An idea for a Confront fix...

[Call Me Awesome]

1 minute ago, sacredlunatic said:

@Call Me Awesome
Naturally I agree with that philosophy but that's the problem.  Scrappers have NO AT wide issue or hole that needs filling.  Any improvement to Confront without some kind of corresponding penalty is going to a straight up buff.  The fact that Confront is stupid and useless does not by itself justify buffing Scrappers.

Would anyone be willing to have some aspect of Scrappers nerfed in order to have an actually useful power instead of Confront?  My bet is no.

Any change to confront that improves Survivability or Offense is a straight up buff that the AT overall does not need.

Again, I agree that there should be a reason to take every power in every set.  There are a lot of powers that are not worth taking and Confront is one of them.  But justifying the claim that Scrappers need a buff as a whole AT, not just individual sets, is a tall order.

I'm certainly not arguing that Scrappers as a whole need a buff.  It's a philosophical opinion that every power needs to have a valid reason to be chosen.  If Confront gets buffed so that it's a valid choice in a build then there's going to have to be another power left out of your build to make room for it.  

 

Take Confront and suddenly you don't have room for your APP blast/AOE power.  Or take Confront and skip Weave.  Power choices should be tradeoffs and as it stands now there's no reason to bother with Confront so you automatically have an extra power choice with no downside.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Call Me Awesome said:

I'm certainly not arguing that Scrappers as a whole need a buff.  It's a philosophical opinion that every power needs to have a valid reason to be chosen.  If Confront gets buffed so that it's a valid choice in a build then there's going to have to be another power left out of your build to make room for it.  

 

Take Confront and suddenly you don't have room for your APP blast/AOE power.  Or take Confront and skip Weave.  Power choices should be tradeoffs and as it stands now there's no reason to bother with Confront so you automatically have an extra power choice with no downside.

Yes, but the problem is coming up with something you can replace it with, that works for every set, that doesn't break the cottage rule, and that is actually good, but not so good that having it makes the AT overpowered.

So far I don't think any of the suggestions made fit the bill.

[tidge]

Before we ask that single-target taunts be altered, how about we get a Purple (or PVP) IO set for taunts?

[Fortuneteller]

1 minute ago, Call Me Awesome said:

It's a philosophical opinion that every power needs to have a valid reason to be chosen.

There's a great many power across the powersets that fail to have a valid reason to be chosen though, hell there are some powers that outright interfere with a team. I'm looking at you Dimension Shift. I don't see any problem with some AT's or Powersets having 'bad picks' and that figuring out the 'bad picks' is a part of learning a powerset.

[Wavicle]

7 minutes ago, Fortuneteller said:

There's a great many power across the powersets that fail to have a valid reason to be chosen though, hell there are some powers that outright interfere with a team. I'm looking at you Dimension Shift. I don't see any problem with some AT's or Powersets having 'bad picks' and that figuring out the 'bad picks' is a part of learning a powerset.

That is a terrible design philosophy.  False choices are always bad.

[Monos King]

13 minutes ago, Fortuneteller said:

There's a great many power across the powersets that fail to have a valid reason to be chosen though, hell there are some powers that outright interfere with a team. I'm looking at you Dimension Shift. I don't see any problem with some AT's or Powersets having 'bad picks' and that figuring out the 'bad picks' is a part of learning a powerset.

I disagree. I think every ability should have a purpose for a certain circumstance. The reason some abilities would end up as skippables would simply be that the circumstance of which you would use said ability is very specific, ordinarily impractical, or just not what you are personally going for. The other possibility is simply that a stronger version that does the same thing comes around later on, and you decide you only want the stronger version rather than both. 

Edited January 27, 2020 by monos1

[Fortuneteller]

1 minute ago, sacredlunatic said:

That is a terrible design philosophy.  False choices are always bad.

Well don't look at my i didn't design the game. 😛


I'm also curious why OP thinks that scrapper taunt needs dev time for a fix though, when there are a great many things i can think of that 'need fix' a lot more. Like i could understand this kind of a thread popping up in a years time when the dev team isn't trying to fix a hundred things, like they currently are.

But is scrapper taunt really something that needs to be talked about, or is it at the bottom of the list? *shrugs*

[Fortuneteller]

1 minute ago, monos1 said:

I think every ability should have a purpose for a certain circumstance.

Scrapper taunt DOES have a purpose. It's a single target taunt. Works fine.

[Wavicle]

3 minutes ago, Fortuneteller said:

Well don't look at my i didn't design the game. 😛


I'm also curious why OP thinks that scrapper taunt needs dev time for a fix though, when there are a great many things i can think of that 'need fix' a lot more. Like i could understand this kind of a thread popping up in a years time when the dev team isn't trying to fix a hundred things, like they currently are.

But is scrapper taunt really something that needs to be talked about, or is it at the bottom of the list? *shrugs*

It wasn't my idea.  It was the devs.

Confront is literally the least chosen primary power in the entire game. It doesn't have a use really, despite it being a single target taunt, because it is on an AT that doesn't care about taunting.

[Monos King]

8 minutes ago, Fortuneteller said:

Scrapper taunt DOES have a purpose. It's a single target taunt. Works fine.

I was disagreeing with the idea that there should be throw away powers.

[Fortuneteller]

1 minute ago, sacredlunatic said:

It wasn't my idea.  It was the devs.

It was? I must have missed that thread. Nevermind then i'll see myself out.

You'll have to forgive me, i've seen too many 'fix this' or 'change this' threads. And i'm just sitting here thinking, can i just play CoH the wa thaty it was? 😛

[Wavicle]

7 minutes ago, Fortuneteller said:

It was? I must have missed that thread. Nevermind then i'll see myself out.

You'll have to forgive me, i've seen too many 'fix this' or 'change this' threads. And i'm just sitting here thinking, can i just play CoH the wa thaty it was? 😛

I'll clarify.  They did not, as far as I know, state that they are going to change Confront.

They did however make note of the fact Confront and its variants are literally the least taken powers in the whole game. Literally almost everyone skips them.

[Galaxy Brain]

1 minute ago, sacredlunatic said:

I'll clarify.  They did not, as far as I know, state that they are going to change Confront.

They did however make note of the fact Confront and its variants are literally the least taken powers in the whole game. Literally almost everyone skips them.

Correct. @Fortuneteller, do you not see an issue if a power is taken by literally less than 1% of characters that have access to it?

[Fortuneteller]

1 minute ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Correct. @Fortuneteller, do you not see an issue if a power is taken by literally less than 1% of characters that have access to it?

Not really, no. Many powersets have skippable powers. Leaves room for pool powers. I think part of the enjoyment that i get from CoH is that there are many builds available, some more optimal then others, and learning which ones are worth is a part of the game. I don't think every power needs to be a must have.

I'd also add that the only way you're going to get players to pick confront over something else is to remove confront from the powersets, and replace it with something else entirely. Therefore that would still make confront the least picked power, because it would no longer exist.

People don't scrapper to taunt things.

[Redlynne]

31 minutes ago, Fortuneteller said:

Scrapper taunt DOES have a purpose. It's a single target taunt. Works fine.

It is very successful at doing what it's supposed to do.

The "problem" is that people put a remarkably low priority on the power doing what it does.

 

So here's a different way that Single Target Taunts (all of them!) could be modified.

Give them the "Jolting Chain" treatment ... except instead of doing damage, the power just Taunts instead.  Just limit the number of splits/jumps that the power can make and you'll be able to affect more than one $Target depending on conditions.  I can easily envision a scenario where Confront would be reconfigured to Taunt a single $Target and then "chain jump" to (up to) 2 more $Targets in the immediate vicinity (so short range on the jumps) ... and that's it.  That would be enough to get the attention of 3 out of a 3+ man spawn grouping ... under the notion that 3 Minions equals 1 PC.

[Galaxy Brain]

7 minutes ago, Fortuneteller said:

Not really, no. Many powersets have skippable powers. Leaves room for pool powers. I think part of the enjoyment that i get from CoH is that there are many builds available, some more optimal then others, and learning which ones are worth is a part of the game. I don't think every power needs to be a must have.

I'd also add that the only way you're going to get players to pick confront over something else is to remove confront from the powersets, and replace it with something else entirely. Therefore that would still make confront the least picked power, because it would no longer exist.

People don't scrapper to taunt things.

Ok, so you do have a problem with it then given that you dont play scrappers to taunt things, yet there are taunts in their sets that are literally there just to be skipped?

 

Not saying its optimal, but they should at least be useful and worth considering. 

[Galaxy Brain]

2 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

It is very successful at doing what it's supposed to do.

The "problem" is that people put a remarkably low priority on the power doing what it does.

 

So here's a different way that Single Target Taunts (all of them!) could be modified.

Give them the "Jolting Chain" treatment ... except instead of doing damage, the power just Taunts instead.  Just limit the number of splits/jumps that the power can make and you'll be able to affect more than one $Target depending on conditions.  I can easily envision a scenario where Confront would be reconfigured to Taunt a single $Target and then "chain jump" to (up to) 2 more $Targets in the immediate vicinity (so short range on the jumps) ... and that's it.  That would be enough to get the attention of 3 out of a 3+ man spawn grouping ... under the notion that 3 Minions equals 1 PC.

Trying to remember, do ST taunts exists elsewhere but Scrapper sets?

[Wavicle]

They don't need to be must haves.  Just be of Some actual use.  Right now they are of no actual use.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Trying to remember, do ST taunts exists elsewhere but Scrapper sets?

Widows have them, and you can get one from the power pools.

Edited January 27, 2020 by sacredlunatic

[Wavicle]

I dunno.

I don't see any way to change them to make them useful to Scrappers that doesn't make them overpowered.  Probably should just leave them as is, an option that no one actually wants unfortunately.

[Lazarillo]

39 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

It is very successful at doing what it's supposed to do.

The "problem" is that people put a remarkably low priority on the power doing what it does.

I feel like it's very underrated in that regard.  Confront has all sorts of uses. 

 

On a team, it lets the Scrapper do what Scrapper do best and hold onto a potentially dangerous enemy while the team manages the riffraff.  I was on a couple TFs earlier today, in fact, and found this very handy for keeping AVs off my team who were dealing with large ambushes that came with them.

 

Solo, it's an excellent tool for pulling enemies apart.  Handy when fighting Nemesis and trying to prevent oversaturation of Vengeance, or, say, in an Arachnos base where everything's right up in everything else's butts.

 

Oh, and heck, I've helped with Mito-tanking on Hammy raids thanks to that, because even some Brutes skip their taunt (WHY!?).

 

So yeah, super handy, and right out of the box, too.  I have a quick, easy power pick that gives me a variety of benefits and doesn't even need any extra enhancement slots dedicated to it.

Confront doesn't need anything but for more people to respect it.

[Replacement]

2 hours ago, sacredlunatic said:

@Call Me Awesome
Naturally I agree with that philosophy but that's the problem.  Scrappers have NO AT wide issue or hole that needs filling.  Any improvement to Confront without some kind of corresponding penalty is going to a straight up buff.  The fact that Confront is stupid and useless does not by itself justify buffing Scrappers.

Would anyone be willing to have some aspect of Scrappers nerfed in order to have an actually useful power instead of Confront?  My bet is no.

Any change to confront that improves Survivability or Offense is a straight up buff that the AT overall does not need.

Again, I agree that there should be a reason to take every power in every set.  There are a lot of powers that are not worth taking and Confront is one of them.  But justifying the claim that Scrappers need a buff as a whole AT, not just individual sets, is a tall order.

I want to reiterate the notion of Opportunity Cost.  Scrappers simply don't have room in their builds, but that doesn't excuse the fact that they can count on only having 8 choices from their primary.  No other AT can count on that (And @Fortuneteller, this is worth mentioning to you as well -- certainly there are bad/pointless powers in other powersets, but there isn't an AT-level "schtick" you can expect to see in every one of an AT's sets that are all as skipable and pointless as the rest).

 

You can buff Confront, even having it add some straight +performance, and tune it to be good on some builds but not all of them.  That's just business as usual.  It's not a buff to scrappers overall if it has no impact on the top builds.  One could imagine it being good enough a power pick to rationalize grabbing it on some underperforming sets, while ignoring it on the DPS champs.

[Wavicle]

Here's an idea no one will like:

Change the name of the power to, off the top of my head, Strategize (someone else can come up with a better name).

If you target an enemy the power will function as Placate currently does.

If you target an ally the power will taunt the top three mobs on that ally's threat list.

[Wavicle]

Actually, I kind of like that.  Stalkers get Placate.  Brutes and Tankers get Taunt.  Scrappers get a power that's sort of both.

[Replacement]

1 minute ago, sacredlunatic said:

Here's an idea no one will like:

Change the name of the power to, off the top of my head, Strategize (someone else can come up with a better name).

If you target an enemy the power will function as Placate currently does.

If you target an ally the power will taunt the top three mobs on that ally's threat list.

No, not terrible.  A bit cottage-y, but not terribly so.  It would remove a pulling tool but clearly, no one's using it for that anyway.

 

--

 

As always, this is something where I feel the need to mention: We are serious enough about this that down the road, it could be tossed onto the test server to find out.  If it's found to be upping top-performing builds on Test, we reel it back.  If that means reeling all the way back to what's currently Live? So be it.