All enemies have global chance to proc +to-hit

[aethereal]

10 minutes ago, Ukase said:

A proc in various NPCS would not be noticed by me. They either hit you or they don't. In the chaos of battle, I hardly think when I take that 1700 pt slam from Bobcat in Tin Mage that I'm going to recognize why the hit occurred. 

Why not just raise all the npc ToHit 5%? We'd never notice, not really. Except the farmers who were on the margins of soft cap. 

A global increase in to hit would create pressure to build towards a 50% defense target instead of a 45%.  It would increase the value of the few sets that can reasonably reach 50% and diminish the value of hybrid sets (it would also increase the value of pure-resist mitigation techniques).  I think that making the incarnate content have a big global to-hit bonus was a bad idea.

 

Having something where going over the 45% defense target has decreased returns, but not no returns, doesn't create the same strong pressure to just build to higher defense.

[ShardWarrior]

On 7/11/2020 at 8:08 PM, Xanatos said:

No.

I think that says it all in this case and I agree.  No thank you.

[MsSmart]

Sweetie, I am so against this suggestion...

 

When it it get for this game the concept of challenge, it is mostly at the expense of the support classes, their only means of survival are very high levels of defense; which you are so eager to deny them their main survival means.

 

Why not suggest something that does something at the expense of melee types, for a change? Like attacks that ignore resistance?

 

The game when it gets to challenge is horribly unbalanced, please don't make it worse.

 

Sue

[Sakura Tenshi]

@aethereal I won't say I'm completely opposed to this because I made a similar suggestion, but you CANNOT JUST raise the tohit of enemies across the board without some player compensation. Yes, Defense is king, but do you know what makes Defense king? Sets with incredible resistances too. Willpower, Invulnerability, BioArmor, Rad, etc. all have powerful resistances and other mitigations and get only better through softcapping defenses. You raise softcap by adding accuracy to enemies and guess what? those powersets will still be strong. You know what sets will be screwed over hard? Super Reflexes, Ninjutsu, Energy Aura, Ice Armor, and other sets with negligible if any resistances (trust me, I've gotten /nin's resistances up to around 35% across most damage types, still drop fast without defense) because you just kneecapped their primary survival means.

 

So if you wanted to just stonewall non-melee ATs from being able to take on higher difficulty mobs, that's one thing, if you want to make it so high resist/regen/absorb can't just body all content thoughtless, that's understandable, but doing this and telling defense based characters "lol, just use your tier 9 at the very beginning of a spawn" is an awful idea because you're basically dragging out gameplay by forcing them to be on constant stop and go as they have to balance themselves around their crashes between mobs. And if they happen to be stuck fighting for longer than the 2 minutes you get? Well, it doesn't sound like you care so why worry?

[Patti]

What about dropping the defense caps for non melee and giving all defense powers a little defdebuff res to compensate for not being able to reach the same levels of defense?

[Doomguide2005]

15 hours ago, Patti said:

What about dropping the defense caps for non melee and giving all defense powers a little defdebuff res to compensate for not being able to reach the same levels of defense?

The problem there that jumps out at me is both the Incarnate cap and the 'soft' cap are in fact soft caps.  There are Defense Hard caps that already exist and vary by AT.  None I believe can currently be reached solo ... maybe an SR Tank could get there or close with Elude + set bonuses + Incarnate powers etc.  But for Tanks the Hard cap is 225% iirc and that is still way beyond the I-cap or "soft-cap"

 

My answer would be bring on the Battalion.  Make them smart foes (AI wise) that bring buffs and debuffs to the battle where the players need to team and can't just zerg after doing so

Edited July 26, 2020 by Doomguide2005
Typos

[MsSmart]

4 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

The problem there that jumps out at me is both the Incarnate cap and the 'soft' cap are in fact soft caps.  There are Defense Hard caps that already exist and vary by AT.  None I believe can currently be reached solo ... maybe an SR Tank could get there or close with Elude + set bonuses + Incarnate powers etc.  But for Tanks the Hard cap is 225% iirc and that is still way beyond the I-cap or "soft-cap"

 

My answer would be bring on the Battalion.  Make them smart foes (AI wise) that bring buffs and debuffs to the battle where the players need to team and can't just zerg after doing so

The problem with your suggestion, is at the end it really tears into the support classes far more disproportionately than the melee classes, as it is, every time I go into a tough TF, it is the support classes that are doing the majority of the "dirt-napping". While I embrace the concept of more challenge, it should for now be more focused on the melee classes, who are the ones clamoring for it anyway, and give the abused support classes a little respite.

 

Some examples of how developers historically figured challenge, lets give all mobs aoe status effects and make super sure that support has no protections against them, and then lets spam those! Resistance (which is capped) at their very best halves the duration of the status effect, which is pointless, since it gives plenty of time for the mob to murder the support class. How does this challenge the melee?

 

Ambushes! Oh yeah, where they do they usually spawn at? Correct at the rear of the party! Who is at the rear of the party? That is right the support classes, why? They have no protections versus status effect, laughable damage resistance, and poor defenses (until mega IO slotted, if the player even knows how to do that); so they are not going to be leading the melee at any time!, and have little choice but to be at the back. So who gets surprised hit first? That's right the support types, where is the melee challenge in this?

 

As I said, more challenge is actually needed, especially since the incarnate system, there really needs to be much more incarnate material to drive challenge. Also needed are more challenge mechanisms that really, really, really needs to focus on melee. I have tanks, that are essentially invulnerable, I jump with them into any TF or scenario and don't even care what and how many I am fighting, they can't touch me! I don't even need support while at it, I can heal myself, recharge myself, give myself damage boosts, debuff my opponents, and what not. I may not kill as quick as a blaster, but frankly they don't kill that much faster than me, in fact I can do it so well, that it empowers me to farm efficiently with them, when I am inclined to, so damage is actually rather good is it not? So you all tell me, where is the fabled game balance? I thought in the beginning of live that melee sacrificed DPS for the sake of protections versus damage, and the support sacrificed protections for the sake of effects and damage; a balance that frankly is totally out of whack...

 

Sue

[ImpousVileTerror]

Bringing on more challenging content would absolutely be ideal!  Sadly, I think it's also one of the tallest orders to place on the current Dev Team here at Homecoming.  Something of that scale and magnitude would be on par with a full expansion, and then have the added issue of potentially being content that isn't accessible to all players, immediately downgrading its priority compared to other projects which have a broader appeal and impact.  I mean, unless the Homecoming Devs also deploy a change to allow for limited Incarnate participation at -all- levels, anyway.  I don't see that happening without some really convincing demonstrations made on the benefits of removing those gates.

And, of course, new content doesn't change that there is old content which gets absolutely steamrolled when bringing Invention Set Bonuses in to play.  Not that I personally see that as a problem (I'm withholding judgement until I get more evidence one way or another), but it's definitely a problem to plenty of the players who frequently bring up concerns about overall difficulty.

 

A reason against Defense Cap changes, in addition to the one Doomguide mentioned, is that Defense is not solely a tool used by Melee Sets.  Time Manipulation, Cold Domination, and (the classic) Force Fields Sets are all examples of times where "squishies" have Powers which rely on Defense.  One could arguably say that a Power like Personal Force Field would also increase the Defense Cap of the squishy while using it, but that adds more work and another point of failure if things get buggy.  The amount of work it would take to get in there and change each Defense Power, and then rebalance them again and again until they're JUST right would be pretty time intensive on development.

 

Of course, that's not meant to discourage anyone from spitballing more ideas!  The whole situation is a tangled one and, without the Homecoming Team publishing a design document delineating their specific intent regarding the issues presented by the community, we're all less taking shots in the dark to see what ideas will stick.  All the same, I think it's better to take the shots in the dark than no shots at all.  Maybe we'll hit upon an idea that is either just so crazy it'll work, or so simple that no one's expressed it yet.

[Doomguide2005]

@MsSmartNot exactly, i don't really think the idea of a global to hit buff is needed.  The nasty groups, the tough content is there if wanted.  The Battalion is or would have been a very specific enemy faction the Live devs were apparently planning, "The Coming Storm".  My vote is essentially no buff bring on the storyline, the future ... which was intended it seems to challenge incarnates and the material developed for them.

[Doomguide2005]

And if support classes are suffering ... that's a different issue.  Nothing, I repeat, nothing in this game is tougher to crack than a grouping of support characters supporting each other.  And I personally think that's part of the issue the tendency to build to solo not team even on support classes.

[kiramon]

On 7/12/2020 at 1:21 AM, DreadShinobi said:

The issue isn't defense, clearly resists are the problem. Instead of a tohit buff, make it so all enemies have a chance to critically hit, that deals triple damage and ignores 100% of your resists. So when your defense fails you actually feel it. Layered defenses are far too broken, it's time those council marksmen learn to snipe. 

I think this is pretty key.

 

as someone who soft caps defense on pretty much every character I play (and I’m at like 17 fully IOd characters); yes my soft capped can go in, but if they don’t have resists up there too they’re much more likely to face plant. are they tanky? I guess but I don’t even consider them to be tanky as much as survivable- I think mobs  Do too much damage if you don’t have enough defense/resists and not enough if you do - but I also can tell you that if I take my 45% all positional crab and stand him next to my fire farmer (45% fire, capped fire resist) you can see the difference — like, it’s pretty huge. Now she can still live and doesn’t die, but Having 50% resists compared to capped is significantly more dangerous.

 

that being said, it actually makes me appreciate what my sonic resonance characters bring to a team, seeing how rare +resist buffs are. In fact, if you add psi to sonic >i< would consider it an extremely strong set, and I already think highly of it (since I have 7 sonic resonance 50s lol).

 

Anyways, I do think we can get too strong with IOs, but I think we’re way too weak without them. But that’s a perception of the gameplay mostly, since were no longer forced to rely on teammates to be strong. So a decision has to be made - do we want to have these strong solo characters or do we want to literally make it so 4/8 content requires a team TO SURVIVE. If so, that’s when we should start looking at how to make things tougher. Until we decide that, we really can’t make any changes.

 

sooo

1. decide at what level we want defenses/resistances to fail (I think that vs +0 we should be capable without IOs, +2 with IOS, Etc)

2. Decide if we want everyone to be able to “live” while taking hits 1- the original game wasn’t built for blasters and other damage ATs to take hits like they do, but How much of a death sentence do we want that to be?

 

 

if you play the real content of the game, standard leveling without IOs or trust fund characters, and your whole team is that way, the original team dynamics come into play a lot more...

 

outside of all of that, if you play with monitoring of your defenses, most groups shred it down pretty good without DDR. 

[aethereal]

I think people aren't doing a very good job of understanding the level of additional challenge that this change would bring:  not very much.

 

A little, certainly.  It might be that people would want to turn down their notoriety from +4/x8 to +3/x6 or so, depending on exactly how much they relied on exactly-at-softcap mitigation.  But the effect of this change is that a few enemies would be mildly more likely to hit you at softcap, after the initial alpha.  It's nothing like the level of additional power that a global +5% (or even +3%) to hit buff would bring.

 

It's not intended to be primarily a rebalance or an additional challenge change.  It's just supposed to make there be less of a sharp threshold from "increasing returns to def" as you go from like 35->45 to "almost no additional return to def" from 45 on.  And in a world where this change was added, the primary threat to softcapped squishy characters wouldn't be whatever random minions procced the to-hit bonus, it would continue to be defense debuffers and cascading failure.

[skoryy]

8 hours ago, aethereal said:

I think people aren't doing a very good job of understanding the level of additional challenge that this change would bring:  not very much.

As I learned from Arcana back in the day, it actually is pretty significant.  The difference between 40% and 45% defense is you're getting hit twice as often.  30% and you're getting hit four times as often.  That's a significant difference especially if your only mitigation is defense.  

[FrauleinMental]

8 hours ago, aethereal said:

I think people aren't doing a very good job of understanding the level of additional challenge that this change would bring:  not very much.

Then why suggest it at all?

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, FrauleinMental said:

Then why suggest it at all?

I mean, I explained that in the post you just quoted, in the part you didn't quote?

[aethereal]

3 hours ago, skoryy said:

As I learned from Arcana back in the day, it actually is pretty significant.  The difference between 40% and 45% defense is you're getting hit twice as often.  30% and you're getting hit four times as often.  That's a significant difference especially if your only mitigation is defense.  

 

It's not really that much difference because that only applies to even-conn minions, and other enemies have a higher than 5% chance to hit you at soft-cap.  But sure.  The 5% of even-conn minions who procced this to-hit bonus would have triple the chance to hit you on their second and third and maybe fourth attacks, if they survived that long.

 

If ten such minions attacked you four times each for 100 damage each, without this change you'd expect to take 200 damage (two hits).  With this change, you'd expect to take about 250 damage.

 

It's not totally insignificant, and if you were riding the ragged line of your challenge rating, you'd expect to have to lower your challenge rating.  But it's a long way from giving everyone +5% to hit, especially when you consider that most minions and lieutenants do not survive long.

[FrauleinMental]

23 hours ago, aethereal said:

I mean, I explained that in the post you just quoted, in the part you didn't quote?

I just object to the rhetorical device.  You say it isn't meaningful and then outline a meaningful change.  Not everyone has an awesome enough toon to run +4/x8 right now.

[FrauleinMental]

23 hours ago, aethereal said:

 

It's not really that much difference because that only applies to even-conn minions, and other enemies have a higher than 5% chance to hit you at soft-cap.  But sure.  The 5% of even-conn minions who procced this to-hit bonus would have triple the chance to hit you on their second and third and maybe fourth attacks, if they survived that long.

Some of us still fight even-conn minions from time to time, contrary to current meta.  And the change you're proposing hits those characters harder than the one you hope to balance.

[aethereal]

54 minutes ago, FrauleinMental said:

Some of us still fight even-conn minions from time to time, contrary to current meta.  And the change you're proposing hits those characters harder than the one you hope to balance.

If you are softcapped and are fighting even-conn opponents, you have room to spare on your durability.  You will not notice this difference.  And if you aren't softcapped or near to it, you will see essentially no additional damage from this change.

Edited July 28, 2020 by aethereal

[RCU7115]

If it's global proc then imagine how quickly your defense will drop when you run into a group of baddies that debuffs your defense when they hit. In 10 seconds you could have a cascade failure before you even realize and your dead. Oh well then use an inspiration but that does you no good if you happen to have run out or are unable to combine into a purple becuase you happen to have 2 of everything but different sizes. 

It's already been stated and the numbers prove that 40% defense is twice as weak as 45% def which is HUGE. 

[HelenCarnate]

What you are suggesting is an occasional 300% increase to damage taken for a short period of time to those right at the soft cap with a greater chance against LT and Boss mobs?  Hard pass.

[AR!ES]

excuse me do I have to download the actually game to play or just the homecoming server thanks

[aethereal]

46 minutes ago, HelenCarnate said:

What you are suggesting is an occasional 300% increase to damage taken for a short period of time to those right at the soft cap with a greater chance against LT and Boss mobs?  Hard pass.

200% increase from damage taken from a single even-conn minion, sure.  Which would change that minion from "not able to budge your green bar" to "not able to budge your green bar."

 

Go have a softcapped character stand in a group of three white minions.  That's the overwhelming power you'd be facing for ten seconds.

[HelenCarnate]

1 minute ago, aethereal said:

200% increase from damage taken from a single even-conn minion, sure.  Which would change that minion from "not able to budge your green bar" to "not able to budge your green bar."

 

Go have a softcapped character stand in a group of three white minions.  That's the overwhelming power you'd be facing for ten seconds.

Then do the same for higher level boss mobs, many of which also have defense debuffs. 

[JayboH]

I very much dislike this idea because you can die to RNG without the ability to react or outplay it in any way.