Galaxy Brain

hey, you leave Redside alone >:(

Tbh, I had imagined adding difficulty settings (either what we got now or the settings you can do in Flashbacks/TFs proliferated) to also add some form of multiplier to the end merit gains. A +4 TF w/ EB Encounters should be > +4 TF >>> +0 TF.

I was thinking they would appear in all content if you choose for them to appear, and lets say they are worth 1-4 merits based on their level vs you or something with an X% chance they appear per spawn. Over time as you run missions or even Task Forces and they crop up it can add up very fast.

I both love and hate this example whenever it is tossed around. I love it because, yes it's mathematically true, but hate it because you are still avoiding a TON of damage by the time you get to "I take 2 pts instead of 1!". Yes, you go from being hit 1/20 times to being hit 1/10 times, but you still gotta respect you are avoiding 9/10 attacks 😜 Anyways, there's been great points made here especially regarding the use assets already in the game to get to the same effect. @Zeraphia, I agree that new content would be best... it is also the furthest away since it takes the most work compared to recycling and tweaking existing content. If old TF's are out dated, then tweaking them to be up to date in various ways would be the ideal play IMO. A fresh coat of paint on the encounters to decrease monotony, a "Master Mode" where you can run lvl 50 versions of prior TFs with slightly altered enemies, etc. I think this line of thinking aligns well with what @parabola and @DSorrow brought up in terms of utilizing existing options and working with what we can in regards to resources and in-game number tweaking. One observation I've made playing through low level content again is that certain factions change rank drastically as you level. In particular, The Lost. AT low level, take the DFB for instance, you have lost minions who are more or less regular dudes, the LT's are bigger bulkier mutated dudes, and then the bosses are fully Rikti-tized for the most part. As you level, as some point the LT's become Minions and the Bosses become LT's, making way for new stronger lost Bosses. Following a similar line of thinking, it may be worth eyeballing certain factions to simply follow that same route but to where they start phasing out minions in favor of more Bosses and LT's. I can definitely see like, Freakshow having more Tanks in the higher levels, Council having more warwolf transformations, and so on as an optional difficulty under say... "Solo Bosses" > No / Yes / Additional Bosses. That automatically carries risk/reward as bosses are worth a good chunk of inf/xp per defeat, and having more of them takes up "AoE real estate" as well as presents a much higher threat level for characters in general. Probably speaking out of my ass here, but my exp modding other games has shown that Spawn Rates are usually a variable that can be tweaked. If something as simple as "more Bosses, less Minions" is an option I think that would be a big step. Maybe eyeballing the rate they spawn in groups normally like I did with x3 difficulty is in order.... As for player retention, I mentioned this int eh Shadow Cyst thread but I think adding in more "Elite Enemies" that could pop up and be worth a Merit for defeat would perk a lot of interest. Quantums, Signature NPCs, random Elite Boss-ranked normal bosses with a highlighted "golden battle-aura" could all be something to look forward to if when they popped up you had players know they'd be worth the fight. Honestly, having Elite Bosses appear in 6-8 man content in general would probably be fine. "Solo AVs" > Elite Bosses / AV's / Spawn Elite Bosses.

Itd be nice if Seekers had the exact same rech as Trip mines and you could amass a swarm of them, or pop one out mid-fight. Reduce the spawned seekers to 1 tho

If they're taking too long and they feel like they arent making a difference is when people give up. If changes were made that still allowed AoE to rock and ST to rock, as well as Control to rock, then I dont see people throwing their hands up as suddenly different characters contribute more than before.

I am very curious, as I am of the opinion that Time Bomb in most any form is out-done by Trip Mine by itself. How do you make Time Bomb a viable pick compared to Trip Mine without making it downright silly?

I like mob buffs that can be countered, like Sky Raider Engineers or Immunes Surgeons. If you let the specific mobs do their thing they become force multipliers until dealt with/etc.

Great minds huh? Honestly, looking at it this way it appears the issue is not that AoE shreds through minions/etc, and more that spawns are dis-proportionally minions/etc! Lower the amount of Minions and add in another boss or two per spawn and things should spice up.

+Con is the most "economic" solution, but these all have merit (though the different attack patterns again only matter if enemies survive). Adding more enemies per spawn would make each AoE a bit less effective due to target caps, and allow a team to spread out a bit to cover more of a mob and allow Crowd Control to have a place in truly "locking off" a portion of the fight. Combine that with say more common bosses (ex 3 per spawn instead of 2 for a 1.5x spawn rate) and having more common buffs and we got ourselves a cool challenge. Tbh that'd be nice

Wanna touch on this real quick because I feel they are actually linked. As demonstrated, if 80% of the enemy force is eliminated in the 1st 1-2 volleys of random AoE's that are tossed out by the team, there is no longer a need for CC or certain support styles. At the very least AoE control becomes a bit questionable depending on the team dynamic, and with what is left for incoming damage from singular tough targets it may be a wash for how much support is needed.

No set has "bad" ST damage in the same realm of how say, EM has "bad" AoE. The only sets I can think of which actually "bad" ST are Spines and Robotics, and they both are "fine" with Bots having a very cheesy -1000% regen from the Assault bot to make up for their bad ST output vs hard targets. I think we are looking at this from two different directions though, as yes an Apex would favor better ST with multiple War Walkers but that is one Trial/Task Force vs the multitude of story arcs / legacy task forces / etc where you are faced with waves of enemies that favors AoE output naturally. Not just PI Council / ITF's, just general content throughout the game follows the basic formula of tossing tons of minions and LT's your way for I'd wager 85% of content. If you're soloing or speed running specific content then of course that would carry a different "meta" than what we normally see, but IMHO this is not the norm when you look at your every day team. I'd love that myself! More instances where different types of powers are useful compared to "just blow them up", similar to the Xenoblade games where different status effects and enemy states can radically change combat compared to just brute force. Sure, you could just go ham and buzzsaw a tough boss down. Or, you could apply a Stun to them somehow, and then that makes them vulnerable to other mez effects which then strip all it's armor and makes it easy while you got them locked down. Etc. Its not just AE farming, as I was able to show in the OP, simply having each member of a random 8-man team throw out a typical 10+target AoE is enough to wipe all minions within range from +0 to +4 on, and should be able to wipe out all LT's within range in 2 cycles. Within 2 cycles, +0 bosses are nearly dead and +4 bosses have a solid chunk taken out of them to make ST damage much easier (at +3 it'd be even easier). I'd argue that is more indicative that AoE is overtuned if ST focused characters can wipe out swathes of targets by accident anecdotally, as well as backed up by the "averages" example I came up with. What more specialized AoE characters bring to the table is the ability to clear even faster if they have multiple AoEs or stronger ones (usually both) which further eats into any ST targets within a given encounter outside of specifically hard single targets which only show up in special missions. I've rarely ever been on a PuG running task forces where we have actually struggled to beat down an AV either. It may take a bit longer depending on the group, but outside of very specific encounters we have never been stonewalled. (Ironically to the other part of the thread, a stonewall we usually face is not having enough Mez for the weakened Hami in lady grey lol) This may warrant investigation, but I'd think that 200 dps per person should be achievable in most random PuGs with the amount of buffs/debuffs either on yourself or shared with the team. Also, I'm at 1337 rep now yay

We have positional defense, but nowhere is there a positional resistance outside of Melee/Ranged damage mods on AT's

I do wonder if this in particular is a possible knob for the devs to turn...

True, but +AoE specific defense is better than +HP for all levels. It solves a problem of ST damage being a bit overshadowed in normal gameplay. This I have not experienced too much if at all. As mentioned in my OP, very few sets if any have "bad" ST damage, and when you have 8 players stacked on an AV you're most likely gonna win. An AV encounter is one thing, but compared to the rest of the game it is almost a niche task compared to the waves upon waves upon waves of enemies fought on normal missions. Not so much "harder" as much as "competitive for control". Look at the sleep example, that would allow a Mez effect to compete with an AoE attack given they can combine for greater effect,

As the game has progressed we have seen a definite trend in how characters are played and what powersets are popular: Damage is King, powers that don't contribute to damage directly are less valuable on average AoE >>> ST. Sets focused on being ST specialists very rarely "shine" with how the game plays out. Teams are too fast / self-defense is too potent for CC to be valuable as it once was These three trends combined leads to a ton of both perception problems as well as design/player choices that shape the way the game is going. It's also shaped tons of discussions on the boards when it comes to suggestions. You can see it in threads like the Energy Melee one where people want it to have more AoE, or where people want powers to have certain secondary effects added so that they can slot Damage Procs, adding -Res as the go-to for buffing a power otherwise, and so on. I would like to see if we can actually measure why this appears to be the case, as well as offer suggestions on what could be done to existing encounters to allow for "non meta" builds to shine and actually be "meta" in their own ways. Lets start with AoE/Damage. To best understand what we are observing, lets take a look at what we're actually damaging: Looking at both ends of top-level play (outside +1 level shift), the HP of enemies effectively doubles at +4 thanks to their Damage Reduction reducing damage taken by 0.48x before any native resists/etc. But how much does this really matter? In order to find out I parsed through and looked at the damage of non-nuke AoEs that hit 10 or more targets across Melee and Blast sets and averaged them out. On top of this, I looked at all the native Damage Scales of AT's (such as a Blaster's 1.125 ranged scale, a Defender's 0.65 scale, etc) to find out what the average would be there too. Avg Damage Scale = 0.91 Avg damage of an AoE with 0.91 scale = 50.57 base So now we have a measuring stick that we can "Assume" is being used per member of a team. With 95% damage enhancement, and I'd reckon about an average of +60% damage boost from things like Crit Chances over time (you name it), Fury, Build Ups, Aims, Assault... that leaves us at a final damage of 128.95 per AoE Lets apply that AoE power to our NPC's both Solo and as part of a full team: So, what does this mean? What is eye opening to me is that at both +0 and +4, the opening volley of AoE on average should just eliminate minions. You have much more leeway at +0 with only 3-4 damage dealers needed, while at +4 you need 7. That said... only Defenders, Corruptors, Controllers, and Brutes would on average have AoEs that fall under the average here, and of those you can gain Fury, Scourge, Containment damage on your epic fireball, or simply provide high enough damage boosts to offset that to where these values ring true. At +0, Lieutenants fall as well and at +4 the 2nd wave of AoE (assuming fast rech too) should also clear them out with 8 players. Bosses are left at either just over 1/2 hp by the opening volley of 8 AoE attacks, or have a significant dent at +4. EB's similarly get dented, but are very rare to encounter. What balances this is target caps, as you're likely to not hit everything in a x8 spawn with all 8 AoEs, but anything that overlaps is certainly wiped and makes the rest of the fight much faster! Minions get wiped very quickly, as do LT's which leaves Bosses for the ST specialists... except "being awful at ST but great at AoE" is rather rare, and when there are 8 of you focusing fire then even a bunch of Bots/ MMs or Spines/ characters can make short work of bosses. If you happen to be using a set where AoE is not emphasized, unless there is an EB or above the team can and will outdo your contribution with the AoE flurry + ST cleanup. What could we do here? There are many options but here are two examples off the top of my head: Increase the base HP of Bosses/Elite Bosses by 20%. This would require 3/6 8 man cycles at +0, and 7/13 cycles at +4 for your normal AoEs to wipe out these targets, while allowing ST DPS to shine as you can still take down these tougher targets faster while the AoE specialists wipe Minions and LT's and still contribute Give Bosses/Elite Bosses inherent AoE defense. Not sure on the number here, but maybe something like 15%ish sounds right to allow them to sometimes just flat out "deflect" the AoEs that wipe out their underlings, and over time allow ST damage to shine brighter against them I much favor the latter as it does not mess with lower tier encounters as much where the boss having more HP could be troublesome, but either way I feel that they could use some buffing to give ST characters something to chew on and contribute with other than the odd AV fight. Control vs Damage As noted above, your average team is going to be wiping out the vast majority of enemies in 1-2 attack cycles, which decreases the value of controlling them first since most of them will be dead or near dead by the time control takes effect. Combine this with how infrequent control AT's are sort of allowed to toss out AoE mez and how player survival has gone up, its not hard to see how Damage has sort of become king. Without going into the specifics of each power / powerset, I think there are a few universal changes that could be made to mezzes to make them carry more weight throughout the game: Sleeps provide an non-resistible -50% damage resist debuff while the target is slept. Sleeps are often seen as the worst Mez type as nearly any other effect will break the mez on your target, rendering it useless. Adding a sort of incentive to actually allow the enemies to be slept *then* hit for a large amount of bonus damage will give it more utility in the current game. This circumvents the frustration of waking up sleeping targets by hopefully making it a mini-game to want to sleep then smack. Maybe even have the bonus grow the longer they are kept asleep! Make AoE holds Mag 4 in PvE Given that anything less than a boss is going to be slobberknockered anyways, why not make the AoE hard-controls of the game effect them for safety? As is, AoE hold powers are often seen as not worth it. They currently cannot be perma'd in any way so allowing them to be true "show stoppers" when they are available is a worthy trade off for all their other drawbacks. Take a look at the general secondary effects / synergies of different Mez types A much broader talking point, but to sum up some personal feelings: Fear = Stun = Confuse = Hold =sorta= Sleep . We have 4 types of Mez that all take an enemy out of the fight for a time, with Fear and Sleep being weakest as you can interrupt them, Stun and Confusion being sort of in the middle as Stunned targets wobble around a little but cannot harm you while Confused ones can move freely but attack enemies and can't harm you anymore, and of course holds being total lockdowns of the target. We touched on sleep already and it has a niche where you can actually bypass the mez protection of some enemies using them but for the rest it seems that they are interchangeable? They all "lock down" the enemy where they either don't attack you or better yet attack other enemies while not attacking you. This leads to certain mezzes being way more potent based on the powers themselves (Seeds... certain AoE stuns... etc) and effectively throwing powerset balance out of whack a little while still facing the problems talked about above where even if strong, the majority of targets are gonna be thwacked anyways making it kinda moot. It would be nice if the mez types got a review to maybe add some fun new effects dependent on the mez. What these are are up for debate but like with Sleep adding in bonus to damage for waking them up, leaning into the current meta that folks enjoy with the other types could be fun and make those types of powers much more rewarding. IMO, tweaking encounters like making bosses a bit tougher to take down in opening volleys, and mechanics like sleep more "up to speed" with the way the game is played would go a long way to bringing a bunch of sets and play styles up. What do you all think? What else do you think could be done to make certain effects/styles competitive?

you found out the hard way

My momma told me you can't convert those no matter how hard I try...

Just make them like, 10% bigger and they'll be perfect. Still a challenge but just a scootch less annoying

Earsymmetry!

The first person to send me an in game email @Galaxy Brain will get 1 inf, but it'll be bestowed with the power of friendship

I dont think it would require new animations nor a "Crazy" amount of work. Something as minor as 2 powers being different per set + some altered stats can go a very long way 🙂

On this note, I would much prefer if each AT that shared a powerset was treated more like Stalkers and Dark Blast where each AT has their own version of the set in question. Corruptor Dark Blast =!= Defender =!= Blaster =!= Sentinel, etc. Instead of playing the same Elec Blast on each AT (sans Sentinels... but even they have similar power structure with tweaked stats for this set), why not mix it up a bit where each elec blast differs between ATs beyond just the AT scales?

agree +1, or better yet even allow some other hair styles like long hair from the hats

I do think that the lack of enhancement to the power itself is a huge cost that should balance it out.