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Daniel_R

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  1. Yup. The odd thing is that I actually think there's broad agreement that a rebalance would be good for the set - but we still keep having the same "discussions". For the record: 1. Take off some of Rage's buff (Damage and ToHit) and compensate the DPS of Set's other attacks, then - 2. Scrappers, if the set is ported, get Buildup; finally - 3. Optionally, provide a toggle-based +Dmg alternative to Rage (Focus?), to provide a thematic and mechanical alternative that doesn't disadvantage defence-based armours (toss a coin if scrappers get the choice too - I vote "no"). Alternatively, keep it exactly like it is - it's actually kind of comforting that we're still having the same arguments after two decades, and it makes for a pretty good drinking game.
  2. Honestly, like clockwork. You haven't min-maxed, though, have you? You chosen to sacrifice an 80% Damage Boost, plus a significant ToHit bonus from just one power, and partially mitigated it with very expensive IOs, late-game. Your reasons (I'm guessing) were either: you were looking to avoid the -def penalty (Super Reflexes?), you were playing on a Brute and relying on Fury, or just willing to hack around the issue by spending a billion Inf. Which, honestly, is absolutely fine - CoH is a forgiving game: we have a Hard Mode for a reason. You don't need to min-max. The SS Set, and the game itself, is still lots of fun, even if bits of it are a little broken here and there. None of that changes that the Developers still have to work within certain mechanical and mathematical restrictions, if they're serious about game balance, when building or changing power sets, and that given those restraints, the SS Set is just a little broken thanks to Rage.
  3. This is a very, very, very old discussion in the history of City of Heroes. Without going too much into the specifics of that history (the other posters here will doubtless do that for me - this is Legacy Tech Debt dating back to the launch of the game), I believe that the principle reason for not doing this now has to do with the set's overreliance on Rage, and the current downsides to Rage. Put simply, all attacks in SS are balanced around Rage, and Rage is very strong offensively. The performance of SS without Rage is distinctly sub-par, to the point where it is essentially almost required. Porting Rage to Scrappers in its current form, however, would be problematic. First off, Scrapper Criticals, when applied to double-stacked Rage, would be unbalanced, according to every numbers-based analysis of the idea I've read over almost two decades. Simply removing and replacing for it for Scrappers with, say, Total Focus, would also leave the Set underpowered, as the Set is balanced around a strong persistent Damage and ToHit buff. There's also the issue of the Rage crash - the defence debuff applied during the crash (which has only recently been applied in the game) already unfairly affects defence-based armour sets. On a character with Tanker hitpoints and Resistance values, this is arguably mitigatable; a Scrapper would be more severely affected. From a Game Balance viewpoint, Scrapper Super Strength simply veers too far out of the acceptable bounds of performance on both ends - it would be overpowered offensively, with a periodic death sentence to certain Scrapper builds, or it would underperform. The solution would involve a full balance pass prior to porting, boosting the DPS of every SS attack, maybe giving all attacks an intrinsic ToHit boost, while nerfing the Damage boost and perhaps the ToHit boost of Rage. Then, force Scrappers to take either to take Total Focus or a +DMG toggle similar to SD's Against All Odds or the Assault Hybrid power (in the case of Tankers and Brutes, give them the option to choose the Toggle or Rage). While I believe this would 'fix' the issue, during and following from this, the Devs would doubtless get a metric ton of abuse for doing so (as they did the last time). Whatever numbers they chose would not satisfy a lot of players. As they're a volunteer team, with limited manpower, ambitions for the game, and who are basically giving me my Favourite Game of All Time for free (and probably saved my mental health during the Pandemic and Lockdown), I'm inclined to be understanding as to why they don't want to touch that particular problem with a bargepole the length of the Pacific Ocean.
  4. Daniel_R

    Regen Brute

    My Regen Brute: Exported build: I rotate Unleash Potential, Melee Radial and Instant Healing in typical play - works out pretty nicely most of the time, with the usual DDR caveats.
  5. Threw this together in about 5 minutes, so apologies to the Build Geeks here: doubtless there's more to be done with it. Mid's feature for Build Exports seems to be broken at the moment, But I managed to export this data chunk: Which should give you this: Some notes: - Emphasis here was on building a layer of mitigation on top of your Regen and click heals - you're getting around 35% positional defense (melee and ranged), plus a layer of Resistance (65/25/17), which should see you through most content. Take some small purples for the nastier stuff and you should be fine solo. - As with most builds that aren't defense-based with DDR built in - beware Defense Debuffs. - Once you've unlocked your Hybrid slot, you can rotate the Melee Hybrid and Instant Healing, at which point you'll feel fairly Tanky. Might be painful getting to that point. Good luck.
  6. So there is. Just to be clear - I'm suggesting extra "Rest" animations as much as alternate types of Run. So, we might end up with - Run - Run + Heroic Variant Pose - Run + Villainous Variant Pose - Ninja Run - Ninja Run + Heroic Variant Pose - Ninja Run + Villainous Variant Pose - Beast Run - Beast Run + Heroic Variant Pose - Beast Run + Villainous Variant Pose ...etc My ideal system would separate out the Resting animations and simply have you select your rest animation and run animations from a couple of dropdowns. This however, looks to be a pre-existing system with developed UI, so should (crosses fingers) be less work for our overworked volunteer dev team.
  7. We currently have a couple of custom run animations available in the tailor - ninja run and beast run. These also have associated rest animations. As of the new patch notes for the upcoming Page 4 update, this will be expanded to two more. It would be nice to expand this further. In particular there are a number of 'resting' and 'running' animations that are currently already selectable by emote, that would add a lot of flavour and variety to CoH. The variant Heroic and Villainous rest poses should be added, at the very least.
  8. I'm on board with this. Maybe cross post this to the Suggestions section - try and make sure it's seen? From a gameplay perspective, the first 20 levels could use something fun to do that isn't the DFB. So, to expand on this: Have a new Stateman contact for levels 1-20, as you said. The contact could sit roughly where the Galaxy City NPC is currently on Atlas Plaza. The character gives out a repeatable mini-TF, or Storyarc, designed for low level characters, perhaps based in Galaxy City or Praetoria (acceptance of the mission transports you directly there). For extra bonus points, have Statesman as an ally in the content - build up a connection to the character. Maybe have some other Phalanx characters appear. Once you level past 20, the Statesman contact is replaced by a Shrine/plaque/Statue of some sort, surrounded by mourning civilians. It should also be available to revisit in Ouroboros to claim any associated badges. I'll take a look at your arc, as well.
  9. Based on the lore left behind by the original Devs, we know that the Well is not the source of superpowers - superpowers, canonically, somehow come from the combined 'potential' of humanity. The Well represents a conduit to a power source external to that - it works as a force-multiplier. There's some google docs out there in the internet ether that set out the lore around this, along with how they were planning to develop this in future story arcs. I may see if I can find them. FYI - how I would develop this myself if I was writing future content - I would zero in on the character of Pandora and use that to expand on the origins of the CoH 'verse. From the lore, it's hinted that Pandora had a hand in the origins of superpowers somehow, at some point in the distant past. Might be worth an Ouroborus Storyarc to explore...
  10. In 17 years, I've -never- seen this suggested for the game, and now it seems like such an obvious thing to put in. Nicely, done, Murkweave.
  11. I'm curious as to how feasible Cape Insignias would be, while we're having this conversation.
  12. I've enjoyed this thread immensely, and agree with many suggestions. Very much taken with the idea that Nemesis is the most social-media savvy of the villain groups. Although, if Zuckerberg is a Nemesis automation, its not much of a disguise... Here's my own, based upon my own reading of the CoH lore: "Pandora", aka the source of all superpowers in the CoH universe, was originally an Ascended who foresaw the threat of Battalion She sacrificed herself to infuse the "Pandora's Box" artifact with the entirety of her power - it created a self-sustaining "web" of energy that connects to all powered individuals (and some artifacts/pieces of technology) and tweaks the rules of reality to magnify the "possible" - it isn't the "source" of superpowers, but merely what makes it possible for a highly trained human to dodge bullets, or a chance mutation to enable telepathy, or exposure to radiation to induce super-strength "Primal" Earth is special as it's the most "probable" of all the parallel worlds where Pandora made this choice - it's the epicenter of superpowered humanity in the multiverse Consequently, it's where the Well of The Furies has decided to make its stand against Battalion There exist "mundane" worlds that the "power web" does not extend to, that have been visited by Portal Corporation - no superpowers are possible there; trying to dodge bullets or expose yourself to radiation there is not a great idea In the Statesman/Ms Liberty TF, Lord Recluses' power-draining machine works by draining the energy from this web and channeling it into him; he's been looking for an alternate power source to the Well of the Furies, and he thinks this is it 'Invention Origin' enhancements work in an entirely different way to normal enhancements - the 'normal ones' directly enhance the source of the powers (radiation, spells, training, etc); IO's work by blending natural and supernatural elements to enhance their connection to the Power Web, making even more powerful abilities possible Statesman, Lord Recluse and Hero 1 and others who got their powers directly from The Well and not the Power Web, don't use enhancements The Well of the Furies is a person - they have a physical form and are hiding out in Paragon somewhere The power from the Well of the Furies is not magic; The Power Web is not magic either Hope you have fun with these. I have more, but these all been burning a hole in my head - they occurred to me when I was planning out how I would write a Stateman TF short story or late-game AE arc, and I deep-dived into the original dev's comments on the lore.
  13. Thanks, I'll put this one on the pile too, Hew. In the meantime, I think I'll stick with my initial reaction, which is that there's now more fun content/powersets to play given the nerf to SS, and that I'll revisit this decision when I have more free time to spend.
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