Monos King

Hi, it's been a while. I greatly appreciate the work and sentiment behind the Frostwork re-evaluation, that power should be getting some love. However, I desperately despise the change from max HP to absorb. Now in spite of my feelings, it's not all bad, but if a buff was the intention it falls short - especially for Masterminds. I talked to a few others who may have echoed some of these points here a little while ago, but I think it's a good idea to go over the benefits and detriments so that everyone understands my perspective. Absorb Vs Max HP Both act a pseudo resistance; a 10% absorb or 10% HP buff will cause you to die 10% slower. Say you have 2000 HP and are struck with 2000 pts of solid dmg. At base, you will now have 1 HP (since players can't get one shot). If you are given a 50% absorb bonus, you now have an additional 1000 health and are left with the same. If you are given a 50% MAX HP bonus, the same happens. Absorb Benefits 1. Allows you to expand your max HP The absorb cap is equal to the base HP cap of whichever AT is being buffed (including pets, NPCs, you name it). Tanks can receive up to 5,408.028 HP with full absorb, something elite Bio builds will often find themselves with. For pet henchmen who have pitifully tiny max HP caps, absorb consistently offers better survival...on paper. 2. Protects you against Percentage Based Damage This is pretty huge, and a strong argument in absorbs favor in any situation. Attacks like Marauder's Nova Fist, Tyrant's Flow Lightning, Diaboliques Earthshatter, Penelope Yin's psionic Drift and various other abilities from challenge content attack your HP directly, making HP buffs entirely useless. Nova Fist in particular sets players to about 1HP, as it does 99% of your health. Absorb will cushion this greatly. 3. Can be re-applied Old Frostwork will offer you the big max HP, but further usages won't help you. Absorb offers a shield that can be re-added once it falters. This allows it to act like resistance, as well as like a heal. 4. Can come in small, reapplying DoTs This is a testament to the versatility of absorb. Instantly reapplying absorb could prevent taking dmg below a certain threshold *at all*, but primarily the current state it is used in for powers like Spirit Ward is very helpful because 5. Absorb can be Power Boosted Which, in the rare instances of such a power being added, allows for a good synergy permitting the small DoTs to become much larger absorb shields. However, Absorb Issues 1. Absorb can be weakened Attacks that deal -HP such as Crimsons abilities naturally weaken the strength of absorb as well. The only way to counteract Crimson and his godlike -HP is with HP buffs of your own. Once your max HP is set to 10, absorb isn't helping you at all. You'll get like 1 Absorb. Furthermore, in the instance you are fighting something with -special, should that exist, it's worth noting your absorb benefits would be affected as well - assuming it was your own click power. As far as I know, -special would not affect the buffs you receive from others. 2. Bodyguard mode and many other abilities bypass Absorb You may have heard this on the discord, I was informing people of this fact for a hot second. It's my biggest gripe; absorb is not perfect. Hamidon's attacks, some of Crimsons, various many challenge abilities and zone/object triggered effects all ignore absorb outright. This is especially troublesome for masterminds who are already struggling to keep pets alive on a regular basis. But most importantly, Bodyguard mode damage split ignores absorb. If you are taking the brunt of the damage, using absorb on your pets literally does nothing. You've wasted a power. For the other mastermind secondaries like elec affin and Nature, yyou also have plentiful healing to circumvent this issue. Not so with cold domination. Running my demons/cold, I actually had to start clicking Rebirth occasionally when the pets health got low with this change. My pets personal survival was a bit better if I had them attack, but that's not exactly useful when I'm fighting AVs that will one shot them regardless. 3. Has to be reapplied I'll reference Frostwork specifically here. While the benefits of reapplication were discussed earlier, the fact that it *has* to be reapplied is really no good for a single target power like Frostwork. Max HP offers a hands-off approach, you use it and then for the duration of the power, your target has enhanced regeneration and can be brought back up to the their new cap naturally. You can do this which each teammate, or pet. However, with absorb, once the benefit has been tacked off from damage, that is it. Frostwork is now useless until it next recharges, and since it is single target you are either forced to sit and use it on the person who needs it most like a heal, rather than drop it and move onto the next. 4. Faaar more common than +HP (Lengthier, check my math) Now for Max HP. Max HP Benefits 1. Is Permanent Max HP bonuses do not need to be applied once you lose the extra health you were given. Until the duration of the power has expended, you simply keep the HP bonus. This is important when you are using, say, a Single target 1 minute recharge ability and have to apply it to over 7 pets, or have teammates split across that you cannot constantly attend to. 2. Allows you to overcome the regen cap Essentially, whatever the percentage of HP you just gained, you also gained additional regeneration of equal amount. This is effectively allowing you to overcome the Regen cap. 3. Cannot be weakened or bypassed This is very helpful when fighting debuff heavy enemies, or the likes of Crimson. There do not exist any debuffs as of now that weaken MAX HP buffs. This is super important for masterminds. 4. Unique The simple fact is, Max HP buffs are extremely rare as support powers. They have extreme utility in the lower levels, and offer new avenues to face enemies that would be otherwise quite difficult. Max HP Issues 1. One and Done You cannot make use of Max HP once it is applied more than once. They don't stack, and even if they did, the HP cap will have been achieved. Furthermore, unlike absorb, it cannot be used as a pesudo heal. 2. Percentage Based Attacks Ignore Max HP Buffs Regardless of what you do, Nova Fist will take you to 1HP. 3. Maxed out characters find themselves at the HP Cap There are a lot of set bonuses and temps that increase your HP cap, so in end game content, absorb is seemingly better. It is worth noting, however, end game content is also where all of those powers that ignore and weaken absorb show up to begin with. Furthermore, most armors are still not reaching said HP caps. The Take-Away I look at this through the lenses of a mastermind and a scrapper, but I do consider every AT in the game. Even so: Absorb is better when used on a mastermind, but worse when used by a mastermind. If an MM were to have Frostwork used on them, generally speaking, it will be better for bodyguard mode because now the pets don't take any damage at all. However, this is a rarer instance. If you are a mastermind, you are focused on supporting your pets, and so while the absorb will be stronger than max HP for them, they are literally benefitting nothing when BG damage hits them. They are taking Hamidon's damage raw, along with many others. Because this isn't purely an absorb vs max HP conversation, and is instead a "which is better for Cold Domination" conversation, I have to argue that the benefits this single target power of Frostwork are just much higher when as a MAX HP power. The current limitations of Frostwork and Cold Dom make it better tailored to be max HP, and not an absorb power. It's also just mechanically misaligned. Cold dom's point is to make the team take less damage through defense, and debuffing enemies. It cripples enemies so the team can spread out and destroy. It has long last duration buffs to contribute to this task. Giving it a buff that inherently demands of the Cold Dom user to tail and reapply crushes the spirit of the independent playstyle that it cultivates. You're supposed to buff them, and then they go off and do their own thing. Absorb isn't allegiant to that mechanic. And again, Bodyguard mode ignores absorb. This is terrible for masterminds. Cold Dom has no healing to supplement. If nothing else, Frostwork is a screaming sponsor to the notion that Mastermind secondaries should get different treatment for certain powers than other Archetypes get, taking from the example of Detonator from traps. There is definitely a better way to address this power.

Hellstar was a fixture in the Freedom community long ago, and had made a brief return to Homecoming, being the reason I learned about Homecoming to begin with. In fact, Hellstar was the reason I played City of Heroes at all, learned how to type by playing this game, and began to explore complicated scientific concepts. That is because Hellstar was in fact a character played by by father. I always thought this outfit was stupid, and often inquired as to why he was even playing a female character when I was younger. Something something I don't want to look at a man lmao. He seemed to have a storyline in his head with it. With his various Hellstar characters, he was amongst the first to engage in a successful Freedom Hami raid, and had over 58 level 50s as early as 2008, going on to eventually lead the Bounty Hunters R Us Supergroup in its heyday. From the hours he poured in from start to finish, and the bonding we had while he did, it was clear he loved City of Heroes. He was there in the games final hours, before the plug was pulled. Sadly, he loved another thing nearly as much as City of Heroes - smoking. Lung cancer took him out of the fight. Towards the end of his life, our relationship wasn't exactly positive. He wasn't the best. But I always remembered the moments we had in this game. It brought us together. I wasn't able to be by his side when the plug was pulled on him. So I'll leave this post in remembrance instead. I didn't always like you dad. But I still love you.

Utterly unacceptable. Terms of Service typo discovered. Shut it all down, NCSoft. (In fact there's two)

I vaguely recall posting this a few years back, but in the event I did not I'll just revive the topic. Thugs Bruiser possesses an enhanceable Hold bonus from Knockout Blow, but does not accept Hold enhancement set IOs. It's been this way for years. Would love to see this remedied.

Good show old boy.

Oh interesting, good suggestion. I did look and it is doing the damage tick. But it is not applying the -def on players, or on NPCs.

I've been at this for a while, it's probably just a bug with the continuous refresh. There aren't any mechanisms in PvP that would cause this, so we most likely need dev intervention. I'll also check to see if this occurs in PvE. Edit: It does. The -def is not affecting NPCs either.

That is the case, however each of these ticks is supposed to be a 100% chance. The -defense should be applying throughout the 15 seconds. Similar powers usually show this. My target did not move, and I monitored not the combat attributes, but my own To-Hit chance initially, which is how I discovered this. Even while attacking non-stop with extremely short animation time powers, my chance to hit never rose while the target was in the puddle, just as the targets defense never updated. If this is a glitch not in performance, but a byproduct of its design, it's still not working as it should. Although, it seems that it's just not applying -def.

The Experimentation pool power Corrosive Vial is not properly applying -Defense in PvP, and possibly in other settings as well. My Chance to hit before and during usage of Corrosive Vial did not change. Here is the defense on the character that had Corrosive Vial used on them: Before After The power shows up in the Base Defense category, but does not actually apply to any of the defense types, leaving it unchanged. Occasionally the debuff does show up, but only for a second, and still does no affect defense even during that second.

Pets summon from villain epic pools are taunting enemies as a result of Gauntlet, taking away aggro from the user. In Pulling situations, and especially PvP situations, this bug makes a huge mess of things. (Note: This bug was discovered on beta).

based on toxic tarantulas powers, it should allow slow enhancements, but currently does not.

Seems like I do. The title is an error however, I meant that Tanks/Brutes widow is not allowing for Slow enhancements, and is instead showing To Hit debuff.

Power seems to erroneously slot To Hit Debuff (which the powers don't actually have) rather than Slows.

I'm young enough to have Snapchat on my phone, just to eye it with disdain.

I like this. I personally think you shouldn't even get the new LRSF unless you've played through the accompanying who will die arcs, but this would be an acceptable alternative. Pretty sure that's how MLTF was but I guess continuity is just moot.

I like this idea.

Oh I haven't given up, I just think we got a pretty decent amount of good suggestions that can be revisited when desired. The devs have certainly seen the most productive proposals as well.

Oh that's just a joke your comment is very much valid lol We are certainly very and unavoidably powerful once we're maxed out, and it would be silly to call content universally easy once we're at the precipice of power. There are just some other conspicuous factors, like how we got there.

That isn't quite the scenario that is being discussed here. I can find some quotes to bring you up to speed if you're interested, as I imagine you haven't in fact read "the entire discussion". Though this thread is now a discussion of iron man's morality and the meaning of being a hero so maybe that'll have to wait.

Another reason I'd like to see some thoughtful mechanics added to enemy groups and missions. I said this earlier, but incentive to play the game less hastily is also something that will help mitigate the out-pour of those that are too strong stomping on content with the lesser powered, and thus increasing those players sense of efficacy in teams. Also if it's any indication from responses in this thread, it'd probably be more enjoyable. Though I do realize some have expressed they aren't too fond of it as it exists now, such as Luminara, so perhaps we could think of some that would appeal to them as well. Then everything would check out.

I'm debating whether or not to let this thread devolve into "Determing Whether or not we're actually Heroes".

I can tell you are somewhat weathered by the topic. I've found myself informing nearly everyone that jumps over the last few pages of this, but you'll be happy to learn the point of this thread is not to discuss options to make the game more difficult or to suggest buffing enemies. You hit the nail on the head, at the very least a vocal quantity of players do not want things getting generally harder. Once you dissect the matter, though, you can find that a large part of the issues with the games ease don't stem from the ease itself, but from factors discussed throughout the thread. There are ways to address those issues beyond just making enemies more difficult; in fact in some cases, that wouldn't even help.

Like in Lambda instead of making mez short out some part of Marauders protection, they made a temporary power to cuck controllers and then spit on them by literally naming it a "Pacifier" grenade. Then while screaming "West Side!" it called it's boy Jocas just so they could mug mez itself in the Magisterium. Well, that might not be exactly what happened but it feels like it. I'm definitely of the opinion whatever trials may come in the future could fix that little problem.