Jaunt / Combat Teleport

[America's Angel]

17 hours ago, barrier said:

Just add -fly to it and adjust the timer so that preemptive jaunting is discouraged. Jaunt, coupled with the absorb changes, has made it so that it makes little sense to target a blaster in the upcoming meta. This is what the range bonus nerf accomplished: a bunch of blasters that can port out of blazing bolt range really easily...

 

While I haven't been playing much lately (much like @M3z, I find this City of Raptor Packs meta to be stupid boring and would rather play faster games elsewhere), I survived more proper spikes last week than I've ever had before, and it was all about realizing that my "fuck it i'm dead" threshold for blazes and stranglers in my tray is incredibly higher now that as a blaster you have nearly 2.1k hp and you're not going to get hit with a blazing bolt if you jaunt up with your 80% range bonus on jaunt and they're not carrying a range bonus from the blazing bolt.

 

I actually think the bolt range nerf and the absorb changes were pretty bad moves, after having play tested a bit.

This was also my initial thinking in the 8v8s I'd played these last few weeks. But then I realised that I was probably just surviving more because most people actually aren't actually that good at locking quickly/spiking in unison, and the snipe range nerf revealed this skill deficit. (A deficit that, until now, blazing bolt's insane range was hiding.)

 

That said, I preferred the 8v8 meta on live. Where ranged damage was lower, so locking quickly/spiking in unison mattered more, and evading was harder. (You had to actually know how to evade by reading the match better, and knowing how to use distance/break LOS.)

 

The problem, ofc, is that damage is too high right now due to procs to be able to reliably use LOS breaks/distance to evade. So Jaunt is required.

 

So...how to balance this? It seems like a no-win situation.

Ideas:

1. Lower blaster HP to 1606. See if that fixes it. If not, then try...
2. Increasing Jaunt's Cooldown to 20-30s. See if that fixes it. If not, then try...
3. Decreasing proc damage.

 

I'm hesitant about decreasing proc damage because this will negatively impact 1v1s. So I'd suggest trying the first two ideas, first.

Also, I don't think Raptor Packs are a problem. Not when you can just take -fly powers. For example, Madvillain's been running a fire/dev in kickballs these last few weeks and it has been good at countering raptors.

Edited November 18, 2020 by America's Angel

[barrier]

On 11/18/2020 at 6:06 AM, America's Angel said:

This was also my initial thinking in the 8v8s I'd played these last few weeks. But then I realised that I was probably just surviving more because most people actually aren't actually that good at locking quickly/spiking in unison, and the snipe range nerf revealed this skill deficit. (A deficit that, until now, blazing bolt's insane range was hiding.)

 

That said, I preferred the 8v8 meta on live. Where ranged damage was lower, so locking quickly/spiking in unison mattered more, and evading was harder. (You had to actually know how to evade by reading the match better, and knowing how to use distance/break LOS.)

 

The problem, ofc, is that damage is too high right now due to procs to be able to reliably use LOS breaks/distance to evade. So Jaunt is required.

 

So...how to balance this? It seems like a no-win situation.

Ideas:

1. Lower blaster HP to 1606. See if that fixes it. If not, then try...
2. Increasing Jaunt's Cooldown to 20-30s. See if that fixes it. If not, then try...
3. Decreasing proc damage.

 

I'm hesitant about decreasing proc damage because this will negatively impact 1v1s. So I'd suggest trying the first two ideas, first.

Also, I don't think Raptor Packs are a problem. Not when you can just take -fly powers. For example, Madvillain's been running a fire/dev in kickballs these last few weeks and it has been good at countering raptors.

Damage isn't too high because of procs. It's too high because we have few mitigation strategies/mechanics to deal with it. People need to stop saying that the problem is procs because some naive developer here is going to believe it some day and this game will be much worse off because of it.

 

The problem with damage is the way Diminishing Returns interacts with cast resistance buffs and APP/PPP armors. Those things could be reworked to make it all a lot more like it was before i13. If you think damage is too high now, imagine a blaster two-shotting you with TF and Blaze or three shotting you with Blaze, Bone Smasher and Flares. That's what live was like. It's just that people don't remember that. The only reason people didn't blow up in 8v8's back then was that we had resistance buffs that mattered and we even carried oranges to pop when you saw icons on your bar because that made sense back then.

 

Regarding your points:

1. Increases mortality but likely decreases the speed of the game as people spend 15 seconds in the sky every time 2 offense die. Those 15s sound like nothing, but that's enough time in a match to make me want to alt tab and tetris.

2. Meh. Jaunt is fine until resistances get fixed.

3. Nope.

 

I consider Raptor Packs to be an issue. They slow the game down. They make me want to spend more time in other faster games. A team that Raptors after every two deaths is about as fun to fight as a team that runs a bunch of stone blasters (fossilize tanks and brutes) and masterminds. IE, Not Fun.

 

And fire/dev is fine when you're playing casually and not Rens or Rare's core teams (which I believe are the only non-community teams that can field full 8's right now, which should give you an idea of how this meta has encouraged a huge amount of stratification and attrition). Against Rens or Rare, giving up an absorb shield (especially after the changes), Strangler and Toxins is just going to get you punished, more often than not.

[America's Angel]

3 hours ago, barrier said:

Damage isn't too high because of procs. It's too high because we have few mitigation strategies/mechanics to deal with it. People need to stop saying that the problem is procs because some naive developer here is going to believe it some day and this game will be much worse off because of it.

 

The problem with damage is the way Diminishing Returns interacts with cast resistance buffs and APP/PPP armors. Those things could be reworked to make it all a lot more like it was before i13. If you think damage is too high now, imagine a blaster two-shotting you with TF and Blaze or three shotting you with Blaze, Bone Smasher and Flares. That's what live was like. It's just that people don't remember that. The only reason people didn't blow up in 8v8's back then was that we had resistance buffs that mattered and we even carried oranges to pop when you saw icons on your bar because that made sense back then.

I don't understand what you're saying here. Damage wasn't a problem on live back when we had the old %chance-to-proc system. DR & resistance buffs & APP/PPP armours all still interact the same way they did pre-shut down. The only thing that's changed on Homecoming is the move to PPM, and Fire/Plant blasters fire/x corruptors and x/ice defenders slotting 3-5 procs in each attack. That's the cause of the Homecoming-exclusive "damage is too high" concern.

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't want procs nerfing. It would negatively impact 1v1s too much. But they are the cause of the problem. Your idea of buffing +res shields is a good one. It'll help counter procs in 8v8, but not impact 1v1.

 

3 hours ago, barrier said:

Regarding your points:

1. Increases mortality but likely decreases the speed of the game as people spend 15 seconds in the sky every time 2 offense die. Those 15s sound like nothing, but that's enough time in a match to make me want to alt tab and tetris.

2. Meh. Jaunt is fine until resistances get fixed.

3. Nope.

 

I consider Raptor Packs to be an issue. They slow the game down. They make me want to spend more time in other faster games. A team that Raptors after every two deaths is about as fun to fight as a team that runs a bunch of stone blasters (fossilize tanks and brutes) and masterminds. IE, Not Fun.

 

And fire/dev is fine when you're playing casually and not Rens or Rare's core teams (which I believe are the only non-community teams that can field full 8's right now, which should give you an idea of how this meta has encouraged a huge amount of stratification and attrition). Against Rens or Rare, giving up an absorb shield (especially after the changes), Strangler and Toxins is just going to get you punished, more often than not.

Help me out - why does your/M3z's team hate raptor packs whilst Rare & Renegades are happy to play with them? Why are some teams cool with it, but some not?

Edited November 19, 2020 by America's Angel

[barrier]

28 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

I don't understand what you're saying here. Damage wasn't a problem on live back when we had the old %chance-to-proc system. DR & resistance buffs & APP/PPP armours all still interact the same way they did pre-shut down. The only thing that's changed on Homecoming is the move to PPM, and Fire/Plant blasters fire/x corruptors and x/ice defenders slotting 3-5 procs in each attack. That's the cause of the Homecoming-exclusive "damage is too high" concern.

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't want procs nerfing. It would negatively impact 1v1s too much. But they are the cause of the problem. Your idea of buffing +res shields is a good one. It'll help counter procs in 8v8, but not impact 1v1.

 

Help me out - why does your/M3z's team hate raptor packs whilst Rare & Renegades are happy to play with them? Why are some teams cool with it, but some not?

1. Again, they are not the problem. DR resists bending down resists to 40-50 percent for squishies and cast resistance shields adding 3% to your resists at best is the problem. A proc nerf would be moronic if the reason for the nerf is 8v8 damage. Mitigation is the issue. I said it before: I used to be able to two-shot 1606s on my blaster pre-i13. The way that was balanced back then was the fact that the blue ladder ran sonics and the red ladder ran sonics and therms which then mitigated how huge damage was before DR was a thing.

 

Adjusting resists would be the way to go. And maybe also looking at DR on mez resists so that two cast CM’s put you into server tick territory for duration, effectively eliminating the power of mez’s for teams that can run a tight backline (while punishing those that can’t).

 

2. I am in Renegades. We use raptor packs. We have played the slow game in the past. It is fucking boring. That’s why I hate it. That simple. Raptor packs and regroups slow the game down. Speed is why I like this game and why it quickly replaced Guild Wars 2, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter for me when Homecoming came out. Right now, I’d rather spend my time playing Overwatch than having to deal with the drudge that is a playtowin match among competitive teams.

 

In Rens we had a couple of chats about forbearance. We didn’t run stupid stuff like Stone Blasters and we probably ran two Masterminds three times at most even though we have one decent MM from the ladder (Spec) and a very vocal one from those times as well (me). Give it a couple of months and you’ll see how this meta ends up encouraging a much slower and boring game as the community teams get themselves together and some of them start playing to win.

[America's Angel]

@barrier Ah so you're saying the increased damage from procs on Homecoming wouldn't be as big of a deal if res buffs did more? If that's what you're saying then...yeah it seems like we actually agree on the same solution. (Buff res shields.) And yeah CM as an anti-mez/hold spike counter sounds good to me. Mez spikes not having a counter is one of the dumbest things in PVP IMO.

Edited November 20, 2020 by America's Angel

[barrier]

1 hour ago, America's Angel said:

@barrier Ah so you're saying the increased damage from procs on Homecoming wouldn't be as big of a deal if res buffs did more? If that's what you're saying then...yeah it seems like we actually agree on the same solution. (Buff res shields.) And yeah CM as an anti-mez/hold spike counter sounds good to me. Mez spikes not having a counter is one of the dumbest things in PVP IMO.

yup yup

[Gibson99]

On 11/4/2020 at 1:02 PM, M3z said:

Jaunt as it relates to the arena community is it provides an alternative defensive option other than just tanking a spike with greens or phasing. If you are paying good attention you can jaunt out of danger before or during the initial parts of a spike usually living. People tend to jaunt up and use arena temp jetpack (raptor pack) and wait til the coast is clear before coming back down.

 

Before this it was, you'd force a target to phase during a spike, then while they were in NoPhase (aka they can't use phase again for 2 mins) you'd kill them and it was really hard to do anything about it. Now you have another defensive option to survive a spike.

 

The issue in the arena community is we're in this meta of everyone jaunting/raptor packing around and it creates this very unfun/boring gameplay (in my opinion and a lot of other people I've talked to).

 

THAT SAID, there needs to be more defensive options outside of just phase but jaunt is just so stupid that it's basically like having a 16 second(the time it takes to get 2 charges of jaunt to jaunt up) get out of jail card. Not to mention it's very advantageous to just pre jaunt up all the time just to get high ground and deter spikes on yourself leading to situations where teams just have half their team flying around. It looks as stupid as it sounds.

 

I have a couple of propositions/ideas:

 

1. Increase cooldown on jaunt, maybe double it or triple it.

2. Remove "global cooldown/rooting" after jaunting, meaning you can instantly attack or jaunt after jaunting. For me this would help with jaunt chasing, sometimes I jaunt chase and the guy is no where to be found because I have no idea if they jaunted up twice and then forward or jaunted up 3 times. Once they are out of the render zone it's hard to chase people with jaunt because you just have no idea where they are and the .3 second delay really seems to mess me up personally. I like the mobility in COH so I would totally be okay with everyone zipping around at a million miles per hour.

3. Add a different NoPhase condition to jaunt, Maybe if you Jaunt 4 times during a 60 second duration a different NoPhase(could be called NoJaunt) timer is applied to you (different from regular phase). Meaning you'd have 2 different times you could escape with jaunt per minute as well as being able to phase once every 2 mins. This would reset on death.

 

Anyway, these are just some ideas I'm not really sold on any of the numbers I've provided, these are just rough ideas to work off of or throw away. ALSO I AM NOT SAYING DO ALL OF THESE IDEAS TOGETHER. Really if there were just more mechanics in the game teams had to juggle other than just damage/heals (this is why I keep bringing up slows guys 🙂 ) then I think things would also be better for everyone.

PvP is complete garbage. Nothing makes sense. Jaunt is stupid. Melee stalker damage is now a joke. 

Slows are gone, Mezzes gone. It's pathetic. 

I'll see you in RV in ten minutes...

 

[arcane]

Considering we know the arena community has zero problem imposing arbitrary rules on their own - why not just ban arena temp powers like raptor pack? 

Edited December 25, 2020 by arcaneholocaust

[macskull]

4 hours ago, arcaneholocaust said:

Considering we know the arena community has zero problem imposing arbitrary rules on their own - why not just ban arena temp powers like raptor pack? 

[arcane]

2 hours ago, macskull said:

I hear from people all the time about arbitrary rules like number of a given AT per team, number of poisons per team, taunt, electrified net arrow, telekinesis, old paralytic poison, etc. etc. etc. Were they making all that up or do I have a point?

[macskull]

18 hours ago, arcaneholocaust said:

I hear from people all the time about arbitrary rules like number of a given AT per team, number of poisons per team, taunt, electrified net arrow, telekinesis, old paralytic poison, etc. etc. etc. Were they making all that up or do I have a point?

The difference here is outright limitations/bans on certain powers for balance reasons, and even then sometimes there isn't a clear consensus among the arena community on those. Generally speaking those only apply to large-team organized stuff though. The discussion point here is not "do we outright ban these powers" since it's obvious that isn't a popular solution, but rather "how can these powers be tweaked?" That being said I don't really see these changing, and there's definitely an argument to keep Raptor Pack in its current form. Combat Teleport has too many limitations to be seriously used in PvP, I think.

[barrier]

On 12/25/2020 at 1:14 PM, arcaneholocaust said:

Considering we know the arena community has zero problem imposing arbitrary rules on their own - why not just ban arena temp powers like raptor pack? 

Because a lot of the "problems" aren't apparent when 16 idiots are playing each other without any bans. The bans are there because the meta looks horrific when it's any of the high end arena teams playing against each other or when one of those teams fights a community team and doesn't hold back.

Edited December 31, 2020 by barrier

[arcane]

54 minutes ago, barrier said:

Because a lot of the "problems" aren't apparent when 16 idiots are playing each other without any bans. The bans are there because the meta looks horrific when it's any of the high end arena teams playing against each other or when one of those teams fights a community team and doesn't hold back.

Off-topic fun fact: the only MMO PvP I've ever played where playing the default way (casually and not hyper-coordinated on discord) is considered more or less idiocy is also the smallest MMO PvP community I've ever seen. Correlation or causation?

[barrier]

4 hours ago, arcaneholocaust said:

Off-topic fun fact: the only MMO PvP I've ever played where playing the default way (casually and not hyper-coordinated on discord) is considered more or less idiocy is also the smallest MMO PvP community I've ever seen. Correlation or causation?

Don't think you've played enough PVP games if you think that's the case.

[reib]

On 12/31/2020 at 7:44 PM, arcaneholocaust said:

Off-topic fun fact: the only MMO PvP I've ever played where playing the default way (casually and not hyper-coordinated on discord) is considered more or less idiocy is also the smallest MMO PvP community I've ever seen. Correlation or causation?

Voice chat was requested and mandatory for any organized PvP i played in my life. Mmorpg, FPS, rts, etc.

 

[arcane]

15 hours ago, reib said:

Voice chat was requested and mandatory for any organized PvP i played in my life. Mmorpg, FPS, rts, etc.

 

So ESO and GW2 are just popular outliers.

[reib]

I play GW2. Discord It Is used and requested from any organized guild or commander for any High tier pve, PvP or WvW content. 

If you talk about casual playing It Is different shit. Everything Is good.

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_Wiki:Discord

 

Just look at GW2 wiki...

Edited January 7, 2021 by reib