Galaxy Brain

Luckily, many mobs that resist psy are weak or neutral to Smashing and Lethal

You should link this in the Difficulty thread under the General subsection 😉

I think this is a case where we can push aside the cottage

I dont think we need new currency, but maybe just apply current ones to those mobs and missions instead? Such as the alignment merits, etc.

I like the idea around making the ST attacks chain off of a target if they are hit by Tesla Cage... Actually, given how Electric Affinity works, I wonder if its possible to allow the ST attacks to chain briefly if you use Aim? Rename it to say "High Voltage" and for 10 seconds your st attacks can chain lightning to X targets for theme. X in this case is whatever value they look for when (Aim) is active, otherwise its 0 I agree the ST damage could use some love, which is where Tesla and VS should be buffed. But, I want to explore where a chain attack could be implemented since it is now a highly thematic part of electric sets that is missing.

Porque no los dos? I agree that Tesla should be the sentinel version to give the set a Freeze-Ray equivalent of sorts and boost the ST output. Likewise, every other elec set has a chaining power to cement that as an electric staple and its odd now to see Elec Blast without iconic Chain Lightning anywhere.

Something I realized today after electric affinity's release is that every electrical themed set in CoH has a chain power (except epics). Chain Induction on Melee, Jolting Chain on control, over half of ElAf, Ionic Judgement... but no Elec Blast? The set is seen as on the lower half of blast sets currently, and the secondary effect is often called into question. If one of the powers offered chain blasting potential, it could carve out a bit more of a niche with added AoE damage on top of being thematically fun. The question is, which power? There are 2 blasts, and a snipe for ST attacks, as well as Tesla Cage for utility. Of those, I think making Zapp able to be a chain-snipe may be the best bet as the t1 and t2 should not be touched for Blaster balance, and Tesla Cage chaining would be akward. Zapp being able to chain could do less ST damage than other snipes (slow or fast), but uniquely let you summon powerful chain lightning that other sets do not have access to. Voltaic Sentinel also is a point of interest. It shoots out a smaller version of Charged Bolts (T1) and already attacks targets randomly within its range, drawing aggro right to you. Sparky has been another point of contention as its damage contribution is hard to quantify vs if elec had a t3 blast. If it had a chaining bolt while active, maybe it could be enough to push the group clearing time a bit? What are your thoughts?

Indeed.

@oedipus_tex had a great idea to include critical end drain similar to that, but to keep it % based. Different enemies have different total endurance, with minions having 100, lts 140, bosses 200, etc. They have the same recovery rate, and end costs for powers but the larger pools diminish the effects of even % drains as they need less end per tick to get back in action. If the drain was a flat number it would not scale too well. I think the consensus of having fewer, stronger drains is solid. Elec Blast is a legacy set that was clearly designed as both a player and npc powerset. As such, on NPCs having like 5 clockwork zap you adds up fast against players with only 100 end and much faster end consumption than the reverse. The best sapping abilities generally 1-2 shot end bars anyways (SC + PS, etc), so I do like the idea of consolidating sapping power even more than just with SC. Touching on elec blast specifically as a side note, every other elec set has a chain power now... where is theirs? 😛

Procs that debuff enemies do not stack as they cause the target to cast a power on themselves, which can be refreshed but not stacked. Luckily, these debuffs are unresisted and will always be what they say on the tin 🙂

Achilles does not stack traditionally (20+20 = 40), but you can refresh the duration between multiple powers (up to 5)

I think it depends. More Inf/Xp/etc can be one thing, but having a good deal of bonus merits, special temp powers, special accolades, or other such goodies are possible too. It doesn't even have to be stuff at max level but stuff that'd be nice while leveling

If you take away something from a power, but add another thing of equal value to it, is it nerfed?

It still could be, but not obnoxiously so. Or at the very least, keep a lot of the "outskirts" vast, but condense any travel needed for missions / story to a much more convenient area.

TBH, they could (again speaking in relative terms cus who knows what weird ramifications getting rid of geometry might do) literally just delete 2/3rds of each map and condense everything together and call it a day, with massive normal islands to work on with only a few portals / jumps.

Redside is an acquired taste for sure, and at first it was on the right track with robbing banks / etc giving temp powers and infamy. But then blieside got similar bonuses + the special redside ATs were unlocked and there was little reason to put up with it. I feel like being a villain should be more lucrative than being heroic, following what happens with the tutorial level of all things where your first choice to steal Blue Spectrum's power gives you a buff. Yeah, youre a dick but you are rewarded for being evil. Robbing places should give tons of bonus infamy, etc. Goldside has some of the prettiest areas and that is empty due to percieved difficulty as well. Since it is so specialized, starting a character as a praetorian and running through the story there could give perks as well. Essentially my goal with this line of thinking is that the current "challenges" are not popular as there are easier alternatives for the same or better (per run) outcomes. Adjusting what you get for being villainous, a praetorian, or so on, will not shift everybody to being that way but it will certainly make it more attractive and gain more players and attention.

I was able to dig deeper into this thanks to the same post here: Short answer, is if everything is divided equally we could assume that 62% of accounts have a lvl 50 character. Of those that are incarnate? Unknown but by sheer numbers it must be way more than 5%

Side track here, but how the heck is Invuln bad? You have solid base resists + solid base defenses, which allow you to build more leisurely for bonuses. At perma hasten levels of recharge, you are also looking at perma or near perma Dull Pain as well for a massive HP boost compared to other sets atop the Res and Def. Yes, there is a Psy hole but uniques patch that up reliably on top of Dull Pain.

@Yomo Kimyata, @DSorrow, @jubakumbi, @Lines, I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle of that discussion. I don't believe anybody wants to see a grind fest, nor do people want to see this become dark souls. On the other side of the coin, a significant amount of people do feel the game's "natural" ease is troubling and some are even bored if they roll around at full power. In between those extremes, we actually already have content that is harder than normal but often is passed up, and I do believe that there is an underlying reason that ties into Risk/Reward: Classic example is with random PuGs deciding to go after Council, Warriors, etc instead of say CoT, Carnies, Arachnos. On both sides of this sentance we see enemies that are easier and harder to combat than the other, but at the end of the day they are "worth" the same. A Council boss = A Carnie Boss = A Warriors Boss = An Arachnos Boss, despite them all being different "challenge ratings". If they essentially scaled based on how tough the threats are "supposed" to be, then you may find more people being much more tolerant of running missions with harder enemies. Sure, the Carnie mish might be tougher than the Council one, but you get (X) more XP / Inf / Drops from em. Certain zones are ghost towns due to difficulty already. Redside is a bit tougher on average (Arachnos, etc as per point 1), Goldside, Hazard Zones (already discussed), and the Shadow Shard are all criminally underplayed. If there were a little extra nudge for playing these areas (like how Gold originally had the starter IOs iirc) they could be seen as an alternative rather than a novelty. The Shadow Shard in particular also carries extremely dangerous enemies that are a shame to waste! Revamping this zone to be easier to navigate + special dimensional rewards or something could breathe new life (Incarnate content?) into a forgotten area of the game. Story Arcs are similarly underplayed IMO compared to just running Radios / Newspapers for XP, or Task Forces for Merits. Sweeping over them again to make them competitive with both (Ease of travel between zones / missions being picked up by having to return to contact, having competitive merits for the amount of missions and what you actually do, etc). If they are competitive, we may see more of it. Way I see it with these, is that the perception of ease could be mitigated if we make the existing hard stuff worthwhile to direct our power at. Add in some new optional stuff like advanced enemy encounters, and so on, and we're on the right track to having some cool new content.

I posted this in another thread, but I re-formatted some of the numbers as percentages, which may be easier to gauge proportionally:

Sources are from this thread, IGNORING FIRE BRUTES All Levels: Of ALL characters created, with the exception of Fire brutes which we sorta know what they are played for, this is the general distribution. Level 50: Same as above, but for lvl 50 characters only. Masterminds fall down severely here which is interesting, but otherwise a similar distribution. Going by just the raw "number of 50's" data: Blasters, Controllers, Brutes, Scrappers, and Tankers make up ~56% of all level 50 characters out of 15 possible AT's. 3 of those are high-damage AT's (Blaster, Brute, Scrapper), with the new Tank buffs they are also rather good at using AoE damage to clear spawns. 3 of these are armored AT's (Brute, Scrapper, Tanker), which means that survival is less of a concern to them than raw damage output. Controllers, depending on the combo, can in theory be both of these with great damage output and survival but they are highly volatile based on the combo and if put head to head with the other top 5's, will be out damaged (most likely Tanks out AoE them now). Played Time at 50: This metric shows the time played at level 50 per AT, and then again per level 50. This should roughly show how often / how long certain AT's are being played for. We can see some ups and downs here, but in general it shows a similar trend. As for raw numbers about the actual number of lvl 50's vs number of players: Total Accounts = 159,537 Raw total characters = 1,168,293 -> about 7 characters per Player Raw total lvl 50's = 99,460 -> about 0.6 lvl 50's per Player (62.34%), and only about 8.51% of all characters made. Assuming these are all divided evenly of course. So despite making up less than 10% of all characters, it could be assumed that over 60% of the playerbase has at least 1 level 50 character. Seeing the number of active accounts in Feb was 32,164 and not the whopping 159,537, we can only guess what to encounter based on the %'s I posted above in Blue. ( @Cipher, any data on the count of active characters? 😉 ) So anyways, to answer the quoted post: We can assume that 62% of players have a lvl 50 they use. Odds are, that lvl 50 is a Blaster, Controller, Brute, Scrapper, or Tanker. These AT's excel at clearing spawns and can be mostly self sufficient to varying degrees (least on the Blaster, but they clear fastest) Clearing out dangerous enemies and being self sufficient leaves little room for other AT's or Players to shine, or at least it is much more noticable when these top 5 AT's roll in. Numbers on IO's and Incarnates are not given, but Incarnates come naturally for lvl 50 characters and we can probably assume that AT's with high Lvl 50 play time will have both, which includes the top 5 picks which are great at content anyways. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

I still would love to have some data mining on this, but I strongly believe what I said earlier about the average player most likely dabbling in IOs on HC. People playing the game nowadays either played it in the past or were introduced to it by a veteran who likely plays with the person and shows them the ropes, at least the vast majority IMO. Of those groups, they either just had experience with the system or are being taught about it, and the info is out there and naturally falls into a player's lap as they play. The average forum user is a step above the average player most likely in terms of making builds and specific knowledge, but I dont think the "average" HC player in 2020 is that far behind.

The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of including +LvL as an advanced boss feature. Something popular in my older suggestions thread, and that @Infinitumand I have spoken about is the idea of adding difficulty via an "Advanced Enemy Spawns" option. This could be an optional mode which beefs up enemy groups with new encounters that may require a bit different strategy to fight. As a baseline, if an advanced enemy spawns it could con as a ++ level to your current setting (at +0, it would show as a +2, and so on) and have other special powers that make them a dangerous target. We could simply apply this to bosses of existing factions and give them a very noticable aura or some other cue to make them stand out and indicate this will be an advanced spawn. They could be individually very strong, maybe copy player powers where they draw strength per NPC and player around them in a range, or the reverse where they buff the group around them, and so on. There is a lot of room for creativity with them. For fun, make them worth a merit when defeated! Maybe scale so a boss is 1, an eb is 3, and an AV is 6. That way as you encounter them in missions you naturally have better merit gain. The advanced setting however would not just be "double HP" or whatever for all spawns, but rather a chance for special harder enemies to appear almost like Void Hunters.

Hm, maybe not like a whole.mission of +5/+6, but what if bosses in spawns were?