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aethereal

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Everything posted by aethereal

  1. I think that we should stop dicking around with travel power changes -- the latest round of changes were interesting, but also kind of a waste of time in my opinion. That said, it wouldn't be insane to make a "power pool" or something like it that just gave people access to the four classic travel powers without costing them a power pool slot (so literally just flight, teleport, superspeed, super jump). I don't think that can reasonably be abused -- it probably just means that people who really want teleport for concept aren't punished as badly as they are in the game today. You could probably also give people access to Mystic Flight and whatever the Super Jump clone is called (but not Speed of Sound, which at least for PvP is a power that impacts combat balance heavily).
  2. And in fact BFR has better DPA than Ice Bolt and Ice Blast already (albeit way worse than FR/BIB). People are welcome to not like the fact that it has a long animation time, and it suffers badly in comparison to FR/BIB, but it's not like it's bad DPA (and of course it can be heavily procced today). I think it's worthwhile considering changes to BFR, but those changes shouldn't be "Ice gets yet another absurdly high DPA ST attack with a hold baked in." Making it a "snipe" that does high damage/hold on the slow version but very low damage/hold on the fast version might be interesting. So people who use it as an opener now could still do that, and people who want to use it to stack holds on a boss or something in combat can use it, but it's not part of an optimal DPS chain.
  3. As a point of order, BFR has standard accuracy and range. It certainly attracts aggro and had notify mobs set to true. I don't understand aggro calculations in any detail, but I'd be surprised if it attracts "little" aggro compared to any other ST hold/blast.
  4. This doesn't capture the dynamic of defense, in two ways: 1. LotG is crucial to building to permahasten, and if your powersets do not include copious defense powers having defense powers in pools is a major premium as a complement to Hasten, not an alternative to it. 2. Defense offers strongly increasing returns as you approach softcap. If it were easy to hit softcap for most characters without pool powers, the ability to pick up defense pool powers more easily wouldn't be a big deal -- but outside of Time defenders and defense-based armor sets, it's not easy to build to softcap without pool powers. If it were impossible to get near softcap for most characters, it wouldn't be a big deal to give people access to more defense powers. But in fact, we live in a world in which getting S/L/E close to or to softcap is possible with pool powers and set bonuses, but it's tight. So every additional +3% or so you can pick up matters.
  5. There's also a smaller unavoidable shell on the T9. I wish that bio armor was less all or nothing: that there were meaningful shell options that weren't so gigantic and over the top, but also weren't pretty generic particle effects.
  6. Obviously on some level "making sleeps better" is the right answer to Siren Song, but I don't think anyone has come up with a very convincing way to make sleeps better. Certainly not a convincing way that doesn't involve a lot of new coding. In terms on specifically why should Siren Song get looked at over any other sleep, well: 1. It's in a generally underperforming set (on blasters). 2. The set specifically has issues with single target damage, with an underperforming heavy hitter power and no snipe, so it's kind of frustrating that SS doesn't play well with AOE, which is still not great in Sonic, but at least they have some. 3. It's in-theme for it to be a confuse (as the legendary sirens were like mind control through song). Now, could SS just be like "swap a mag3 confuse in for the sleep, of similar duration"? Hahaha no. AoE confuses are ridiculously strong and set defining for actual control sets, you can't just hand them out to blasters. As I'm gaming it out, confuse probably isn't the right mez to add: it doesn't play well with sleep. Maybe add a shorter mag2 stun to it, so that minions at least stay CCed if the sleep is broken? Alternately, a ST or very low target cap (like, 2 or 3) confuse instead of sleep gives you a chance to leverage your -res debuffs while solo.
  7. Confuse instead of sleep would I think be nice for Siren's Song, but it's hard to see how you could balance an AoE confuse on a Blaster. At the very least, it'd need to be a very short confuse.
  8. I really think that there's an obvious place for "Hellfire Assault" or "Hellfire Manipulation" dom or blaster secondaries that simply use the existing whip animations or even the entire powers, mixed with some green fire-themed other powers. People would love it, and it would solve all of that issue of "there aren't enough whip animations for a melee set" and "whip animations are insanely complicated, we can't make more of them." EDIT: Or even an epic powerset for Sentinels, since they get melee powers in their epics.
  9. Nothing else moves in other than a straight line. Like, they're mostly bulbous masses, that's not what I'm objecting to. It's that you lob the neuron bomb in an arc, and it starts over your head and disconnected from your body. The rest of the set doesn't do that.
  10. Doesn't seem very generalizable. We have a lot of power slots already. The number of people who really are just looking for one more power slot to take travel powers, compared to the number who would take another useful-in-combat power, seems like it must be pretty small. And I doubt that in general what the game needs is to increase the incentive for every character to take tough and weave.
  11. Maybe my biggest power customizataion request is a version of Neutron Bomb that doesn't involve the radioactive basketball. I feel like it's very out-of-place and goofy looking in a set that's otherwise pretty straightforward blasts. I'd like a variation describes a straight line towards its target and emits from the hands (or eyes), instead of like being formed up and lobbed.
  12. No travel power has any prerequisites.
  13. For better or for worse, it seems like the dev team is trying to encourage people to take travel powers, not discourage them.
  14. My feeling is: Spines is pretty fine as an AoE-focused set. Having a damage aura in the primary is great, Throw Spines is really good, and in fact I think Ripper is pretty solid (at least for characters who can keep enemies close with taunts). But the first and most standard AoE kinda sucks. Having a PBAoE is nice, especially at lower levels. I don't think that Spine Burst should be made into an incredibly amazing power that's best in class. I think it should get maybe a 15% bump in DPA through lowered animation time. Solve redraw, do that, and my sense is: Spines is fine.
  15. I think that shaving the animation time of Spine Burst down a little is all it really needs, plus cosmetic stuff and no-redraw (which I assume everything eventually gets the katana treatment).
  16. I don't think there's a ton of daylight between our positions. To some extent, we have to decide how much defense we want to balance around -- it is of course possible to build to softcap for S/L damage quite easily even with no defense in your actual powerset, and fairly possible to softcap at least one or two other damage types as well (though it's not like building tons of defense is costless), and complicating factors are that regeneration of course has a multiplicative mitigation when combined with resistance and defense (as do defense and resistance when combined with each other). But as with everything when we talk about high-end builds, we put a spotlight on late-game level 50 play, and my view is that we should be concerned with Regeneration's ability to stand as a mitigation layer without assuming Superior sets and Incarnate powers and so forth. However, the risk of that position is that if we make Regeneration function well with only mild defense/resist support for level 30 characters, we risk a scenario where Regen is overtuned for decked out tip-top builds.
  17. It is similar to RTTC, but RTTC (and Bio's click heals/absorbs/regens that are dependent on number of targets) exist for a reason: they solve a real problem. And the tech is limited in how many ways we can do similar things. In terms of adding absorb to Regen, if you want a high-performing regen + absorb set, use bio armor. If you want a high-performing passive regen set, use willpower. Regeneration should have its own identity, not just edging closer to either bio or willpower.
  18. I think that the big issue facing Regen is that it doesn't scale well, being too thresholded. Like, say you're a Defense or Resist-based character who mitigates 70% of damage that comes at you. You're facing 100 dps. You take 30 dps. Okay, now you're a Regen character who heals about 70 hp/s (averaging out your click-heals). You're facing 100 dps. You take 30 dps. So far, so good. Now along comes an enemy group who does 120dps (20% more damage). The defense and resist characters take 36 dps, 20% more than they otherwise would. The regen character takes 50 dps, 67% more than they otherwise would. Ooof. Some amount of this is unavoidable and flavorful, but I think it's too extreme right now (especially if we don't just assume that table-stakes for regen is building to soft-cap defense). There should be some amount of scaling to damage taken. Willpower and Bio do this by having heals/regen that scale to number of opponents, so it'd be nice if we could avoid the exact same mechanic for regen, but I'm not sure that any other real technology is available to make it happen functionally. Some ideas: 1. Have regen that scales to your current health (so more regen the lower health you have). This is doable, but I think tends to be a pretty subtle effect and given that regen's current weakness is alpha, it's not going to help a lot with alpha. 2. Maybe if you use Reconstruction when you're below 50% health (or whatever), it instantly comes off cooldown once? Second time, regular cooldown, similar tech to burst of speed or combat teleport? 3. Maybe an aura that gives you healing based on class of enemy near you? Like, less if there are minions, more if there are lts, more if there are bosses, more if there are EBs/AVs/GMs?
  19. I think that something that underlies a lot of disagreements and talking past each other is an implicit disagreement about the appropriate power level of the game. Like, even among people who agree that the top-end power level should be brought down somewhat, or things that are borderline exploits nerfed, the question of how much is rarely explicitly discussed, but I think is really important. So, right now, top-end tanks can solo ITF at +4/x8 with enemies buffed and players debuffed. They can come close to doing it (can do it?) with no incarnates. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we think that's kind of crazy. Should top-end tanks be able to solo ITF at +4/x8 without the enemies buffed/players debuffed, or only with T4 incarnates? Should top-end tanks be able to solo ITF at +2/x4? Should top-end tanks be able to solo ITF at +0/x1? Reasonable people can disagree here! But when it comes to questions of balance, it's really important. Are we trying to cut off exploits (however defined), but keep power level otherwise mostly unchanged, maybe just even things out a bit? Shave off a thin slice of the very most powerful end, but still allow people to operate at difficulty levels that are to some extent "not intended"? Substantially nerf the top end?
  20. Inspirations are powerful! A small purple inspiration is better than almost any defensive power in the game, during its duration. It is negligibly cheap: killing a single minion at level 50 gives you like I don't know, enough to buy 100 or so of them? If your inventory of insps were infinitely large, you could simply cap to-hit-chance, defense, damage, and damage resistance all the time for non-meaningful amounts of money. So the balance point around insps is some combination of it being a little obnoxious to activate a bunch of them, and sharply limited inventory space. The email trick vastly loosens your available inventory space, in a way that it seems very unlikely to have been intended for. I'm not deeply invested in defining whether or not things are exploits, but it wouldn't be at all unreasonable to regard this as one, and, if one felt that it was a sufficiently commonly used exploit, to stop it (perhaps, as @Wavicle suggested, by disabling taking things from inventory while combat-flagged).
  21. Enhancement set names: Cold Snap Boreal Flash Freeze Frostbite Glaciate Chilling Wave Brittle Transition Shattering Freeze Deep Freeze Benumb (slow set) Rapid Condensation Negentropy Polar Express (j/k) Frigiate Icy Tomb (hold set, not that holds need more damage procs I guess) Ithaqua's Breath
  22. Can you stack knockback? I think it's an instantaneous effect, so different sources can't stack it (one power activation can potentially stack, so if you have a knockdown power and then you add a %chance to KD proc, I think that can stack up into knockback). But I've never seen it stack from different sources. As far as I know, once you're in the KB/KD cycle, you're immune to other KB.
  23. This is a persistent myth. Sentinel resistance debuffs are not unresistable.
  24. Sometimes when I get the Arcane Power proc, Arcane Bolt does not recharge. Here's an example in my combat log: You Immobilize Button Man Buckshot with your Ring of Fire. You hit Button Man Buckshot with your Ring of Fire for 3 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Button Man Buckshot with your Char for 3 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Button Man Buckshot with your Char for 3 points of Fire damage over time. Arcane Power bursts through your body! Arcane Bolt is still recharging. You hit Button Man Buckshot with your Char for 3 points of Fire damage over time. You hit Button Man Buckshot with your Char for 3 points of Fire damage over time. Arcane Bolt is recharged.
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