Galaxy Brain

February 1, 2021

Edit:

Awesome job on this!!! Only thing that would be awesome to add is a dropdown or even page with all the Power Categories listed out. For example, I can get to here:

But I do not see an easy way to get a list of all Power Categories if I were to look up various enemy groups?

February 1, 2021

11 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Granted, that'd be an incredibly inefficient and downright stupid way to do it... but ya could.

I do think this sentence could be highlighted a bit more, as what some people have been pointing out is that changing balance would just shift targets on the next best risk/reward thing.... Well, until Fire Farms are nuked from orbit I think any concern about that is out the window when it comes to "normal" content.

February 1, 2021

38 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

I think there's definitely an issue with deciding on a limiting principle.

In terms of Achilles' Heel, my suspicion is that if you did try it, it wouldn't significantly alter your results. AH is primarily of use on long, ST fights (AV/GM), so it's not going to substantially alter the speed you can do mixed AE/ST content like your tests.

Damage procs are also probably outside of your concern. While 'proc monsters' are common with Defenders and other low damage AT, they just don't have the payoff over straight slotting for Blasters due to the relatively high base damage. If you look at the best Blaster builds, you'd be hard-pressed to find the kind of ridiculous franken-slotting you see with Defender builds. Given this, it's reasonable to argue that Radiation being able to slot 2 more procs/power than Fire isn't a meaningful distinction since they'll be both be straight-slotting those powers and just getting whatever procs naturally come with that approach. The cost of being a 'proc monster' as a Blaster is simply too high, so we can ignore the complexities it might bring to your analysis.

I think AH may actually have a bigger factor than we may give credit for given there are several mandatory boss fights + an EB fight in the test mission. With several sets that ended up being where they slowed down.

For damage procs, I didn't plan on proc-monstering but more looking at the comparison of who can slot what. As a Blaster, end redux could be replaced by an extra proc on some powers if they can take it with all the recovery we have, and then you start eyeballing 1 damage proc on Rad Blast + normal slotting vs Fire Blast which cannot take any "extra" procs. Not only can certain sets take different procs, but the chances of them firing differ for many powers set to set.

38 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

But Knockback is different.

As you noticed, powers like Energy Torrent are wildly different in character from their native versions and the knockback-suppressed versions. Likewise, Force Feedback is a core justification for many sets because it doesn't just make one power better but has an impact across your entire build. Consider Fireball vs. Explosive Arrow. They're virtually the same power, except that Fireball does 35% more damage and Explosive Arrow does KB (that needs to be suppressed to make it useable). But on a perma-Hasten build, simply having Explosive Arrow in your arsenal with SA/FF means your entire build is running 25% faster (if you can find enough targets to regularly blow up).

Ask yourself this question: "Which does better AE damage - Fire Blast or Archery?". If you just look at the base numbers or SO builds, the answer is easy: Fire. I don't even need to go through a blizzard of math to convince you Fire is better AE than Archery because you already know it - and you probably knew it long before you ran your tests. But if I ask the same question in the context of FF/SA, the answer is probably reversed. The massive recharge bonus doesn't just make Explosive Arrow better, it makes the entire rotation better as well as lowering the recharge on abilities like Aim/Build Up.

Almost no one chooses Radiation Blast due to Achilles' Heel and the +2 procs/power. But the FF/SA possibilities are central to why players choose certain sets.

The question for me is not so much who is better, but rather how much is X better over Y. For example, if you could proc out your Rad Blast character a bit + normal slotting, and it is like within 15% of the top builds then I'd say "oh cool, this isn't the best but it's in the ballpark". If it's like, 50% worse then we have issues.

February 1, 2021

1 minute ago, golstat2003 said:

I don't consider newspaper missions/radio missions to be end game. Especially since they grant 0 end game level rewards (incarnete nor merits).

Newspaper/radio missions are meant to be quick throwaway missions of no consequence. It's fine if teams breeze through those.

Though if they want to buff council IN TFs/SFs/Trials, sure.

I guess I should rephrase and say at end-level, not so much end-game.

February 1, 2021

1 hour ago, Gatling said:

I will say, this is definitely why I made sure to point out /energy. I have absolutely no issues with end draining. SC is over 100% by default WITHOUT Power boost, and enemies who have end drain resistance cannot stand up to the power boosted version.

This is false. SC at base is -35% end drain. With essentially max enhancement, it can be boosted to about -70%. Very few enemies in the game outside AVs have specifically end drain res to boot.

1 hour ago, Gatling said:

I do not use Voltaic sentinel or Tesla Cage.

This is where I strongly feel COH Cannot be judged appropriately on a primary set alone. Secondary's especially secondaries like Energy Completely replace these Powers from needing to be used. They're single target and low reliability.

It cannot be judged 100% alone no, but you have to look at the pairings. Every other blast set "works" paired with every secondary, but Elec Blast essentially NEEDS 2 secondaries else it doesn't "work". If elec blast is "bad" unless you go out of your way to pair it with only 1/7th the available secondary sets... that is an issue.

1 hour ago, Gatling said:

Also if you're talking Number crunching, This is where stuff gets even more convoluted. Because COH isn't just theory crafting, it's practice.

Lets remove Complications for now as I am writing this during works lunch break and i'm running out of time.

Elec damage has a huge bonus (And also technically a huge negative) to its damage, as it is ALL energy damage. (excluding TB)

If you take a Base Ice blast vs a Base elec blast they do the same damage on Paper (same recharge time, same damage, same activation time etc). But in practice Ice does Less damage to most enemy types. Because Ice has smashing damage mixed in. Most enemies have higher smashing resistance than energy/elemental resistances. This gets even more pronounced with the tier 2 powers. Ice blast vs Lightning Bolt. Factor in that Ice blast has travel time vs Lightning Bolt does not, and you're looking at a completely different scenario for both blasters.

Positioning

Time to kill at certain distances

Damage received

DPS solo

DPS in groups

Keep in mind I'm not saying these things as if you do not know this. We all know this, but this is where things get so Murky the number crunching begins to go out the window.
Power interactions and synergy is one of the main driving forces behind Hero effectiveness.

This is true, for the T1 and T2 powers. Where it goes out the window though is when you look at Freeze Ray, Bitter Ice Blast, etc, in conjunction with the rest of Ice Blast's kit. The fact that elec blast attacks hit instantly is actually really cool, as is the pure energy Damage... its just that those X factors only apply on the "basic" attacks that all blast sets get while the rest is questionable.

1 hour ago, Gatling said:

Take Ice storm vs Ball Lightning AOE set up. (lvl 50 enhanced primary only)

Elec (+Aim):
Rush into group before AI alpha's
Short circuit + Ball Lightning
(You can also reverse this while hovering and Shortcircuit before they aggro and shortcircuit again after SC. Only really works with hovering or flight)

This will not only kill all the minions but end drain absolutely everything to 0. There is no massive alpha damage (This does depend on some Enemy groups. as some alpha very quickly and some like to stare at you). you are free to DPS.

Ice Blaster Cannot do this with their primary.

Ice (+Aim)
If you open with Ice storm. You WILL get alpha'd, and hit with a second volley. In a big enough group. You die.
If you open with Frost breath. You WILL get alpha'd and hit with a second volley. In a big enough group. You die.

ice Storm aggro's enemy on cast.
Ice storm into Frost breath has to be at a range where you can actually cone Frost breath.
This puts you at massive risk.
Blizzard also does this (but is strong enough to kill minions very quickly so its less of a risk, but bosses can still cut a Blaster down)

In a group however, this is absolutely not an issue.

I've failed pretty bad at quoting your posts but the above argument is: On paper things seem good, in practice it never really turns out that way. And in practice other blaster sets just have not delivered to the heights people have been touting.

P.S. Thank you for your concise and detailed explanations. While I do not agree with the conclusion, on paper the numbers are very well represented thank you. Maybe run with me some time on Torchbearer?

If you actually look at the base numbers. Power-for-power (For same type of powers) The base damage is the same.
then factor in resistances and then quirks. and you're looking at very similar numbers. Especially with how secondaries flatten that damage difference curve. Again, only fire truly has crazy DPS because of the fire tick chance and that is still included in the Over-all DPS so it isn't actually THAT crazy. And that is only in small groups or solo, because in large groups Killing a group in .3 seconds with one team configuration vs killing a group in .3 seconds in another is not a good way to justify build snobbery.

Same goes for NOVA's. Killing 15 minions and Lieutenants and having 1 boss survive your Thunderous vs Killing 15 minions and lieutenants and having 1 boss survive your inferno. Is the same thing. Only Thunderous will also have the Boss standing around doing nothing. But in a group. that boss is already dead.

There is a lot of nuance that goes into it for sure, but as somebody who has run every blast primary with the clear intent to make them compete against each other across hundreds of missions.... Elec Blast has base issues.

Fire, Dual Pistols, Rad Blast, Water Blast, Archery, Beam Rifle, and possibly Energy and Dark Blast with adjustments (mitigated KB) all performed better than Elec Blast across multiple tests where I simulated x8 "team" content to measure offense, which included mobs + boss fights to test AoE and ST output. For defense, Elec Blast *NEEDS* to be paired with Power Boost or Power Sink to "work" in the split seconds where you are either fine or defeated, while other blast sets can either out-damage it in AoE or have better immediate side effects like Knockdowns/ToHit/Slow. The ST damage is also very poor in practice, though in longer fights it does have an edge if you can maintain the drain.

Its weird, come to think of it the set relies VERY hard on SC to do it's thing while the rest of the attacks really do not do much when it comes to Sapping, and since Sapping is really only relevant when enemies are at 0% for extended periods it turns into that synergy catch 22. Its ok, awesome even that Elec/ pairs amazingly with /Elec and /Nrg, but it is not cool that it in contrast flounders with other secondaries by comparison while all other primaries can basically do "their thing" without *needing* synergy.

I am not saying elec is *awful* by any means. It's a blast to play when it works, and especially paired with Elec or Energy as mentioned in the OP. Like I said, my main for a long time was an elec3 blaster! However, it is a shame that Elec blast is one of the few sets in CoH that gets kind of shoehorned into needing synergy while other sets are in the camp of "oh cool! We synergize and it's better" instead of "oh, I need to pair this with something that clicks else it is worse". Those both sound like two different ways to say the same thing, but the difference is there.

On top of this, Elec's AoEs tend to take a bit more time to apply their damage due to DoT's, and the lack of a "true" 3rd blast hurts the set (Tesla Cage buff pls). Sparky is unreliable as you said, and the end drain is super focused on one power. Honestly the set could get by with basically "Number Tweaks" where:

Tesla Cage buffed to be a "real" attack. Even if it's similar damage to the T1/T2 that'd be a big boost.
Voltaic Sentinel should be more user friendly. The guy works when he works, but the short timer + long cast time (on a power that is perma out of the box) is compounded by how he likes to target random people / has issues following you around. Either it should just last way longer/be a toggle, or maybe allow multiple of them and keep the other downsides.
the DoT application on the AoE's sped up a tad (3s and 4s for Ball and SC, shorten those by half?)
End drain across the set should be more consistent, or at least offer more "Key Drain" powers. Thunderous is awesome here but is not up all the time, SC is up more often but you gotta get closer / animation time / you still need another power to pair with it. If Elec Blast's "Aim" was changed to "Charge Up" or something, where it lost some +ToHit in exchange for +End Mod that'd be cool, or even take away some of the end mod from SC and TB and give it to the other powers so that combined it makes more sense?

To me it just feels like a set that's *almost* there.

February 1, 2021

25 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

Fair point.

I think part of what troubles me is that eve with all of the qualification on what the ranking of powers is meant to indicate some chunk of the populace is simply going to hop to the last pages and walk away with, "X good, Y bad". KB->KD took Energy Blast from 9th to 2nd. But perhaps its okay to stop there and leave it to players willing to go beyond the simple take away to see if they can push Energy Blast (or any of the KB sets) further up the list by milking Force Feedback.

The highlight is really my goal here with how I start these at SO-level, the performance-floor if you will lol.

However, the point with Energy is solid as it made an EXTREME jump, but it also had SA slotted literally everywhere compared to the other sets which had at most 2 powers slotted so it's kind of an outlier there.

February 1, 2021

12 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

Forced Feedback is as fundamental a shift to function as KB->KD. Moreover Force Feedback is dirt cheap on the AH.

I cannot think of any other IOs which stand to do so much for so little investment.

The difference is that FF adds power directly while Sudden Acceleration is sort of a side-grade, if that makes sense. You can slap FF over a Recharge enhancement and odds are it is straight up far better, whereas you need to give something up slot-wise to fit in SA unless it's Overwhelming Force.

If I open the door to FF, then Achille's Heel, Damage Procs, etc are on the table too.

February 1, 2021

13 hours ago, Hjarki said:

I'm not sure if you included it, but you might include Force Feedback in your KB adjustments. On single target attacks, it's nice enough - but on AE attacks, it dramatically increases the cyclic rate.

Ok, so that opens the door to all IO's then?

February 1, 2021

1 hour ago, golstat2003 said:

/shrug. Still not seeing an issue here. I'm fine with one class of mob being the training wheel mob. There's more important things to worry about.

at end game level there should be no more training wheel mobs

February 1, 2021

What if we just buffed council.

Semi joke, semi serious.

January 31, 2021

Setting the hard cap there does far more harm unless there are downright overhauls to every defense set across the board (not just armors, straight up any power with +def) as well as defense bonuses.

Gonna be a hard pass just due to sheer complexity, let alone player reactions.

January 30, 2021

3 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

It actually makes AOEing them to death much easier too. lol

Tbqh, I do feel like there should be a slight something done about that. AoE is waayyyyy too valuable IMO, and having enemies that specifically mitigate it a bit could be nice where it gives ST specialists more to do and lets you swap tactics.

January 29, 2021

3 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

To be fair, that still leaves me with one tactic: kill 'em all.

Difference being they come to me to die rather than me going to them.

And that alone can be a big difference for a lot of sets!

January 29, 2021

15 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

I believe this is exactly why the waves in the Terra Volta Trial were speed/adjusted up. In the old days you'd just be sitting there twiddling your thumbs. Cut at least like 15 minutes from the length of the Respec Trial from what I recall.

Yeah! That and the Yin TF where its basically the same deal are actually super fun changes of pace where you're actually defending something. More missions like that (hell, revamp the citadel TF and have a mission halfway where you defend his database or something) and you'll be sure to find different strategies highlighted from builds and players who are not as adept at the "go go go!" Style

January 29, 2021

25 minutes ago, gamingglen said:

Except people hate those missions because they are not "broot smash!". I know of two, both in the Croatoa arcs: "stop 30 Fir Bolg from entering door" and "stop takeover of Salamanca" (save 3 mystics and protect from incoming Red Caps that try to interrupt the mystics' ritual). I like those missions because they are different, though they do seem to be a tad long.

I think the highlight is the reason they are hated, since its like 30 waves and there is a solid minute gap or more between the waves.

If it was something like "5 waves incoming!" and a 30s timer per wave before the next stacks onto you that'd be more exciting, but still break the pace of "we chase the bad guys" to "oh damn we're pinned and theyre coming!"

January 29, 2021

10 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

Until COH players learn the pattern again, and it's back to "muscle memory". But that's just the nature of adding anything new to mmos. Devs take months to add "it", players beat "it" within 7 hours. 😅

While true, it is all about increasing variety, which I think is what a lot of us really mean by "Difficulty". Most content right now is very same-y, and it leads to the strategies we have now + the meta where just raw damage is king, and building for self defenses on top of that. If there were enemies in missions that circumvented that with how they say, needed to be controlled in some manner else they're a pain to take down, or different objectives that require some coordination, etc, all these things can compound to make tasks more meaningful for more builds.

Certain builds are "bad" just by the context they're in. A mission where the goal is to hold a line would be amazing for sets that rely on setting up whereas today they often get left behind as a team blazes through a mission for example. Switching things up in that regard opens the door to more viability.

January 29, 2021

8 hours ago, Troo said:

Could just be dancing around simply wanting more content and a wider variety of challenges.

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Sure. Variety is the spice of life and all that. Changing things up to make them more interesting doesn't mean they have to be more difficult.

I think this is a good way to put it. By its very nature, "different" will be "difficult" compared to what we have right now. Anything that would make you change tactics from "mow them all down" may not be intrinsically harder from a mechanical level (choosing a specific target instead of shotgun blasting everyone indiscriminately), but the addition of different decisions with pros and cons would shake things up.

January 28, 2021

2 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

advertise a tf where everyone unslots their incarnate powers it is easy to see if that is done. there should be no problem filling such a team. If there are not enough people to make a TF with those rules, then changes to the game forcing that on people probably shouldnt be made.

This would be a good experiment for Incarnates, but going a step further and saying "hey, who wants to respec and run an SO only old school TF?" Would likely garner crickets unless we pull an oceans 11 style getting the gang together montage of folks lol.

Part of this points to what BZB said where the carrot has to be there. It's not even too alien a concept as the current difficulty sliders do give increased rewards for your efforts. Its just that the current power level of players exceeds the hard difficulty (level shifts especially) and the current hard enemies use some nonsense that ends up being more frustrating than "difficult". That of course leads to super lawnmowers buzzing down the most efficient content since it its not "worth" trying to tackle the tougher grass.

January 28, 2021

What if we all bought out white salvage right before they short, causing a squeeze?

January 28, 2021

On a Tanker:

20% def (all but psy) > 10% def

50% res (all but psy) > 25% res

Mag 10 KB/Mag 22 Stun/Sleep/Hold/Immob > Mag 5 KB/Mag 11 Stun/Sleep/Hold/Immob

43.25% DDR > 21.63% DDR

-65% rech > -32.5% rech

-30% dam > -15% dam

-10mph run speed > -5mph (going off mids atm I dont see the real numbers)

-10ft jump height > -5ft

On a Brute:

15% def (all but psy) > 7.5% def

37.5% res (all but psy) > 18.75% res

Mag 10 KB/Mag 17.3 Stun/Sleep/Hold/Immob > Mag 5 KB/Mag 8.65 Stun/Sleep/Hold/Immob

43.25% DDR > 21.63% DDR

-65% rech > -32.5% rech

-30% dam > -15% dam

-10mph run speed > -5mph (going off mids atm I dont see the real numbers)

-10ft jump height > -5ft

January 28, 2021

TBH, how would you all feel if Granite's stats were halved, both the good and the bad, but it allowed you to use some of the other earth armor powers?

January 28, 2021

1 hour ago, DSorrow said:

The only two types that could be expanded upon are preparation, but as we don't have the ability to switch between powersets or readily change equipped gear, any additional difficulty in preparation would probably be pretty much impossible to implement while retaining the spirit of CoH: keeping any team / powerset combination viable. This leaves tactics and strategy, so I would propose things such as:

more priority targets that need to be tackled in order to defeat the spawn quickly (Cimeroran healers, Sappers, Hamidon Mitos)

some targets that are either weakened by mez (= Def / Resistance toggles) or immune to taunt (dangerous to the rest of the team) to increase the value of bringing hard CC

branching maps with time limits: do you roll as a group to clear one branch faster or split into two to clear both branches at the same time?

STF type beefed up final bosses, but you're only able to deactivate some of their buffs, choose according to your team's strengths

Oh, and of course, additional difficulty settings, such as we have for TFs, with appropriate rewards.

Funny you post this just as I wrote up the one above showing how maps tend to keep people linear!

I think you're spot on in that the only viable way to add more difficulty is to add more strategy to the game as you advance. We have *pockets* of this like with Tsoo and CoT LT's in certain levels where you WANT to lock them down or defeat them first specifically before they can cast their awful -ToHit auras, more things like that that give players tactical decisions mob to mob would be great. The only issue is that these tactical enemies would need to have some layer of anti-cheese, such as huge amounts of AoE def or being Taunt-Proof/Resistant (an idea I really like that I've never seen brought up, berserk enemies that will need to be hard CC'd or Defeated since they bounce around) else the problem of "my numbers are bigger lol" puts things back to square one.

Even simple things in the maps like adding more hazards could be nice. A CoT map with lava you can yeet enemies into, or a locked door that needs keys on either side of the map or scouting to find, etc, etc , etc. There are a ton of options that are *possible* but would need to impact player decisions, not just stats.

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I agree with you, but I suspect that is because you, like me, are already post-reward. We either have everything we need or we know how to quickly get anything we want, so for us, any rewards at all are superfluous.

However, I dare to guess that the vast majority of players are always going to want rewards of some sort. And that makes sense to me.

I personally want rewards to be pared back because, as you say, this project went in the direction of easy player gratification and that's really not my preference. However, I'm not making the decisions, and I have to assume the current developers want something that they want to play, and that they feel most people want to play, and that is not destructive for the player driven economy.

Well, with the advent of DO's and SO's being seen from lvl 1, as well as the ability to upgrade slotted enhancements on the fly, the drops in the game are in a weird spot. Yeah, SO's will drop as the primary "loot" from lvl 25ish onward, and that's about it. You have this progression every ~12 levels or so from TO to DO to SO, but then it abruptly stops. Why not have common IO sets be able to drop past lvl 35 or so? Something like you're playing, defeat an LT, and there's a 25% chance they drop a yellow IO into your inventory instead of an SO. It'd make the IO system much more accessible as what we have now is *almost* that but with the added time sink of having to just /AH and grab your goods to make the thing.

I wouldn't advocate for that normally, but in HC we are already nearly at the point where they may as well be normal drops with how easy it is to make or straight up get certain drops.

Higher difficulty settings / tweaks in turn could influence these drops. Lets say Oranges or Procs don't drop in normal difficulties (at least to your tray, you could still get recipes), or even different enemy groups have different IO drop pools based on their theme / difficulty?

January 28, 2021

20 minutes ago, Neiska said:

Well, wouldnt it be a simpler thing to run teams with self imposed handicaps? Fewer people? No heals or support? No taunter? And so on?

Yes and no.

Yes, in that self-imposed handicaps have no limits or roadblocks. Want to unslot all enhancements and see how far you go? Cool! Want to skip/not use key powers? Go for it! No, in that you then have to get others to join in on that in the same way.

To me, personally, I think it is an issue if multiple characters on a team can solo the hardest setting in team content at a decent pace. MMs are weird here in that at base they can tackle some very hard stuff without super special builds... but slowly and with clear caveats. Newer builds can surpass that to where a member of the team can just fly off and do their own thing in a 4/8, 8-man team (I know I do it often on my Claw/Ea scrapper or my En/Time blaster). Sure, it is easier with team mates around but it doesn't feel as necessary in most missions I participate in.

However, like I mentioned before: everything is related.

In a given mission, there is usually a clear path from start to finish with few places if any to "break things up".

Looking at 4 random maps, (Large Rikti, Large CoT, Large Cimeroran, Large Office), there is pretty much always a clear path from start to where the main objective is with little variance. Theres a few spots with a branching option but the general flow sort of funnels everyone to the same spots. It's not like the Avengers movies where you see them really split into different groups at the same time to handle simultaneous threats.

Due to this, teams are sort of corralled into sticking together (not a bad thing) even if they "could" split up, often its just blazing ahead to the next group in the line and then as they fight, the other part of the team leapfrogs them, etc. This is far too fundamental a thing to alter for the HC team, but I think everything put together is what leads to the topic of IOs / Incarnates / Difficulty / Etc popping up so often.

January 28, 2021

57 minutes ago, Luminara said:

You're ignoring the history of Co*. How many missions were changed to use timers to prevent players from farming? How many critters have had their XP reduced because players abused the bonus they offered? Every glowie in the game had its XP removed specifically because players saw an opportunity to reap increased rewards with less risk, and they didn't just take that opportunity, they dosed it with roofies, bent it over and hammered it until the developers dragged them off of it. How many times have we been down this road, with anything offering a reward above and beyond the norm being taken out behind the wood shed and beaten into submission because players went to town on it? Do we really need another lesson?

TBH, that kind of went out the window with the AE. As long as players can make custom enemies and gain rewards from them, there's no content that will actually match the risk/reward/time stats. Luckily, that is self-balancing in that the farm maps/missions are so far removed from "actual" gameplay that it's basically another game itself and it immediately turns a lot of people off.

Going back to the comparisons of Council vs Carnies, it gets much more complex than Damage Types. Lets break down both groups at level 50:

Yellow = Bonus Acc

Blue = Mixed type attacks

Green = Yellow + Blue

Council breaks down with 8 different Minions, 5 different LT's, and 4 different bosses in a given mission. At x8, assuming a full team of players, the average group will contain 14 minions, 4 LT's, and 1 Boss group to group. Without going nutso looking into every single power, we can look at the ratios of damage from rank to rank as well as the base hit chance at even-level:

Minions are damage mod 1, base hit chance 50%
LT's are damage mod 1.5 (on average, LT attacks deal about 1.5x that of an identical minion power), base hit chance 57.5% (1.15 acc mod)
Bosses are damage mod 2.7 (2.7x stronger than an identical minion on avg) , base hit chance 65% (1.3 acc mod)

With this in mind, we can look at each attack and multiply it by the number of the rank on average, then divide it by the number of the rank in the group. Then, you multiply it by the rank's damage mod, and then the chance to hit you to get a final "portion" of incoming damage. For example, a Vortex Cor Leonis Fire is a minion, so there will be 14 of them in a group, but only a 1/8 chance of it appearing compared to other minions so it's Flamethrower power bumps up to a 14, and then down to a 1.75. Minions have a damage scale of 1, and a 50% chance to hit but the flamethrower has a 1.3 bonus accuracy modifier turning that 50% into 65%! 1.75 * 1 * 0.65 = 1.1375 as the final "Fire" contribution. Add those up, and then divide the result by the total and you get the following spread:

I'm kind of surprised by the sheer amount of negative energy damage that council pack, but to be honest Smashing and Lethal may as well be combined as IIRC there are very, VERY, few protective powers available to players that only protect against one or the other:

Lets do the same for Carnies:

While having less damage types, they do have a significant portion as Psychic which is an explicit hole for many builds and will need to be dealt with spawn to spawn, whereas the negative damage from Council has no sets with explicit weaknesses to it. Lets actually take a look at these enemy groups vs Tanker sets:

So uhhhhh, long story short here when factoring in the base Res/Def values it turns out that Council are actually Deadlier than Carnies on average, by about 1.1%. Two of note are Ice Armor and Rad Armor which had basically opposite performance vs either group.

This is only part of the picture though as that is just raw damage (and only 1 AT's mitigation of it), and even then this is just spit-balling SUPER hard since I am ignoring recharge/attack cycles, etc, since I was sort of laser focused on damage types. That also said, the ratios of damage are important to note as Council while seemingly only having a *small* portion more SL than Carnies have many more attacks with a SL element when it comes to defense. Since I stayed up in a rabbit hole doing this, I may not have accounted for that.

But that's not what matters between the two, the bigger issue is their special abilities.

Council have:

Council	39.85
Special	# per Group
Knock	9.2
Acc Bonus	6
-Speed	4.75
-Rech	4.5
Disorient	3.6
Self Resists	3.6
Self Heals	2.8
-Res	1.75
Hold	1.3
Immobilize	1.3
Sleep	1.05

Carnies have:

Carnies	81.77
Special	# per Group
-End	19
Exotic Resists	19
Disorient	8.83
Knock	5.3
SL Resists	4.83
-Def	4
Self +Def	3.5
Sleep	2.33
Hold	2.33
-Acc	2.33
-Dam	2.33
Phasing	1.83
Flight	1.83
Burns	1.33
Heal Allies	1
Immob	0.5
Summons	0.5
-Regen/Rec	0.5
-Rech	0.5

Their damage spread may be comparable in terms of theoretical proportions, but the share of special effects blows Council out of the water. In the meta sense that SL defense is easier to come by, on top of the plethora of nasty side effects that Carnies have I think it is safe to say that on the whole Carnies offer more challenges than Council at high level*.

*Interesting note, Council change radically based on level bracket and I'd argue certain brackets like 30-35 are far superior than the lvl 50 council due to their makeup.

January 28, 2021

@Brutal Justice, the 45% defense soft-cap is not worth changing directly at this time. Not only is it far too drastic a change for the playerbase as it would require changing the ToHit mechanics entirely, but IIRC would not be possible without some jank for certain ATs getting certain modifiers based on your suggestion.

That said, I get what you are trying to solve but this isn't the way to do it. The roles of Support and Control in particular are heavily affected by IO's due to the bonuses generally allowing you to become far more personally durable, which for many support sets greatly diminishes their ability to help a team in conventional means (healing gets devalued, +Def gets devalued aside from a buffer against -Def but that is weird, etc). It also lowers the need to lock down foes as much if they aren't gonna hurt too bad in the first place, let alone if you can just delete most enemies in the time it takes to apply controls.

This leads to a good number of characters feeling like they are just being dragged along in a good number of teams, which isn't alleviated by trying to find other teams since the cycle continues for a number of sets that don't offer specific types of force multipliers.

However, the solution to give these more relative value is not to widescale nerf most of the playerbase and mess with the most basic of base mechanics, mainly as that is treating symptoms and far more trouble than it's worth. Defense bonuses are sort of balanced around Def Debuffs existing, but by nature having a tiny chance to be hit in the first place it gets kind of counter-balanced + overwhelming offense can greatly mitigate the incoming hits in the first place. .... It's complicated. Taking away from players removes player choice and agency as they all just kinda get worse, its not like how in some games you can tackle certain challenges that are not the norm in order to get outside the norm benefits.

Speaking of, a chunk of the balance talk about IO's that gets greatly overlooked is how they are obtained. It's easier than ever to get a hold of IO's even if playing "casually" (I'll define this as maybe like an hr a day or less) due to a bunch of factors, but in general it is relatively low effort to grab up materials or items straight up with minimal research and investment. In the before times, despite being a "haves vs have nots", there did exist a level of investment behind getting to these power levels that has been greatly diminished. This is out of necessity for sure, but I do feel it has been a source of power creep that has thrown off the ecosystem of multiple power sets in unforseen ways. I have half a mind to just open the floodgates as it were and make IO's just a thing that drop / you can buy from stores outside very rare/special ones as at that point it would be a massive base lvl power boost to the players that would in turn allow the devs to make more interesting enemies that don't feel as insurmountable. Superpowered characters fighting superpowered enemies sounds like fun to me! Nerfing characters wholesale though does not, and simply makes the game worse.

Sign In

Profiles

Forums

Events

Store

Articles

Patch Notes

Posts posted by Galaxy Brain