Bill Z Bubba

Let's start here. Are you actually requesting a soft cap of 40% rather than 45% or are you asking for a hard cap of 40%? Lowering the soft cap would actually mean altering the tohit/defense equation. Making it a hard cap would grossly nerf defense based sets while barely touching sets based on healing or resistance. This is a ridiculous and unbalanced change with regards to the game's overall power creep, which, by the by, I absolutely agree has occurred over the years. Untrue. Any power creep that affects any powerset affects ALL players that use said powerset, regardless of whether they are teamed or not. Speed of killing is determined by overall DPS. Nerfing our ability (again, overly nerfing defense based sets compared to healing/resist sets,) to mitigate damage won't slow down our ability to defeat enemies. I have to spend a half-second to click a respite? So what? I'm still slaughtering the masses by the thousands an hour. If your concern is solely based in kill speed, you should be requesting that the damage mitigation provided to enemy factions be buffed. Again, if you somehow cap defense at 40%, making it the new hard cap, you'll then be making all defense buffs completely useless for everyone that manages to hit that 40% without outside help. Force Field defenders ain't gonna like that one bit. If you really want everyone to lose 5% defense without affecting caps, just give all critters a +5% tohitbuff as they gave incarnate critters a +13% tohitbuff. This is why the defense soft cap against incarnate critters is 58%. Cussing is always involved. Couple things here. Since Cyberpunk came out, when I get on CoH, it's to team with my SG and no, not a one of them I would consider a "casual gamer" as is described by so many, and I say that because they're all damn good on any character they choose to play, fully kitted out or not. We don't care if someone brings a lowbie to an max diff ITF because there's probably a couple of us that can keep the ball rolling and faceplants are just another badge. But before CP, I would hop on PUGs when the mood suited me (yes, a change since before the snap) and I saw the same thing there. Far more IOed up characters than not unless we were all running lowbie TFs and even then, there was usually a few exemplared and heavily IOed folks around. My point to all of this is that you're looking in the wrong place if you want to readjust the game due to all the powercreep. Nerfing defense is a non-starter and that partially so because defense without DDR ain't shit in a lot of areas of the game where resist and healing always function. (Yea, yea, except against Hami.)

It wouldn't. It would just be a completely useless nerf that grossly affects defense based sets. You do understand the difference between the soft cap and hard cap when it comes to defense, right? Are you aware that the actual current hard cap on defense is between 175% and 225% depending on AT? What would warrant such a nerf?

Much like ROUS, I don't believe they really exist.

1: It doesn't matter, it's a nerf and a silly one. 2: Someone else can come in with the math stating exactly how much less mitigation 5% defense is when dealing with CoH ToHit mechanics, but I will state this as a very long time Super Reflexes junky... it's a ridiculous nerf to ALL powersets that rely on defense.

This right here is the kind of post that can alter an opinion. I recant my request for mez protection for squishies beyond what we can already access in game.

And here's the problem. MMO does not mean that one must team. It means that one is ABLE to do so. Soloing deserves no nerfs. Ever. Which is precisely why the buffs I would like to see for the more squishier archetypes are buffs, rather than nerfs. Now I completely understand those that enjoy the added difficulty just for playing certain ATs. As a matter of fact, it makes me debate wanting those changes. But nerfing soloability? Bad move for player retention. Very bad move.

Just wanted to thank the Mids devs for removing the prestige sprints from the default page.

This. Tanks are absolutely the best for absolute survivabilty and damage output when ignoring enhancements and being a lowbie. Which, ya kinda gotta do just due to the way slotting works as you level up. A 6slotted brawl with SOs after all, (just an example, don't do this unless you're Houtex on his Brawling Humilator,) is far better than a single empty slot. Edit: And as soon as I hit save on this post, my brain went "oh, but fury damage in lowbie levels....."

Fair enough. On my wishlist would be the ability to have a aggro cap's worth of enemies in every spawn.

What you're doing is continuing to insult the rest of us by stating all some want are more rewards and it's all about that while ignoring that you're flatly wrong. I'll put it in smaller words for you. Asking for higher diffs with rewards is not the same as just wanting more rewards. What part of that is so difficult for you to understand?

Wrong again. Willfully being insulting is nasty. I should know since I've gotten a couple 3day bans for being willfully nasty.

Yes, rude. You incorrectly and malignantly state that those asking for more challenge are only doing so for more rewards. It's a false statement. An incorrect statement. The truth is that I want higher diff settings because it will be both more challenging and more rewarding. What I don't want is more challenge without corresponding rewards. That's why I don't run around with enemies buffed, player debuffed and no insps set all the time. If there were corresponding rewards for doing so beyond "can I do it," I would do it more often.

Focus and Shockwave from Claws beg to differ. That said, I'd love to see an assault/debuff AT where the secondary is mostly PBAoE-centric and acts as armor.

I rather enjoy knowing there's always a power to skip in my SR builds. Especially since the other 8 are not optional.

Why? What's the difference between being geared up to handle +0/x1 versus +2/x2? My rewards go up then, why shouldn't they for +6/x10? And how, exactly, do you stop the increased inf/xp gain and drop chances from having more enemies to defeat?

That's rather rude and wrong. Just so ya know. If I want a challenge without rewards I can turn off enhancements. This is a game. With greater difficulty comes greater rewards. That rule wasn't changed when we went from the old diff settings to the current, why would it need to be changed if more diff levels were added?

Why shouldn't rewards match difficulty?

Depends on the enemy and build. It is not a fact. I can go afk against several enemy factions at max diff with quite a few of my builds simply because my mitigation is greater than their incoming damage. Even my claws/sr brute is immortal against an aggro cap worth of +4 Cimerorans...

Yea, I can grok that.

Oh, it's not that, I just like seeing my costumes properly. It's also why I don't use Nrg Aura. 🙂 Even though I've stated the same, it's really not true. While there is the binary portion (mezzed or not mezzed) there's also the bit where getting hit with multiple mezzes stacks. Something you can watch while playing. Mez hits, you lose mez protection, as it drops off, your prot value goes back up. This is why tanks get 13 to scrappers 10 pts. Giving squishies 3 would be nothing more than a buffer against the stray mez and not something I see a problem with. I like my fire/bio sent's identity: Burn it all to the ground while laughing.

The best DPS I've mustered on my sr/claws tank comes from the following: ST chain is Followup, Focus, Slash, repeat. T4 Musculature Core T4 Degen Core T4 Assault Core T4 Pyronic Core Maybe 4-4.5min pylon times. Haven't done one in a while. The main problem with SR is that it doesn't buff damage at all. My bio/claws tank does much better just as my claws/bio scrapper greatly out DPSes my claws/sr scrapper.

Forgot to add, with an FA/Claws tank, I strongly advise reading through this thread.

Absolutely. It's why so many lean on Rune of Protection or hover blast with as much ranged defense as they can get. I'd place good money that the vast majority of us make all sorts of concessions in our builds, concessions not needed at all by those with built in mez protection, that given even a modicum of baked in protection would allow for a great many other things to improve our builds and lessen the aforementioned performance disparity.

At lvl 50 and incarnated out, sure. It's not like I run max diff at lvl 1.

Would 3 points of mez protection that kicks in at lvl 10 added to the inherents of all squishy ATs homogenize everything? They'd still get mezzed through that but it wouldn't be nearly the binary fun vs mezzed that the current situation creates. And it wouldn't involve respecs nor would it force a change in tactics. You left off Stalkers and Sentinels, by the by. Not that I play stalkers but, yes, I don't enjoy having to hide or constantly back away from fights or analyze every spawn every mission because one mis-step means having to use a rez or a hospital trip or waiting around for someone else to pick me up off the floor. I don't judge ATs by how easy they are. I judge them by how annoying they are to play at a level to which I've grown accustomed. Masterminds are the only AT I refuse to play due to considering them completely broken in a bad way. Stalkers I don't play just cuz I don't like Hide. I guess in the end, I simply dislike having to buy mez protection to have fun with some ATs when the other half of the archetypes don't have to. I don't consider that a balanced situation.