Galaxy Brain

Thank god we still have 6 slotted damage as intended, and infinite herding as intended, and no customization of weapons or powers as intended, and only 5 AT's as intended. The game changes, bringing up "its always been this way" is a weak argument when we are seeing patches that drastically alter the game still to this day. As for the actual topic, Knockback in CoH does not feel super-heroic. Where can you do this? That is not CoH knockback. KB in this game is slow and often does not provide significant benefit over other forms of mez, such as Knockdown or Knockup. There are no environmental benefits to flinging enemies either unless you want to gamble against a wall and hope they don't get stuck in geometry, thus actually making them untouchable by most powers. Superhero knockback should be flinging people through walls, across rooms, smacking into other enemies and being awesome, not a nuisance. I've ranted on this before, but ever since the KD enhancements were added and show how strong KD is over knockback with how it relates to CoH general gameplay the sets with multiple KB powers have sort of gotten the shaft. Alternatively to just converting to KD, we should make KB better and actually "super". Launch a guy? They take bonus smashing damage and are stunned, etc. Convert that to KD? You lose that bonus effect in exchange for better "control".

This is why we need sticky threads for all these hot-topics. @GM Widower, what are the odds of having stickies if we go through and pick out the top X repeated topics?

Just saying, that seems like more of a burden of Illusion/ than a need for Hasten. illusion should have the means of having it's core control up often enough to work by itself.

Y E E T B L A S T

On some builds, hasten and a lot of + rech is not needed. But I would argue that on most, recharge allows you to become multiplicatively stronger due to how it scales plus how many powers are on longish recharges to begin with. Hard hitting attacks, defensive clicks, reliable mez, summons, powerful support powers all usually have a recharge that prevents them from being used too often. But, since recharge is % based you get more bang out of all these types of powers the more rech you get as you shave tons of seconds off at a time to allow you to rotate the powers in more and more to allow you to defeat enemies faster or simply survive encounters more reliably. I would argue that while yes, lt every build needs recharge / hasten, it is always a fantastic option to gun for and that is indicative of the base gameplay being a bit rooted in time = money for some things (old mmo roots) as well as the recharge bonuses attainable having few rivals to compete with in terms of goals for slotting.

Hasten is so powerful that it invalidates other build choices even on a casual level, and often if you are looking for powers to pick it is a toss up between.... well you name it, and the best power in the game. I cant tell you how often I sit on a character looking at pool powers and just not knowing wtf to take over it. Hasten aside, an alternative to LotG would be nice if it were made exclusive to it as well somehow as @ArchVileTerrormentioned.

I mean I guess, there is no DFB in goldside sure but the enemy types are relatively similar in what you'd see on either side

People really think starting goldside is hard? o.O I love goldside! The 20 levels of story arc per character is great, and the aesthetic is overall different enough to warrant going through as much as you can.

Redside only chest detail of burnt toast, + the dual titan weapons set

Redside has always been proactive, hell just look at Mayhem missions. Giving redside more proactive content that lets your villain be the big bad in a tangible way would be awesome. Hell, maybe make it tied to Villain Merits somehow that you could gain via Redside storyarcs and SF's to encourage playing that side more.

Heroes already got the cool stuff. Also, we're villains so we're used to not playing fair

The number one thing for me is the customized way you can build a character. In other games, each class is essentially the same within said class, but in CoH two controllers using the same primary can be totally different beats depending on the secondary and other choices.

I do want to touch on what @ZeeHero was saying. CoH combat is honestly a bit shallow on average with how you really only need to account for your own defenses + having just enough offense to defeat enemies before they defeat you. Mez in all its forms are a form of Defense on average where you hamper incoming damage to you and your allies, while buffs and debuffs increase your ability to either take or dish damage faster. Stuns, Holds, Knockdown, Sleeps, and other mez effects which effectively remove an enemy from play temporarily are all essentially the same mechanic with a bit of variance. There is no say, combining a Stun and an Immobilize to create a full-hold for more duration / etc. Or if they are slept, they take a critical hit from the next attack, or if knocked down their defense becomes 0, etc. For the most part, the depth fizzles out at "These powers stop enemies attacking in some way", which makes them carry different efficiencies in how they do this (Hold is the best as it immobilizes and shuts the enemy down, Stun is next best as they cannot take actions except stumble about slowly, the rest either get interrupted immediately / relocate the target or last only a short time, etc). Stopping enemy actions is a really cool ability, but since there is little depth beyond that for most mez powers (there are exceptions), they have to compete with self-defense and damage. Starting with the latter, the ultimate way to stop enemy action is to simply kill them. The more offense you bring to an encounter, the better the odds you can take out key sources of incoming attacks to bolster your own survival. Boosting your own defensive power has very attainable ceilings in this game as well, which further bites into the usefulness of Mez past a certain point. If a character can wade into content and essentially last forever vs incoming offense, what need is there for Mez effects over Damage to simply finish the fight? Some ATs get by with doing both at the same time, but in general with the way you can build this facet of the game can be pushed aside more often than not as it can not be worth the effort. (Not to mention the truly dangerous encounters ignore mez anyways for a good while) On a similar note, several buff-sets get overshadowed by these same mechanics. Healing has always been overshadowed in CoH, but when characters are hit infrequently and have decent regen rates of their own it gets even more overshadowed. Buffing defense similarly has diminishing returns when players can self-cap that stat, if not spread the love with easy access to Maneuvers. If mobs are wiped in seconds, then there isn't even enough time to apply debuffs or even use certain buffs. This is combined with how the enemies in the game are not usually very interactive. Most stand about in groups or occasionally walk about the map, but when combat starts tend to dogpile and just use attacks in vein before they're beat up. Some do have dangerous debuffs, some do have mez of their own, some even buff each other, but those all can be defeated by the same tactics as any other fight. Debuffs dont hurt if you avoid them, same with mez with or without mez protection. Enemies buffing each other is rarely but a 1 second slowdown depending on if they time their buffs right. Players are rarely tasked with say: approaching an enemy in a certain way, targeting a certain part of the enemy first, using the environment to harm the enemy, etc. For most of the game, charging ahead is usually all that is needed unless there is something that forces you to disengage. What would be nice is if there was content where Mez/Buff/Debuff helped with this style. What I mean by this is that making content where the above is "necessary" is a no-go. Stuff like that can suck, like not having enough mez to defeat the weakened Hamidon (at least there you know what to plan for), but having certain elements become "easier" with those in play would be nice, or at least behaviors that reward the use of these powers more. For example, give more enemies Toggle abilities that boost their allies passively or debuff players in a good sized range. This can be fought by pure force and defeating these nuisances, but doing so can be dangerous as they have increased offense and defense. If they get mezzed however, these toggles shut off and make the entire group easier to deal with, and conversely ally buffs can push your team to overcome the enemy boosts. By adding more content that encourages these mechanics over what the current meta has favored it offers alternate goals to strive for and increases character diversity, as well as allowing players to feel super in different ways.

Dark souls is an excellent rythm game, not so much a combat game. I'd actually look at the Xenoblade series for cool MMO combat, even though it is single player. In short, the way they handle buffs/debuffs/control are multiplicative. They are usually short lived and drastically alter combat while active, such as a foe when its finally (toppled/mezzed) having drastically lowered defenses or even special interactions where other moves do bonuses to mezzed targets specifically. The game let's you use a variety of tactics to spike performance, but they are all viable in efficiently dealing with enemies.

They're happy with council sure 😛 But yes, adding that extra (Heroic/Villainous) setting you could turn on to spawn these new enemies would be nice. I would just like to also see them appear in normal content should you choose to have it on.

Why not add it to existing content? We have already seen certain groups revitalized on live with the late addition of Super Stunners, Warworks in Arachnos, etc

I like the idea of adding enemies which grant buffs that counter player defenses unless you get further buffs or CC the buffing enemy. That way the support and control ATs have more value, and while you could try to brute force these new enemies it would not be the most effective route to do so.

Flipside, talking with the SG about this last night, essentially the only meta relevant sets for both either debuff enemies, boost stats not normally touched by IOs, or offer lots of damage with their control. If you dont check those boxes you feel superfluous in high end teams.

Expanding further on an idea found here: An idea for "Advanced" content was being able to re-run completed mission arcs with your characters under different settings. Much like the "New Game+" of other games, you could for example run the Frostfire Arc at lvl 50 with incarnate powers vs similarly boosted lvl 50+ Outcasts for a challenge-run. This could come with new badges, Merit / Etc rewards for running the New Mish+ content with other Oroboros settings, and so on. This could even be applied to Task Forces. Thoughts?

This is honestly the tiniest of QoL improvements, but the Force Shields that Protector bots place on you and your bots are done one at a time and they go through a loop every couple minutes of shielding everyone over and over. Could they just get the same treatment the shields in FF proper got?

If you don't have enough inf to upgrade all enhancements, does it just upgrade X amount of them?

New plan, all ATs can crit and give scrappers a new thing

Going through again I could pick out the positions as well. As for this data, knowing how defense works and that S/L is in over 1/2 of all powers, capping to that should cap you vs half the game regardless of the second type of their attacks.

Cold honestly shocked me with how infrequent it shows up. As for finding data on how many are split damage, that is doable but will take a bit if time. Off the top of my head... it may be easier to count which ones *aren't* a mix

Hello everyone! In researching for a separate project, I took the time to scour as much as I could about the various NPC factions and what types of damage the bring to the table, and brought those to my own table! Looking through a grand total of 117 enemy sub-groups, and a whopping 4979 instances of typed damage, I found the data you see above. The top portion compares the total number of instances of each damage type, so for example out of 4979 instances, Energy made up ~18%. The bottom shows the types compared to how they are split among the groups, so out of 117 factions you are likely to encounter energy ~21% of the time. This confirms some things we already know, like why it is important to get S/L defense, but I think it is truly eye opening to see the "Encounter Chance" per damage type like this. I had no idea how nearly non-existent Cold damage is for example! Click here for a link to the full sheet