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Steampunkette

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Posts posted by Steampunkette

  1. I should note: The Superadine storyarc actually goes from about level 5 to a maximum of 44 (When you arrest Countess Crey in a Janet Kellum storyarc)

     

    So that's a Street Level Storyline reaching from 5th level Skulls all the way up to a level 44 Archvillain.

     

    It's pretty great, really!

     

    But because the focus is on Incarnates and "Post 50" means -just- Incarnates... Yeesh.

  2.   

    23 minutes ago, Apparition said:

    City of Heroes draws a vast amount of inspiration from super-hero comic books, television shows, and movies.  But, in the end, City of Heroes is a video game.  It has to function like a video game.  In particular, it has to function like a massively multiplayer online video game.  In those games, there has to be a sense of progression, of your character becoming more powerful and taking on bigger and more powerful threats.  Otherwise, there's no real reason to play.  If everything in the game didn't have levels, why even bother leveling to level 50?  Wouldn't a level 50 PC feel like that he or she wasted time grinding all the way to level 50, knowing that someone at level one can do the exact same things?  Game play and game narrative have to come before personal narrative.  That's how you get a game and a game world.

    Ehhh... No.

     

    The idea of infinite growth of the character and the threats they face is a common direction to go. But it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to tell the Dragon Ball Z story for advancement of narrative and a character to feel more powerful than they did at earlier points in their progression.

     

    Having a character go from fighting 2-3 thugs at a time and barely winning to having them fight 8-12 thugs at a time and winning, easily, is progression in itself. Having more powers. Having enemies that you consider "Weaker" than you is similarly, progression. There's no need for those differences to be massive or exaggerated, like Superman fighting a couple of thugs when you could have Wolverine kick their butts with the exact same level of ease.

     

    Take Frostfire, for example. Within the CoH Narrative he's "Swapping Sides". But whether he's level 15 or level 40 he still has access to the exact same powers. Why is he narratively more powerful at 40-50? Frostfire goes from barely able to fight Trolls and getting his butt kicked by you in the Hollows to fighting off Malta on behalf of Longbow. At no point does he get a new power, or even a new costume. He just -is- that powerful. Did he "Take it easy" on you in the Hollows..? Why?

     

    Is your level 50 character who gets beat up by Malta in a mission where he finishes fighting off the spawn weaker than Frostfire from the Hollows? No. Obviously not.

     

    Because the Narrative Level and the Game Level are Separate. Oh, he's a level 50 character, for sure. But he's got the same powers as a level 15 character. While his combat functions have improved with level, his actual power variety hasn't.

     

    I also like how you make the example of the character "Wasting their time" by grinding to 50. Isn't that what we're -all- doing? Just spending time gaining levels? Vet levels when we're out of levels that "Really" Matter? Wonder if the people with 1,000+ Vet Levels feel like they've wasted their time...

     

    Or if they feel like they've played a game that they enjoy to that ridiculous level.

     

    That said. There's other forms of progression. Like the aforementioned narrative progression. You -can- move from Street Hero to World Hero to Cosmic Hero... Or you can create progression within each type. Like Street Heroes that go from fighting drug dealers to Kingpins to Courts of Owls.

     

    I get it if you can't imagine that sort of progression lasting from level 1 to level 50. But I know you can experience it from 1-40 in CoH. After all, you can go from Skulls to Family and Freakshow to Crey to work your way up the supply chain. Just stretch those storylines out a little bit more to get it from 1-50 and -whammo-. You've got a Street Level storyarc from 1-50.

     

    Just like the Peacekeeper Arc starts out with you saving all the Kheldians in the world from a super-device that chews them up and destroys them before level 30.

     

    31 minutes ago, Night said:

    You seem to have a strange understanding of the game, as well as wanting it to be something it wasn't designed to be and has no will to be. To that point, there's also the thing of villain groups, even those spanning 1-50, having different enemies for different levels. You won't find certain mobs going past lvl 15, another past lvl 25. In Council, you'll fight mainly regular-sized dudes in combat gear with assault rifles up to around lvl 20. Then afterwards you face more dangerous enemies like the vampyri and werewolves and robots. Suddenly Council get sonic weapons and tougher troops Because you're doing things that are more important to them to protect from you than a tiny base in Atlas staffed by interns. The sense of progression continues on as groups you faced before now have more powerful troops to fight against you.

     

    Some enemy groups even have separate enemy composition depending if you're facing the 1-50 version or strictly the lvl 50 ones, as I found with Family goons having a separate 50-only version with tech Resistance weapons.

     

    While Daredevil may be focusing on beating up lvl 1-15 street thugs and groups of Council MekMen are a new, challenging end-of-arc fight, Superman will be elsewhere, fighting MekMen, vampires, werewolves, Nictus-empowered troops and preventing building-sized robots from being operational, stuff that's way above Daredevil's pay grade. Nothing's stopping you from doing as you said, turn off XP at like lvl 20 and enjoy doing Daredevil stuff, but you can't expect everything to then come down to lvl 20.

     

     

    Yeah, not even gonna bother.

     

    Just read what I wrote to the person above you.

    • Confused 4
  3. Oh... The way I suggested to handle crossing the narrative barrier the other way?

     

    The World Hero treated Street Threats as level -10.

     

    The Cosmic Hero treated World-Threats as level -10.

     

    So if you wanted to play Thor you could head to Kings Row and have absolutely no threat coming at you from the Skulls because you were Cosmic. Similarly Iron Man as a World Hero would've seen them as a nuisance at best.

     

    Never did make it +10 for Street or World characters moving up 'cause that's just the story they wanted to tell. I also had ways to flag yourself as one kind of character or another, and change those flags at different times, too.

  4. 49 minutes ago, GM Tempest said:

    There are plenty of mechanical reasons people have mentioned here that make it difficult - narratively it doesn't make sense either, but the problem with converting the entire game to that kind-of rote system is just...

    Well, this is a game, and we're trying to make this game appealing and fun - and I think changing everything to neutral-level would make levels feel less...impactful. Suddenly it doesn't matter if you're level 1 or level 50 - you can go anywhere, do anything, and heck the consequences! It comes down to level 1-49 being pointless slog then, where you feel only slightly more powerful - and then suddenly at level 50 you get your proper gear going and incarnate stuff and you just begin melting entire zones. Having progression, zones of operation, means you get to feel your character growing in power as you fight progressively more difficult and thematically distinct enemies - you go from a wet-behind-the-ears rookie to a seasoned champion of good/evil by the end, having gone from stopping petty crime/committing petty crime to world-shaping events.

    I can see some of the points you're making, but it ultimately doesn't really work in a game with more than one player.

    You'd definitely have to build the game, or sections of the game, around the idea of a game divided not by character level (Or not just by character level) but by narrative level.

     

    A long time ago I suggested to some developers I was working with (On a game that never saw the light of day) that we should create different Narrative Levels alongside the core leveling mechanic.

     

    I tried to express the idea of characters getting to start the game at level 1 in different "Zones" which each had their own style. Cosmic city zones on Space Stations and alien planets. Street Level city zones in New York. World Level city zones across the globe.

     

    That way a player could choose to start on Horizon Station as an alien superhero fighting Cosmic level threats from level 1-50.

     

    Or make yourself a street level character who never leaves Hell's Kitchen by fighting street gangs from 1-50.

     

    Or a World Level hero who stops a plane from crashing in Tibet and then flies back to New York to write about it for the newspaper.

     

    (Or maybe just a Street character who spends all their time fighting crime in France or wherever they choose to play, or a character who starts out in Zimbabwe before moving to New York)

     

    And each of these characters at level 1 and level 50 would have the exact same amount of powers, hit points, and whatnot based on their character's core functions like their Archetype.

     

    Can a Street Hero help fight Cosmic Threats? Sure, if they're high enough level or have someone to sidekick them. Why not? Daredevil helped the Fantastic Four fight Galactus, after all.

     

    But City of Heroes has this gameplay mindset of a level 50 character being Superman and a level 20 character being Daredevil and the only way to keep playing Daredevil is to turn off your XP and stay in Steel Canyon punching the Council for the rest of your career. Meanwhile Superman mostly flies around a different city zone (Peregrine Island) punching Council same as Matt Murdock in Steel Canyon.

     

    I largely got the same pushback. But in the end, you can tell both types of stories in the game where there's content from 1-50 in King's Row and the Shadow-Shard. And only tell one story when King's Row stops being relevant at 20 and you can't even go to the Shadow Shard 'til 40.

     

    Ultimately, that's a big part of why the Council exists from 1 to 50 in a nebulous "Sometimes we're super powerful and sometimes we're not" fashion. 'Cause Peacebringers are these big Cosmic Hero characters who are stuck leveling from 1-50 like every other hero. At least this way they get to fight a "High End Villaingroup" and do "Worldwide Storyarcs" at level 1.

  5. I'm all for 1, 2, 3, and some of 5.

     

    The rest is very "Meh". Particularly number 7.

     

    Rularuu is something we should only really get back to if and when the current devs bring the Battalion down on our heads as we unleash him on our enemies.

     

    As to 5, I feel like the capstone mission should be a more general "Bank Mission" style where you're trying to save a bunch of refugees from a Natterling attack or whatever. Then separate side-missions around the refugee camp itself where you're fighting Nemesis, recovering Kora Fruit, or other similar stuff.

    • Like 1
  6. 33 minutes ago, CaptainLupis said:

    I'd prefer if it was not a co-op zone, but instead a co-habiting zone. Somewhere both heroes and villains can go and be heroes and villains. Maybe with some sort of metric as to who is more in control of the zone, like RV has, but without the PvP element, just whichever side is completing the most missions is on top, as it were.

     

    I know that's not likely what is going to happen, as it would double the amount of time it would take to implement missions, but it would be nice for a change not to have keep saving those stupid heroes from whatever mess they have stirred up whenever my villain goes to a co-op zone as there is nothing villainous to be had there.

    It is an annoying aspect. But there's actually a second layer to why it's so frustrating:

     

    Character Flagging.

     

    You ever make an AE Arc and you get to choose whether to make a given ambush (for example) an "Enemy" or "Rogue"? That same flagging exists in the open world of CoH. It's why the Council will fight the Fifth Column in Steel Canyon, or why Arachnos units fight against Longbow in Faultline. One of those groups is set to "Rogue" and placed in such a way that it will wind up fighting another specific group.

     

    Players have a similar flagging setup behind the scenes. But it only becomes relevant in PvP Zones, because you're flagged as Hero, Enemy, or Rogue (for free for all PvP).

     

    Currently, to exist in a zone with the other side, either everyone is flagged "Hero" and can team together in the standard co-op style, or characters are flagged differently and you can't team... but it also institutes open world PvP.

     

    To create a cohabitating zone where heroes and villains share the region without teaming up the game needs a "Hero2" flag or "Villain" flag separate from Enemy/Rogue.

     

    That said... it's possible that flag has been created and we don't know anything about it, yet. In which case the "Co-Op" zone title might still be applied because no one thought of the "Co-Habitating" term on the Dev team (Stranger things have happened in production companies!). But it is likely that, yes, it will just be a Co-Op zone where everyone, Hero and Villain alike, is trying to stop the Warrior or whomever from achiving big power and bringing down destruction with it.

  7. You'd probably have to do it as a separate radio setup with unique Ad-Lib missions. Just because of the way "Boss" is coded into them.

     

    But that could be really cool, actually. Radio Missions where you explicitly hunt down AVs? I'd play the heck out of that.

    • Like 1
  8. Well I can certainly understand the need for granularity in order to avoid it becoming too watered down in one direction or another, I still feel like it's the wrong decision.

     

    However the decision has been made and the suggestion is thus no longer relevant. Sorry to have wasted people's time.

  9. 1 hour ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

    I understand where you're coming from, and you're not wrong in that regard. This game was designed to flexibly accommodate as wide a variety of player concepts as possible, and is one of the reason that it is beloved so. Generally, any concept you can think of, with some elbow grease and flexibility can be realized in-game as a playable character. (Obviously there are limits, but imagination tends to cover the difference when it has to.)

    However, that being said, the player canon, will always be, the player's own canon. While it can be built off the game's canon, the reverse is not so readily presumable, nor should it be necessarily. The context of the City of Heroes narrative always has what we'll term the nebulous 'Players Identity' that it takes into account where the writing is concerned in terms of the player's role and current relation to the universe they're playing in.

    In City of Heroes, at the upper-end of the current writing, the 'Players Identity' is that they are Primal Earth's strongest defenders who, after the war with Praetoria, have siphoned power from the Well to become incarnates and are being meticulously primed by various efforts to face the Coming Storm.

    If you're existing strictly through the game's framework (which you don't have to, there is no wrong way to play the game in terms of personal writing!), that is how the game defines a player's character right now in relation to the narrative. Because the game's world operates by the rules the writing has established, it has to define the 'Players Identity' to some degree otherwise it makes it difficult to make consequences matter, and the whole thing gets muddy.

    While it's possible for players to create a character with the concept that they, at Level 1, could destroy the Praetorian Hamidon in a single punch (like a certain anime?😄). It's not hard to see why it'd be problematic for the narrative to attempt to officially accommodate that concept, and still have any meaning and weight.

    Essentially, the way I see it is this: If the player opts to discard the game's canon, rules, and definition for the 'Players Identity' for their own instead (which is totes cool! Again, City of Heroes thrives on being a medium to fulfill a player's personal creative vision in any way they see fit) then, by the same extension, the game's writing no longer strictly applies to them any longer, so it catering to them isn't viable.

    So Kallisti Wharf's entire population of NPC Villains, Cops, drones, Etc, are -all- going to be Incarnate Level threats at all times?

     

    1) That makes no sense in relation to the way the game hands out "Incarnate Power" to only a handful of characters (Of which the player character is one)

    2) How is Kallisti Wharf even -standing- if everyone is god-tier superpowered as even street-level mobs? How can cars traverse the streets without some Incarnate-Jacked Warrior (Or Hellion, or Freakshow, or Knives of Vengeance, or whatever) yoinking their car up and yeeting it at whomever happens to be nearby?

     

    Like, I get it. You want the narrative to be big and cool and powerful. But that doesn't mean the random street mobs in a clear city-zone where perfectly normal people make it to and from their office jobs, hospital shifts, and gardening of the immaculate parks have to be god-tier powerful.

     

    Again, I'm not talking about the Missions, here, though I'd love for them to be written as broadly as possible for characters of a range of levels rather than only Incarnated out 50+ characters with at least 20 vet levels.

     

    I'm talking about the Street Trash. The generic thugs who mug hapless civilians in the streets. For them to be level 54 incarnates across the entire zone would break any kind of logic regarding the power levels involved, wouldn't it?

  10. While I understand your position, @Cobalt Arachne I find I fundamentally disagree with it.

     

    John Stewart, the Green Lantern, was not a street-gang fighting Superhero when he first started out. He was the Green Lantern, with all the weight of responsibility that it carries.

     

    The Question, similarly, will never be strong enough to stand toe to toe with Darkseid and fight him.

     

    I think the fundamental idea of giving all superheroes a leveling progression reflected through narrative scale was flawed from Day 1. Some characters just -are- Cosmic Scale Heroes. Some characters just -are- Street Heroes who fight gangs. And I sincerely feel like those stories are horribly underserved by a game which presumes every player must make the progression from Street Tough to Cosmic Badass.

     

    I'll also point to Sidekicking as a major hole in the "How can we do narrative with level 1 and 50 heroes beside each other?" the answer is: Who really ultimately cares when they can put together a team of eight people ranging in level from 1 to 50 with two characters over 40 and still have a grand old time, together? Doesn't matter if Superman is there, The Question will still get lasered to death by Darkseid.

     

    Further: We have the leveling content that already exists if someone wants to enjoy the "Leveling from 1-50" path to superherodom (Rather than just getting PLed to 50 or whatever).

     

    And finally: That first time player starts in Atlas Park, with contacts in Atlas Park. And a boatload of other characters milling around in Atlas Park. That player will know nothing of Kallisti Wharf or any other level-scaled options around the game and will just play the game normally. Preserving the "Thrill and Engagement" of the new player growth experience.

     

    I'm not saying "Write all new content as if all characters are level 1, level 50, or somehow both simultaneously!" because that would be obnoxious. I'm not even saying "Write all the content in this specific zone to be level 1-50"

     

    I'm suggesting that the zone -itself- contain level scaled NPC Mobs, rather than 49-54 mobs. And that the missions be scaled as widely as possible, For some of the content that might be 45-50+. For other content maybe it would reach as low as the 30s or 20s. But probably no level 1 missions fighting Warriors.

    • Thanks 1
  11. 42 minutes ago, Judasace said:

     

    How do those mobs function if  say an ungrouped level 1 and level 50 are standing next to each other when they spawn, and then both characters start attacking the mob? does it take damage as if the level 1 were level 50? Or as if the level 50 were level 1?

    All functions of city of heroes are based on magnitudes. A magnitude one attack deals a specific amount of damage to a character based on the level of the character using it. When the game determines damage taken it takes in the purple patch to determine how much damage that magnitude one attack does.

     

    When an NPC has no level it deals damage based entirely on the target's level. My magnitude one attack at level one deals 8.3 points of damage. So I will hit the level one character for 8.3 points of damage. If he then turns around and swings at the level 50 character that character will instead take 53 points of damage from the exact same attack.

     

    It is really an ingenious system.

  12. What it says on the tin.

     

    Set all the NPCs in the zone to scale based on player level, so whether you're 50, or 1, you can enjoy the very cool zone.

     

    Similarly, make the Missions in the zone scale to the widest possible margin. I'm not gonna ask you to make level 1 Warriors, obviously. But let's not lock it all up as 50 content or anything.

     

    This could actually encourage players to level in and enjoy the zone as something new to do at any level range!

    • Like 1
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    • Confused 1
  13. So... I've been playing Dark/Martial as a "Blappy" type character. And so far? It's pretty great.

     

    The AoE Immob holds enemies in Caltrops which I've budgeted 4 damage procs to, though I might swap one for knockdown. The fear slows incoming damage, but if it's still too great, Heart of Darkness stops it altogether.

     

    Add in some ninja-star ricochets, leg-sweeps, and a cool spinning kick, and it's pretty cool.

     

    I'm RPing the character as a D&D Roguelock. Grabbed Infiltration and slapped a Stealth IO into my sprint for near-stalker levels of sneakiness. On Teams I can rush ahead in stealth, pop Heart of Darkness and Caltrops, then pop out of melee to fling the Immob before diving back in for kicks and stuff.

     

    Only 28 so far. But I put this build together for her.

    Mistmourne - Dominator (Darkness Control).mxd

  14. At the time, global suppression was the only way they knew to make it work without the animations breaking in relation to movement.

     

    Specifically: Swift.

     

    Because Swift is a globally active power that always increases your movement speed the walk animation would have you gliding too far in relation to how fast you were actually going.

     

    At the time of Walk's introduction, the ability to change a character's Movement Speed Cap on the fly hadn't been invented, yet. So everything was managed with speed increases and decreases. Part of why Hover has a massive fly speed penalty tied to it (Largely 'cause the Engine understands "Fly 1" as a defined value of speed and they had to lower it for hover to not just be flight since it is all based on Magnitudes)

     

    Now that we have the ability to just set a defined speed cap (Through all the work done to create Afterburner) and use the Walk "Animation Priority" in the same way Hover has a higher animation priority than the standard flight pose...

     

    It's possible we'll see it in time. But it's gonna take a lil' while.

  15. 16 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

    For 1,000 years he has been the default pronoun in the English language when the person is hypothetical or sex of the person being referred to is not known.

     

    Combing through a ton of descriptions and changing them to a pronoun that is "more acceptable by today's standards" is an awful lot of work just to virtual signal to your friends on Twitter/Facebook.

     

    Speech is not violence. And being accidentally referred to by the wrong pronoun isn't going to harm you in any way.

     

    Just in case it isn't clear: I vote 'no'.

    Etymology Time!

     

    "They" comes from Old Norse. "Sa". "Sa" was gender neutral and referred to one or many people. It became "They" in Old English, that is to say: English old enough that Shakespeare would've been like "Thy speech is most strange 'pon mine ear. Whither came thy mother and father?"

     

    Along with "They" came Their, Them, That, and The. That's right. THE came from Sa. Again, this is -OLD- English, which was really more German than English as you'd recognize it, today.

     

    Remember that "Thy" from Shakespeare? They became super common in use because the nordic Thin (Pronounced Thine) meant "Yours". And that became "Thou" which eventually became "You". "They" as a pronoun is older than "You" as a pronoun. Ain't that somethin'?

     

    Don't get me wrong. "He" has existed for almost as long as "They", in various forms. But the idea that it was the default "Person of Unknown Gender" for a thousand years ignores that They has been around just as long and is still in active use and has been THE ENTIRE TIME.

     

    It would be linguistic revisionism to pretend that "He" is and has been the default.

    • Like 3
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  16. 1 hour ago, Mr Pierce said:

    No one liked my overheal idea?

     

    For two reasons. The first is as follows:

     

    37 minutes ago, WindDemon21 said:

    No cause that already assumes you're at full health most of the time where it wouldn't be needed. The point of having reconstruction being absorb is so you can block damage letting the rest of your regen powers actually do their job rather than "instantly full health, other regen is doing literally nothing now."

     

    And the second is: The game has no way to track "Overhealing". It's just not something the engine does. When you're healed, you gain X amount of hit points. If you're at the cap, you gain X amount of hit points but nothing happens. It still just tries to give you those hit points and a separate function keeps them from applying beyond a certain point. It doesn't actively track how much was or wasn't applied.

     

     

    • Thanks 2
  17. 29 minutes ago, Tyrannical said:

    Sorry to be the rain on your parade but I think Captain Powerhouse stated that he doesn't want to put more 'mutually exclusive' picks into powersets like he did with Sentinel's Super Reflexes.

     

    Still a pretty neat idea all the same though.

    Damn. You're right. Back in September of 2019 he stated we wouldn't see more exclusive power choices for the Forseeable future.

     

    In fact Master Brawler was an experiment that was supposed to be reverted 'cause it's a bit of a hack job in the code, but they didn't, and now people love it, so it's remaining.

     

    Well... still! There's always hope for the unforseen future from 2019...

    • Like 1
  18. 16 hours ago, MTeague said:

    I'm with you on the Regen Debuff Resistance being stacked out the wazoo, just like /SR gets Defense Debuff Resistance out the wazoo, to protect their whole thing.

    I can't get on board with a precastable Absorb Shield.  I know they went there for Sents and frankly, I'll never make a Regen Sent because of it.

     

    For me the feel and intent of Regen should be that I DO take damage.  My green bar DOES move. It just heals right back up afterwards.

    I do not care how much of that is passive vs toggles vs clicks.

    I don't mind it being click heavy.

     

    Maybe something that kicks in as health drops....., so that you're not that hard to hurt, but extremely hard to put down, and spend most of the time with a green bar pinging back and forth between 50% and 100%?  But I don't want Ablative Carapace by another name as something intended to heal damage before it even happens. 

     

     

    How about this for a change...

     

    Dull Pain and Durable Regeneration as mutually exclusive options.

     

    Durable Regeneration is a Toggle which increases Max HP by half the value of Dull Pain and provides a 20 second duration Absorb Value equal to the other half of Dull Pain's max HP increase every 20 seconds which dissipates if the toggle is removed. The Absorb Shield is not enhanceable, while the HP Increase value is enhanceable. There is no heal effect of the toggle.

     

    Then a player could aim to take alpha strikes with their small absorb value (267 at level 50) while losing out on a portion of the max HP buff which decreases the effectiveness of all of their other regen-centric powers and gain a small cyclical absorb shield to slow down their HP's drop to the tune of 13hp/sec which is about equal to +115% regeneration as an up-front value.

     

    For reference: Dull Pain on full power increases your HP/S from Regen by about 10 outside of Instant Healing and by about 50 during Instant Healing. It would lose about 1/3rd of it's overall power. So Durable Regeneration would cost you about 3hp/s regen from Fast Healing and Integration, and a further 15hp/s regen during Instant Healing for a constant 13hps. Lose 18, gain 13, but those 13 function as a shield...

     

    ... I think it could work.

    • Like 1
  19. 5 hours ago, HelBlaiz said:

    I love the idea of the set having a couple team support modes as well as a solo mode. Number balancing would be tricky, but that just means some more time on beta. A few of the mechanics sound like they'd need some custom coding, specifically the Survival tactics ability to make a target less dangerous to you and only you. The game doesn't really have that sort of mechanic in place.

    OH! Yeah.

     

    That doesn't work at -all-. No way for it to function in the CoH Engine without designing a whole new system.

  20. If you're fighting an AV, GM, or other superpowerful enemy (The Incarnate Trial bosses, for example) a single Sentinel can mean a -lot- more damage from the team during specific burst windows, since the debuff affects proc damage and is unresistable.

     

    Unfortunately it's plagued by 4 important problems.

     

    1) It charges based on attacks, meaning you often can't pull it out on a spawn without "Wasting" it since many enemies are dead, or badly wounded, leading the Sentinel to hold it.

    2) While holding it, you cannot use two of your baseline attacks, often cutting into attack chains and making the character feel syncopated rather than smooth.

    3) When you do use it, it doesn't feel -strong- or -powerful-. It honestly doesn't feel like much of anything, even though the rest of the team is hitting harder.

    4) Damage values feel universally low, making the archetype feel like it's floundering.

     

    We already know that Sentinels are Opportunists, so how about Containment?

     

    Containment, specifically doing extra damage to targets that are currently stunned, held, asleep, immobilized, or under a Fear effect, could make them feel stronger without significantly altering their overall damage output, and give them an explicit role on the team: Taking out controlled targets before they break free. An the narrative role of taking advantage of openings and opportunities.

     

    Combine with the current Sentinel Mechanic and you'll have a Sentinel and any control characters attempting to nuke AVs while the Purple Triangles of Doom are down.

     

    Further, outside of Dual Pistols, Energy, Fire, and Water Blast, the other blast sets all have the ability to randomly, or specifically, apply stuns, sleeps, or holds to targets, usually while doing very nice damage. And each of the Epic Pools has one or more Control Powers for Sentinel characters, ensuring every Sentinel, whether Solo or on a Team, has options to benefit from this aspect of their inherent power.

     

    Give their AoE attacks a 25% chance to do +50% damage and their ST attacks a 50% chance to do +50% damage to controlled targets and I think you'll have a winner.

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