Have toggle debuffs become obsolete?

[Solarverse]

Mobs these days die so fast. It's crazy how fast people wipe mobs off the face of the map these days. As a Defender (I have a Dark/Dark and a Rad/Fire and an Cold/Ice) I simply find myself not even using my toggle debuffs because by time I cast the debuff, mobs are dead already. This typically starts at around level 22 (right around SO's time) and on up to level 50 content. The only time I find toggle debuffs to be of any use (maybe?) is when groups are attacking AV's (although the debuffs are not even close to being needed) or even better, GM's.

 

Maybe my views on the toggle debuffs are over exaggerated....I don't think so, but I am willing to be open minded here. However, it sure feels like I am wasting time debuffing anything with toggles these days. Have toggle debuffs become obsolete or am I simply seeing things one sided here? I mean, I play Blasters, Tanks, Brutes, Stalkers, pretty much everything in game with the exception of Sentinels (which I personally find to be an utterly useless class) and I can honestly say, I don't really feel like toggle debuffs are all that great anymore post level 22.

 

I don't know, either I am right or I am wrong or perhaps somewhere in between. What do you guys and gals think?

[Bopper]

If your group is railroading mobs, then odds are any debuff is useless. That said, toggles still have plenty of use now that they anchor on the dead, and can still be used for the tough fights.

[Solarverse]

5 minutes ago, Bopper said:

 toggles still have plenty of use now that they anchor on the dead

That has made a huge difference, I will admit that. That was a very welcomed change.

[Brutal Justice]

Damage is out of control.  It’s not just toggle debuffs that suffer from diminished value.  I was on a LGTF with my trick arrow the other night and I could barely keep up with the damage dealers.  Often times they would blow up a mob and move on, leaving a couple survivors, but since cleanup takes precious time, they just left them to jump into the next large mob.  By the time I could get a disruption arrow down, I may have been debuffing 1/4hp mobs for a second or two.   

 

Crowd control, aggro management, debuffs, all of these have very little value after an IO build enters the team.  Which these days, with the availability of attuned builds, can happen in the teens.  Enter incarnates and rolling judgments and you don’t even need your primary or secondary.  

 

I would consider myself a casual veteran.  All I play in are PuGs and below lvl 40 for the majority.  Once incarnates are in play, it may be fun for a bit, but it’s not rewarding for me.  When I view the game through the lense of a newer player, I don’t see a sustainable model.   When the gameplay is not rewarding and I feel like I am bringing nothing to my team, why would I stick around?   It’s not that controllers or defenders are incapable, it’s that the power gap makes them superfluous.  

 

Something needs to be done to bring value back to the lower dps archetypes.  I like Dynasty Warriors games, but I don’t play them for very long, especially not the same one for 7 years.  Right now City of Heroes is a musou game.  Those games are successful because they release a new one every 6 months.  In my opinion, the current state and direction of the game is not a sustainable model.  

[Redlynne]

The game is more challenging/interesting WITHOUT Incarnate power ups.

[Solarverse]

Honestly, I miss the days when Tanks *needed* Healers, when Blasters *needed* Controllers and Tanks and Healers to keep them alive. I miss the days when a Healer was actually thanked for healing for the team. I miss the days of people saying, "Damn good Tanking, man....thanks for that." and I miss the days when Controllers were praised for keeping mobs from scattering all over the place and killing squishies. Squishies....I don't even think that is a thing these days. Not really. I don't know how to "fix" the game, because any attempt I have made to suggest a "fix" for the game was met with some serious opposition. I think the game has taken a turn where the players who preferred the game prior to IO's and Incarnates have pretty much left the game and are now by far out numbered by the players who cherish the current state of the game as is. So to be honest, the damage has been done and there is no reversing it....at least not on this server.

 

If a sever popped up that came with the original pre i5 mechanics of the game, with the newer powersets implemented into the older mechanics of pre i5, I can honestly say I would jump on it in a heartbeat. Go back to the days when the best enhancement you could get was the OP HO enhancements.  I have soooo wanted to make an Emp Healer since the game came back out...but I know that if I did, he would be the most useless powerset in game...and I jsut refuse to put myself through that as the game currently stands.

 

If anyone ever learns of a Vanilla version of this game, please, by all means, let me know. I wouldn't quit this version, but I can honestly say this would no longer be my primary server if a Vanilla server were to be released.

[Camel]

I’ve adjusted my play style accordingly to still make a difference. Debuffs still make an impact, albeit, not huge sometimes. I typically drop my patch debuffs before my team engages the mob. It’s helped a lot. Even on teams that steamroll, you will notice a substantial difference in a mob that is not debuffed VS. a mob that is. Will your team kill it quickly without the debuffs? Yeah. But will they kill that same mob twice as fast with debuffs? Also yeah. 

Edited February 20, 2020 by cazden121

[Gulbasaur]

On 2/20/2020 at 2:54 AM, Redlynne said:

The game is more challenging/interesting WITHOUT Incarnate power ups.

This is part of the reason why I play a lot of exemplared stuff. If I can take a load of single-digit teammates into Dark Astoria, run it on +3x8 and still thrive, then I think possibly I'm a bit too powerful. I can tank Mot and Romulus, maintaining aggro, on my fortunata. Even my defender has got to the stage that I can pretty much run into a group of enemies without any fear and I'm not even trying to build it for survivability. 

 

There's also a bit too much focus on end-game builds, which overlooks the fact that there isn't a huge amount of end-game content - you need to be able to exemplar if you want a decent range of activity, which means you need to be able to play without a functionally invincible tank and defence and endurance on tap. 

 

Resistance debuffs are always useful. Defence debuff much less so at 50 as so many people have tactics running that a team can end up with +100% ToHit by accident. 

 

Debuff toggles have a huge amount of use if you don't limit yourself to over-easy end game play. 

Edited February 21, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[Solarverse]

5 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

This is part of the reason why I play a lot of exemplared stuff.

 

Debuff toggles have a huge amount of use if you don't limit yourself to over-easy end game play. 

I to play a lot of Exemplared content, the trouble is with this though, is that players these days don't want to play the game unless it is easy. So lower levels they all play everything on +0 which means mobs still melt. They don't want a challenge. They won't start playing content on +4 until they are IOed out and geared to the teeth, where again they are ripping through mobs like paper.

 

Either way I go about it, mobs are getting creamed, nobody wants a challenge, and my toggles feel very pointless.  😞

[Blackfeather]

I definitely feel like the game goes a bit too fast in larger groups sometimes, which does make the more supportive powers in the game seem a bit unnecessary. I'm not confident in my ability to pinpoint the reasons why that's the case though. But it's most definitely felt - there's a shift in gameplay style from what feels like a tabletop game brought into MMORPG form, into damage-wrecking-ball-explosion-train-ride. Not to say one's necessarily better than the other of course, but I do kind of miss out on the former at higher levels, whilst the latter seems a given in any large group.

[Solarverse]

33 minutes ago, Blackfeather said:

I definitely feel like the game goes a bit too fast in larger groups sometimes, which does make the more supportive powers in the game seem a bit unnecessary. I'm not confident in my ability to pinpoint the reasons why that's the case though. But it's most definitely felt - there's a shift in gameplay style from what feels like a tabletop game brought into MMORPG form, into damage-wrecking-ball-explosion-train-ride. Not to say one's necessarily better than the other of course, but I do kind of miss out on the former at higher levels, whilst the latter seems a given in any large group.

Yeah, it's not about what is better, because everyone plays for different reasons. I think what it is more about is what is better for you. Looks like those who have posted this thread feels what was better for us was the way this game was when it was new, before the days of IOs. Before IO's support classes were very much fun to play and I felt like I was contributing. These days, any support class I play, I just don't feel like I am making any contributions to the team. The only way I feel as though I am actually contributing is if I play a Brute or a Stalker or a Blaster. Anything else, I feel like I am just along for the ride.

 

At the end of a Task Force, when I say, "Thanks for the team!" what I am really saying is, "Thanks for carrying me!" if I play anything other than Brute, Blaster or Stalker/Scrapper.

[Erydanus]

On ‎2‎/‎19‎/‎2020 at 4:22 PM, Mr.Sinister said:

Damage is out of control.  . . .  In my opinion, the current state and direction of the game is not a sustainable model.  

Yeah... I hate to say it but I basically agree with you. I appreciate the HC Team has brought back the game but it's also clear that they have a vision for what they like to play and the meta has shifted along those lines. At times I feel like I'm at the station and seeing the bus pull out. Given the choice between a meta that disfavors the type of characters I like to play and not having the game I am of course very happy to have the game. I also like the polish and professionalism the team brings to these servers. I actually don't think the issue is IO builds, I think the issue is things like nukes not having a crash and snipes being a routine attack instead of a special opener-only move, and various play balances to archetypes. But the flip side is maybe we'll see other adjustments down the road, I mean if everyone else is getting more damage why not give controllers and defenders some too? 

[Doomrider]

When it comes to being fully io'd out, the somewhat half-baked solution that is working at least for me (because I like to play support still) is just to run with 3 or 4 people.

It's not perfect, but it feels like each person is contributing more. This obviously isn't much of a solution for pick-up groups.
Pugging through the early levels on a support build is hit or miss I find. I typically see at least 1 person on the team who's a higher VL and flush with IO's that's carrying the rest to some extent. It's usually at that point I just let the team runs it course until people start to drop off, then so do I.

[Sir Myshkin]

2 hours ago, Erydanus said:

I think the issue is things like nukes not having a crash and snipes being a routine attack instead of a special opener-only move, and various play balances to archetypes. But the flip side is maybe we'll see other adjustments down the road, I mean if everyone else is getting more damage why not give controllers and defenders some too? 

The things you're referring to aren't hard choices that were made by the folks running the Homecoming servers, but by the original Devs before the game shut down. Things like the PPM changes, Fast Snipes, etc were on Beta before sunset occurred. Those alterations were just moved into active service after the bugs were kinked out and the best approach to move them forward was determined. The only real (major) change that has come out of Homecoming has been the changes to Tankers. Even the Sentinel AT was something in the back-log of Dev testing/files that was just "completed" and rolled out.

 

The way the game is right now isn't (effectively) any different than the way it was when it shut down, most people have just forgotten that fact.

[Coyote]

3 hours ago, Doomrider said:

When it comes to being fully io'd out, the somewhat half-baked solution that is working at least for me (because I like to play support still) is just to run with 3 or 4 people.

It's not perfect, but it feels like each person is contributing more. This obviously isn't much of a solution for pick-up groups.

 

Well, it is, if you're the one running the team and advertise it as a small team at high difficulty. I rarely lead teams, but when I do, I have no interest in max-sized teams unless it's in the teens or twenties when there aren't that many slots or powers. Smaller teams still face some difficulty in many situations, but the difficulty caps out around 4 players... any more players added is just moving the needle back towards Easy Mode.

[Brutal Justice]

36 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

 

The way the game is right now isn't (effectively) any different than the way it was when it shut down, most people have just forgotten that fact.

The availability of the top tier IOs is much different.  There were Uber builds on live that would be the same build today.  The difference is how available they are now.  I never once saw an ATO or PVP IO on live.  Same with the winter IOs and attuned builds.  Overwhelming force as well.

 

You’re correct we are not much different than we were on live, or what was planned.  It’s the other things homecoming has changed or allowed that has changed the game.  I prefer the availability but if it’s going to stay like this then something needs to be done to help the game.  

 

I propose a scaling hp pool for mobs that scales with team size.  Allowing the mobs to be more durable makes them inherently more difficult because they actually get to fight back.  It wouldn’t make them cheese like irresistible damage or mass debuffs.  

[Solarverse]

47 minutes ago, Mr.Sinister said:

I propose a scaling hp pool for mobs that scales with team size.  Allowing the mobs to be more durable makes them inherently more difficult because they actually get to fight back.  It wouldn’t make them cheese like irresistible damage or mass debuffs.  

That hitpoint change would have to be quadrupled to make any real difference, but I would be all for it!

[Bopper]

41 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

That hitpoint change would have to be quadrupled to make any real difference, but I would be all for it!

 

1 hour ago, Mr.Sinister said:

I propose a scaling hp pool for mobs that scales with team size.  Allowing the mobs to be more durable makes them inherently more difficult because they actually get to fight back.  It wouldn’t make them cheese like irresistible damage or mass debuffs.  

This sort of already exists in the form of mob size. More teammates, more enemies, thus more HPs. But ultimately, I do like the idea. Maybe a formula that grants MaxHP.Current = MaxHP.Original * [1 + 0.1* (#TeamMembers -1)]

[Camel]

I think a nice fix to this would be adding more difficulty levels. Maybe boost mob size to x10 and add levels up to +6? This would keep the game in its current state while allowing a more challenging experience. Maybe even a 5% boost to all mob HP except AVs when on a full team. I still find the game satisfying, but I do hope we get the option to have a more challenging experience.

[Sir Myshkin]

2 hours ago, Mr.Sinister said:

The availability of the top tier IOs is much different.  There were Uber builds on live that would be the same build today.  The difference is how available they are now.  I never once saw an ATO or PVP IO on live.  Same with the winter IOs and attuned builds.  Overwhelming force as well.

I'm not saying I was a player rolling in Influence, but I had my fair share of maxed out builds on Retail. Yes things felt like they were harder to come by at a certain point because it was costing a billion inf to buy chase IO's, but the Merit system was tweaked back then to make it so players could invest their time on playing content and earning merits that could be exchanged for those rewards more freely; that same system still exists now. The difference between Retail and Homecoming is the nature of how the "Free Market" was set up. Back on Retail everything was fairly self-moderated from a demand to cost perspective, and the Merit system was the Dev's answer to "fix" how ridiculous it truly had become. Given another year I suspect we'd have seen a much better balance of cost considering the Hero/Villain merit system (Tips) hadn't been out very long before sunset.

 

We didn't have attuned builds either, but that just leans (I think) into extending the flexibility of allowing players to exemplar more freely to keep more people available in a wider range of content. We're also talking about a much more isolated pool of players. A few thousand versus 10-15 thousand across double the servers from back in the day. It was much more likely to run into a swarm of people with altitis that never fully IO'd any build at all, and were just playing the game. Winter ATO's and the secondary AT-O sets didn't exist on Retail either, but they're not the lynch pin.

 

I still run into plenty of people that don't have IO builds, are playing content of all ranges, and are just enjoying the game for the game's sake. Heck I was just on an Imperious TF with two non-Incarnate 50's, and a slew of 40-48's with barely any IO investments in their builds (if any) just chugging along. It's the second one in the last few days that's been that way.

 

2 hours ago, Mr.Sinister said:

 It wouldn’t make them cheese like irresistible damage or mass debuffs.

If you want to scale the content, then use the content that's available to you to do so. Everyone looks at the Architect system as a farm tool without looking at its potential to design and develop unique, more difficult content for Incarnates. There is an author who put together a series of AE missions that I myself took a shot at with a T4 Incarnate solo, duo, and with a team, search for "801" and do the 801.1 mission with your Incarnate IO build, see how far you get. It's not hard for hard sake, it's increased difficulty without unnecessary scaling of the base game content. More bosses, Elite Bosses, more dynamic power sets/usage.

 

I would advise not running in at +4/8 off the first swing.

[Blackfeather]

6 hours ago, Solarverse said:

Yeah, it's not about what is better, because everyone plays for different reasons. I think what it is more about is what is better for you. Looks like those who have posted this thread feels what was better for us was the way this game was when it was new, before the days of IOs. Before IO's support classes were very much fun to play and I felt like I was contributing. These days, any support class I play, I just don't feel like I am making any contributions to the team. The only way I feel as though I am actually contributing is if I play a Brute or a Stalker or a Blaster. Anything else, I feel like I am just along for the ride.

 

At the end of a Task Force, when I say, "Thanks for the team!" what I am really saying is, "Thanks for carrying me!" if I play anything other than Brute, Blaster or Stalker/Scrapper.

I'm not entirely sure that IOs are the cause of this observation. While it certainly contributes, I kind of notice the whole 'shift' at the mid to mid-high levels - endgame builds aren't going to be complete until 50, and generally lose a good deal of their potency when exemplared down. There's probably an interconnected amount of factors at play that's causing this (of which IOs may be a facet)...but I'm not really sure what.

[Solarverse]

3 hours ago, Blackfeather said:

I'm not entirely sure that IOs are the cause of this observation. While it certainly contributes, I kind of notice the whole 'shift' at the mid to mid-high levels - endgame builds aren't going to be complete until 50, and generally lose a good deal of their potency when exemplared down. There's probably an interconnected amount of factors at play that's causing this (of which IOs may be a facet)...but I'm not really sure what.

Oh I do agree with you. I also blame the fact that we can change the difficulty of our missions. In the old days, you just couldn't do that. So you played at whatever difficulty the game told you to. There was none of this, "Let's run everything at +0!" I have actually had people on these very boards tell me that if I run something higher than +0, and they are on my team, they would quit my team. Nobody wants to run anything at +4 until they are all IOed out.

 

In other words, very few of us are left that still appreciate a challenge.

[TBN8681]

I must admit, I seldom get to use toggle debuffs aside from AVs and GMs. 

 

There are lots of good points made by you all. I'm wondering if it's easiest to just change the toggle debuffs into cilckable instant debuffs as opposed to adjusting difficulties, DPS,  etc.

 

I'm also wondering if this has been brought to devs' attention. Certainly, at some point, this should be addressed as I've been carried on many teams without contributing much when playing my debuff toons that have toggles as debuffs.

 

I do miss the days when the whole team would have to coordinate and put in real teamwork just to kill a single mob. 

 

 

Edited March 16, 2020 by TBN8681

[TBN8681]

On 2/21/2020 at 10:00 AM, Solarverse said:

Yeah, it's not about what is better, because everyone plays for different reasons. I think what it is more about is what is better for you. Looks like those who have posted this thread feels what was better for us was the way this game was when it was new, before the days of IOs. Before IO's support classes were very much fun to play and I felt like I was contributing. These days, any support class I play, I just don't feel like I am making any contributions to the team. The only way I feel as though I am actually contributing is if I play a Brute or a Stalker or a Blaster. Anything else, I feel like I am just along for the ride.

 

At the end of a Task Force, when I say, "Thanks for the team!" what I am really saying is, "Thanks for carrying me!" if I play anything other than Brute, Blaster or Stalker/Scrapper.

Well said. I also feel like I have to race with my teammates so I can cast debuffs before they steamroll through mobs. Aside from toggle debuffs, I've also been on plenty of teams where the mobs are destroyed before a kin is able to cast FS lol

Edited March 16, 2020 by TBN8681

[Peacemoon]

On 2/21/2020 at 6:43 PM, Coyote said:

 

Well, it is, if you're the one running the team and advertise it as a small team at high difficulty. I rarely lead teams, but when I do, I have no interest in max-sized teams unless it's in the teens or twenties when there aren't that many slots or powers. Smaller teams still face some difficulty in many situations, but the difficulty caps out around 4 players... any more players added is just moving the needle back towards Easy Mode.

Agree here and this matches my experience. Big teams are often very steamrolling the mobs. Other than placing down a tar patch or a freezing rain there is rarely time to do much.

 

However my memory is this is exactly how the game was when live. I never played after about issue 21, but IOs definitely made a difference, but they did make the game more fun also.

Also remember we have people with amazing builds farming solo +4/x8 maps. Well, if most ATs are capable of doing that solo, imagine what 8 players could do, even if they aren't all capped out?

 

Of course I've also joined lots of teams, particularly at low level, which have not been that great and there have been lots of wipes (old school teams I think of them!). In a strange way the game can be more before level 25. 

 

There are quite a few ways the HC team could increase the challenge to the game. This is probably worthy of its own thread but these would include:

1: New content designed specifically for small teams of 4. By capping the players to 4 you force teams to make some sort of decisions about what types of characters you want. In keeping with CoH's amazing gameplay, you would need to make sure that there are a thousand ways of completing the content. I.e. no 'requirement' for a tank. 

2: Increase the amount of enemies able to spawn from x8 to like, x16 (not sure how feasible this is). Even if you can't increase the spawn sizes due to mechanics, maybe just make spawns 100% bosses at x16.

3: Disable things like incarnates when doing challenge content. I've never had incarnates, but there seems to be a consensus it is unnecessary power creep..

 

Really with this our imaginations (and the flexibility of code!) are the only limits to what is possible. I tend ot favour solutions which wont blanket effect the entire game. Its sort of nice if 'regular CoH' plays like it always did and as woudl be expected, but that there are options to either overtune or access super challenging stuff to increase difficulty and rewards.

 

Oh I just thought of a new idea. More rewards for completing a TF with a small group of no more than 4, and/or certain affixes applied. I think ouroboros arcs you can stipulate no inspirations, no enhancements, etc? Imagine if you could turn those sort of affixes on for double or triple the merit rewards for a TF? Yes it might not be the most efficient farm, but it would unlock some very challenging options and give people a bit of an incentive to suffer it as well!