[Focused Feedback: Dark Miasma (Release Candidates)]

11 hours ago, Bopper said:

My first response was only in regards to Tar Patch and that the impact was only a loss of 6% DPS (at absolute worse, while likely less than half that in team settings). Your response to my numbers was I am forgetting the other nerfs. But now you're saying you're not against the other nerfs?

 

Ok. 

In all fairness, in other MMOs (I believe FFXIV is the one I'm thinking of) a damage increase of a lower scale for a few seconds has largely contributed to classes being "meta".  I think we might want to be careful about saying "only" because sometimes those small values are the difference between top tier and unviable (though they clearly aren't in this situation, I think the tar pit nerf is substantially more relevant to the argument than the twillight grasp nerf). For a Controller who isn't using procs (ie a leveling controller), 6% less of a res debuff probably eclipses the actual damage they're providing.

 

That being said - does this actually matter? And I sincerely doubt it does in 99% of gameplay and the other 1% are situations we'd never notice.

13 hours ago, Draeth Darkstar said:

You're ignoring the other 3 nerfs to Dark Controllers and 2 to Corruptors and Masterminds.

 

Having all personal and pet healing reduced by 25%, -Res reduced by 25%, and for Controllers with Fade and Power Boost, Defense reduced by 100%+ is a heavy set of nerfs.

A BIG question here regarding Fade is "Should Power Boost even work this way?" and on some level I think Power Boost just shouldn't affect defense and that defense powers should never be balanced around the belief that it should, even if we're fine with it doing so. That's more of an opinion-oriented choice, but it's hard for me to see this as a true nerf when we're just "fixing" something that is a mechanically nonsensical choice when we really take a step back and think about what it means.
 

13 hours ago, Vanden said:

I also have to wonder how the set apparently managed to fall so far. I remember during Live, the common wisdom was that Dark Miasma was an excellent set. On Controllers, it's an even better buff/debuff set because it loses two powers of the kind that Controllers already get in the primaries for two more excellent buffs. But now it gets this small slap-on-the-wrist nerf and suddenly people are claiming it's not that good to begin with? Something smells fishy.

I imagine a very large portion of it is that To-Hit debuffs are now considerably less relevant, solo play feels much less common as a whole, and groups move quickly which makes Tar Patch and Darkest Night much less useful overall because they need to be set up. We also saw the introduction of sets like Time and Nature that really raised the bar on what a support set could do.

The game changed around Dark, but I think there's at least three other Support sets in an obviously worse spot and probably more like six or seven if we're being honest.

edit: Forgot to clearly state my position; these changes are fine. Supports as a whole in CoH (even the ones I think are underpowered!) are very strong and I don't think that there's any AT modifier fixes that has the potential to throw any set out of whack unless that set is already doing very, very poorly.

[Weekly discussion 42: Scrappers!]

Scrappers are in a strange place - I don't actually think there's anything wrong with them exactly, I just struggle to see why I would want to play the majority of powerset combinations on a Scrapper in the current environment. Not because Scrappers are bad, but because Scrappers sort of lack any kind of overarching identity. Brutes absolutely step on their toes quite a bit as a damage AT while also having a built-in taunt that provides a lot of utility even when you're not tanking. Stalkers have the utility of a very strong built-in stealth, and plenty of newer Stalker primaries aren't giving up AoE anymore. Tankers are tanks, and the recent buffs make them very appealing.

And that's where the strange place for Scrappers is; they're not in a bad spot, they're not bad at all, but they just have no identity and less utility than other melees and I don't want to play most combinations on a Scrapper because of that. I don't think they need buffed. I don't think there's anything glaringly wrong with the archetype. I think that any given buff would probably either not resolve the identity issue or would send them flying out of control into being the "best" melee AT again. I think the core issue is that we have 4 ATs who do very similar things, not that Scrappers are somehow broken. And that makes them boring.

I like Kinetics/Shield largely because I like Kinetic Melee and the Power Siphon mechanic is less impactful on a Brute and doesn't exist on a Stalker. Shield's damage buffs on Scrappers are more impactful than on Brutes, and I like the core mechanic of Against All Odds as being surrounded vs. what I believe Stalkers get.

[Weekly Discussion 41: ATO Sets!]

36 minutes ago, GM Miss said:

What are yalls favorite procs from the sets?

Flame Orb + Energy Font (even if they suck) for looking cool. Slotting them into the AoE immob can end up with me getting a lot of fireballs following me around, but I'm somewhat unconvinced they actually do anything.

[Weekly Discussion 41: ATO Sets!]

This might be a somewhat unpopular opinion, but I really wish that the pure damage procs (Blaster's Wrath, Will of the Controller, Malice of the Corruptor) were something else. I'd hate if they were changed, but it's really disappointing that some characters get something that really ties into their identity and then these three get this. I hope that any future ATOs skip over pure damage procs and lean into identity building aspects.

I think Scrapper's strike is kind of secretly mediocre; any given crit bonus is essentially the same amount of bonus as damage, and I don't think people would slot a 3% damage bonus. The Brute/Scrapper/Stalker balance is super precarious, but I feel like this ATO could afford to get bumped up a little bit. It's just kind of lame when you think about how ATOs make Stalkers into on-demand crit machines and then Scrappers get... this. It's also less interesting than the other three global ATOs (Stalker's Build Up recharge, Kheldian Heal, and Arachnos Toxic Damage proc) and I already think the non-Stalker ones are awkward and kind of boring.

Dominator procs are both interesting in my opinion (I LIKE fiery orb even if it's not that great) but there's just nowhere particularly good to put them. I don't know if letting me slot them into damaging attacks is the right choice, though. I like the juxtaposition between the Defender heal and Corruptor +End, which I think provides a little bit of identity to two Archetypes who are very similar. Controller sets provide some interesting bonuses, but they can also conflict with slotting my "attacks" for damage; I kind of wish there was damage built into both of these Archetypes' ATOs, which would make me feel a lot more compelled to actually slot them.

I personally think it would be interesting if we could somehow use the code that prevents Regular and Superior ATOs from being on the same build to instead create mutually exclusive procs with interesting effects; something like a Defender providing an unslotted Maneuvers level Defense aura vs a modest Recharge aura (two popular effects). I think it's kind of wishful thinking, but the thing I like about ATOs is that they enhance Archetype identity; any new ones should do that, but so many people have different views of what each AT's identity should be that it becomes muddy without introducing choice.

[What's up with Stalker Claws Eviscerate?]

The lower damage has to do with Stalkers and Scrappers having different damage scales - I actually think that the Stalker Eviscerate does more base damage before scale gets involved, as does Swipe. The problem is that a fairly AoE light primary loses out on two AoEs for single target damage, something that it is hard to claim any given Stalker primary lacks, and its almost impossible for a single target gain to outperform the possibility of hitting two targets in terms of mob-clearing utility, which is a very substantial portion of the game.