Parabola

What's the difference between a hard no vote and a no vote? Does it count for more? Could it be countered with a rock hard yes vote? Perhaps the Mohs scale could be employed? (Apologies, I'm clearly in an odd mood today)

Yeah this. I much prefer rad over invuln. Defence debuff is often discussed as if it is the only problem defence has to deal with. Auto hit damage is a thing and more commonly there are enemies such as devouring earth, nemesis and rularuu that can stack to-hit buffs on themselves to the point that defence can become meaningless. That's why I always go to resistance/heal sets if I'm looking to do really irritating content and so far rad is the best I've found for that. The trick is to build for recharge and resists rather than trying to add defence when there is no support for it. Also as you are going to get hit by everything you need to focus on debuff resistances too. Focused accuracy, ageless radial and solid slow resists from winter sets are a must.

I've tried to stop getting involved in balance threads as they tend to become toxic very quickly. I just wanted to say that I hope it is recognised that the fact we see these threads pop up all the time suggests that there really is an issue here to be addressed. I'm not sure that this particular solution is the way to go but the existance of an underlying problem seems clear. Against my better judgement I'll also say that 'change the soft cap and everyone will quit' is an odd argument. The soft cap resulting in a 5% chance to hit is that important that if it were changed everyone would leave? What if it were changed to 6%? Or 5.1%? Where's the rage quit threshold? People throw around the 'everyone would leave' accusation like it's some kind of trump card in all these discussions and it's truely tedious.

I don't have much experience with EM so I'm not really qualified to comment on most of your post, although the changes look like solid buffs across the board to me. But this particular statement just isn't true imo. With the buffs tanks have received they've never been in a better place. They do great damage now, are every bit as tough as always and are unparalleled at generating and holding aggro.

Best of luck with this topic. You aren't alone in these frustrations but many seem to very vocally disagree and conversations having anything to do with game balance tend to get heated. For what it's worth I agree that there are very real issues here. Personally I solo most of the time now because of it. Embracing the tankmage seems the only way currently!

I believe buffalo can also mean 'to bully' which kind of fits? Hence: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

And roughly a dozen of those posts have actually been on topic. Good luck finding them!

Exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. As you say the values would all need testing and balancing but this general small, medium and large layout seems sensible.

Please don't take offence at this but I'm beginning to think certain people need to get a room and ... work some stuff out.

The difference is that in all other situations you are able to act. Against damage you can click heals, run away or fight back. Similarly against debuffs, they may reduce your options but they don't often remove them altogether. But hard mez simply turns your character off for a while and so completely removes your agency. I've no desire to remove mez but I do think it could be a better gameplay mechanic.

Yup, another valid point. Having endurance spend being the cost for reducing mez duration seems the simplest thing but it would be problematic in end drain scenarios. Then again none of this is designed to replace the existing mechanics - waiting out the mez would work in exactly the same way as it currently does. Or we could try to come up with another opportunity cost for using the 'struggle' power.

Yeah I like that. Perhaps the mez badges could modify the effect of the 'struggle' powers making them more effective for the endurance spent etc.

Yeah thanks. In many respects it shouldn't come as a surprise that this has degenerated into a game balance argument with some 'learn to play' overtones and the usual deep philosophical arguments over soloing vs teaming. Goodness knows I've been involved in enough of both of those so I can't really complain but of course none of that is what this idea is about if people would actually stop to read and understand it. Anyway ... carry on all.

This He also does a cover of smack my b up which is one of the best things I've ever seen.

I would approach this from the other direction and say that the fact most AT's can largely forget mez exists is a design flaw in itself. But it's not one that can realistically be addressed without a rebuild of the mez mechanics from the ground up so we more or less have to work with what we have. I'm not suggesting we allow all AT's to break free of mez, just that we could create a mechanism that would allow mez duration to be reduced, at a cost, in an interactive manner. The cost could be quite high so that in overall balance terms it usually isn't worth paying but it would still give the player an option and a decision to make. It strikes me as potentially a good game mechanic regardless of considerations around who would use it under which circumstances.

Yeah I'm not so into the idea of a minigame or spamming a button in this game. We don't have things like that currently and I don't think they would fit. But we do have clicking powers, so if you were presented with a 'struggle' power when mezzed that would reduce the duration at the cost of endurance that would fit with the rest of the gameplay. There could be different variations of this power for expending a large amount of end or a small amount. Something to give the mezzed player a decision to make and something to engage with. As for your second point, yeah this mechanic would be player only. The whole point is player engagement so the mobs would have to miss out on this one!

The soloing vs teaming debate rather misses the point of this. Yes some AT's largely ignore mez and they are generally considered to be better at soloing than AT's that can't ignore mez. And yes this is an MMO and leaning on your teammates is a legitimate design feature. But neither of those points are what this is about. This isn't about trying to do away with mez, it's trying to come up with an idea to make mez a more fun game mechanic. Solo or teamed, on a squishy you will get mezzed every now and again. As it stands you can do nothing apart from eating a breakfree or firing a power like RoP if you have it. The idea here is to create an engaging way to have more options than that. This is simply for the benefit of gameplay not any kind of balance argument.

The patch currently in testing reduces RoP's duration. This has caused something of a kerfuffle in some quarters. I haven't ever used it so don't have skin in that particular fight but it has brought up the whole subject of how mez works. I think this slightly misses the point but thanks for joining in :).

32 or 38 levels is a long time to wait. And one aoe (no matter how good) is still one aoe, it can't chain with itself. In a world where dark melee has had shadow maul buffed and another aoe added I think we can hope for extra aoe of some sort in SS. Stone melee needs it more though it has to be said.

I think (it was a while ago now) that this is roughly the same idea that I suggested to one of the CoH successor projects. They seemed to want much the same mez system as CoH and I thought this would work with the same setup but be an improvement in terms of gameplay. No idea what they thought of it though, CoH came back and I kind of lost interest in what they are doing... Yes indeed. If I were totally rewriting the mez system I'd want to find a way that everyone would be affected by it to some degree rather than the 'haves and have nots' mez protection system we currently have.

Yeah I take the point about the recoding of powers and the danger of someone lining their nuke up, getting mezzed that instant and blowing the nuke without realising. I like the server tray pop-up idea a lot. As long as there is a cost you can pay to shorten the mez duration and that a higher cost results in a shorter duration. And that you should always have the option of not doing anything and riding it out as you currently do. I'm more inclined to keep it within the game mechanics than a minigame though. One of the things I like most about the idea of struggling free is how thematic it is, what comic book hero hasn't had to force their way out of a trap at some point? A minigame might be in danger of breaking the sense of immersion. Thanks for the comments everyone!

With the discussions around the Rune of Protection changes on beta there has been a bit of focus on the mez mechanics in CoH and people's frustrations with them. Of course not everyone will agree but I do find the mez mechanics a little clunky; the binary on/off nature of the mez protection system doesn't seem ideal to me. But we are where we are with the fundamental structure of how mez effects work so I've been thinking about how we might make what we have more fun. It strikes me that the biggest frustration with mez when playing a character without protection is that it takes away all your agency. You either have a breakfree (or a power like RoP) you can click, or you are stuck there for the duration, effectively stopped from playing until it wears off. So my idea is to introduce a 'struggle free' mechanic. Give all primary and secondary click powers the ability to be used while mezzed but instead of having their normal effects they just grant the user mez resistance. So when you are mezzed you have a choice, you can wait it out as you do now or you can spend endurance and power cooldown building up mez resistance to shorten the duration of the mez effect. Quick recharge, low endurance powers would only grant a little resistance, slow recharge, high endurance powers would offer more. I think this would be more fun because at least you would be doing something. In practice you might simply spam your attack chain to reduce the mez duration by a bit or you might have a big hitter like a nuke that you could sacrifice for the sake of ending the mez very quickly. If you were in little danger you would make different choices to when you were in mortal danger and choices are good! I have no idea of the technical feasibility of this overall but I can see one potential issue: blasters defiance. Defiance already has the mechanism that allows low level powers to be used while mezzed. Personally I've always found that a horribly clunky mechanic as well so I'd be happy to see it replaced but others may like it. If it were to be replaced as part of the 'struggle free' mechanic, blasters could simply be given higher modifiers on the mez resistance granted by their powers. They get mezzed a lot so are well practiced at struggling free. As a final thought the idea would be really sold if feedback could be given to the player to show they are struggling free of mez. In an ideal world this would be animation based but simply hovering some numbers over the character's head would be better than nothing. So, any thoughts?

The point that you seem to be making over and over again is that in your opinion you either max out your travel speed or the whole thing is a waste of time. Hit the cap, whatever that might be, or don't bother. This ... isn't a point of view that is widely shared as you are seeing. They are in effect raising the speed limit in coh and providing us with faster vehicles. Where before there wasn't any room for modifying our vehicles to go even faster there now is, if we want to invest we can get more out of them but it's entirely optional. If we don't want to invest we will at least be going as fast as before and in nearly every case (I think maybe all cases) we will be going faster. I made a rather flippant suggestion earlier but it does have a point. If they were to provide a free power that would limit your movement cap to the unslotted maximum, so you could run it and 'be at the movement cap', would that make you happy? Is it simply a case of needing to see that blue number in the list? Or is the problem really that you don't want anyone else to be able to be faster than you even though they will have to have invest slots in doing so?

Devs, can you make a pay to win power that costs no end to run and that hardcaps flyspeed to whatever you get from fly + swift with no slotting? Then people can fly at their movement cap all the time and apparently be happier than they currently are. Actual feedback? Are you sure you're in the right place?!

You do move mighty quickly with hover + em. I can see myself taking it on kiting hoverblasters who can stomach the end cost because of their sustains. (The end cost does seem a bit steep though devs.) The added mez resists and out of combat defence are nice but not really the selling point to me. I take afterburner as a lotg mule anyway so I may as well take em and have the option of very fast kiting when I want it.