Shin Magmus

I'm glad this thread was made, because it revealed very publicly that the overcomplication of the Tanker nerfs was so shockingly-poorly handled that players thought the numbers changes were buffs instead of nerfs. This thread needs to be archived, maybe even pinned, so that it may be studied and referenced in the future. Thank you to everyone, but especially to Snarky.

Why? Explain why without saying "one specific abuse in one speedrun"? Give feedback, in the feedback thread.

Snarky has the right of it. I just want to add that I hate the intangibility as well, and seeing a teammate inflict that on enemies would stall all of our progress and... dare I say... halt all of our fun! You have the exact feedback thread here where a Beanbagger could say "akshually, I like the intangibility" and you can see unanimous opinion that nobody likes that part of the power. Black Hole has been used to grief Hamidon the way it is now. BLACK HOLE HAS BEEN USED TO GRIEF HAMIDON THE WAY IT IS NOW. This is a feedback thread, I'm now speaking to the devs: why even let that power's extreme potential for misuse remain in the game? Do we, as a community, really need to use a flimsy justification like the cottage rule to leave in tools that are almost solely negative, with significantly more potential for harm and malicious intent than for benefit? If you're already changing the power, then just remove the problematic part of it entirely.

This part is just straight facts. The nature of most of these Tanker nerfs is that all Tanker AoEs are going to both perform worse, and feel worse, any time you have to use them against a smaller number of enemies. As soon as you have to use an unfairly nerfed 16 target cap AoE against 4 or 5 enemies, it will now be **significantly worse** than the same AoE used by a Stalker, Scrapper, or Brute. So Tankers aren't actually AoE specialists; They're AoE shittylists.

It is genuinely shocking how poorly these Tanker nerfs were both handled by the devs, and received by the players. Was it really that hard to just reduce their damage scalar slightly, rather than try to invent 2 new formulas and a new mechanic exclusive to Tankers: overcap? There were multiple easier, simpler ways to reduce the damage output of Tankers. Knowing that Tanker AoEs are basically getting triple-nerfed just makes them extremely unappealing to take as powers, but if the Tanker's identity was being an AoE specialist and now the AoEs themselves are unappealing, then literally all that's left is their increased bulk. That's not enough, it was never enough, which is why Brutes were better than Tankers for so long and why Tankers were originally buffed. It's sad I have to point this out.

Scrap Brain Zone can't be a Cone!

Sounds like hot garbage, lol.

Just the fact that Seeds hits 16 enemies means it isn't explicitly a death sentence to cast it first now, which will be a huge improvement for a lot of players. Can lead with Seeds but probably still want Spore Burst as well now, and might still use it first depending on the situation. Someone will need to test if Fly Trap and Spirit Tree survive better now, but you also need to like play poorly on purpose in order to leave un-CC'd enemies free to attack your pets in order to test this. Maybe some set spawns like small groups of Cimerorians on the wall would be good to throw the pets at?

Maybe we could address enemies running away and being frustrating to fight in general, instead of having to keep band-aiding it with Taunt Auras to the point where we have to fight the dev team to get them on Scrappers? Nah, let's just keep a core aspect of combat inherently unfun unless you or a teammate has Taunt or hard CC.

Seeds of Confusion is shrimply not allowed to be worthwhile again. I highly recommend allowing Plant Control to keep some sort of 16 target cap Seeds, because as soon as you force the set to rely on the AoE Sleep *every* spawn, it immediately gets compared to other sets that do the same thing. If I'm forced to take Mass Hypnosis (Spore Burst) on my Plant Control character and to use it as my opener in every fight (because Seeds is unsafe to use as an opener)... then why would I even play the set and not just go play Mind Control? Spore Burst -> 10 target Nerfed Seeds <<<<< Mass Hypnosis -> 16 target Buffed Terrify (that now applies Containment for Controllers).

See below for an example of how these exceptions should be clearly spelled out to avoid lying by omission: my edits in green. Aura of Insanity Toggle: PBAoE, Foe Confuse, Disorient, Sleep, Hold, Fear, DoT(Psionic), +Special, Mez Magnitude can be enhanced You emit a powerful psychic aura that causes the minds of those around you to become weak and distracted. Foes may be randomly stunned, held, terrified or even confused in your presence, in addition to suffering a debuff derived from the applied control effect. Unlike most powers, enhancements can boost the magnitude of these control effects, enabling them to affect stronger foes. Those that resist these effects will suffer damage over time. This power allows you to use your own Hit Points to keep enemies near you disabled. The power cost no endurance but can be dangerous to use. Fixed description typo. Tankers and Brutes should now be able to slot taunt enhancements and sets on this power. Tanker radius increased to 12ft.

Yes, they work differently to every other mez power in the game and also work in a way that is completely unexpected to the casual player. Imagine if a Controller slotting some Hold enhancements into Char let them just Hold an EB consistently, every time, with only one click. The fact that mez magnitudes are static is an important criteria to how mez powers are balanced between the ATs. Frankly, any power working differently needs a HUGE disclaimer in the power info in-game, and probably even something on the tooltip as well, like: WARNING: This power's magnitude can be increased by slotting Mez Duration Enhancements. Observe Exhibit A: the literal verbiage used in-game to describe a Hold Duration Enhancement... which follows the same logic for other mezzes. THEY'RE ALWAYS EXPLICITLY REFERENCING DURATION EVERYWHERE WITHIN THE GAME. This means that, to not be lying to the playerbase, HC Devs would need to perform a massive text sweep and change all of this text to say something else, such as "Hold Effectiveness" or more clearly "Hold Duration sometimes but Hold Magnitude when we feel like it." You can't just make an exception that turns all of these lines of text into outright falsehoods, and lie to the players, without doing some work on the back-end to fix the descriptions and explain the truth. Players shouldn't need to guess how their powers and enhancements might work, and need foresight pre-knowledge obtained from the forums or Discord.

Have they said why they wanted this one random power, with random effects, to be the exception to Mez Enhancements increase duration and instead have Mez Enhancements increase magnitude? I'd just like to know why.

Looks perfect as-is, send it!

That's right. Faultline has spoken.

Well at least I can 5-slot Panacea into Rad Therapy now and get more Recharge for my other powers on my Scrapper... y'know, cus the damage procs are hilariously worthless in it now. For characters who heavily relied on it as a source of AoE dmg, that stings. The Ground Zero nerf just normalizes it with every other power in the game, which is only really going to severely affect AE farms with extreme target saturation. Sucks for them, but they can roll up another farmer in no time.

Is there a reason that Deep Sleep uses a "number of hits" system instead of a "twin effect" system? You can't control how many of your teammates use Caltrops or Rain of Fire for example, but if Deep Sleep simply applied 2 Sleeps concurrently then it could still be useful in these scenarios. What if the powers simply applied the current regular breakable Sleep and an unbreakable Deep Sleep for ~3 seconds. This unbreakable portion would disappear on its own rather quickly, but it would allow a Mind Controller casting Mass Hypnosis to have any effect at all on a team. You could make the hit counter be 100 hits and it still would barely do anything to a team with multiple "rains."

Pet Controls will be huge for sets like Gravity Control. The previous workaround was keybinds and macros to select Singularity, and TP it to your location (these had to be doubletapped to work). Now we can just send him into the center of a group. Additionally, the ability to simply put pets on Passive and stop them from going crazy will be a huge boon. Lastly, Terrorize Containment is long overdue, and this will lead to an era of Mind and Illusion Controller dominance with AoE dmg sets that I feel like nobody is currently predicting.

Good. This simple change, which also simplifies the experience of playing the set (and reading the power descriptions, and understanding what your powers do), breathes new life into Sonic Blast Attack in a purely beneficial way. What this does is it makes the debuffs work how many other powersets already work... mmmmm consistency. Send it,

LMFAO... yeah, fix please. This is probably as simple as a wrong flag on the KD portion of the power.

If Empathy simply gets some long overdue buffs/reworks, and especially if Fortitude is turned into an AoE (but with lower numbers) to be truly analogous to Farsight and World of Pain, then Power Boost goes from "pretty good" to "mandatory". The option to click PB then Fort everyone... including yourself, is the kind of thing that would rejuvenate Empathy and bring it up out of the dumpster tier.

These images are sending me. Fortunately, I play good powersets so I have Mitigation against Joke Damage.

This thread isn't supposed to be a basic English class about teaching definitions. Getting dragged into arguments with people (who are blatantly wrong) is the beginning of how all of these threads get locked. GM GooglyMoogly is here, unseen, in the shadows. You don't see him but he sees us all; he is watching, waiting for someone to slip up. Healing is not, and never has been, damage mitigation. If you have 600 Healers all lined up in a row, all ready to heal, but the enemy deals a big attack and oneshots everyone... you all die because you lacked sufficient damage mitigation: now you have 600 dead Healers. Now if the same scenario happens with 2 Healers but 598 Buffers, who boost the team's Defense and Resistance up massively: people survive. The same attack hits your party but the damage is reduced and it also outright misses some of you, which gives the 2 Healers time to heal everyone back up to full. The difference in these examples should be obvious. <> Resistance and Defense are damage mitigation, as are debuffs to enemy stats that reduce their Damage and Tohit. <> Max HP and Absorb are a damage buffer, they don't technically mitigate damage but they increase the amount of time you will survive, and therefore the time you have to react. Max HP also multiplies Regeneration. <> Healing and Regeneration are just health restoration and nothing more. Regeneration is often stronger because it is multiplied by Max HP increases, and you can build to push both these stats very high.

Healing isn't damage mitigation. It's literally not.

Imagine waking up and deciding that attacking the nicest people in the community is a good idea... Lauci you have the patience of a saint.