
aethereal
Members-
Posts
1774 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Store
Articles
Patch Notes
Everything posted by aethereal
-
I haven't played an electric blaster, but one thing that was discouraging to me back on live with my elec/kin corruptor was my inability to end-frain AVs.
-
The minutiae of how procs work are a little confusing, but the general principle is easy. Longer recharge = greater proc rate. Single target = greater proc rate.
-
Overcapping that much seems pretty silly to me. You're 10% above incarnate defense softcap and I dunno how much over resist cap. Meanwhile, you're 9% under incarnate softcap and 16% under resist cap on energy. It seems clear that if you could knock 5-10% off your S/L numbers and add the same amount to your energy numbers, you'd drop incoming energy damage to less than 1/5th of its current value in incarnate content, and you would lose effectively no S/L durability. Now, sure, maybe that takes you from "who cares I'm unkillable" to "who cares lol I'm unkillable rofl." That's the life of a high-end level 50 tank. But if the thesis is that EA and Invul are pretty similar, then I'd prefer less S/L and more energy compared to an invul tank. I'll also note that Invul is a top-tier Tanker set, so saying that EA is very similar to it is a pretty high bar.
-
Right, so clearly that character would be better with lower S/L resists and higher energy resists. And somewhat more arguably lower S/L defense and higher energy defense. I mean, level 50 tankers are all fairly unkillable, so maybe who cares, but you have way past capped S/L mitigation (99%), even in incarnate environments, while your incarnate energy damage mitigation could get almost an order of magnitude better, and even in non- incarnate environments it could get more than 2.5 times better.
-
The Piecemeal arcs weren't perfect, but they were ambitious and a huge breath of fresh air. I'm super excited to see more.
-
When is Ninja run not going to detoggle combat jump ?
aethereal replied to plainguy's topic in Suggestions & Feedback
Athletic run is a free P2W power that's in the game right now. It's ninja run minus the stance. There were no plans to make it possible to use CJ and ninja run stack together in i27p1. In fact, there was a whole bunch of making all kinds of minor movement powers that currently stack with CJ not stack with it. Those changes for rolled back. If i may editorialize, the idea that we need to avoid having minor movement bonuses from actual chosen powers (not P2W, but selected powers that take a slot) stack is nuts, and I hope the idea for permanently buried with i27p1. -
Compared to invul, it's got endurance management, a heal that you can use tactically, and a bunch of regen, albeit none of the giant max hp buff. But also, it interacts well with the environment: invul on takers finds it easy to massively overcap s/l resistance and defense, while EA has better energy values, and you can get some of the prolific s/l resistance (tough plus sets), and defense (sets including kinetic combat and blistering cold).
-
As a utility thing, I like that BABs is pretty close to enemies. Makes it convenient to street-sweep for some of those early levels when DFB isn't happening, and it's just much more of a run to and from Ms Liberty from the enemy groups. A vendor would be fine as long as it doesn't push the bad guys farther away.
-
Yeah, the basic problem is EA is arguably overpowered on everyone, and with Tanker values would be crazy overpowered.
-
Are fallen bodies tangible? I can't remember ever being blocked by one.
-
This is literally unreadable. Why would you use black text?
-
Why is Ice Melee > Frost so much worse on Stalkers than other ATs?
aethereal replied to Draeth Darkstar's topic in Stalker
Okay, I looked this up in the powers API. First of all, Frozen Aura has a grant assassin's focus effect group. In fact, a 100% chance one. However, it's flagged "main target only," which I don't understand how that would affect a PBAoE power, which has no main target as far as I know? It looks to me like the intent is to have there be a 100% chance of Frozen Aura granting one and only one stack of Assassin's focus. If it's not, then that looks like a bug to me. Second, Frost on Stalkers does 6 ticks of 15.01 damage Frost on Scrappers does 6 ticks of 16.89 damage Frost on Brutes does 6 ticks of 11.26 damage Anything else shown in the in-game detailed info window looks very strongly to me like a display error. All other effect groups are either non-damage, PVP, crits, or fiery embrace. -
Galaxy Brain's 2021 Sentinel Fix
aethereal replied to Galaxy Brain's topic in Suggestions & Feedback
Yeah, I have a few quite different criticisms of this proposal: I specifically think that resistance debuffs should not, by and large, be unresistable. That makes them very up-and-down in terms of power in a way that's not at all legible to players. I don't think that this really ends up giving a very compelling team role to sentinels (single-target modest resistance debuffs aren't in high demand), and it potentially compromises the amount of buff we'd be able to give them in terms of raw damage, and thus makes them less capable soloers in return for a not-very-compelling team role. I don't think that this package of conditional effects and different benefits is easy for teams to work with. It just seems complex to me. Conditionally giving out small bonuses to damage and regen to allies and also if they hit their targets they potentially give heal/endurance to the sentinel? (this one isn't really mine, I don't have a problem with it) I don't think the dev team is going to go for "sentinels constantly give -15% resistance to their target," and that we shouldn't invest effort in routes that the dev team is opposed to. So those are all very separate criticisms. Like, I don't think that each one has anything to do with each other one. -
Galaxy Brain's 2021 Sentinel Fix
aethereal replied to Galaxy Brain's topic in Suggestions & Feedback
I was looking at Rubi's powers API, not Mids. EDIT: I looked at the powers API for Corruptor charged bolts, it reports 41.71. -
Galaxy Brain's 2021 Sentinel Fix
aethereal replied to Galaxy Brain's topic in Suggestions & Feedback
Is something weird going on with Corruptor Archery damage? It shouldn't be that much lower than Blaster damage. Specifically: Blasters should have 1.125 scale, so 52.55 normalizes to 46.71 Sentinels should have .95 scale, so 44.38 normalizes to 46.71 Corruptors should have .75 scale, but 27.82 normalizes to a painfully low 37.09 (Note that I double-checked, and Galaxy Brain is correct that those are the listed numbers for Corruptor Snap Shot). -
Galaxy Brain's 2021 Sentinel Fix
aethereal replied to Galaxy Brain's topic in Suggestions & Feedback
What is the team utility they offer? Are you talking about the resistance debuffs? Current sents offer very limited practical increase in team damage. 5% resist debuff isn't a lot (2.5%, as it is against +4 opponents, is almost nothing). Opportunity's 20% is more meaningful, but it's still affected by the purple patch and still has mediocre uptime and is hard enough to apply that it's hard to get excited about it. -
Galaxy Brain's 2021 Sentinel Fix
aethereal replied to Galaxy Brain's topic in Suggestions & Feedback
The initial proposal sounds pretty crazy complicated to me. We should be looking to decomplexify Sentinel, not increase its complexity. Also, I don't think that the devs would ever go for a significant unresistable resistance debuff. I get the impression that Cpt Powerhouse wants to remove most sources of -resist, such as removing the Tanker -resist in favor of a straight damage buff. I imagine that the same will happen to the Sentinel. PS: do "unresistable" debuffs still get hit by the purple patch? I don't know how that works. Giving allies +perception seems, I don't know, maybe flavorful but actually such a non-big deal that most people won't even notice? And can something you don't notice really be flavorful? Powerhouse has also said that he wants the Sentinel to be "sustained AoE damage" oriented -- better than a scrapper at sustained AoE, worse than a scrapper at sustained ST, presumably worse than a blaster at burst AoE. I don't really agree with this as a goal. I'm not sure that "sustained AoE" is a coherent source of strength. Burst AoE is all that matters, since good burst AoE kills all minions and most lts? Does it matter if you can follow up your AoE with more AoE once the minions and lts are dead? And I also think that it's hard to find a role for an AoE-focused class between Tanks and Blasters, especially since Scraps and Brutes are plenty good at AoE. My preferred role for a Sent would be sustained ST damage. Like back-loaded Stalkers. Instead of coming out strong with guaranteed crits from a hide, my preferred verssion of Sents would be for them to build up to a brutal cadence of high ST damage against hard targets, probably by applying a small-but-long-duration-and-stackable resist debuff on each hit to a target. (Yes, I know I said that the devs don't want to do more -resist, but I'm not a dev). I think that the defensive-opportunity-like small heal and endurance heal against a target could also play into this, making them a premiere class for duking it out with very hard targets. Like, your first hit to a target could mark them, and then once marked the second hit and later could have a chance to proc heal and end heal. I think this would be an interesting role, personally, though it's very much not the meta and I think it wouldn't do a ton to make the broad playerbase more happy with sents, and wouldn't necessarily make them great team players (since a full team generally chews through even very hard targets pretty successfully). If you want to give Sents more of an AoE focus and more of a "I watch out for my teammates" deal, then I like the idea of giving Sents a powerful, short-duration accuracy debuff on opponents on their first hit, followed by a long period of immunity to that acc debuff from the opponent (on a mechanical level, you'd have an effect that would give -accuracy if the opponent didn't have a particular status, then it would give that status to the opponent). So the next hit would not repeat the accuracy debuff. Why accuracy and not to-hit? Because -accuracy on opponents is useful even if the player is soft-capped, while -to-hit is not useful if you're soft-capped. I believe there are no sources of -accuracy in the game, so this would give sents a thing only they would do. It would help them survive alpha so they could sustain their AoE long enough to kill minions and lts, and it has a sort of flavorful thing of, "Oh shit, an ambush is coming in, I'll give my team a chance to recognize it and reconfigure to deal with it." You could also have sents have inherent +perception and give -stealth on hits, which I like more than them having an aura of +perception. Basically, since the sents are a damage-dealing class, I like as many of their abilities as possible be tied to hitting their opponents instead of just passively giving off auras. -
Galaxy Brain's 2021 Sentinel Fix
aethereal replied to Galaxy Brain's topic in Suggestions & Feedback
I can't tell if you're proposing this as a change or just don't know how the current system works, but current sentinel resist debuffs are not unresistable. -
Compress the range of Recharge values
aethereal replied to aethereal's topic in Suggestions & Feedback
I think global -recharge should also be cut in half, just like global +recharge. -
Compress the range of Recharge values
aethereal replied to aethereal's topic in Suggestions & Feedback
I'd really like to see less discussion of radical changes to Hasten. Those are just too disruptive. My initial proposal certainly does propose nerfing Hasten, but I think it does so in a way that avoids completely invalidating thousands of builds and people really need to think clearly about how likely it is that we're going to make changes that completely invalidate thousands of builds. -
Compress the range of Recharge values
aethereal replied to aethereal's topic in Suggestions & Feedback
FWIW, I think a Hasten that was an auto-power that gave +25-30% global recharge would be pretty mandatory as well. Like, certainly not as strong for high-end builds as the current thing is, but still it's hard to imagine people giving that up, especially since it wouldn't require the kind of extensive slotting support that current Hasten does. -
Compress the range of Recharge values
aethereal replied to aethereal's topic in Suggestions & Feedback
I mean, that maybe would have been a good idea from the outset, but it'd be incredibly disruptive now. Whereas my suggestion -- while not at all the solution I'd pursue if I were designing a CoH-like game from scratch -- I think could plausibly be implemented without completely breaking thousands of character's builds. -
Compress the range of Recharge values
aethereal replied to aethereal's topic in Suggestions & Feedback
Yeah, I agree that that's the most worrying aspect of it. On the other hand, chasing defense past 45% doesn't do much, and below about 30% doesn't do much, so this arguably just makes more builds competitive with the tip-top of the old meta, which had perma-hasten and a bunch of defense right at 45% anyway (ie, they benefit less, other builds benefit more). -
The Status Quo If a power has a 30 second recharge base, an optimized level 50 build will have permahasten (+180% global recharge) and (at least if you aren't chasing procability) will probably get +75% or so local recharge from a set, call it +250% recharge, for a total cooldown of (30 / 3.5) = 8.57 seconds. Even in non-endgame, a reasonably slotted, low-priced build will have the +75% recharge and let's say +20% global recharge for a total cooldown of (30 / 1.95) = 15.38 seconds. But haha, did you just pick up that power or are you super low level? Well, enjoy the 30 second recharge time. This is what we have to balance around. The assumption that a large percentage of players will be dealing with 1/3rd of the listed recharge times, or less, for essentially every power without trying. That means that any time you DON'T have that, the game kinda just... doesn't work. If we try to make a power good when its recharge is 20 seconds, then it's too good when it's recharge is 8.5 seconds. If we make it good when its recharge is <10 seconds, then it's bad when its recharge is >20 seconds. This is a pretty serious design constraint in CoH and it has led to the nearly universal chasing of large levels of global recharge in all endgame characters. The Proposed Change Every power in the game gets its recharge cut down by 1/3rd (without changing damage or other values). Recharge enhancements go from schedule A to schedule B. All sources of global recharge get their values reduced by 50%. Reduce the recharge cap from 500% to 350% (this should have little effect on anything, both are pretty unattainable) (note that you can express recharge cap as 500% or +400%, and 350% or +250%. I know that the recharge cap isn't +500%). So what does that mean? The 30 second recharge power is now a 20 second recharge power at base. If you had +180% global recharge before, you now have +90% global recharge. If you had +75% local recharge before, now you have +45% local recharge. So your modified recharge for an end-game build is now (20 / 2.35) = 8.51 seconds (functionally the same as before, very slightly better). The non-endgame, reasonably slotted build now has +45% local recharge and +10% global recharge for a total cooldown of (20 / 1.55) = 12.9 seconds (considerably better than before). And the just-picked-up the power lowbie character has a 20 second recharge time (much better than before). So basically this buffs low-end recharges substantially, gives a significant buff to mid-end recharges, and leaves top-end recharges roughly the same. What about Hasten? You may have noticed some sleight of hand there. We had permahasten for the top build prior to this, hence the 180% global recharge, and I then reduced it to 90% in the proposal. Does that actually give us permahasten in the modified build? Hasten has a base recharge time of 450 seconds, and a buff duration of 120 seconds. That means that it needs 275% recharge to get to perma. We usually get it there with 95% local recharge and 180% global recharge. It supplies 70% of the global recharge itself, so you need 110% global recharge (or so) without it. In the modified world, Hasten would have 300 seconds base recharge time, still with a buff duration of 120 seconds (but the buff would only be +35% global recharge). That means we need 150% recharge to get it to perma. 95% local recharge would be about 55% local recharge after the schedule change of enhancement slots, so we'd need about 95% global recharge. Hasten would supply 35% of that 95% for itself, so you'd need 60% global recharge build from set bonuses and other powers. That's a little harder than it used to be -- it'd be the equivalent of building 120% global recharge instead of 110%. If we liked we could reduce the recharge of hasten a little more, or we could make it a little harder to get permahasten -- both seem fine. Okay, what about Domination? Domination is as far as I can think of unique among major, important powers that people seek perma status for in that it can't take local recharge. It has a 90 second buff duration and a 200 second cooldown. Under the proposed change, its cooldown would drop to 133 seconds. It would need 48% global recharge to become perma -- the equivalent of 96% global recharge in the old world. This seems fine to me. Why? This change is designed to have little effect on level 50 existing builds while making it somewhat easier to forgo chasing very high levels of recharge -- making builds that do not chase those very high levels of recharge be less disadvantaged than other builds. It would presumably change the meta of level 50 in a few ways, probably making it easier for people to focus more on defense than on recharge. It would probably make Hasten somewhat less of a must-have power -- but still a pretty useful one. It would buff lower-level play significantly (which seems fine to me -- there's lots of headroom in low-level play, nobody is soloing at +4/x8 at level 12. (Yes, yes, I'm sure someone is. You're very good at this game). If we're worried that this constitutes too much of a buff, we could cut base cooldowns by 25% instead of 33%. Then this would still be a buff to low-power builds, but a significant nerf to high level builds. I doubt people would go for it.