Patch Notes for January 16th, 2020 - Issue 26, Page 4 (Release Candidate 2)

[Bossk_Hogg]

Tankers were never going to be meaningful support. That isnt what the AT was about, sold as, or played as. Buffing their support and not buffing their damage would be buffing tankers by taking them in a different direction than their core identity. Plus the melee armored support playstyle would better fit the Guardian. I understand there's a lot work to be done on that, but it at least lets them somewhat reserve their design space. 

[lemming]

I didn't do any deep delving into the Tank & Brute changes, but didn't notice much of a change to the tanks I copied over, but enjoyed the Brute's fury building up and sticking around more without having to have Brawl on auto.

[Heatstroke]

When is this going live ????!!!!!!!

[Widower]

54 minutes ago, Heatstroke said:

When is this going live ????!!!!!!!

When it's ready.

 

(Disclaimer: readiness should be interpreted as a measure of being free of bugs. Bugs are bad.)

[Biosphere]

On 1/16/2020 at 6:27 PM, The Curator said:

 

• Tanker
  • Buff modifiers increased to match Controller values.

 

So is this confirmed to only have changed Leadership for Tankers or what else got modified with it?

[Wavicle]

8 minutes ago, Biosphere said:

 

So is this confirmed to only have changed Leadership for Tankers or what else got modified with it?

I would imagine it effects Shield Defense's ally buff and Radiation Armor's ally heal.  There are also powers in other pools such as Sorcery and Force of Will that would probably be effected, and several powers in Epic and Patron pools.

[Wavicle]

I have to say, given the philosophy behind the Bruising removal (which I have no objection to) I do not understand why the increase to Controller Buff levels but not an increase to CC levels.  Why not leave buffs small but have better CC, if CC is considered a class role?

[Myrmidon]

2 hours ago, sacredlunatic said:

I have to say, given the philosophy behind the Bruising removal (which I have no objection to) I do not understand why the increase to Controller Buff levels but not an increase to CC levels.  Why not leave buffs small but have better CC, if CC is considered a class role?

That 10% boost in taunt Mag is going to give us some of that. What more crowd control do you propose?

[Wavicle]

5 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

That 10% boost in taunt Mag is going to give us some of that. What more crowd control do you propose?

I don’t. I’m just curious why the decision was made to increase buffs, and why it wasn’t instead a decision to increase cc. I was just thinking longer durations, but it doesn’t matter I think the proposed changes look pretty good.

[summers]

2 hours ago, sacredlunatic said:

, if CC is considered a class role?

 

3 minutes ago, sacredlunatic said:

I don’t. I’m just curious why the decision was made to increase buffs, and why it wasn’t instead a decision to increase cc. I was just thinking longer durations, but it doesn’t matter I think the proposed changes look pretty good.

Why do you think CC is considered a class role for Tankers? They have Taunt as their form of crowd control, but nothing about the AT suggests to me that they should have stronger holds or confuses.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, summers said:

 

Why do you think CC is considered a class role for Tankers? They have Taunt as their form of crowd control, but nothing about the AT suggests to me that they should have stronger holds or confuses.

Well, I can't remember specifically, but I thought a homecoming dev had said something to that effect.  

[oedipus_tex]

Interesting changes. Thank you to the developers for the obvious care you put into the game.

 

RE: Tanker mezz strength. I actually had to go look it up because I always just assumed it would be stronger for Tankers, due to mezz being a property of certain armors (e.g. Dark Armor). I'm not upset it wasn't updated, although it doesn't break immersion for me for Tanker mezzes to be substantially longer than for other melee archetypes. It feels very in-role for me. 

[summers]

17 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

Interesting changes. Thank you to the developers for the obvious care you put into the game.

 

RE: Tanker mezz strength. I actually had to go look it up because I always just assumed it would be stronger for Tankers, due to mezz being a property of certain armors (e.g. Dark Armor). I'm not upset it wasn't updated, although it doesn't break immersion for me for Tanker mezzes to be substantially longer than for other melee archetypes. It feels very in-role for me. 

Dark Armour is shared by a number of Archetypes and I'd not consider any of them to have Mezz as an Archetype feature (Stalker, Scrapper, Brute, Tanker).

[Chronicler J]

10 hours ago, Auroxis said:

The general case being what? No damage buffs at all and AoE reach and target cap being irrelevant?

I already stated why it's hard for me to let go, I wanted offensive support buffs for a long time (I've been vocal about my reasoning long before the patch) and instead i got a support nerf, a useless must-pick t1 power and a tanker that more closely resembles a brute in function.

They refuse to talk about the support nerf. A team will lose damage on a hard target now because of these changes. Tanks can face roll radio missions better, I guess. That's a plus, right? The content I run in AE is far harder than anyone expects to run in this game. The moment I saw Tanks lost Bruising, I knew it just meant we'd lose damage on AVs/EBs. Gauntlet should have been changed instead of being fixed, and it should've been in favor of making it support the team. Aggro control has been so pointless in this game--it has just worked because the AT doesn't take Rocket Science to pilot when you grab mobs. I'm surprised people think it's a cause for concern when we talk about the AT. Mobs just roll over dead in lvl 50 content, and you barely notice the need for it in sub-50 content. 

 

I don't even care if Bruising was a justification for the T1 pick, bumping Tanker damage to .95 over .75 and giving them full-mob AoEs is someone's agenda in development, and a not "fix" for the T1 "issue" as it is described. The Tank has no identity at this point. I agree 100% with Auroxis that the Tank should've been given a form of offensive support as an expanded identity from Bruising. 

Edited January 18, 2020 by Chronicler J

[Sovera]

2 hours ago, Chronicler J said:

They refuse to talk about the support nerf. A team will lose damage on a hard target now because of these changes. Tanks can face roll radio missions better, I guess. That's a plus, right? The content I run in AE is far harder than anyone expects to run in this game. The moment I saw Tanks lost Bruising, I knew it just meant we'd lose damage on AVs/EBs. Gauntlet should have been changed instead of being fixed, and it should've been in favor of making it support the team. Aggro control has been so pointless in this game--it has just worked because the AT doesn't take Rocket Science to pilot when you grab mobs. I'm surprised people think it's a cause for concern when we talk about the AT. Mobs just roll over dead in lvl 50 content, and you barely notice the need for it in sub-50 content. 

 

I don't even care if Bruising was a justification for the T1 pick, bumping Tanker damage to .95 over .75 and giving them full-mob AoEs is someone's agenda in development, and a not "fix" for the T1 "issue" as it is described. The Tank has no identity at this point. I agree 100% with Auroxis that the Tank should've been given a form of offensive support as an expanded identity from Bruising. 

Yes, but, AVs tend to be 30 second fights, and AVs tend to be 5% of the content. Everyone going omg tankers were nerfed against AVs I beg to consider in what way is it worse to be buffed for 95% of the content than being buffed for 5% of the content.

 

That's why I, and others, looks at these complaints, including Auroxis, otherwise a swell guy with which we can disagree on an argument but not have to hate on a personal level, and go UGH, even if it turns out to be a nerf and it takes 20 seconds extra to kill an AV those 20 seconds have been recouped by the gained time dealing with the trash to REACH the AV by the Tanker's improved buffs.

 

Did I want Tanks, Brutes, Scrappers and Stalkers to be near indistinguishable? No, I've said so in the past. People are still going about Tankers and Brutes as tanks and we all have done Nth content with a Scrapper tanking everything. Mechanical differences would have been better, but let us please stop harassing CP for not finding this dream solution that pleases 100% of everyone 100% of the time.

Edited January 18, 2020 by Sovera

[Haijinx]

19 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Yes, but, AVs tend to be 30 second fights, and AVs tend to be 5% of the content. Everyone going omg tankers were nerfed against AVs I beg to consider in what way is it worse to be buffed for 95% of the content than being buffed for 5% of the content.

 

That's why I, and others, looks at these complaints, including Auroxis, otherwise a swell guy with which we can disagree on an argument but not have to hate on a personal level, and go UGH, even if it turns out to be a nerf and it takes 20 seconds extra to kill an AV those 20 seconds have been recouped by the gained time dealing with the trash to REACH the AV by the Tanker's improved buffs.

 

Did I want Tanks, Brutes, Scrappers and Stalkers to be near indistinguishable? No, I've said so in the past. People are still going about Tankers and Brutes as tanks and we all have done Nth content with a Scrapper tanking everything. Mechanical differences would have been better, but let us please stop harassing CP for not finding this dream solution that pleases 100% of everyone 100% of the time.

I agree with this. 

 

The AV is one of the rare times a Tankers extra survivability may matter - so they already have a role there.

 

And bruising Bosses and Lts is a waste of time. 

 

  

[Chris24601]

2 hours ago, Sovera said:

Did I want Tanks, Brutes, Scrappers and Stalkers to be near indistinguishable? 

To be fair to our current devs, that’s a problem inherited from all the way back to Jack Emmert’s decision to use completely different ATs for the villain-side expansion despite the fact that requests for being able to faction swap (which comic characters do all the time) were already a thing during CoV’s beta.

 

But Jack being Jack wanted to enforce the different feel of the Isles using the villain ATs, and making them more independent rather than team role focused, but only the MM was a truly unique concept rather than a sort of priority swap of a hero-side AT.

 

So when side-swapping inevitably became possible the end result was that, yes, there was a whole chunk of ATs who’s mechanics weren’t that different and whose major distinctions then were power set options.

 

Options which player demands for power set proliferation and the dev team’s need for content available to as many players as possible (particularly once Freedom hit and they decided to add power sets to the cash shop) further eroded the distinctions.

 

Basically, hindsight is 20/20 and we’re living with decisions made 15+ years ago by people at least two leadership teams removed (Stateman/Jack > Positron > War Witch > Homecoming) from those decisions.

 

There’s no fix that will satisfy everyone, because 15 years of inertia won’t let it. The fact is that Brutes and Tankers were never that different; which wasn’t a problem when the Red/Blue barrier stood inviolable (co-op in the RWZ not withstanding).

 

Short of a CoH2 where you’re rebuilding the system from scratch and everyone starts in this new game from scratch, I think the best solution is just to accept that there are going to be relatively redundant ATs with only the finest nuances between them that individual players have preferences for.

 

There are tons of legacy mechanics in CoH that are redundant, but still maintained for those who like them.

 

I get the sentiment to try and eliminate that... for me it’d involve nuking Skyway from orbit/giving Steel Canyon an Atlas Park-style revamp... but, particularly at the toon level, you risk destroying the very reason someone currently enjoys the AT (new power sets that do things differently are another matter entirely, that’s a new

option not a change to an existing one).

 

TL;DR... blame Jack Emmert for causing this mess, not our current crew for trying to fix it.

[PrinceTycho]

On 1/16/2020 at 6:27 PM, The Curator said:

Phantom Army

• Added new customisation options for Phantom Army
  • Mirror (copy of current character costume)
  • Phantom Mirror (copy of current character costume with Phantom Army VFX)

Anyone know if this addition also applies to the 'Phantoms' Lore power? Since they do use the same 'Phantom Army' graphics?