Attacks without positional restrictions

[DrRocket]

This is a request more in the lines to aid support class survivability.

 

It is common wisdom that for a support class to survive in the high level battlefield that "Defense" is a prime consideration, after all if you can't be hit - you don't die

 

In general support classes do not haves no overall protections against status effects (such as holds) and modest resistance to damage, yet the poor widows have zero resistance to all damages but psionic, talking about a glass jaw! Making Defense a critical element for in the battlefield survivability.

 

In general support class can get modest resistance to status effects, but the problem is that the best they can hope to achieve is reducing the duration of the status effect by half, which gives the mob plenty of time to close in and kill the player, so resistance is not really an effective choice.

 

Through the use of IO sets, the player can achieve reasonably high defense values to reduce the odds of being hit significantly, and thus becoming survivable and becoming more reliable to perform their support functions.

 

So far defense works well, but when they are attack for instance by a Rickti Mentallist whose hold attack is non-positional, it becomes for all practical purposes and auto-hit! Rendering the player's huge investment in IOs useless. Same true is for the infamous Zapper, another guy that just auto hits. In many ways having mobs or players with powers like this in my opinion unbalances the game.

 

So could it be possible to ammend the powers that do not have positionals, to be positional such as the Rickti Mentalist to be a ranged attack hold?

 

Thank you

 

Ps: I know that some incarnate powers can mitigate the hold fest that Rickti spams so well, but it is not an honest or full solution to the inbalance, for instance what incarnate actually would provide protection from the zapper?

 

[Saiyajinzoningen]

acrobatics provides a slight hold resistance, target those mentalists 1st and lock them down, do u mean sapper? if not whats a zapper? if so destiny ageless if a great solution to deal with end draining foes

[DrRocket]

Saiyajinzoningen

 

    I hear you, and thanks for spell checking me, I tend to be phonetic when I type.

 

   Still I feel when a player goes to great lengths and influence cost to optimize a character, it is inherently wrong to have game mechanics that arbitrarely denies the effort. I only seek to have my perceived deficiency in those powers that effectively are auto-hit have thier auto-hit eliminated.

 

    As I indicated resistance is of very marginal value, for all it does is reduce the duration of a status effect, it doe snot provide real protection. Sappers are devastating to all classes, very good concept of endurance drain as an attack, my only objection to this is their auto-hit ability.

 

    While Incarnate powers can mitigate the effects of "auto-hit" powers, they are not present during a character's development. Not al players play characters with the intent to do incarnate material. Some just enjoy creating new concepts and leveling to 50, before they go to a new concept. There are those players, who actually try to enjoy the content and level as it was in the old days as opposed to use fast leveling TFs such as Death From Below, and then thre are the AE farms...

 

    In this thread I am not advocating giving support classes any added survivability powers, just allow their defenses to actually work all the time.

 

Thank you

[Saiyajinzoningen]

i hear u, i also dont like to rely on incarnates to fix a hole however there is a lid for every pot....although im not sure that analogy works here but you will find that the elec armor is very very immune to sappers. 

 

Again this is a strategic issue, simply target the problematic foe 1st and take them down. For invuln its psi foes for elec its toxic for Rad its cold. I do feel your pain im sure kheldians want those void specific foes gone too. 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Rune of protection, bam right there a way while leveling to cope with CC if you cant handle break frees. most AT are vulnerable to CC, being nigh impervious to it is a perk of the defensive set using ATs. Support are suppose to be more vulnerable, be thankful the game AI isnt smart enough to ignore tanks and tear down those who heal buff like a smart foe would.

 

And yes You babble on about IOs. they are a non factor when talking about balance as the game doesnt balance around the use of sets. They are a pure bonus above the games difficulty. And actually not everyone advocates for def from sets I certainly dont, soft def that can easily be shredded by def debuffing enemies has always beena  newb trap in my book.

 

Powers that ignore positional defense are few, but are not game breaking they are the natural paper to the rock of defense. Sappers are not that big a deal for the power sets meant to be able to endure such like regen and will power, or my beloved drain psyche using blaster that recovers end faster then a sapper can steal it.

 

And as was suggested above, smart play aka tactical play means take out the mobs you fear the most first. Use steath, and hit the things your afraid of hard. I mean enxt your going to advocate for quantums to be removed from kheldian play entirely because they are unfair. Or see debuffing enemies removed because they negate all the soft def and res from IO sets that dont have the debuffing resistance of actual powers.

 

You do understand the most powerful solo GM killers are controllers and offenders right? When an AT can single handedly kill the most powerful mob type in the game they do not need any buffing nor are they lacking because you dont know how to prioritize targets.

[DrRocket]

23 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Rune of protection, bam right there a way while leveling to cope with CC if you cant handle break frees. most AT are vulnerable to CC, being nigh impervious to it is a perk of the defensive set using ATs. Support are suppose to be more vulnerable, be thankful the game AI isnt smart enough to ignore tanks and tear down those who heal buff like a smart foe would.

 

And yes You babble on about IOs. they are a non factor when talking about balance as the game doesnt balance around the use of sets. They are a pure bonus above the games difficulty. And actually not everyone advocates for def from sets I certainly dont, soft def that can easily be shredded by def debuffing enemies has always beena  newb trap in my book.

 

Powers that ignore positional defense are few, but are not game breaking they are the natural paper to the rock of defense. Sappers are not that big a deal for the power sets meant to be able to endure such like regen and will power, or my beloved drain psyche using blaster that recovers end faster then a sapper can steal it.

 

And as was suggested above, smart play aka tactical play means take out the mobs you fear the most first. Use steath, and hit the things your afraid of hard. I mean enxt your going to advocate for quantums to be removed from kheldian play entirely because they are unfair. Or see debuffing enemies removed because they negate all the soft def and res from IO sets that dont have the debuffing resistance of actual powers.

 

You do understand the most powerful solo GM killers are controllers and offenders right? When an AT can single handedly kill the most powerful mob type in the game they do not need any buffing nor are they lacking because you dont know how to prioritize targets.

Rune of protection is a new one for me, appreciate the advice, can you tell me more about it? is it an IO that any class could use? Sounds like an awesome solution to me.

 

In general I don't have issues with debuffs, as long as they require a "to-hit" and are subject to resistance. Otherwise, you may be correct that I may object to those powers with the only difference being that I don't advocate, as suggested, to delete the powers but enforce a balance, in short for every attack there is must be a capable defense.

 

Thanks for the advice

[Captain Powerhouse]

As far as the original devs were concerned, many mental attacks "lack" positional typing because they are not, by definition, taking place in the physical world. Basically: psi is considered both, an attack positional (Mind) and a type. It was very intentional that sets like SR did not get Psi coverage. 

 

Why not have both, a Mind and a Psi separate typing for consistency might be simply because as far as the engine cared, that might had been seen simply redundant (albeit I can see cases where a conceptual set could be more resilient to Mental attacks than actually projected Psionic energy, and the other way around.)

Edited December 18, 2019 by Captain Powerhouse

[Leogunner]

Rune of Protection is a sorcery pool power in the final slot. Takes 2 other sorcery powers to get and it acts as a break free for all mez and gives the user a good chunk of damage resistance. 

[Replacement]

Too bad Rune of Protection is, by definition, very loaded on aesthetic.

[DrRocket]

46 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

Rune of Protection is a sorcery pool power in the final slot. Takes 2 other sorcery powers to get and it acts as a break free for all mez and gives the user a good chunk of damage resistance. 

Awesome! Thank you

[Erydanus]

Also there is in the controller epics a mez protection power in the Psi pool. It does have 1 serious weakness, unlike the similar powers in defense sets or even the Rune of Protection, it can't be activated after you're held, you have to trigger it before you're attacked. (I think that was a deliberate choice back when, I don't think it's a good choice now since Rune of Protection can be used while mezzed and it's a pool power...). 

[Dragon Crush]

4 hours ago, Replacement said:

Too bad Rune of Protection is, by definition, very loaded on aesthetic.

While true, you can at least RP is as a magic thingy handed to your character by a caster friend, doesn't necessarily have to be your character's own work. Of course, since it requires 2 other powers in the set, you'd be getting a fair number of gifts from your magic allies.

[Trickshooter]

On 12/16/2019 at 8:19 AM, DrRocket said:

So could it be possible to ammend the powers that do not have positionals, to be positional such as the Rickti Mentalist to be a ranged attack hold?

 

 

I feel some Psionic powers lacking a positional defense is a reasonable trade off for the many more debuffs that lack a damage type defense, and to fix one without the other would be kind of unfair. And that could be quite a lot of work.

 

Also, if they did fix both, Mind Control would need some reworking, because that whole set's "secondary effect" is that many enemies lack the specific psionic type defense to dodge them. Add a positional defense to those powers and Mind is basically Fire without its DoT, Elec without its End Drain, etc.

 

My point is, it could be opening up a can of worms. It's not impossible, but would probably need quite a bit of time to pull off and then test thoroughly.

[DrRocket]

15 hours ago, Trickshooter said:

 

I feel some Psionic powers lacking a positional defense is a reasonable trade off for the many more debuffs that lack a damage type defense, and to fix one without the other would be kind of unfair. And that could be quite a lot of work.

 

Also, if they did fix both, Mind Control would need some reworking, because that whole set's "secondary effect" is that many enemies lack the specific psionic type defense to dodge them. Add a positional defense to those powers and Mind is basically Fire without its DoT, Elec without its End Drain, etc.

 

My point is, it could be opening up a can of worms. It's not impossible, but would probably need quite a bit of time to pull off and then test thoroughly.

I feel your pain, but yet in an ideal world, yet because we are not in ideal world it does not mean we should not strive for perfection...

 

Every form of attack should have a form of defense and protection, in my opinion that is a true balance.

 

The moment exclusions or exceptions occur the chance for an unbalance in the game to occur becomes rather likely, the game is so complex it pretty much guarantees it.

 

It does not matter if the attack is a status effect, debuff, or plain damage the recipient of the attack should have "defense" to avoid being struck by the effect and "protections" to mitigate the effect regardless of archtype. I do support the levels of defense and protections should vary between Archtypes, but they do not need to be binary in nature but shades of gray.

 

Take status effect protections for example,  either you have lots of it or none, which I think is inappropriate from a design stand point. While a tank has MAG 12 protection and Scraper/Brutes/Stalkers (samples) have 8, the rest have zero; this is a sample of binary thinking; why not let the support classes have MAG 4 protections? Think of the sequence 12/8/? obviously the next number in the sequence is 4. 

 

When it gets to Debuff, it is broken no doubt about that,  player debuff attacks are usually a sub effect of an attack in most cases, thus you must have a "hit" component to the power and thus the victim have an opportunity to dodge the attack (defense) unless of course the attack is non-positional and the attack automatically hits (see what I mean about broken system?), then to make matters worse, the second half of the balance system does not exist at all, there are no protections similar to the MAG system for status effects nor resistances to reduce the degree of the debuff and its duration. I would support that debuffs should come with a MAG value and perhaps the same MAG defense system used for Status effects be utilized, thus a Tank would have a MAG 12 protection against debuffs, and would take a bunch of hits to add up beyond 12. Resistances to Debuff could be arbitrarely matched to a particular resistance that already exists, for example a psioninc attack with a debuf would be resisted by psionic resistance, and dark could be resisted by energy resistance for example. But I do acknowledge there is some ferocious coding ahead to balance out the world in this respect. In the same vein, Hold MAG protection could be used for debuff protection for example in order to reduce the large amount of coding and recoding...

[MunkiLord]

There are only a few attacks that lack position type, I like that occasionally there is something you have to really be careful about. I oppose this suggestion. 

[UltraAlt]

Anyone can get Stimulant from the Medicine pool.

Empathy can use Clear Mind on others to help them resist holds, etc.

Kinetics has Increase Density

Radiation Emission has Accelerate Metabolism that makes an ally somewhat resistant.

All of these are usable on others. Help your teammates out and maybe one or two of them will help you out in return.