Give Trick Arrow ESD Arrow instead of EMP Arrow

[Trickshooter]

10 hours ago, Redlynne said:

Trickshooter ... when handed a lemonade, you need to stop trying to make lemons out of it.

But I love lemons! 😁 In all seriousness, though, I have spent too many hours since 2005 thinking about Trick Arrow, and sometimes people make some cool sounding suggestions on how to fix it off the top of their head, and I try to rein in the expectations because sometimes it's not as easy as people think it will be, and not always a very practical solution. People don't need to agree with my own ideas, but I want them to at least get more information to help them make their own suggestions better.

 

10 hours ago, Redlynne said:

I'm well aware of the fact that Sleep is not inherently immune to aggro.

I think we're arguing about two different things here. I wasn't trying to just state that walking up to a Sleeping enemy will cause aggro when they wake up.  Because, yeah, duh. Maybe I just misread what you meant by "Sleep (which does not inherently draw aggro or create Threat)".

 

I think what you were saying was that a sleeping enemy is an enemy that can't be attacking you. What I thought you were saying was that Sleep does not notify mobs, and I just wanted to be clear that that is not tied to Sleep, or any effect in the game, but is an individual flag on every power, and Mass Hypnosis is the only Sleep that has it. There are other Sleep powers that don't cause damage, but enemies will aggro when they wake up or if you miss (like Spore Burst or Salt Crystals).

 

10 hours ago, Redlynne said:

So when you say that it's "inherently better for Controllers" to have Trick Arrow powers that incorporate control effects in them, that's only true in the sense that Controllers have other powers those controls can be stacked with

Well, that is one part of what makes it better for them, yes. But there's also the fact that controls effects in the set last longer for Controllers. There's also the fact that because of an old bug, and the old devs decision not to completely fix it, Controllers share Slow mods with Defenders. Not to mention everyone shares the Oil Slick Arrow pet! So when I say "inherently better for Controllers", what I mean is...

 

Trick Arrow as a set was designed to defend a team offensively through -Resistance, -Defense and OSA, and defensively through Slows, Controls and -Damage from PGA. Offensively, Controllers are weaker with the -Resistance and -Defense, but they get to use OSA with the same potency as ATs that are specifically designed to do more damage AND they can leverage it better with their controls. Defensively, Controllers completely win because their controls are longer, they stack with their primary, their slows are Defender strength, and while the -Damage from PGA is better for Defenders, Controllers can once again better leverage the effect with their primaries.

 

And this is just against Defenders.

 

Controller and Corruptor secondaries are intended to perform similarly, but Trick Arrow really suffers as a secondary for Corruptors (and Masterminds) because it wasn't build with them in mind. The only parts of Trick Arrow that perform better on Corruptors than Controllers is the DoT of Acid Arrow and the bonus damage of EMP Arrow. Meanwhile, Controllers perform equal or better with every other effect.

 

And because of the original design of Trick Arrow relying on Controls and Slows so much, Corruptor and Mastermind TA are practically the same, even though MM secondaries are intended to be weaker than Corruptor secondaries. The only aspects of Corruptor TA that are better than Mastermind TA (besides, again, the DoT of Acid Arrow and bonus damage of EMP Arrow) is the -ToHit of Flash Arrow (by a whopping 1.25%), -Damage of PGA, and the -Defense of Acid arrow. Mastermind EMP Arrow even drains more endurance than the Corruptor version!

 

Nearly every aspect of the set works better for Controllers. Its weaknesses affect them less because its effects work better with their primaries. So when someone says "let's buff this by adding a Control effect," what they're typically suggesting will improve the set, yes, but it will improve it much more for Controllers who typically don't need the help and whose performance with the change will likely make it falsely appear that the set is all better now, which is kind of what prevented the set getting the work it needed for the other 3 ATs that had it for years.

 

Please don't read any of this with anger. I'm not mad or trying to argue.

 

[SeraphimKensai]

58 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

Cosmetic costume options have NO IMPACT ON GAME MECHANICS for a reason...

I was more or less thinking things like storm elementals, ghosts or robots. Essentially NPC only that could have a flag or built-in resistance to such an effect.

 

I wasn't thinking about someone walking around with a blindfold on their character to protect themselves.

[SeraphimKensai]

1 hour ago, VileTerror said:

And enemies without lungs should be immune to Char and Cinders.

 

But then the game would be a colossal pain in the ass; first for the Devs to make all those changes, and then for the players who had various Powers suddenly become useless against whole swathes of enemies.

You make a good point in that the scope of something like that would be a significant time investment, and then the ramifications of players with existing powers.

[Redlynne]

3 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

I was more or less thinking things like storm elementals, ghosts or robots. Essentially NPC only that could have a flag or built-in resistance to such an effect.

The ONLY way you can get away with justifying that, from a game mechanical perspective, is if you make them resistant/immune to other powers which have the same game mechanical effects.  Otherwise, you wind up going down the rabbit hole of "blinding by light" powers don't affect them, but "blinding by dark" powers do (which they obviously already do) ... and so on.

 

All I'm saying is that you're reaching for a Can o' Tentacles™ that really should NOT be opened ...

 

Part of what makes City of Heroes "work" under the hood is that whether powers affect something is generally pretty darn consistent no matter the appearance (or costuming) of the $Target being affected.  If an NPC has a "counter" to a particular power effect, it has that "counter" for ALL effects of that type ... rather than having that "counter" against some powers (but not others that do the exact same game mechanical effect) because of how the power "looks" to the Player.

 

In other words, if you're going to make "storm elementals, ghosts or robots" particularly resistant to the effects of Flash Arrow, then ostensibly you ought to be making them resistant to EVERY EFFECT FLASH ARROW HAS such that they resist such effects from ALL powers with those effects, not just Flash Arrow (because Flash Arrow ought to be uniquely Gimped By Design deliberately because of what Flash Arrow "looks like" when used).

 

In other words, making special rules for Flash Arrow (only) on this point is a mistake.

Best to keep things consistent, regardless of the power doing the effect ... unless if there's a special reason for a vulnerability (robots category vs EMP Arrow, for example).