Trickshooter
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Posts posted by Trickshooter
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28 minutes ago, Dr Causality said:
The important part is we should be able to fix, mitigate or work around the bug portion without also hurting the Def portion of Fade. It's a choice to fix the LOOONG overdue bug in a way that also significantly reduces the amount of the Def /Dark Affinity has. We should discuss and think about that choice, rather than thinking of this as simple no brainer bug fix.
When it comes to situations like this, the goal is generally to fix what's wrong while affecting players the least. Note that this is not always the same as affecting the least amount of players.
The Problem: Damage Buffs increase the amount of +Resistance offered by Fade.
The Cause: A combination of Fade's +Resistance being enhanceable, the power itself allowing outside sources of Strength (e.g. Power Boost), and the longstanding relationship between Damage Resistance and Damage buffs.
The Solutions:
- Remove the +Resistance
- Remove the ability to enhance the +Resistance
- Flag the power to ignore outside sources of Strength
Now let's examine these a bit more...
Remove the +Resistance
Obviously the least ideal. It fixes the bug, but it changes the player's understanding of what the power does; it no longer "works as advertised" from when they chose it. And for what reason? In order to leave an interaction between Fade and Power Boost, a power not even in the Darkness Affinity powerset. On top of that, it leaves people with enhancements in a power that do nothing now, costing them a respec or unslotters to remove the enhancements, not to mention the initial investment to get those enhancements that are no longer functional.
Remove the ability to enhance the +Resistance
While this is probably the option most people here will suggest, it's not ideal either. Why? Because while the power still works as advertised, you're still left with everything else from the last option, all just to accommodate Power Boost, which is only one power in one of the nine APPs Controllers can take.
Flag the power to ignore outside sources of Strength
Now, I know you're probably going to say, "This change also forces me to respec!" But, in all honesty, no it does not. Your build may no longer be ideal, but all of your enhancements still work in the powers they're slotted in. Fade still provides the buffs it always has and it still matches its description from before the fix; the only thing that changes, besides the bug with Damage buffs, is the interaction with Power Boost. This solution will definitely upset some people, as any of them will, but Fade itself changes the least with this option. That's what makes it the best option, even if it's not the most popular.
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1 hour ago, Solarverse said:
Was the change really necessary? What was the actual reason for the change?
The answer:
1 hour ago, Solarverse said:Fearsome Stare had a nice pseudo hold along with a really nice accuracy debuff, which IMO was a lot more useful on a Controller
If Controllers were going to get Fearsome Stare, it just made more sense as a power in a Primary, so they put it in Darkness Control. Controllers had to wait 8 years for darkity-dark powers and anyone that played Dark Miasma pretty much understood why: It was like an AoE Hold and a ST Immobilize away from being a Controller Primary already. I'm surprised Darkness Affinity ONLY lost Fearsome Stare and Petrifying Gaze, honestly.
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The only thing I wish Banes had was an alternate version of Combat Training: Defensive in Bane Spider Training that gave Melee Defense instead of Ranged Defense. Taking either one would lock you out of the other, of course.
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Ok, I do like this set, but the more I look at it, the more I'm just so confused by how limited it seems, I guess.
Shock: I think this fits pretty well with many of the tier 1 powers with the addition of -Regeneration.
Rejuvenating Circuit: Overall, I think it's fine. It could probably be a bit more potent, so I would consider lowering the upfront heal a bit and adding some Heal-over-Time.
Galvanic Sentinel: I like that it solves a lot of issues for a solo/small team player with the set, and that it also now comes with a -Regenation as well. I think it's still a bit weak and could use a -Endurance aura. As others have said, on some teams it won't be that useful, but if it had a bit more utility it could be useful as an alpha absorber, draining endurance and soaking up that alpha damage.
Energizing Circuit: This just seems very limited. It could use the addition to +Speed and +Recovery. That would really help it sound more like something "energizing".
Faraday Cage: All good here.
Empowering Circuit: This I feel could also use an additional effect. I'd go with +Recharge.
Defbrillate: I just wish this had some effect on enemies, but I'm fine with it staying as is, too.
Insulating Circuit: This power is just so odd to me. It's purpose seems a little lost because the set already has tools to deal with incoming damage. The only comparable power is Wild Bastion, but I understand the purpose of that power; Absorb to protect your health bar while the attached Heal-over-Time recovers it. The heal is a bit unnecessary because Nature isn't short on healing, but I understand why the two effects are together in one power as they make it clear when to use it. I guess I don't see when Insulating Circuit is the right power to use; you just use it because it's there and it's not NOT helping.
Amp Up: Honestly, I would drop the +Special and +Recharge from this power, and just make it a PBAoE that adds the endurance-draining, knock up-causing bolts to all nearby allies attacks for a short while. That to me would make it more fun to use. Right now, it seems like something with no real purpose; you really just put it on ally because you have it, not because it will add much to a fight.
Static: With no self-buff from this, and with the effect only affecting 3 mostly situational powers, why even have it? And I don't mean that vindictively! I just feel like, at this point, it's starting to seem like a leftover mechanic from early in the set's development and now we're trying to come up with ways to keep it while it's becoming less and less useful.
I don't want anyone to feel discouraged. I understand that support sets are probably the most difficult to design because there's no real buff/debuff formulas to follow, no 'token' powers (Build Ups/Aims, Confronts/Taunts/Placates), and no real formulas or standardized tiers. I think this can be a good set, and it definitely fills a character concept niche that's been missing, but I think overall it needs more focus on an intended goal.
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20 minutes ago, eknudson said:
I took my tank into Siren's Call and checked there and I still did not see any DDR from Evasion.
Well, I'll see if I can see any differences between them all in better detail whenever I'm home.
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The only difference I can see between the Tanker and Scrapper versions while not at home (besides the Taunt) is that the Tanker version's PvE +Def(AoE) activates for 2.25s every 0.5s, while every other effect lasts 0.75s. The Scrapper version's effects are all set to activate for 0.75s every 0.5s. Is it possible that the timing of the +Def(AoE) is throwing off the other effects of the power?
If so, you'd only see this have an effect on the Res(Def) in PvE, as the PvP effects (the Def(AoE) again and AoE Elusivity) also activate for 0.75s every 0.5s. Can someone test if the Res(Def) correctly works on a PvP map?
Also the Brute version of Evasion is set up for every effect to activate every 2s for 2.25s (instead of every 0.5s for 0.75s like the Scrapper version), except that the AoE Elusivity it gains in PvP only lasts 0.75s, so that is also a bug.
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7 hours ago, nzer said:
Cold Domination sounds like it should be a control set (and probably would have been if the control sets were named properly)
Here's an interesting bit of info: At one point, the plan wasn't to have these kind of generic names that some of the Control and elemental Melee sets have now. Ice Control specifically was at some point called Ice Formation. You can see these names by looking at the internal names of the power icon graphics.
Earth Control > Earth Grasp
Ice Control > Ice FormationFire Control > Fire Trap
Illusion Control > Illusions
Dark Melee > Shadow Fighting
Fiery Melee > Fiery Fray
Ice Melee > Icy Onslaught
Energy Melee > Power Punch
I can only assume these were all eventually standardized in order to make it more obvious what they did just by reading their names.
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1 minute ago, Bartacus said:
This just feels purely subjective. I personally think it sounds more generic, not better. Two sets have the word affinity, that doesn't mean it's a convention. Otherwise instead of Thermal Radiation we'd have Fire Affinity. Instead of Cold Domination, we'd have Ice Affinity. I'd rather we take after the latter two examples than the ones that you gave, personally, because they sound way less generic.
@Super Atomis giving those other names more as examples, rather than saying it now fits because of those two.
The name "Shock Therapy" was clever, but the powerset names tend to be a bit more straightforward, as a description for what they do. Shock Therapy as a name follows more like what an actual power would be named. I would expect like an Electric set's heal to be named Shock Therapy, rather than the set itself to be named that.
It's the difference between Thermal being called Thermal Radiation or Cauterizing, or Cold being called Cold Domination or Permafrost, sort of thing.
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I'd be fine with the name being Electrical Affinity. I like that you can say you're an Elec/Elec Defender/Corruptor/Controller.
If a name change is still being considered, what about Static Induction?
Ties back to the Static effect of the powers, sounds a bit clever while still having that 'scientific' sounding name to tell you what the set does, and relates to Electrostatic Induction, "a method to create or generate static electricity in a material by bringing an electrically charged object near it."
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The set definitely works a lot better with the chaining powers jumping back to the caster, and having the pet so a solo player can use these is a huge help too.
Faraday Cage's changes are very welcome. Graphics are easier on the eyes, new duration reduces some of the set's clickiness, and the addition of all damage types makes it feel more unique and less like one of the other Mez Protect toggles just turned in to a location AoE.
Shock still feels like I wish it did something else. Perhaps if it gave 2 stacks of Static? Or -Defense or -Resistance?
I like Galvanic Sentinel, but I think its effects are just a little too weak. I think it could be improved by an aura that ticks -Endurance/-Recovery on nearby enemies in addition to spamming Discharge.
Also, Galvanic Sentinel's Discharge is inheriting Recharge slotted in to the pet summoning power. Probably not intentional.
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3 minutes ago, Leogunner said:
Only if it's applicable to players too.
Old nukes would have been Self Destruct buttons
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29 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:
Electric's secondary is already strong enough.
As an Electric/Electric Dominator...
But you're kind of highlighting a sub issue here. Elec powersets can be potent... when you play them with a complimentary set. Would you be skipping Controls on your Elec Dominator if their secondary was Martial or Fire?
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1 hour ago, Coyote said:
even AVs don't actually have resistance to -Resist debuffs. That, and -Damage, are the two main debuffs that work upon them at full strength. Oh, and -Special, I think. In fact, I updated my suggestion in the Shock Therapy thread, to change the debuffs to a trifecta of -Special/-Damage/-Resistance, which basically ignores the usual resistance to debuffing except for special situations like some attacks that may be specifically flagged to ignore modifiers.
Well... kind of. Resistance and Damage debuffs can both be resisted, not just by level differences, but also by Damage Resistance the target has. If they have 30% Smashing/Lethal Damage Resistance, they will resist 30% of a Resistance or Damage debuff, but in that instance only for Smashing and Lethal damage.
Say for example an enemy had 30% Resistance(Smashing), and you hit them with a 100 damage Smashing attack. That gets reduced to 70 damage by their resistances.
Now, if you hit them with a -10% Resistance debuff first, that doesn't turn their 30% Resistance in to 20% Resistance the way a -10% ToHit debuff would reduce an enemies chance to hit from 50% down to 40%. The 30% Resistance resists 30% of the debuff, so that 10% -Resistance goes down to -7%, bringing their 30% Resistance(Smashing) down to 23%. Your 100 damage Smashing attack is now reduced to only 77 damage, which is still an increase in damage of 10% from the 70 damage it would have been without the debuff.
Similarly with Damage debuffs, if an enemy had a 100 damage Smashing attack, and you hit them with a -10% Damage debuff first, that would reduce their damage down to 90 damage (assuming this is an NPC with no damage buffs). However, if they have 30% Resistance(Smashing), that reduces the Damage debuff for just Smashing damage down to -7%, reducing the damage of their attack down to only 93 damage.
Because of this, Damage debuffs are least effective against enemies that heavily resist the damage type that makes up most of their attacks (so like... every Archvillain lol), and most effective against enemies that don't heavily resist the damage they cause (I dunno, maybe... Clockwork?).
You're right that -Special isn't resisted, but only because -Special isn't a true debuff. It's more like you're giving your target enhancements with negative values. The only way for a target to resist that effect is if their powers are specifically flagged to ignore outside buffs/debuffs or if any effects in their powers are flagged to ignore enhancements, which neither of those is impossible to happen, and I'm not home to verify, but it's probably unlikely that many NPC powers are set up that way.
EDIT: I guess I should've also mentioned that yes, I like the idea of an "Exhausted" effect from draining endurance. Just got distracted by a "The more you know..." moment!
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38 minutes ago, Coyote said:
2: We can't really set up NPCs to run toggles instead of base resist values, because it would put too much strain on the engine to calculate toggles for all hostile mobs in the game all the time. Instead, they're auto. Only the few debuffers run toggles.
Not to mention NPCs don't really know to run toggles until they encounter players, so you could easily exploit this and kill enemies very easily and very quickly with certain builds that can do a large amount of AoE damage before enemies get a chance to turn on these toggles.
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8 hours ago, nzer said:
I'm not 100% sure of the mechanism, and I haven't verified it myself, but my understanding is that using Clarion Radial before using Power Boost results in a much larger +special than the other way around, so I'm assuming there's some unintended interaction there.
Yes, Strength effects (which is what +/-"Special" is) do affect other Strength effects. However, flags can be set to prevent it and I could've sworn this was already fixed, with Power Build Up from Power Mastery being the last one that was originally missed?
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Got a chance to play some tonight, but didn't team so I can only comment on the 3 powers that can be used solo.
Shock: Feels like it's missing something, probably because the Endurance Drain doesn't feel like it's adding much. The -Recovery helps, especially with a Discharge follow-up, although I would frequently use it on an enemy and 1-2 seconds after applying it, I could see them recover some Endurance. I don't know if that's just a server timing thing, but it was kind of a lengthy delay.
Discharge: I can see the potential of the Endurance drain on this power, however it's absolutely useless without -Recovery. With 5 stacks of Static I could get even con enemies down to about 40% endurance left, I think, and that's while not slotted for EndMod, but even on lower con enemies who I could drain in one application, it was as if I did nothing. They immediately recover endurance and attack as if nothing happened.
Faraday Cage: I understand the goal was for something different, however I don't think it really works for the way people play. I tried to preemptively use it before fights, but it was a bit frustrating that if I tried to leave, and was already under the effects of a mezz, I would end up mezzed and vulnerable just out of reach of the bubble. It feels like that would also be a bit annoying for an ally. If they get mezzed outside of it, I have to wait for it to recharge and then resummon it by them to free them. Feels a bit inconvenient. If the goal is to keep this a location AoE, I like the idea of making it work as a quick-recharging toggle like Lifegiving Spores.
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6 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:
NPC's attacks on the other hand typically only need 1 endurance to attack.
I spot checked some NPC powers, and the lowest endurance costs for any of their attacks was around 4-7 endurance. It looks like the newer NPC groups end costs are very similar to players, so like scale 1 damage is about 5.2 endurance, but the legacy NPC groups use older values, so typically the lowest for them is 7 endurance for scale 1 damage. But again, that's just spot checking. I think what's more likely is that NPC AI makes them attack more conservatively, rather than us as players who try to maintain attack chains. So like they run out of endurance, but without -Recovery as well, they usually only lose about 1-2 attacks they would have done before they have enough endurance back to continue attacking.
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3 minutes ago, Leogunner said:
For all intents and purposes, that's a toggle.
Except that they can continue to run while the NPC has no endurance.
Edit: sniped twice!
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11 minutes ago, Troo said:
It doesn't de-toggle targets similar to players?
AFAIK NPCs don't have real toggles. They have long duration clicks that cancel when mezzed to give the illusion of detoggling.
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Just now, Number Six said:
This is still preliminary (but proof of concept is working), so it may change before it’s patched in.
Instead of always chaining to the nearest eligible target, a priority system was implemented.
For all of the chain powers, if the target you cast it on is a player, it will try to jump to other players. It can still jump to pets, but will only do so if there are no eligible players in the jump range.
Similarly, if you target a pet first, it will prefer to jump to other pets and allied NPCs (but can still chain to players if there aren’t any other targets).
The healing and absorb chains were also given “smart heal” logic and try to jump to the eligible target with the lowest HP first.
😮 Cool! I asked if that was possible after Jimmy's response to the initial feedback, so it's neat to see it was.
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10 hours ago, Solarverse said:
Not sure how a Knock Back would help a Stalker anyway, that would be very counter productive to the class
This made me chuckle because Disrupt used to be Repulse... an AoE knockback toggle lol
Just the worst power, but so funny.
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23 minutes ago, siolfir said:
I thought of a potentially (pun noticed but not intended) controversial suggestion for Shock, but first some background on where it was coming from: Electric Melee offers a chance of mag 2 sleep with Charged Brawl (10%), Havoc Punch (30%), and Jacob's Ladder (10%).
Realizing that it would make the power best for Controllers, would it help while soloing to add a short 30% mag 3 sleep, and a minor damage tick (similar to Gale) to keep it from stacking?
You wouldn't need the damage to prevent stacking. The Sleep could actually be flagged to not stack. I know because PGA used to prevent stacking of it's Sleep, so as soon as you activated it again, the previous Sleep would immediately end.
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3 minutes ago, Auroxis said:
It also doesn't buff the Heal on Healing Flames, but that's to be expected since that power has enhanceable +resist.
This is something I was concerned about seeing the Ally +Special. I expect some bug reports from people saying that they don't work on specific powers, not realizing that those powers have always been excluded from outside buffs/debuffs, it was just difficult to notice on the ATs that didn't have access to +Special effects before.
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26 minutes ago, Auroxis said:
Its +Special component doesn't buff defense. This also reproduces for Empowering Circuit.
What power's Defense were you trying to buff? Is it possible it's a power that it's flagged to ignore outside buffs/debuffs?
Fade and Farsight Should Not Benefit from External Buffs
in Suggestions & Feedback
Posted
I think you misunderstood what I meant. When I say "to accomodate Power Boost," I meant removing the ability to enhance the +Resistance with enhancements in order to allow Power Boost to affect the +Defense of the power.