Game Balance & The Endgame

[ScarySai]

Only if full auto shoots incendiary rockets until you turn it off.

[macskull]

Just have it shoot Blaze on every tick, DoTs on DoTs

Edited September 24, 2020 by macskull

[FUBARczar]

2 hours ago, siolfir said:

a) I posted those numbers in response to a "Fire Blast has better DPA numbers than Titan Weapons with Momentum," which made me take a look at it again because - get this - Fire Blast isn't that far ahead of the next best ranged set, while Titan Weapons - annoying mechanics aside - has a wider performance gap between it and second place.

 

b) As I've said repeatedly, I DON'T CARE IF A FIRE/ BLASTER CAN OUTDAMAGE A TW/ SCRAPPER. THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO. I put the numbers up because knew Blaze was good, and didn't believe that the rest of the single-target attacks were well in line with others. So stop telling me a Blaster can clear faster, because IDGAF, it's WAI.

I just pointed out that you weren't considering all aspects.  Also what data sets are you using when you say, "Fire Blast isn't that far ahead of the next best ranged set, while Titan Weapons - annoying mechanics aside - has a wider performance gap between it and second place"?

[Mezmera]

1 hour ago, FoulVileTerror said:

I'm guessing that's kind of the point, @macskull.

Not to shoot my own feet any more, but . . . coupled with Piecemeal's post a few pages back, it seems like the Team are testing the waters of increasing transparency.

I hope the level of drama here hasn't been too discouraging, and that helpful feedback has been obtained.

 

When has transparency ever been an in-noble goal?  If they'd have done this months ago some people wouldn't feel ambushed with what's being proposed and thus wouldn't feel a need to rush their dialogue through.  At the end of the day they'll still want people to play on their servers and what better way to keep them engaged, yes hold them to some level of objectivity and compromise but that goes both ways.  

 

Looks to me that what's being considered affects a large portion of the base unless you're a blaster main in which case it's kitty cats and rainbows. 

 

One persons drama is another's culture.  

Edited September 24, 2020 by Mezmera

[Kanil]

11 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Only if full auto shoots incendiary rockets until you turn it off.

 

5 minutes ago, macskull said:

Just have it shoot Blaze on every tick, DoTs on DoTs

[agentx5]

Can we please have the Sorcery Pool revisited ASAP?

[Enflame] and [Spirit Ward] only lasting 5 seconds in particular?

They look & sound awesome, but functionally they are arguably some of most useless selections in the game.

 

Also I've been patiently waiting for improvements to the Inherent Powers that'd make ATs more distinctive, Kheldian's in particular (I loved RedLynne's PBAoE team buff suggestion).

Edited September 24, 2020 by agentx5

[golstat2003]

17 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

Only if full auto shoots incendiary rockets until you turn it off.

You mean incendiary rockets out of your butt, right, RIGHT? 

[Coyotedancer]

3 hours ago, carroto said:

It can be enjoyable to join lower-level groups.  It feels more like what I remember.  It kind of sucks to have many of my powers unavailable, and some of my set bonuses shut off, but it tends to be an actual team, working as a team, to some extent at least.

For whatever it's worth, for anyone who feels like their support characters aren't valued on end-game teams? I highly recommend running them exemplared with lower level groups. That's what I do routinely with all but one of mine. (The Time/Dark I mentioned up-thread... Ivory... is the only one I run at 50+) Those groups are the ones that need you and they'll usually love to have you. It's good fun.

[FoulVileTerror]

erhm . . . about the Blasters . . . 

Rumour mill milling its rumours, I have the understanding that Blasters will be getting toned -down- in Page 6.  At least in the places where they violate Controllers' niche.

'course, I don't -know- that . . . so The Curator's post is a little surprising to me in the way it was phrased in that particular paragraph.  Maybe the rumours were wrong.  Maybe the Team decided to change gears.

I mean, not to be too petty, but if Blasters are getting another new Set, then tit-for-tat with Controllers/Dominators, it would be nice to see less toe-stepping there.   Of course, it would also be nice to have Controllers receive treatment to their AoEs to bring them on-par with what Atomic Manipulation is capable of on the Live Homecoming servers right now.

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, Kanil said:

make full auto a toggle is my argument

...

 

This is ... glorious.

 

Edit: The tech for this is already in the game.

 

You turn this toggle on and as with Khel shapeshifting, it locks you out of all other attacks.

And like Judgement Vorpal, you don't need a target, it just hits whatever is in front of you.

And it doesn't root you so you can just hop into a spawn and spin around.

 

I want this so bad.

Edited September 24, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[ScarySai]

Have it copy all abilities cast while it's on every 3s, and have the only limitation to the stacking be how much endurance you can sustain every 2s before bottoming out.

[Grouchybeast]

8 hours ago, FoulVileTerror said:

I'm guessing that's kind of the point, @macskull.

Not to shoot my own feet any more, but . . . coupled with Piecemeal's post a few pages back, it seems like the Team are testing the waters of increasing transparency.

I hope the level of drama here hasn't been too discouraging, and that helpful feedback has been obtained.

At the moment my hypothesis is that the devs are hoping the forums will chafe themselves into exhaustion over completely theoretical changes, so that when the actual changes hit test they'll get less nonsense and more real feedback from people who have actually tested the changes.

 

I think they underestimate forum stamina.

[skoryy]

1 hour ago, Grouchybeast said:

At the moment my hypothesis is that the devs are hoping the forums will chafe themselves into exhaustion over completely theoretical changes, so that when the actual changes hit test they'll get less nonsense and more real feedback from people who have actually tested the changes.

 

I think they underestimate forum stamina.

They'll do what they've done before and listen to those who do the testing and put in the work.

[BitCook]

10 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

Having something other than DPS today, DOES make the content easier. That's the point I just made. I'm not sure where this idea is coming from. Some people and I are playing an entirely different game.

 

EDIT: To be clear I jump for joy internally when team leaders pull in Doms, Controllers, Defenders to a team when that scrapper or blaster leaves. Why? Cause I know the power of force multiplication. When I form teams I'm not primarily looking for DPS. And I've not seen a majority of folks in LFG ever turn away non-dps ATs.

The idea is coming from many (again I can really only speak to myself and the people I've talked with about it)  of us who have been playing Support Mains.

On most endgame teams, you do not have time to get out any of the "force multiplying" powers that were hallmark to teams back on live.  Try playing a Rad anything.  You might.... might have time to get a cast of RI out.  You certainly won't get much else.  As a controller, you may get a singular control in play... although why?  If a mob is going to die in 2-5 seconds, what possible use to the team is stunning them before their very quick demise.

Several of us have shared experiences and done the following test.

Run to a mob with your team, use your support/debuff/controls.  See how long the team takes to defeat the mob.  Run to the next one and do nothing.  Odds are, it's about the same time.

The thing about force multiplication is that as the time to kill decreases so does the effects of your multiplication.  Say a buff/debuff adds 10% to the entire team's kill speed.  That's pretty good!  If it took the team 30 seconds to defeat the mob, you might expect 27 seconds to wipe them out with that buff.  However, let's go with our steamroller team.  They take 10 seconds to wipe the same mob.  Now you changed them to 9 seconds.  Your value decreases as kill speeds increase.  At some point, the kill speed is essentially 1-2 cast times and adding any support/control/aggro management is essentially useless.

I have never seen any AT turned down.  That is something that I would agree with.  However, sometimes that's because you often get teams like:
"PI Missions LF2M +4, bring anything."

Because they already have 1-2 characters that can solo that content.  They could literally care less what you bring.  You want to door sit?  Okay, no big.

Some of it is people who still really believe in the power of support sets.  Some is that any 8 heroes will clear anything in the game (in general).

I don't know what you are experiencing and the groups you are playing, however, for me and at least some people I have worked with on builds and tips, this is a pretty common scenario.

[Haijinx]

10 hours ago, FUBARczar said:

I just pointed out that you weren't considering all aspects.  Also what data sets are you using when you say, "Fire Blast isn't that far ahead of the next best ranged set, while Titan Weapons - annoying mechanics aside - has a wider performance gap between it and second place"?

It may be or may not be.  I am not sure how far ahead it is.  At least in the blast sets, the set with the secondary effect of extra damage(DOT) coincides with it being top damage dealer.  Unlike Fire Melee where it is nowhere near the top. 

 

But Fire Blast does have some annoying aspects to it compared to say the generic blast set*

 

Its Cone animates Very slowly.

Its snipe is slower animating than most. 

Rain of Fire is kinda blah to use without binds.  

 

Performance is top notch though. 

 

These little hitches matter more when you have zero mitigation in your primary (beside damage).  Breath of Fire can get you killed.  

 

===================

*Energy Blast would be "the generic blast set" if it didn't have all that knockback.  Its progression and power picks are what everything else deviates from.  

[Haijinx]

9 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

...

 

This is ... glorious.

 

Edit: The tech for this is already in the game.

 

You turn this toggle on and as with Khel shapeshifting, it locks you out of all other attacks.

And like Judgement Vorpal, you don't need a target, it just hits whatever is in front of you.

And it doesn't root you so you can just hop into a spawn and spin around.

 

I want this so bad.

Only if you limit the Toggle to the choice of a belt-fed water cooled gun model choice. 

 

Gotta have standards. 

[FUBARczar]

2 hours ago, Haijinx said:

It may be or may not be.  I am not sure how far ahead it is.  At least in the blast sets, the set with the secondary effect of extra damage(DOT) coincides with it being top damage dealer.  Unlike Fire Melee where it is nowhere near the top. 

 

But Fire Blast does have some annoying aspects to it compared to say the generic blast set*

 

Its Cone animates Very slowly.

Its snipe is slower animating than most. 

Rain of Fire is kinda blah to use without binds.  

 

Performance is top notch though. 

 

These little hitches matter more when you have zero mitigation in your primary (beside damage).  Breath of Fire can get you killed.  

 

===================

*Energy Blast would be "the generic blast set" if it didn't have all that knockback.  Its progression and power picks are what everything else deviates from.  

What's Breath of Fire?  lol  

Thankfully you don't have to and really can't take every power, so having a dud like BoF is no biggie, it's complete rubbish.  Even the vaunted TW has skippable powers.  

Still any lead that TW has in performance (and one set has to lead) pales in comparison to the need underperforming sets need to be buffed.

[Haijinx]

4 minutes ago, FUBARczar said:

What's Breath of Fire?  lol  

Thankfully you don't have to and really can't take every power, so having a dud like BoF is no biggie, it's complete rubbish.  Even the vaunted TW has skippable powers.  

Still any lead that TW has in performance (and one set has to lead) pales in comparison to the need underperforming sets need to be buffed.

Breath of fire is kinda epic though on a team with range enhancers though.

 

But yeah I usually skip it too.  Fireball is awesome enough.

[Phoenix']

17 hours ago, ScarySai said:

They used to, and they were often skipped or got the user killed for doing it.

 

If Paragon saw it fit to buff those, I don't see any valid reason to get rid of it now.

Nukes need to return to where they were tbh. 

I'd rather see them having a good damage buff than recharging every 25 secs with no end penalty. 

I remember people were having second thoughts on using them and that was fine

[KeepDistance]

3 hours ago, BitCook said:

The thing about force multiplication is that as the time to kill decreases so does the effects of your multiplication.  Say a buff/debuff adds 10% to the entire team's kill speed.  That's pretty good!  If it took the team 30 seconds to defeat the mob, you might expect 27 seconds to wipe them out with that buff.  However, let's go with our steamroller team.  They take 10 seconds to wipe the same mob.  Now you changed them to 9 seconds.

I don't have a dog in this race, but this example doesn't prove your point; the steamroll team will take out 3 mobs in 27 seconds rather than 3 mobs in 30 seconds.

[Haijinx]

28 minutes ago, Phoenix' said:

Nukes need to return to where they were tbh. 

I'd rather see them having a good damage buff than recharging every 25 secs with no end penalty. 

I remember people were having second thoughts on using them and that was fine

I used to skip them.  They took so long to recharge, and would generally kill me anyhow.  

 

So I prefer it the way it is now, but it does contribute a lot to Power Creep.  So there is that wrinkle.  

[FUBARczar]

1 hour ago, Phoenix' said:

Nukes need to return to where they were tbh. 

I'd rather see them having a good damage buff than recharging every 25 secs with no end penalty. 

I remember people were having second thoughts on using them and that was fine

all 100% crashes are laaaaaame, bad design, there are better ways

[Haijinx]

Perhaps they could start by revamping the council.

 

Since this is the group that gets beat up the most, any changes here would really impact the state of the game.  

 

Although my preference is improving the brains behind the idiot bad guys - maybe buffing some of the group members would help.  

 

Leadership powers for Council Bosses I think might work well.  

Add some more grenades.  Or buff the ones they have.   Device Blasters got their T1 Web Grenade buffed with damage.  Do that.  

Add in medic powers to some of the LTs.  

Edited September 24, 2020 by Haijinx
clarity

[Mezmera]

10 minutes ago, FUBARczar said:

all 100% crashes are laaaaaame, bad design, there are better ways

I'd up the recharge time on the nukes a bit or do something where recharge is unaffected on these powers kinda like how some of the newer armor t9s have a set recharge.  

 

Then they could do something like make it 50% end drop then it also caps your defense values at 30% and resistances to 45% for like 15 seconds.  You're exhausting yourself with a massive attack so wouldn't it be likely you'd be easier to hit and harm just after exhaustion?

Edited September 24, 2020 by Mezmera

[KeepDistance]

On 9/20/2020 at 8:12 PM, Giovanni Valia said:

The numbers really speak for themselves here. TW is an outlier. it's OP. Everyone knows it, but not everyone will admit it.

 

I know I'm commenting on a really old part of this thread but I suspect the thinking is characteristic of more than one poster.

 

I would be very, very cautious about drawing a conclusion about how a set performs based on how many people use it, for two reasons.

 

First, people play sets for more than just effectiveness. Pain and Empathy are similar powersets, and which one is better is debatable, but Empathy is chosen almost 10x as frequently as Pain for Defenders. Why? I would guess it's largely that Empathy fits better with folks' character conceptions, particularly for a heroic archetype. Some hypothetically effectiveness-balanced TW set might still be chosen more frequently than others because people think it just looks cool, for example.

 

Second, looking only at aggregate numbers like this hides details about context, and sometimes that context matters. For example, the quoted statistics don't separate out Fiery Aura, even though previous statistics in that post do separate them out because clearly FA is an outlier of its own. Why is it an outlier? Because the combination of AE and Winter IOs made fire mitigation the clear winner for farming maps. Does that mean FA should be changed, or does it suggest that farming potential should be spread out among more damage types?

 

More generally, underlying structure of data may mean that aggregates appear to show properties that disappear when the data is broken down - see Simpson's Paradox for the statistical background on how this happens. The apparent outlier of FA is one example of this, but there may be others more directly related to TW.