Bill Z Bubba

Don't go runnin too hard with that. I'm apparently an "outlier" and an "opinionated curmudgeon."

@Bopper mentioned that internal testing was showing worse than arcanatime variance on actual cast time which gave me a big ol' sad (making me miss my attack chain spreadsheets slightly less given their obvious inaccuracies) and I still haven't gotten an answer on how/why this would be. Hopefully the devs will chime in one day with what an attack's *actual* cast time is given the current hardware/software environment CoH is running on. Although based on what you've stated and what I've read elsewhere, it seems that there is NO *actual* cast time.

Standard progression isn't an issue. Not even with SOs at lvl 1. Not even with all the teleporters. If you don't have double XP turned on, if you haven't purchased 8 hours of amplifiers, if you're not constantly stocking yourself with T3/T4 inspirations, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the ride from 1 to 50, solo or teamed. Course.... I don't do that anymore. I PL an alt to 50 in around 2.5 hours in AE, I spend another hour or so getting the initial build done in Mids, another 30 minutes unlocking PPP, then another hour slotting it out fully with its lvl 50 IO build. 4 hours of actual gameplay from 0 to a fully tricked out lvl 50 build. And thanks to all the emps/transcendents I have available, even T4ing said alt isn't that much of a hassle. Call it another 8 hours of farming Heather's arc if need be. This.. compared to the 4 months it took Bill Z Bubba to hit 50 the first time around, while I was between jobs and gaming 16-18 hours a day cuz I could. Standard leveling progression is fine. The problem is how few people choose to go that route because the other routes to get it done are soooo much faster.

Only because you've become accustomed to the ridiculousness of 3 minute tanker pylon times. Tanks used to have to pay for their extra mitigation through sucktacular damage output. This is no longer the case and completely disgusting. Nerf 'em. Hard and with extreme prejudice. Edit: And yes, if that means nerf the +damage from shield or bio, do it, across the board.

One thing I hope is being kept in mind by the dev team, as mentioned earlier, is that heightened difficulty and challenge *should* include heightened reward.

Only ATs I think need a buff are the poor Khels. Good gods below they suck so bad. Widows and Soldiers are rock solid team players. Scrappers are right where they should be. Weak enough on armor to die in the rough stuff but still dishing decent damage. Brutes: See scrappers except that their caps should be nerfed. Defenders: Meh, leave em be. Cors: See defs. Stalkers: Who cares? Stalker Claws suck butt with no spin. 🙂 In all seriousness, probably in a good place, too. There are other sets to choose from. Masterminds: I got nuthin. I hate 'em. I have one because I need one of every AT fully built and T4ed. Tanks: Nerf the shit out of 'em. Far as I'm concerned they are the pinnacle of absolute brokeness in CoH. Blasters: Meh. I guess they're fine and the problems they do have are due to SetIO bonuses and not really AT based.

I honestly hope that's NOT true. Bad changes *should* be rolled back. Tanks *WERE* overbuffed and should be nerfed. P2W garbage made sense on the SSPS with its minimal invite-only playerbase but have no place here and should be purged. Being able to run around with a near infinite amount of T3-T4 insps in email *should* be blocked. I'll continue to hope that sanity overrides the fear of player backlash.

I *would* like it kept in mind that increased difficulty *should* always be met with increased reward.

To your point, we both know that a ton of people out there are doing speed runs at +0 and I can absolutely see a correlation between that mindset and folks who join them thinking that everything is too easy. As I said in another thread, difficulty must be ok, because I'm a pretty decent player/builder and I have yet to be able to solo a +4 MLTF. I know others have done it but I don't know what cheat codes they used or how many T3/T4 insps they had sitting in email. For those reading this, if you've soloed an MLTF with no insps/temps/amps at +4, my hat's off to you and I'd love to hear what you did it with.

There's easier (stupid amplifiers and tanker buffs) and then there's "what's the point?" Honestly, if anyone needs a diff level lower than -1/x1 while they play... no, I don't care what the reason might be, there is NO reason possible in my mind that anyone would ever need a diff lower than that. I could get through that diff using 1 foot on my mouse. With a defender using flurry.

I was never a fan of any of the raid content. Sure, I did them when I had to for the loot but it was always begrudgingly. I knew I was contributing but with that much going on I also knew that if I was replaced with any other player running any other AT/Combo, the outcome would be the same. I'm glad I've never experienced other games' endgame/raid content.

Guess my only question is why? Is it possible to get faceplanted at -1?

I honestly grok where you're coming from on this. I agree with much of your post on what happens with balancing. Unfortunately for me, when I see gross imbalances, and worse - imbalances being made greater through poor decision making, the whole thing becomes less fun for me. Fact is, even now, my desire to play or hang around the forums has been lessened greatly by the way things have been going. And that sucks... but, it happened on live, too.

Same thing happened to me. Soon as my spreadsheet showed how close brute claws had gotten to scrapper output it was an immediate no brainer to move BZB Scrap to a different server and recreate him as a brute on Pinnacle. Yes, AT balance was broken in many areas long before the snap happened.

To be fair to those folks, choosing added difficulty for no added reward doesn't make much sense either. I would certainly be more inclined to disable insps and temps if, say, drop rates were slightly increased for doing so.

Yea, that's not an issue when you're solo. Adding teammates already greatly lessens difficulty as it is and that's actually a good part of the design. A lvl 35 on the ITF fighting +5s isn't an issue when he's being spammed with leadership toggles, fulcrum shift or whatever other buffs are flying around.

You have to unlock PPP through the various Patron Arcs. Black Scorpions is the quickest route and by doing his arc you unlock all 4 PPP. Once you hit the appropriate level, head to Pocket D, talk to Null the Gull, change you alignment to villain, drop your diff to +0/x1, talk to the guy standing outside of the main Arachnos tower, do all the missions up until you're granted some badges, done.

Hard mode is already available through turning off insps, temps, buffing enemies and nerfing players. Hell, you can even turn off enhancements.

I do find it a problem that my shield/nrg tank now has the same DPS as my claws/sr scrapper while maintaining VASTLY more mitigation and that's WITHOUT a procmonster build. Tanks should NEVER be able to match scrapper damage output. The HIGHEST damage output tank should NEVER be able to match even the LOWEST damage output scrapper. It's a prime example of how ridiculously broken AT balance has become in this game. Edit: yea, this will be my sig for a while.

My undying disappointment.

Seriously, thank you for saying so. I completely agree. Judgement is also extremely problematic.

I think you're looking at it the wrong way. I'm betting that no one on your 64 minute Synapse was eating inspirations stored in email or cranking 8 hours of all 3 amplifiers. All I want to do is remove the cheats from the game. Cuz cheaters suck and make everything worse for everyone.

Understood. But I still fail to see where that little extra DPS can come close to the massive loss in mitigation and utility that I'm seeing. But, for a character that does nothing but fight pylons just to get the big numbers, yea, makes perfect sense.

Pics?

I found them boring on live and haven't run a single one since coming back. I can go from 0 to 50+3 fully T4ed and IOed in 48 hours but that's now.. starting out, of course, I had to get the farmer to 50 and amass all the emps into transcendents in email, etc. No, I don't really long for the days when it took me 4 months just to hit 50. Granted, again, I soloed a LOT before the snap. Like 95% of my game time.