ForeverLaxx

What collaboration? You've made a declaration that the power is getting nerfed despite your reasoning not holding any water to how the game is played. You're essentially looking at all the runners in a race, seeing all the people long-distance running around a track, and charging up to the one guy who is power-walking and telling him he's taking this too seriously and needs to have a leg amputated. Then you tell him it's fine because he gets to choose which leg or where the break is and he's supposed to be happy about that? For what it's worth, on my characters with RoP, this is a straight buff to how they use it. I'm not looking at this from my personal gain because I never used the power in the manner others did to avoid being cookie-cutter Defense Global chasers. I'm looking at this as the nerf it is for those people who stepped outside the box, found a build that worked for them that was still numerically inferior to the standard, but could at least stand next to them and get the job done. I'm fighting for build diversity at the end of a character's career, where most characters start to converge on the coveted Defense Caps and Perma Hasten. All you're doing is taking a demonstrably weaker option away from people and pushing them to build just like everyone else already is. My problem is the reasoning with the change and the result of that change. I'm aware I've stated this often, so I'm sure I'm one of those "annoying, repeats themselves posters" but you can't tell people that something is broken when it's very easy to prove that it isn't, and then back it up with "just trust us bro". It just doesn't work that way. What exactly makes the power "broken" in the context of what the players can already do in the game? Dominators are practically expected to get permaDom so that takes Mez out of the equation for them. Force Field/Sonic Dispersion/Trick Arrow characters all have solo answers to Mez, some of which are up 100% of the time. Controllers get access to Indomitable Will, which can be perma'd, providing complete Mez protection. Emailed Breakfrees exist and they're super-cheap. This is the disconnect we're all talking about. RoP is one tool in a handful of tools that are all actively managed to provide character safety that doesn't overcome the passive safety of building for Defense Caps. It doesn't need nerfed because it's not strong enough to need nerfed. Continually telling me that it is doesn't convince me, just as us telling you it's not broken, with evidence, doesn't convince you. You already made your decision: now it's just a question of how "severe" that decision is. To the severity of the undeserved nerf, I'm in the camp of 60s duration and 180s recharge if it's going to retain its "immunity" to recharge buffs. At least that way it plays better with how people actually use the power in a high-end build, and those that don't (like me) can rely on it to get them through a tough fight instead of having it drop off at the last moment.

Say it all you want. Their excuse, and your incessant desire to defend their excuse, has no basis on reality and only serves to carry the narrative that they want to nerf the power. We all see it, we've all accepted it, and some people are contemplating finding a new server because of it. It's bad precedent. I'm not returning to this topic and I probably won't provide feedback in any future feedback thread as I've been shown time and time again that a small handful of dev apologists circle the dissenters like sharks to vehemently defend dev changes that make no sense in the context of how the game is played. If dissenting feedback amounts to nothing, then there's no point in it and I don't partake in pointless ventures.

You're ignoring that "squishies" already have "absolute immunity" if they pick the right primary/secondary or carry a tray of breakfrees. By the way, purples will offset that "no DDR" problem really well. Interestingly, a breakfree will "offset" that pesky auto-hit mez problem since you're very unlikely to get tagged with one that needs a ToHit roll in the first place. You keep saying "absolute immunity" with regards to RoP and I just have to assume you don't play the game at this point.

He only supports the change because others hate it. He said so as much in a much earlier post in an earlier build where the planned nerf was arguably even worse. I'd move on, if I were you. Save your sanity, as they say, since he's not arguing in good faith anyhow. The current nerfs to Rune of Protection are likely to go through. Why? Because someone on the dev team really wants to nerf it. It doesn't matter that it's demonstrably weaker than chasing Defense caps. It doesn't matter that it's becoming a glorified inspiration that requires 3 power picks, 1 pool, and an Origin Pool lockout. It doesn't matter that the only time it's even relevant as a defensive tool is when you can rotate it with other defensive cooldowns like Incarnates or armor T9s that aren't terrible (such as MoG). It doesn't matter than even when you're able to do this you still have stretches of time where you're completely vulnerable. It doesn't matter that it's more active mitigation and requires paying attention to. It doesn't matter that even when you go all-in on this build path, you're still functionally weaker defensively than if you had just picked up the Holy Trinity of Pool Powers and chased +Defense Globals. It seems that City of Heroes does have its "Holy Trinity" after all, except it's called Speed, Fighting, and Leadership. Try to do anything else and even if it's not as good you'll be deemed overpowered if you sometimes get close. Rune of Protection is functionally pointless now. I'll just carry breakfrees, at least until they're nerfed I guess.

Upon further reflection of the changes, I'm not a fan of the adjustments to Arcane Bolt. Is it a buff? Yes, obviously. Do I want to play whack-a-mole when I play City of Heroes? No, I don't. More and more powers and powersets have started getting this "randomized/triggered" boost design and it's starting to become one of the things I hated about World of Warcraft's class redesigns. Hitting powers only when they light up (or suffer their ineffectual nature otherwise) doesn't make the game interesting and starts to make everything feel like it plays the same. Even worse, it feels like the game is telling me how to play it. It takes the agency away from the player by enforcing a "use state" that completely overshadows all other states of the power. This was my biggest problem with the Energy Melee revamp and we all know how that turned out (I guess my feedback there wasn't "compelling" enough to convince the Council of 13). And what's worse, this design enforces the perception that these attacks are "supposed to suck" and they're only allowed to be usable on a strict, randomized basis. I'll reiterate that Enflame having the Terror effect completely ruins the power for anyone who doesn't have some kind of movement lockdown ability. At this point I've decided that's the point: make the power bad for everyone except people who can hold a spawn down. Damage powers that can't reliably damage anything and make enemies scatter to the four winds aren't worth picking up. It's great you fixed the bugs with this, but if I can only kill one enemy with this toggle (since he can't actually escape the damage despite running all over the place like a confused chicken), it's not worth anything. Spirit Ward's changes are a sidegrade that happens to benefit the way I play but I can see people who picked it for how it functions currently would be upset with it. You've essentially traded one group of people's preferences for another group's and I'm not sure that's a great way to make changes. If the goal is to get more people to think these powers are worth it, is it really working when the people who took them are dropping them and offsetting any new adopters? Rune's changes are just bizarre. You harp on about how it's overpowered, and yet, no one was taking it. It's been demonstrably shown that Rune has always been a weaker choice than stacking Defense, yet you want to nerf it anyway. The way you locked in a 33% uptime made the power busier, harder to "chain" with similar high-level powers, and essentially no more useful to a character build than two standard inspirations. There's no reason to nerf something that isn't meta unless future changes to the meta would have made this become meta, but at that point, why not just keep this power untouched until those future changes? It seems no amount of factual "it's weaker than the meta" declarations is going to dissuade The Council from deeming the power broken at this point. Sometimes you guys hit it right, like with Titan Weapon. Other times, you miss the mark entirely like with Energy Melee or Rune of Protection. In all cases, though, feedback is either brushed aside by boiling it down to something you think is meaningless, or you warp the feedback to adjust the power/powerset in a manner that still falls under your initial change's design goal. Even if that's not happening, that's the perception based on what information we have available to work with. You can declare that perception wrong until you're blue in the face, but when you nerf a power that is, in practice, worse than the standard build and all feedback still leads to a nerf? Well, it's still getting nerfed, isn't it? Kinda makes the feedback feel pointless, wouldn't you agree?

Hmm. Unexpected. Arcane Bolt changes are pretty interesting and only make it more attractive to the characters I take it on (basically just Controllers because the damage still isn't good without Containment) but maybe that will change with the animation speed increase. I kinda like the idea behind Spirit Ward, but an absorb shield you have to build over time on a target while toggled can feel bad if you suddenly find yourself warding the "wrong target". A 30 second cooldown pretty much prevents you from effectively shielding an ally if you had the power active on someone else. Maybe that's the point, but just to be clear I'm not suggesting any sort of instant cooldown to let you swap targets with effectively no drawback. Then again, perhaps the idea is that you're just meant to toggle it on whoever is getting focused at the moment then shut it off between mobs? In that same vein, I'm not sure about Enflame. I always found the thing that holds the power back the most is the Terror effect. Making the thing you cast it on run around all over the place made me stop using the power on the only character I ever picked it up on and I don't see that being addressed. Now, on to the sticking point: Rune of Protection. While I'm glad the power's base recharge was dropped significantly, enforcing a 1/3 uptime for the power just makes it a glorified Break Free that comes with 2 small Orange Inspirations attached. Is that the intention?

Not sure where you'd get this idea unless you only look at high level sets and purples. Many sets don't function this way, in particular many "low level range" sets that are essentially just a version of higher level sets designed to be used while leveling and replaced with their higher level analogs. Even some of these higher level sets just barely get into the "soft ED" range (in Mids this is when the number is yellow rather than red). In fact, looking at Mids for my permaDom character, only the purple sets really overcap any stat (usually two stats) well beyond the "red ED" range while most of the orange sets only approach the top end of the "yellow ED" range on a single stat (usually the one that set cares about most, be that damage, ToHit, etc). It just gets worse for sets that don't scale to 50. Kinetic Combat, despite being an orange set, doesn't even break past the "green ED" range because the set stops scaling past 35. Travel sets have it particularly bad with this change though as these powers were essentially speed-capped out of the box, so having bonuses to movement speed on the IOs themselves wasn't as useful as endurance reduction was. That's no longer the case, but the old sets are unlikely to get adjusted to account for the newer, higher caps. Regardless, I figured I would just clear up this misconception that slotting a "full set" is meant to "cap out" a power. Anything short of a Purple or Superior Set generally doesn't come close, and the few that do only do so for one stat.

Just to be clear here, we only have access to the version of the powers on Live and Open Beta and can only comment on how they exist in the manner we can access. Nebulous "future changes" are meaningless until they're in our hands. Trying to assuage our concerns and declare our problems with the reasoning behind these changes void by coyly declaring our "concerns" will be improved in some future edition does nothing. Those adjustments aren't here for us to look at, and considering your stance in this thread that all adjustments to this power have been "justified" by RoP being "overpowered", I'm going to hazard a guess that I and others will not be enjoying whatever adjustments are being made. The power is being changed based on faulty, suspect logic -- adjustments to that power getting changed that still result in a net nerf aren't going to suddenly change our minds and agree the power needs to be nerfed. The power may be strong in a vacuum, but this game isn't played in a vacuum with every power in isolation of the others. RoP is just one tool in an entire toolkit built around trying to do something different than just throwing a ton of +Defense set bonuses at a character and ends up still being weaker than that. Nerfing it makes zero sense no matter how often you want to keep claiming otherwise. EDIT: What I find of particular interest is that the devs are using this "the game isn't played in a vacuum" argument regarding travel powers. Now, obviously, I'm not advocating that Fly have the same cap as Super Speed because I agree the game isn't played in a vacuum and verticality has value you can't really put into a spreadsheet. But then we come back to RoP, which is being nerfed because of the spreadsheet vacuum and I have to ask how that happens on a dev team that must know RoP, despite looking "too good" in a spreadsheet, is still worse overall than the standard as they clearly demonstrate an understanding of this problem when evaluating travel powers.

Yet the nerf is only going to affect the IO'd crowd. A build running just SOs can't use it in a manner that could be considered gamebreaking. Irrespective of that, being a full IO build doesn't break the power either. I know I said I was done posting in this thread, but I couldn't stop myself from this one. It's just a bad argument on every face.

Trying to be facetious doesn't make you cute. That was the PvE implementation. You don't have to like it or agree with it (and many who love to blame PvP for everything typically continue to do so), but that's the reason for the adjustment.

It's an oft-repeated, and incorrect, declaration people make. The "true" travel powers were never meant to be active all the time in combat and they had been using -Accuracy while active in order to reflect that. It wasn't enough to deter their use and certainly didn't stop the extreme speed Jousting issue so Suppression was introduced. Yes, you can still Joust, but at slower speeds that still put you in relative danger of retaliation unless you have corners to duck behind. Before suppression, you could fire an attack and be well outside counterattack range without even really trying.

They're always irrelevant to you because you only support the change due to the backlash against it. You said so yourself in another post. The "average" performance of most pool powers is so low that most of them are essentially ignored simply because Hasten and IO Bonuses related to defense powers like Weave and Maneuvers is so powerful. The only reason people use Weave and Maneuvers instead of Concealment for the same thing is Concealment loses most of its defense for being in combat, you have to turn them off for escort missions, and you can't stack Stealth with Invis (I'm aware this pool is changing this patch). Weave and Maneuvers, by themselves, aren't even that good -- it's what you can do with them in your build that matters and what you can do with your build having RoP is demonstrably weaker than what you can do with Weave and Maneuvers, despite RoP being "stronger" than those in a vacuum. This is why we don't spreadsheet balance. For some reason, I had thought RoP's recharge was 500, not 600, making a capped Recharge character have only 10 seconds of downtime, hence the "perma" in quotes. This only strengthens my case, though, as it makes RoP worse even in the best-case scenario. And in the best-case scenario, it's still weaker than capped Defenses. And capped Defense gives you a 5-7.5% chance of avoiding all mezz all the time with zero active engagement or additional holes. RoP has, even at the stupidly-high recharge cap, a 30 second window where you can be mezzed. In a more realistic solo scenario, this 30 second window is stretched to roughly 3 minutes of vulnerability. This also assumes you aren't fighting anything with -recharge effects that you're ALSO eating because you opted for Resist instead of Defense, since Defense would ALSO prevent you from getting hit by any -recharge effects that aren't autohit. Besides, you can get "immunity" to Mez anyway through much simpler means than using RoP: Pick a powerset that has it built-in, carry a tray of breakfrees and restock every mission, fill your email with breakfrees, run with a team who slaps you with Clear Mind or something similar, etc. RoP has clear downsides and that's before considering that you have to take 2 powers for your build that don't contribute to it in any meaningful way. Compare that to Hasten (give up nothing), Weave (give up one power, since Tough slots Defense uniques), Maneuvers (give up nothing), and Combat Jumping (give up nothing)/Hover (give up nothing). See above. For some reason, my brain remembered 500 instead of 600 for its base recharge. I put "perma" in quotes as it would have had a 10 second downtime instead of 30 seconds at the recharge cap. I'm just going to reiterate for this thread that my characters with RoP don't run any IO sets. They'll effectively be "unaffected" by the nerf because I can't currently use those powers in a manner like others can just as those characters aren't running around at the defense softcap. This isn't a selfish "my character is unplayable" argument -- I take umbrage with the supposed reason for a nerf I find to be meaningless and hollow in the face of what players can already accomplish with better builds that insofar as I'm aware are fully supported by the game's current dev team and combat design. That is to say, nerfing RoP because it's "too strong" when it's not meta and does not have the tools to become meta like Defense Cap + permaHasten are is beyond silly. I'm bowing out of this debate with this post. There's nothing more I can say on the matter without running in circles.

Your attempts to distill an argument down to a soundbite in order to refute it miss the mark, yet again. My point is not that powers needs to reach "The Big 3" before they can be nerfed, my point is that when a power doesn't even come close to those is getting nerfed for being "too good", there's some obvious spreadsheet number crunching going on and no accounting for how the game actually plays or what you lose to get there. 115% global recharge and you have permaHasten. Everything you take to get to that number are defense powers, which encourages 45% Defense Softcaps. The powers essentially pick themselves. Compared to 500% recharge for "perma"RoP. You're not getting that solo unless all you want to do is have RoP as your entire build. You may pick up Hasten, and you might even be able to get it perma, but you'll be charged 3 picks and 3 pools (since you're locked out of two for picking Sorcery at all) to use RoP instead Defense as your personal armoring of choice. What do you gain by doing this? 20-40% resistances if you slot for it, and downtime between activations that you have to fill with other powers if you don't want to be vulnerable. So you give up passive, perfect defensive coverage in order to gain active, imperfect coverage that's weaker than the former. Yet it's still getting nerfed, because "internal discussion" says it's too good. As I said before, I don't buy it.

I can only work with what I'm given, and they don't like to give anything I can work with. In the absence of evidence to the contrary (and the fact that Dominators are designed around permaDom, making high recharge an "expectation" to a certain degree), I'm going to continue to hold my opinion that High Recharge + Defense Cap is an acceptable level of power for the Developers. In that scenario, one power you can't afford to perma when solo that also tends to strip significant defense bonuses from the build when not used with powersets that provide their own inherent defenses getting nerfed for being "too good" just seems exceptionally silly and needlessly restricts build diversity. Sets that come with their own modifiers to defense can hit the Defense Cap much easier, but we're not nerfing SR or Defense Set Bonuses simply because SR can hit the cap way faster, easier, and cheaper than Regen. Instead, we're nerfing a power that takes 3 power slots to access, locks you out of power pools to access, takes one of your 4 allotted pools, and is essentially just a glorified Break Free + Orange inspiration. I'm with you on wondering what else they may think is overpowered if they believe RoP qualifies, though, considering how it works in-game and not in the vacuum of a spreadsheet.

No, it isn't. I'm not going to get in a debate here, but suffice it to say, being at the Defense Cap means you get hit by far fewer attacks, completely bypassing any mez that may have been attached to those attacks. Carry a couple breakfrees for those times where you get unlucky and it's like you have permanent mez protection at all times. For some reason, the Devs have decided that Defense Cap + 200% recharge builds is acceptable (or at least, too ingrained to modify), but a non-perma power without tons of outside help or a butchered build is "too good". I don't buy it.

Frankly, this all just smells of changing a power based on spreadsheet analysis and not on in-game function. On paper, perhaps the power itself might be "too strong", though I struggle to hold that opinion considering what players can do without it that makes them better than they ever were with the power. That's my problem with this change: it's changing something based on spreadsheet data and not practical usage. When you can make a character more powerful, and do so much easier, by picking up the "standard meta" of Pool Powers to cap out your defenses and run around with around 200% recharge solo, and that is better than Rune will ever be under it's current Live numbers, how can you justify a nerf to it? One single power being good, but difficult to leverage with clear trade-offs sounds like GOOD design to me. In a game where being a literal god is but a few IOs away, how is one difficult-to-leverage alternative even an issue?

This is the part I keep coming back to. Builds with RoP in them are active, cycling powers to keep things going and don't tend to have enough powers to keep these armor cooldowns on 100% of the time. Even with high recharge, RoP isn't getting permanent uptime so you have to weave in other defense/resist powers you have from other sources. It's active, relatively intense gameplay as far as CoH is concerned. People complain about having to watch Domination or Hasten, depending on which they didn't auto-cast. Using RoP in this manner is even more involved than that. Compare that to just building high recharge and Defense. You set Hasten on auto and proceed to spam your nukes every other spawn, with two filler AoEs for the in-between spawns. There's literally nothing else to do because your defenses are covered and you only have one clicky to worry about so it's on auto. RoP builds are far more active than this and still don't protect you as well in the long term. Read: RoP builds are weaker than the standard setup. But for some reason, RoP is overtuned.

Enough to respond directly to it. I'm not going to repeat anything I said there to you. Read the post if you care. EDIT: leaving my post and your quoted response to me. If you can't stand by something you post, don't post it then delete it

How is one power that is demonstrably weaker than the "standard" high Defense build contributing to Power Creep?

No, it doesn't. You're trying to boil down an argument into one you already think you've countered so you can disregard it. That's extremely disingenuous and dismissive for the sake of being so. Arcane Bolt and Spirit Ward are relatively weak, this is true, and only some characters get something for taking them (Controllers under Containment, mainly, and those who want a heal power for set bonuses). Mystic Flight is a wash as it's a travel power. Enflame could be interesting, but it's not, because the damage is low and makes things run away like old Burn used to. All that leaves is Rune of Protection, a power that doesn't protect you as well as the "standard" Defense Cap builds and requires more investment to work properly. As has been stated multiple times, RoP is not overtuned. It has just enough benefit to be considered a side option to the standard if you don't mind being locked out of all other Origin pools and picking up at least 1 "useless" power along the way. Taking this pool tends to lock you out of going heavy Defense on top of that so it's not like RoP is there to offset high Defense builds without DDR from getting mopped by Cascade Failure or bad luck. What we're telling you is that a niche power that sometimes performs almost to the level of the standard Weave + Maneuvers + Defense Bonus IOs when it's not on cooldown doesn't need to be nerfed because it's not strong enough to be nerfed. All you're accomplishing is the removal of what little "high end" build diversity we have and pushing people into sticking with the High Recharge + High Defense standard that's already heavily encouraged by the game's own combat design. EDIT: To the "better than armor T9" crowd, the armor T9s have almost universally been bad ever since the ability to perma them was removed and the sets they're part of don't need what they offer to do their jobs. This became even more true due to IO bonuses. Being better than a T9 (and only sometimes, at that) is more on the head of the T9s being bad than Rune being "good".

Overperforming as compared to what? Other powers in the same tier that are so bad no one takes them at all except for theme or for a crazy idea? RoP is a very niche power that only specific builds were trying to leverage, and in those builds, RoP was always just part of a cycle of defensive cooldowns like MoG or Shadow Meld in order to maintain some kind of defensive barrier. On top of that, this "barrier" was full of holes and had large moments of time where nothing was up and you were vulnerable. That sounds like a good design to follow, not remove. Compared that to picking Hasten and +Defense pool powers to stack with your +Defense Epic armor/Secondary armors and you have 185% recharge and +45/+59 Defense all the time and Rune of Protection becomes even worse. Unfortunately, my fear was confirmed with this post. "Internal discussion" said this niche, specific power was "overtuned" despite no one taking it so it gets the axe. Great.

That's only one problem we, as players, are having here. The other is that it appears that even with feedback that has a directed focus, it doesn't matter what we say unless we agree with the change. RoP is turning into the same case that Energy Melee (I'm aware I was a minority there, admittedly), Nin's Speed Bonus, and Blaster Secondary range "normalization" is: a change that's happening no matter what anyone says about it. Telling us why nerfing a niche pick in a weak Pool, turning it into just another "who cares" power, particularly when compared to the popular, build-defining Pool Powers that builders bend over backwards to include isn't really the issue anymore. The issue now is asking why our feedback even matters on powers you insist on nerfing regardless of what we say. "Compelling enough to change" seems to be an insurmountable bar to clear for certain changes. Why have the discussion at all if the discussion never mattered? If the point of any power not named Hasten, Tough, Weave, Combat Jumping, Maneuvers, Tactics, and Vengeance is to be bad, then just tell us so we can move on.

I'd imagine it's because it's not a "real" travel power like the others. It's a themed movement power that is essentially just a slottable Ninja Run.

This is the part that confused me. It's like they saw the complaints that didn't make any sense, then went and changed the powers so that the complaints were now valid. Seems kind of backwards, doesn't it? Put me in the camp for not liking this adjustment. Being slower out of the box while also having to shift more slots and powers around to get back what was already working fine before feels like a bad change to me.

It really shouldn't be surprising that one of the only "high tier" Pool Powers that people can justify sinking multiple power picks into has people who don't want it to become another dead power in a sea of dead powers. It being "better" (not universally true anyway, depending on AT) than some random armor set's T9 while still being a rare, niche pick says more about the sad state of that armor's T9 than it does about the strength of the pool power. Armor T9s have been mostly a waste for most sets for a long time in general anyway.