Please get rid of the Fear effect on Assault Rifle>Ignite

[kelika2]

inch, mile, etc.

[Grindingsucks]

Would be fun if targets hit by it would catch on fire and fall down and flop around on the floor, like the ghouls in the praetorian underground.

[arcane]

Doesn’t make sense thematically at all so I gotta vote no.

[Greycat]

... you know, this is something I'd love to see be enemy specific.

 

Demons, ghosts, fire imps, Girlfriends from Hell, anything really fire based? No fear effect.

Robotic? Delayed fear effect. Or a fear -> hold (processors overheated and they shut down.)

Everything else? Darn right they're running away. They're on *fire.* That crap hurts!

[Outrider_01]

Change to a single target burn, splash effect for minor damage on nearby targets.  The burn patch is too niche in use like the Gun Turret until it was changed to the hover version, the Sentinel version looks so much better at a single target dot attack.

[AerialAssault]

What if enemies hit by Ignite were hit with a burn DoT? The fire patch itself could inflict the burn on any enemies that wandered into it afterwards. 

 

The DoT would, of course, not stack and would last about as long as the fire patch does.

[arcane]

14 minutes ago, AerialAssault said:

What if enemies hit by Ignite were hit with a burn DoT? The fire patch itself could inflict the burn on any enemies that wandered into it afterwards. 

 

The DoT would, of course, not stack and would last about as long as the fire patch does.

This makes the most sense of the last three suggestions IMO. Maybe not exactly as described but lingering damage makes sense. Greycat’s idea is nice but would be a lot of mob specific coding work, AND you could argue those imps should just be immune to the fire damage too, which nobody wants. Outrider’s wouldn’t be kind to the cottage rule.

 

Also maybe a +mag immobilize proc would be nice so that you could root a boss in one shot.

Edited March 13, 2021 by arcane

[kelika2]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Doesn’t make sense thematically at all so I gotta vote no.

Vote denied.  Burn is the counter example.

 

Even now, Ignite causes extreme fear no matter how many brutes/tanks are taunting/punchvoking

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, AerialAssault said:

What if enemies hit by Ignite were hit with a burn DoT? The fire patch itself could inflict the burn on any enemies that wandered into it afterwards. 

 

The DoT would, of course, not stack and would last about as long as the fire patch does.

 

I would love to see this. Split the damage to be 50/50 = 50% of the damage will be applied by igniting those who touch the burn patch, being set on fire for 1/2 the total damage simply by touching it. The other half would be from the burn patch itself. If you keep somebody in it, it would be effectively the same as now.

[AerialAssault]

39 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

Vote denied.  Burn is the counter example.

 

Even now, Ignite causes extreme fear no matter how many brutes/tanks are taunting/punchvoking

 

Burn is an exception, not the rule. 

 

If I remember correctly, Burn used to make enemies run away, but this was massively counterintuitive for a melee class to make enemies run away from them.

 

Similarly, enemies will try to run out of Caltrops rather than stand in them. It's probably one of the only 'smart' things for AI to do (not stand in auto-hit damage patches).

 

[Max Firepower]

4 hours ago, Greycat said:

... you know, this is something I'd love to see be enemy specific.

 

Demons, ghosts, fire imps, Girlfriends from Hell, anything really fire based? No fear effect.

Robotic? Delayed fear effect. Or a fear -> hold (processors overheated and they shut down.)

Everything else? Darn right they're running away. They're on *fire.* That crap hurts!

 So anything on fire gets Fear?  
 

That may bring Fire down a few pegs.

 

As you pointed out, that makes sense.

[Greycat]

19 minutes ago, Max Firepower said:

 So anything on fire gets Fear?  
 

That may bring Fire down a few pegs.

 

As you pointed out, that makes sense.

Honestly, of the three "effects" I mostly-jokingly threw out there, I want to see robots affected as mentioned. :)

[Alchemystic]

Dunno about you guys, but if I was stood in fire, ideally I would like to be not stood in fire as fast as I can.

[Greycat]

54 minutes ago, Tyrannical said:

Dunno about you guys, but if I was stood in fire, ideally I would like to be not stood in fire as fast as I can.

 

I don't know, some of the winters I've been through...

[Incursion]

I Don’t understand  the thematic argument, if any of us were a lowly hellion and a super powered hero/villain even looked at us the wrong way we’d all be heading for the hills. Some powers just aren’t fun to use. Mobs scattering, Absurd knockback are all complained about in the team setting, which is how this game was always balanced around. It’s an underused set that was overcorrected in the old days. 

Edited March 14, 2021 by Incursion

[kelika2]

7 hours ago, AerialAssault said:

 

Burn is an exception, not the rule. 

 

If I remember correctly, Burn used to make enemies run away, but this was massively counterintuitive for a melee class to make enemies run away from them.

 

And with ignite having an even smaller radius than burn, i dont see why ignite can also be exempted

[AerialAssault]

9 hours ago, kelika2 said:

And with ignite having an even smaller radius than burn, i dont see why ignite can also be exempted

 

I literally said why, because the characters that use Burn are melee ATs. It is completely counterintuitive for a melee character to make enemies run away from them.

 

One thing about Ignite is that it actually does a lot of damage. Immobilized foes are completely at it's mercy. If Ignite were to not cause enemies to run out of it's small radius, it's damage would have to be reduced accordingly.

[kelika2]

12 hours ago, AerialAssault said:

 

I literally said why, because the characters that use Burn are melee ATs. It is completely counterintuitive for a melee character to make enemies run away from them.

 

One thing about Ignite is that it actually does a lot of damage. Immobilized foes are completely at it's mercy. If Ignite were to not cause enemies to run out of it's small radius, it's damage would have to be reduced accordingly.

The way you are typing it, it has a wide enough area to make Ion judgement flinch.  even if targets do not run it hits 2-4 targets max, if that

[Neogumbercules]

My suggestion is to make it a single target attack that will chain to enemies that get close to the original target. 

 

Or replace it with the Assault Bot Incendiary Missiles and make it the T9 power of the set. 

[Razor Cure]

On 3/14/2021 at 5:07 AM, arcane said:

Doesn’t make sense thematically at all so I gotta vote no.

Really? We are gonna argue 'sense' in a super hero game?

Admittedly, I HAVE used that argument myself, but on the flip side..

 

Why do mobs come closer to something taunting them? Sure, it gets their aggro, but wouldnt it make more sense for some (mostly) harmless minion to RUN the hell away from the Tank with full team backup?

Why do mobs use brawl attacks in melee, when armed with big guns/fireballs?

Why do fire demons take 'normal' damage from fire?

Why do fire demons have Invincibility?

Why does AR have utterly idiotic mixes of range and cone sizes?

 

The list goes on.

The fact is, Ignite would be a great and unique power, if it wasn't already being screwed by teh range and cones of the set, let alone being mostly lethal damage AND the fear affect.

 

[dragonhawk777]

On 3/13/2021 at 3:23 PM, AerialAssault said:

 

Burn is an exception, not the rule. 

 

If I remember correctly, Burn used to make enemies run away, but this was massively counterintuitive for a melee class to make enemies run away from them.

 

Similarly, enemies will try to run out of Caltrops rather than stand in them. It's probably one of the only 'smart' things for AI to do (not stand in auto-hit damage patches).

 

Burn had a fear effect on it for one reason and that reason had nothing to do with it making sense thematically. Jack (forget his last name) hated that so many people were making fire tanks and using them to power level other players like people do now in AE.  They tried putting timers on missions that were heavily farmed (notably the werewolf map) and when that didnt work he nerfed Burn so it put a fear effect on the power rendering it useless.  He just wanted to end Fire tank farming, and was going to do it any way he could.  Eventually he left the company and they reset the power back to its old mechanic.  My guess is Ignite got its fear effect around the same time as Burn did, as I dont remember there being complaints about the fear effect back when the game first launched.

 

Overall fear effects that made mobs run away proved detrimental to overall gameplay and the new effect was they would stand there shaking in fear.  Illusion controllers ran into the fear effect making people run around with Spectral Terror but the ability was later changed to make them just stand there shaking.  Any ability that makes mobs runout of it is generally bad and it becomes useless.  AR already is the red headed stepchild of blasters with only sonic being considered worse, so if for no other reason than to give AR something good they should dump the current fear effect and make it the standing there shaking effect if anything.

 

As another poster pointed out putting anything that makes 'sense' in a super hero game is pretty pointless.  How many street thugs would face a guy that shoots plasma out of his hands with only a .38 or a bat, yet groups like the Skulls, Hellions and Family do it all the time.  Sense would cause them all to run away the moment they saw any of us, making gameplay fairly miserable for any class.  Heck even the most run TF, ITF which is filled with Roman soldiers just holding swords and spears would be doing nothing but running out of the instance since by the time you are doing that one you likely are all IOed out and probably have some members with Incarnate powers, so you basically have ancient rome fighting super heroic gods.

Edited March 15, 2021 by dragonhawk777

[UberGuy]

Ignite does not cause Terror, which is the status effect cause by what we call "Fear" powers, like Fearsome Stare. Ignite causes Afraid, which is the effect that makes NPCs want to run out of it.

 

Most place powers (read: "pseudo-pet") which inflict unpleasant effects on NPCs generally also cause Afraid, because, realistically, you would not expect remotely intelligent beings to stand in such effects. Location-based damage fields like Rain of Fire, Ice Storm, Sleet, Caltrops, etc. all cause Afraid on NPCs.

 

Ignite, however, has limitations those powers do not. All of them also inflict slows on the NPCs, either for theme (cold, caltrops) or just to keep the NPCs from fleeing out of the effect too quickly for it to be useful as a damage power.

 

Ignite could have a slow attached, but the power's radius is very small, so that's not likely to be useful.

 

Unless the design goal is for the power to have very low practical damage, I think the change to mixed TAoE + pseudopet that inflicts DoT probably is the way to go.

 

* The TAoE up-front damage ensures you get a certain fraction of damage dealt against targets in the target area

* The pseudo-pet could apply something like this:

   *  set_mode(ignited) on all affected target(s) for 5s

   *  X damage every 0.5s for 5.1s  (if !target.mode?(ignited))

 

So anything that wandered into the fire after the original cast would be set on fire for several seconds, even if it was not there when the patch landed, and that would stick to it even if it ran out of the patch. Standing still in the patch would not, however, stack DoTs on it due to the condition. (There may be some better way to do this than modes, which would, among other things, preclude stacking ignite from multiple players. This is hopefully  just an example.)

 

Edited March 15, 2021 by UberGuy

[Incursion]

1 hour ago, dragonhawk777 said:

Burn had a fear effect on it for one reason and that reason had nothing to do with it making sense thematically. Jack (forget his last name) hated that so many people were making fire tanks and using them to power level other players like people do now in AE.  They tried putting timers on missions that were heavily farmed (notably the werewolf map) and when that didnt work he nerfed Burn so it put a fear effect on the power rendering it useless.  He just wanted to end Fire tank farming, and was going to do it any way he could.  Eventually he left the company and they reset the power back to its old mechanic.  My guess is Ignite got its fear effect around the same time as Burn did, as I dont remember there being complaints about the fear effect back when the game first launched.

 

Overall fear effects that made mobs run away proved detrimental to overall gameplay and the new effect was they would stand there shaking in fear.  Illusion controllers ran into the fear effect making people run around with Spectral Terror but the ability was later changed to make them just stand there shaking.  Any ability that makes mobs runout of it is generally bad and it becomes useless.  AR already is the red headed stepchild of blasters with only sonic being considered worse, so if for no other reason than to give AR something good they should dump the current fear effect and make it the standing there shaking effect if anything.

 

As another poster pointed out putting anything that makes 'sense' in a super hero game is pretty pointless.  How many street thugs would face a guy that shoots plasma out of his hands with only a .38 or a bat, yet groups like the Skulls, Hellions and Family do it all the time.  Sense would cause them all to run away the moment they saw any of us, making gameplay fairly miserable for any class.  Heck even the most run TF, ITF which is filled with Roman soldiers just holding swords and spears would be doing nothing but running out of the instance since by the time you are doing that one you likely are all IOed out and probably have some members with Incarnate powers, so you basically have ancient rome fighting super heroic gods.

well said, and that's exactly what happened with Burn.  There were two very popular burn tankers, fire/fire and fire/ice. The ice patch mitigated some of the nerfs as mobs would just keep slipping as burn would do the dirty deed. AR was very popular at launch. Ignite and full auto were considered OP pre-ED days and they started hitting it with the nerf bat. I didn't have one at the time as i was running around with an energy/electric blaster (my god that character had his debt badges quick).   Before burn tankers was the Invulnerability tanks, and i believe invincibility took a hit at some point.   Most of the balance changes at the time all had to do with thwarting Power Leveling.  Fear was a very very broken mechanic for team play.  Was probably the only thing more annoying than KB.  

[Incursion]

If we are going to use the thematic defense, then i guess every melee dmg aura should cause mobs to run away and not try to stand directly in front of you and bash your head in.  I don't know but if saw any of you with quills shooting out of your hip,  blazing aura puffing away, nuclear/radiation clouds, my butt would be hiding in the cellar.  Sometimes a game is just a game, and comic book and super hero lore is fiction and it's for fun.  Keeping these in a logical place makes sense for development, but if a power is making it hard to team with someone or simply isn't useful it should be changed to be fun and useful and comparable to the other powers across those sets. 

[PeregrineFalcon]

Honestly I think the best way to improve Ignite isn't to remove the fear effect, but to cause it to light the target on fire. That way they take damage, catch on fire, get afraid and run away, but they continue to take the same amount of Fire DoT they would have taken had they stayed in the Ignite patch.

 

Bonus points if the devs are able to add an emote where the target waves his arms around and screams like people do when they're on fire. Perhaps the could use the sound file that Carnies use when they are defeated.