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[Apparition]

11 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

Except defs and corrs have almost the exact same number of characters in the march 2020 stats.

If you take out empathy (defs #1) and kinetics (corr #1) there are more corrs than defs being created. 

 

Neither emp or kin have anything to do with procs.

 

So either the player base hasn't gotten the memo that defs>corrs, or it isn't actually true outside of a very small number of scenarios.

 

Sonic blast might be an exception sometimes, but probably not all the time.

 

That # of level 50 Corruptors and # of level 50 Defenders isn't the whole picture.  Look at the number of play hours between level 50 Corruptors and level 50 Defenders, as seen here.  There is a disparity.

 

Of course it's an anecdote, but over the past several months I have seen many, many more Defenders at level 50 than I have Corruptors.  I notice these things while running raids and doing Incarnate trials.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Apparition

[Super Homer]

My memory from back in the day is that at launch Defenders and Controllers had the same (or very close) modifiers. Same was true for Tankers and Scrappers. This made both, defenders and tankers feel worthless, so they nerfed most modifiers for Controllers and Scrappers to be 75% as strong as the Defender equivalents. 

 

I dare bet money that a lot of the pseudopets that were "left alone" was not due to it being intended, but because it was a pain to hunt them down and update them. Pets dont have player mods, the only way they make them work is by manually changing every scale arbitrarily until they match the summoning AT. Not only is that very likely ridiculously tedious, its extremely error prone.

[Trickshooter]

43 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Analyzing these powers on a spreadsheet you can argue they should follow AT scaling like most powers do, but I'm not so sure, I think it was left alone because it worked, didn't break anything and wasn't too over/underpowered.

Paragon's decisions, despite how much they did care about the playerbase, were almost certainly 90% corporate-driven. Most of these powers ended up just copy/pasted without any adjustments simply because they had limited time and it was just faster to do that. And they stayed the way they were for so long typically because they just weren't allotted the time to fix them, usually because time spent fixing things was time spent not working on something profitable.

 

For example, I can tell you Trick Arrow was considered a set "in need of work" by the developers from as far back as 2008 (that's at least the first time it was acknowledged to me), but there was never time on the schedule for it. They couldn't really publicly comment on this kind of thing, because then it would be expected sooner rather than later. For a lot of people, this silence was "proof" that the devs felt it was fine. But the reality was that fixing these sorts of things was often more involved than turning a lower number to a higher number. Multiple departments had to be involved (powers, art, animation, QA, etc.), which meant time had to be scheduled, and that wasn't always possible. That's just how it is in a corporate office. Even when Synapse was finally able to semi-commit to working on TA (12/14/2011, I still have the message), it was still at least a year away before it could be put on the schedule.

 

tl;dr: It makes sense that we would think maybe these powers went unchanged because they were okay as is, but most likely it was just because taking the time to port things correctly was often at odds with the amount of time the old devs could actually work on them.

[ScarySai]

2 minutes ago, Trickshooter said:

tl;dr: It makes sense that we would think maybe these powers went unchanged because they were okay as is, but most likely it was just because taking the time to port things correctly was often at odds with the amount of time the old devs could actually work on them.

I understand that point, and it makes sense to me - I can relate on that front quite a bit, after all. Yet, I'm not entirely sold on it, either.

 

At the end of the day, we're all leaning on assumptions when we discuss 'what was intended' Speaking personally, I prefer it be left alone because I find the change to be not only a pointless indirect nerf that frustrates storm/dark users, but because this is hardly something that really needed to be given attention to begin with.

[Frosticus]

56 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

That # of level 50 Corruptors and # of level 50 Defenders isn't the whole picture.  Look at the number of play hours between level 50 Corruptors and level 50 Defenders, as seen here.  There is a disparity.

 

Of course it's an anecdote, but over the past several months I have seen many, many more Defenders at level 50 than I have Corruptors.  I notice these things while running raids and doing Incarnate trials.

Fair enough. 

That's unfortunate because when external buffs are present corrs deal a lot more damage.

 

I'd harbour a guess that defender popularity has more to do with ease of making them tough due to higher values on defensive/resistance shields. Plus you can shoot up to lvl 30 so fast now. It used to matter getting bitter ice blast at 18 vs 28. not so much anymore .

 

The latter two are why I've learned toward defenders lately. Combos I wanted to try were just too time intensive previously. 

 

At any rate. I've petitioned for a larger scourge range in the past and continue to.

 

 

Edited March 16, 2020 by Frosticus

[siolfir]

2 hours ago, Jimmy said:

And that’s a perfectly acceptable opinion to have, just keep in mind that it is possible to provide constructive feedback without the aggressive language on display in this thread. And I’m not just talking about you here.

 

We’ve got limited time to read through feedback and engage - generally that means we focus on level-headed posts, such as those by @Bopper, @oedipus_tex and @Galaxy Brain (and many others!) as that’s a significantly more effective use of our time. Even when they are being critical - which is frequent - they provide thoughtful feedback based on actual testing and analysis, instead is just emotional rhetoric.

 

TL;DR: Want your feedback to be considered? Be constructive. Don’t be rude.

 

 

Edit: well, okay, not really but it was fun to post. Also, can we un-nerf Heat Loss then? I haven't made a Cold on Homecoming, and until I saw 24% earlier in this thread I hadn't checked the numbers and just assumed it was still 30% from the 3 Colds I had before.

Edited March 16, 2020 by siolfir

[Trickshooter]

7 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Speaking personally, I prefer it be left alone because I find the change to be not only a pointless indirect nerf that frustrates storm/dark users, but because this is hardly something that really needed to be given attention to begin with.

I am no fan of nerfs, and if it were up to me I'd probably have done thing a little differently, but honestly I feel the opposite of this sentiment. It's always been unfair that Defenders have had to share these powers with ATs that were specifically designed to be weaker with buffs and debuffs. There is almost no similar stepping-on-toes between Defenders and Controllers when it comes to mez, or Defenders and Corruptors when it comes to damage. Even when Defenders and Corruptors shared a handful of psuedopets with Blasters, Corruptors still had a leg up on Defenders because their versions always made sure to include Scourge.

 

Most of the passion surrounding all of this in this thread is frankly a bit surprising to me. I know no one likes nerfs, but for years there were weekly "Why would you pick a Defender over..." threads on the old boards, and the point you would frequently see mentioned was "the difference between Defender values and [insert AT] values are so minimal that it makes almost no difference." You would not think those threads could have ever existed reading this thread.

 

To me, this does not seem like Homecoming messing with powers just because they're technically wrong. To me, this seems more like they have bigger plans, and implementing those bigger plans involves fixing/streamlining old systems, and some of these powers got away with things because of those old systems, and the new systems just happen to reveal that these powers were technically wrong.

[siolfir]

13 minutes ago, Trickshooter said:

There is almost no similar stepping-on-toes between Defenders and Controllers when it comes to mez, or Defenders and Corruptors when it comes to damage.

Defenders and Dominators have the same modifiers for mez, so that would be the overlap instead of Controllers, and there are a few Defender builds using Sonic Blast that will "outdamage" Corruptors - usually leveraging mid-level damage buffs with resistance debuffs. Kinetics is a notable exception because of the lower damage cap, so a Corruptor will pass them fairly easily, but Rad/Sonic was a commonly-touted build that did as much or more for Defenders, depending on Accelerated Metabolism's uptime and whether or not you took Assault. Those comparisons were all also while solo, since as mentioned earlier additional buffs will tend to favor the higher base damage, especially when paired with a higher damage cap.

 

Personally I've always felt that the Corruptor modifiers should be equal to or stronger than the Defender modifiers on debuffs, and should be weaker than the Defender modifers on buffs - which they already are - to make the names actually mean something. It's not worth jumping into a trench over, but it was an "it would be nice if" thought I had when I first started. I tend to make a Corruptor or a Defender based on the power order more than anything else, since I like exemplaring to run lower-level TFs and arcs and want certain powers available for them, unless it's Kinetics when I go for Corruptors just to get the higher damage cap.

[ScarySai]

38 minutes ago, Trickshooter said:

Most of the passion surrounding all of this in this thread is frankly a bit surprising to me. I know no one likes nerfs, but for years there were weekly "Why would you pick a Defender over..." threads on the old boards

Most people on the old boards weren't running IO builds, much less purple/pvp min/maxed ones. There was also a fair share of frankly clueless people, among which were usually the types to make those threads.

 

Now a maxed build is much more obtainable and information is much easier to get. It doesn't surprise me at all that people aren't the same as back then, mostly.

Edited March 16, 2020 by ScarySai

[kenlon]

It's really good to see that the devs are focusing on addressing the mountain of technical debt that Paragon had accrued before shutdown. Making all the powersets conform to the intended AT modifiers is an unmitigated good, since it means all sets are operating on an equal level, rather than some arbitrarily behaving differently because someone did a copy and paste without correcting the values way back in the Before Times.

 

If this does significantly nerf an AT/powerset, and needs to deviate from the AT modifiers for a specific reason, then that change can be made when testing proves that there's a problem. Going "NUMBER GET SMALLER FORUM USER SMASH" blindly the moment that a power is changed is not good for the long-term health of CoH Homecoming, and we need to resist the urge to do so.

 

EDIT: . . . and now I'm tempted to make a SS/Willpower brute named FORUM USER. Dammit, I don't need more alts!

Edited March 16, 2020 by kenlon

[Mikewho]

1 hour ago, Frosticus said:

Fair enough. 

That's unfortunate because when external buffs are present corrs deal a lot more damage.

 

I'd harbour a guess that defender popularity has more to do with ease of making them tough due to higher values on defensive/resistance shields. Plus you can shoot up to lvl 30 so fast now. It used to matter getting bitter ice blast at 18 vs 28. not so much anymore .

 

The latter two are why I've learned toward defenders lately. Combos I wanted to try were just too time intensive previously. 

 

At any rate. I've petitioned for a larger scourge range in the past and continue to.

 

 

Agree with all this. A larger scourge range would solve a lot of the issues I had in mind.

[Grouchybeast]

4 hours ago, Not Horus said:

Is there a sudden interaction that's making these sets overpowered after 10 years? No. They're not oppressive or even all that common so why even bother to devote the resources to it. There are sets that could use the same level of effort to be made usable instead of rotting in the gutter(forcefield)

In this case, though, it's true that every set in the game with pseudopets is already getting the same level of effort and attention applied.

 

Every set is part of this rebuilding of the pseudopet system.  Every set is being moved over to the new system where pseudopets intrinsically inherit the numbers from their parent AT.  There is no singling out of these particular two or three powers, because the tiny handful of visible changes are literally incidental to the substantial amount of code work being done across the board.

[ABlueThingy]

I said this in a different thread but it really belongs here.

 

On 3/15/2020 at 3:12 PM, ABlueThingy said:

 

It looks like, to me, the Homecoming team is trying to gut and rearrange the bowels of CoH's backend into something coherent so that it can be stable and easy to update.  This is part of what they said they were doing during The Dark Times™.  It's a long and arduous process and it looks awful when being preformed on a live game with people in it.

 

The Pseudo-Pet change is a good one I think, that was a nasty bit of kludge to make the game work.  With time and care I'm sure a better method can be devised.  I mean, even the OG Devs came up with better ways.  They just didn't have the ability/time to back port them to the older sets.  Now that we do... we should.  CoH's code is a NIGHTMARE of random hardcoded info, tables that bleed everywhere.  I remember one time they changed something about Cape physics and it broke the tram system back in the live game.

 

How? Why?  God knows.  But cleaning up all this code, making it make SENSE so you can track problems and actually fix them instead of building elaborate work-arounds should be the goal.

 

Buuuuut.  You end up with weird consequences. Cleaning up the AT mods and Psudopets means some powers are losing or gaining relative strength. Not necessarily because they think the powers are OP or UP or anything.  They are just now reset to a baseline, universal, rule. Now if Controller /Dark or Corr /Dark are doing poorly... you can change them.  THAT is worth the nerf, I feel. 

 

GOING BACK TO THE BEFORE TIMES...

 

TAR PATCH. Also Twilight's Grasp, but Tar is easier to talk about because it has a single nice round number.  Assuming you ignore the -speed. Which I am.

 

Tar Patch was just always -20% res for everyone, no AT mods. Because it actually summoned a static pet that cast the real "tar patch." When you cast Controller/Dark/Tarpatch it summoned "Tarpatch.pet" which was a specific NPC that cast "Tarpatch debuff aura."  If you cast Defender/Dark/Tarpatch it summoned "Tarpatch.pet" which-- etc.  For every PC and NPC that cast it.  Didn't matter what version of the power you cast, you always summoned the same tarpatch.pet.  Now later on they did find ways to make it so each AT summoned their own version of the pet but that was by STARTING with that assumption and building it that way from the base.

 

It's much harder to go and un-code the original stuff.  It's not as easy as just making a new TarpatchDEF.pet and rewiring Def to summon that new one.  I mean, you could.  But then any NPC that was using the Def version would ALSO summon this new pet. So you'd have to go through and alter them to use a new pet.  And the new pets all have to call on new powers with modified stats.  And this is true for every psudopet they didn't make exceptions for.  Which was... all of the original ones.

 

So when the time DID come for that and they had Corruptor and MM who were going to get this new power.  They had to decide if they wanted to go through and prune and clean all the Psudopets to force them into having AT mods(They couldn't actually make them respect AT mods they would just manually adjust the numbers) or just... screw it.  It wasn't THAT big of a deal at the time.  And making new versions of the pet meant more crap code tangled across a dozen tables, diagnosing any issues would be hard.  You'd have to dig through all these redundant copies of the power.  And it just... wasn't worth it.

 

I remember this argument though.  I had played a Dark Def and a Robo/Dark MM.  The fourms complained quite a bit that it kind of made Defender versions of Dark feel kinda crappy, all the powers should obey the AT mods or else what is the point.  My Dark MM's buffs/debuffs were just mostly the same as my Defender's.  But the MM had three times the damage, easily.  But at that point Posi had said... they can't buff the Def version of Tar Patch.  It's literally the same power as MM and Corr versions.  You buff one you buff all. (also all the NPC versions).

 

(this is why the suggestion to just buff the Def version is misunderstanding the issue... until now they couldn't do that)

 

So we all just kinda... bleh, fiiiine.  At the time "Psudopet" was the dev's "A wizard did it."  It kind of trumped all balance discussions.  "Why is TA garbo?" "A wizard did it."

 

Homecoming has made it so now all versions of Dark Miasma can be more easily balanced individually.  AND without making a bunch of stupid clone powers, it looks like.  But that means that all the Tar Patches and Twilight Grasps snapped back to AT mod shape, a nerf for most.  If they need to be buffed individually now they can be.  Like, I don't think Any */Dark MMs are going to really suffer.  But maybe */Dark Corrs will need help.  Now you can fix one without breaking the other.

 

At least, I think.  I've not seen what changes they made to the code.

 

[Tater Todd]

To touch on what a lot of posters here have already said I didn't learn about proper slotting until very late in the game's life so a lot of my old forum arguments were definitely on the "Why would you bring a Defender along?" train.  Now that I'm older, I'm able to see the true value of a Defender and I'm able to step back and see how buffs and debuffs quantify a teams survival and kill speed exponentially in comparison to "late game-watered down support" and slightly higher blast damage.  When IO Sets, procs and Incarnate abilities are factored in I think Defenders take the win.  Exemp'ing down for trials and events seems to be even more common place than it ever was on Live in my opinion; so that's yet another reason why I find Defenders to be a better choice (which is saying something because I'm very much a "Redside, 'till I die" kind of person).

 

 

Mastermind Henchmen AI Updates: Testing

Mastermind Henchmen set to Go To are now free to move within a 30' radius of the selected position in order to attack foes.

• I tested this out on the Mastermind primary I'm most familiar with...Mercenaries and I feel like it should be reduced down to anywhere between 20' - 25' radius due to some issues with pets getting KB'd down hill out of my line of sight.  This didn't often but it was a concern

 

Call of the Sandman: Chance to Heal Self: Testing

This proc should no longer trigger more than once when used on AoE powers

PPM increased from 2 to 3

• This proc change will affect a lot of builds in a negative way...mostly Powerset Combos like Ice/Ice Tankers since this Proc helps with the overall survival issues of Ice Armor.  The proc change also affects powersets that make use of "dead weight" sleep powers in Blast and Controller sets for example.  I think a better way of going about this is to reduce the incoming heal by a certain percentage.  That way it doesn't make the proc pretty much useless to a decent amount of folks which is the way it is now currently on Aeon/Brainstorm.  The current beta change makes the proc only useful to Electrical themed powersets. 

Corruptor > Dark Miasma > Tar Patch: Testing

• The Corruptor version in Tar Patch is now showing the updated Tar Patch values correctly.  I've seen no issues here so far.
• The proposal of increasing the Accuracy of Twilight Grasp to me sounded a bit absurd and I laughed it off but after further review I can't believe I'm saying this but I agree.  I was looking at what Twilight Grasp "brings to the table" "in an vacuum".  When you factor in the fact that Dark Miasma is littered with some of the slowest activations and buffs/debuffs in the game it makes sense to up the accuracy a bit to compensate.

Again, I'm not a fan of these changes to procs and support sets but I am able to see that there's a bigger picture here and I'm looking forward to what that may be.  I also trust that the HC Devs know how this will change the playing field and they will address those issues in due time and I appreciate you all for letting us express of frustrations and concerns with the past, current and future changes.
 

[Myrmidon]

7 hours ago, ScarySai said:

I understand that point, and it makes sense to me - I can relate on that front quite a bit, after all. Yet, I'm not entirely sold on it, either.

 

At the end of the day, we're all leaning on assumptions when we discuss 'what was intended' Speaking personally, I prefer it be left alone because I find the change to be not only a pointless indirect nerf that frustrates storm/dark users, but because this is hardly something that really needed to be given attention to begin with.

Once they have the work done for all of this, they can always adjust the power values if needed, Sai. Tankers suffered through months on live of having all of their attacks miss because of a Gauntlet bug, this is nothing but a speed bump in comparison.

[ScarySai]

39 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

Once they have the work done for all of this, they can always adjust the power values if needed, Sai. Tankers suffered through months on live of having all of their attacks miss because of a Gauntlet bug, this is nothing but a speed bump in comparison.

I'm going to try and be a bit more optimistic despite my doubts and misgivings, though I won't exactly be happy if it ends up being a problem and goes unresolved for months - I'll wait for the what-if to happen before worrying too much about it.

 

P.S: Remove taunt from gun drone, please.

Edited March 17, 2020 by ScarySai