Game Balance & The Endgame

[BZRKR]

2 minutes ago, GM Tahquitz said:

Walk now has increased accuracy while the power is activated. 😁

THANK GOODNESS! The Post-Mothership Raid parades have been such a pain with the current accuracy issues. Thank you Dev team! 🙂

 

(seriously though, thank you for all your hard work!)

[Parabola]

6 minutes ago, FUBARczar said:

Remember that so many people choose TW on Scrappers because they want performance.

I don't buy this argument. People play tw because it's op therefore it should stay op?

 

People talk a lot about feeling super in this game in these discussions. The thing is they are playing a game where you blast fire out of your hands or wave a 12 foot sword around. How is that not super regardless of the numbers? All characters do super things down to the lowest performing sets.

 

But of course this isn't what people actually mean when they talk about feeling super. They are talking about the power of their character vs others. They are talking about their ability to solo 4/8 such and such a tf.

 

But in order for one build to feel more super than all the others, all the others naturally feel less super. In order for one character to be able to run team content at max difficulty all their teammates need to feel less super watching them do it. This isn't good for the game. We can all be super together but a little give and take is necessary.

[Alchemystic]

For the metabuilders who dont care about game health and only want cheap unbalanced content, Thunderspy is that way --->

 

For those who clamor for the stagnant live server experience and hate the idea of updates in general, Rebirth is that way <---

 

Have a pleasant journey.

[Pzn]

50 minutes ago, Phoenix' said:

Keeping an unbalanced system in order to prevent yourself doing a respec is a lame reason pal. 

I dont mind respecing 100 times per week as long as I finally see a balanced system that this game deserves 

It's not an unbalanced system.  Plenty of different ways to build.  There's no reason to target nerfs towards one way.  Building towards soft cap does a lot more to trivialize the game than anything.  There's plenty of content that my proc focused builds are not capable of soloing that a well balanced build could breeze through.  It's a tradeoff.

[ScarySai]

Blasters finally get their time in the spotlight after eons of eating floor, yet people are already calling for their head. /eyeroll.

 

17 minutes ago, Tyrannical said:

For the metabuilders who dont care about game health and only want cheap unbalanced content, Thunderspy is that way --->

The people who care about HC will continue to voice their concerns with design in HC. If you want an apathetic playerbase, CO is just for you.

Edited September 21, 2020 by ScarySai

[Pzn]

1 hour ago, Xanatos said:

Absolutely spot on. There are a few instances where procs need to be looked at in PVE (such as double-proccing in burn, -res procs giving blasters/scrappers the same -res as debuffer sets, the FF +rech proc being permable in Energy Blast, etc) but I don't think damage procs are a problem at all in PVE. They allow for build diversity in PVE. I like that. That should be encouraged.

This seems reasonable to me.  Instead of overhauling the entire proc system again just rebalance specific procs or power/proc interactions that are overperforming.

[Coyotedancer]

12 hours ago, Vanden said:

Some powers are buffed, but some powers are nerfed.

I'd say "A swarm of small changes and a few larger ones... Some of which were seriously needed (Titan adjustments, I'm looking at you-) and many of which honestly seem more like solutions in search of a problem."

[Kanil]

5 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Blasters finally get their time in the spotlight after eons of eating floor, yet people are already calling for their head. /eyeroll.

 

The people who care about HC will continue to voice their concerns with design in HC. If you want an apathetic playerbase, CO is just for you.

i just want things to make sense in blaster town

if tw is an outlier and is getting the buffnerf, whens fire blast getting the treatment

 

 

 

[Alchemystic]

4 hours ago, ScarySai said:

The people who care about HC will continue to voice their concerns with design in HC. If you want an apathetic playerbase, CO is just for you.

By all means, check my post history, see how apathetic I am about the game. 🙄

 

I just know when people are more interested in griefing the HC team because the game no longer fits their vision, instead of taking the time to actually beta the content and offer constructive feedback that improves the overall experience.

 

If you felt stung by my post, I can only assume you're the former.

 

Edited September 21, 2020 by Tyrannical

[arcane]

There seem to be a few posters that think that if their own personal design preference is not followed exactly, that no player feedback was ever requested or listened to.

[ScarySai]

26 minutes ago, Kanil said:

i just want things to make sense in blaster town

if tw is an outlier and is getting the buffnerf, whens fire blast getting the treatment

 

 

 

I wouldn't hold your breath.

 

Personally would rather see AR, elec, rad, psi and DP get a few buffs. I doubt they will touch fire.

[Apparition]

4 hours ago, Phoenix' said:

I play blaster 99% of the times since i9 

Blasters MUST be nerfed! 

Hp cap reduced to 1606, no absorb/hp auras are few of the things I personally believe should happen 

That would be a sure way to get me to never play a Blaster again.

[ScarySai]

People seem to have forgotten just how bad blasters were before I24. Mental was basically the only playable secondary for awhile.

[Phoenix']

10 minutes ago, Apparition said:

That would be a sure way to get me to never play a Blaster again.

You shouldn't then. 

Blasters were popular before i24 anyway. 

They are for dealing massive dmg and die easy. 

Thats the description of the AT

Edited September 21, 2020 by Phoenix'

[BrandX]

17 hours ago, Bopper said:

Popularity does not matter. Performance does. As for TW, all single target attacks do 10% more damage than the design formula dictates, all cones do 18% more damage, and WS does 44% more damage. Everything overperforms. Not to mention the DoTs that FT and WS gets.

 

Add to that, it is an outlier in both clear time tests and single target damage tests. It beasts. And it outperforms the next best sets by a considerable margin... I'm talking the gap between #1 and #2 is similar to the gap between #2 and an average set.

 

While I'm not sure I'd alter TW, I do have top agree, popularity doesn't mean anything.  Regen is popular and it's considered by many to be an underperformer.

[ScarySai]

I made a test TW/bio for a laugh, and I'm pretty sure I never killed an AV that fast before, and I play crab spiders and masterminds.

 

Critical on TW are what make it more silly than anything else, to me. At least claws has to keep rapidly tearing away in single target. I was chunking about 1/8th of it's health bar per rotation on the TW, meanwhile.

 

I'm very anti-nerf for this game in particular, and even I have to agree that TW, especially on scrappers, was out of line.

Edited September 21, 2020 by ScarySai

[zenblack]

1 minute ago, ScarySai said:

I made a test TW/bio for a laugh, and I'm pretty sure I never killed an AV that fast before, and I play crab spiders and masterminds.

 

Critical on TW are what make it more silly than anything else, to me. At least claws has to keep rapidly tearing away in single target. I was chunking about 1/8th of it's health bar per rotation on the TW, meanwhile.

I think there is a lot of things going on to make that happen. It doesn't hurt that the set has defensive options (and extra LoTG slot), a significant -Res, a low cooldown fast "in Momentum" damage skill to abuse and of course the super over performing Whirling Smash 🙂

[ScarySai]

The fantastic DPA and getting the -res from evolving armor definitely help.

[Blackbird71]

14 hours ago, Captain Yesterday said:

 

How to fix the game in the way PEOPLE WANT (not dev want) with these steps.

1. Create new level 50 content - not just missions, but special tf and trials. Have special timed content/stories/etc.

    Effortlessly enhance said difficulty of said content by doing NO more than limiting all teams to a size of 4, and increasing the aggro cap to 22 or 32. Super mega blaster is going to wait for the tank.

 

No.  No, no, no.  No thank you!  Some of us actually like playing with other people in an MMO; reducing team size limits that.  It's bad enough sometimes doing SG events and only being able to include eight people at a time.  Four would be horrendous.

Next time, please do not presume to speak for "people;" speak only for yourself.

[arcane]

37 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

People seem to have forgotten just how bad blasters were before I24. Mental was basically the only playable secondary for awhile.

Definitely just your opinion 🙂

 

In some parts of the game this is just City of Blasters now. Everlasting tourney on Saturday I’m looking at you.

[Kanil]

36 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

I wouldn't hold your breath.

 

Personally would rather see AR, elec, rad, psi and DP get a few buffs. I doubt they will touch fire.

i know it's not gonna happen, but i'd just like to see where the breakdown is in terms of what seems like a logical disconnect in 'tw is way fucked and it needs to be normalized to encourage people to pick other sets' while fire blast exists. 

 

like anyone who has done any real testing of the sets at absolute minmax performance, which seems like how tw is being viewed can clearly observe the gap between it and every other blast set. the difference seems to just be that it's a legacy set and not a meme because you still have yahoos out there arguing that something like elec blast's -end holds more value than fire blast just being better in every meaningful way than any other blast set (barring the obvious sonic blast for support chars) with literally no drawback at all unlike tw's momentum

 

 

 

[ScarySai]

2 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

Definitely just your opinion 🙂

 

In some parts of the game this is just City of Blasters now. Everlasting tourney on Saturday I’m looking at you.

Post i13 pvp is such a raging garbage fire that fire blast is the least of its problems. It's better now, but it's going to need it's own dedicated page to fix it, if it ever gets attention.

[kiramon]

21 hours ago, Super Atom said:

Cottage rule is an off-hand comment a dev said as a general guideline they follow and people took it too literal and it has now become anti-progress / balance. I wouldn't always consult it for every change unless you're literally trying to make energy melee shoot cottages.

Thanks, but the question is around whether or not these Devs will enforce it  - or are they willing to change? I don't think we have the same limitations as live, so I think it should definitely not be upheld. There are certain powers that just need to go. 

[golstat2003]

9 hours ago, macskull said:

That reason is because when a player sees Healing Aura, Heal Other, and Absorb Pain they go "ooh a healer!" and roll Empathy. If I had 5 inf for every time I saw an Empathy Defender who took all the heals but skipped Fortitude and only had one or two attack powers from their secondary I'd be at the inf cap.

 

Don't get me wrong: Empathy is a useful support set, at least in the early/mid levels where characters don't have many powers and the powers they do have are usually un- or underslotted. Healing is valuable at that point because it's the most useful form of mitigation. As you move into the upper 20s and beyond, and especially into the 40-50+ range, direct healing becomes less and less important as mitigation because of the prevalence of defense and resistance buffs. Sure, Empathy has Fortitude, the RAs, and AB - but the RAs are on a stupidly long timer, AB is a really good buff that can only be reliably kept on one teammate at a time (and if your RAs are up half its bonuses are redundant anyways), and Fortitude's nice but... at the end of the day in mid-to-high-level teams Empathy basically brings AB and Fortitude to the table and those two powers alone aren't enough to make the set good. I mean, I won't say no to an Emp, but I know I'm not alone in saying I'd rather have a Cold, Dark, Elec, Kin, Nature, Pain, Poison, Rad, Sonic, Storm, Therm, Time, Traps, or Trick Arrow filling that spot.

Pretty much this. ALL. OF. IT.

[zenblack]

18 minutes ago, Kanil said:

 (barring the obvious sonic blast for support chars)

Pretty sure my 1st post got eaten by the forum software.

 

To quickform it: I wish people wouldn't lump Sonic BLASTER's into Sonic Defender/Corruptors. They will never get a fair shake in their own AT if they are carrying around the excuses of other AT's. As a Blaster set, Sonic is atrocious. My suggestion would be to replace the terrible Siren (or Screech) with a Snipe. You could also modify the power so the Initial target takes damage while some sort of semblance of Siren is allowed to stay though this is putting a lot on the plate of one power. This alone would catapult it from the depths of despair to middle of the pack and allow it to be an average set power wise to a degree.

 

To clarify. There are things that you could do to make the set over all better by mostly looking at animation times, but it won't be enough to move it's place in the Blaster world.

Edited September 21, 2020 by zenblack