, but regardless, IMO Controllers made out like bandits in the transition from Defender --> Controller. Any corrections to pseudo pets still won't outweigh the ability to obtain excellent base Defense and slot an extra LoTG. On Masterminds and Corruptors there's maybe some more room to complain, but IMO not much. Dark Miasma is the rare buff set with a true Control power in Fearsome Stare, which also happens to be a significant-ToHit buff. While it's true the nuker-iffic meta of the game has made this power somewhat less amazing, it's still very good, and we have to assume at some point debuffs of this sort will be resurrected in value if the Homecoming team continues development into level 55+ content where players may not be able to blow enemies away instantly. Overall I'd say these changes make the game better and more consistent. One thing I think is very good is the developers are taking the buff/debuff sets seriously instead of as afterthoughts. The melee, blast. and armor sets have always been held to a higher level of scrutiny than the control and buff/debuff sets and I'm glad to see someone giving some attention to some longstanding issues that would have been less likely to have existed this long on one of the more closely watched archetypes.

Sleet and Freezing Rain have operated that way as long as I can remember, so its not an urgent thing. However, what the developers described earlier in this thread sounds like a more streamlined way to implement effects that previously relied on a psuedo-pet. From the way they described it, it might be difficult to recreate the 35/30 numbers, so I wouldn't be shocked if it becomes 35/26.25. 26.25 is where the math would land you if you were using a standardized formula.

It's actually really unclear what the correct numbers for Sleet and Freezing Rain "should" be. Freezing Rain is 35% on Defenders and 30% on Controllers. Sleet was cloned from the Controller version of Freezing Rain when Cold Domination was released for Corruptors. Then when it was back-ported to Defenders the numbers weren't adjusted. Thing is, 30% wasn't 75% of 35 to begin with. 75% of 35 is 26.25%. The fact that it is currently 30% is an oddity in part because most sets that used psuedo pets werent adjusted at all. Storm was adjusted but they used the wrong number. 😄

This seems a touch dramatic. The numbers match other AoE -Resist powers exactly. Anyway I'm of the mind that the developers of a resurrected server can change whatever they want. The source code is out there for the pure preservationists. I'd personally much prefer this updated version of CoX to the literalist version, stuck 8 years in the past.

I don't think the update to Tar Patch is harsh or unfair. The AoE -Resist in Thermal, Time, Sonic Resonance and Radiation has always been -22.5 on Controllers , Corruptors and Masterminds. That's the "correct" value for those archetypes and those sets have always been fine. I always assumed that the bigger values from borrowed psuedo pets were provisional and if the developers ever had reason to revisit those powers they were subject to correction. Given the updates they are making to the overall pet system it makes sense to me that that time is now and it I understand why they wouldn't want to reintroduce what was originally a technical workaround.

The fix to psuedo pets is exciting to me actually. It actually makes it easier now to glance at a powerset and know how it scales across the archetype. The original system where some psuedo pets were adjusted and others not was a mess and I won't miss it. I do wonder how Tornado and Lightning Storm will fare. Does this mean they can Scourge? If so, bring it on. I also assume this change makes it easier to carry flags like Domination over from caster to pet, which is very useful and the reason I assume they pursued this.

Interesting updates, thanks for sharing. The only power I think can that has a long-duration +STR effect that includes Defense is the Radial side of the Clarion Destiny tree. I imagine that will be grandfathered in or else adjusted. For a visual, here's what Destiny Clarion + Power Boost does to my Dark/Time Controller's Defense. Left side is base Defense of the power (2 defense IOs) right side resulting Ranged Defense. His base Ranged Defense is 0. I do hope you plan to keep -ToHit as a Power Boostable effect. The effect is strong too there but IMO fair.

Usually I see Conductive Aura frankenslotted with End Mod/Accuracy for the effect it has on mobs. The +Recovery it gives you isn't much of a factor.