Game Balance & The Endgame

[Kanil]

i agree, +damage is the best and that's why empathy is the best

 

also fire blast is undertuned because it only does damage unlike archery

[Apparition]

This thread has me expecting Peter Funt to pop up out of nowhere and say, “Smile!  You’re on Candid Camera!”

[Doomrider]

18 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

  And AV/EB/GM only receive like 15% of your debuff.  So that massive -85% res poison defender can deal out is reduced down to -12.75% res.  Still enough to make a difference but not as crazy as it looks starting out.

 

[Ralathar44]

39 minutes ago, Doomrider said:

 

Good post, is it just -res that pierces this heavily or were the AV/GM modifiers changed from what they used to be?  Because Venomous Gas is -25% res and it's getting 16.25% here so either it's only being reduced by 35% against an AV which is nothing close to any of the information I've been seeing regarding AV/GM debuff resistance.   I've definitely noticed a significant reduction in slows and apparent effectiveness of other debuffs during my personal play but obviously without direct numbers examples like that picture it's partially guesswork.

If it's all debuffs piercing that much then it's a rather major change from the numbers I know of with information from within the last year.  For example how much reduced would -slow or -recharge or -def or -endo receive?

Edited September 21, 2020 by Ralathar44

[modest]

52 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Not unless you're recharged and hastened out they don't.  All of those times are even less than 1/3rd of their base recharge.  Considering that only happens when you're twinked out I think my shorthand of 1/3rd of the power recharge is much more fair as most people will never be fully twinked out and indeed most of your character's career will not be in that state.  Even serious players don't fully outfit every character they create or play to that level.  If you base all balance on the bleeding edge capability you will inevitably get skewed results when comparing it to the average experience.  Everyone gets extremely broken with end game with full IO sets and incarnates, we know that and that's part of why kill speed has become so fast.

Sleet and Heat Loss are both AOE debuffs, meaning you want to use them primarily on groups and you'll want to have them ready for the next group.  If they finish recharging 3-5 seconds into the next group then its effectively down for that group due to the level of damage teams do at your tricked out levels just plowing through groups.  Envenom has a shorter cooldown because it's primarily a single target debuff, the AOE portion of it is fairly small and does a lesser debuff than done to the main target.  Envenom's entire set is focused around a single target and even with the proc machine that is poison trap it's struggled for a long time largely because of that.  Because the reality is that most fights in this game are group fights and normal bosses go down plenty fast enough to all other power sets.  And AV/EB/GM only receive like 15% of your debuff.  So that massive -85% res poison defender can deal out is reduced down to -12.75% res.  Still enough to make a difference but not as crazy as it looks starting out.

That is not how resistance debuffs work. Resistance debuffs are resisted by resistance.

[Mezmera]

Let me preface this by saying generally I like the thought behind some things they've done while the game has been out of secret.  The dom revamp was well done and well received.  Having remade my main from the live days my Mind/Nrg dom does feel a tad OP whereas /Fire doms still think they are the tops.  Granted there's not an outrageously overperforming secondary and you know what you're getting yourself into when you should be reading what each power set does. 

 

So catching some of the underperforming powers up to the rest felt like a great idea.  So was reneging on the proposed nerf to their snipe, again I'm glad they had listened to comparing and contrasting from people asking why doms were being nerfed to be blaster-lite, is it so bad an AT has a snipe better in their kit than another when the other AT gets almost everything else better?

 

From what I think there's works to get rid of that Energy Release mechanic for Whirling Hands and make it instantly recharge.  So we are walking back something quite unique that could be better tweaked with swapping the damage percentages down a bit and then fix the bug where a lot of the time you lose the mechanic for reasons.  

 

With that I do think TW is a bit OP on a scrapper particularly /Bio but on my Brute it's meh.  Then with PPM I do think there's already too many damage procs in the rare sets as it is but removing them tends to penalize most of the underperforming sets that make use of these procs to compensate.  Then you'll still have blasters who aren't as reliant on these procs because they spew out fast damage with low proc rates aside from maybe the nuke.  

 

There's some reasonable arguments for proceeding with caution as what's fun for someone else gets the bat it might just be turned onto you next.  

[Ralathar44]

8 minutes ago, modest said:

That is not how resistance debuffs work. Resistance debuffs are resisted by resistance.

Then what I believe you are saying is that resistance debuffs are not subject to traditional debuff resistance and instead processed through their own separate mechanics.  Which would ironically make debuffs that are not -res (outside of -regen, which is a special case) incredibly less valuable and thus only make the problem of everything being focused around killing worse since even the valuable support sets are focused around killing lol. 

So say -def and -spd would be subject to ridiculous debuff resistance and yet -resist would be subject to a much smaller reduction, as shown in the picture Doomrider posted above..  That might be worse than all debuffs being resisted heavily if that's the case.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Ralathar44

[HelenCarnate]

2 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

Again, there is a good reason debuffer sets are far less played.   There is 1 debuffer anywhere near in the top half of the most played defender sets: Radiation.  Radiation with the loaded PBAOE buff AM, fast re-charging toggles, ~100% uptime coverage of basically every debuff imaginable, and significant amounts of -regen is able to keep constant uptime on debuffs avoiding one of the main limitations of debuffer sets...consistent uptime in fast kill teams.  It still has AM to fall back on even when scaling reduces it's debuffs significantly.  Next closest debuff set is dead halfway down in Dark Miasma.
 

 

Did you take the time to see the top set Defenders use for their primary and consider why that is?

Why did you only look at defenders?  Controllers of course have Kin at the top thanks to +damage going a long way for a class that can summon pets but the next 3 are all mainly debuffing sets.  Corruptors tend to lean to more self buffs so of course Kin and Time top the lists but the next 4 are all known for their debuffs and they outnumber the top 2. 

[Mezmera]

As for Endgame content to my dying day I will always be about creating more intuitive and complex content.  Going Rogue absolutely pissed me off.  It was promised as an expansion with new levels and tons of new content.  The problem was that the new levels were going to be coming in piecemeal along with a lot of that new Endgame.  Then what we got was a new tutorial zone for them to brush up their creative skills. 

 

They weren't picking up new subscribers on a dated game that was already niche and with the bulk of new stuff added it was more for people that alt a bit more than people that like to play their favorite full powered builds.  Where if they'd have just made all that new stuff 35 to incarnate everyone gets to enjoy the extra stuff to do not just half the community.  I voiced my discontent that it was still increasingly harder to find teams, even in the new zones, and I got a lot of "Hush up" comments, then a little while later the game was gone and a lot people got to miss out on what they were waiting for in more Endgame.  

[HelenCarnate]

 

33 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Good post, is it just -res that pierces this heavily or were the AV/GM modifiers changed from what they used to be?  Because Venomous Gas is -25% res and it's getting 16.25% here so either it's only being reduced by 35% against an AV which is nothing close to any of the information I've been seeing regarding AV/GM debuff resistance.   I've definitely noticed a significant reduction in slows and apparent effectiveness of other debuffs during my personal play but obviously without direct numbers examples like that picture it's partially guesswork.

If it's all debuffs piercing that much then it's a rather major change from the numbers I know of with information from within the last year.  For example how much reduced would -slow or -recharge or -def or -endo receive?

 

The reduction is due to the mob being level 54 and has nothing to do with the AV status.  Against mobs that are +3 your debuffs are only 65% effective.  So instead of Achilles heel doing 20% like normal it is 65% of that or 13%.  Notice also that there is a 25% base resist to lethal damage.  He was hit with a debuff for 55.25% but the damage resistance was only reduced by 41.44%.  That is because they resisted 25% of that debuff (55.25x0.75=41.4375 rounded to 41.44).

Edited September 21, 2020 by HelenCarnate

[Ralathar44]

9 minutes ago, HelenCarnate said:

 

 

The reduction is due to the mob being level 54 and has nothing to do with the AV status.  Against mobs that are +3 your debuffs are only 65% effective.  So instead of Achilles heel doing 20% like normal it is 65% of that or 13%

I'm pretty sure that AVs/GMs had separate debuff modifiers from the traditional level based reductions unless that's been changed.   Against +3 mobs I've been consistent in saying I believe all set types are fine, albeit with indidivual sets potentially needing tweaks.  The problem level wise was +4/+5 which I've been very clear about.  But AVs/GMs to my memory, and in all the searching I've done, have their own separate table of level based debuff resistances that caps out at 87% at 55.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Ralathar44

[modest]

15 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Then what I believe you are saying is that resistance debuffs are not subject to traditional debuff resistance and instead processed through their own separate mechanics.  Which would ironically make debuffs that are not -res (outside of -regen, which is a special case) incredibly less valuable and thus only make the problem of everything being focused around killing worse since even the valuable support sets are focused around killing lol. 

So say -def and -spd would be subject to ridiculous debuff resistance and yet -resist would be subject to a much smaller reduction, as shown in the picture Doomrider posted above..  That might be worse than all debuffs being resisted heavily if that's the case.

Resistance and regeneration debuffs are the most impactful debuffs at the end game. Resistance debuffs directly increase the damage of the entire team. They also allow a team to deal damage above the damage cap of their archetype, and increase the damage dealt by damage procs.

 

-Regeneration debuffs are very helpful against targets with high health and regeneration. The values of powers that debuff regeneration are typically either 500% or 1000%. Those percentages are so high that they have a large impact even if they are heavily resisted.

 

Damage and ToHit are heavily resisted, but they can be layered/stacked enough to have an effect. For example, my Storm/Dark Defender can lower a level 52 Praetorian archvillain's ToHit to 32%. As a result, due to the way that tohit and defense work, the archvillain has a 9.90% ToHit chance. That extra survival is not necessary for an end game team, but it is a meaningful debuff when solo.

[HelenCarnate]

1 minute ago, Ralathar44 said:

I'm pretty sure that AVs/GMs had separate debuff modifiers from the traditional level based reductions unless that's been changed.   Against +3 mobs I've been consistent in saying I believe all set types are fine, albeit with indidivual sets potentially needing tweaks.  The problem level wise was +4/+5 which I've been very clear about.  But AVs/GMs to my memory, and in all the searching I've done, have their own separate table of level based debuff resistances that caps out at 87% at 55.

To other things yes but not damage resistance. 

 

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Archvillain

 

Archvillains are also noteworthy for having strong debuff resistance that scales by level. As of Issue 9, this resistance applies to -RunSpeed, -Recharge, -Endurance, -ToHit, -Defense, -Perception, -Regeneration, and -Recovery.

[Grouchybeast]

4 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

I'm pretty sure that AVs/GMs had separate debuff modifiers from the traditional level based reductions unless that's been changed. 

Archvillan Resistence is a power possessed by AVs.  It's separate from and additional to any purple patch effects on the player's powers.  So a defense debuff on an AV will be reduced by AV Resistance AND purple patch effects.  Resistance debuff would only be affected by the purple patch.

[MunkiLord]

I think one way to make adjustments go over better would be if the respec process was more pleasant. 

[Ralathar44]

1 hour ago, modest said:

Resistance and regeneration debuffs are the most impactful debuffs at the end game. Resistance debuffs directly increase the damage of the entire team. They also allow a team to deal damage above the damage cap of their archetype, and increase the damage dealt by damage procs.

 

-Regeneration debuffs are very helpful against targets with high health and regeneration. The values of powers that debuff regeneration are typically either 500% or 1000%. Those percentages are so high that they have a large impact even if they are heavily resisted.

 

Damage and ToHit are heavily resisted, but they can be layered/stacked enough to have an effect. For example, my Storm/Dark Defender can lower a level 52 Praetorian archvillain's ToHit to 32%. As a result, due to the way that tohit and defense work, the archvillain has a 9.90% ToHit chance. That extra survival is not necessary for an end game team, but it is a meaningful debuff when solo.

Hmmm, honestly I think that proves what I'm saying though.  You used Blackstar and Hurricane, both enhanced for -to-hit and both of those are pretty unique cases.  Very effective during that time frame mind you, a good use of powers, but that is definitely an exception and not the rule.  Normal -to-hit debuff values are nothing close to those numbers and hurricane's is supposed to be balanced out because of it's repel properties requiring you to use it very carefully vs most things as it scattered mobs and pushes targets out of melee range of allies.  Blackstar is a nuke from a blast set, which is ironically more effective at debuffing to-hit than any debuffer set....even better than Radiation unless it also uses dark blast.

So as has been stated by others -res doesn't have any special debuff resist like other debuffs and so translates largely through other stuff has to have huge values or high stacking of smaller values to amount to much.  So -res is useful, -def has generally high values that could make a difference, -def debuffs get pretty high so they can translate some useful % through at least.  -% damage is going to be reduced to trivial numbers, - recharge from debuffer sets is going to be reduced to almost nothing, -spd will be reduced to very small amounts and is generally not useful like it is on normal mobs, endurance drain is possible but takes ludicrous amounts from a specialized and enhanced power combo to have any effect.
 

1 hour ago, Grouchybeast said:

Archvillan Resistence is a power possessed by AVs.  It's separate from and additional to any purple patch effects on the player's powers.  So a defense debuff on an AV will be reduced by AV Resistance AND purple patch effects.  Resistance debuff would only be affected by the purple patch.

That explains the disconnect on AVs, thank you.  It's weird that -res is the only one that doesn't get such severe diminishing returns when even -def does.  It's no wonder AVs/GMs is all -regen (normally super high base values), -res (not subject to AV specific resistances), and -def (high enough base values when fully enhanced to make at least SOME difference+alot of small incidental sources from attacks). 

But purple patch would still affect all so against +4/+5s all debuffs would be reduced to 48%/30% of their values while buffs would retain full values.  Prolly not much of a problem for most folks commenting here tackling things as a +1 level shift so 54s are in reality only +3 to them.  AS I stated, incarnates break everything lol.  A non-shifted level 50 applying a 10% debuff to a level 55 would get 3% debuff in effect while a +1 shifted incarnate vs that same enemy would get a 4.8% effect.  That's over 50% more effective.  If we lower the mob to 54 then a +1 shifted incarnate would get 6.5% and a normal 50 would get 4.8%, in this case the incarnate is 35% more effective with the same debuff.  This is in addition to any incarnate passives/abilities that might potentially affect their debuff in specialist builds.

Basically the experience of a level shifted incarnate applying debuffs in a +4/8 mission and that of a non level shifted natural 50 is pretty significant.  Between 35% and 50% depending on the mob group.  If you're level 30-49 and a further level down being sidekicked up to 49 the difference is even more severe with that additional 1 level difference.  I can see why people think there is no issue if their primary experiences are formed based on incarnates with level shifts.

 

Edited September 22, 2020 by Ralathar44

[MunkiLord]

I'm not going to find the posts, but did y'all see those Scrapper primary numbers? Do people not realize just how f***ing good War Mace is? Why aren't more people using it?

[skoryy]

Just now, MunkiLord said:

I'm not going to find the posts, but did y'all see those Scrapper primary numbers? Do people not realize just how f***ing good War Mace is? Why aren't more people using it?

Leveling yet another alt up has hit chore status, otherwise I'd still be making progress on my own level 35.  Honestly, its pretty strong.

[ScarySai]

7 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

I'm not going to find the posts, but did y'all see those Scrapper primary numbers? Do people not realize just how f***ing good War Mace is? Why aren't more people using it?

Haven't really been inspired to roll it, though I'm well aware of how strong it is.

 

I already have a claw/bio, so I'd probably try WM/Ninja, or embrace the meme of WM/ENA. I hear the latter is strong and pretty.

[BitCook]

3 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

 In a properly balanced end game we'd still get hit, people'd still get hurt, heals would still be useful, and fights with individual mobs would take longer than 10-15 seconds.  Not specifically because that's needed for empathy, but because that's needed for a wide variety of powersets to be useful.

Exactly.  Well said!  Control, Aggro management and to a lesser degree Buffs and Debuffs are really just not that important in the end game.  Yes they can be useful, but when the damage dealers get strong enough to take an alpha and do enough damage solo to wipe out team content, there is a strong argument that you are hurting your team by not bringing an optimized damage dealer.

[BrandX]

8 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

This is my experience as well and would say Kinetic Melee suffers the same due to animation length.  TW is definitely not on the list of choices for me on speed TFs or iTrials.  Far from it in fact.  To be honest, I do not think I have ever seen a TW scrapper or Brute on a TF or iTrial recently.  From my experience, they are an outlier and nowhere near as common as SS or StrJ.

 

StJ and SS have the luxury of being very superhero/concept friendly, with StJ being a good super strength concept for Scrappers.

 

TW, not as concept friendly for many.  Personally, I wish they'd just port the Razor Sword over to Katana 🙂  Love the concept, don't enjoy the playstyle.

[Taboo]

3 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

I'm not going to find the posts, but did y'all see those Scrapper primary numbers? Do people not realize just how f***ing good War Mace is? Why aren't more people using it?

nerf bait..

[GM Tock]

As a reminder, please don't reply to a post that is a clear Code of Conduct Violation (such as a personal attack or abusive language.)  Any posts quoting the reported post will be removed in turn, regardless of why.

 

That's all, carry on!

[GM Tock]

3 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

I'm not going to find the posts, but did y'all see those Scrapper primary numbers? Do people not realize just how f***ing good War Mace is? Why aren't more people using it?

I lurvs War Mace!

[Ralathar44]

War Mace has grown so much, I still remember when Clobber did minor damage and was a disorient only power :D.