Melee Support AT concepts

[JayboH]

I know - the topic has appeared multiple times over the years, here's a few ideas:

 

Attack primary / armor secondary

 

Scrapper-level armor/health/caps

 

Primary damage does somewhere in the neighborhood of dominator assault and non-vigilance defender numbers.

 

Primary grants AOE buffs/heals/debuffs upon enemy hit only around the caster (or enemy) with a few exceptions:  build up attack which is in every primary and only grants it to the caster, like Claw's Follow Up.  The buffs/heals also affect the caster.  The heals would likely come from the second attack and would likely be a bit weaker than a corruptor's, but since the cooldowns are the same from other melee AT's they will be typically casting these weaker heals more often.  Debuffs would have a smaller radius than the heals/buffs.

 

A support bar gets filled (like dominator/sentinel) and the player can click a special ability that spends the bar that grants a buff/debuff in a large aoe around the player that lasts a decent duration.  This buff/debuff can only be one or the other dependent on a selector switch (like Dual Pistols/Staff.)  Whatever selection the player chooses will appear on the buff bar as an inherent gray icon with a green or red border.  This buff/debuff ability can vary between sets - like electric melee can grant recovery or debuff recovery, dark melee could grant to-hit or debuff to-hit, staff could grant an endurance discount or a recharge debuff, etc.

 

 

The buff/debuff special ability can be perma if the player continues to successfully attack enemies and recasting it before the previous buff/debuff wears off.  The heals/buffs/debuffs from your primary are always present - this Special ability is a separate ability on top of what was mentioned.

 

Positioning is intentionally a big deal with this AT by design.  Players would likely want to be within the various AOE radius of the Melee Support to take advantage of the primary support and the special ability if the Melee Support has it switched to buffs (since the inherent icon can be seen on the buff bar for the player by anyone in a standard team.)

 

Super teams of all Melee Support would likely do fairly well.

 

Think Paladin class or for a more-recent development, look at Brigitte from Overwatch.  Buffs/debuffs cannot stack - they just refresh or restart the duration if used repeatedly within the duration window.

 

Just tossing some ideas around.  Survivability would be high for the player however damage cannot compete with other melee ATs solo without the build up attack and the inherent special active.  They can mini-tank like scrappers in a pinch but have no primary or inherent taunt ability - only damage and possible taunt auras from their secondaries.

 

Edited August 1, 2020 by JayboH

[biostem]

I'm not a fan of having a particular secondary effect tied to specific effects, like how Sentinels must take their T1 attack in order to get the offensive opportunity effect.  What I would do would be to intermix armor toggles, (modified or otherwise), in with the support sets.  For instance, maybe drop shadowfall and black hole from darkness affinity, and combine tar patch and darkest night into 1 location-based aoe that slows, debuffs damage resistance, debuffs damage dealt by the enemies, as well as their tohit.  That would free up 3 slots, in which you could place dark embrace, murky cloud, and obsidian shield.  As for the melee attack sets - what I'd do would be to give them higher debuff values to those attacks, kind of like how defenders' blast sets have better debuff values, but their melee damage would be lower.

Edited August 1, 2020 by biostem

[FoulVileTerror]

When composing a whole new Archetype, I think the best plan of attack for the volunteers here are either to plan in such a way to minimize the amount of "special tweaks" needed for the Primary and Secondary Sets.

OR

Have a dedicated team of separate volunteers who focus work on the Archetype with the supervision/direction of the Homecoming Team.

 

I'm curious as to the Homecoming Team's reception of The Duo Archetype that was worked on by @malonkey1.  It may give us a good indication of how receptive they might be to an Archetype like the one proposed here being worked on by independent volunteer(s).

[JayboH]

9 minutes ago, biostem said:

I'm not a fan of having a particular secondary effect tied to specific effects, like how Sentinels must take their T1 attack in order to get the offensive opportunity effect.  What I would do would be to intermix armor toggles, (modified or otherwise), in with the support sets.  For instance, maybe drop shadowfall and black hole from darkness affinity, and combine tar patch and darkest night into 1 location-based aoe that slows, debuffs damage resistance, debuffs damage dealt by the enemies, as well as their tohit.  That would free up 3 slots, in which you could place dark embrace, murky cloud, and obsidian shield...

It would be no different from a defender skipping their aoe heal in order to pick something else.  It's also no different from a blaster not taking their first two powers that they are supposed to be able to use while mezzed according to their inherent design.  People can and do skip armor abilities as well.  If we did it the way you mention, that would basically make every secondary a required selection, would it not?  That wouldn't really solve the issue you presented if so.

 

The concept here is that everything would require a tohit check with the exception perhaps of the tier 9 if you want to do something special there on the primary.  Positioning is key, kind of like how Grant Cover works only on a bigger scale.

 

You could however take certain abilities out of the secondaries that debuff enemies or deal direct damage like damage auras and replace with a single target heal perhaps and make that part of it (and the AOE heal on primary hit concept stays too.)  Now that doesn't do anything if you are soloing, unless you want it to grant a passive regen buff perhaps that you get just by picking the power.

Edited August 1, 2020 by JayboH

[biostem]

1 minute ago, JayboH said:

It would be no different from a defender skipping their aoe heal in order to pick something else.  It's also no different from a blaster not taking their first two powers that they are supposed to be able to use while mezzed according to their inherent design.  People can and do skip armor abilities as well.  If we did it the way you mention, that would basically make every secondary a required selection, would it not?  That wouldn't really solve the issue you presented if so.

 

The concept here is that everything would require a tohit check with the exception perhaps of the tier 9 if you want to do something special there on the primary.  Positioning is key, kind of like how Grant Cover works only on a bigger scale.

Not all defenders heal, but they must take at least 1 of their 1st 2 primary powers.  The same goes for blasters.   The difference is that whether you skip the 1st or 2nd ranged attack power a a blaster, you aren't fundamentally missing out on a function of your AT, like how a Sentinel does.  Sure, someone of this hypothetical AT could skill the armor toggles, but then they'd just be playing against their AT, similar to a petless MM.  My issue with the proposal is that, for instance, what if a sub-par effect is paired with a great melee attack, or visa-versa?  Imagine if a powerful effect were paired with shadow maul?  That'd be a difficult power to rationalize taking.  I'd prefer my attacks be attacks, and my other powers be focused on their respective effects...

[JayboH]

15 minutes ago, biostem said:

Not all defenders heal, but they must take at least 1 of their 1st 2 primary powers.  The same goes for blasters.   The difference is that whether you skip the 1st or 2nd ranged attack power a a blaster, you aren't fundamentally missing out on a function of your AT, like how a Sentinel does.  Sure, someone of this hypothetical AT could skill the armor toggles, but then they'd just be playing against their AT, similar to a petless MM.  My issue with the proposal is that, for instance, what if a sub-par effect is paired with a great melee attack, or visa-versa?  Imagine if a powerful effect were paired with shadow maul?  That'd be a difficult power to rationalize taking.  I'd prefer my attacks be attacks, and my other powers be focused on their respective effects...

The first two attacks aren't going to both be AOE heals however for this AT.  I suggest making the AOE heal part of the second attack choice for most.  The first ability might be something minor, like a single-target slow tied to an attack.  As far as pairing a great melee attack with a sub-par effect, first of all there is no requirement for sub-par effects to exist, but let's pretend that happens: I don't see an issue at all.  Making it very hard to choose abilities vs skipping them should be a goal in any set's design.  Make it kind of suck to skip an ability always for everything in every set!  That is a very good thing in my opinion.

 

If you want your attacks to be attacks and other powers focused on their respective effects...  well the good news is that there is other ATs that do just that.  I think Sentinels need an overhaul as do a lot of people, but in the meantime there are players who enjoy playing them as a mixed AT: range blasts + armor.  This is similar in that regard.

 

Shadow Maul got changed recently by the way.

Edited August 1, 2020 by JayboH

[biostem]

17 minutes ago, JayboH said:

If you want your attacks to be attacks and other powers focused on their respective effects...  well the good news is that there is other ATs that do just that. 

Being dismissive of others' critiques doesn't usually endear you well to your audience;  It is a fact that there are powers that are sub-par, when measured by various different criteria.  It's great that you want to be optimistic that none will exist in this new AT, but that simply won't be the case.  I'd rather not shoehorn so many abilities into the attacks.  Modifying the support sets to include a few armor toggles would, IMO, be the more elegant option...

Edited August 1, 2020 by biostem

[JayboH]

13 minutes ago, biostem said:

Being dismissive of others' critiques doesn't usually endear you well to your audience;  It is a fact that there are powers that are sub-par, when measured by various different criteria.  It's great that you want to be optimistic that none will exist in this new AT, but that simply won't the case.  I'd rather not shoehorn so many abilities into the attacks.  Modifying the support sets to include a few armor toggles would, IMO, be the more elegant option...

That's exactly what everyone does to other players when they rip Sentinels to shreds - they completely dismiss those that enjoy the AT, which is exactly why I posted that in the very next sentence you cut out of the quote. 

 

Shoehorning it into the armor toggles would make them perma, would cut the positioning focus of the AT in half, and would actually increase the player's survivability even more since tohit checks couldn't be implemented (think about it - even if you made it possible, how would the game know you want to heal off the minion instead of the AV?)  Putting them into armor toggles would be like granting Soothing Aura on a bigger scale or like an Emp Defender with Healing Aura on autoclick to the always-on armor toggles.  Downtime might actually be encouraged for group hugs.

Edited August 1, 2020 by JayboH

[biostem]

12 minutes ago, JayboH said:

That's exactly what everyone does to other players when they rip Sentinels to shreds - they completely dismiss those that enjoy the AT, which is exactly why I posted that in the very next sentence you cut out of the quote. 

 

Shoehorning it into the armor toggles would make them perma, would cut the positioning focus of the AT in half, and would actually increase the player's survivability even more since tohit checks couldn't be implemented (think about it - even if you made it possible, how would the game know you want to heal off the minion instead of the AV?)  Putting them into armor toggles would be like granting Soothing Aura on a bigger scale or like an Emp Defender with Healing Aura on autoclick to the always-on armor toggles.  Downtime might actually be encouraged for group hugs.

I never said you'd put the buffs/debuffs/heals into the armor toggles.  The support sets would largely remain unchanged, save for a few adjustments to allow the armor toggles into the sets.  What you would end up with is a support AT that lives in melee and is more effective with the secondary effects of said melee attacks.  Please re-read what I originally posted...

[JayboH]

44 minutes ago, biostem said:

I'd rather not shoehorn so many abilities into the attacks.  Modifying the support sets to include a few armor toggles would, IMO, be the more elegant option...

 

16 minutes ago, biostem said:

I never said you'd put the buffs/debuffs/heals into the armor toggles

 

Ah, just poor context.  You can see how that could be misinterpreted.  Don't shoehorn them into attacks, modify the support sets to include a few armor toggles instead.

 

The problem with this idea is that support and armor sets are balanced around themselves considering all of the abilities as a whole, which means that your armor is going to be much weaker or the supports would be much weaker - I suppose you could buff/nerf them to counter this but only to a degree, especially if scrapper survivability is still the goal - take SR for example.  You would have to combine the auto powers with the armor toggles and the slotting would be completely out of whack and possibly overpowered due to theoretically being able to get the same power from two abilities that have 12 possible slots with just 6 slots.

 

This also doesn't fix the issue with not wanting to skip a single power but I don't really consider that an issue unlike others.

Edited August 1, 2020 by JayboH

[biostem]

1 hour ago, JayboH said:

The problem with this idea is that support and armor sets are balanced around themselves considering all of the abilities as a whole, which means that your armor is going to be much weaker or the supports would be much weaker - I suppose you could buff/nerf them to counter this but only to a degree, especially if scrapper survivability is still the goal - take SR for example.  You would have to combine the auto powers with the armor toggles and the slotting would be completely out of whack and possibly overpowered due to theoretically being able to get the same power from two abilities that have 12 possible slots with just 6 slots.

Which specific armor powers you pick would, most likely, be chosen to fit the specific support set you're building around;  dark armor  -> darkness affinity, radiation armor -> radiation emission, and so on.  You would then tweak the exact values to be in line with how those armor powers would work in conjunction with the support set.  For instance, perhaps you'd pair SR with force field, but maybe you'd keep dispersion bubble, and allow it to stack with focused fighting, focused senses, and evasion, and use it instead of practiced brawler, for staus protection.

Edited August 1, 2020 by biostem

[JayboH]

30 minutes ago, biostem said:

Which specific armor powers you pick would, most likely, be chosen to fit the specific support set you're building around;  dark armor  -> darkness affinity, radiation armor -> radiation emission, and so on.  You would then tweak the exact values to be in line with how those armor powers would work in conjunction with the support set.  For instance, perhaps you'd pair SR with force field, but maybe you'd keep dispersion bubble, and allow it to stack with focused fighting, focused senses, and evasion, and use it instead of practiced brawler, for staus protection.

Well Practiced Brawler is superior to Dispersion when it comes to solo protection by quite a lot, unless you modify it to grant similar numbers only for the caster.

 

I guess I would have to see an example of what the secondary would really look like.

 

It's really a completely different concept of what I posted, that's supposed to be position-focused and reliant on to-hit from an attack set.  I tried to give Brigitte from Overwatch as an example.