What happened to Slows in PvP?

[Solarverse]

I ran a few tests using two accounts today just to see how good my slows are. Wow, they don't do anything worth mentioning these days from what my test results showed me. I remember in the old days, my Ice/Cold Corruptor would just make a Stalker's life completely miserable. Now...well, doesn't seem to matter what I throw at him, even a low level toon with zero resist to slows or -recharge seems unaffected from my Slowing abilities. The only thing I noticed was the Jump Height had been lowered considerably, but that was pretty much it. Is that the way slows are going to remain in PvP? I was very disappointed with the results. I had actually considered giving PvP another roll, but if those results are going to be the extent of my -recharge and slowing abilities, I think I'll hang that idea up.

Am I missing something here or doing something wrong?

[Glacier Peak]

I would attribute that to diminishing returns. 

 

I believe the answer can be found in one of these resources:

 

[Glacier Peak]

I wanted to follow up with another post relating to the expectations of the OP. My main is an Ice/Cold Corruptor and I enjoy PvPing - however, I have found that debuffs in general are not as 'powerful' as sheer damage output in either arena or PvP. I 1v1'd a Spines/Regen Scrapper in the arena to test this theory, and even with Benumb dropping the other player's regeneration, my -rech/slows hardly did anything to mitigate their movement or attack chain. This may be due to diminishing returns, but it also may be due to slow resistance from some IO sets. Either way, I had high hopes for -slow, -rech, and -regen coming from Ice/Cold, but have not seen the levels I experienced on live lately. Then again, perhaps if I rolled an Ice/Cold Defender, the debuffs would scale higher (but I would miss out on Scourge!).

Edited October 5, 2020 by Glacier Peak
and -rech

[Liberty]

Slows aren't quite as overbearing as they used to be where you were sitting around for 30 seconds not able to use a power or moving at slower than sprint speeds with super speed on.  They are however still impactful.  Even something as small as fighting double ice blast characters in 2 v 2's you can really start to feel the -recharge stack up.   It just doesn't floor your recharge anymore.  Heatloss still will for 30 seconds but that is about it.

 

Stacking Grav control abilities still messes with jump height pretty well.   

 

Also characters can build over 100% slow resist if they want to which completely neuters the soft CC that it brings.  

[macskull]

8 hours ago, Solarverse said:

Am I missing something here or doing something wrong?

Recharge slows are mechanically unchanged from the pre-I13 system, except Defender debuffs are no longer unresisted. What has changed is that slow resist is more common (all melee armor sets get it for free if they don't already have it, and there are more sets now that have slow resist in set bonuses) and diminishing returns reduces the actual value of -rech that is applied before resistances. For example, Defender Infrigidate is -87.5% which would DR down to about -75% and then be checked against slow resist. Movement slows, specifically -runspeed, are different because the -maxrunspeed flag was removed from the PvP attributes. It is still possible to slow run speed but not nearly to the extent it was pre-I13.

2 hours ago, Liberty said:

Also characters can build over 100% slow resist if they want to which completely neuters the soft CC that it brings.  

Fun fact, slow resist DRs at the same rate as recharge. You'd need about 125% slow resist to actually be immune to slows post-DR.

[Solarverse]

6 minutes ago, macskull said:

Recharge slows are mechanically unchanged from the pre-I13 system, except Defender debuffs are no longer unresisted. What has changed is that slow resist is more common (all melee armor sets get it for free if they don't already have it, and there are more sets now that have slow resist in set bonuses) and diminishing returns reduces the actual value of -rech that is applied before resistances. For example, Defender Infrigidate is -87.5% which would DR down to about -75% and then be checked against slow resist. Movement slows, specifically -runspeed, are different because the -maxrunspeed flag was removed from the PvP attributes. It is still possible to slow run speed but not nearly to the extent it was pre-I13.

Fun fact, slow resist DRs at the same rate as recharge. You'd need about 125% slow resist to actually be immune to slows post-DR.

I don't think it is working as intended then. To test further, I took a level 20 Scrapper, turned off all Shields and put him up against my 50 Ice/Cold. The results were the same as they are with a well built character of even level.

I would make a video but that is prohibited right now.

[macskull]

What exactly are you seeing? You can post combat attribute screenshots at least.

[Solarverse]

Trying it again vs a level 11 Warshade against my fully IOed out Ice/Cold Corruptor.  It slows his run speed down a bit, but nowhere near like it used to. I know diminishing returns and all, but man. One difference here though is that the recharge has been reduced against this character. So the -recharge takes affect, but the -speed seems to be off by comparison by a huge amount. However, keep in mind this is vs something that has zero enhancements and is level 11, heh. In any case, I think in PvP today where people build for slow resist and +Recharge, I think Cold Corruptors or Defenders have probably seen better days in PvP.

So apparently it works, I am just not so sure it is working as intended.

[Solarverse]

8 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

I wanted to follow up with another post relating to the expectations of the OP. My main is an Ice/Cold Corruptor and I enjoy PvPing - however, I have found that debuffs in general are not as 'powerful' as sheer damage output in either arena or PvP. I 1v1'd a Spines/Regen Scrapper in the arena to test this theory, and even with Benumb dropping the other player's regeneration, my -rech/slows hardly did anything to mitigate their movement or attack chain. This may be due to diminishing returns, but it also may be due to slow resistance from some IO sets. Either way, I had high hopes for -slow, -rech, and -regen coming from Ice/Cold, but have not seen the levels I experienced on live lately. Then again, perhaps if I rolled an Ice/Cold Defender, the debuffs would scale higher (but I would miss out on Scourge!).

Yeah, I ran a few tests on a level 11 (with zero enhancements and no resist to slow or -recharge) just to see how much difference it made against him. The Slows were barely noticeable. Like, really, the slow effect was very poor. The -recharge however was actually on par with what I had expected. I think the problem is though is that everyone builds for +Recharge which seems to negate any -recharge affect from Cold.

With this, I think I am going to go rethink my life, heh.

[Glacier Peak]

Just now, Solarverse said:

Yeah, I ran a few tests on a level 11 (with zero enhancements and no resist to slow or -recharge) just to see how much difference it made against him. The Slows were barely noticeable. Like, really, the slow effect was very poor. The -recharge however was actually on par with what I had expected. I think the problem is though is that everyone builds for +Recharge which seems to negate any -recharge affect from Cold.

With this, I think I am going to go rethink my life, heh.

I feel you. Debuffs just aren't as useful in solo situations as they used to be. Pairing debuffs sets together is nice though. I like teaming with a thermal or radiation debuffer and a heavy hitter like a fire/ta or beam/plant Blaster.

[Silent Method2]

Though it depends on what era you recall from Live servers, the removal of -maxrunspeed that @macskull noted is very likely to be the culprit for what you are noticing. Many slows used to also inflict -maxrunspeed, which always mattered far more than the amount of the simple -run speed. Pre-i13, a target with no slow resistances could be slowed to a crawl on the ground simply with one Siphon Speed (which is relatively minor as far as slow and -rchg powers go), because it inflicted -maxrunspeed, and then add a web grenade to prevent jumping or flying.

 

Nowadays, with -maxrunspeed (almost) completely removed from PvP powers, the closest you can really get is messing with people's jump height, which often takes more valuable time than it's worth, or things like Weaken/Benumb + web grenade because you can roughly think of Weaken/Benumb working "negative slotting" for the attributes they effect, so they weaken the strength of someone's Speed of Sound slotting, for example.

 

Beyond that, the removal of PvP movement suppression, the addition of Jaunt, the proliferation of slow resistance as a set bonus, and the increased usage of flight powers have all given targets more ways to deal with movement slows.

[Solarverse]

On 10/5/2020 at 10:13 AM, Glacier Peak said:

I wanted to follow up with another post relating to the expectations of the OP. My main is an Ice/Cold Corruptor and I enjoy PvPing - however, I have found that debuffs in general are not as 'powerful' as sheer damage output in either arena or PvP. I 1v1'd a Spines/Regen Scrapper in the arena to test this theory, and even with Benumb dropping the other player's regeneration, my -rech/slows hardly did anything to mitigate their movement or attack chain. This may be due to diminishing returns, but it also may be due to slow resistance from some IO sets. Either way, I had high hopes for -slow, -rech, and -regen coming from Ice/Cold, but have not seen the levels I experienced on live lately. Then again, perhaps if I rolled an Ice/Cold Defender, the debuffs would scale higher (but I would miss out on Scourge!).

I ran tests against a low level character who had zero IOs and absolutely zero resists to slows or -recharge. It was sad really. I think you are right though, PvP today (I have not PvPed yet since i13, prior to i13 I lived and breathed PvP) is all about Defense (since resistance seems to be given without much effort) vs Straight forward DPS and high Accuracy +ToHit.

[Solarverse]

On 10/20/2020 at 1:26 PM, Silent Method2 said:

Though it depends on what era you recall from Live servers, the removal of -maxrunspeed that @macskull noted is very likely to be the culprit for what you are noticing. Many slows used to also inflict -maxrunspeed, which always mattered far more than the amount of the simple -run speed. Pre-i13, a target with no slow resistances could be slowed to a crawl on the ground simply with one Siphon Speed (which is relatively minor as far as slow and -rchg powers go), because it inflicted -maxrunspeed, and then add a web grenade to prevent jumping or flying.

 

Nowadays, with -maxrunspeed (almost) completely removed from PvP powers, the closest you can really get is messing with people's jump height, which often takes more valuable time than it's worth, or things like Weaken/Benumb + web grenade because you can roughly think of Weaken/Benumb working "negative slotting" for the attributes they effect, so they weaken the strength of someone's Speed of Sound slotting, for example.

 

Beyond that, the removal of PvP movement suppression, the addition of Jaunt, the proliferation of slow resistance as a set bonus, and the increased usage of flight powers have all given targets more ways to deal with movement slows.

I think you hit it right on the head of the nail here. That makes complete sense, especially since I stopped PvPing after i13. I was one of the PvPers who left PvP in mass exodus after the i13 nerf. It's a completely different world in PvP now than it was when I last PvPed. I'm not even sure if I could even get in to PvP today with the way it is today.

[Glacier Peak]

2 hours ago, Solarverse said:

I ran tests against a low level character who had zero IOs and absolutely zero resists to slows or -recharge. It was sad really. I think you are right though, PvP today (I have not PvPed yet since i13, prior to i13 I lived and breathed PvP) is all about Defense (since resistance seems to be given without much effort) vs Straight forward DPS and high Accuracy +ToHit.

And even the state of pvp that you described (def vs acc/to-hit & dmg) is really one sided thanks to the diminishing return curve of defense in PvP and the absolute insanity of damage procs. Damage is king.