Galaxy Brain
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Posts posted by Galaxy Brain
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43 minutes ago, Luminara said:
Neither of those enemy groups are any more difficult than any other group, they're merely perceived as such by people who build in specific and limited ways, those who focus exclusively on what's considered "common" and ignore everything else. There's more to the game than Lethal/Smashing Defense and burst DPS, and the challenge represented by any particular enemy group is not a universal constant, rather a character-dependent variable. That was the purpose of using two different characters facing different enemy groups as an example. Each experiences different challenge levels when facing different groups.Trick Arrows characters struggle with Council, because Marksmen impose -Recharge, Warwolves completely ignore Slows and have Immob protection... and they spawn without the debuffs on their placeholder critters, forcing the TA to reapply his/her click debuffs mid-combat, and since debuffs have an animation time, the TA can take significant damage, or be defeated, before those debuffs are active. This is an example of an enemy group presenting greater than average challenge, despite being considered "easy".
It all depends on us. Not the groups, not even specific foes within groups, but us. The choices we make, the characters we play, the builds we design and implement. We create our own challenge level within the game. For every group someone says is "hard", there are plenty of builds available that make them easy. The obverse face of the coin is just as true, some of the "easy" groups are a pain in the ass for many builds.
I think we're looking at this in two different lights.
Yes, it is 100% true that certain builds or sets have an easier or harder time vs certain groups. However, you gotta look at the grand scheme and not just the exceptions. Lets say 5% of characters struggle inherently vs Council as it is just a bad match-up, as you described with Trick Arrow. Likewise, lets say 20% of characters struggle against Carnies as they are a bad match-up the same way Council are vs Trick Arrow. That same TA character could for example have a field day vs Carnies that an Invuln character shudders at, while the reverse is true vs Council. This doesn't change that on average the Carnies are more dangerous to more characters in this example scenario.
Lets take another example, where end game Banished Pantheon have a bunch of Cold Damage attacks + slow debuffs / other nasties. Does the fact that Ice Armor currently caps itself to Ice Res and Slow Res invalidate that endgame BP are much more difficult to tons of other sets? Circling back to Psychic damage:
5/12 armor sets, 6/14 when we include Regen and Ninjitsu (Regen's resist is smol + it actually greatly dislikes Psy damage because -Rech messes with clicks, so while it does resist it a little it still has a negative Matchup vs Psy I would argue, Bio has Psy Def which is not in the screenshot) equates to ~60% of melee characters specifically having a hole in their mitigation. On that alone, any enemy groups that feature Psychic damage on the whole are more dangerous than those without even if Dark Armor exists with it's massive Psy resist.
Yes, exceptions exist and they always will but in the big picture there also exists groups that are definitely more difficult than others across multiple builds.
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1 hour ago, Luminara said:
Should one of those enemy groups have an enhanced reward structure? Which one? Both represent a problem for one of the characters, but not the other. What justifies one of those groups being exceptionally rewarding, but not the other when they both present a significant challenge for different characters?
What you left out is that both of those groups present a challenge above the "norm". Yes, some characters handle them better than others, but a constant is that both of those groups present difficulties beyond your run of the mill enemy faction that gets beat down by everyone.
1 hour ago, Luminara said:This is the problem with just increasing the rewards for fighting one enemy group and not the other - you're not encouraging players to fight that enemy group, you're encouraging them not to play certain archetypes/builds. The reward increase has to be more granular and adaptive, or it's just a penalty for not playing the "right" character, or having the "right" build.
Alluded to above, I think it'd make more sense to have "Brackets" of enemies. Sort of like how there are some enemies that are villain of the day cannon-fodder, some are special episode enemies, and others are:
Something like Council/5th Column/Sky Raiders would be Tier 1 lets say. Groups in this bracket are the "baseline" where just about everyone is expected to beat them up.
Carnies/Malta/Nemesis could be Tier 2. Enemies in this group offer more exotic or simply better threats than T1. That is not to say some builds may have an easy time vs some of them, but they most likely are not good vs ALL in this group (like the example of one character hating Nemesis but loving Carnies, and vice versa). They give X% more rewards than Tier 1.
Banished Pantheon/Rularuu/IDF could be Tier 3. Enemy groups in this bracket are designed to be very dangerous to just about everyone, carrying harsh debuffs / special attacks / the works. Builds can be good vs this tier in some aspects, but it is unlikely they are "great" vs any of them. They give X% more rewards than Tier 2.
When it comes to soloing, you have the freedom to pick and choose who you go up against, so these are kind of moot. When teaming though, people usually opt for the lowest common denominator for speed/safety reasons moreso than strict "rewards", but it all factors in given all enemies are worth the same currently. If there were new brackets of enemies based on their "value", we may see more players suddenly curious about that Carnie Radio mission this time around as it will be a boost of Inf/XP/Drops instead of it being an auto-skip.
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I feel this is a good watch for everyone. It is not directly 1:1 relatable to CoH, but a lot of what this guy touches on is relevant enough to our conversations. Since I last checked in, there are a few points I'd like to address:
It seems like everyone is still assuming players are either "Newbs" or "God Tier" with no in between?
Just via sheer... I guess probability this simply is not the case. Yes, there are folks totally new to the game, just as there are those who have been veterans since Day 1 running around with the perfect build. Yes, there are players who are good enough to solo an ITF on SO's with no help and there are those who cannot solo to save their lives on a character that was built by a friend and tricked out. But for every one of these examples there is likely 4x as many people who fall somewhere in between all those extremes. This is a part of what my OP was aiming to address with trying to spitball a % of people who simply "used" IO's. Lets say the example with Miracle holds true and roughly ~47% or so of the active playerbase is buying this unique, powerful item. That is a very significant chunk that are engaged in the "optional" IO system, and it does not account for any overlap if say, 15% more people buy Numina instead of Miracle (a total of over 60% now), or the chunk who do not need to buy Miracle because they already have it, nor the chunk that will not be buying it for other reasons. I reckon there is a good majority of the playerbase who engage with the system "enough" to where it is worth a look into how they drop / balance from one IO set to another / etc.
However, the extremes of the Newb vs God Tier player will always exist, as will the differenced between the best and worst possible builds/etc. What the video above points out though is that while you do not and SHOULD NOT aim for perfect balance, you do want to keep an eye out for any "true" extremes that define player choices negatively. We had examples of both sides of the coin come up and get addressed in the last patch actually!
Titan Weapons and Energy Melee were both examples of a God Tier and Bottom Tier set that got adjustments for the health of the game. TW, objectively, was the best Melee Set by just about every conceivable metric outside of AFK farming. You want ST damage? TW. You want AoE damage? TW. You want a set that provided extra mitigation? TW. A set that even had a force multiplying power for teams? TW! Outside the learning curve to it (which was honestly slight, and you can put in the endurance woes under that bit) there was no real reason to roll anything BUT TW if you were looking for objective performance, which in turn would negatively impact build diversity. Fire Blast could be argued to be similar to TW but unlike that set it only blows other Blast sets away in Damage, it "pays" for that with being incredibly risky (inherently) unlike TW which could do everything almost for free. On the flip side, Energy Melee was a very underperforming set which had no real reason to be picked at all as other sets did it's shtick and more while also having other perks, making the set almost a "noob trap" of sorts if we're talking raw performance. The changes to EM carved a special niche out for it as the Single-Target king among melee sets, alongside the changes to TW shook things up and made a much healthier spread of "top performers" in that space. In a much more meta sense, EM being better and valuable could be argued to lower the amount of AoE output in teams for each EM player, which I'll touch on in a sec.
A similar point could be made about the Tanker and Brute changes a long while back which was definitely for the overall benefit of the game. Before that change, Tankers had harsh competition from Brutes which could essentially "do their job" while also dealing far superior offense. Instead of nerfing Brutes (they *technically* did but also gave them a HUGE fury buff so to me it's neutral), the buff to Tankers instead evened the playing field to where there are now meaningful decisions between the two AT's and healthy discourse instead of one of the AT's being almost defaulted to.
Who cares if other people do XYZ?
Another point being brought up is the question of what does it matter if people only want to do council radios, or if they want to build a certain way, etc? Well, it gets to a point where if single characters can solo the mission that your entire team is on no sweat... whats the point of teaming up? If you can get powerful enough to where teams are not required then it gets kind of fuzzy overall IMO. This is not even talking about the need of a Holy Trinity, as that is a definite strong suit of CoH, more just the general sense that you are not contributing to the team if there are one or two members who can just solo the thing.
This ties directly into what content everyone plays as well, and a good chunk of that has to do with rewards/time ratio. Players opt for council missions because they can be facerolled through more efficiently than Carnies/etc, plain and simple. This can be good fun for sure, but it sort of turns into the TW of content. If there is no reason to run other content because Council missions can just be done faster and safer for the same payout (outside of Merits, which has a healthy cycle thanks to strike targets), then odds are when you hop on to play your options can be to either solo or jump in on the council-bashing. If other groups were suddenly more enticing, not only would this shift what content players run on average but it would also shift the meta subtly. Builds that may not be *as* good at tearing through council may for whatever reason be better at tearing through Carnies than another that tears through Council, in a roundabout way actually *buffing* that build style by buffing an enemy group.
A good point touched on in that video is that how "everything effects everything" when it comes to balance. Buffing EM to be a fun, premiere ST set will change team content as one less member of the team is as AoE-centric, but at the same time contributes more to taking down singular hard targets and has a different way to engage in team content than the norm. Making Carnie content worth tackling opens the door to different powersets showing their strengths that are not normally given the limelight as more players tackle their missions. Giving certain enemies Accuracy (not tohit) bonuses but weaker damage per hit could make the defense meta shift slightly to not be as end-all be-all since you're still likely to be pinged every so often unless those guys (the rarely seen Sniper enemy?) get dealt with, etc.
I would not advocate for getting rid of Council PI teams ever. They can be a blast of mindless fun and perfectly scratch that CoH itch if you're just hopping on for a bit! However, its a problem when it becomes the *dominant* content that a lot of teams fall into, taking away opportunities from those who would like to see more of the game. Any time when the gameplay "Stagnates" due to overly dominant, or overly... bad options shift player actions is when balance should be looked into. It's perfectly fine to have a spread of effectiveness, but it's not ok to have a TW and a KM, or a Council Radio and Rularuu Arc in the same spreads with imbalanced effort/reward ratios that end up with options left to the wayside.
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My main on live was an Elec/Elec/Elec blaster that was a blast. I can relate to @TNT's experience where teams would actually take notice of my Sapping and Blapping, and it's awesome.
That said, as @Gatlingalluded to by mentioning me... it is a very odd set when you look at it by itself. My testing does not take secondaries into account on purpose to isolate just the primary performance and it sort of shines a light on the main issue with Elec: you *need* to synergize with it for it to work.
As @Coyote said, -End is all or nothing. So, if you have Elec/ by itself... outside of Thunderous Blast it's got nothing..... sorta
The graph above I made many moons ago and it details each Elec Blast power with 95% Damage enhancement and 33% End Mod enhancement. The left side shows the damage dealt, the right the % drained. In between is the % of damage dealt to each rank of enemy per power, if the portion is Green then you will deal more damage than you drain when using this power on an enemy, if it is Red then you Drain more than you Damage per hit. For most powers on a Blaster, you WILL kill Minions and LT's (the majority of enemies on screen) before you drain them if you do not have a 1-2 combo to drain with. On bosses and above, you will drain faster than you damage on average. Though lets break that down a bit more.
On average, Defiance will give you about ~15% sustained damage buff, lets apply that and look at the % values of the attacks you zap a boss with:
If you happen to have Thunderous Blast on deck and open with that, and you are mopping up the boss after with SC, then sure you will likely keep them pinned. But lets say you and just 1v1'ing a boss and dont have your very-slowly animating nuke on deck. Running through each power, Charged Bolts could be used twice and Voltaic Sentinel can fire about 4 times if it fires at the same time as your first shot, taking around 11.24 seconds total (ignoring arcanatime for right now), using Tesla Cage in there as well as Zapp Combat version, we're looking at:
54% damage dealt on Boss, 27% damage dealt to an EB in 11.24s
If you lead with SC, then you will deal 103% Drain to both within ~8s as Sparky will help simultaneously. If you do not lead with SC, it will take roughly 11.24s like above.
If you enhance end drain by 95% on all powers, the fastest will be in about 4 seconds if you have VS active as SC = Charged Bolts with VS hitting twice during that time should drain 101.4%.
Using some of the new Enhancement sets that boost End Drain AND Damage will pretty much get you somewhere between 4s and 11s vs a single target. Sounds great!
But, this requires you to land multiple attacks on a single guy in quick succession before you get your payoff, which with the best case still has a random 5% chance to fail, and at worst.... well you're working with Voltaic Sentinel who has ADHD if there is more than 1 guy in range and a limited duration + lengthy resummon combo. Time is the BIG factor here as you do need to survive for X amount of seconds vs a boss before your secondary effect kicks in, which depending on the encounter can be daunting. Remember, the purple patch effects all effects vs enemies so at +4 your Damage and End drain are reduced to 0.48x effect!
Other effects are available immediately and get better as you stack through a fight such as -Rech/-ToHit. On top of this, they are usually attached to sets with powers that deal a bit more damage per hit and/or animate faster than needing a 3 second close/mid range power to apply the effect / weird pseudo-pet. Comparing it to say, Ice/Psy/Dark Blast, all of those get immediately useful stacking debuffs per hit, on top of proper t3 blasts they can control AND mez blasts that deal real damage. They each also have more effects than Elec Blast does with Psy and Dark having AoE knocks that are up very reliably, Ice having movement slows and an AoE fear (kinda) to keep distance, and dark also having an AoE immobilize + a self heal alongside a comparable Nuke in Blackstar that at least hits faster than either SC or Thunderous Blast and applies -35% ToHit in an AoE even on a Blaster-Scale.
This is circumvented if you can pair Elec with /Elec or /Energy in order to stack Power Sink/Lightning Field + SC, or Power Boost and SC, but that makes basically every other secondary choice sub par for this one primary, while the other sets mentioned can enjoy them + the other secondaries just about the same if not more due to not needing a "Strict" synergy for their secondary/main effects to work, as well as bringing more to the table. In my latest test Elec did outperform Ice/Psy/Dark in x8 missions, but that was also while I was invincible and so the end drain and secondaries didn't matter... and at that point you'd shoot for higher offense.
As for End Drain's effect of "oh, 1 tick and they can do everything!", this is due to enemies not using 100 endurance:
I didn't include AV's in the other chart as their 85% resistance to Drain AND -Rec makes it silly, and the massive HP means everything would be like 1% lol.
What we see here with the different endurance amounts normally doesn't actually matter since all end drain we use is % based. Charged Bolts will drain the same portion of End from a Minion or an EB. What's different is actually what is the same funnily enough: Recovery and Endurance Costs. Enemies have the same recovery values and endurance costs for powers as we do, its just they nor only cycle through attacks slower but each tick of their endurance brings back far more fuel due to their different pools. Focusing on a Boss, each tick of their recovery is about 2x as strong as our's, so lets say if a player recovers 5 end they would recover 10, allowing them to use some of their bigger powers even with a sliver of end recovered. An Elite boss cranks that up to 8 times, with 1 tick giving 40 endurance and letting them use even the hungriest of powers. Below bosses don't really matter here as they should be dead before drained in most cases.
Well, that was longer than I thought but to sum everything up though, Elec Blast should be great on paper and it does have great strengths. Attacks generally hit instantly which is a rare perk, and when everything lines up it can do really cool things! Its just the on-paper version where you rely on Voltaic Sentinel + slow animating or bad DPA powers to accomplish these things can be tricky to say the least where other sets can be just as if not more effective given similar circumstances. Yes, if you pair it right this task becomes a lot easier but that is almost gimmick status to me where on the flip side elec is "Bad" if you do not pair it right.
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Actually, realized the "Radial" KB of explosive arrow may have issues too, as well as Umbral Torrent on Dark with the different cone lengths.
Archery KB = 8:40Archery KD = 7:50
Dark KB = 9:35
Dark KD = 8:39
Oh, and Sonic's Shockwave...
Sonic KB = 11:27
Sonic KD = 10:12
These all make sense tbh... over the course of 10 encounters in the mission sim, having KB make you have to take say 2-3 extra shots per fight would easily take up about a minute. Lets compare:
Wow, KD makes a HUGE difference when you look side by side! This is the same test as before (0/8 invincible with SO values, sets like Energy and AR had to emulate values with Tactics/etc but the hit chances between +0/+1 enemies were identical in the end while fitting in Sudden Acceleration/Overwhelming force) with the only real difference being that enemy scatter was greatly mitigated. Of note is Energy Blast which legit SKYROCKETED to 2nd place overall behind fire with it's KB mitigated.
Just for giggles too, lets compare the Scrapper results in the same test with their (few) KD-ified sets:
Nice to see Blasters take the cake still with clearing mobs 😉
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In b4 all the unique /Sonic blaster combinations
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Doesn't go far enough, enable Hurl from Super Strength and Propel from Gravity to use civilians as weapons
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The main things holding Fire Melee back are the lack of well.... strengths that Fire Blast has.
FB has easy to apply AoE and ST with lightning fast Fireball and Blaze, while FM has slow applications of similar powers. Hell, just making Fire Breath a clone of Frost would immediately make the set 3x better, let alone speeding up GFS
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4 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:
Depends on the enemy and build. It is not a fact. I can go afk against several enemy factions at max diff with quite a few of my builds simply because my mitigation is greater than their incoming damage. Even my claws/sr brute is immortal against an aggro cap worth of +4 Cimerorans...
Pretty much this. Like sure, nobody is *by strict definition* unkillable, but vs 90% of the game you are immortal as long as you're actively playing on a ton of builds.
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10 minutes ago, Sovera said:
I suppose that we will only know when one of the god devs chimes in. But I'm sticking with the 100% damage boost lasting 20 seconds with roughly 30 seconds downtime as the culprit. My Fire/Claws Tanker has it down to 53 seconds cooldown, this not considering the FF procs shortening it a bit further.
Stalker and Scrapper have the bad Fire Armor, but Brute and Tanker do not.
I highly doubt that is the reason why FM isn't touched. Even with that, it still would not be as good as other sets due to the drawbacks of Fiery Aura.... plus as mentioned FE is probably even better with the sets that have better base performance in total that Fiery Melee.
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Make your guy an IRS agent
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5 hours ago, Seed22 said:
I dunno, even on SOs, if you have to hide and wait on a Stalker in this environment, that seems...not right at all. As for the rest of the discussion, I’m on the side of keep it as is. Not because I use SOs(I send myself full builds and $$. Dont need SOs), but because I know others do.
I agree with this, but at the same time it's why I ask "how many people use IOs?" In the general sense.
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48 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:
Exactly. Some powersets are endurance hungry, even with no recharge bonuses driving more attacks. Other powersets alleviate that problem but it would limiting to tell people using Dark Armor or Titan Weapons (or heaven help you, Dark Armor with Titan Weapons), find some other build. Other sets have other issues--difficulty in reaching defensive or resist caps. The IOs that address those issue are less universally desirable but only by a fraction (since some ATs aren't really into capping defense/resistances without Herculean effort).
TBH more sets than those have End issues, theyre just the most egregious lol. I find endurance management is just kind of this weird stopgap a lot of people need to work around to the point of it being kind of questionable, but thats just me
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27 minutes ago, CrudeVileTerror said:
Rather, give players something that tempts them to slot something OTHER than Performance Shifter in to Stamina.
Well, the main thing there is that Perf Shifter is so good + Endurance Issues are awful. Nerfing Perf Shifter is just bad juju and makes End issues worse, but alleviating the End "Hole" everyone builds for (not eliminate) would make Perf go from mandatory to "nice to have". Things like that are what to look out for.
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On 1/18/2021 at 7:43 PM, Haijinx said:
Thanks, I think Energy Torrent an underrated power. Nice wide cone and quick animation.
But yeah without KB->KD enhancements Energy Blast scatters baddies around
Actually ended up redoing Energy Blast since I could easily replace some enhancements with the infinite endurance you get while invincible in AE, making sure to keep the same Rech/Dam/Acc values as before and well....
Energy Blast Knockback = 8:51 avg
Energy Blast Knockdown = 7:47 avg
Also did the same with AR:
AR KB = 10:27
AR KD = 9:01
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1 hour ago, Shenanigunner said:
Unnecessary to the gamers who just want the game bent their way. I completely get that.
And I have made it clear that it could use exactly the same code base, exactly the same implementation, update after update, just as five shards already do, despite some player differences among them... with one additional switch enabled that already exists on beta/test. No other difference unless the mass pleas of the gamers there want further anti-nerfs.
I haven't heard one single cogent argument against the idea itself, except misunderstandings about this and that I somehow advocate "banning" some subset of users. I've said and mean nothing of the kind... but if all the crazed powergamers migrate there, we're all better off, including them.
Well, if you wanna play at 50 immediately with any IO's you want the Beta Server is accessible to everyone.... but that isn't too popular. I can pop in there and make myself lvl 50 immediately with the freebies menu, then use the same menu to slot myself out without ever touching a crafting table or the AH.
1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:I don't consider the game side unbalanced at all. We're given a huge range of difficulty levels and three starting zones of varying difficulty.
It's the archetype/build side that's completely out of whack and yea, a whole lot of that comes down to how mez protection/effects are dealt with and the massive disparity that causes. Can't get clarion until after level 50 and some vet lvls, after all.
Do IOs exacerbate the issue? Absolutely. But does that mean the game needs to be rebalanced? Or does it mean that there's a few underlying concepts in our character builds that could be looked at without ever having to touch the environment those builds exist within.
I did a bad job explaining what I had in mind for balance, but Bill basically nailed what I had in my head. It is not so much "wow the whole game is out of whack" and more:
Huh, there are many builds that cannot equally use the IO system in the same fun ways (Sets with -Def or +Def and not, certain ATOs being amazing and others not), and there are a ton of IO's that *everyone* takes which ends up with less diverse characters than what I would imagine be intended.
Its things like a new pool power being bad/amazing depending on if you can slot LotG, or an AT falling behind because they do not benefit from the same ATO proc abilities as a rival AT, or an AT/Build that is actively not fun unless you "cram" tons of IOs into it to just level the playing field (MM's can be argued to be here with Pet Auras). That is where lines get very blurry and you gotta start thinking on where adjustments should be made if any. Let alone the general point of you being stronger overall just by using them.
25 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:The "selling point" of COH was always that you didn't really have to craft gear or deal with an auction house.
Is it high time that selling point goes away? Maybe.
So this is gonna be a hot take, but something that came to mind is there are also a lot of IO sets that don't do much (a good chunk of yellow / non scaling to 50 sets). With the market stocked with materials / tons of premade IO's already out there.... what if non orange/non unique/non-proc ones just dropped into your inventory? Or at the least like, make it so you can craft on the go if you have the materials + recipe on hand and slot while playing. In HC it's already basically there with /AH and the right amount of Inf as you auto-fly across a zone to the next mission, why not just allow it when you're able?
1 hour ago, wjrasmussen said:so every body plays like you do? You have them so others must have them.
Also, you want a play style therefore other people must play your playstyle?
Do you want content to be harder than it is currently? Don't slot those things if you feel they are overpowered. Or is is about forcing something on other people? Or the power difference from you to them?
Not so much that I expect people to conform or anything of the sort, but with all the talk here, in discord, or even just in-game I know that a lot of people use the IO system but it seems almost Taboo to talk about it's impact. As I said in an earlier post, they have been part of the game far longer than not and making them more integrated via balancing them/balancing what sets can slot what/etc could go a long way.
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1 minute ago, golstat2003 said:
See the rest of my reply. I edited while you were typing. Sorry.
The Inventions system (I consider crafting to be a part of that, just like the AH is) was said to be optional. I don't think that should change.
Ah I gotcha. The actual need to craft is certainly a barrier, but its pretty dang easy nowadays with a saturated market where you Pay X inf and pop out the exact materials.
I just think part of it is that Inventions came out in Issue 9 in 2007. The game ended at issue 23, coming into 24 in 2012. That's 5 years and 14 updates with Inventions being a thing vs 8 updates and 3 years with only SO's (with a chunk of that being before ED/ect so even that was a whole different ballgame). Add in HC and thats another 2-ish years with inventions, and the audience now is predominately veterans of CoH I'd imagine who are die-hard or at least familiar with the system when they returned.
They have been part of CoH far longer than they haven't, and I would bet that most of us playing HC are veterans who knew of it. Simply "ignoring" them seems odd.
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3 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:
The answer to that is no. The game should be continued to be balanced around SOs. Full stop.
If and when Common IOs and setIOs start dropping from casually defeating Minions, LTs, Bosses, EBs and AVs THEN and only THEN should they start to think about balancing around IOs.
....they do, in the form of recipes. On top of that, you can just get them on the fly casually with /ah.
Hell, just playing a character that is above lvl 40 gets you tons of inf through just general missions + selling what drops to a vendor. You can easily get IOs straight up or at least components to craft super easily.
I'm genuinely curious tho how many people actually use *Pure SO's* as opposed to SO/Generic + some odds and ends.
Edit:
@ the notion of we're supposed to "Feel Super" :
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2 minutes ago, Shenanigunner said:
As I have been saying in a number of threads. I have no problem with the extreme players; I do get a bit exasperated at the continual movement towards lowering every bar to enable this play mode, make it all about racing to end-game content and builds, etc.
If I read the OP correctly, the game should be "balanced:" for this extreme play mode, leaving all others (those of us who don't scrabble for IO sets at every earliest opportunity, for example) to... what? "Learn better?"
I wanna reply to this specifically, as this is the exact mindset that I see whenever the topic comes up.
1) The assumption that everyone is either "Super Duper my-first MMO casual" or "Balls to the wall EXTREME to the 2nd decimal point of effectiveness".
Tons of people *must* be in between, hell a generic IO build surpasses SO builds in sheer value past lvl 30, and if you continue that the lvl 50 or beyond lvl 50 generic IO's allow you to be significantly better than SO (2 lvl 55 IO's is roughly equal to 3 SO's, while just 2 lvl 50 IO's is about 90% as effective as 3 SO's, etc), If we wanna just compare values on the somewhat standard "3dam / 1 acc / 1 rech / 1 end" :
SO's = 95% Dam / 33% other // IO's = 99% Dam / 42% Other at lvl 50.
The bump in Dam is negligible, but that is a decent bump in the other stats that can let you easily turn the difficulty up a notch.
Even if you take an SO build and with many of the sets that have -Def, Achilles Heel changes your offense considerably. As does slotting Numina/Perf Shifter/Etc into Health and Stamina that everyone gets. Or the variety of Pool Powers that allow Defense Sets for LotG or Uniques. How much "power" is there beyond the norm when you're essentially just running generic + a handful of special IO's? You're not Uberbuild9001, but you must certainly be better than the "norm" and many, many people must fall into there....
2) On that note, my OP was more talking to the point of "are enough people using IO's to where it has become more normal than SO's?" That doesn't mean "balance vs the uber builds", moreso "oh, 70% of people have beyond vanilla recovery and recharge.... interesting"
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7 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:
Yeah . . . player-market is probably a messy thing to try and gather such information from. Getting the actual numbers should happen before any decision-making happens. And even then, having the numbers doesn't necessarily explain the -why- of them, and since motivation was already established as an important factor in this matter . . .
Thanks for putting the effort in, @Galaxy Brain, but I think you're operating from a flawed premise at the start here. Sorry.
I agree and said it'd be inaccurate going into it, its just without datamining or going character to character and "checking" I don't really see a way otherwise 😞 As others said, some people may buy multiples per person, etc, but I don't think its that prevelant to throw it off.
My main point though is that compared to active players, the amount of IO's at least being bid on seems to be a sizeable enough portion to where it is actively used by "enough" players. To me, this seems enough to talk about at least some of the far more common ones like the Miracles, LotG's, etc that you see in literally *every* build, let alone going to the 9's.
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So, a shower thought to me was that we often tout the game as "Balanced on SO's". Hell, I make it a point to showcase sets on said metric as often as possible.... but we all know of the IO system and it really is not something gated away in secrecy with all the resources we have at our disposal to learn about it, or even just buy IO's at a whim with the AH being a slash command away.
Its often said that "new players wouldn't understand it", or it's simply too complex to be relied on. While both can be true, in today's age much more complex loot systems have come and gone for players to digest which to me mitigates the notion of people not grasping it. The complexity can be tough for sure given how many options there are, but IMHO I think there are a bunch of players who "use" the system enough to where I think it is a solid base of performance. Do they "optimize" it? No, but there is a weird blurry line between an SO build, a Generic IO build, a build with a few uniques, a build with some set bonuses and uniques.... and so on.
I think it's worth taking a gander at who is using the IO system. First, we need to know our audience:
Taken off Discord, these are the peak player counts per Shard on HC for the last 7 days as of this posting. On the whole, lets assume there have been 2955 players online this week. The AH is cross-shard, so looking into active bids on commonly sought-after IO's can give us an *idea* of how popular the IO system is, if we try and correlate 1 bid per player:
*LotG I divided by 5 as folks usually try to buy as many as they can
I could add more and more, but in my experience these are some of the most commonly slotted IO's across many builds. Now, this is not accurate for sure but if we take this correlation then we can guess that about 44% of active players are using the AH to buy and slot powerful IO's. If we ignore Gaussian/Achilles/KB IO's as not every set gets easy use from those (all others can be slotted in Health/Stamina/Take your pick of pool powers) and it shoots to around 56% average. With this observation we could assume that the IO system is at least *used* by half the players, even if we go just based on Miracle with close to a 47% ratio of Bids to Active Players in the past week, being a unique it could be assumed that 1 bid = 1 player here, though of course some may be buying a good chunk at a time... but that gets too squirrely.
The point I want to bring up with this is that the IO system being used in general with the ability to slot powerful uniques changes things up. Any power that has +Def essentially has +Rech, -Def also has -Res (and damage procs), KB is easy to convert and is being done so (the ratio lines up with roughly the ratio of sets that have AoE KB powers), and so on and so forth. This doesnt even on ATO's which can be easily attained with Merits. It seems to me that many more players are actively using IO's to put themselves a step above the game, and to be honest IO's have been "the thing" for longer than SO's have if you look at the total lifespan. I guess I just want to open the floor to thoughts on this as within the HC community it seems a sizeable portion of people use them.
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Like I did with Blasters, I realized I could make myself invincible in AE and just go to town on a x8 mission on just plain old SO's in order to gauge the effectiveness within a saturated team environment, under the assumption that safety is "off" given there are support characters there to mitigate the heat and let you cut loose.
The following was at +0/x8 on a plain SO build for each (except Claws and KM which had the same enhancement values as 3dam/1acc/1end/1rech with a KD proc)
S+ / S TIER: RAD MELEE - SPINES / CLAWS / WAR MACE
So, Rad Melee being *that* good was a surprise, but I think it was a combo of it's -Def mattering at the SO level vs +1's over time, and it having a slightly better time fighting multiple bosses compared to Spines. Both of them just delete waves of Minions and LT's, but Spines slowed down a bit when it came to ST DPS on the boss or two in each spawn at x8.
Claws and War Mace are basically tied with only a few seconds between meaning there is wiggle room of like a few missed attacks here or there, and are just both incredibly solid sets that just happen to not buzzsaw through hoards as effectively as Rad or Spines.
A TIER: SAVAGE MELEE / ELEC MELEE
Two great performers that simply lacked a little somethin compared to S tier sets. Savage in particular had a little bit of a slower approach to AoE despite being able to shred a single target up, and on the other side of the coin Elec Melee had great AoE but worse ST. Both great, but the 4 sets above them outperformed them in the same sort of styles.
B TIER: TITAN WEAPONS / KATANA
I'll start with Katana as it is in B tier for pretty much the same reason as Savage/Elec, it is a very solid set but it just lacks that extra oomph to match the top tiers.
Titan Weapons is probably a shock to see down here, but it makes sense. TW has a lot of AoE's, but most of them only hit 5 targets at a time while most of the top tier's AoEs hit 10 at a time (or more in Rad's case), so even if TW is deleting everything it hits, it can only hit so many at a time which leads to more cycles to clear a mob. Without a secondary to further enhance DPS, the set by itself offers above average output, but not the best (especially if we are ignoring safety/etc).
C TIER: BATTLE AXE / STAFF FIGHTING / DUAL BLADES / ICE MELEE / DARK MELEE
Most of the sets here just end up being "worse" versions of other sets in this category:
- Battle Axe is really just bad War Mace. The Lack of Clobber or Shatter on the set really shows here
- Staff is decent, but sort of trades raw output for versatility and utility and it shows here
- Dual Blades is a good set, but it is inconsistent when trying to shred through as many people as possible. To me, I feel if combos just "worked" even on miss like TW's momentum (like as long as you land the finisher + activate the powers it works) it would be a much better performer with Attack Vitals. Until then, random misses and such cost valuable time cycle after cycle.
- Ice Melee performs pretty well considering it does trade a lot of output for safety, with Safety not being needed though it's flaws show. Good AoE but ST feels a little slow.
- Dark Melee has great potential, but in this vacuum the nature of it's AoEs sort of has the TW problem of being hard to hit as many targets as you'd like, as well as the issue of being slow to apply the total damage.
D TIER: ENERGY MELEE / MARTIAL ARTS / FIERY MELEE
This tier has two sets that are ST specialists, so it's no surprise that in the x8 test they'd be lower... but it's concerning seeing Fiery Melee down here. The whole set is themed around "f it, just all offense!" but.... even when you are set to be invincible it is not topping the charts like Fire Blast is on Blasters by itself. The AoE is either slow with it's longish cooldown, or too narrow to utilize well even when you got tons of targets. The ST was also kind of slow with DoT's or GFS's animation... it just really lacks the oomph you'd expect.
E TIER: PSY MELEE / BROADSWORD / STREET JUSTICE
Below D tier, we get some sets that seem like they may just need IO love to really work... and Broadsword. Like Battle Axe, BS is just strictly inferior Katana, not much else to say there!
Psy Melee and StJ both felt underwhelming despite having a kind of similar design where they can boost key attacks for astounding output, but not really...? Starting with Psy, I found when it worked it works well enough, but without Insight active either through RNG or the lockout period it honestly felt super average, and with a smallish cone + slow PBAoE for mob clearing it ending up being rather sluggish at x8. Greater Psy Blade also feels bad compared to Energy Transfer now given that with ET you can guarantee you get the "Good one" constantly, and EM ended up above Psy. Likewise, StJ's AoEs are both pretty tiny and despite recharging quickly, spamming them interferes with combo setups that you want to use vs Bosses and the like which leads to very poor mob clearing. Wrecking bosses also did not feel as spectacular as it should have, but perhaps both these sets shine brighter with more procs/etc.
F TIER: KINETIC MELEE
No surprise here, KM is just slow as molasses to "work" where you gotta build up 5 hits to unleash good damage, on top of the longer cooldown of Energy Siphon... and yeah, its a mess.
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Tbh, I'd much rather combine Ignite and Flamethrower now where FT is the same, but creates Ignite on the targeted enemy you select for FT.
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10 minutes ago, Haijinx said:
why does Energy blast do so poorly in AOE, the knockback?
It has two great fast animating AOEs and then the nuke
The KB I think was a factor as if mobs here and there get pushed out of the second wave of attacks, it means more cycles to defeat the encounter.
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"The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?
in General Discussion
Posted
They can certainly form teams for specific tasks, but when broadcasting which pulls more people?