Moonlighter

Is it possible to have an option that gives the character the most common uniques? My initial list would be Kismet, Numina's, Miracle, Panacea, Performance Shifter, Steadfast Protection, Gladiator's Armor, Shield Wall, Reactive Defenses maybe?

Don't even get me started on Kinetics when you lose party members because your heal missed three times in a row.

Make Follow Up still pop its damage on a miss, have Attack Vitals generate combo credit on a miss, and just change it for #$*@ Assassin Strike; like an ATO that makes that strike have a 98% to hit chance.

Combo chains, and sets where your build up is replaced by a power that cycles a damage buff. Missing a Follow Up is a 30% lost damage buff for an entire chain of attacks. Missing any attack in the entire Attack Vitals combo denies you significant damage at the end of the chain.

There are tons of people frustrated by it. If you play characters who are highly dependent on opening strikes or attacks that are needed for chains, having a 5% arbitrary miss chance is maddening. Let high accuracy or to hit drop the percent down but never let it hit zero. At 5%, with the amount we attack, having an entire chain messed up 30 or 40 times a night is just annoying. If people don't play characters where this is a thing, or just group a lot where in the chaos of the moment they just don't notice, then yeah they won't get why this is an issue.

Initial Thoughts: ~ I really didn't have an issue figuring out the system since I had two slots unlocked just from doing regular content so that was a good change. I can work into trials later without feeling that I have given up progress when finishing up high level content at 50. ~ Normalize the components to have any commons/uncommons/rare work. I know for flavor it looks good to have different ones, but when the rewards panel comes up we need to spend time cross referencing which component we will need in 3 incarnate levels on this character. As an example, if the whole system was simplified to "Minor Incarnate Boon" "Major Incarnate Boon" and 'Epic Incarnate Boon" then the system would work exactly the same, take exactly as long to grind, but the rewards choice dialog would be a thousand times easier because I could just bank stuff for later without having to bring up a spreadsheet or combing through the crafting window again. This is particularly relevant when someone is running a series of incarnate trials. Another simpler to implement option? Just make the swap crafting interaction allow us to swap components with no extra cost; a minor for a minor, a rare for a rare, etc. Then I can just grab Hamidon Goo (or whatever) and swap it to what I want later. ~ The level shift makes it too hard to find really tough content outside the AE; I'd like the difficulty slider to go up to +5 to compensate. Edit: Alpha is good enough without even needing a level shift; just remove the level shift for content outside incarnate? ~ I'd like some meaningful content where Incarnate stuff just doesn't work. ~ I know this is probably out of scope in terms of development, I honestly wish the system let us boost specific powers instead of global bonuses to the system made us make choices that worked into the build meta instead of superseding it. If the alpha boost was specific to a power, and I could make 3 of them total, I'd have to consider my build a lot more. Like if the Omega slot let us do an alpha slot for one specific power. Do I want to boost my blaster nuke? So I need more defense from Scorpion Shield? Do I want my highest DPA attack cycling faster for better single target? That's not an obvious or easy decision.

The set got, not including the hold changes made to all blaster holds, *nine* nerfs including massive reductions to the recharge buff, as well as damage buff and to hit buff reductions. The argument could easily made that a reduction to Upshot and ESD Arrow was enough, coupled with the Hold changes all the blasters got.

Look, I know people want to defend the devs, and people want to step into to what they perceive as overreacting to every little change. I get that. I, for one, am appreciative of their hard work and the passion the devs have for keeping the game alive and healthy. Especially when they are putting out new content. Having said that, I also believe their are some fairly simple rules to development that devs can and should follow. Even volunteer devs that are otherwise kicking butt. Don't nerf, unless it is absolutely necessary for either the integrity of game play, or the integrity of the build meta. Just don't nerf things after players have had a chance to establish builds. Don't nerf. (Unless necessary) I get that Titan Weapons was an outlier. It messed up the build meta. The performance was was way off. Great. I get that Bio Armor is way off. Every serious performance driven build now uses Bio Armor, and it has every defensive set perk the devs had previously dreamed of. I get that. I will understand when it gets looked at. But don't casually nerf existing powers unless there is a very real reason to do so. The reason people are aggravated is that there no justification for this nerf, and yet it feels bad enough to have a number of players complaining. I mean, you are defending the nerf, but my question is this; are either of these Tactical Arrow attacks at the full range causing such a problem that gameplay is compromised or that the build meta of blasters will overwhelming move toward Tactical Arrow? Honestly, is the extra range something you are seeing on live at the moment that is warping the build meta or making content less fun for other builds? I just don't see it, so this nerf feels bad but has no justification at all in the mind of players using those builds who have used Electrified Net Arrow to establish full range attack chains. That's pretty much the issue; you are defending the nerf but I haven't seen any good argument that lowering the range will actually do anything to make the game better.

And to be clear, I am not saying no sets should have systems that create different types of rotations. I wouldn't advocate for the removal of the combo system on Dual Blades anymore then I'd support adding a combo system to Martial Arts.

I felt Wavicle's response has been more than respectful.

*Because* those games enforce the holy trinity and focus on big target play. Playing DPS would be so boring in that scenario that they need to impose mini-games to make those feel rewarding. The mini-games are compensating for a game design that does not exist in CoH. I am in a raiding guild and love me some DPS raiding, but WoW is trying to overcome the boredom of a restrictive and, quite frankly, stale content design.

Enforced attack order in sets can definitely make them less interesting and less fun. Let's look at Martial Arts versus Dual Blades. Martial Arts is actually a very good set currently for two reasons: 1.) it can be built in several different ways while still getting good performance. 2.) The design rewards moment to moment decisions. Dual Blades, on the other hand, punishes moment to moment gameplay decisions by imposing a penalty for straying from an exact order. With MA, I often change up attack order depending on the situation. Do I want to EC then CAK to impart extra crit on CAK and concentrate on killing a problematic enemy in the crowd as fast as possible? Do I want to EC followed by Dragon's Tail to impart extra crit on multiple targets? Do I want to open up with Dragon's Tail to mitigate the return alpha strike? Do I want to use a short attack on this enemy who has a sliver of health left because EC is overkill? That's even assuming I am on my character that uses Eagle's Claw; I also have a character that relies on the high recharge CAK - SK - Cobra chain and that plays differently, but I constantly weave in different combinations and can decide when to hit Dragon's Tail for good effect. That the set encourages moment to moment game decisions is a strength of the set. To compare, let's look at my Dual Blade scrapper who uses Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals. Because the set was designed with a combo system, the game imposes a fairly substantial penalty for making moment to moment decisions during the game. The only decision I make is whether to hit Typhoon's Edge right after BF. That's it. When I log in tonight and play that character? I know my next attack sequence will be BF - Attack Vitals. When enemies shift around me what will I do? BF - Attack Vitals. What will I do for Council, Nemesis, and Carnies? BF - Attack Vitals. There is a penalty for adjusting my chain to take advantage for the moment to moment play; the design forces the player into a rigid combination of key presses in a way that MA, Mace, and Katana does not. That does not make DB more interesting. To wit, my DB scrapper is fairly boring to play in comparison to MA or Mace. (Fortunately for DB you can also build a higher recharge attack chain with good performance that uses BF more often, so the problem is lessened for that set but that isn't really relevant to the point that adding combinations don't necessarily make a set more interesting.) Energy Combat is much less restrictive so I think it will be fine. But I sympathize with a player that is trying to communicate the way that adding these set gimmicks actually restricts rather than enhances moment to moment play, and also exaggerate the effects of misses on DPS. I think it is short sighted to dismiss those points and adopting that stance that set gimmicks that enforce attack order are somehow "more interesting" to game play when I actually find just the opposite. As an aside, one of the reasons I am chiming in is I am somewhat concerned that the devs will update more melee sets by making them "interesting" by adding gimmicks like this.

I liked the splash damage in Eagle's Claw and support that change, but it is also not a big issue to revert it.

No. No no no no. No. Seriously my main is MA/Nin. I use Ninja Run as my travel power because I love the animation and I leveled and incarnated and slotted out the character *because* I could use Ninja Run as my travel power despite /Ninja being lackluster. No.

Nightcrawler is *really* hard to hit. Teleporters in the comics almost universally use the ability to avoid hits.

Bopper used the term splash damage to refer to lesser AoE damage that does not affect the damage formula so as to move a power into the true AoE balance formulas. Eagle's Claw is balanced as a single target power and the extra damage is less than the main attack, thus the term splash damage. So I assumed it was a thing,

Your character doesn't become visually translucent out of combat when the power is active.

I am liking Combat Teleport; I am not saying it is super useful but it's fun. I agree it should give a small defense buff for a time after using it to match Hover and Combat Jumping.

Will boostset also work up to 55 so I don't have to drag salvage boosters one at a time for potentially dozens of enhancements?

Was playing with Tactical Arrow on test. Electrified Net Arrow is still bad at 60'. The change didn't really fix anything for kiting blasters picking things off at range. I am just going to reroll to a set where I have close range melee options with soft control and where it is much easier to cap S/L defense with melee attacks.

I'd rather see Ki Push at 6 seconds with higher damage, even though I can juggle three bosses at a time now.

Not sure where to put this bug, so since this is other powers: It looks like messing with the /Ninj toggles on blasters somehow messed up /Ninj scrappers. On my 50 /Ninj scrapper: Jumping on LIVE Shinobi Only Speed: 55.76 Height: 31.38 Shinobi + CJ Speed: 55.91 Height: 39.38 Shinobi + Ninja Run Speed: 75.37 Height: 59.18 Jumping on TEST Shinobi Speed: 54.68 Height: 31.08 Shinobi + CJ Speed: 43.07 Height: 22.40 Shinobi + Ninja Run Speed: 62.53 Height: 42.20 Shinobi no longer stacks with Ninja Run, and Combat Jumping actually suppresses it. Hopefully this will be fixed ASAP, as now moving around testing on my main is much slower.

Wait, what? No, the devs wouldn't do that. Let me check on my 50 /Ninj scrapper Jumping on LIVE Shinobi Only Speed: 55.76 Height: 31.38 Shinobi + CJ Speed: 55.91 Height: 39.38 Shinobi + Ninja Run Speed: 75.37 Height: 59.18 Jumping on TEST Shinobi Speed: 54.68 Height: 31.08 Shinobi + CJ Speed: 43.07 Height: 22.40 Shinobi + Ninja Run Speed: 62.53 Height: 42.20 Shinobi no longer stacks with Ninja Run, and Combat Jumping actually suppresses it. I am sure that this is a bug that was a side effect of them playing the /Ninj blaster powers. I can't believe the devs would do that deliberately.

The hardest thing to teach game devs is to avoid making conceptual nerfs for balance, and only change things for the worse if game play demands it. Titan Weapons is an outller that affects game building. Bio Armor is an outlier that affects game building. EMP Arrow is an outlier that affects building. No one is saying Electrified Net Arrow is a problem. Groups are not spamming LFG with cries for Electrified Net Arrow teams to power level them to 50. The devs are nerfing it for purely conceptual reasons in the face of a lot of backlash. It is a bad hill for the devs to plant their banner on. The other thing that is hard to teach game devs is that once powers are in the game and players have had a chance to establish builds and playstyles around a set/class/build then that is the new design paradigm. The argument that "this was never intended" is irrelevant once the players have had a chance to establish characters with those sets. It's fine to balance if the power is causing actual balance issues, either by creating broken play patterns or by narrowing the effective build options. If the devs have found that an 80 range Electrified Net Arrow, for example, is being abused by hover blasting content and completing something way harder than intended, and that option is not available in multiple other places, then yes that is a real issue that needs to be addressed. If something is an outlier that narrows the conceptual builds that can reach certain levels of performance then yes, that is a real issue that needs to be addressed. My problem is that the game devs are standing their ground on this nerf for conceptual reasons, rather than play issues. If they said that the increased range was causing the build options to be narrowed because then sure, I am behind it. But that's not the reasoning presented. The increased range of the early Tactical Arrow powers has become a feature and advantage of the set for the most important reason of all; the players have adopted the playstyle in game. If the devs are nerfing for conceptual balance reasons, and not listening to feedback, then they are making a mistake.

To add what others have already put out, there is a lot of good soft control in melee range on some sets. My /Martial blaster is often safer teleporting in and using Ki Push to send an opponent flying (and not damaging me) while I knockdown other targets and finish them, where hanging back and using ranged in some cases will result in more damage from return ranged fire.