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[Troo]

8 hours ago, Bopper said:

My guess is there will be extra damage from extra KB. Maybe implementing something similar to damage you get from falling, the harder you're knocked back to the earth, the harder damage you take.

 

But that's just a Hail Mary guess

Yes, that's my guess as well.

Of course I'm just imagining the most awesome thing possible.

[Troo]

10 hours ago, ScarySai said:

12 hours ago, Troo said:

Slipping power changes in as bug fixes with little to no explanation is a bit lame.

This is probably my #1 complaint with how they've been handling nerfs. Seems kinda sneaky, I don't like it.

 

If you're going to nerf it, just say how and why, don't try to justify it as a bug fix when it's clearly not what you're doing.

 

I don't think it is anything nefarious. I believe the intention is to clean up some mechanics, I get that.

 

However when they come for the other pseudo pets.. hopefully any effective changes will be made clear.

[ScarySai]

1 minute ago, Troo said:

I don't think it is anything nefarious. I believe the intention is to clean up some mechanics, I get that.

I don't necessarily think it's "nefarious", but it is sneaky, and I'm not exactly happy when changes are pushed through and poorly rationalized with this being used as a justification. 

[ROBOKiTTY]

Sleet started out at -30%. To adjust the secondary version downward to -22.5 or -26.25 would not be an unbiased normalization but a nerf. Envenom in poison, originally a mastermind exclusive, is at -30% for secondaries and -40% for defenders, in line with AT mods, so adjustment to cold and/or storm should be upward instead to stay consistent with it. Cold, storm, and poison all share a lack of a self-heal or significant self-protection like sonic has (more below), so they get higher -res numbers to aid in their more offensive nature. I don't think adjusting all -res powers to a uniform value is at all desirable, because it homogenizes them while ignoring intrinsic differences between sets.

 

Sonic resonance, on another note, seriously underperforms right now. Disruption field has an obnoxious 1.04/s endurance cost and does -30% res and nothing else on a defender. Liquefy has a base recharge of 5m for a 30s patch with completely underwhelming effects (on a defender, -35.7% def/tohit, KD patch, mag 2 hold, -fly/-jump, and -28.5% recharge). Its main saving grace is a mez protection bubble.

[Vanden]

39 minutes ago, ROBOKiTTY said:

Sleet started out at -30%. To adjust the secondary version downward to -22.5 or -26.25 would not be an unbiased normalization but a nerf.

Well, I'd say it'd be both.

[Parabola]

2 hours ago, ScarySai said:

I don't necessarily think it's "nefarious", but it is sneaky, and I'm not exactly happy when changes are pushed through and poorly rationalized with this being used as a justification. 

I don't see what is sneaky about a change being openly discussed in beta testing? And these changes have been well rationalized and aren't being pushed through, again they are being openly beta tested. Your disagreement with the changes doesn't make any of those things so. I'm sure your concerns have been well noted by now.

[Dan Petro]

3 hours ago, ROBOKiTTY said:

Sleet started out at -30%. To adjust the secondary version downward to -22.5 or -26.25 would not be an unbiased normalization but a nerf. Envenom in poison, originally a mastermind exclusive, is at -30% for secondaries and -40% for defenders, in line with AT mods, so adjustment to cold and/or storm should be upward instead to stay consistent with it. Cold, storm, and poison all share a lack of a self-heal or significant self-protection like sonic has (more below), so they get higher -res numbers to aid in their more offensive nature. I don't think adjusting all -res powers to a uniform value is at all desirable, because it homogenizes them while ignoring intrinsic differences between sets.

 

Sonic resonance, on another note, seriously underperforms right now. Disruption field has an obnoxious 1.04/s endurance cost and does -30% res and nothing else on a defender. Liquefy has a base recharge of 5m for a 30s patch with completely underwhelming effects (on a defender, -35.7% def/tohit, KD patch, mag 2 hold, -fly/-jump, and -28.5% recharge). Its main saving grace is a mez protection bubble.

Sonic is honestly a pretty big sleeper of a set.  The 1.04/s res debuff toggle is end heavy because of the lack of recovery but it also matches radiation's EF.  The set can easily and permanently keep -60% res up on a single target for defenders which is only beat by poison (colds can keep -60% up in aoe's with heat loss but not quite perma usually).  It can provide a MASSIVE 61% resistance to all damage but psi and it has the most versatile mez protection (self + able to stack on others) of any set out there.  The set at or near the top of three of the support stats and I don't think any other set does that (with things like heals, recharge / end and recovery buffs, damage, debuffs, etc.  The general purpose support sets like rad and time are great because they do a bit of everything, but sets like FF, Sonic, Empathy, etc do fewer things just at a much more potent level than just about everything else.  

 

I agree liquefy is underwhelming from a duration / recharge perspective, and that could certainly use a bit of a tweak.  But -36% base def and to hit is huge, you can essentially floor the to hit of an entire mob and cap out your parties to hit chances in most cases.  

[Jimmy]

23 hours ago, Darkneblade said:

As for twilight grasp not sure how to feel about this one, if heals going downwards can we atleast get increase in accuracy ? like 1.20x ? same as Transfusion?

Good observation - we'll take a look.

[Sovera]

All this DRAMA over a 7.5%. All this DRAMATIC arguing over SPREADSHEET DPS.

 

I'm amused.

 

In practical terms 90% of the game is melted under 10 seconds with or without a Tar Patch. I suppose that with a Tar Patch it would go down to 7 seconds. With a 'nerfed' Tar Patch it goes to 8 seconds.

 

(THE HUMANITY! WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?)

 

A 'hard' target that takes a minute to kill without Tar Patch goes down in 40-ish seconds with it. With a nerfed Tar Patch about 45 seconds? THE HU-... nvm.

 

 

I can assure -everyone- in this thread that in actual game play no one will even notice the difference. On a long run, with DPS meters running that tally the total damage and kill times, with 5 minute long boss kills and DPS checks, yeah, sure, 7.5% would be noticeable by theorycrafters min maxing a static comp. But here?

[macskull]

31 minutes ago, Sovera said:

All this DRAMA over a 7.5%. All this DRAMATIC arguing over SPREADSHEET DPS.

 

I'm amused.

 

In practical terms 90% of the game is melted under 10 seconds with or without a Tar Patch. I suppose that with a Tar Patch it would go down to 7 seconds. With a 'nerfed' Tar Patch it goes to 8 seconds.

 

(THE HUMANITY! WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?)

 

A 'hard' target that takes a minute to kill without Tar Patch goes down in 40-ish seconds with it. With a nerfed Tar Patch about 45 seconds? THE HU-... nvm.

 

 

I can assure -everyone- in this thread that in actual game play no one will even notice the difference. On a long run, with DPS meters running that tally the total damage and kill times, with 5 minute long boss kills and DPS checks, yeah, sure, 7.5% would be noticeable by theorycrafters min maxing a static comp. But here?

That's... not how math works. Adjusting the -res component from 30% to 22.5% is a 25% reduction in effectiveness, not 7.5%. This means that all the targets in Tar Patch will take 25% less damage - not just from you, but from everyone else as well.

[Apparition]

5 hours ago, Dan Petro said:

Sonic is honestly a pretty big sleeper of a set.  The 1.04/s res debuff toggle is end heavy because of the lack of recovery but it also matches radiation's EF.  The set can easily and permanently keep -60% res up on a single target for defenders which is only beat by poison (colds can keep -60% up in aoe's with heat loss but not quite perma usually).  It can provide a MASSIVE 61% resistance to all damage but psi and it has the most versatile mez protection (self + able to stack on others) of any set out there.  The set at or near the top of three of the support stats and I don't think any other set does that (with things like heals, recharge / end and recovery buffs, damage, debuffs, etc.  The general purpose support sets like rad and time are great because they do a bit of everything, but sets like FF, Sonic, Empathy, etc do fewer things just at a much more potent level than just about everything else.  

 

I agree liquefy is underwhelming from a duration / recharge perspective, and that could certainly use a bit of a tweak.  But -36% base def and to hit is huge, you can essentially floor the to hit of an entire mob and cap out your parties to hit chances in most cases.  

 

Part of the problem with Sonic is that it's whole shtick is resistance, both +resistance and -resistance.  Yet the Controller/Corruptor/Mastermind version of Sonic Resonance does 15% less -resistance than the Controller/Corruptor/Mastermind version of Cold Domination, and Cold Domination's -resistance is AoE.   Now, whether or not this is a problem with Sonic or with Cold Domination, that's a value call I won't make.  But it is a problem that makes Sonic seem less desirable on those ATs.

 

As for Liquefy, I'd just reduce its recharge time in half.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Apparition

[macskull]

6 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

Part of the problem with Sonic is that it's whole shtick is resistance, both +resistance and -resistance.  Yet the Controller/Corruptor/Mastermind version of Sonic Resonance does 15% less -resistance than the Controller/Corruptor/Mastermind version of Cold Domination, and Cold Domination's -resistance is AoE.   Now, whether or not this is a problem with Sonic or with Cold Domination, that's a value call I won't make.  But it is a problem that makes Sonic seem less desirable on those ATs.

 

As for Liquefy, I'd just reduce its recharge time in half.

I think reducing the end cost of Disruption, lowering the recharge of Liquefy, and speeding up the animation of Sonic Siphon would go a long way to helping that set out.

[Apparition]

4 minutes ago, macskull said:

I think reducing the end cost of Disruption, lowering the recharge of Liquefy, and speeding up the animation of Sonic Siphon would go a long way to helping that set out.

 

True, but conceptually I think there is an issue that a power set that specializes in resistance does less -resistance on most ATs than a power set that also offers -500% regen.

[ScarySai]

7 hours ago, parabola said:

And these changes have been well rationalized and aren't being pushed through

Hard disagree on both counts, though I suppose time will reveal the latter.

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

That's... not how math works. Adjusting the -res component from 30% to 22.5% is a 25% reduction in effectiveness, not 7.5%. This means that all the targets in Tar Patch will take 25% less damage - not just from you, but from everyone else as well.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the math would be 1.225/1.300 = 0.9423, which is about 6% less effective. But that is assuming there are no other -resistance debuffs stacked on the enemy, which in that case the impact is even less.

[Coyote]

10 hours ago, ROBOKiTTY said:

Envenom in poison, originally a mastermind exclusive, is at -30% for secondaries and -40% for defenders, in line with AT mods, so adjustment to cold and/or storm should be upward instead to stay consistent with it.

 

Powers do not have to have identical debuff values, if they differ in other major statistics, like Sleet's huge area, and the fact that it's stackable whereas Envenom is not.

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

All this DRAMA over a 7.5%. All this DRAMATIC arguing over SPREADSHEET DPS.

Assuming my math in the post above is correct, it's even less of an impact than that

[macskull]

Hey, a nerf is a nerf.

[Coyote]

1 minute ago, Bopper said:

1 hour ago, macskull said:

That's... not how math works. Adjusting the -res component from 30% to 22.5% is a 25% reduction in effectiveness, not 7.5%. This means that all the targets in Tar Patch will take 25% less damage - not just from you, but from everyone else as well.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the math would be 1.225/1.300 = 0.9423, which is about 6% less effective. But that is assuming there are no other -resistance debuffs stacked on the enemy, which in that case the impact is even less.

 

You're correct, Macskull made a conceptual error and said 25% less damage, when it would have been more accurate to say "25% less BONUS damage". Otherwise, by his phrasing, lowering the debuff to 0% would mean that the mob takes 0% damage, rather than 0% BONUS damage. Yes, lowering the debuff by 25% should end up with damage lowered in the neighborhood of your value, or even less against +level mobs since the level adjustment will lower the debuff. It will probably be about a 4-5% DPS decrease for most characters using the power.

[macskull]

Math got me again, it seems. I guess a better way to put it would be "the debuff is 25% less effective."

[Sovera]

4 minutes ago, macskull said:

Hey, a nerf is a nerf.

Yes. And that's what these ten pages have been about. Not that it is an insignificant nerf (and a bug fix rather than a nerf at that), but nerf, omg.

 

I'm all for a bit of forum drama if I have popcorn and the patience to wade through ten pages of 'gut feelings' and 'think of the children' and 'these devs will KILL COH IF THEY CONTINUE DOWN THIS PATH!' but lets at least listen to Bopper and his math.

 

6%, and now the devs have things clean behind the scenes to ease their work. Lets please move on.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Sovera

[Bopper]

To be fair, double stacking results in a 1.45/1.60 = 90% effectiveness. So if you're the only debuffer and you can permanently apply a double stack, the loss of DPS is at worst 10%. Again, assumes no other -resistanxe effects on the targets

[Troo]

17 minutes ago, Bopper said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the math would be 1.225/1.300 = 0.9423, which is about 6% less effective. But that is assuming there are no other -resistance debuffs stacked on the enemy, which in that case the impact is even less.

percent change versus effective rate? can you both be correct?  (1.300-1.225)/1.225 = 0.06122 and 1.300/1.225 = 1.06122 silly math

Edited March 16, 2020 by Troo

[ScarySai]

Anyone else getting Deja Vu?

 

Anyway, if we're discussing impact, this will affect solo players the most, particularly masterminds and illusion controllers, as both rely heavily on debuffs to produce good results, especially Illusion due to PA's nature.

 

I'm against it on principle, more or less. This doesn't affect me at all, but I'm not exactly supportive of changing what doesn't need to be changed, tar patch was fine.

 

I'm far from a purist, too. I rather like quite a bit of the changes made to the game. This isn't a good one, this doesn't improve the game or change 'da meta', it just kicks /dark characters in the balls.

Edited March 16, 2020 by ScarySai

[Coyote]

1 minute ago, ScarySai said:

Anyway, if we're discussing impact, this will affect solo players the most, particularly masterminds and illusion controllers, as both rely heavily on debuffs to produce good results, especially Illusion due to PA's nature.

 

I'm against it on principle, more or less. This doesn't affect me at all, but I'm not exactly supportive of changing what doesn't need to be changed.

 

My main's an Illusion/Storm, so I'm personally affected by this. I don't LIKE it, but I can see the reasons for it, and as you can see, I'm in favor of letting the Devs try to balance the game as best as they can. A better balanced game will result in better gameplay, even if it means that my favorite character loses some DPS. And to be honest, it's hard to argue given that I've met just two AVs in the whole game (though I'll see about Reichsman this week) whom I can't DPS down. That doesn't seem like a character who will be crippled by the nerf and end up WEAK. Frankly, Storm is a very strong set, and it will survive fine, and Cold will also be fine, and Sleet in the epic pool for Dominators was clearly far ahead of the other -Res debuffs available in epics.