The time has come to fix AoE Holds/Mezzes

[Parabola]

12 hours ago, Leogunner said:

Quit your bitchin'.

 

12 hours ago, Leogunner said:

Doh! But we're balancing around SOs!  IOs don't matter! derp da derp da derp da derp!

Classy.

 

3 hours ago, Leogunner said:

You're self-proclaiming the AoE holds are crown jewels.

 

If you ask me what the crown jewel of Ice Control is, it's Ice Slick.  The crown jewel of Gravity Control is Wormhole.  The crown jewel of Plant Control is Seeds of Confusion.

 

I would argue that those softer controls that are available every spawn are better described as the bread and butter powers in their sets. It does make sense from a balance perspective for the hard control aoe holds to be of more limited use, making them for special occasions. I think those of us arguing for changes feel that their use is so limited however that they have become completely skippable.

 

I make exactly the same argument about the crashing tier 9's in the armour sets. It's fine to have a power that is only for occasional use but it should be useful enough to justify taking for those occasions. In my opinion they currently aren't useful enough and so are automatically skipped in my builds. The aoe holds are in the same boat.

[tidge]

Aiming in a different direction:

 

Setting aside ATOs with special effects (e.g. Energy Font, assorted PBAoE), there are only a few 'control' procs that I look towards slotting. For me, typically those are the %Damage in the (PB)AoE. I've seen the case made for +%Absorb from Entomb, and I'm a BIG FAN of 'Contagious Confusion' in single-target Confuses... but in general the procs in the controls seem rather lackluster. For example, is there really an advantage (aside from set bonuses) to %Disorient on top of a Fear attack? Or a -ToHit on a Stun? Can someone make the case (corner case if necessary) for these sorts of procs?

 

Also: If anyone wants to start a petition drive to get the Fear and Taunt powers their own Superior (preferred) or PVP custom sets, I'm on board! For Fear, I'd like a 'Contagious' proc variant (since single-target Fear attacks are generally meh); for Taunts a % -ToHit (or -Damage) would be a nice proc option.

[Leogunner]

9 hours ago, parabola said:

I would argue that those softer controls that are available every spawn are better described as the bread and butter powers in their sets. It does make sense from a balance perspective for the hard control aoe holds to be of more limited use, making them for special occasions. I think those of us arguing for changes feel that their use is so limited however that they have become completely skippable.

I usually consider bread-n-butter stuff to be what you put around your meat.  What powers do I use around the meat of my control sets?  The ST hold and perhaps another or immob if the set doesn't have another.  For my Grav/EA Dom, the bread and butter is Lift, ST Hold and Total Focus...Propel if you want to get in the Impact damage.  For my Ice/TA Controller, it's the 2 ST Holds and procc'ed out immob.

 

As for the AoE Hold, it's just unnecessary to buff them unless you also want to nerf the rest of the controls in the set to even things out?  I mean, do you need a control AT to control even more?  Or do you just feel that particular power (AoE Hold) should factor in more because it's a supposed control "nuke"?  I'd also like to remind you that usually nukes are tier 9s.  No control AT has a tier 9 AoE mass crowd control click except Mind control.  If the AoE hold is skippable to you (not specifically you, just anyone in this thread), that is partly because a lot of powerset types have such skippable powers (confront, placate, repel, neurotoxic breath, a lot seem to really not like the tier 1 attacks, petrifying gaze, etc etc) but mainly that the way many players have min/maxed the game and get others to conform to a playstyle has created specialized builds that do not prioritize many other types of tactics and effects.

[Erydanus]

I really like RedLynne's very thoughtful first post. I think it's an excellent compromise.

 

I also think it's time to take a step back and look at the meta of the game and not just with a microscope on this exact issue. There is a change that might seem unrelated but it has radically affected play and that is the elimination of most crashes, especially for Nukes. I don't think we need to worry about City of Statues because the game is already City of Nukes; I mean that sincerely. I've seen whole spawns in a +4 TF blown up by nukes completely trivializing anything any support character did. If a controller could use their AoE holds a bit more, I'm not sure it would even impact game balance but at least it would feel like we could have something to do, and maybe controllers would get a little more appreciation compared to another damage dealer. 

 

For that matter, and apologies for tacking this on, but I have to point out when Containment went in, Controller epic pools weren't adjusted. It wasn't until MANY MANY issues later that the devs one day said on the forums "holy crap, how did we not half the damage of controller epics so that containment merely brought them up to 96% of where they were originally when we added containment?" The forums collectively responded "but we did in fact point this out at the time." And lo, the nerf fell. (I think the power balance guy had changed in the meantime and he Made A Decision and could not be talked down; I remember a lot of us were really angry). Anyway it was a real pain in the ass when it happened and I already had a level 50; it didn't change what my character could do only how fast, and made what was fun play more grindy. Since Homecoming has a higher damage and faster play meta I'd like to suggest that change simply be reverted as well. I have to stress here we're talking about 1 single target blast and 1 AoE in most controller epic sets, not a bunch of powers; some of the epics have a 3rd attack but some of the epics only have 1. Considering melee types can run around sniping things in combat with their epics, I just don't think this will be a problem, controllers still have to establish containment to get the full damage value. If anything, doubling their epics will probably mean some of them will just toss out a quick blast before the blaster drops their nuke and at least do some damage.

 

The truth is the players who would benefit most from the AoE hold nerf and the epic damage nerf being reverted would be soloers. It would however also increase controller contribution to teams in general. But it would be particularly valuable to soloers, and people who run a duo or trio with just a spouse or friend.

[Redlynne]

20 minutes ago, Erydanus said:

I don't think we need to worry about City of Statues because the game is already City of Nukes

Controlled enemies that take no damage from being controlled still need to be defeated.

Nuked enemies are "controlled" FOREVER (unless if they have a self-rez power) by damage defeating them.

 

Controlled but not defeated = BAD

Defeated without needing control = GOOD

 

I'm trying to contain my hilarity at the hypocrisy on display by some people (who shall remain nameless to protect their guilt).  Because when is a control not a control?  When it's a faceplanter nuke of course!

[Leogunner]

20 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

I'm trying to contain my hilarity at the hypocrisy on display by some people (who shall remain nameless to protect their guilt).  Because when is a control not a control?  When it's a faceplanter nuke of course!

How about the hilarity at the hypocrisy of how we got to City of Nukes is through consistent power creep veeeerrry similar to what's on display here?

 

Btw, I've been against a lot of changes over the years to include inherent Fitness and removing the unique factor of the lethal crashless nukes by making all nukes crashless.  I also don't like what incarnates have done to the late-game and think the IO bonuses on def and rech need more duplicate values to limit non-def armor types from capping def.  A lot of those boats have sailed but I'm not a quitter.

[oedipus_tex]

You should also look at the way nukes are balanced,

 

Here's Psychic Wail on a Blaster:

• Recharge: 145
• Mag 3 Stun (enhanceable)
• -70% Recharge for 20 seconds
• Damage: 250
• Accuracy:  112.5% (significantly ABOVE average)
• Radius: 25

 

Versus Ice Control's Glacier:

• Recharge: 240 (almost 100 seconds longer)
• Mag 3 Hold with 20% chance for +Mag 1 Hold
• -62.5% Recharge for 10 seconds (half of Psychic Wail)
• Damage: ZERO
• Accuracy: 60% (significantly BELOW average)
• Radius: 25

 

Comparing powers side by side this way out of context can be risky. But I also think the Blaster nuke changes reflect a change in game philosophy. The AoE Holds still seem to be under the old philosophy.

 

That said, I wouldn't mind a "third wave" of changes in philosophy where we dial back on the top-level ability to roll over spawns easily. Doing that would probably require the creation of a whole new level 54 zone though, and require limiting the effects of the Destiny and Judgment powers--truly the place a lot of the overpoweredness is coming from.

Edited January 1, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Myrmidon]

12 hours ago, tidge said:

for Taunts a % -ToHit (or -Damage) would be a nice proc option.

Yes, please.

[Haijinx]

Its not really city of nukes though. Would need a lot more Blaster players for that.  

 

Its more city of Brutes still.  

[boggo2300]

53 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Its not really city of nukes though. Would need a lot more Blaster players for that.  

 

Its more city of Brutes still.  

we should form a Brute Squad!  then shuffle them off to an out of the way forest somewhere

[Parabola]

14 hours ago, Leogunner said:

As for the AoE Hold, it's just unnecessary to buff them unless you also want to nerf the rest of the controls in the set to even things out?  I mean, do you need a control AT to control even more?

All along I have been focussing on the design ideal that no power should be completely skippable and arguing that that aoe holds are very close to being so. You are absolutely right, we don't need more power creep and controllers don't in general need more control. However I still think it should be possible to improve the utility of the aoe holds without too much further imbalance.

 

One suggestion from earlier was to improve their uptime but reduce the area of effect and max targets. I'm not saying that is exactly the answer but I think it might be the right kind of thinking. Another thought is that the aoe holds have been described as a kind of control nuke, we could look at going a different way with them and leaving (or even reducing further) the uptime but increasing the magnitude and accuracy. The idea being to say that if they are supposed to be emergency powers lets at least make them reliable emergency powers.

[Galaxy Brain]

3 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Its not really city of nukes though. Would need a lot more Blaster players for that.  

 

Its more city of Brutes still.  

Blasters are right up there with brutes as the most common AT tho?

[boggo2300]

38 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Blasters are right up there with brutes as the most common AT tho?

yeah, but we have so much more style

[Galaxy Brain]

Pew pew boom > gettin mad

[Grouchybeast]

5 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Its not really city of nukes though. Would need a lot more Blaster players for that.  

 

Its more city of Brutes still.  

City of Blasters, AE of Brutes.

[golstat2003]

On 12/28/2019 at 10:49 PM, Super Atom said:

On a side note, dominators do not need the purposed change in the above response. Controllers maybe, not domis.

I'm of the mind that NEITHER need them. With IOs they do just fine.

[Galaxy Brain]

Just now, golstat2003 said:

With IOs

Thats the problem there

[golstat2003]

Just now, Galaxy Brain said:

Thats the problem there

And I'm not sure what the solution is. I could see a slight buff in that department for both ATs. But then what happens to the high end or even mid-tier where IOs are concerned.

Yes balance should be around SOs, but I'm not sure I'd be interested in what they take away for that buff, if they are trying to not make the high end too overpowered.

[Galaxy Brain]

Well, the SO thing is why I am campaigning for a datamine of how many players actually use IOs vs SOs. If the vast majority of players use IOs... well... then the balance should shift.

[golstat2003]

On 12/29/2019 at 9:51 PM, Leogunner said:

Sorry, that wasn't aimed at you.  More specifically, posters who have been arguing whether balance is looking specifically in one direction, the other or both to different degrees.

 

To me, IOs have needed a nerf for a long time but that's neither here nor there.  

Agreed. As much as I've fought against it for years I've come to realize this has been needed as I've spent the past few months getting back into COH. However, I don't see this happening EVER. The level of effort for a volunteer team (including having to take in the 100s of pages of feedback and literally months of testing data they'd have to review + squashing the EPIC amount of bugs that would probably surface due to this game's ancient spaghetti code) would simply be unrealistic. 

 

Time would be better spent doing what they are doing now with targeted buffs and nerfs to powers. I don't see an IO revamp happening here on HC (or any of the other servers) EVER.

[golstat2003]

11 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Well, the SO thing is why I am campaigning for a datamine of how many players actually use IOs vs SOs. If the vast majority of players use IOs... well... then the balance should shift.

Probably,  but it would open up a can of worms so large it would probably take months to get out simple changes. If we had maybe 5-6 IO sets it would be easy. We sure hell don't.

 

If I throw out a Sentinel setup, I would probably get 15 different responses on how to IO that toon out. At different setup ranges -- frankenslotting, mid-teir slotting, high level slotting, purple level slotting, ATO slotting. And that is only for ONE primary/secondary setup. (Notice I haven't even mentioned Pool Powers/Ancillary Powers/Patron Powers yet. LOL)

 

Good luck to a purely unpaid team balancing all that out in any timely fashion as they make changes. 😬

Also who determines what is the optimal build type they are shooting for? (We have +recharge builds, builds that focus on defense, builds that focus on resistance, combos of them, etc etc.)

 

EDIT: I'm not sure people realize how much work this would be if they did try to actually FULLY balance by IO, or even revamp IOs.

Edited January 2, 2020 by golstat2003

[Haijinx]

27 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

City of Blasters, AE of Brutes.

Don't really see that.  A lot of teams I'm on have no blasters

 

Unless I'm on one of my blasters, the we have 3 >.<

[Haijinx]

The problem with nerfing IOs is they serve a lot of the customization function of newer rpgs.  

 

 

[Galaxy Brain]

3 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

(frankenslotting, mid-teir slotting, high level slotting, purple level slotting, ATO slotting)

I think a couple of things could be balanced around here. Purples are more or less static in that they are super rare and available only at max level, on top of having only 1 purple per type. Unlike other IOs, they are sort of in their own bubble.

 

The ATO's are similar in that they are also sort of in their own "bubble" where they only affect certain ATs and the procs in them are all sort of universally good to shoot for. 

 

Its everything else that is a mess when it comes to bonuses and certain procs / unique effects that are questionable.

[golstat2003]

1 minute ago, Haijinx said:

The problem with nerfing IOs is they serve a lot of the customization function of newer rpgs.  

 

 

Also, THIS.