Lost Deep

So... while I do applaud all the changes to Arachnos Soldier, I feel like they're not addressing the issues I have with the archetype. For context, I've yet to try IO set slotting. I just don't feel like it yet, and to that end I don't sweat over not being the best. I usually play on -1/x2 and have fun in that band (recently I've been flirting with -1/x3, which feels daring!) My point of view is not endgame and not optimized, I have lots of characters in the mid levels and with basic IOs. Within that admittedly narrow band, here's my experience with Soldiers: I feel like Soldiers of Arachnos don't work. I slot the control powers and they don't control quite enough to work. I slot the defense powers and I feel squishier than sentinels. I usually run -1/x2 when playing solo, up to and including with the Blaster, but with the Soldier I sometimes have trouble with -1/x1. Leveling up an Arachnos Soldier is Not Fun. You're constantly having problems, constantly hoping that the next power in the list will solve the problems, and then either it doesn't or you instead get new, worse problems. Despite having a passive that is +regen and +recovery, I always have survival and endurance issues. The resistance bonus from Crab Armor and Wolf Armor are both so bad that they feel less like a viable choice and more like a tax. They have good mez protection by all means, but really if there's one thing a soldier has plenty of it's Mez protection. Bane Armor is better about that, but ultimately whenever I feel like being sneaky I play my /ninjitsu stalker. Web grenade is a great control but it's the only one in the set so if it doesn't work your only option is pop clickies and pray. Other people in this thread say that Soldiers are just better Sentinels, but my experience is the opposite: sentinel has all the upsides of soldier and none of the stress. If Soldiers of arachnos are great in the endgame... that's great and I hope you have fun, but I have trouble seeing people getting soldiers there short of boring, optimized exp farming. And it's great to say that Set IO slotting will fix my problems, but from my point of view that's not a solution; that's giving up and accepting it as broken. I don't have a solution. I don't fully know what the problem is, all I know is the feel that I'm consistently getting, and it is that I've never been able to get Arachnos Soldier to feel good. It's been close many times, but there's always something that makes it frustrating. Do I really need to get tough and weave on an archetype with defensive toggles? Do I need to get Aerial Superiority to get enough controls? All I know is that Soldiers of Arachnos make me frustrated, and these changes (while, again, definitely nice!) aren't enough to change that,

Initial low-level test gives me mixed feelings; it feels like the most distinct parts of Assault Rifle have been replaced with melee attacks. I don't think that's bad, per se, but it's an odd choice and feels less distinct than the original.

Initial low-level testing is... not impressive. For my part, I don't hate sleeps; they're fine. They're not great, but as someone who solos a lot any CC, even the situational CC of sleep, is appreciated. I do like how Gas-grenade re-applies the sleep on a regular basis, I like how the tick rate is optimized so that if you do wind one with an AoE they reliably get one attack off before sleeping again; it's a nice bit of risk vs reward. That said, having two sleeps at first level is too many... and then you get access to cryo freeze ray, which is like tranquilizer but better. And then you get liquid nitrogen which is like sleep grenade but better. Yes, the recharge is limitingly slow, but when that's the only way it's lesser why bother slotting gas grenade at all? Even without worrying about synergies etc, this isn't a good setup for the first few tiers of the power set; it comes off something of a mess. (That said, I don't play Controllers or Dominators much so I don't know how much of this is an assumed part of the sets or essential to synergies.)

Today I learned that Signature Arcs start at level 10. I have been playing this game on and off for a long time now, I have multiple characters in the thirties, and I was wondering when the signature arcs start. Today a friend informed me that they're available at level 10. Why is this information not available in game? They're not in the contact finder, they don't have pop-ups when you reach the relevant level (unlike twinshot and the gong rogue contacts) and to my knowledge they're not even in the maze of contacts in the old CoH contacts! Unless they're in the pillar of ice and fire somewhere I have no reason to believe that there's anything in the game that directs you to the signature contacts other than their spots on the map, which does not inform you of the level requirements or whether they're in continuity with any other plots. Yes, the information is on the wiki, but that's not helping most people. The fact that you need to go into a web browser and look up the information to find it is only an indictment of how poorly it's presented in game. This is, arguably, the main plotline of City of Heroes. Why aren't they given more emphasis? While on the topic, I feel like the contact finder needs to be fleshed out in general, because there's plenty of contacts that are really easy to miss, either from the contact reference maze or from old content. This game has so many plotlines! Why are they buried?

I'm testing the DP changes, and... with new Suppressive Fire, why would I want Executioner's Shot? Suppressive fire does slightly less damage, true, but it also has a faster recharge time, less endurance, and a useful rider. Executioner's Shot's bonus accuracy isn't bad, but I'm already slotting Accuracy on everything anyway. What's to gain from Executioner's Shot? I'm honestly not sure whether I'm missing something or if new Suppressive Fire is starting to crowd Executioner's Shot's niche.

It's important to remember that no experience is universal. Some players only do basic IO slotting, some only do SO slotting. I myself have some issues with Endurance slotting, and I try to keep that in mind whenever I'm giving feedback. It was while investigating this endurance slotting that I noticed that Mastermind attacks baseline cost more endurance than most comparable attacks. If you propose that mastermind attacks are properly scaled to the correct damage output of the mastermind character, which I do believe, you're still paying more endurance for it.Demon Summoning and Beast Mastery justifies these costs by giving the attacks powerful utility that isn't seen in other sets: a way to increase the value of the attacks and make them worth taking without increasing the literal damage output of the Mastermind. In addition, in CoH high-end +4x8 play is COMPLETELY different than +0x1 play in the beginning or mid-game. My understanding is that leveling up a character usually needs about 2 respecs, or at the very least one at 50 to set up your slots right for high-end builds. If a Mastermind attack is great at the high-end for some specific reason, that's great and I hope you have fun, but you unlock the attacks at levels 1, 2, and 8. In these early levels you're low on powers and slots, and things are starting to ramp-up into being actually baseline challenging. Having to pay more endurance for less results in a tight economy for slot choices doesn't feel good. My personal experience is that every time I have End trouble with a mastermind, the first step is to get rid of the mastermind basic attacks. Thus far that has never left me worse off. I understand that this isn't going to be universal, but I want to understand why this is happening to me and according to official data Masterminds do, in fact, pay more endurance baseline for the basic attacks. I'd just like those attacks to either receive reduced endurance costs to bring them into line, or improved utility so the endurance tax is on actual, broadly useful mechanics.

(Accidental doublepost, sorry)

This! I'm very much a mid-game player, and I was commenting in the Mercenaries thread that I wasn't using Serum because due to the mix of long duration and super slow recharge that it almost always felt wasted or too precious to use. Necromancy has much less of that problem (a mere 300 seconds of recharge compared to Serum's 500) but not none. And some power sets are fine with that being a mechanic, maybe expert usage of that power is intended to be what separates the greats, but it's worth pointing out and discussing; I personally generally prefer having better general options and a mid-end panic button instead of a godly panic button.

How many slots are you putting into your aimed shot? Those numbers are along ways away from the baseline: the baseline end is 6.5 and baseline recharge time is 4.0. Especially while leveling slots are at a premium and putting a lot of slots into a Mastermind attacks feel bad. In my own experimenting, they feel much better if you put even a 30% end reduction in them... which is, of course, taking a slot that would normally be reserved for accuracy or damage. Bow and Arrow has a baseline endurance cost of 1.64x the cost of aimed shot, recharge time of 2x aimed shot, and damage 5.74x snap shot. Comparing a raw Bow and Arrow to a no-slots Aimed Shot gives the victory to Bow and Arrow without question. In addition, the second ninja attack is using the first attack profile for other sets, with the first attack being even faster. Which I don't think is super relevant to the balance argument, but an interesting note. In other words, are you sure you don't want to play petless mastermind? By all accounts you'd be very good at it.

A little more testing, and I noticed something: I'm not using Serum. Serum is a massive buff... once every eight minutes. Some missions won't last that long. With a duration of two minutes, it can cover several fights. It's often still running the next time I change maps. But then you spend 8 minutes with it not even an option: a detectably long time. The result? I forget I have it. And then when I have it, I'm nervous about using it: it's too precious to use. If in 3 minutes I have a bigger crisis I'll be sad I used it now! The classic RPG fallacy. I think Serum would be better if it had a duration of 30 seconds and a cooldown of two minutes.

I REALLY like new Sentinel. I have some character ideas that fit in the sentinel space, but I never liked opportunity: I wound up just ignoring it and taking whichever result I got (most often the T1 one, since my play flow uses T1s a lot). Managing it purposefully was too disruptive to game flow for it to be worth it to me. This Beta changes that entirely. Sentinel now has a definite gimmick and a feel: You have a 'I hate that guy' button. It encourages target priority. You can use it back to back if you really need to, but the gauge mechanic means that if you do it's liable to be a while before you use it again. It makes you gauge threats, prioritize targets, and think while you fight. This is both very on-brand for the sentinel fantasy as it has been defined, AND what I was already doing without any distinct mechanical benefits outside of just... good fight control. Sentinel now encourages that same kind of playstyle through its mechanics, and (MOST IMPORTANTLY) feels good to play. Thank you, I love it.

The start of the game is when henchmen can do the least. As you go on, henchmen do more (especially damage), you have more from your secondary, and even unlock ancillary pools. All these, for the reasons I went over in the original post, make the basic attacks less relevant in a great hurry. And -Regen isn't for mid-game: it's for Archvillains, Giant Monsters, and other high-end things. It's effectively nothing against the vast majority of the game. When it does matter, it's felt: -200% regen is nothing to sneeze at. But adding something that is admittedly situational to a basic attack like that puts it in an odd situation. When you'd normally use these attacks the most, low- to mid-level, you're never actually going to benefit from the -regen. When you're up against something with notable regeneration, they're not notable damage: they're only useful for the -regen, the damage they deal is largely negligible. I'm not saying this setup is somehow innately wrong, but it IS strange and I wonder if these attacks would be more effective with a different focus.

This is specifically about the attacks in the pet sets, Such as Burst in Mercenaries, Dark Blast in Necromancy, etc, not the effects of the pets themselves.

I DID! I discussed these changes in the original post! My angle is that while Ninja and Necromancer are the right direction and likely only need refinements, the Mercenaries attacks offer very little in comparison to the existing stand-outs of Beast Mastery and Demon Summoning! In addition, the -regen on the robotics attacks is really only notable in high-end and late-game play which is a strange choice on attacks that that should be biased toward the start of the game!

My angle is that I am adapting: I'm adapting to not use them because I see no reason to. That isn't necessarily good for build variety, these are notable parts of the powersets but there's so little reason to take them. This isn't just about endurance economy, it's about the actual ideas behind why they are designed this way. I'm arguing that making these powers baseline better, by adding utility, not damage, will improve the quality and breadth of builds for the sets in question. It will also make them better appreciated by beginners and mid-end players. Why not put forth the effort for that? There's only things to gain.

The current Beta Mastermind attack changes are, by and large, good. At least, they're a start in the right direction. But they don't actually solve the core issue with them, and that is that Mastermind attacks are often a liability to use in a fight because they cost too much to offer too little. By and large, most Mastermind Attacks fall into this kind of setup: A light attack: 6.5 Endurance A medium attack: 10.66 Endurance A basic AoE attack: 18.98 Endurance Details vary, the exact damage to endurance ratio varies, but these are the core values. First off, these are high values. Here, at a glace, is the general costs for blasters: A light attack: 5.2 Endurance A medium attack: 8.528 Endurance A basic AoE attack: 15.184 Endurance The Blaster versions also do more damage, as they should, but the truth of the matter is that Mastermind just spends more End for comparable effects. Now, I'm not going to claim Mastermind attacks should get a damage buff. They shouldn't. When you want to do damage as a Mastermind, what you do is you tell all your Henchmen to attack that target. Your personal contribution to damage is, even at the best of times, negligible much after level 20. Well, then, what are they for? They're buttons to hit during combat. They're little things to do so that you don't get bored herding the henchmen. The issue is that if they're used this way, basically just pushing one whenever you feel like it because you want to contribute to the fight, they can be dangerous. Masterminds want to spend Endurance on a lot of things. Assault, Maneuvers, and Tactics are no-brainers: they're basically toggles that give your henchmen free stats. Tough and Weave are VERY common, as they're the main way that Masterminds can build for survivability. That's a baseline of five toggles, not counting potential costs from the secondary set. Even with conscientious endurance slotting that adds up. Secondary sets are harder to factor in. Some are hugely click-hungry, and if you use it you're not liable to have a lot of spare time to use your Mastermind attacks in any case. Some are End-hungry, they have support toggles and debuffs that need to be applied regularly. A select, blessed, cursed few are both. (I love you Poison, but you're a bit needy.) This all makes using Mastermind attacks hard; not only does not every set give the player time for them, but a number of sets use a lot of endurance, making other endurance expenditures dangerous. Yes, you could take the Mastermind Attacks, but they take a lot of Endurance and give little back. What are your alternatives? Power pool ranged attacks? Not really. Power Pool ranged attacks have a endurance efficiency around the same rate as mastermind attacks. They're expensive, and they do damage, and precious little outside of damage. That said, it rather puts things in perspective: the Mastermind ranged attacks might as well be pool powers given their numbers. So, what do you take? Well, I personally take Boxing, Kick, and Cross Punch. Boxing: 4.42 Endurance Kick: 4.94 Endurance Cross Punch: 10.66 Endurance. You can claim that they're only good damage if you take all three... and you're right. You can claim that they're melee powers when Mastermind is built to be ranged archetype, and you're right. But you're going to be in the Fighting pool anyway and you need to take at least one of Boxing or Kick for access to Tough and Weave. Why not take the other two for some buttons to push in combat? Not appealing to you? How about Experimental Injection from experimentation to buff one Henchman for a while? 10.4 endurance to give someone a large amount of Mez immunity and bonus regen and recovery. Spirit Ward from Sorcery: a fairly-priced toggle to add absorption over time to one target. Great for whatever minion is in melee like an idiot! Weaken Resolve from Willpower: a mere 7.58 endurance for a 7.5% penalty to defense and resist for 15 seconds, and a small accuracy penalty as a bonus! Air Superiority from Flight: 6.5 endurance for a 100% knockdown. Occasionally useful for a little extra crowd control! Pacfiy from Presence: To get the enemy to stop beating on you personally! Provoke from Presence: A taunt to get enemies to come into your minion's murder range! Misdirection from Concealment: if you're in concealment for some reason, you might as well pick it up for the placate and 15% resistance penalty! Aid Other from Medicine: I mean... hey, the animation time is too long and it's interruptable, but if you have the time and you're cofident on your henchmens' control over the situation, why not? Of course, these are not perfect. They have notable limitations, long cooldowns, the like, and their Endurance costs are pretty comparable to the very Mastermind Attacks I'm deriding... but they don't just do a pitiful amount of damage and burn your endurance. They're utility powers, some quite strong, and their nature means they generally give more per pop than attacks do... especially for Masterminds, who don't need more damage but always want team utility! This is a serious case where the power pool limit might be a major consideration for your build. But, the question stands: why take a Mastermind attack when I could have any of these? Well... there some Mastermind attacks where that's already answered. Beast Mastery Call Swarm: 5.46 Endurance Call Hawk: 9.62 Endurance Call Ravens: 16.9 Endurance They cost less End, but they also do less damage... but according to Mid's at least the damage per end is better than baseline. But that isn't important: these powers aren't about doing damage as we said. What are these powers really about? Pack Mentality. Each of those powers have a chance to give a stack of Pack Mentality. A stack of Pack Mentality gives your henchmen a +2% damage boost... up to a max of 20%. It'll take some doing, and likely creative Endurance management, but a +20% bonus to your henchman damage is worth fighting for. Demon Summoning The base prices are the same, with the exception of Crack Whip at 17.94 Endurance. As it's a cone, not a ranged blast, I think that's reasonable. But, more importantly, each of these attacks gives a 9.375 penalty to damage resistance. Yes, just for using all three of Demon summoning Attacks, your target suffers about 28% more damage from all sources. No muss, no fuss. THAT is worth spending the Endurance it asks for. So, then, moving forward, how do we make Mastermind attacks worth using? We don't want to increase the damage output, that's not their job. To me, there's really only two ways forward: 1. Cut their end costs, sharply. Down to the standard. Why do they cost more in the first place? Even then there isn't a lot of reason to take more than one. 2. Give them major utility. There's already basis for this in Beast Mastery and Demon Summoning, where the utility is the entire reason they're taken. The current Beta is a step in this direction, and with Ninjas and Necromancy they seem to be in the right neighborhood; they're more likely to need exact number tweaks than major changes. Mercenaries's bonus, however, is too small: three attacks for a total of +10% damage is pitiful. Demon Summoning gets almost triple that amount with less limitations. Robotics on the other hand is... odd. A 200% Regen penality is a sizable amount, but the number of enemies in the game that have a notable amount of regen is small, limited to archvillains, giant monsters, and other parts of high-end and endgame gameplay. I don't even know if there are any enemies with 600% regen that would call for using all three abilities. Given that these are Robotics's basic attacks, intended to be the most used at low levels, having them ultra-specialize in endgame and high-end combat is weird. That's my thoughts on the matter. It's good this is being looked at, it's been a thing for as long as Masterminds have been a thing, but this isn't just a matter of a few powers having slightly low numbers. There's serious gameplay conventions that need to be considered here, and I hope that I can spark some discussion on them and how to handle them.

The updates to Necromancy are very interesting! The attacks that summon specters in particular are 'huh' worthy. They're still not really worth using as attacks (Drain Life has life drain if you want that, but that's about it), but the summoning specters mechanic is worth investigating. I can see certain builds with less-active secondary power sets building some for specters. At the very least I think someone with a better head for builds than I should try it; giving them more damage might be worth it, or just putting end reduction on the attacks to get them relatively cheaply. I'm not sure on this: in the bustle of a Mastermind fight they are VERY hard to track, and their contributions are lost under all the other orange numbers, so probably some dedicated testing is in order. Apart from that, if a Necromancy Mastermind does have the spare power slot, grabbing one and not slotting it is probably an entirely viable option to get more chaff on the field. That said, the big limitation is liable to be action-heavy secondary sets: any secondary set that wants you do do a lot of clicking is going to find using the attacks to summon specters probably not worth the time taken and end drain; they have better clicks for the cost. All said and done, however, this has given the necromancy basic attacks more consideration than they have had historically! At the very least this is progress in the right direction.

I overall like the upgrades to Mercenaries. I've never wanted to make a Mercenaries character before, and now I do! However, my personal bugbear has always been the basic attacks in the Mastermind sets, and Burst, Slug, and M30 Grenade aren't putting up a strong first impression. In my opinion, +3.33% damage per attack is too little. Any MM with a secondary with -res has a better damage improvement option than getting Burst/Slug/M30. It's still not worth the end cost, and even if a build does want the bonus damage it really needs to get all three to get an amount worth noting and that means three power choices. I think this is in the right direction, it encourages coordination with your henchmen instead of just fighting one guy while your henchmen fight the rest, but it needs to be MUCH stronger.

Saw the Beta shards go down again and come back up, and the issue has been resolved.

I was playing on Brainstorm, trying out the Necromancy changes, when the server disconnected. Okay, no problem. The launcher said I had an update, I updated, waited for the shards to come back up, tried to re-join, and this happened: I have tried both checking for updates and verifying files in the launcher, the result has not changed.

Okay, I've done some initial testing, was doing some stuff in the mid-levels to try the new progression, and here's my initial impressions: 1. The refinement to the bot abilities is VERY GOOD and feels much better. I love it. 2. The pulse rifle attacks still aren't worth taking. I don't know end-game optimization, but -regen is a very niche application for much of the game. Yes, there's times when you really want it, but the rest of the time it's a fun fact. The only one of the pulse rifle powers I might take is Pulse Grenade, for -regen in an AoE, and even then it isn't worth slots. Any power pool attack except Toxic Dart is unquestionably better. The Endurance cost is just too high for the low damage it does, -regen or not. If they're really good at super high-end stuff because of that -regen... well, that's nice, but they're still garbage in the 20s.

Stalkermind. Mastermind with the Stealth power, the stealth power gives you -100% threat which means that most of the time the enemy will prioritize your minions over you. Throw in that your minions are now more spammable than ever, and you have a lot of staying power that just wasn't an option before. It's not perfect, but it's very nice!

I do on paper but the whole domination thing is a buzzkill. That and I have some character ideas specific to some melee sets. It'd be hard to make an assault set out of dual blades! The entire reason I want this is less the mechanics and more that I have character ideas for melee fighters that do more things other than survive and take hits. Is this moving closer to the batman ideal? Yes, but there's other ideas I want to try too.

I would like an archetype for melee fighters other than defense. Melee/Support would be neat, but what I most want is something along the lines of Melee/Manipulation for characters that more operate through savy and enemy control (with maybe a few limited ranged options) than raw ability to take hits.

They don't point out the signature story arcs. There's enough stuff in the game even without them but I keep making heroes and keep not finding the signature story arcs. I'm reliably given a contact for Graham Eastson, but not for the actual signature story arcs. I mean... if I DID care a lot I could look it up on the wiki, but it's still head-tilting.