Galaxy Brain

June 1, 2021

The interview process for minions is brutal

May 24, 2021

Re: Calculating active mitigation tools / burst survival tools

Given that these are incredibly variable options that give literal bursts of protection, it is very hard if not implausible to calculate their effects especially when they regard interrupting enemy attack queues/etc. This accounts for both CC attacks + killing the enemies as well as things like MoG, they are just so variable in application that it is hard to actually quantify them in any meaningful calculation.

Looking at MoG for example, it has a 240s base cooldown. Lets be generous and say a fight lasts 2 minutes (120s) each at x8. At base, or even at 100% normal recharge this power would really only be used once, and add a flat 15s of survival time given that basically anything outside a mob of extreme psychic attackers will not touch you. At maximum recharge (240/5 = 48s) you could use this three times, increasing survival by 45s.

Thinking on this a smidge more as I write, I happen to have data on 0/8x clear times for a given mission we can extrapolate (at least for a scrapper):

These are the avg clear times of my standardized 10-mob mission map runs that include bosses and an Elite boss at 0/8x. In testing, I know for a fact that to get through the mission there is just about exactly 60s of travel time (without travel powers), so we can subtract that from all these averages / the total average and then divide by 10:

The average is about ~50s, though we could go to ~60s or ~45s too. Lets say 60s as that is a bit more nice a number to say 1 minute, plus it could relate to higher difficulties / random stuff that may push a fight a bit longer.

So, given that we can say an average encounter is 60s long, we can infer that something like MoG will be available at the start and end of a fight.... but only if you legit use it right away and then again the moment it is recharged. Realistically, you will not be recharge capped so MoG is only gonna be online once in this fight. Assuming you use it only for the alpha may have much different implications than if you use it for when poo hits the fan, though either way it is gonna give you 15s (25% of the fight to be fair!) worth of basically invulnerability. The issue of uptime creeps in though as you go fight to fight depending on the mission where bigger maps with some travel between spawns favor things like MoG where more constant fighting will not.

Now, lets say that the above averages per fight are correct as well. If you have to survive for 60s, and all but KM (lol) can beat the fight in under 60s, where does that leave us? Do we assume we 100% of the time do the correct sequence of actions 100% perfectly per mob? What if that key War Mace attack didnt proc Knockdown or Stun (or just straight up missed), what if the mob makeup was a bit different and that Arachnos spawn had more Toxic damage than usual (good for Regen but not so much other sets)? Do we say that every ~2 seconds there is a +X second bonus to survival depending on the set where CC / Self defense tools could come into play? Like with the breakdown of Regen above, it *could* be averaged out but then it gets downright ludicrous to think about with not only recharge brackets but entire attack chains and the like. It'd be a fool's errand outside of the few sets that have guaranteed tools like Parry, Pendulum, or Total Focus, etc, that you could in theory work into a calc where every time it's up you use it and it'd work outside of missing. But back to the main point about surviving vs beating the 60s benchmark, if all armors can survive 60s.... then what are we looking at?

We cannot reasonably calculate every map and the travel time in relation to powers recharging for each fight (esp with variable travel methods), on top of the variable powers in attacks sets that can provide added mitigation. Our next best bet is to isolate our variables with the assumption of:

If X armor set can perform at a certain level vs incoming damage by itself, then adding Y extra mitigation through attacks and whatnot would of course make it better.

If Regen really benefits from pairing with battle Axe to keep foes bouncing on their butts... then yeah, Willpower and Invulnerability would too.

UNIQUE to Regen among most sets though is that it's mitigation COMPETES with your attack mitigation tools. If you can normally get +X mitigation in a fight by using an attack power, or +Y from using reconstruction, you may suddenly have to make a quick choice where other armor sets can just benefit from the +X on top of their baselines.

This is where I feel getting the average data through a fight lasting X seconds, AND/OR seeing how long they could last in X scenario to score the set is valuable. In my earlier notes showing time to defeat if you just took it on the chin is where things get super interesting. If an armor set lets say can naturally last 70s vs an enemy mob on average compared to Regen lasting 55s on average, you could say adding in MoG will even the odds but that is an extra power they have to use + this assumes you already use all the clicks regen has during the fight... while the other armor set didn't have to click and instead got to use attack powers which can close the gap with either defeats or added mitigations. This then goes back to the point of going fight to fight.. which over time would be relative to if you just stood there infinitely getting punched/zapped/flashbacks of math tests or whatever psychic damage does to you.

TL;DR :

Yes, active mitigation / burst mitigation matters. However, it is incredibly hard to account for the different permutations of those when compared to the more static "take it on the chin" metric that most all armor sets (hell even inspirations) can be measured against. If we can measure the more static variables, we can get a guestimate of where the "floor" is that we add the dynamic ones onto.

May 24, 2021

On 4/21/2021 at 7:21 AM, Hew said:

It might actually be claws in the top spot (gasp, quite serious here). Last I checked it was in the top 3.

edit: There is more to AVERAGE dps than pounding on a pylon, which is pretty meaningless in the course of play. At no point (other than Kahn), do you sit around pounding on a relatively immobile bag of hitpoints _in play_. You are always moving, dealing with various levels of mobs in different groupings, which is why @Galaxy Brain?s test for dps over average play map test works so effectively.

It depends how you look at it! In general, EM will let you slobberknock bosses / tricky single targets but struggles when clearing the map. It averaged on the lower end, but once you get IO's it does better than what you'd expect for such an ST heavy set.

May 21, 2021

52 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

Two main issues with the above analysis:

MoG needs to be included. It is one of Regen's chief mitigation tools.

Standing still in mobs as a DPS sponge is not representative of how the game is played, and is therefore not representative of how mitigation works in practice. What this means is you need to pause incoming DPS at regular intervals relative to killspeed/travel speed, in order to reflect moving between groups. (You also need to show DPS dropping as the fight continues due to enemies being killed.)

1) I mentioned I omitted it for a reason, given it's maximum uptime of 32% is less Strength of Will, If I include MoG I am giving WP that too. Unstoppable can even get a similar if not better uptime. The tricky bit with these types of powers (even IH) is that their low uptimes make yo-yos of performance that is not as easily calculated as things like Reconstruction or Dull Pain. In the specific case of MoG, it makes you so essentially invulnerable for 15s that I may as well add 15s x Usage to the metrics for how often it can be cycled, which in most cases is only about once.

2) This was done via calculation as otherwise I am not gonna do every permutation of attack set mitigation / movement as that is lunacy. This is more a representation of how well it *could* fare over time given things being averaged per cycle / etc. In a specific moment, such as the 90s window IH is active or DP + X is active the results would be better, but throughout a mission it won't always be on, as alluded to with the gaps between fights.

3) You are welcome to do everything I did, it's all available to parse via in-game logs for enemy DPS, armor values over time, etc

May 21, 2021

17 hours ago, Koopak said:

I want to note I feel those numbers for recharge are a bit off base, but it shouldn't effect your point to much.

I knew I goofed lol, I divided by 4 instead of 5 for max rech (recharge floor is 4x, so I always mirror it to 1/4th at fastest). Lets keep that result (400% added rech), and lets also toss in say... 250% rech (150% global) along with the capped 500% rech

New numbers:

+100% Normal Rech Regen w Dull Pain = 93.12 HPS / 23.77 Res (except Psy) / 8.91 def (except Psy) / 2096.9 avg HP

+250% Rech Regen w Dull Pain = 151.91 HPS / 30.45 Res / 15.59 def / 2545.33 avg HP

+400% Rech Regen w Dull Pain = 173.23 HPS / 14.86 Res / 2694.8 avg HP

+500% Max Rech Regen w Dull Pain = 218.44 HPS / 37.13 Res / 22.27 def / 2993.75 avg HP

Same but ignoring MoG since at tippity top capped rech it still has less than 1/3 uptime:

+100% Normal Rech Regen w Dull Pain = 93.12 HPS / 14.86 Res / 2096.9 avg HP

+250% Rech Regen w Dull Pain = 151.91 HPS / 14.86 Res / 2545.33 avg HP

+400% Rech Regen w Dull Pain = 173.23 HPS / 14.86 Res / 2694.8 avg HP

+500% Max Rech Regen w Dull Pain = 218.44 HPS / 14.86 Res / 2993.75 avg HP

As we can see, Regen relies a LOT on Recharge for effective anti-DPS. Lets put it through the ringer against a handful of enemies though.... lets say 5th Column / Arachnos / Incarnate Banished Pantheon?

Luckily I have been able to get data on the damage spread of these three groups at different intervals of difficulty:

5th column
Mob Size	x1	x4	x8
Avg DPS	52.37	256.42	481.53
Smashing	80.00%	67.00%	70.00%
Lethal	7.00%	18.00%	15.00%
Fire	2.00%	3.00%	2.00%
Cold	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Energy	0.00%	1.00%	1.00%
Negative	11.00%	12.00%	11.00%
Psionic	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Toxic	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%

Arachnos
Mob Size	x1	x4	x8
Avg DPS	67.3	277	554.57
Smashing	11.00%	15.00%	14.00%
Lethal	39.00%	33.00%	37.00%
Fire	11.00%	4.00%	5.00%
Cold	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Energy	18.00%	22.00%	23.00%
Negative	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Psionic	17.00%	13.00%	11.00%
Toxic	4.00%	15.00%	12.00%

Banished Pantheon
Mob Size	x1	x4	x8
Avg DPS	45.45	242.43	495.49
Smashing	16.00%	17.00%	20.00%
Lethal	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Fire	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%
Cold	32.00%	21.00%	20.00%
Energy	18.00%	29.00%	27.00%
Negative	34.00%	25.00%	26.00%
Psionic	0.00%	8.00%	8.00%
Toxic	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%

With this handy-dandy spread, we can calculate the survival rating of Regen at different stages of difficulty / recharge rates vs these 3 mobs. Given that MoG does not "scale" well over time, I'll omit that as basically you're gonna be adding +15sec as a flat rate when you pop it. Reconstruction's Toxic Res will also be calculated as it is relevant for Arachnos.

Lets start with the basic rech on 5th Column real quick to show how it adds up:

I have a cut-off at 300s survival time on the yellow Results row as otherwise it gets silly. As you can see, each damage type present within the mob is represented by the real-world data in how they spread. For regen this doesn't really matter except for Toxic Damage, and Psionic if we include MoG. The next step is gathering that yellow bar and looking at the "Score" it has vs that enemy type:

Looking at the Time to Defeat per difficulty rating, on the right hand side we can evaluate the performance of the set across the board. The total is just all the times added up, the avg is the average of all the times, and the Harmean is the "Harmonic Mean" or the Avg of the Avg, which boils down to an Average score with outliers taken out. Lets do this for all 3 vs the baseline 100% slotting:

Funny enough, it does best vs Banished Pantheon (before stuff like -Rech kick in). Now, to compare this to say.... Willpower and Invulnerability (also on Brutes), with the proper scaling of RttC and Invincibility per avg mob size (3 / 7 / 16 [10 cap]), also including the -ToHit from RttC:

Now lets average these results and compare:

In terms of overall performance, what does this mean?

WP has the highest total and avg "score" on average, though keep in mind it has nothing that scales with recharge available so this will be it's static value compared to Inv and Regen which both have at least 1 power that gets better with Rech.

Regen having the lowest, and Invuln the highest Harmean stats shows a key difference in how their mitigation scales tho:

(Lol Arachnos vs Invuln)

Invulnerability has a much smoother performance curve as difficulty (and thus damage) increases (Omitting the /1 stats as even tho Invuln has a lol vs Arachnos they're all basically immortal to it):

Its notable that Regen starts WAY higher, but then is consistently below Invuln per tier. Reminder too that this is with IH being averaged out over time. With the 100% rech slotting it only has an uptime of ~28%, which means for ~72% of the time your regenerator will perform much worse than Invuln which is more static.

Lets redo this comparison with the 250% rech:

And 400%:

And capped 500% for good measure:

Sooooo, what does this show though? Regen does well when you have boatloads of Recharge? Yes, depending on where you look. In a team setting, you are likely only going to focus on the x8 values shown here (as well as at end game). This also only shows a sampling of enemy groups / etc for comparison, and to be fair we didn't give anything else to Invuln (blame time constrains to recalc it's Dull Pain with lots more rech).

This said, this is all averaged out. For WP and Invuln, they are more or less always at peak-ish performance + have Debuff resistances that Regen does not have. If Regen is debuffed, or caught between clicks then the performance you see above will p l u m m e t.

May 21, 2021

So, the no redraw / by extension being able to color the "poofs" of green toxins (or hide them!) would be sick, def agree there.

Lethal / Tox combo could be explored more sure, but tbh this is a larger issue that IIRC is on the radar when it comes to damage type balance throughout the game. Even with it being mostly lethal, the way Spines deals damage leads to excellent performance even outside of farm environments so it doesn't really need too much help.

Impale becoming a snipe is actually kind of interesting though. It's the worst ST attack in the set for sure, but the long wind up seems like it could fit that theme. Again though, it doesn't seem too necessary.

May 21, 2021

7 hours ago, Koopak said:

I want to note I feel those numbers for recharge are a bit off base, but it shouldn't effect your point to much.

I'll agree MoG tends to be so reactive as to make assessing it as a distributed factor is a bit dubious due to its uptime, the build i used in my example accomplishes a ~17% up time, plus or minus some depending on Force Feedback procs. I also think you just treated it as a 75% resisst 45% defense when the effective values of those will be lower.

That said, I don't think the uptime and recharge are the main reasons to not assess it, as I feel Instant Healing SHOULD be assessed in that way. The reason being IH should be used on cooldown much more often, and while MoG is easily one of the best T9 armor powers there is, its still an oft unused T9 Armor.

I'll try to find some time later this week to mock up a full assessment with recharges and such considered.

You know, I may have done the max rech a bit off when looking at it. But still, rech-cap values wouldn't be much higher than this.

May 20, 2021

4 minutes ago, Hew said:

Except the vast majority of that content (xp boosters aside) does nothing to empower you, except the 3 very expensive buffs, and you can get that from a base empowerment station... Most if it is travels, prestige attacks, etc etc.

Those buffs, whether from P2W or from a Base I would draw a line at for sure. Same with Temp Powers from missions tbh tho only a few are "good".

Incarnates and IO's are the next thing below that line, as are technically inspirations as the "Optional stuff, but you get them naturally" tier as you do not technically have to go out of your way to get them.

The baseline tier would be dropped enhancements (SO's) / store bought... tho that technically applies to Insps as well

May 20, 2021

11 hours ago, America's Angel said:

Well in that case, in order for us to balance really hard new level 50 TFs, we need to look at how purple/orange/red/yellow inspirations function at 50.

One approach would be reducing their strength. Another could be to stop them stacking.

Considering all the tools we have available to us at level 50. It doesn't make sense that purple/orange/red/yellow inspirations are as powerful as they are. Level 1-50 they work fine. (And should be kept that way for 1-50.) But at 50 they are ridiculous. Case in point: I basically have infinite money in this game - why would I ever build for defense when I can buy a 50% defense inspiration for 1 million? Why slot for damage when I can just put myself at the damage cap?

That said, I think green/blue/break frees/rez insps are all fine. And I think being able to email yourself insps is fine. (Lots of casual players do this with rez inspirations. Wouldn't want to take this away from them.)

This is something I agree on and was what I highlighted in my earlier post. HC does have different levels of access to things from the live game that drastically alters how we play.

Making it so inspirations do not stack, at least numerically (maybe chewing a ton increases the duration) and follows a "bigger is better" approach could be interesting (bigger insps replace the smaller value?) though that would be a drastic change to how they work... at least it'd be much easier to account for.

Other things like access to literal P2W stuff I feel should not be part of balance discussions as those are legit "lol I win" things.

May 20, 2021

Hm, no interaction if you shoot your laser at the same guy twice?

May 20, 2021

@Bill Z Bubba, another thing I wanna shout out real quick is that Claws is fundamentally different on a Scrapper, making it's comparison to Brute/Tank versions unfortunately not 1:1 😞

May 20, 2021

(its funny since as a video game, everything we do is math)

May 20, 2021

5 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Agreed. I don't think it's meaningless at all.

My question is: where does it truly matter?

Edit:

In the Scrapper vs Brute thread (that became Brute vs Tank), didn't you and @Infinitum show time and again the Brute still cleared faster? Did you record the damage received as well?

May 20, 2021

8 hours ago, RogerWilco said:

I also don't know the damage and hit calculation mechanics well enough to understand if one mob doing 100 dps, or 10 mobs doing 10 dps, makes a difference.

This is always an interesting topic. It does and it doesn't.

With 1 mon doing a ton of dps, odds are they are a boss and will stick around longer in a fight and thus have more opportunities to hit you and deal their big damage. The 10 x 10 crowd are likely small fry, and as you fight them their DPS plummets as each one you defeat lowers incoming damage by 10%. That said, with 10 attacks at once any debuffs they carry will stack fast and can be deadly.

May 20, 2021

3 hours ago, America's Angel said:

When assessing the HPS of regen, you must always include the following:

Moment of Glory (reduction of incoming DPS via res & def divided by recharge time)

Reconstruction (heal divided by recharge)

Dull Pain (heal divided by recharge)

Dull Pain boosting native regen

Dull Pain boosting Instant Healing +regen

Resilience (reduction of incoming DPS via res)

(And native regen, Fast Healing & Health, obviously.)

Agreed, tho MOG's uptime makes it very, very dubious to include. If we assume normie slotting that gives it ~1/2 rech we are looking at an averaged 8.91% Def/Res, at capped rech it is a more respectable 17.81%, tho still in reality there are really big gaps with either a 12.5% or 25% uptime.

Reconstruction grants between (brute numbers) 25 ~ 50 HPS at norm/max rech (and max heal outside Heal buffs)

Dull Pain grants between ~40% max HP avg and 80% max HP, as well as 6.6 ~ 13.3 HPS at norm/max rech

Resilience lowers all damage taken by 14.86%

Instant Healing provides between 17.26/34.53 HPS over time, or 24.15/62.07 with Dull Pain

Base HPS all added is 26.78, with DP it boosts to between 37.46 / 48.14

So, added up:

Normal Rech Regen w Dull Pain = 93.12 HPS / 23.77 Res (except Psy) / 8.91 def (except Psy) / 2096.9 avg HP

Max Rech Regen w Dull Pain = 173.23 HPS / 32.67 Res / 17.81 def / 2694.8 avg HP

This is averaged out with all pistons going to to speak.

3 hours ago, America's Angel said:

When assessing the HPS of regen, it's advised to also consider the following:

Tough (reduction of incoming DPS via res)

Weave (reduction of incoming DPS via def)

Maneuvers (reduction of incoming DPS via def)

Combat Jumping (reduction of incoming DPS via def)

Rune of Protection (reduction of incoming DPS via res divided by recharge)

Unrelenting (heal divided by recharge)

Aid Self (heal divided by recharge)

Field Medic (+heal to the unresisted heals in the sets, divided by recharge)

Other things probably worth considering:

Power Transfer Proc (x2) in the epics.

Power Transfer Proc (x2).

Regenerative Tissue, Numina, Panacea, and Impervius Skin procs.

Superior Entomb proc.

This is valid, though we can only fit so many into a given build. With many of the powers / bonuses giving the same thing we can honestly just slap in X% (Stat) to the equation too.

May 20, 2021

2 hours ago, KauaiJim said:

If the real concern or complaint is that this game (even prior to live shut down) had made so many things available to players as to trivialize content AND offer nothing that challenges them I could not agree more. Pointing at IO's makes sense because they contribute to that 'problem'. Feeling like an ED or NGE level game rebalance is in order though I just can't get on board. I know that IS NOT what some of you are saying, but I'm getting the feeling that is what some of you are wanting.

I don't think we need another ED / NGE lvl change (at least impact wise), so much as getting our bearings on how @America's Angel put it: how do people actually play the game? If we see that "oh, most people do indeed use IO's" then it may be worth balancing around them in some fashion a bit more. Stuff like making crappy IO sets good is also in this realm as its not all just focusing on the tip top to dial it back!

May 20, 2021

4 hours ago, America's Angel said:

Speaking purely in the context of balancing super hard level 50 TFs...you 100% can balance around these extras. You just have to assume players:

-Stack insps to be at the +dam cap.

-Stack insps to be at the +def cap / are softcapped through IO bonuses

-Have Destiny bonuses.

-Have controllable Lore pets.

-Puts out a certain amount of -res.

-Have high global +rech

There's ways to counter all of this with PVE mobs: Autohit attacks counter excess defense, AVs with large AoE debuffs that reduce damage/recharge/accuracy by like 200%, control attacks which turn your lore pets against you, have AVs/missions that require the use of certain inspirations to function (and thus reduce the amount of insp tray space for other stuff.)

Anything can be countered by a dev team with enough time on their hands.

Sure, in theory they *could* balance around anything, it doesn't make it the best idea to.

May 19, 2021

Awesome post @Koopak! My only caveat is when comparing the, well "comparative" value of more buffs on Regen vs the "absolute" on others. Like yes, a Regen character going from 9% to 32% resistance is a big leap compared to 23% -> 62% (3.5x vs 2.7x), but end of the day the 62% is a much more powerful raw amount of mitigation as it relates to incoming damage.

Given you have similar values for Defense in both examples we can put those aside, and lets look at say 400 incoming DPS vs those resist values after defenses:

400 vs 62% = 128/s

400 vs 32% = 272/s ( over 2x the incoming damage )

To sustain against this, Regen will need to heal >2x as much HPS as Rad to not die. Granted, Regen has more HP to chew through but if it's not regenning a constant 272hps it will eventually fall where Rad has a smaller goal to hit.

In your examples, you had effective regen of 127.55 for Rad and 152.2 or Regen outside of IH which has an atrocious uptime even at the fastest which makes it unreliable... one of these sets is gonna walk away with a bigger bruise given rad will be taking an effective 0.45 dps vs Regen's 119.8 dps.

If we go by just their raw effective HP outside of res/def:

Rad = 2,865.16 / 0.45 = 6367s

Regen = 2,894.17 / 119.8 = 24.15s

Granted if both characters can "Win" the fight in 10s this doesn't really matter, but it does show a difference when it comes to the absolute values.

Part of the issue though is that Regen isn't really a unique thing. As shown by Rad being able to get a healthy amount of HPS, green insps can be made/queued up easily, healing procs, and even just natural regen rates (given: Rad is a bad example as it does have +Regen and self heals but still) most all characters have ways to sustain their HP that in other games would be considered a healing factor. Its not like an invincibility character in CoH can be chipped away over time while a Regen can't.

However, I 1000% agree that the way Regen works should be preserved. A set where you have to be on your toes and actively maintain your survival is super cool and unique among the cast of powers. The issue is that what it does either requires a lot of hoops that other sets do not need / get more absolute benefit from in a way that is not exactly equitable to the effort.

May 19, 2021

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I know it's all in play but I'm pretty sure, due to her never correcting me when I called her a her but that proves nothing, the greatest math-minded player to ever grace these forums was a woman.

We even have a mechanism named for her in arcanatime.

She just wanted to have fun, Bill 😉

May 19, 2021

Just now, DarknessEternal said:

You guys want to stop being assholes and just say something useful?

The Brutal mission sim is very useful, though I do need to edit it some as the feedback has been it is rather RNG-y for some AT's

May 19, 2021

40 minutes ago, arcane said:

Point is I’m not convinced Blasters need any help at all 😉

Gonna mirror Bill in that, well yeah "Blasters" don't need help, the "Blast Sets" do

May 19, 2021

Double post, but to be more precise with the goal:

In my opinion, the goal should be that the maximum amount of playstyles are viable and carry weight in as many encounters as possible. Currently, there are meta forces that stifle this goal by downplaying swaths of play/build styles "out of competition" on top of in general making team content feel non-impactful.

May 19, 2021

14 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

Players are welcome to put artificial restrictions on themselves when they play. I know it's popular with certain groups on the forum (tankers, mostly) to not use inspirations/P2W buffs/base buffs/incarnates other than alpha. But that isn't "the norm". It's a subset (tankers & those that think like them) of a subset (forum posters) of the playerbase.

The vast majority of the playerbase are casuals playing 1-50 on SOs. The game is balanced around them.

This is true, but I do feel that most players heavily use dropped inspirations which =/= prepped inspirations (huge difference), as well as anything that drops into their lap such as recipes / Incarnate powers as normal gameplay grants you them. There is a clear line to me between the "normal" game and going out of your way to prep Base Buffs, P2W buffs, Specialized queues of inspirations, or other Temp Powers you can gain from XYZ thing.

The side of the line with the "extras" I feel is not possible to balance around.

Because it is so, so varied in application + allows you to go into ludicrous stat blocks I feel that content cannot be reliably made with those in mind. The access to these used to be their balancing factor but that is out the window now, and with those in mind we cannot feasibly set up encounters that are "fair / challenging" to something with capped stats without it being atrocious if you are not capped / really janky.

I feel there is a definite bell curve where if people who strictly use SO's and *nothing* else is on one side, people who use *literally everything* is on the other. We definitely do not want to "force" people to one side or the other.

14 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

But let's consider new level 50 content designed for the min/max uber crowd. If you make new content, and balance it around alpha-only/no inspirations...what's to stop uber players using other incarnates/inspirations/etc?

Nothing is stopping them. So what exactly would you have achieved in the months-long process of beta testing the "balance" of the difficult new level 50 difficult content? The answer is nothing. All of the uber players will use the resources that you have decided not to factor in when balancing new content. And they will breeze through it, just like they do all the current level 50 content.

This is why I said "balance the game as it is played, not as you wish it was played" in my post. Otherwise you'll end up spending 6 months on a new super-hard level 50 taskforce people will learn to speedrun in 15-20 minutes.

People will learn and conquer all new content, that is a given. The issue to me is that level of stompage that is possible far outpaces what the game offers to be stomped, and that has ripple effects to where certain sets / AT's get impacted by the meta in ways that are not easily fixed. This is certainly exasperated by the access to "outside" boosts such as P2W stacked with tons of insps, etc. The next level down is IOs/Incarnates stacked up, and then from there the base lvl should be SO's + whatever you would consider "average" insp usage as they drop, with the opposite end at the bottom being self restrictions.

The game is generally set to be doable by that "base lvl SO + rando Insps", but does not scale up from there while players can far surpass it. Surpassing IMO is fine, its the *far* surpass that is the issue.

32 minutes ago, KauaiJim said:

Is the desired goal to make content that is more challenging for YOU? (live and let live)

Is the desired goal to make content that is more challenging for EVERYONE because no cheaters/easy mode? (live and let die)

I am leaning towards the second, but it is a bit more nuanced than just "lol harder". There are real concerns with the meta with how STRONG defense is in general, as well as recharge but thats a totally different animal, on top of raw offense that begins to really dampen whole sets / ATs and impact player fun. Few people care if they do 1% less dps than the other guy in the team. We see a LOT of people caring that "oh, well I guess I did not contribute at all today" when they're in a team.

When coming up with "buffs" to the things that get put down by the meta, it is often by homogenizing them to feed into the meta which isn't right, and strips some of the soul away from CoH / the Sets / AT's each time it's done. Instead, there should be efforts made on giving opportunities for those odds and ends things to shine and let players have fun with what they chose instead of feeling superfluous. By definition, any changes made that shake up the meta like that will be more difficult as players across the board will need to adapt. Part of this is content design (more enemies where CC specifically is the "best" way to tackle them, etc), part of this is the name of the thread and looking into loot / equipment balance (do certain IO bonuses / slotting styles stifle others in a way that discourages player choice?), part of it is looking into how to access certain things (is the hard content not done because it is a pain to get to? are P2W buffs/etc too easy to obtain?), all these relate together in a sort of ecosystem, and any changes to it even if healthy overall could see some shifts in the food chain.

May 19, 2021

shooting for soft cap specifically isn't necessary, its more that starting from basically "0" mitigation to gaining it from IO's is a comparatively big leap compared to a Tanker which currently has decent damage that gets enhanced by procs, and amazing mitigation which is not really enhanced too much by bonuses.

May 19, 2021

Elec Blast needs help to "do it's job", as its one of the only sets in the game that sort of *needs* synergy with another complimentary set to perform it's gimmick. By itself it actually has a hell of a time leveraging it's sapping mechanics which is definitely it's thing compared to most other elec sets given it has Short Circuit, and Thunderous Blast tho it's cycle time leaves it kind of meh as a consistent drain tool.

It also doesn't help that it has rather poo "real" ST damage despite what it may look like on paper.

2 hours ago, arcane said:

I don’t actually want Fire Blast nerfed. I’m just saying that IF you were to try to bring equity to DPA, it would be less bad to nerf Fire than to make every other set monstrously OP too. Since I’d prefer not to nerfherd, my logical preference would be to leave the status quo and focus on actual underperformers.

It would be more economic sure, but the core issue is more that blast sets IMO are not as cohesively designed as melee sets, which leads them to suffer a lot when they have performance dips. In that regard it is much better to buff the not-good ones.

2 hours ago, arcane said:

Of course I only play with IO’s, but I don’t buy the implication that blasters are underperforming in non-IO land. If I haven’t finished my IO’s on any given character, I just compensate with more inspirations. It’s never as if IO’s make an AT go from worst to best; they only amplify what’s already there.

Well yes and no due to slotting options / comparative strength that certain IO's give to one character over an other. I'd say the "boost what's there" is much more true for Tankers over Blasters where IO's moreso patch holes that were designed to be holes for a reason.

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