Arch type normalization within class

[MsSmart]

HI:

 

     I been playing since the live days, and can tell you Homecoming is a great improvement in game friendliness towards the players.

 

     Yet, I can't shrug the feeling that old school or old time arch type choices tend to be in general less capable than the newer generations within the arch type.

 

     Take a Tank's Bio Armor, beautiful fun set, now compare it's overall abilities to say Fire Armor, and the difference is amazing, with fire being noticeably inferior. For example Fire gets no knock back protection at all, nor resistance to knock back, Bio armor gets 10 pts of knock back protection and 100% resistance to knock back, Fire gets no resistance to slow,  while Bio does. These are just a few examples, if fire wants toxic protection it is dependent on burn for it, while for Bio is part of a permanent defense power.

 

      When I look at Scrappers for instance some gets emergency heal and endurance boosting, others don't at all. Maybe those secondaries need a re-look?

 

      When I look at blasters some primaries have snipe, but not all do! I always felt Snipe was a blaster signature power. if you look at selections of cones, aoes, pbaoes, etc there are significant differences in availability between class primaries. Also I feel the damage of Blaster attack powers are simply to low, since most of their powers are rated moderate, a brute's tend to be High; which is strikes me as unfair for a brute has the entire suite of protections at very high levels and the blaster has none.

 

     So why not look at the various arch type primaries and make them equivalent with each other?

 

Sue

 

 

[Darkneblade]

Damage of blasters simply too low? 

Their whole point is damage...

Unless you mean electric blast

Edited May 15, 2020 by Darkneblade

[Psyonico]

First, Fire does get slow resistance, in temperature protection.

 

Without looking at IOs (which is the way the game is balanced) the "strongest" defensive set was released with the game (Stone Armor).  Yes, fire armor has its holes (so does every set) but in the case of fire, it makes up for it in powers like Fiery Embrace and Burn, meaning you do more damage than other defensive sets.  Dead Enemies do no damage.

 

As for blasters and snipes, I'm going to disagree that that's the "Signature Power" I think that goes to the T9 Nuke.  In which case there is a disparity.  On Live this disparity was balanced out by the -100% Endurance and -1000% recovery on the stronger nukes while sets like Assault Rifle and Archery didn't have that but had less damage.

 

Blasters out-damage brutes, end of sentence.  The "Low, Moderate, High, Extreme, etc.) system is out of date and very confusing, you should be looking at Damage per Second, which is available in the "More Info" section of the power's description or in the Enhancement window.  There are a few exceptions to this, but they make up for it in other ways.  a (Spines/Rad/Fire)/Fire brute will do more damage than a Dark/ blaster, but the blaster makes up for it with more control, while the brute sacrifices defense for that damage (again, this is all only considering SOs)

[Yoru-hime]

"Normalization" and "equivalent" are firm steps toward the sort of homogenization that we explicitly want to avoid. We WANT every set to have their own nuance and style. Some of the specific problems you note are outstanding complaints that some people would like to see addressed, but set balance is a tricky discussion, as noted in about half the threads here and it tends to be handled on a case by case basis rather than with a broad brush so we don't lose that variety. There are some underlying formulas about how powers should be balanced, but the level of normalization you're asking for would make the game a lot more bland.

 

CoH isn't perfectly balanced. No one will claim that it is, but making every Blaster set identical to each other with the exact same set of powers and each one does exactly the same damage and... What would be the point of playing various sets? Right now, we have choices. Am I willing to give up the snipe in exchange for the holds that Ice Blast offers? Do I want the click heals and endurance of Regen or the constant defense and recharge bonus of SR? All the power info is right there when you roll up so you know what you're getting. You may eventually change your mind, but that's what alts are for.

 

 

[MTeague]

36 minutes ago, Yoru-hime said:

CoH isn't perfectly balanced. No one will claim that it is, but making every Blaster set identical to each other with the exact same set of powers and each one does exactly the same damage and... What would be the point of playing various sets? Right now, we have choices. Am I willing to give up the snipe in exchange for the holds that Ice Blast offers? Do I want the click heals and endurance of Regen or the constant defense and recharge bonus of SR? All the power info is right there when you roll up so you know what you're getting. You may eventually change your mind, but that's what alts are for.

Sooooo many times this.  If some sets need *mild* *small* tweaks, perhaps. A couple % points here or there to an existing power maybe. But I would not want powersets to be completely redone, or to gain whole entire types of functionality that they never had before. Some sets are always going to be "better" than other sets by opinion / word-of-mouth / favored playstyle of more vocal players.  Sometimes, that opinion will reflect objective truth. Sometimes, it won't.  I enjoy playing "disfavored" sets and finding hidden gems that perform quite well if people would just try them out.

[SwitchFade]

There are so many things to say that contradict the OP, I don't know where to start.

 

SR is old school and still absolutely OP in end game.

 

Invuln is obajeezus unkillable.

 

Kinetics is old set, and top tier.

 

My head swims with more examples that refute the OP.

 

I'm very sorry, I cannot support any change suggested in the OP.

 

Hard no vote.

[r0y]

I think there are a lot of sets and powers that could benefit from a review.  From what I understand, there is a to-do list to bring some (or many) of them into a more "normalized" (for lack of a better word) consistency, so the disparity isn't so obvious.  At the same time, I agree that there needs to be such disparities for the thematic players, or at the very least "it's nice to have variety" - there will ALWAYS be a Flavor of the Month (FOTM), right now and for the entirety of Homecoming, it's been Bio Armor. 

 

Should all armor sets perform as well as Bio, or should Bio be re-tooled to bring it down to the rest (which is I think what was going to happen before the shut-down, but I could be wrong).  Maybe this is the question.  It could also be asked of Titan Weapons.

 

It would be nice to see the glaring, silly holes filled (e.g. dark's knockback), and there are some armor set powers that really could use a buff or something (e.g. Fire Armor - why do we rarely ever see it outside of farming?  That's why.)  The issue with the "new" armor of Bio, is that it is IDEAL.  It is a LAYERED system.  Defense, Resist, Regen, Absorb, Heal.  Very strong.  Some sets like SR (who someone actually thinks is "absolutely OP" in end-game, lol) is a one-trick pony.  Granted the scaling resistance stuff added near the time of shut-down (and I think buffed since SCORE) is helpful, but SR is not at all OP in the end-game, unless your idea of end game is council missions from a police scanner.

 

SR (and any purely defense set) suffers an issue that ALL defense suffers:  if it works, it's OP, if it doesn't, it's terrible.  Well, the game cannot have 100% defense, so there's always a case when defense fails and man, is it noticeable.  Unless you have layers backing it up.  If SR was to allowed work, it would be OP, but the massive amounts of defense debuffs and non-positional/non-typed damage really work it.  SR was the corner the devs painted themselves into, IMHO, you can tell by what they did for Ninjitsu (lol).

 

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by r0y

[MsSmart]

I read the posts, and some do make valid points and contributions and I agree there is a danger of making them all carbon copies of each other, and a question arise, how different they must be from each other. The so called additional damage a fire tank can do is that ample compnesation for no kb, no kb resistance, no slow resistance, no regen debuff resistance, no endurance debuff resistance?

 

While there is true that carbon copies characters is bad, does it have to be so drastic?

 

I also concede that the issue is not universal, never intended to indicate that, for example dark armor has no KB protection for instance...

 

Sue

[aethereal]

I mean, there's a reason why Fiery Aura is the premier armor set for farming -- the additional damage is large.  And as people mentioned to you, it has slow resistance.  Does Fiery Aura need regen debuff resistance?  Fiery Aura characters don't get significant amounts of regen.  Most sets get no end drain resistance.  KB resistance is easily closed with IOs.  The real problem with Fiery Aura is not, I think, its debuff resistance, it's that it's a pure-resist set with relatively low resistances to common damage types.

[MTeague]

14 minutes ago, r0y said:

I think there are a lot of sets and powers that could use with a review.  From what I understand, there is a to-do list to bring them all into some "normalization" (for lack of a better word) so the disparity isn't so strong.  At the same time, I agree that there needs to be such disparities for the thematic players, or just "it's nice to have variety" - there will ALWAYS be a Flavor of the Month (FOTM), right now and for the entirety of Homecoming, it's been Bio Armor. 

 

Should all armor sets perform as well as Bio, or should Bio be re-tooled to bring it down to the rest (which is I think what was going to happen before the shut-down, but I could be wrong).

 

It would be nice to see the glaring, silly holes filled (e.g. dark's knockback), and there are some armor set powers that really could use a buff or something (e.g. Fire Armor - why do we rarely ever see it outside of farming?  That's why.)  The issue with the "new" armor of Bio, is that it is IDEAL.  It is a LAYERED system.  Defense, Resist, Regen, Absorb, Heal.  Very strong.  Some sets like SR (who someone actually thinks is "absolutely OP" in end-game, lol) is a one-trick pony.  Granted the scaling resistance stuff added near the time of shut-down (and I think buffed since SCORE) is helpful, but SR is not at all OP in the end-game, unless your idea of end game is council missions from a police scanner.

 

SR (and any purely defense set) suffers an issue that ALL defense suffers:  if it works, it's OP, if it doesn't, it's terrible.  Well, the game cannot have 100% defense, so there's always a case when defense fails and man, is it noticeable.  Unless you have layers backing it up.  If SR was to allowed work, it would be OP, but the massive amounts of defense debuffs and non-positional/non-typed damage really work it.  SR was the corner the devs painted themselves into, IMHO, you can tell by what they did for Ninjitsu (lol).

 

 

My take on it is, "slot well, choose your powers well, and SR becomes just as layered".

• You should be able to build up a fair amount of resistance via set bonuses, certainly to at least the common damage types.
• and you don't even need to get hardcap resistance via set bonuses if you have 3 passives plus reactive defensive unique all giving you scaling damage resist
• between Preventative Medicine Absorb Proc, Panacea Proc, Power Transfer Proc, you can get quite a bit of passive healing that just happens for maintence to help maintain you between hits that do sneak in. 
• Physical Perfection and/or Medicine tree are quite doable to add to a build

Edited May 15, 2020 by MTeague

[r0y]

5 minutes ago, MTeague said:

My take on it is, "slot well, choose your powers well, and SR becomes just as layered".

• You should be able to build up a fair amount of resistance via set bonuses, certainly to at least the common damage types.
• and you don't even need to get hardcap resistance via set bonuses if you have 3 passives plus reactive defensive unique all giving you scaling damage resist
• between Preventative Medicine Absorb Proc, Panacea Proc, Power Transfer Proc, you can get quite a bit of passive healing that just happens for maintence to help maintain you between hits that do sneak in. 
• Physical Perfection and/or Medicine tree are quite doable to add to a build

The easiest thing I do is take Aid Self.  It's amazing with just 1 interrupt IO (0.6s interrupt) I can cast it even when I have a DoT on me.  That's more than enough, usually.  Where I see SR fail in end game is when one tries to tackle an AV (e.g. lord recluse, tyrant, anything on Magisterium, etc).

 

Of course one can slot to make up the discrepancies, but that's a bit of a different issue from the OP's some sets are nowhere near as good as Bio.  Because whatever you can do to help SR, you can do to make Bio and others even better.  However, I do understand your points and they are, of course, valid.

[MsSmart]

The reason for this post, was in part from my tanking experience and the different in feel from each of them.

 

I do not think it is correct to damn the fire tank to farming, they can do it safely but the DPS is not there to make it fun, that is the realm of brutes, to be honest...

 

But the push for it was Hami, I lately felt an urge or desire to tank hami. After talking to many veteran players in Everlasting the common consensus was that only two tank primaries Bio and dark could survive the Ham alpha strike when you first engage. The Bio is good to go as long as you have hybrid-melee, the dark needs hybrid melee and 4 slots filled with kb protection to achieve 16 kb protection.

 

So my objective is to make the other forms of tanking capable as well to do Hami, never been much of a fan for pidgeon holing a class or primaries to one and only one activity. I feel any arch type class should be able to do all the activitie4s advertised to be expected by the class regardless of primary selected, I do not have an issue with some being better at any niche but disagree at being incappable at any given class niche as well.

 

I do agree what I am asking is tough...

 

Sue

[aethereal]

Also, I haven't explored the numbers very well, but I play a /bio brute and as far as I can tell, bio's debuff resistance is awful.

[SwitchFade]

I'm going to leave this here, because I don't need to convince people when actual proof exists,

 

SR in end game built well becomes OP.. I don't need to quote multiple posts, threads, builds and math, it's been done 1,000 times.

 

All my SR toons facetank GM's, AV's and everything else, without aid-self, that's how good it is. Further, with massive debuff resist, there are few factions that have any effect. There's a reason SR is NOT on any npc, it would be stupid OP.

[r0y]

2 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Also, I haven't explored the numbers very well, but I play a /bio brute and as far as I can tell, bio's debuff resistance is awful.

Yeah, they do not have much other than Endurance Resist (85+%) and some slow (30%), but no defense debuff resists (which is why many take Ageless radial-side).

[aethereal]

Just now, r0y said:

Yeah, they do not have much other than Endurance Resist (85+%) and some slow (30%), but no defense debuff resists (which is why many take Ageless radial-side).

I also just played against the Shadows, and they floored my regen, so I don't know if it has some regen debuff resistance, but definitely not a ton.

[Snowdaze]

10 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

I'm going to leave this here, because I don't need to convince people when actual proof exists,

 

SR in end game built well becomes OP.. I don't need to quote multiple posts, threads, builds and math, it's been done 1,000 times.

 

All my SR toons facetank GM's, AV's and everything else, without aid-self, that's how good it is. Further, with massive debuff resist, there are few factions that have any effect. There's a reason SR is NOT on any npc, it would be stupid OP.

Plenty of mobs and foes have 1 or 2 SR abilities, but yes giving a whole suite would be a bad day for players under many circumstances.

[MTeague]

Now I feel an evil desire to make an AE map full of Dark Melee/SR and Dark Blast/SR mobs.

"How fast can this mission be voted off the island?"  😄

Edited May 15, 2020 by MTeague

[r0y]

1 minute ago, MTeague said:

Now I feel an evil desire to make an EA map full of Dark Melee/SR and Dark Blast/SR mobs.

"How fast can this mission be voted off the island?"  😄

Funny you should mention that... similarly, I am making a Dark Melee/SR tank right now...  Not sure what I'm going to do/where I'm going with it, but this is my initial build (not to thread-jack, but...)

 

Spoiler

http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1440&c=665&a=1330&f=HEX&dc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

 

[Naraka]

Personally don't mind improving old sets a bit but I'm against making them all the same.  Improving sets like Fiery Aura wouldn't be bad, but upping its resists and giving it KB protection is rather boring.  What if instead, a power the power Temperature Protection were changed to give KB resistance (not protection, so you'd still get knocked around) but pulse a buff on the user where, if they get knocked back, the explode in a PBAoE minor fire/smash attack + KU.  Call it Temperature Check or Backdraft or Backblast Area.

 

I also feel some sets are clear outliers and should probably have some of their specialities reigned in.  Sets like Time Manipulation, Bio Armor, Titan Weapons and possibly sets like Shield Defense and Nature Affinity too.  Maybe shifting some of their advantages into their mechanics rather than outright removing them.  Having more of the utility of Bio tied to the different mutually exclusive toggles, for example.

 

My main worry is that every set will play like every other set and I will feel less inclined to make alts at all.

[kenlon]

3 hours ago, r0y said:

SR (and any purely defense set) suffers an issue that ALL defense suffers:  if it works, it's OP, if it doesn't, it's terrible.  Well, the game cannot have 100% defense, so there's always a case when defense fails and man, is it noticeable.  Unless you have layers backing it up.  If SR was to allowed work, it would be OP, but the massive amounts of defense debuffs and non-positional/non-typed damage really work it.  SR was the corner the devs painted themselves into, IMHO, you can tell by what they did for Ninjitsu (lol).

 

Hah. Try Tanker SR sometime - that'll break you of those silly notions right quick. But even for the lesser versions of the set, you still have staggeringly good Defense Debuff resistance. With only a pair of common defense IOs in each power: 93.23% resist for Brutes and Scrappers, 82.87% for Stalkers. Defense cascades are not a problem for SR. And there's a lot less untyped damage around than there used to be.

[Doc_Scorpion]

5 hours ago, MsSmart said:

I do not think it is correct to damn the fire tank to farming, they can do it safely but the DPS is not there to make it fun

That is an opinion, not a fact - and there is a vast difference between the two.  Personally, I find both my fire/fire and fire/shield tanks loads of fun to play and neither are farmers.

 

[MTeague]

53 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

That is an opinion, not a fact - and there is a vast difference between the two.  Personally, I find both my fire/fire and fire/shield tanks loads of fun to play and neither are farmers.

 

I do not often see Fire Tanks / Brutes outside of AE.  But I'd certainly be willing to roll with 'em, and I'd bet most groups would have zero problems cruising along.

[Ukase]

7 hours ago, MsSmart said:

I read the posts, and some do make valid points and contributions and I agree there is a danger of making them all carbon copies of each other, and a question arise, how different they must be from each other. The so called additional damage a fire tank can do is that ample compnesation for no kb, no kb resistance, no slow resistance, no regen debuff resistance, no endurance debuff resistance?

 

While there is true that carbon copies characters is bad, does it have to be so drastic?

 

I also concede that the issue is not universal, never intended to indicate that, for example dark armor has no KB protection for instance...

 

Sue

I have more than a couple fire farm brutes. In the wake of the changes to tanks, I made a fire/fire tank, too. 
The truth is - I've got a rad/SS tank, too. And a rad/stone tank. And an rad/electric. (see a pattern there?) 

I've also got an invuln/stone tank. And honestly - while my fire tank isn't suitable for taunting hami without some external buffs, (the others are) I'll take my fire/fire for 90% of the content over the other tanks every single time. Why? Because the damage is clearly superior, and the defense and resists are the same. I don't worry about slows. Winter-Os take care of that easily. 

All the talk of burn..pfff...Healing Flames! Every 6 seconds, a full bar of health! Take that, Invuln with your requiring 200% recharge for perma-dull pain. 

KB? My fire tank uses glad armorX2, Overwhelming force, not to mention Blessings of the Zephyr in Super Speed, and a steadfast protection KB to go along with the res/def(all).  I'm not the least bit worried about kb for 90-95% of the game. In a pinch, I could take out my kismet accuracy and put in a karma KB. 

Hopefully, the HC devs will leave fire armor alone. 


As for blasters, I love my blasters. There's a reason why they're not "normalized" - and that's because we don't want fire primary to be identical in animation, damage, dps to ice primary. We need the powersets to be different. Choices are part of what made this game so compelling to play. 

I made a savage melee stalker a month or so ago. Seems an AWFUL LOT like claws to me. Same weaponry. I can't recall for certain, but a couple of identical, or very similar animations. I stopped playing it. I thought it would be ...more savage and less clawing. There's already enough similarities to suit me. Gotta say no. 

[Outrider_01]

Click below 😏

  

Spoiler

 

Guys, can I have it all?

-Defense like water, everything slips by

-Resists like Don Juan, nothing can turn away from the charm of taking one on the jaw; punch or a kiss

-Speed like the Flash and reflexes like Neo

-Regen that makes Wolverine look like he has a festering wound

 

Uh, than it would be City of Homogenization.  What about attack powers?

 

Pfft, if I got everything in the armor category with speed I can just spam brawl.

 

 

9 hours ago, MsSmart said:

For example Fire gets no knock back protection at all, nor resistance to knock back,

Burn.  Stand in it, enemy gonna knock you out.  BALANCE!  Extra damage aura ability, more weakness.  Though burn is redundant in a group, everything is dead before you cast and the immobilize protection is a joke since you would be stuck in the patch when its cast....so it like helps while in it but its killing anyway so the point of being immobilize in it only hurts the enemy from their own actions.

 

Quote

Dark armor stuff

Rainbow of resists across all damage types; though moderate

60.5% Psi resist, whats that?  Selling point!

Multipe control powers, Stun and Fear with some -tohit (yeah minor, but turns the set into a control hybrid)

PBAoE based self heal = 8100 hp self heal with an accuracy check; Is that right?  8k heal ?

 

Little knockback isn't going to hurt you, when you can take a little bit of everything in return.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Outrider_01