Arbegla

Here is where I would actually disagree a lot. Hasten has an end crash, and doesn't stack (no matter how hard you try..) Tough/Weave have pretty steep endurance costs, as does Maneuvers. What makes them so powerful is that they stack, and you can manage their downsides pretty easily. Now Combat Jumping? That power is heavily overpowered for what it does.

Funny story, that added Resistance that RoP gives you, stacks with Bodyguard mode, giving you an insane level of mitigation on your Mastermind (in addition to the Mez Protection), as your resistance reduces the damage first, then Bodyguard mode is activated.

Except you're using two powers (or three, with Clarion), and you're not quite there. There is a HUGE difference between 40% defense, and 45% defense. (literally twice as many attacks land on you)

Because while the combination of Mez Protection and Resistance is very nice, the Mez Protection is the major offender, not the resistance. The fact it also gives Resistance is just icing on the cake. Getting full Mez Protection, in a clickie every 3 to 10 minutes, for 90 seconds at level 20 on ANY AT is very very powerful.

We're getting a free-respec with this change. You don't like the power, you can respec out of it. That's how it relates to what is going on here.

I think the Devs already have a level of 'Balance' in mind, and I do think they need to make that public knowledge. Once you know where the line is, we'll be able to adjust accordingly. Softcapped defense and 200% recharge is nice, but its not making you immune to an entire section of the game.

RoP not making it to live means that if you wanted to use it, you had to respec into it on test. And/or reroll a new character and pick it up then. If RoP did make it onto live, but you wanted it on a level 50, you had to respec into it.

Melee Hybrid, Clarion, and Barrier are all Incarnate powers thus, they aren't usable below level 45. Temp Powers are by definition Temporary. Break Frees also also temporary, and limited in use, you can only carry so many of them. RoP on the other hand, is available as early as level 20, and does a lot to increase both your survival, and grants immunity to Mez. Its pretty clear it was a very powerful power, that needed to be adjusted.

Ok, that's fair and understable to a point, though RoP still wasn't available on the live servers before the shutdown, so its still a new enough thing to need to be worked out.

Oh I agree, but its still different animals. And pretending they are the same, it isn't fair to RoP. Because RoP is 1 power that provides immunity to an entire section of the game (in addition to granting significant damage resistance to ALL damage types) for its entire duration. Softcapping your defense isn't possible via 1 power. It requires a specific set of powers and IO set combinations to achieve. Its MUCH more then just 1 power.

While I do understand that the respec process is annoying, you do know that when City of Heroes was first released, Re-specification wasn't even included right? You picked what you picked, and if you didn't like it, you rerolled the entire character. Respecs weren't possible until Issue 2.

Softcapped defense means you have a 5% chance to get hit against an even level mob, and when you do get hit, ALL effects lands, mez included. Mez Protection means that if you do get hit, you are immune to the mez status effect. 100% immunity until it surpasses your Magnitude of protection. Completely different animals.

Mez isn't that constant, especially if you have high defense values. Also what difficulty are you running at? What is the game balanced around? Because if you're trying to complete missions at a higher difficulty then the game is balanced around, then that is on you, not RoP.

This is kinda a strawman argument. The power levels are fundamentally different. High recharge and high defense is not the same as active Mez Protection, which is what RoP grants you. In addition to 30% resistance base. IOs can't give you that, it simply can not. There is no 'Mez Protection' IO, and no single bonus is going to give you 30% resistance to all damage types (the closest I can think of, is the Scaling Resistance IO, but that only goes to 10% resistance to all, and you have to near death for it to kick in that much). IOs also only provide Mez Resistance, not protection. RoP fills a hole that NOTHING else available to ALL ATs fills. And it did it really really well. In the Devs eyes, it did it too well, so it got nerfed.

While I can't talk about the workflow of programming for the Dev's here, I can talk about commercial grade programming workflow, and even with the best code base in the world, you don't want to change too many things at all. Incremental changes are always best, as you can break something in new and creative ways. They were already touching the travel powers (which covers Mystic Flight) and the change to RoP is simply reducing a duration value. If there is proper coding standards, that is a pretty simple change. Now, rebalancing the other powers, (keep in mind, two of the powers within the Sorcery Pool affect Enemies and Allys, but in different ways) is a lot more work, and was definitely not planned as part of this change. We're going to get a free-spec when this hits live, and we'll get another one when/if the Sorcery Pool gets looked at again. Temporarily making a Origin Pool (that on average only 5% of players take) less popular isn't a big deal.

Except its not. Mez has been around since the beginning of the game, Squishies have been around since the beginning of the game. RoP wasn't even implemented in the live game (it was only released to the BETA server, not even the full Test server) and squishes have been doing just fine. A mez is not a death sentence. And even if it was a death sentence, Death in City of heroes is insanely lenient, and self rez powers are abundant.

Oh I understand the having enough mitigation that more doesn't feel like it'll benefit you, but the benefit is still there none-the-less. For example, your Dark/Dark tanker has no DDR, so you can cascade, especially fighting things like Malta, which do have -defense, -rech. But that is a mid to high end IO build. If the game isn't balanced around mid-high end IO builds, using them as an example of what you can do is pointless, because simply put, you're already unbalanced. what RoP does let you do, on live, is at Single Origin levels of power, ignore Mez protection (and take at least 1/3 less damage with the 30% resistance it offers) roughly 40% of the time. With JUST SOs. That is why it is important to know where the Devs draw the line. If the line is at Single Origins, then RoP is insanely overpowered, especially with no real crash on it. If the line is at 'low-mid' level IOs builds, RoP is still pretty powerful, because it lets you ignore Mez, and take FAR less damage. on a mid-high level IO build, its probably fine, because the bulk of your mitigation is via set bonuses, and therefore RoP is just covering a small hole you can't get from IOs.

And that is where we need to figure out what balance means. A High end Tanker build still has room to benefit from buffs, like +damage, +rech, and +regen/Absorb. The caps on those aren't possible to hit solo. You can get 'good enough' with Perma hasten, and softcapped defense, but you're not hard capped by any means. I think the only attribute that is possible to actually self cap, is Hitpoints. Everything else has limits far exceeding what you can do with the IO system. Yes, you can get good enough, and yes, layered mitigation is better than just maxing out one or two stats, but a high end IO build isn't invalidating other buffs sets. They still benefit from the buffs. Mez protection is one of the few things that the IO system doesn't address AT ALL. (aside from the Blaster ATO, but that's a proc, and not really guaranteed) It only grants Mez Resistance, which lowers the duration you are mezzed, but the IO system intentionally has a Mez Protection hole within in. I Understand where you are coming from, but if the game is balanced around 0/1x on SOs (which used to be the metric..) then what you can do with IOs doesn't matter at all. Its a moot point because that isn't where things are balanced.

This really depends on what difficulty you play at. I don't have any issues at all on my squishies, even without mez protection. Mez has been around much longer than ways to get around it. Blasters didn't always have Defiance that allowed them to still attack while Mezzed, Controllers didn't always have and Epic power pool that can grant Mez protection, there are more powersets that can grant Mez protections than before. And RoP was literally one of the LAST things to be added to CoH before the shutdown. It didn't really get a chance to be play tested or balanced around.

The big thing, is with the Melee Judgement, (or Clarion) you can basically chain those together, and have permanent Mez Protection on a squishy. What made RoP so powerful was mostly the fact that it chained with other things to completely make you immune to Mez, something Squishies shouldn't be able to do solo.

I fully support the RoP changes, and I really don't understand the argument against it. Death in City of Heroes is one of the most forgivable things in any MMO I've ever played. We don't have to corpse run, we don't lose levels, heck, they even added Hospitals to Hazard zones now, so the walk back to the mission isn't even that bad. Debt slows down leveling, but leveling up is to easy anyways that isn't barely a bump in the road. And there was not just self rez temp powers, but vet powers as well (not counting Wakies) And, a Mez isn't instant death either. Holds and Stuns suck, but Sleeps are broken if you get hit (or healed), and immobilizes you can still use ranged attacks. Unless you're running +4/8x, chances are really high that if you do get Mezzed, you'll be fine. I really think knowing what the Homecoming Devs consider 'Balanced' will help. What difficulty are powers judged at? 0/x1? +2/3 (the old max difficulty before the Notoriety changes...) or +4/8x, which is the highest you can ever play at? Once we know what the Devs are considering to be the balanced difficulty, we can have a better idea of what is considered overpowered. Without that knowledge, we just don't know, as some people can handle +4/8x and solo AVs/GMs, and others can't. There is a HUGE gap between power levels, and until we know where the balance is located, we can't really say something is or isn't balanced.

Not to point out the obvious, but doesn't Dwarf have mez protection? And can't you shapeshift while mezzed now?

That's fair. Maybe increase the recharge (or reduce the duration) so it's not permanent.

Ice/Storm with gale slotted for max KB...

I can sorta kinda understand the "dead body nukes" being a bad idea, but those powers are already balanced around long recharge times, and are typically skipped anyways (cuz who really dies these days now?) An easy fix could be to limit it so only the MM can affect their pets after death (so only the MM can rez/vengy/body nuke). And it'll make it slightly less abusive. Vengeance is nice and all, but it doesn't stack easily, and again, build diversity is fun.