macskull

I feel personally attacked, but in my case... I'm just bored, man. Forum PvP is fun.

This is the patch in question (June 3, 2004). It doesn't explicitly say those words, but that's what that patch is (aka the "purple patch"). The wiki article dates from late 2006, so at the very least this was in the game at that point. The only resistance to -res continues to be damage resistance. Relative level doesn't provide resistance to debuffs, it means the debuff is less effective to begin with. The "-20% equals 20% more damage" is referring to damage resistance reducing the value of -res (you still end up doing 20% more damage with a 20% -res debuff even if your target resists it slightly). Again, you can go and check City of Data on the wayback archive and you'll see none of the -res powers were flagged to ignore level differences - this is important because every single power which affects an enemy must be explicitly flagged to ignore level differences if that's how the devs want that power to behave.

Resistance debuffs have taken relative level into account since the patch which added that waaaaaaay back in June 2004. The reason you can't find any patch notes for what you're searching for is because they don't exist. Even going back to the archived version of CoD from 2012, none of the player-accessible -res powers there are flagged to ignore level differences.

This topic is old, but I don't know why anyone's looking for a Kin or a Rad when the best "farm support" character is a second Brute.

I haven't seen a single Nature/Elec in a PvP environment, so this looks like a case of "seems like" != "reality." Nature's a good set, but it's not actually that great in small-team, 1v1, or zone stuff. The cooldowns and animation times on its best powers are too long to be useful in those environments. Nature shines in large-team matches, but even then it's far from a requirement. It's currently very possible to build a character that's completely immune to recharge and movement debuffs, even factoring in DR. I'm not 100% sure what point you are trying to make here, but control never mattered in large team stuff. Even pre-I13 the only Controllers you saw on most teams were Ill/Emps, and I think I can count on one hand the number of players who ran Dominators on the redside teams. Mez was borderline brokenly good in dueling situations under the old rules - you basically had to be super aggressive to get a kill on your opponent early and then hope your breakfrees lasted the rest of the match or you'd be playing City of Statues. Under the post-I13 ruleset, control is not particularly useful in duels and small-team stuff (short of dropping offensive toggles, which is somewhat useful depending on your opponent) while being absolutely broken in large-team stuff: drop a hold/stun on a target and then spike them, and there is literally nothing anyone can do about it.

Rebirth didn't get "a live version of it," they built the set on their own using the power definitions that were in the game files (i.e., they did all the animation/VFX work, which is where the vast majority of difficulty lies). Rebirth's dev team is busy enough with their own content as-is, and getting them to develop a Homecoming-specific version (since the powers systems between Homecoming and the OuroDev-based servers are not compatible) won't happen. EDIT: The reason other dev teams aren't going to just up and merge with (or contribute toward) Homecoming isn't really a case of ruffled feathers, except maybe the Thunderspy team. The other dev teams have different design goals and philosophies that are mutually exclusive with Homecoming, and it makes no sense to duplicate effort on a different server when their attention is primarily focused on making unique things to bring players to their own server.

Oh, I'm under no illusion that player numbers will magically start to go up. That ship sailed a long time ago.

I would venture to say nothing the HC team does ingame will attract new players in a significant way. Even new content releases provide a temporary boost in players which lasts less than a month before the population goes back to its previous numbers. The only way new people will show up is out-of-game awareness, and in today's gaming environment that means streaming. HC really screwed the pooch with the streaming ban. Sure, that's over now, but the damage is done.

I mean, I can go on the HC Wiki and in 30 seconds Wind Control won't be there anymore, if you're using that justification for it being in the game. The only reason it's on the wiki is because it was on ParagonWiki due to its powers being in the game files. All that means is the power definitions are there, to say nothing of the animations or any other artwork, and it's my understanding that creating new animations is extremely difficult and time-consuming. If I had to venture a guess I'd say it isn't on HC yet because 1) it requires tons of animation work to be at their standards and 2) it isn't a priority right now. I think I've addressed this before, but I'll put all my inf on the line right now when I say Homecoming is never going to absorb another server's dev team. The existing servers out there have wildly different design goals and visions and there's no way to reconcile all that with getting everyone under one roof, even if they did want to merge (spoiler alert: they don't).

That wouldn't move farmers back to PI, that would just cause the market to implode as one of the main suppliers of IOs suddenly stopped supplying them. If you've got a system which gives inf and XP but no drops (other than marginally-useful-at-best Architect tickets) prices will go way up as everyone's competing over a much smaller resource pool. Sure, you could remove inf and XP from non-Dev Choice arcs - congrats, you've turned AE into a ghost town.

Goddamn, it's been over a year already since that happened?

Red side's cool and all, but having to slog through some of that content while not having the resources available to the hero ATs (especially when the two sides had separate markets) was awful. Having almost everything segregated from the very beginning kept redside from ever really being successful - once the new shiny wore off players went back to blueside where they were already established. As far as AT balancing goes, the hero ATs got constant tweaks while the game was in development even before side-switching happened, because the game was evolving around them. Adding side-switching mixed things up a bit, but we can't look at ATs designed around a game launched nearly 20 years ago and say they "were never designed nor meant to be as powerful as they are now" - the game has been continually changing over its life and eventually some things will get left behind unless they receive attention. Even before side-switching was a thing, Tankers were already considered largely unnecessary for most teams running most content. I'll address this part at least - Controllers and Dominators are really only similar in that they provide damage mitigation via crowd control. In today's game, crowd control is often unnecessary and has taken a backseat to buff/debuff and damage (which is something the dev team has been working on addressing with the sleep changes and addition of hard mode TFs). Of course Dominators out-DPS Controllers, Controllers aren't a DPS AT. Dominators really only outdo Controllers in the mitigation department when Domination is up (less than half the time if you haven't invested several hundred million into an IO build), but Controllers do have that 20% chance for additional mag on all their controls and deal double damage to mezzed targets and some incarnate bosses/mobs even without them being mezzed. If you ignore the crowd control parts of the AT, you're left with their secondaries - Controllers act as force multipliers for the entire team via buff/debuff abilities, and Dominators do DPS but they are by far the squishiest AT in that role.

Your first point has been discussed at length but there isn't a way to change HP separately between PvE and PvP and at this point lowering Blaster HP in PvE is a nonstarter. Adjusting Blaster base resistances might be a possible solution but with DR on damage resistance even a 10% or 20% reduction doesn't actually get significant results once you factor in epic/patron shields. Your second point is already being addressed on a case-by-case basis. Defender buffs are definitely not too good because DR means there's virtually no difference between what a Defender can do and a Corruptor/Controller can do. Debuffs are a little different but for the most part they're not in a bad place. The -res from Envenom was reduced in PvP a few patches back to address this concern though - this was never an issue before because Defenders didn't have Poison and the all-over-the-place power proliferation done after shutdown was done with no regard for PvP balance concerns.

If the only thing keeping players redside was the inability to play certain ATs blueside, then that's a pretty clear admission redside needed help and a lot of it. But let's look at the rest of this paragraph: Tankers sort of took a backseat to Brutes post-I18. That's been rectified by buffing Tankers, and now the two ATs have different playstyles and neither overshadows the other. End result of side switching: Tanker buffs. Defender vs Corruptor is only "a nonstop issue" on the forums. There are some powerset combinations which are clearly advantaged on one AT or the other, but for the most part it doesn't really matter and it comes down to personal preference. End result of side switching: nothing really changed, but had the Vigilance buff not happened in Issue 17 it probably would've happened after Going Rogue. Side-switching did make it painfully obvious how underwhelming Stalkers were, even with the scaling out-of-hide crit chance that was added (waaaaaaaaaaaay back in Issue 11, but no one seems to remember that). Thankfully they got some attention afterwards. Now you've got two ATs with different playstyles and different specializations. End result of side switching: Stalker buffs. Your Controller/Dominator comparison is a little weird to me because those two ATs don't really compete for the same role on a team. Controllers are control/support while Dominators are control/damage, meaning Dominators more accurately compete with Blasters. Dominators are cool and all, but outside of Domination they're just worse Controllers and worse Blasters. End result of side switching: Nothing really changed. What do we take away from this? Thanks to side-switching, the game as a whole is in a better place.

I saw an interesting suggestion: mez durations scale with team size so they're longer in 1v1 situations and shorter in 8v8 situations. I don't necessarily think that's the right solution, but mez working in a more dynamic fashion might be the only way to keep it from being next to useless in one scenario and brokenly good in another.

I think the biggest change between live and Homecoming is the accessibility of the "good stuff." On live you had to painstakingly grind out Incarnate progress, and even a modest IO build was hundreds of millions of inf unless you got lucky drops. Here it's very easy for me to come up with a character idea, level it, and IO/accolade/incarnate it, which makes me more willing to play especially compared to the other servers out there where things aren't quite so easy.

I'm referring to "trinity" as "tanks/heals/DPS," which thanks to relative character power level vs NPCs and the insane strength of buffs and debuffs means you never really needed all three. If everything's feeling more "samey" now it's at least partly because the average character is more powerful than they were back on live (this is A Good Thing) and partly because the game's been around for so long people have most of the nuances figured out. I like the ability to hop onto pretty much any team and have an expectation of being successful in most content, though I've found the ultimate determination of whether a team will be successful in any given content is the players behind the keyboard.

You keep doing this thing where you insist something that's broken because it is literally impossible to counter is the same as something that's "broken" because you don't like it. Man, I like you, but goddamn have you been so very wrong about this for the last two years.

The answer to your question is in the post you quoted.

TK's banned in most organized stuff for the same reason you like it - it's a broken power with no counter. It's super fun being able to do literally nothing for 20 seconds because someone clicked a button. At least pre-I13 you could pop a couple breakfrees to get out of the repel effect.

Not quite what you are talking about but there was discussion during the I27P3 beta testing about potentially using the signature story arc tech to assign players certain powers so everyone ends up with the same build, which would probably help get more people interested in PvP, but that's still a huge gap from the organized large-team stuff.

Because teams weren't using them for the mez, they were using them for Blaze -> Fossilize spikes. The hold from Fossilize was largely irrelevant if you had clean spikes since your target would be dead at the same time the hold would occur anyways. That team comp also wasn't really a HC-specific thing, the winning team from the 2011 Freedom PvP League ran Dom-heavy lineups with Earth/Fires for the exact same reason. The key difference between the Dark hold and the other examples you gave is the hold (like any other hold) literally had no counter. You could do nothing to avoid it, save hoping it just missed, and if not you got to sit there for the next 8 to 12 seconds hoping you'd live. The Dark hold wasn't really a problem in 8v8 stuff because as soon as the community found out it was busted they banned the power, it was way more broken in zone where you'd just get dogpiled by half a dozen enemy players with zero recourse. Sets and team lineups can be countered (that's part of the strategy of team PvP), but broken powers really can't be. As far as TK goes that power's been next to useless since the I13 changes, "we" didn't do anything to nullify it. If we're talking about control ATs as a whole, quite a few teams have run out of the box lineups with non-Emp Controllers but they're rare these days - not due to "total disregard of the control AT" but just because it's a lot of effort for mixed results. People point at Blasters and say "nerf these!" and there's been some of that already (Blaster +range from snipe powers is gone in PvP, for example) but other AT-wide PvP-specific changes which don't affect the AT in PvE are trickier. There's been discussion about adjusting Blaster HP but apparently that is a bit of a stretch.

That was a very much tongue-in-cheek post. A "Torchbearer needs your help" thread would be about as useful as this one, and this one's about as useful as a rusty spoon on steak night.

Not really on-topic, but the "holy trinity" was never really a thing in this game.

I'm going to assume you're speaking to the player-driven I27P1 and I27P2 PvP changes in this post, but if not I apologize. You keep saying this, but I'm struggling to think of any examples of powersets or ATs that have been made "absolute trash" because of Homecoming's PvP-related changes that weren't already in that category. Before you say "Dominators:" no. Most teams were running a 2-Emp 3-Blaster 3-Dominator lineup for a good part of 2019. Dominators didn't suddenly become bad, people just realized Natures and Rads/Poisons were more valuable in a lineup because they made the entire team less squishy. I'm also going to assume you're talking about the Dark Control hold getting its hold duration reduced (as a reminder, its original 8-second duration was a bug), but I find it difficult to believe you actually think an 8-second-base hold was okay in a game where mez protection literally did not exist. Fast forward to today, where you can actually get mez protection in PvP again, and an 8-second hold might be more workable. I'm not going to pretend the current mez system is great - but I'm also not going to pretend the old one was either. There's a middle ground somewhere, and I'm sure there's a solution players can mostly agree on.