Game Balance & The Endgame

[Lines]

Just now, Ralathar44 said:

Honestly this makes me want to role a fire/spines for normal content just to test it out.  I ended up plenty tanky with a stone/regen brute, so I can't imagine Fire/Spines would have any real problems.

It's perfectly sufficient, for sure, on any of the ATs it's available on.

[TalonBlue]

As far off as the powerset discussion goes, I’m holding off on that subject until there’s more info. But the general statement that some powersets need love because they don’t see a lot of play is something I agree with.

 

As far the Proc’s and PPM discussion goes I’m not too soon concerned about the damage numbers, but I would love to see some reworks and visual updates to how proc’s work when they trigger.

 

Damage proc’s just show more damage numbers above the enemy and I would love to see actual animations specific to each set. Like for example: Mako’s Bite would trigger an animation similar to Spirit Shark Jaws. Just something extra to let you know when you are triggering those procs and the visual appeal when those effects happen.

 

And it would be nice if AoE’s like Positron’s Blast would proc an actual AoE effect both damage-wise and visually.

 

I’d love to see a rework to some of the less used, non-damaging proc enhancements as well, to better fit to the theme of the specific set or just to be an enhancement worth slotting...some procs just don’t do enough.

Edited September 23, 2020 by TalonBlue

[BitCook]

18 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

For what it's worth, the PB/Farsight/Clarion combination really isn't as de facto as all that. Power gamers who are deeply invested in meta-building tend to use it, but it's far from universal or even expected in my experience. I'm saying that as someone whose most-often-played-at-50+ Defender is a Time/Dark/Dark with Ageless. 

Sorry maybe my meaning wasn't totally clear.

I meant that to really participate in endgame content you probably need someone that is at least softcapped or at least has pretty good defensive values to one or more categories that you are facing.  Weave + CJ + Maneuvers + 2x defense IOs are pretty standard on a lot of builds because it's just kind of needed.

PB + Farsight allows a defender and to a lesser degree a controller/corruptor to achieve the softcap result by underslotting or even not taking a few of those powers.  It lets them focus on more things to prop up their anemic damage.

Again, Force Field and Cold can give you about the same defense with three powers and can do that from level 6-12 on.  PB + Farsight is a late blooming combination that requires a specific epic pool and since they are not toggles requires frequent reapplication.  While I would agree the power is an outlier, it's not as bad as people make it out too be.

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Ralathar44 said:

The fact that they have the damage to be farmers is not an issue, this again comes back to defense which largely comes back to IO/Incarnate level power being used in content that was never designed for it.  Pre-IO/Incarnate they just wouldn't have the survivability to farm like that.  But turns out a free soft cap of defense to back up your res and self heal makes a big difference.  Then you add diminishing returns breaking incarnate passive and level shift.

The problem isn't the base sets in most cases, the problem is that IO/Incarnate being used in content not designed for it breaks everything.

As a fire farmer I barely use my incarnate abilities. I don't need them to farm. And Fire Farming isn't even the easiest type of farming there is.  Once AGAIN IOs here are the larger issue than incarnate abilities. Prior to Incarnates Fire Farmers were still burning through FIRE farms easily.

Edited September 23, 2020 by golstat2003

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Judasace said:

One thing I don't get is that if this balancing is so important, why aren't Spines/Fire Brutes getting eviscerated? They're by far the most played AT for a reason, and if you want to look at an AT that totally reshaped the landscape of the way players play  the game, well that's the one right there.

Because they're ONLY used in AE. That's it. Spines sucks everywhere else. Edit: Hell, I don't even use it in AE. My farmer is fa/claws.

Edited September 23, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[Ralathar44]

8 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

As a fire farmer I barely use my incarnate abilities. I don't need them to farm. And Fire Farming isn't even the easiest type of farming there is.  Once AGAIN IOs here are the larger issue than incarnate abilities. Prior to Incarnates Fire Farmers were still burning through farms easily.

The incarnate ABILITIES are just icing on the cake.  The level shift + diminishing returns piercing passive is a major shift in both damage in survivability.  The effectiveness bump from +4 to +3 enemies is very large.  +35% damage wise and even more survivability wise due to the multiplicative nature of how damage mitigation functions with healing.  There are also additional considerations like how scaling debuffs and endo drains and the like can go from being annoying to absolutely crippling or vice versa with level differntials and the enemies diminishing chance to hit (and thus proc secondary effects).

Edited September 23, 2020 by Ralathar44

[golstat2003]

2 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Because they're ONLY used in AE. That's it. Spines sucks everywhere else. Edit: Hell, I don't even use it in AE. My farmer is fa/claws.

Once I found out about plant/psi dom's I stopped using my fire farmers with any regularity.

[golstat2003]

3 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

The ABILITIES are just icing on the cake.  The level shift + diminishing returns piercing passive is a major shift in both damage in survivability.  The effectiveness bump from +4 to +3 enemies is very large.  +35% damage wise and even more survivability wise due to the multiplicative nature of how damage mitigation functions with healing.

 Again, I use to farm really easily without incarnate abilities before AE existed and you only could do the portal corp farms. And I've seen others do so with various types of farmers. IOs are the main issue here not incarnate abilities. For instance a Fire farmer can start farming when they have all their abilities well before level 50. Same with other types of farmers. Because of IOs.

Edited September 23, 2020 by golstat2003

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

 Again, I use to farm really easily without incarnate abilities before AE existed and you only could do the portal corp farms. And I've seen others do so with various types of farmers. IOs are the main issue here not incarnate abilities. For instance a Fire farmer can start farming when they have all their abilities well before level 50. Same with other types of farmers. Because of IOs.

You're not wrong. There's a reason I slot attuned IOs as soon as I'm able.

[Ralathar44]

1 minute ago, golstat2003 said:

 Again, I use to farm really easily without incarnate abilities before AE existed and you only could do the portal corp farms. And I've seen others do so with various types of farmers. IOs are the main issue here not incarnate abilities. For instance a Fire farmer can start farming when they have all their abilities well before level 50. Same with other types of farmers. Because of IOs.

Both of them are part of the issue.  IOs and incarnate alpha slot level shft + diminishing returns break (with icing of abilities) both give large power boosts that allow spines/fire to be the farming beast it is.  Sure, it could prolly functional with only incarnate or only IOs at reduced efficiency, but farmers are going to be using both and both together stack multiplicatively since the level boost + diminishing returns passive and the IOs compliment and strengthen the benefits of each other.

[Lockpick]

1 hour ago, parabola said:

Absolutely this. The game simply doesn't push back hard enough for the level of super we can now easily attain. It barely manages it if you're solo and it certainly doesn't in a team. And this is an mmo. Soloing is great but teaming is supposed to be a huge part of the game.

I don't believe this to be true.  I think many people are not using the existing resources to get the challenge they want.  Instead they want the Devs to do all the work for them as opposed to taking ownership of their playing experience.

 

 

A semi-quote from the thread about the AE missions:

 

801 is a Series: 

801.0 Easy,

801.1 Intermediate,

801.2 Hard (My Benchmark),

801.3 Harder

801.2 is the Standard I judge my builds by, and was the original.  If you can solo 801.2 +4x8 with-in the 2 hour timer or less, you are officially Linea Approved. 

801.3 is because I had some teams just stomping 801.2.   801.3 departs from the "Soloable +0x0 on an SO build" benchmark.  It was rare to have a team steamroll 801.2 like that, but it does happen.  801.0 and 801.1 are for the teams that were struggling too much in 801.2.  If there's need I may or may not work on an 801.4 in the future.

 

There are ways to get the challenge you desire without nerfing everyone else into the ground to satisfy your need for harder content.  If you use the existing functionality you can create challenging content and invite similar minded people to do it with you. 

 

I don't think we should we be relying on the Devs to solve these types of problems that players have when there are ways of solving the problems yourself.

• Create your own hard mode content
• Play characters with only SO or basic IOs
• Don't go the incarnate route
• Develop a player network of like minded players and create a SG that imposes the limits you want, so you will feel the challenge you desire

 

I meant to reply to a quote earlier where someone said everyone was Superman and no one was Batman.  You can easily make a Batman character and I have done so.  I limit my power selections to powers that are thematic and I play appropriate content for that character. 

 

 

[Lockpick]

3 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Here's an idea:  What if we limited I-powers only to level 50+ content? 

 

It's only a slight limitation from what already exists but it always seemed odd to me to see a character T4 in all incarnate powers in level 45-49 stuff.

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

 

The reason this thread has gone off the rails is that it seems everyone has a different perspective of what the problem seems to be.   Some believe some power sets are OP, some believe Procs are OP, some believe the game content is to easy, some want to get rid of or limit incarnate powers, some don't see any major issues (I fall into this camp).

 

Once you figure out the problem we should look at solutions that can be managed in game by the community.  Leveraging Devs should be a last resort.

 

[Coyotedancer]

25 minutes ago, BitCook said:

Sorry maybe my meaning wasn't totally clear.

I meant that to really participate in endgame content you probably need someone that is at least softcapped or at least has pretty good defensive values to one or more categories that you are facing.  Weave + CJ + Maneuvers + 2x defense IOs are pretty standard on a lot of builds because it's just kind of needed.

PB + Farsight allows a defender and to a lesser degree a controller/corruptor to achieve the softcap result by underslotting or even not taking a few of those powers.  It lets them focus on more things to prop up their anemic damage.

Again, Force Field and Cold can give you about the same defense with three powers and can do that from level 6-12 on.  PB + Farsight is a late blooming combination that requires a specific epic pool and since they are not toggles requires frequent reapplication.  While I would agree the power is an outlier, it's not as bad as people make it out too be.

 

You really, really DON'T need to be soft-capped to participate in late-game/end-game content here, Bit... You seriously don't. No matter what the AT forum regulars might tell you, that's just never been necessary. Out in the game, it's not expected or by any means universal.

 

I'd go so far as to say that you don't even need an IO set-build to participate. Unless you're trying to solo at higher difficulty or joining high-challenge tasks like serious speed runs, a character will handle just fine with commons and a team of them will still make a reasonable mess of the game's content. 

[ZacKing]

12 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

I don't believe this to be true.  I think many people are not using the existing resources to get the challenge they want.  Instead they want the Devs to do all the work for them as opposed to taking ownership of their playing experience.

 

 

A semi-quote from the thread about the AE missions:

 

801 is a Series: 

801.0 Easy,

801.1 Intermediate,

801.2 Hard (My Benchmark),

801.3 Harder

801.2 is the Standard I judge my builds by, and was the original.  If you can solo 801.2 +4x8 with-in the 2 hour timer or less, you are officially Linea Approved. 

801.3 is because I had some teams just stomping 801.2.   801.3 departs from the "Soloable +0x0 on an SO build" benchmark.  It was rare to have a team steamroll 801.2 like that, but it does happen.  801.0 and 801.1 are for the teams that were struggling too much in 801.2.  If there's need I may or may not work on an 801.4 in the future.

 

There are ways to get the challenge you desire without nerfing everyone else into the ground to satisfy your need for harder content.  If you use the existing functionality you can create challenging content and invite similar minded people to do it with you. 

 

I don't think we should we be relying on the Devs to solve these types of problems that players have when there are ways of solving the problems yourself.

• Create your own hard mode content
• Play characters with only SO or basic IOs
• Don't go the incarnate route
• Develop a player network of like minded players and create a SG that imposes the limits you want, so you will feel the challenge you desire

 

I meant to reply to a quote earlier where someone said everyone was Superman and no one was Batman.  You can easily make a Batman character and I have done so.  I limit my power selections to powers that are thematic and I play appropriate content for that character. 

 

 

great post!

[Coyotedancer]

30 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Because they're ONLY used in AE. That's it. Spines sucks everywhere else. Edit: Hell, I don't even use it in AE. My farmer is fa/claws.

*laughing* Both of mine, too.

 

I just can't stand Spines, on a farmer or anything else. That spine burst business would make me absolute mental if I had to listen to it constantly. 

[Troo]

4 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Here's an idea:  What if we limited I-powers only to level 50+ content? 

 

It's only a slight limitation from what already exists but it always seemed odd to me to see a character T4 in all incarnate powers in level 45-49 stuff.

I could see this working.

 

Or maybe even if it was just the Alpha that worked below 50. Sort of a compromise.

[macskull]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

As I recall, an even level IO is still ~10 to 12% better than a +3 SO at level 50, but do not quote me on that.

Ha-ha, quoted! Common IOs don't level with you but they do not change in effectiveness as you level. With schedule A numbers a level 25 generic IO provides 32.0% enhancement whereas an even-level SO provides 33.3%. If you're constantly running around with +3 SOs (so you upgrade every level) you're looking at 38.33% enhancement which gets matched by generic IOs at level 40. The big appeal of generic IOs was once you hit 22 or 27 you'd slot level 25 or 30 generic IOs as you could afford them and then you'd never have to upgrade that slot again.

15 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

*laughing* Both of mine, too.

 

I just can't stand Spines, on a farmer or anything else. That spine burst business would make me absolute mental if I had to listen to it constantly. 

The funny thing is, spines is sorely in need of a buff but it's unlikely to get one because of its popularity as a farm set (even though it's mostly Quills that makes it popular).

[Bill Z Bubba]

5 minutes ago, Troo said:

I could see this working.

 

Or maybe even if it was just the Alpha that worked below 50. Sort of a compromise.

I'm still fine with deleting lvl shifts from the game entirely.

[Haijinx]

Ideally some of the changes to difficulty would come in the form of Enemy Response to attack.  

 

Cause right now they are morons. 

 

To the point that its pitiful.  

[ShardWarrior]

9 minutes ago, macskull said:

Ha-ha, quoted! Common IOs don't level with you but they do not change in effectiveness as you level. With schedule A numbers a level 25 generic IO provides 32.0% enhancement whereas an even-level SO provides 33.3%. If you're constantly running around with +3 SOs (so you upgrade every level) you're looking at 38.33% enhancement which gets matched by generic IOs at level 40. The big appeal of generic IOs was once you hit 22 or 27 you'd slot level 25 or 30 generic IOs as you could afford them and then you'd never have to upgrade that slot again.

Are most people keeping level 25 common IOs though?  I would be curious to see the data here.  Again, just my own experience here with myself and others I team with but we are swapping those out for higher level IOs or IO sets as we can.

[Taboo]

Like a variety of enemy responses?

 

Oh shit this enemy group swarms vs that enemy group tends to aggro additional groups.

 

More situational awareness. Maybe that +4/8 steamroll team gets slowed down by a tactical error rather than bags of hp. Can still go fast but have to pay attention.

Edited September 23, 2020 by Taboo

[Parabola]

38 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

I don't believe this to be true.  I think many people are not using the existing resources to get the challenge they want.  Instead they want the Devs to do all the work for them as opposed to taking ownership of their playing experience.

 

 

A semi-quote from the thread about the AE missions:

 

801 is a Series: 

801.0 Easy,

801.1 Intermediate,

801.2 Hard (My Benchmark),

801.3 Harder

801.2 is the Standard I judge my builds by, and was the original.  If you can solo 801.2 +4x8 with-in the 2 hour timer or less, you are officially Linea Approved. 

801.3 is because I had some teams just stomping 801.2.   801.3 departs from the "Soloable +0x0 on an SO build" benchmark.  It was rare to have a team steamroll 801.2 like that, but it does happen.  801.0 and 801.1 are for the teams that were struggling too much in 801.2.  If there's need I may or may not work on an 801.4 in the future.

 

There are ways to get the challenge you desire without nerfing everyone else into the ground to satisfy your need for harder content.  If you use the existing functionality you can create challenging content and invite similar minded people to do it with you. 

 

I don't think we should we be relying on the Devs to solve these types of problems that players have when there are ways of solving the problems yourself.

• Create your own hard mode content
• Play characters with only SO or basic IOs
• Don't go the incarnate route
• Develop a player network of like minded players and create a SG that imposes the limits you want, so you will feel the challenge you desire

 

I meant to reply to a quote earlier where someone said everyone was Superman and no one was Batman.  You can easily make a Batman character and I have done so.  I limit my power selections to powers that are thematic and I play appropriate content for that character. 

 

 

This is clearly just one of those things that people see differently. I see a glaringly obvious, plain as day problem. Some people agree, you and others don't. I am delighted the devs have indicated they are exploring all of this but I am sorry if that prospect isn't so appealing for other people. As has been said many times in this thread we all need to wait to test the actual changes before passing judgement one way or the other.

 

I will say that in many ways the very fact that custom AE content has had to be created to challenge very high power builds/teams kind of proves the point that this challenge is lacking in the regular game.

 

Also I totally get the 'make your own challenge/gimp yourself if that's your idea of fun' argument. My counter would be if the game was rebalanced so that it was more challenging you would be just as capable of tailoring your experience by the far simpler lowering of the difficulty slider. There are plenty of settings below +4x8 to explore but sadly none above that.

[macskull]

5 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Are most people keeping level 25 common IOs though?  I would be curious to see the data here.  Again, just my own experience here with myself and others I team with but we are swapping those out for higher level IOs or IO sets as we can.

I mean, apparently there was data back on live that suggested something like 80% of characters had no IOs slotted. We don't have the metrics to make any truly informed decisions here but it would be really nice if we did. cough cough nudge nudge devs are you listening

 

That being said I think it's still very likely that most players don't get into the IO system that much.

[Leogunner]

2 hours ago, BitCook said:

It's not that much of an outlier.  Forcefield already gives ~25% to everything with two powers that are available by level 6.  Plus with Dispersion bubble can keep the team at comparable for three powers available at level 12.  That's not that far out of line than taking an epic and having to heavily slot Farsight and Global recharge to get 32%.  Really... the only difference is that Force Field should also apply to the caster and then there would be parity.
 

That is a HUGE HUGE deal it's not even funny.  If Time could only buff ally def and only applied +rech to itself, how much of a difference do you think that would make to that Time/ or /Time build?

[golstat2003]

48 minutes ago, parabola said:

This is clearly just one of those things that people see differently. I see a glaringly obvious, plain as day problem. Some people agree, you and others don't. I am delighted the devs have indicated they are exploring all of this but I am sorry if that prospect isn't so appealing for other people. As has been said many times in this thread we all need to wait to test the actual changes before passing judgement one way or the other.

 

I will say that in many ways the very fact that custom AE content has had to be created to challenge very high power builds/teams kind of proves the point that this challenge is lacking in the regular game.

 

Also I totally get the 'make your own challenge/gimp yourself if that's your idea of fun' argument. My counter would be if the game was rebalanced so that it was more challenging you would be just as capable of tailoring your experience by the far simpler lowering of the difficulty slider. There are plenty of settings below +4x8 to explore but sadly none above that.

Then they should add those new difficulty options (like improved enemy AI) to the higher difficulty settings. NOT the base game.

Edited September 23, 2020 by golstat2003