Game Balance & The Endgame

[macskull]

42 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Empathy is king by far

what

[golstat2003]

1 minute ago, macskull said:

what

I second this. ummm, huh?

[Vanden]

Empathy is the best one, it's not that complicated

[Super Atom]

1 hour ago, WindDemon21 said:

I'm pretty sure blizzard is on a 170s base recharge and inferno is on a 145s recharge, so I don't see how you're getting that...

Well it's a funny story actually.

 

You see i was an Archery but i swapped to Ice. When i did so, my brain for some reason kept the mentality of "Oh my thing recharges faster" but that wasn't actually the case and until the guy mentioned it, I forgot entirely that it was no longer the case for my nuke. Crazy right?

 

I'm not really a blaster guy in the first place.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Super Atom

[golstat2003]

2 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Empathy is the best one, it's not that complicated

Yeah we're gonna have to agree to disagree.

[Vanden]

3 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

Yeah we're gonna have to agree to disagree.

You can't disagree with numbers.

 

[Greycat]

20 minutes ago, Vanden said:

You can't disagree with numbers.

I can!

 

(Yes, I am just being contrary here. 🙂 )

[Ralathar44]

I've also heard several people talk about MoG being bad or useless but my Regen Brute finds it quite useful and it feels close to balanced to me.  My normal defenses handle most situations but if things start going ugly it gives me time to catch my breathe and re-establish control.  OR if I get spiked and go down i can quickly pop back up with self rez and then regain aggro using MoG to regain control of the situation.  The duration is low at 15 seconds but the recharge is also pretty fast at 4 minutes baseline (under 3 minutes with a single IO) so it's pretty much always up when needed.

If 15 seconds after things went sideways isn't long enough to whittle down enemy dps enough to survive then IMO you shouldn't be winning that fight anyways.  Sure bosses can take longer, but everything else shouldn't.  It serves the exact purpose of being an emergency button used to gain control of a bad situation, which seems to be what T9s in armor sets are aimed to do in general.  Though I do understand that with IO set bonuses this benefit can be lessened or be broken for defense oriented power sets.  But in that case you've chosen to build that way instead of using that breathing room to build differently.

If I was to make changes to T9s like elude, it'd be to make crashes soft crashes, shorten the cooldowns, and shorten the duration, and add flavor.  My vision of them is an intended use case of "get control of bad situation while getting a badass momentary power spike".  Slot efficient, up much more often, and not as punishing when they wear off.  Soft crashes would be things like increasing your endurance costs by 100% and maybe custom penalties in the 10-30 seconds after it wears off instead of losing all endurance and toggle dropping you immeadiately.  Examples of spitballed ideas for T9s and self rez's:

- Unstoppable: 300 second recharge, 30 second duration with 70% of the current resistance buff baseline.  New passive aspect: every hit you land increases your to-hit, damage, and resistance very slightly for 10 seconds to a max of 5 stacks.  The passive aspect is always on but is increased greatly when the power is active.  (This is where that 30% went).  Now allows To-hit enhances and sets.  When power wears off your endurance costs are doubled and the passive is disabled for 15 seconds. 

- Elude: 360 second recharge, 30 second duration with an additional 20% recharge buff.  When power wears off your endurance costs are doubled and recharge is debuffed by 20% for 30 seconds.

- Soul Transfer: Will revive you with no enemies around, but will do so with almost no hp and endurance as well as self stunned, similar to an awaken.  If at least 5 enemies are hit then your recovery, to-hit, and damage will boosted for 10 seconds.  Now accepts to-hit sets.

- Power Surge:  240 second recharge, 15 second duration.  When power wears off your endurance costs are doubled for 10 seconds.  (don't forget about the EMP, no hard crash, lower cd, and lower duration makes the EMP a much larger and more reliable part of this power)

- Hibernate:  When you emerge from hibernation a cold wave radiates out from you (PBAOE) chilling nearby enemies, slowing their movement speeds and recharge.  This power can now slot slow IOs and sets.

- One with the Shield:  360 second recharge, 30 second duration.  New passive: all attacks have a 5% chance to proc additional smashing damage (hitting them with your shield).   While OwtS is active this becomes a 100% chance.  When power wears off your endurance costs are doubled and you have a 0% chance to proc additional smashing damage for 15 seconds.

- Stone Armor:  Granite:  lol nope this set needs a complete rework.  IMO the base armors need to be buffed carry the set, rooted needs it's slow halved + let you jump and use combat jumping (albeit at slowed speeds), and granite needs to become a T9. 

- Strength of Will:  Honestly with the soft 50% endo crash and reduced values this one already feels solid. 

- Moment of Glory:  Keeps same duration and recharge but add a health sized regeneration buff passively.  This buff doubles when the power is activated.  This power can now slot healing IOs and sets.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Ralathar44

[ScarySai]

Empathy's so strong, it actually makes me - the player - feel sorry for the guy who picked it.

[Ralathar44]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

what

That's right, I said it's king....when it comes to team support.  It's far and away the most used defender primary for a reason.  Easy to use and understand, familiar to people from other games (but that's not true on these servers, we're almost all veterans here!), yet still top tier at end game and in the capable hands of a veteran.  It provides both safety and offense to top tier levels, can reliably self heal,  and the two pbaoe buffs also affect yourself...one of which is an endurance management tool.

The reason kin is used for Controllers and Corruptors is because defender players are focusing on buffing the team.  Corruptors are notorious for focusing on their own blasting (which is why they chose Corruptor instead of Defender, they are prioritizing blasting over team support) and you cannot use Fortitude or Adrenaline Boost on yourself, if you could no doubt empathy would be the most used Corruptor secondary too lol.   Controllers use kin to boost the damage of their pets as well as themselves because applying fortitude to individual pets over and over again is a complete PITA and they are disposable too so a long duration long recharge buff is not a good fit for them.  And again because you cannot self buff Fortitude and Adrenaline Boost.  So it's again the choice on them focusing on their personal damage over the best buffing for the team.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Ralathar44

[macskull]

20 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

It's far and away the most used defender primary for a reason. 

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.

Edited September 21, 2020 by macskull

[Heraclea]

7 hours ago, FUBARczar said:

I wasn't defending it.  I simply expressed a desire to raise the tides before you chop the trees down.

Dear GOD! the METAPHORS!

That said, I have a Titan Weapons scrapper I never play anymore.  I never warmed to the set.  It has serious disadvantages and annoyances that don't really coincide with the ways it's supposed to be overperforming.  It's playable mostly because experienced melee players know how to build around extreme endurance costs.  In other words, not for beginners. Its damage spikes are hard to control.  It does not exemp well at all; take your level 50 TW scrapper on a Penny Yin and see.  These disadvantages just don't show when you'ere taking a well kitted out level 50 TW character against a single stationary target like a Rikti pylon. 

[Parabola]

Delighted to see this announcement. Also a little saddened (but in no way surprised) by some of the reaction to it. This is absolutely the right direction to be taking devs. Keep up the good work.

[Ralathar44]

1 hour 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.

Debuffer sets unfortunately get murdered by the purple patch.  Since the game has power creeped to +4/+5 as the high level opponents faced your debuffs will only be applying between 50% and 30% of their original values and enemies get exploded at record speeds by classes doing damage.  And if we're taking about level shifted tricked out incarnates then we're talking a tiny % of the actual game in which to talk about overall power set viability and effectiveness.  I'd wager people spent the vast majority of their time under 50 honestly with how many alts people roll 😛.  Past level 30ish your chances of facing +4/+5 rise pretty steadily, but there are still tons of groups at 50 that cannot handle +4/+5 (and sometimes not even +3/8) unless there is an incarnate carrying them.  If an incarnate is carrying a team then all power viability for that team is essentially moot :P.  We all know that incarnates utterly break the game.

 

Trick Arrow is near and dear to my heart and is hit especially hard by the purple patch.  Disruption arrow is providing between 5% and 10% res debuff and even for hard target elimination when you stack acid arrow on top of that it's a 10%-20% on that same target assuming acid arrow hits ofc.  Oil Slick Arrow barely makes mobs flop anymore and the damage is quite anemic when the actual damage classes are carving entire mobs of +4s up in literal seconds.  The entire mob grouping is often killed before a TA defender even has time to shoot all their arrows.  Which means EMP Arrow is also pretty useless.  So all you really bring a 10%/6.5% debuff AOE, a 20%/13% res debuff single target, and next to no damage.  And if you're a Corruptor those debuff values are 7.5%/5% and 15%/10%.    Honestly I'd rather just have another scrapper/blaster/sentinel instead of that pathetic amount of potential damage increase.  Or better yet bring a Widow or Soldier and provide double leadership buffs and provide more than the Trick Arrow Defender ever could dream of to a high level team.  And I LOVE my Trick Arrow, it was my main pre-sunset.  The Current state of Trick Arrow makes me very sad, I feel like dead weight on high level teams and I don't see a way to fix it without yet more power creep or addressing the purple patch to rebalance basically the entire end game.  If you're running leadership then your leadership toggles are prolly doing almost as much as your entire primary powerset :(.  (ofc part of that is that leadership is arguably too good lol)

If we were talking +2/+3 then sure, I'd agree with you, TA can crush +2 and is still pretty good +3.  But that's unfortunately not what high level teams face and group damage is usually so high that +2/+3 mobs are instantly evaporated unless AOE caps are being hit.  Debuffer sets just get destroyed by the purple patch on +4/+5 mobs. 


Empathy is still quite strong even late game, a large permanent damage/to hit/defense buff to over half your damage dealers via Fortitude is, by itself, more than TA brings to the table unfortunately :(.  Traps can't even set down its stuff before a mob is dead or half dead.  Nature is an odd choice to mention.  It's prolly about as survivable as Empathy but provides less damage and must constantly refresh the survivability PBAOEs if they are being used.  It's one offense increaser is Overgrowth, which is a very nice damage and to hit debuff....but has less than 50% uptime.  And if we're saying IO recharge bonuses and the brokeness of Hasten...um...that applies to empathy buffs too :P.  Corrosive enzymes is a 12.5%/8% res debuff after purple patch vs +4/+5.  It's something but it's hardly great.  Sonic Resonance brings plenty of -res so it can actually debuff in AOE for 15%/10% and single target 30%/20%.  T

I feel like you just threw out a padded list of everything but forcefield just for the sake of having a big list.  I could see you making a decent arguement for about HALF of those power sets, but certainly not all of them...much as I might love some of them.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Ralathar44

[Kanil]

4 hours ago, 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.

 

look on the bright side, at least tw users will go 'yeah it's op but you gotta deal with momentum'

meanwhile, on fire blast:

 

[nihilii]

I'm hoping changes to PPM will aim to make the system more intuitive rather than scrap it back to what we had before. IMHO, intended or not and fully balanced or not, PPM has been the best change. It multiplied the number of decisions one makes with a build. Instead of sticking 5-piece and 6-piece sets in attacks, optimization now comes through careful mix-and-matching to fit as much procs as sensible while retaining appropriate % enhancements. Even previously nigh useless set bonuses like Accuracy have found a new worth, as proc loaded attacks can leverage underslotting with accuracy thanks to these set bonuses.

 

The one arguable flaw of PPM might be the arbitrary nature of slotted recharge hurting your rate but not global recharge - especially because popular alphas boost recharge. Even then, even this aspect creates very interesting build tradeoffs, encouraging the use of a more diverse attack chain as opposed to just cramming as much recharge as possible in your best hitters.

 

PvE builds used to be 100% about maximum defense and recharge, with every other aspect taken care of passively while pursuing these goals. Now we've got interesting choices to make about the damage output we want to reach and the sacrifices we're willing to make. 1 year and a half in of way too many hours toying with Mids, I still find new routes to explore every day for my characters.

 

It would probably be fair to exclude alpha slot from the PPM calculation, if only to challenge Musculature supremacy ever so slightly. Beyond that, I'm not sure changes truly need to happen, beyond UI/UX design making the system more clear to players.

[macskull]

14 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

I feel like you just threw out a padded list of everything but forcefield just for the sake of having a big list.  I could see you making a decent arguement for about HALF of those power sets, but certainly not all of them...much as I might love some of them.

Okay, I'll bite.

 

Cold: Hands-down the best support set in the game. In two clicks you've provided as much defense as Fortitude, but for the entire team, and you get some bonus resistance buffs along with that. You can stack absurd amounts of -res on a target, thereby increasing your entire team's damage. Anyone near you has 60% slow resistance. Heat Loss makes Recovery Aura look downright awful by comparison. You can also shut down a target's regen, effectively increasing your team's damage even further.

 

Dark: Best AoE heal in the game (not super relevant but still a point). Easily stackable -res. Darkest Night has some pretty silly -dam/-tohit numbers. Howling Twilight is an AoE rez/stun, something other sets have to dip into Incarnate powers to get. Fearsome Stare is one of the best CC powers in a non-control set. If you're talking the Controller version, Fade and Soul Absorption are really good.

 

Elec: Okay, maybe not this one. It does bring Fortitude-level +dam/+tohit to pretty much your entire team and Amp Up is pretty nutty if used on the right person but this set overall is pretty "meh." Sorta like Empathy.

 

Kin: Speed Boost, Transference, and Fulcrum Shift. 'Nuff said.

 

Nature: The single-target -res/-dam isn't anything to write home about but it's relatively spammable. It's got -dam, -tohit, -regen, a "drop it and forget it" heal/end patch, absorb, +dam/+tohit/+end discount, +res/+regen, and a little bit of healing thrown in there plus the Bloom mechanic means heals from any source are more effective (again, not super relevant but still a point). Sure, you said something about needing lots of recharge to make some of those buffs last longer but... they're better buffs.

 

Pain: Ehh. World of Pain is a PBAoE +dam/+tohit/+res buff so you can at least keep it up on the entire team. You've also got some -def/-res in there. Not great, but the debuff ability combined with the buff ability edges it out over Empathy. I'd give the nod to AB over Painbringer though.

 

Poison: One of the better debuff sets in the game. You can put out some ridiculous -def/-res/-tohit/-dam regardless of the AT you're on.

 

Rad: I feel like I don't need to talk that much about this one, it's been a staple "Really Good Set" since the beginning.

 

Sonic: Resistance buffs are always welcome and Sonic does well there. Also has that nifty "set it and forget it" -res toggle. Liquefy is pretty bad but that's the biggest downside of that set.

 

Storm: A DPS set disguised as a support set. What's not to like?

 

Therm: More resistance buffs, Forge is better than Fortitude, and it's got hefty -regen. Also -def/-res on a long cooldown but it's still helpful.

 

Time: The very existence of this set pretty much makes Empathy irrelevant. It does almost everything Empathy does, minus the +tohit.

 

Traps: The lack of mobility severely reduces the utility of this set, but it does well in encounters where the user has time to drop a few of the debuff powers, namely Poison Trap and Acid Mortar. Outside of those sorts of encounters, the debuff utility isn't particularly relevant since most teams will be moving fast enough anyways.

 

Trick Arrow: Reasonable ability to stack -res, some decent -dam, and Oil Slick Arrow. Also, good for soft control with powers like PGA and Glue Arrow.

 

If your argument is debuffing sets aren't as useful as buffing sets because the purple patch exists, 1) you're wrong, and 2) Cold, Elec, Kin, Nature, Rad, Storm, Therm, and Time are still better than Empathy.

 

TL;DR: Once again, Empathy isn't a bad set, but almost every other support set is better.

[macskull]

23 minutes ago, nihilii said:

I'm hoping changes to PPM will aim to make the system more intuitive rather than scrap it back to what we had before. IMHO, intended or not and fully balanced or not, PPM has been the best change. It multiplied the number of decisions one makes with a build. Instead of sticking 5-piece and 6-piece sets in attacks, optimization now comes through careful mix-and-matching to fit as much procs as sensible while retaining appropriate % enhancements. Even previously nigh useless set bonuses like Accuracy have found a new worth, as proc loaded attacks can leverage underslotting with accuracy thanks to these set bonuses.

 

The one arguable flaw of PPM might be the arbitrary nature of slotted recharge hurting your rate but not global recharge - especially because popular alphas boost recharge. Even then, even this aspect creates very interesting build tradeoffs, encouraging the use of a more diverse attack chain as opposed to just cramming as much recharge as possible in your best hitters.

 

PvE builds used to be 100% about maximum defense and recharge, with every other aspect taken care of passively while pursuing these goals. Now we've got interesting choices to make about the damage output we want to reach and the sacrifices we're willing to make. 1 year and a half in of way too many hours toying with Mids, I still find new routes to explore every day for my characters.

 

It would probably be fair to exclude alpha slot from the PPM calculation, if only to challenge Musculature supremacy ever so slightly. Beyond that, I'm not sure changes truly need to happen, beyond UI/UX design making the system more clear to players.

I think the crux of the argument is something like "Controllers (or insert X low-damage AT here) shouldn't be able to do that much damage" while completely disregarding any sacrifices that are made to allow that to happen. Homecoming has been out in the open for almost a year and a half now, and the PPM system existed in its current implementation the entire time Resurgence was hidden from the public view. I'm of the opinion that there's no real reason to go after the PPM/proc system and any efforts to nerf it are a solution to a nonexistent problem. I think the only legitimate argument that can be made against the PPM system is PvP balance, but the simplest solution to that is simply reduce the amount of damage procs do in PvP.

[Phoenix']

10 hours ago, Xanatos said:

 

Please leave the T9s alone. They're essential (and balanced!) in PVP, and not needed in PVE.

 

If you're adamant about tweaking Overload/Elude/Kuji-In Retsu/Power Surge/Unstoppable, then all you need to do is lessen the crash. (Similar to how the blaster T9's had their crashes removed.)

 

They don't need reinventing. They don't need replacing. Please don't listen to the people with 1000+ posts in the suggestions forum who play the forums more than the game.

How being unkillable for 3 minutes seems balanced in PvP? And if you have burnout that means in a 10 minute match you can have a t9 for 9 freaking minutes. How is that balanced?
T9s should stay but they should last less time and have way longer recharge.
Plus I would love to see a small t9 given to other sets as well.

 

10 hours ago, Neiska said:

Just my opinion but, balancing powers in a majority PvE game for PvP reasons doesn't seem like a good idea.

well it worked before multiple times

 

9 hours ago, zenblack said:

This doesn't matter for the most part. As a Blaster you have enough places to proc in Fire on the powers that do the heavy hitting that it drastically outpaces all other sets but Ice on the ST (Nowhere on the AOE because Ice is bad at AOE). As a Corruptor you have the same options. It's only on a Defender or (bleh) Sentinel that this comes into play a little, and for the Sent it's only because they are neutered of their snipes.

Procs in fire? Do you know how the current ppm system works?
And let me inform you that propably the best farmer in the game is ice/fire blaster

[macskull]

3 minutes ago, Phoenix' said:

And let me inform you that propably the best farmer in the game is ice/fire blaster

To be fair Ice is only better than Fire in the AoE department in an environment where you're constantly at or over the aggro/target cap, which is why it's so good for fire farms.

[Neiska]

49 minutes ago, Phoenix' said:

well it worked before multiple times

Its also broken things before as well. Other games come to mind. Balancing PVE tools around PVP, when PVP is a small part of the game is kind of ridiculous. 

[macskull]

10 minutes ago, Neiska said:

Its also broken things before as well. Other games come to mind. Balancing PVE tools around PVP, when PVP is a small part of the game is kind of ridiculous. 

There's only been one time in the history of this game that a power has been nerfed in PvE solely for PvP reasons and I'd bet a billion inf you don't know what it is.

[FUBARczar]

9 hours ago, zenblack said:

I just want to say my Inferno is on a 30sec timer. Where Ice really lacks is it's consistant AOE and it can't make up for Fireball, no set really can. Fire is very much the TW of Blasters. I like Ice too, but it doesn't come close to Fire and that shouldn't be. Not Ice in particular, but there is no set that is coming close and until Damage is no longer as heavily weighted as it is, this won't change.

Fire comes close to about 20% increase in DPS compared to the next tier of sets (Beam, Energy, Water).  But overall performance in a full game setting I think Fire is good, and the rest should be bumped a little to catch up with at least (Beam, Energy, Water).  That can be done by simply lowering a few casting times, and maybe slight damage bump on a few powers.  Take the lowest performer (Sonic) for instance: Decrease the animation time of Shout and Bump the damage of Screech like on Sentinels, widen the cones from 30 to at least 45, and Shockwave deserves a slight damage bump and bring Howl animation down to 1.5 to 2.0.  Boom Set is ready to go as a competitive performer.  How about Psy Blast?  Lower the animation time of Psionic Tornado and bump damage a little with a slightly delayed smashing damage component and lower the cast time of Psychic Scream to bring DPS up to Ball Lightning levels.  Bump Will Domination damage to Freeze Ray levels. And done, now Psy Blast is competitive.  And so on.  Small tweaks like that will raise the lowest performing sets, giving those who pick on theme over raw numbers/performance an ability to compete and not be noticeably weak compared to other sets.  And allow min/maxers more choices w/o killing performance.  Win, Win and achieves stated goal of balance, another Win.

 

48 minutes ago, macskull said:

There's only been one time in the history of this game that a power has been nerfed in PvE solely for PvP reasons and I'd bet a billion inf you don't know what it is.

was it Whirlwind  haha

 

9 hours ago, Bopper said:

It's funny. After months of people clamoring for an update on what is in Page 6 and with just a small teaser and some forthcoming discussion on future plans, this thread shows proof once again why things are held close to the chest before releasing any information about possible changes. Way to go guys.

Don't poo poo passion.  Bring something to the table.  Perhaps things need to be communicated and discussed from earlier stages.  And pretty much all of this stuff in this thread is posted elsewhere and just brought here because of relevance, or thinking that this thread is actually being read by decision makers, etc. 

[Mezmera]

I do find it odd how much blasters keep getting shinier and shinier.  Someone on this team has a real kink for them.  If you'd like to tone down the steamrolling that ensues we're going to call into question PPM but blasters have gotten the sustain ability, tons of survive-ability added to the kit in their secondaries, raised hp cap on top of their already higher base hp among other squishies and then to top it off have super duper fast recharging crashless nukes and there's no issues there?  And we keep giving them new improved stuff to play with? 

 

I'm all for creating some balance but also parity is a good thing too.  With certain things being tweaked here and there will there be a toning down of how good blasters have gotten on City of Damage Spam?  Maybe tone down the crashless nuke a tad? 

 

I do mean an actual nerf.  Not one that's a sneaky buff like what was proposed for the Snipe where the base damage was going to be raised along with a slightly longer recharge, in effect raising the proc probability as well.  Yet most didn't realize this is what was happening and argued against the change and ruined it for themselves.  

 

Procs in PvP is a different story.  One ice blast/hold with at least 4 procs is a bit much.  Good luck normalizing anything between PvE and PvP though.  

 

Damn it's good to be a blaster!

 

15 hours ago, The Curator said:

We’re also looking at other areas long-term, such as the impact that Incarnate abilities have on non-Incarnate content, Incarnate crafting, how +special buffs interact with long duration +def powers

I'll just echo what some others are asking for.  Before changing how +special has worked since the start of the game could we maybe get some new harder content to use it on?  Like maybe an option for Incarnate difficulty added to some pre-existing Strike Forces and some new ones with fun new thought out mechanics and dynamic enemies?

[FUBARczar]

8 hours ago, Neiska said:

You are missing the point. That's kind of sort of what they did. It even says "Hey this is what we are thinking about doing" on page 1. 

 

As far as allowing a sort of "player vote" on something, well, firstly I doubt people would agree on things. Secondly it wouldn't surprise me in the least if people tried to make multiple accounts or something to vote more than once etc. I don't think putting a game in the hands of a community would not go the way you might expect. Or there's personal bias, what "you" may want, "others" wouldnt. (thats fair to say about anyone though really.) And thus "you" would still be in the same place where you are right now. Lastly, the majority of players don't use the forums, its a minority. So you would have only 80% of a minority population deciding on game features.

 

That to me, would be "actual" arbitrary "tyranny". Not ongoing updates you happen to disagree with, which is not "tyrannical" in the slightest. It says right in the user agreement that you sign to login each time "things may change". So this shouldn't be any sort of shock to you.  

Seems like what you describe was "democracy" (aka mob rule) having a player vote.  If they vote multiple times it's like taking mail in ballots of dead people, or people that moved and casting them too.  hahaha  Also in a democracy many people don't go to the "forums" and participate in the process.

 

So I guess u are saying you don't want any bias from active forum going players, only the bias of the volunteer devs?  So you want a smaller elite group to decide everything rather than give at least a few more people a voice/ability to contribute?  

 

Yes things may change, but people shouldn't try to be heard or influence the process?  Why do you post on the forums?