Enhancement Diversification

[Pixie_Knight]

I think I'll post one more time about this and then I'm done. Redlynne is, of course, right again (stop being so darned correct all the time). ED was a punishment. It wasn't about balance or uber characters or make way for Inventions. It was a part of a series of major overhauls to the engine to stop people playing in certain ways. Some of those changes (Purple Patch) were reasonably well received, changes like Taunt and AoE limits were debated, and ED was a trainwreck.

 

You're right, the defense re-balancing and a few other things were to try stopping a specific playstyle. But you didn't mention what that playstyle was. So I'll enlighten those who weren't around at the time. The playstyle in question was "one tank (usually fire armor, but not always) gathers up every enemy in a large open map and kills them with an aoe while the rest of the team sits by the entrance doing nothing". Stopping this was a good thing. I intentionally joined such a team only once. I did so because Madam Enigma was level 38 and had run completely out of missions. And she wouldn't be able to get more until level 40. I stuck around on that team for 2 'farm' mission runs, then left because it was boring me to tears. Instead I went back to farming mobs in hazard zones and fighting those freaking eyeballs which ignored my entire defensive set. It took me ages to get to 40, but at least I wasn't bored. Note that this was before the Sidekick/Exempler system was in place, so I also couldn't run most of the Task Forces available to me due to having out leveled them.

 

After level 16 or 18 (depending on their primary) you would join a team, only to have the tank on the team constantly tell everyone to "wait here" at the entrance, then run off to solo the mission via gathering all enemies into one large group and AOEing them to death. Or in other words, the 8 man team existed just to increase spawn sizes and enemy levels for the tanker's enjoyment, and everyone else was expected to be bored while "reaping the benefits". If you were lucky, and playing a fire blaster, you might be allowed to join in by having the tank gather everything together then you hitting Rain of Fire or another AOE that could kill them all quickly. If you didn't play along? If you tried to fight alongside the tanker, or support him since you're playing a defender or controller? BAM! Kicked from the team.

 

Ending this "playstyle" was a good decision since if it had been allowed to continue unchecked it likely would have lead to the game's early demise. While I raged about the changes to Defense since they directly impacted my (at the time only) character, the other things were gladly accepted for the results and reasoning behind them. Before those changes I was seriously thinking about quitting the game because 'farm' teams were ruining the fun. Instead I rolled up my first Defender (a Dark/Rad defender if you must know).

[Jon]

Now it doesn't really matter in the end because everyone assumes you'll be playing your main for months-years to get it to crazy purple set IO and Incarnate unlimited awesome anyway, which is fine, but the current devs can still go back and unbork powers that are explicitly game balanced around crazy expensive global recharge rates that aren't otherwise necessary for a specific AT/build.

 

Are we playing the same game? It is easier to IO/Incarnate a character now than it has ever been before. It certainly does not take months/years to purple out a character for anyone trying to do that.

[MunkiLord]

Calling it a "punishment" is dishonest and, frankly, unnecessarily hostile. It absolutely was about the cookie cutter 6-slotting being too powerful. The old way left no room for customization. One accuracy, 5 damage or you were crap. Yes, there were actual player complaints about that. Enhancement types made totally useless because there was literally no point to using them when it removed a slot for damage.

 

So, yes, it was about balance. It was not, however, a personal attack against you. Or anyone else.

 

Well, I remember the posts by Statesman. It wasn't about making powers better without needing to overslot them or rebalancing the game. He and the other devs explicitly said it (like the Purple Patch, Taunt and AoE target limits) was to change the way people were playing the game. That's a punishment to people who wanted to play the game that way.

 

Then, long after the fact (and after Statesman left) the DEVs retconned the change as a necessary step, not to fix gameplay at the time, but to prepare for the Inventions system that would let hardcore players get OP in a different way.

 

You can claim the word punishment is over the top, but it was "you guys were naughty so we are changing the rules so you can't break them in ways we don't want you to."

 

Your perception simply doesn't reflect reality.

[Stan The Man]

I don't know what would happen if we suddenly had Invention Origin Enhancements but with no Enhancement Diversification and I don't think we should so quickly clamor to undo something that had long term effects to the game that was originally horrible but eventually worked out to a point.  So while I was never happy with ED, it doesn't mean I liked it just because I'm in favor of keeping it now. 

 

But the game is back.  If there are any lingering issues that are due to ED that IOs don't solve, instead of a blanket solution that dismantles Enhancement Diversification, why not address each issue individually, if any?

[Heraclea]

ED was perhaps a necessary evil.  But I did lose a lot of interest in the game when it went live, never got a villain from 40 to 50 until much later, and left for a series of games starting with WoW after i6.  I learned to hate WoW and its progression raiding, its always on the clock statistical game, and the drama repair costs always bring, so I came back.

 

Inventions piqued my interest briefly, but I didn't jump back in with both feet until i12 and Cimerora.  Finally having the sword and sandal setting I always wanted piqued my interest a great deal.  After that I dallied with other MMOs, mostly Age of Conan, but that went progression raidy as well and has an unpleasant community focused on the juvie nonsense of PvP.  I started losing interest in CoH about the time that Incarnates went live when I had more than 40 level 50s.  But I never unsubscribed.  I figured this was the game I could always go back to.  So it goes.  :-[

[Chance Jackson]

As much as most people hated ED when it happened, it's no longer really possible to argue that it was anything but good for the game in the long term.  Without it, content tended to be trivialized and invention sets couldn't really have been a thing.  Saying it drove people to other MMOs is pure supposition.

 

ED is still active and is embedded far enough under layers of code that it would most likely be impossible to remove at this point.  And that's a good thing.

ED(& DR) certainly drove me away it took a free trial of City of Villains specifically to play Masterminds that brought me back.

 

Personally I would love to see ED removed from SO only builds. IOs are balanced around ED so it should remain in place there.

[Chance Jackson]

ED is cancer.

 

Some powers only accept one type of enhancement (especially defensive powers tanks/melee rely on). ED nerfed these powers into oblivion, and ED was something that originally made me quit playing and move on to another game due to nobody wanting me in a team anymore. I got tired of being punished for having powers I needed to survive that only used one enhancement type.

 

If we get punished for single type powers, why allow us to 6 slot them in the first place? Meanwhile, multi enhancement powers can still diversify and be useful with 6 full slots.

 

ED also led to a lot of tanks being all but useless and having trouble finding teams in the lower to mid levels of the game. As a SS/INV tank back in the day, ED sucked. Before ED, I could get in teams all day long and my SG was always happy to have me tank because I got the job done. After ED, teams didn't need me because the big bug Kheldians could do a better job and I couldn't take the hits anymore. 

 

If they ever find a way to get rid of it, I won't miss it. I didn't like my defense potential being nerfed just because the developers decided to dial back returns on single enhancement abilities. If the devs allow me to 6 slot a damage resist power that only takes damage resist enhancements, I want the numbers I should be getting after investing the slots and the money into them.

 

Any tank that isn't maximizing their defense potential isn't doing their job, and ED made it harder to do that job.

 

I got tired of logging in just to sit on the yellow line looking for teams that didn't need me, so I canceled my sub and quit playing.

 

This time around with Homecoming, I made a point to not main a tank just in case ED was still in play. If I want to play rather than sit on the sidelines or solo, I log in a healer.

 

I'm glad that you guys like Enhancement Diversification, but it never did me any favors back in the day, and I absolutely hate the very thought of it.

 

Load of crap. IO sets addressed every single thing you mentioned here. Also, assuming there was a decent population on your server, teams are not difficult to find. If server population was an issue, Freedom was the answer. Or start a team yourself. ED never went away, it never will, and the game is absolutely better for it. Make a tank, teams will take you. Or a Scrapper, or Blaster, or Dominator, or Stalker, or anything. Doesn't matter.

 

ED was the best thing to ever happen to City of Heroes.

ED was trash

IO sets are good

Both are true

 

I always considered when the original devs instituted Enhancement Diversification a major mistake that caused a lot of heroes to go to other MMO's. Is ED still active or did the new bosses flush it down the toilet where it belongs?

 

Doc

 

Without ED there would be no capacity for power augmentation and variation which came with Inventions, it was a correct choice in a long term plan.

You lack imagination, Jack &  NCsoft could have made IO's could exist within the ED framework while SO's remain within the Pre-ED framework & as Redlynne pointed out ED predeated IOs by 2 years.

 

The problem with Enhancement Dysfunction is that the "solution" for it (re: Inventions and Invention Sets) didn't arrive for TWO YEARS after Enhancement Dysfunction was crammed down our throats as a surprise move by Cryptic.

 

It was necessary to make the necessary "room" for Set Bonuses to work the way they do ... but Enhancement Dysfunction was pushed Live TWO YEARS too early.

 

I know.

I was there.

And then I wasn't ... for TWO YEARS ...

And then I came back when Issue 9 launched and Inventions finally (finally!) "fixed" the problem that Enhancement Dysfunction created.

 

 

 

The other major problem with Enhancement Dysfunction is that it isn't a progressive "decay curve" of diminishing returns.  It's a {expletive deleted} punitive CLIFF Of Don't Do This™.

 

AMEN

[Wolf Bonne]

I've always wanted to put my thoughts out there on enhancements as a whole, so this is mostly a rant for me and not at any one person in particular. Hopefully no one minds, obviously feel free to tear into me or what have you.

 

The game was in a very odd place pre-ED, and I don't buy the ED was ever really intended to fix cookie cutter builds, it was just an easy thing to say by the devs. It was much more about lowering the absolutely massive gap between a lot of powersets and archetypes. ED was a hammer to the problem, and it sucked. Back in the day, I thought it was uncreative and hurtful, being older and wiser I now realize the realities of development time and how difficult it must've been to get City of Villains out the door, it was a massive expansion to the game intended to be standalone. I'm much more forgiving, but it hurt. People talk about overpowered builds and such, but there were some gameplay styles that got completely gutted, to this day elec/elec blasters never quite recovered, never got anything to compensate for their lack of a useful secondary effect outside of specific moments. Fixing perma unstoppable and high end cheese builds would've been easy to fix on their own, and they tried, but it still wouldn't properly address the power gap.

 

Some balance changes and tweaks did help make ED less intrusive, and inventions did add a nice layer to the game while bumping people up as a whole by a good amount, but I'd say that their implementation of inventions was... well, it bothers me to hell and back that my characters all fiddle with a cube over some tech looking table and there is no alternative to crafting besides /ah. I would've contextualized it differently while making the system easier to use. The early days of the UI for the stuff was a real nightmare for me, and I still find it tedious. I have to use inventions if I wanna take myself further, there is no real alternative, discounting endgame stuff.

 

As a whole, I think the enhancement system was and is clunky, made more so with invention origins. I'm surprised they never gutted training level enhancements and standardize dual origins or single origin. Just bump us all up to be more powerful from the get-go.

 

 

As for whether or not to remove ED, I dunno how hard it'd be. I suppose it'd be kinda fruitless at this point with how many changed have been made to a lot of older powersets in a post-ED world, incarnate on i25 is so accessible as to maybe be overly trivialized. But I could see a pre-CoV version of the game being interesting to see. I wouldn't want to main on it, but god... I'd love to play my old spines/regen, or my elec/elec blaster, if just for a bit.

[Chance Jackson]

I think I'll post one more time about this and then I'm done. Redlynne is, of course, right again (stop being so darned correct all the time). ED was a punishment. It wasn't about balance or uber characters or make way for Inventions.

 

Calling it a "punishment" is dishonest and, frankly, unnecessarily hostile. It absolutely was about the cookie cutter 6-slotting being too powerful. The old way left no room for customization. One accuracy, 5 damage or you were crap. Yes, there were actual player complaints about that. Enhancement types made totally useless because there was literally no point to using them when it removed a slot for damage.

 

So, yes, it was about balance. It was not, however, a personal attack against you. Or anyone else.

by depriving the best slotting strategy of its effectiveness ED FORCED you to be "crap" (or at least forced you to choose suboptimal slotting) by depriving the best slotting strategy of its effectiveness

[Chance Jackson]

Calling it a "punishment" is dishonest and, frankly, unnecessarily hostile. It absolutely was about the cookie cutter 6-slotting being too powerful. The old way left no room for customization. One accuracy, 5 damage or you were crap. Yes, there were actual player complaints about that. Enhancement types made totally useless because there was literally no point to using them when it removed a slot for damage.

 

So, yes, it was about balance. It was not, however, a personal attack against you. Or anyone else.

 

Well, I remember the posts by Statesman. It wasn't about making powers better without needing to overslot them or rebalancing the game. He and the other devs explicitly said it (like the Purple Patch, Taunt and AoE target limits) was to change the way people were playing the game. That's a punishment to people who wanted to play the game that way.

 

Then, long after the fact (and after Statesman left) the DEVs retconned the change as a necessary step, not to fix gameplay at the time, but to prepare for the Inventions system that would let hardcore players get OP in a different way.

 

You can claim the word punishment is over the top, but it was "you guys were naughty so we are changing the rules so you can't break them in ways we don't want you to."

This is completely untrue. Statesman made several comments that ED was necessary to make way for other progression systems. I remember he gave an example that they couldn't, for example, add an enhancement that enhanced for 50% because without ED it would simply be too good.

the original dually HOs enhanced by 50% for schedule "A" prior to the 1st HO nerf which predates ED

[Vanden]

Calling it a "punishment" is dishonest and, frankly, unnecessarily hostile. It absolutely was about the cookie cutter 6-slotting being too powerful. The old way left no room for customization. One accuracy, 5 damage or you were crap. Yes, there were actual player complaints about that. Enhancement types made totally useless because there was literally no point to using them when it removed a slot for damage.

 

So, yes, it was about balance. It was not, however, a personal attack against you. Or anyone else.

 

Well, I remember the posts by Statesman. It wasn't about making powers better without needing to overslot them or rebalancing the game. He and the other devs explicitly said it (like the Purple Patch, Taunt and AoE target limits) was to change the way people were playing the game. That's a punishment to people who wanted to play the game that way.

 

Then, long after the fact (and after Statesman left) the DEVs retconned the change as a necessary step, not to fix gameplay at the time, but to prepare for the Inventions system that would let hardcore players get OP in a different way.

 

You can claim the word punishment is over the top, but it was "you guys were naughty so we are changing the rules so you can't break them in ways we don't want you to."

This is completely untrue. Statesman made several comments that ED was necessary to make way for other progression systems. I remember he gave an example that they couldn't, for example, add an enhancement that enhanced for 50% because without ED it would simply be too good.

the original dually HOs enhanced by 50% for schedule "A" prior to the 1st HO nerf which predates ED

...Which were nerfed because prior to ED they were too strong.

[Obsidius]

That's why ED will now be known as Equine Deadification.

 

 

... have some Inf :D <3

[Chance Jackson]

Calling it a "punishment" is dishonest and, frankly, unnecessarily hostile. It absolutely was about the cookie cutter 6-slotting being too powerful. The old way left no room for customization. One accuracy, 5 damage or you were crap. Yes, there were actual player complaints about that. Enhancement types made totally useless because there was literally no point to using them when it removed a slot for damage.

 

So, yes, it was about balance. It was not, however, a personal attack against you. Or anyone else.

 

Well, I remember the posts by Statesman. It wasn't about making powers better without needing to overslot them or rebalancing the game. He and the other devs explicitly said it (like the Purple Patch, Taunt and AoE target limits) was to change the way people were playing the game. That's a punishment to people who wanted to play the game that way.

 

Then, long after the fact (and after Statesman left) the DEVs retconned the change as a necessary step, not to fix gameplay at the time, but to prepare for the Inventions system that would let hardcore players get OP in a different way.

 

You can claim the word punishment is over the top, but it was "you guys were naughty so we are changing the rules so you can't break them in ways we don't want you to."

This is completely untrue. Statesman made several comments that ED was necessary to make way for other progression systems. I remember he gave an example that they couldn't, for example, add an enhancement that enhanced for 50% because without ED it would simply be too good.

the original dually HOs enhanced by 50% for schedule "A" prior to the 1st HO nerf which predates ED

...Which were nerfed because prior to ED they were too strong.

they were never restored after ED either because Jack only works one way & had a very Harrison Bergeron esque approach to game balance, & character power levels. iirc he wanted us to be a equal to 3 minions smh

[Vanden]

Calling it a "punishment" is dishonest and, frankly, unnecessarily hostile. It absolutely was about the cookie cutter 6-slotting being too powerful. The old way left no room for customization. One accuracy, 5 damage or you were crap. Yes, there were actual player complaints about that. Enhancement types made totally useless because there was literally no point to using them when it removed a slot for damage.

 

So, yes, it was about balance. It was not, however, a personal attack against you. Or anyone else.

 

Well, I remember the posts by Statesman. It wasn't about making powers better without needing to overslot them or rebalancing the game. He and the other devs explicitly said it (like the Purple Patch, Taunt and AoE target limits) was to change the way people were playing the game. That's a punishment to people who wanted to play the game that way.

 

Then, long after the fact (and after Statesman left) the DEVs retconned the change as a necessary step, not to fix gameplay at the time, but to prepare for the Inventions system that would let hardcore players get OP in a different way.

 

You can claim the word punishment is over the top, but it was "you guys were naughty so we are changing the rules so you can't break them in ways we don't want you to."

This is completely untrue. Statesman made several comments that ED was necessary to make way for other progression systems. I remember he gave an example that they couldn't, for example, add an enhancement that enhanced for 50% because without ED it would simply be too good.

the original dually HOs enhanced by 50% for schedule "A" prior to the 1st HO nerf which predates ED

...Which were nerfed because prior to ED they were too strong.

they were never restored after ED either because Jack only works one way & had a very Harrison Bergeron esque approach to game balance, & character power levels. iirc he wanted us to be a equal to 3 minions smh

Even after ED they would've been too strong. Look at the numbers they went with for the invention system; even two-aspect +5 purple IOs don't get nearly as high as old HOs did.

[MetaVileTerror]

Oo, wait!  Is this thread secretly the new quote pyramid game?  At least that would make more sense than complaining about something as old-hat as this.  Again.

 

Like, "Diminishing Returns" could also be the title of the series of threads which get started on this subject.  Each one becomes worth less than the last.

 

Sorry for the snark.  It's late, and it boggles my mind to see this topic get this kind of attention.  After all, if something this baked-in upsets someone so much, I've heard that starting your own server isn't too challenging.  There are already Youtube tutorials online for how to do just that, in fact.  I may be horribly wrong, but I don't think the Homecoming team is in the "reverse Enhancement Diversification" camp.  But that doesn't mean that those of you can't have your cake for eating purposes.  It's probably just not going to be /this/ particular set of servers where that happens.

And if reversing D.R.E.D. ends up being worth it, I am certain players will flock to those servers in droves.  I just personally wouldn't put any bank on that gamble.

[Jaguaratron]

The stupid in this thread is amazing, people still complaining about and wanting to undo ED? Hilarious.

 

Go and make your own pre ED servers, the code is all over the net, Im sure they will be a roaring success.............

[Pixie_Knight]

And I wouldn't be among them. While I raged with the loudest of us over Defense Reduction and Enhancement Diversification when they were being added, Defense Reduction did solve the problem it was intended to solve. It, alongside adding an aggro cap and a max targets cap to most AoE attacks, put an end to the Tanker Farm 'teams' where everyone except the tanker was expected to just sit just inside the mission so the tanker could go round up and slaughter a full mission's worth of difficulty four or five enemies all at once. Until other changes such as reducing how much XP you got from enemies too high above your level and adding the Sidekick/Exempler system came about it didn't completely get rid of snorefest 'tanker farm' teams. But it was a step in the right direction.

 

All ED really did in the long run was force everyone to realize that no, you don't 6 slotted damage in attack powers or six slotted defense/resistance in defensive powers. Enemies still go down just fine, your defenses are still just fine too. In fact, continuing to six slot for Damage or Defense after the previous Defense Reduction patch was entirely based on the idea of "if my defense/resistance isn't hard capped, it's not high enough". When in fact you didn't need that much defense anymore since enemies no longer started off with a 95% chance to hit. Of course that change slipped under the radar due to the massive ragefest over our precious defenses getting reduced.

[Blastit]

by depriving the best slotting strategy of its effectiveness ED FORCED you to be "crap" (or at least forced you to choose suboptimal slotting) by depriving the best slotting strategy of its effectiveness

 

The same can be said of any rebalancing. The point was to redefine what was optimal. You can't be "forced to choose suboptimal slotting" if the previously optimal slotting no longer actually exists. They didn't decree that they would ban anyone who put more than three damage enhancements in an attack, they made doing so mechanically unrewarding.

 

 

Balance changes happen in every single multiplayer game. ED is not different but people keep talking about it like the developers showed up at your door to punch you in the crotch for playing a Fire/SS Tanker.

[Zolgar]

by depriving the best slotting strategy of its effectiveness ED FORCED you to be "crap" (or at least forced you to choose suboptimal slotting) by depriving the best slotting strategy of its effectiveness

 

The same can be said of any rebalancing. The point was to redefine what was optimal. You can't be "forced to choose suboptimal slotting" if the previously optimal slotting no longer actually exists. They didn't decree that they would ban anyone who put more than three damage enhancements in an attack, they made doing so mechanically unrewarding.

 

And in so doing, made experimenting with things other than the presently most "optimized" option more viable.

 

[MrAxe]

 

ED also led to a lot of tanks being all but useless and having trouble finding teams in the lower to mid levels of the game. As a SS/INV tank back in the day, ED sucked. Before ED, I could get in teams all day long and my SG was always happy to have me tank because I got the job done. After ED, teams didn't need me because the big bug Kheldians could do a better job and I couldn't take the hits anymore. 

 

If they ever find a way to get rid of it, I won't miss it. I didn't like my defense potential being nerfed just because the developers decided to dial back returns on single enhancement abilities. If the devs allow me to 6 slot a damage resist power that only takes damage resist enhancements, I want the numbers I should be getting after investing the slots and the money into them.

 

Any tank that isn't maximizing their defense potential isn't doing their job, and ED made it harder to do that job.

 

I got tired of logging in just to sit on the yellow line looking for teams that didn't need me, so I canceled my sub and quit playing.

 

 

As a tank I only had a hard time finding teams when fire tanks were at the height of their popularity, pre burn patch nerf. Everyone just wanted the fire tank to do everything while they stood around (got so damn boring being in those missions) but ED never affected my ability to team.

[Pixie_Knight]

And to be honest, if you want to 6 slot damage SOs, IOs, or Hami-Os you're still able to do so. You'll still do more damage then anyone who isn't six slotting for damage. It just wont be double the damage. But you can still do it. Enhancement Diversification didn't remove the ability, just made using other enhancements instead more viable.

[Chance Jackson]

And to be honest, if you want to 6 slot damage SOs, IOs, or Hami-Os you're still able to do so. You'll still do more damage then anyone who isn't six slotting for damage. It just wont be double the damage. But you can still do it. Enhancement Diversification didn't remove the ability, just made using other enhancements instead more viable.

No, ED didn't make sub-optimal slotting strategies more viable, it just made the most efficient slotting strategy unviable.

 

I'll repeat it another way, ED did not make any slotting strategy more effective than it had been Pre ED, it just made the best strategy Pre ED slotting strategy ineffective/unworthwhile.

 

There was only more slotting variety because the best strategy became worthless, net effectiveness plummeted. We can engage in infinite sophistry to make it sound like ED made 1 acc, 3dmg, 1 end reduc, 1 rech worthwhile but the truth remains that you don't need the greater recharge if you have greater dmg and they are not equal, because of ED you now need the end reduc because you have to use your powers more to get the same result as Pre ED again an unequal trade.

[Chance Jackson]

Calling it a "punishment" is dishonest and, frankly, unnecessarily hostile. It absolutely was about the cookie cutter 6-slotting being too powerful. The old way left no room for customization. One accuracy, 5 damage or you were crap. Yes, there were actual player complaints about that. Enhancement types made totally useless because there was literally no point to using them when it removed a slot for damage.

 

So, yes, it was about balance. It was not, however, a personal attack against you. Or anyone else.

 

Well, I remember the posts by Statesman. It wasn't about making powers better without needing to overslot them or rebalancing the game. He and the other devs explicitly said it (like the Purple Patch, Taunt and AoE target limits) was to change the way people were playing the game. That's a punishment to people who wanted to play the game that way.

 

Then, long after the fact (and after Statesman left) the DEVs retconned the change as a necessary step, not to fix gameplay at the time, but to prepare for the Inventions system that would let hardcore players get OP in a different way.

 

You can claim the word punishment is over the top, but it was "you guys were naughty so we are changing the rules so you can't break them in ways we don't want you to."

This is completely untrue. Statesman made several comments that ED was necessary to make way for other progression systems. I remember he gave an example that they couldn't, for example, add an enhancement that enhanced for 50% because without ED it would simply be too good.

the original dually HOs enhanced by 50% for schedule "A" prior to the 1st HO nerf which predates ED

...Which were nerfed because prior to ED they were too strong.

they were never restored after ED either because Jack only works one way & had a very Harrison Bergeron esque approach to game balance, & character power levels. iirc he wanted us to be a equal to 3 minions smh

Even after ED they would've been too strong. Look at the numbers they went with for the invention system; even two-aspect +5 purple IOs don't get nearly as high as old HOs did.

they get pretty close and they are part of sets with very strong bonuses

[wjrasmussen]

Some of you have an ED problem and Viagra isn't working for you.  Must be frustrating for you.

[MunkiLord]

And to be honest, if you want to 6 slot damage SOs, IOs, or Hami-Os you're still able to do so. You'll still do more damage then anyone who isn't six slotting for damage. It just wont be double the damage. But you can still do it. Enhancement Diversification didn't remove the ability, just made using other enhancements instead more viable.

No, ED didn't make sub-optimal slotting strategies more viable, it just made the most efficient slotting strategy unviable.

 

I'll repeat it another way, ED did not make any slotting strategy more effective than it had been Pre ED, it just made the best strategy Pre ED slotting strategy ineffective/unworthwhile.

 

There was only more slotting variety because the best strategy became worthless, net effectiveness plummeted. We can engage in infinite sophistry to make it sound like ED made 1 acc, 3dmg, 1 end reduc, 1 rech worthwhile but the truth remains that you don't need the greater recharge if you have greater dmg and they are not equal, because of ED you now need the end reduc because you have to use your powers more to get the same result as Pre ED again an unequal trade.

 

Let's pretend for a minute you have a point. Ok, so what? What does it matter? This is an argument that was lost and dismissed over ten years ago at this point. It didn't stop the change from happening, the game never got rid of ED, and there is nothing to suggest it will happen now. It's over and you lost, it's that simple.