Homecoming Statistics: March 2020

[Peacemoon]

12 minutes ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

The delay on switching to Defensive and then having the Henchpets retaliate was an intentional addition to prevent Masterminds from "cheesing" the Bodyguard Damage Share mechanic.

But frankly?  I think it's time we allow Masterminds to cheese it as an improvement to Quality of Life!

I might not be explaining myself properly, but in my limited MM experience it’s when you finish defeating a spawn. The Henchman sort of hang around for a second or two making sure the enemies really are defeated before following you. It’s true dedication to their task! But, the delay means they lag behind as you go from group to group. 

Also there are some pathing issues on praetorian maps, particularly the Praetoria labs. The stairwells causes NPC followers huge issues. It takes at least a minute to help them negotiate those steps. It’s like taking my elderly Nan on a mission! (And curse the missions where you then have to double back to the entrance, with the knowledge that you have to tackle those stairs again!)

[ImpousVileTerror]

There is nowhere I know that highlights the issues with Pet pathing more than in Player-built Bases.  Boy howdy, does that result in some interesting silliness when you're trying to roleplay!  I can only imagine the disaster that would be caused should the Team ever re-enable Base Raid PvP.

[Mister Mass]

19 minutes ago, Peacemoon said:

I might not be explaining myself properly, but in my limited MM experience it’s when you finish defeating a spawn. The Henchman sort of hang around for a second or two making sure the enemies really are defeated before following you. It’s true dedication to their task! But, the delay means they lag behind as you go from group to group. 

Also there are some pathing issues on praetorian maps, particularly the Praetoria labs. The stairwells causes NPC followers huge issues. It takes at least a minute to help them negotiate those steps. It’s like taking my elderly Nan on a mission! (And curse the missions where you then have to double back to the entrance, with the knowledge that you have to tackle those stairs again!)

Praetorian stairs are apparently the most complicated thing NPCs have even experienced.  Please fix the pathing on these!

[Peacemoon]

14 minutes ago, Mister Mass said:

Praetorian stairs are apparently the most complicated thing NPCs have even experienced.  Please fix the pathing on these!

No idea how easy it is to fix for the team but yes would be great. And the tunnel where you come down the ramp on either side and loop back underneath yourself! 
At least MMs can resummon the pets I guess.

 

The best trick I’ve found when descending stairs is to approach the stairway at full speed, and hope the fall launches the pet most of the way down!

[Mister Mass]

38 minutes ago, Peacemoon said:

No idea how easy it is to fix for the team but yes would be great. And the tunnel where you come down the ramp on either side and loop back underneath yourself! 
At least MMs can resummon the pets I guess.

 

The best trick I’ve found when descending stairs is to approach the stairway at full speed, and hope the fall launches the pet most of the way down!

Yes, I was including the tunnel ramps as stairways in my complaint.  I have never NOT lost or had to wait on a follower on those ramps or on the stairways in Praetorian office/lab maps.

 

The fact that more people aren't complaining about this is the only proof you need that nobody plays goldside. 😛

[Chance Jackson]

On 6/22/2020 at 10:47 AM, ImpousVileTerror said:

The delay on switching to Defensive and then having the Henchpets retaliate was an intentional addition to prevent Masterminds from "cheesing" the Bodyguard Damage Share mechanic.

But frankly?  I think it's time we allow Masterminds to cheese it as an improvement to Quality of Life!

I Strongly Agree

[roleki]

Is there any chance this data will be updated in the near-ish future?  I'd like to see how much saturation Electrical Affinity has, now that it's been around a while.

[Coyotedancer]

27 minutes ago, roleki said:

Is there any chance this data will be updated in the near-ish future?  I'd like to see how much saturation Electrical Affinity has, now that it's been around a while.

 

I'd love to see an update, too. 

 

I want to see how many of us took the low numbers on some combination as a challenge and in response built Unicorns of our own. XD

[zenijos10]

21 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

I'd love to see an update, too. 

 

I want to see how many of us took the low numbers on some combination as a challenge and in response built Unicorns of our own. XD

If anyone does build one, Id love to see your unicorn builds! There are a few threads floating around, like this one:

 

[Coyotedancer]

I've made three so far... a KM/Fire Stalker, a Claws/Fire Stalker and a Dark/Ice Stalker. 

 

I don't use MIDS or Pine's though, so exporting their builds would be, to put it mildly, a royal pain in the rear.

[Noggie1]

i need to meet Veracor...

[VV]

I came to also ask about an update. I am really interested to see if there was an impact from the pandemic lockdown.

[Scientist]

On 4/9/2020 at 5:14 PM, carroto said:

It is surprising that Fortunatas and Night Widows are not more popular, but it's more understandable for things like Banes.  There was a thread recently asking for thoughts on the villain epic ATs and the most common feedback was that Banes are too slow and clunky.  Fortunatas are fun though and in many was come close to a tank-mage.  I suspect the issue with all of the epic ATs is that they don't easily fit into a theme or existing comic hero/villain mold.  As others have said in this thread, a lot of power set choices seem to be driven by theme.  What theme would be served by the epic ATs?  They have their own fixed back-stories.

The other point I've seen made about the VEATs in particular is that you only need one of each, since you can do multiple builds with them and cover literally every power and role that way.  For a Defender, or a Blaster, or a Tank, you may want half a dozen of each, because the powersets play so differently and there are so many powerset choices.  

[KaizenSoze]

It would be extra work about in the next iteration of the statistics a break out the VEAT sub ATs counts would be awesome.

 

As of March there are about 32K VEATs across all servers and levels.

 

I am really curious how many are Night Widows/Fortunatas/Banes/Crabs.

 

I am guessing you would have to query for powers used to break them into groups.

 

Though I have no idea how the database schema looks.

 

[Lunchmoney]

We are now closer to March 2021 than 2020. Time for another batch o' stats?

[Saikochoro]

I think we ought to wait till at least a month or two after i27 hits live before the next batch of stats. I want to see how i27 affects people’s choices. Will energy melee come back with a vengeance?  Will ninja training on blasters?

 

I want to there to be enough time for i27 to affect the stats. 

Edited November 20, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Troo]

Stats before and after could be of benefit.

[Saikochoro]

1 hour ago, Troo said:

Stats before and after could be of benefit.

True enough. Though not sure how much work is involved in getting the stats put together and posted. If it was a matter of one or the other I’d rather see after i27. But if they can do both, then that would be super awesome. 

Edited November 20, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Andreah]

People are already making new characters in anticipation. The sorts of stats to have been tracking, but I kind of doubt we have been would be new characters created each month, characters which reach 50 each month, and say,  characters which reach vet-100 each month. Track those over time, and we might see on-going changes in intent, successes, and long-termers.

Edited November 23, 2020 by Andreah

[Yomo Kimyata]

It is my hunch that a reason that they haven't made this update in a while is that the population has dropped a lot since March, which is fine with me, but may result in a lot of DOOOOOOOM(tm)ing.

[Ralathar44]

On 3/2/2020 at 5:58 PM, Sylar said:

Looks like people only play Spines/FA just to farm which is super boring, there are other sets people 🤣

It's more than that.  Like 50% of all playtime is on a Spine/FA brute.  Arguably City of Heroes is a game more about farming on a Spines/FA brute than it is about everything else.

[Ralathar44]

On 4/9/2020 at 4:47 PM, Peacemoon said:

These numbers are interesting. The most interesting one is how many Masterminds don't go all the way to 50. Maybe once you get all the pets and upgrades it lacks stuff to aim towards. Maybe if their APPs were more personalised it would be better?

Why would you play an MM over anything else other than "cool factor"?  They can't solo as well as half the ATs.  They lose out on both damage and survivability once you start hitting late levels to all melee.  Their support is lackluster.  Their damage attacks cost hella endo for little return.  AOE and CC wreck them.  They are more cumbersome to play.  ETC.  They pretty much peak at 35 and then just feel weaker and weaker as you continue to level wheras most other ATs only continue to grow in power.  Pets die at the drop of a hate and you can too if you're pets are out of body guard mode and you get hit a few times.

There was a time frame where MM was one of the strongest solo classes in the game who other solo classes only caught up to after tons of grinding.  But with the power creep, way faster progression, and more accessible IOs MMs are so outclassed today it isn't even funny.  And they didn't even get any weaker, everyone else got stronger.  And heck, it's hard enough to land a few hits on most teams with mobs dying in literal seconds, now try doing that with pet delay and if you send your pets in first they all die leaving you resummoning or dying to aggro...meanwhile even the blaster can take alphas.

MMs lost their place in the game and everything else has power creeped so much that to give them that place back would require the devs to deliberately overpower them and I just don't see that happening since even Mercs has not received love. 

Edited November 23, 2020 by Ralathar44

[Coyotedancer]

Try running one on a small team rather than in the middle of an 8-player wrecking ball... or better yet, duo/trio. It's a somewhat different world.

 

(I'm saying this as someone who runs a Necro/Thermal MM duo with a Broadsword/Shield Brute. We've also had a Demons/Thermal and TA Defender duo, and a Thugs/Pain and Time/Fire Defender pair.)

[Neiska]

7 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

Try running one on a small team rather than in the middle of an 8-player wrecking ball... or better yet, duo/trio. It's a somewhat different world.

 

(I'm saying this as someone who runs a Necro/Thermal MM duo with a Broadsword/Shield Brute. We've also had a Demons/Thermal and TA Defender duo, and a Thugs/Pain and Time/Fire Defender pair.)

Can +1, One of my favorite teaming buddies with my MM is a friend who plays a Crabbermind, and it works out great - my heals and buffs keep his pets going (they are squishy compaired to mine), but his pets do more damage than mine do, so they are a good help. Not to mention those yum yum improved leadership toggles. 

 

I do agree that MMs and nearly all pet classes (except mabye controllers) kind of fall behind in late game though, which sucks for pet class lovers. Its fun, but I have yet to see any of my fully kitted out pet builds of any kind do half as well as any other AT on max difficulty. That's not to say they don't have a place, or aren't fun, but do have to agree with @Ralathar44 that they are weak, and what support etc they can bring, others can do the same or better. 

[Coyotedancer]

Our weirdest pair... who actually turned out to be absolute terrors... were a Ninjas/Nature MM and a Nature/Water Defender. 

I know it *sounds* silly as all hell, but with the alternating and overlapping Nature buffs to keep those paper ninja nutballs alive they were more or less unstoppable.