DrRocket

At this time one can only set in auto a single power, which in the early days of the "Live" era was sufficient, and usually Hasten was the most favored one to put on auto queue. As the game evolved, especially with the incarnate system, there is a strong desire to have a number of powers on auto, to allow th eplayer to actually focus and enjoy the game as opposed to be mechanics or click button oriented. This would be in my opinion a nice Quality of Life improvement. A sample of powers that would be of interest to have on auto at the same time would be Hasten + Status Effect Protection (Scrapper builds) + Incarnate (Destiny) I do realize that some scrapper secondaries provide the status protection defense as a toggle, but that is not all of them. I researched, experimented with macros via the powexec_ (Auto, Toggle_On, Name) to try to get to non-interruptable/non toggle powers, but could not get the two powers to fire-off, also the macro icon could not be placed on auto, which also defeated the intent of the macro. Of course if anyone of you figured this, then please post what the command would be or how to accomplish the concept of putting on auto upto 3 non-toggle/non-interruptable powers, so I could very gratefully apply. V/R

The comment of the controller not really seen as a solo class, has been with other support classes a deep philosophical issue since the early live days. A lot has to do with personal gaming preferences, and thus the begining of inter-personnal conflict. There are the team oriented perspective, and thus intolerance towards the Solo perspective; and the reverse is true. I dare say, both sides can make rather valid and interesting cases, incidentally. For myself, I like to both play in teams and to be able to solo effectively. I don't see the reason or why they have to be mutually exclusive. Lately the Defender's vigilance a semblance of compromising in this philosophical trend. Here is an Archtype that it's best primary powers does not affect the character, imagine a tank who gets no armor/resistance bonuses but the team gets them instead? And then the secondary is nurfed by 50%! Are there any other Archtypes whose secondary is nurfed in this manner? So enter a band aid fix, Vigilance, if the Defender is alone their damage is nurfed by 20%, its a start towards solo effectiveness, and in a full team they are nurfed by 50%. I have an issue with it all together, there should be no nurfing at all, for instance I have a Storm/Dark defender, the main contribution is debuffing the enemies' accuracy, please explain how nurfing the dark attacks by half is beneficial to the team? what is the rationale or logics behind such a nurf? how does this encourage the storm defender to be more team support oriented? I would think, if they could do full damage they would be supporting the team a heck of lot better! Since this is a controller and friends thread, there is a solo and team component to the issue. From a solo or even on a team perspective, there has to be some kind of adjustment. With bosses having mag 12 ( I think) resistances to effects and controller attacks have in the norm mag 3 attacks with slow recharges, while mag 1 have quick recharges, it would take many rounds before a boss is held. So far the math is elementary. When solo this math is deadly, for the boss can with a quicky MAG 1 status effect take the controller out of action not sure there are any strategies and tactics that can consistently overcome this situation (yes an inspiration addict to play the game solution, is a band aid not a real fix, if this is so good, why not reduce the tanks resistance and make them dependent on tough inspirations to survive?). Staying solo, the damage is so comically low, that a poor controller is out of endurance after hitting and hitting a LT and really sucking wind with a boss! In teams, it is not as bad, given you have a tank or brute with strong AGGROE abilities, lately these tanks/brutes there is an increasing trend to augment their damage at the expense of aggroe magnitude, this results with the poor controller and friends drawing aggroe. The controller has zip for inherent power status effect protection, and not much in the area of defense and damage resistance (these massive handicaps are mitigated at higher levels through the IO and incarnate system though) but while leveling, it just means that your controllers are going to bite the dust a bit too often, when playing take alook of who is dying and you will see it's the support classes doing most of it, and it is very unfair to accuse those players of not knowing what they are doing. Incidetnally when I play my Scrapper, I tend to remain away from the front lines and hang somewhere in between the front and support to provide protection to the support classes as I often see them stun/held/immobilized/disoriented, etc. and makes them incredibly vulnerable to any mob attack, the coverage becomes more critical if the main tank has weak aggroe abilities. For Soloing the Controllers need the real ting damage, and the endurance to make good use of it. In teams, tank/brute aggroe holding is simply not a given, they must have better MAG level powers, with lesser recharges if they hope to hold a mob before it closes the distance in between the controller and the mob, otherwise is what you see all the time, death for the controller. Usually the mobs even minions are spamming some kind of hold, immob. or what not. It is hard as a controller to survive in either solo or team environments, and because there is a group expectation (and solo need) for area effects, the opportunity to get huge aggroe is al too good even if the controller waited for the tank/brute to engage first. I do beleive the controller types do need help

I think the incarnate powers as they are provides incredible capability to any Archtype, which has the effect of making your character actually feel rather super in general. Adding more incarnate powers, would be cool, but would there be a chance that our super characters be a bit too super? There are many thoughts in my mind on how to make an Archtype better, but truly what is the end goal? Is it that any Archtype through the appropriate incarnate slotting can do anything as any other archtype can? I think we are almost there already, in fact. What would be next to improve? Give tank devastating ranged attacks, even a snipe? Give support types inherent status effect protections? Even though they can get "temporary" meaningful protection already through the destiny slot? A real risk with the incarnate system is that with any archtype being able to essentially do anything, is that it may be blending them in such a way that differentiation becomes difficult. Let me take a Brute for example, you can truly boost their damage (making blasters a bit redundant as proven by farmers every day), you can also choose to make their Status Effects much more powerful that they can easily rival a controller, all through incarnate slotting. Adding more boosters, would make this blurring across teh lines even that much heavier, i would fear. V/R

Good point, also the suggestion affects Archtypes disproportionally. The melee types are endowed with good resistances, so if they hit more often, so what? The support classes can get some resistances but never as great for obvious reasons, so when you apply this to a support type, not only they loose defense (their primary form of survivability) but you also hit hard the modest resistance they have, which is far more devastating to what would happen to the melee types. Maybe, the table shown with dfense and resistance penalties only affects melee types and a more "lighter" version used for support types? Once again the two table format, and use the OPs suggestion as a difficulty choice setting with badges would be appealing, and a good topic to be discussed by team members. V/R

I agree this would be a nice Quality of Life improvement

Darn it, I hate to be in the no side of arguments, even when they actually make sense. A recommendation like this would spell disaster to tankers/brutes holding aggroe for a team, and the end of farming all together. If a tank for instance in a full group is doing any TF, the number of enemy mobs attacking would reach saturation as described above and the tank will go down fast, very fast. The support archtypes are already very vulnerable, now you made them even more vulnerable when the AOEs are spammed in a normal battle. I am not sure an empath defender could keep up with heals for the tanker, and that is assuming that they are not mezzed by the flurry of AOE holds or what not. Today I enjoy the freedom of teaming we are experiencing today, have we forgotten in the "Live" days when the group composition for a mission was very much cookie cutter, you got to have a tank and defender or you have no team? I can remember the old days, when the team leader was begging for a defender to join the team and all of us waiting and pleading for example. Today we don't even have to have a defender or support at all to be successful, it sure helps make it more comfortable, but is no longer a must have. I, groan, remember being denied a group invite because I was a Storm Defender and not a real support type class. I do not want to go back to those days. Now that said, I don't disagree with the concept, but I would propose to have this as a difficulty option to be chosen at TF start and have special badges that recognize the achievement. V/R

This is a Quality of Life suggestion: When selecting the type of incarnate slot and item to fill it with, you have a choice of what type of ingredients needed to build it, but then you switch to convert and move away from the window, which either you write what you need or hold in your memory. I am old, so the memory thing is not a swift one. So why not when you get to the window that tells you the ingredients, next to it, it opens the convert GUI so that both GUIs are available? Its only convenience, not a do or die thing.

While I applaud the concept of greater challenge... Note nurf can be achieved by reducing what a player can do, or increasing what a mob can do. I do not support nurfing players, usually the nurfing tends to hit certain archtypes much harder than others, so the nurfing thing is just not a good idea. I do not support mobs that essentially either breaks the rules or exploits game imposed vulnerabilities. I do not support increase on challenge by taking it out on the support classes, for instance in the old days, the introduction of mez was that in the then days developers concept of challenge. This challenge was very uneven, especially for support classes that were left totally vulnerable/helpless to these attacks. Scaling the mobs, seems interesting, but the problem is the mixed composition of player levels, experience, and slotting evolution. Also how the scaling works or buff? Suddenly the mobs have better accuracy? Does condemming the support classes whose only practical survival mechanism is not getting hit? and yet have no impact at all on the resistance based classes? I believe trying to do this kind of adjustments to be very difficult, if not downright impossible in such a complex game. I would suggest difficulty could be done by actually having more different maps, so people have to figure their way thru. Another way to make things more complex are the uses of ambushes whose prevention requires careful planning to avoid (ITF) for example, instead of having defense debuffers, maybe having resistance debuffers may give a few archtypes something to fear, etc.

This is a good topic, not sure about the solution. It is my impression that some sets holds tend to be more effective than others, but it could be that some mobs have added resistances to particular attacks such as fire for instance. It would be interesting to evaluate how all the mez sets by controller and dominator are actually performing, and do first corrections to bring the performance of whatever set to a standard benchmark. I have a fire controller, and it seems the holds just don't take or are resisted, maybe the MAG intensities are too low or some mechanic is taking over which gives the impression of not working. But perceptions could be wrong as well. I do see the point of a poster of not making the game easier, the comment works great if you are one of those classes that powers line up for them, in the case of the controller and dominator that is not the case, they too have a heart and would like to feel they are truly contributing to the team and not just taking up space

I like the idea very much, especially if the IO can be placed in an inherent power such as brawl, sprint, leap, etc. This way the switch is not robbing the player from an IO slot that could very well be need to gain IO set benefits. I would applaud the concept of inherent powers being IO slottable if implemented, the only inherent power that can be IO slotted is sprint that I am aware of.

By now I have played many different archtypes now and during live, and have noted that endurance issiues at low levels are true for all archtypes but some seem to be more accute than others. At times, I figured it has to do with how much real damage you do to a target and the energy cost in doing so as the driving factor. I remember in th elive days, my defender guzzling through the endurance bar to just kill a white mob, then it was a retreat or quaff endurance inspirations to keep fighting, while with my scrapper it was hit bam, bang and done, which resulted with modest endurance consumption. In today's reload, I feel the Homecomming developers have really done alot to make the game more playable for fun sakes than for grinding. Travel in the live days was horrid, now you can buy incredibly good travel abilities, teleports to missions, and more. The game is now less grindy and actually I can focus more in enjoying the game than being a meter-made. I also remember at low levels, there was a huge need for more attacks since many of the support classes damage was akin to a wet noodle, and they would strike for litle effect a mob and then wait to get a chance to get to use their wet noodle again, now with all the prestige powers you have an ample number of attacks both melee and ranged to indulge yourself. To me those are great Quality of Life improvements. I know that endurance at 50+ incarnate is a non-issue, but it sure suxors for many players wanting to enjoy the game and their character is continuously detoggling or gasping for edurance. Some classes their endurance woes comes from the large number of toggles they must utilize to attain a reasonable level of performance, perhaps a reduction on endurance cost on toggles would be appropriate. Some classes their endurance woes comes from the low damage output of the attack and requires many, man uses and thus perhaps a reduction on endurance owuld be appropriate.

To be sincere, my post was mainly as a reaction to what MIDs and clicking on the powers button in game is telling me, when I saw reasonably good defenses, I went good deal, but when I checked on resistances and saw Zero in just about all forms of damage but Psionic, alarms went off. For I view survivability being a combo between defense and reistance to damage. When I play my widow, I find it to be an odd experience, at times I can jump in behind the brute, ensure all those wonderful buffs are covering him, and then I go about reducing the mobs about him (I do not use AOEs by the way, because I am making sure I steal aggroe away from the Brute or Tank). The attack sets are a very nicely balanced between ranged and melee that are a distinct pleasure to use. When it gets to status effects, I am up there with the tank, which are exceptionally good since I am not an aggroe magnet. But then at times something odd happens, and start getting hit, not a lot to be sincere (yet enough to go down very quickly if I don't react quickly), but my health bar significantly drops on a single hit. The class gives me no relief buttons to push for a quick heal, so it's inpiration time. Once I get tagged, its inspiration time and trying to get the heck out of dodge, normally I do manage to leap and get around something out of sight as the pre-programmed attacks are pounding me; and barely survive, as I said most times. But it is the significant decrease of hit points at my health bar from a single hit, that has me concerned, usually my widow is a three hit death if I don't get out of harms way very quick and pop several green inspirations. This is the reason for the suggestion, perhaps as a less than cordial commenter blurted, I need to learn how to play the class better, does has has some truth to it, but frankly I don't think my approach to the class is that much of a neophite. This said, I am very open to advice on how to play the class, and even IO slotting it. Thank you to those who have been constructive and have gifted me with knowledge

I support the idea to allow a stone granite tank to have some jumping capability as opposed to none. Perhaps let it work like a debuff instead of a binary approach to it.

You make a good point, but similar situations do arise during TFs where as of lately I see many Brutes undertaking the traditional role of the Tank, which as an ancilliary player in such groups, I feel they do resonably good enough, but they are not tanker class good. In a TF the number of mobs they have to hold aggroe can be fantastic, and the rate of punishment they endure is quite comparable to farmer class of punishment suffering, perhaps worse because there is a greater range of sources of damage. In my experience for a brute to achieve across the spectrum of damage resistance for sources is actually very difficult for a Brute to achieve (not sure it is even possible); at the end the Brutes choose about half of them to be really resistant to and then go survive, reducing the resistance cap on brutes would be simply said, cruel. With regards to increasing them to Tank level hit points, would break the archtype description that places them somewhere between tanks and scrappers. Remember that compromise is what justifies the brute's damage output. I give you this, interesting tweak, but not sure if it would be a good one overall, would support some beta testing of it though.

Hey folks, really thank you for all the responses and documentation that came with them, it truly helps me understand the game beter and to adapt to the various sitations as well. Once more my gratitude.

Fantastic suggestion, as I said, I was looking for a solution for an SG composed of Alt-O-Holics players, Just about everyone in the SG I belong to has at least a dozen alts, even at 300 it does not take long to fill up. The suggestion was more in the lines of a primary holding company with subsidiaries, where the SG is the holding company, and then each SG members' own SG that holds all their alts would be subsidiary. In the real world, the subsidiary companies have access to the main company communications, so it would be for the subsidiary SGs. The problem with coalition solution, beyond requiring a discipline to use the coalition channel, is that it does not differentiate between allied SGs and the SGs formed by members who hold their many alts. I think a mechanic where the count is based on the account and not the player is rather good idea, like the OP not sure about how difficult it would be to implement. Would welcome the concept that SG shows handles and the current alt being played at the time. This way the player when playing any of their alts, has access to SG chat and can freely participate in SG activities. Difficulties with my suggestion if you want to have alts in different SGs, or some not in an SG at all. Not sure how to work that issue.

I do stand corrected, and you have my appreciation for it. I am also very grateful that you gave me samples and explanations that gives me an opportunity to learn. To expand in the psionic and toxic comment, I noted it as pragmatic, and I also noted that for analysis purposes, that they ability had to be across all archtypes and not where one could fish out a few out of the dozens of available archtypes and be able to check the box. For the resistance to be effective, there should be a relative ease to achive the archtype class cap whatever they may be. For example, I noticed for Scrappers the ability to cap defense in both positional and typed all over, is rather easy, while a bit tough for a defender to achieve and usually they are only positional and nearly impossible to accomplished typed. I do conceed that any archtype could use these IOS but the problem for many is that the only way to get a chance to slot resistance based IOs is through tough and maybe an epic pool power, so they can't build it up to have any significant relevance, lets face it 17% resistance is pointless. With regards to debuff resistance once more you are right, you can buy IOs that help. On the otherr hand there are no powers that provides it. Take a tank or scrapper, they have one or more powers that gives them status effect protections, and resistances, yet debuff goes unacknowledged. Once more thank you for your response, and sharing of yuor knowledge

I would say it is somewhat of an interesting proposal, when you look at the Sentinel, it is in fact a Blaster that gave up range but gained status protections and survivability powers. Your Guardian is similar in concept to the sentinel with regards to the Defender, thus you have a defender with no ranged secondary, but has gained status effect protections and survivability powers. I am not sure, I would wish on any Archtype the damage nurf Defenders have to endure. Despite the other posts, I believe your suggestion does have merit for consideration. For wehat it is worth...

Interesting proposal, but not sure it is a good idea, and this is why Say you do increase HP, so things gets better, but reducing the damage resistance cap may not seem much of an issue when you are engaging one or two.... but sadly there is a but! When you take the good ole brute farming, they are taking on about a over a dozen mobs, and they are getting hit, and with reduced damage resistance, the modest increase in hp will not last long under those conditions. As a result, in my opinion, the Brute would be less survivable because the hit point lass per round is greater than the gain in regeneration and possibly in that very same round the loss of hit points could be greater than the increase of hitpoints..

By now many, for better or worse, have seen posts by me asking for change which could be viewed as good, bad or indifferent. My Systems Engineer's view of a sense of balance can be easily go along Newton's law of physics "For every action there must be a reponse of equal magnitude in the opposite direction" It is not a bad rule of thumb to follow for just abut anything you design and to be mindful of. So when I look at this game there are attacks, which comes in various flavors, and thus under Newtons' law of physics there must be a corresponding defense, resistance, and protection. Why is this important? When I began many, many years ago, I played Dark Age of Camelot which is a very good PvP game at the time, unfortunately the faction distrubution in the server was heavely unbalanced, thus the developers decided to achieve battlefield balance to make up for numbers to give the minority faction especial attacks that came to given players "I Win" buttons. Of course if you were the player with the I Win button that was great, if you were in the receiving side, it was not so good. The "I Win" buttons were so powerful that no one could conceive a good tactic to overcome them with the exception of a mass surge to the overpowered oponents, within a month, I terminated my account with DAOC and began playing CoH. So if you observe at many of my posts I have been honestly snipping here and there at symptons to a problem I see in my opinion. So in this post what I am trying to do is to establish a context. In the game there are in general three forms of attacks: Damage, Status Effects, and Debuffs So we have have an action: Attack, There must be a reaction just as significant to have balance. In a balanced world the reaction would be composed of Defense (avoid being hit which is balanced by the attack's accuracy which helps you hit), Protection (think of true armor) and resistance (damage mitigation, under armor padding) With the above in mind, lets take a look at the three attacks from an overall all archtypes perspective in the most conservative manner (that is take the hardest requirement, and don't go with the one class exception has it thus there is no problem) Damage: 1) Defense available except when attack is non-positional in nature thus breaks the Attack accuracy and dodge balance 2) Protection as in true armor platting concept not available, possibly an unbalance situation, need to look at big picture before making a resolution 3) Resistance is available against all attacks, yet pragmatic resistance to Psionic and Toxic is not present and thus an unbalance. Past this unbalance the concept that resistance can go as high as 90% can mitigate the lack of protection. Note 1: The various archtypes havfe different magnitudes or caps to resistance, which is fine as long as it is not binary (some has it and other does not) and they do make sense from an archtype perspective. Examples based on MIDS analysis for instance Tanks have a 90% resistnce cap, while I noted that Defenders have a 70% resistance cap which is fine, would be nice to see the resistance caps published, to allow further analysis. Status Effects: 1) Defense available except when attack is non-positional in nature thus breaks the Attack accuracy and doge balance 2) Protections is binary in nature, thus pragmatically unbalanced in a sense. Tanks for instance enjoy MAG 12 which is rather good, while Brutes and Scrappers enjoy MAG 8, other archtypes have zero; this does not make sense from a balance for those archtypes do not follow Nweton's law, I would suggest a MAG 4 protection to be more in line that follows the numerical sequence (12/8/?) and still observes the differences between the archtypes. 3) Resistance is available to all archtypes, for some it is easier to raise than others, but it is fine from an archtype differentiation perspective. Psionic and toxic resistance acquisition is much more difficult than the others and could possibly be viewed as unbalanced. Why give PvEs and some Archtype classes "I Win" buttons? Debuffs: 1) Defense is available except when attack is non-positional in nature thus breaks the Attack accuracy and dodge balance 2) Protection is unexistent, potentially very unbalanced 3) Resistance is unexistent, combined with absence of protections, there is a clear unbalance. Note: I have noted that some mobs seem to have a resistance or be impervious to debuffs, not positive if this statement is true but it is just a feeling so it does not truly count. Suggestions: Debuffs should have a mag value, just like status effects, and archtypes should have debuff protection as described in status effect section of this post. Would suggest to keep matters simple that "Hold" status protection could be used as the means to protect from both holds and debuffs. Taking this a step forward, use the "Hold" resistance as the means to mitigate the effects of both holds and debuffs A final observation, the use of a band-aid approach is not really acceptable to regain balance, for example using inspirations as a band-aid is not good design and breaks the entire concept that inspirations are there for that emergency moment that seldom happens as opposed to the must have it in order to survive every single battle an archtype may enter in. I have mixed feelings on the use of power pools as a solution to unbalance situations, but coding wise may be the most practical way to go about it, of course this article may result with major reqork or updates of the pool powers. Please think of the concept I am trying to explain, and please contribute constructively to this concept. It is great if proposals on how to solve a problem or two can be made that have easier implementations, etc. Thank you

I feel your pain, but yet in an ideal world, yet because we are not in ideal world it does not mean we should not strive for perfection... Every form of attack should have a form of defense and protection, in my opinion that is a true balance. The moment exclusions or exceptions occur the chance for an unbalance in the game to occur becomes rather likely, the game is so complex it pretty much guarantees it. It does not matter if the attack is a status effect, debuff, or plain damage the recipient of the attack should have "defense" to avoid being struck by the effect and "protections" to mitigate the effect regardless of archtype. I do support the levels of defense and protections should vary between Archtypes, but they do not need to be binary in nature but shades of gray. Take status effect protections for example, either you have lots of it or none, which I think is inappropriate from a design stand point. While a tank has MAG 12 protection and Scraper/Brutes/Stalkers (samples) have 8, the rest have zero; this is a sample of binary thinking; why not let the support classes have MAG 4 protections? Think of the sequence 12/8/? obviously the next number in the sequence is 4. When it gets to Debuff, it is broken no doubt about that, player debuff attacks are usually a sub effect of an attack in most cases, thus you must have a "hit" component to the power and thus the victim have an opportunity to dodge the attack (defense) unless of course the attack is non-positional and the attack automatically hits (see what I mean about broken system?), then to make matters worse, the second half of the balance system does not exist at all, there are no protections similar to the MAG system for status effects nor resistances to reduce the degree of the debuff and its duration. I would support that debuffs should come with a MAG value and perhaps the same MAG defense system used for Status effects be utilized, thus a Tank would have a MAG 12 protection against debuffs, and would take a bunch of hits to add up beyond 12. Resistances to Debuff could be arbitrarely matched to a particular resistance that already exists, for example a psioninc attack with a debuf would be resisted by psionic resistance, and dark could be resisted by energy resistance for example. But I do acknowledge there is some ferocious coding ahead to balance out the world in this respect. In the same vein, Hold MAG protection could be used for debuff protection for example in order to reduce the large amount of coding and recoding...

Please read the context for the suggestion... You may have a different opinion then. Just saying

Awesome! Thank you

This is a Quality of Life suggestion I for one, and not alone, can be accused to be an ALT-O-Holic, is there a class and combo set, yeap, I am going to build it and raise it up. This said my main problem is that SGs have a limited number of character slots that can be a member of the supergroup. If I have 20 alts, and others to, the supergroup would only have like 5 players total, which defeats the purpose of having an SG. A solution to the problem maybe to increase the SG size to have several hundred membership, or do something else. Since I have so many alts, I created an SG for them so I can store stuff and share among my alts without using the email system, the real reason I did the base incidentally, and then do a coalition with the SG as a player want to "operationally" be in. The problem is that players in the SG talks in SG chat and not in coalition as a practice, so if I am playing one of my alts that are not in the SG, I do not get to hear and contribute to normal SG traffic. Thus the request, could there be a special say Coalition Plus arrangement, thus being able to read and write in the "host or main" SG, thus rendering the personal SG a bonafide extension of the main SG. Only a thought

Rune of protection is a new one for me, appreciate the advice, can you tell me more about it? is it an IO that any class could use? Sounds like an awesome solution to me. In general I don't have issues with debuffs, as long as they require a "to-hit" and are subject to resistance. Otherwise, you may be correct that I may object to those powers with the only difference being that I don't advocate, as suggested, to delete the powers but enforce a balance, in short for every attack there is must be a capable defense. Thanks for the advice