A note on Rune of Protection changes

[Arbegla]

9 minutes ago, BRADICAL said:

Squishy archetypes only begin to approach the damage output of melee archetypes when you factor in procs. Blasters are largely redundant, especially now that tanker AoE caps are at 16. Even the best controllers have poor AoE damage output, and if they aren't outright slowing things down, they're going slower by themselves than most other ATs trying to do the exact same thing.

This would all be justified, if the buffing/debuffing/controlling powers themselves had any actual meaning, but like I said before the game just doesn't work like that once you plug in set bonuses and incarnates. Unless you're playing at lower difficulty levels or forcing yourself to play in teams that only slot SOs, those powers are all a novelty at best.

There is simply no direct, equitable comparison to justify the status quo when you account for the disparity in power that the game allows you to build towards. That it is disproportionately in favor of the melee archetypes is a discussion prompted by this nerf to RoP, a statistically niche power itself that brings some measure of balance to the bigger picture here, but it's still terribly broken at its core.

 

Balance isn't about whether +4/x8 is possible or not (it always is), it's about how easy it is to achieve that level of performance within the limitations of your archetype, powerset, set bonuses and incarnate powers. The game has encouraged this for a very long time now. Given that we have a pretty clear understanding of what everyone's defense, resistance, and recharge values tend to hover around in the end, it's impossible not to account for things like the overall efficacy of buff powers and the effect recharge has on their permanency.

But different archetypes operate on very different ends of the same system that is, for the most part, pushing them all towards the same goal. That is the problem.

 

So, you're argument is basically 'The game is already brokenly unbalanced, so why do we care if squishies can get Mez Protection ~50% of the time?'

 

[Ankhammon]

28 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

Using controls takes time.  If you're facing three Tsoo Yellow Ink Men, that's time you have to spend mezzing each one.  Does Unyielding work in a similar manner, forcing you to perform an animation for every mez you encounter?  No, you're not rooted in place and locked out of your other powers while the toggle is dealing with the mez for you.  This allows the toggle/click status protection user to progress more rapidly and respond instantly to other threats, while the squishie is forced to pay an animation tax just to proceed.

 

Using controls can fail.  There's always a 5% chance for a control to miss.  Does Active Defense miss?  No, of course not.  Active Defense ensures that those three Tsoo Yellow Ink Men won't put your character to Sleep.  But controls, due to the hit check mechanic, offer no similar guarantee.

 

Controls don't deal much damage.  Squishies already have low damage scalars, and they're required to use their least damaging powers to lead fights so they can prevent themselves from being mezzed.  Meanwhile, other archetypes are leading with their strongest attacks, because they can ignore mez.  They mop up all three of those Ink Men in seconds, while the squishies are still trying to prevent themselves from being mezzed.

 

Break Frees aren't Rages, or Insights, or Lucks.  Archetypes with toggle/click status protection can afford to bring some variety to their inspiration tray.  Not only are they exempt from the status protection animation tax, and the potential for missing with their status protection, and dealing more damage by using their more powerful attacks to start fights, but they can also carry more combat inspirations to improve their efficiency and speed.

 

Range is poor at providing defensive benefits in Co*.  It doesn't offer increased Defense.  There's no +Res_For_Being_At_Range modifier.  Enemies can move into melee range.  If the squishie's controls, the controls he/she was forced to use to make up for not having status protection, actually did the job, then range becomes a penalty, not a bonus.  Those enemies are, presumably, mezzed, but the squishie is paying yet another tax, that of ranged damage being lower than melee damage.

 

Don't say "teams".  Cryptic started moving us away from that solution a long, long time ago.  Paragon did nothing to steer us back toward it.  The HC team opened up multiple "team only" avenues to solo players, so clearly, they're no more intent on forcing players to team for basic things than the previous developers were.  The "team if you want status protection" horse died so long ago that it's not even a decomposing pile of bones at this point, it's dust.

 

Squishies have to pay animation taxes, damage taxes and HP taxes "for having debuffs and controls" (everyone has some controls, and some debuffs, but everyone doesn't pay the same taxes, oddly).  Any one of those three would be a sufficient limitation.  All three together is... well, it leads to threads like this.

 

TY Luminara for once again posting my thoughts in a better way than I can. 

 

The only thing I can add is think of a Natural Affinity Defender, who can do wonders to de-buff/survive a large group of baddies while they take a minute or more to "arrest" them. Then add in one little sleep that only lasts for 1 second and what do you get? 3 toggles drop instantly and take seconds to recharge while that Defender scrambles to chomp any vitamins they have and hit their heals while they turn their heals and run. 

This is the life of a non IO'd to the gills Naff Defender. 

 

I'm not saying that RoP isn't overpowered for many a player, but I do argue that in a game where well over half the population would never see this situation that balance is not really maintained. 

Particularly if you solo. 

[Mezmera]

7 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

 

Ok, you got me on the T9 defense powers, like Elude, and whatever /Nin gets. However, both of those powers have pretty nasty crashes, and RoP doesn't. Also, those are available at 32/38.

 

The resistance is affected by modifiers so you're right there as well. Though, even 16.25% resistance to all, (remember including Psi/Toxic) when enhanced can still get you to 25% resistance, so you're taking a lot less damage, from a power you can get at level 20.

 

Since burnout from the speed pool affects primary and secondary powers you're able to double the duration of these powers.  If meleers were so inclined they could lean onto those t9's heavier.  Which you rightly cannot do by insta charging pool powers with burnout.  

[siolfir]

4 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

 

So, you're argument is basically 'The game is already brokenly unbalanced, so why do we care if squishies can get Mez Protection ~50% of the time?'

 

I think the argument was more that some squishies and every melee can get mez protection 100% of the time, so why weaken options for those who build specifically for it through heavy investment in power selection and slotting, when those choices get you to a point which is (performance-wise) weaker than going for the more common routes and/or easier AT paths?

 

[Chance Jackson]

I'm pretty sure i only have Sorcery/ROP on one of my toons & that is the one with the greatest thematic match, why is this pool being further weakened at all? I also never agreed with Weaken Resolve getting nerfed either🙄

[Haijinx]

9 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

 

So, you're argument is basically 'The game is already brokenly unbalanced, so why do we care if squishies can get Mez Protection ~50% of the time?'

 

At least its honest.

[Luminara]

2 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

Blasters have the highest damage scalars for both melee and ranged attacks and are arguable the most squishy.

 

Blasters can continue to use their T1 and T2 attacks through mez.  And they have higher base HP than defenders/corruptors/controllers.

 

4 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

Controllers deal double damage when something is mezzed.

 

Controllers have the lowest damage scalars, like masterminds, 0.55 melee and 0.55 ranged, and none of their primary powers deal much damage.

 

10 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

I'll give you Defenders and Corruptors, though they do have solo bonuses (30% damage for defenders, and Scourge for Corruptors)

 

How much damage does a mezzed defender or corruptor deal?

 

10 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

They also have MUCH higher buff/debuff values. Except Blasters, who have the weakest.

 

What is the value of a detoggled buff/debuff, or a buff/debuff that can't be used because the character is mezzed?  How much benefit does a character see from a 25% Resistance debuff if the character can't attack?  How much survivability is added by a 15% ToHit debuff if the toggle which kept the debuff active was deactivated by mez?

 

14 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

AoE mezzes exist

 

On long recharge timers, making then unusable for every spawn.  And they have hit checks.  Remind me, what hit checking does Fallout Shelter perform?  Is that power only available once every other spawn, or every third spawn, or once per mission?

 

18 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

Jousting is also a thing. Line of Sight tactics pretty much wreck the AI in City of Heroes so badly isn't not even funny.

 

You left out KB, KD, KU, sniping, Hover, temp pet tanking and a few other staples.  I'm not new to Co*.  I'm not new to playing squishies in Co*.  I'm not even new to playing the weakest, least effective squishies.

 

I also know that a tank can now deal more damage, more quickly, and with none of the risk I face on my squishies.  That's not balance.  Tanks were supposed to be a low damage archetype, that was their trade-off for being the most survivable.  Now they're high damage and maximum survivability.  I'm not complaining about tanks, mind you, I'm simply using that as an example of the imbalance between squishies and other archetypes.  Squishies are the only ones being held, strictly, to an old, dead standard, taxed out the ass for reasons that aren't valid in the game these days, and it's inappropriate.

 

24 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

There are plenty of other ways to deal with Mez then popping an origin power pool and pretending you're a tank for 60-90 seconds.

 

I'm not posting about Rune of Protection.  I don't have it on any of my existing characters.  I don't have any builds planned to use it.  I'm neither for nor against the change to it.

 

I am posting about the gross inequity in status protection.  Treating squishies like a lower class citizen in regard to status effects is a festering wound in this game, a cankerous boil that needs to be lanced.  The longer it continues untreated, the worse it will be, and the more painful the treatment when it finally happens.  The inequitable archetypal taxation has to be addressed.  The only two outcomes are resolution, or revolution.

[BRADICAL]

27 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

 

So, you're argument is basically 'The game is already brokenly unbalanced, so why do we care if squishies can get Mez Protection ~50% of the time?'

 

They can already get mez protection 100% of the time, it's just annoying to maintain it for any number of reasons and RoP makes things like this easier. My argument is that outside of the written design of how each archetype should function (fundamentally at odds with how the game is played), there is no reason why a power like RoP can't be allowed to exist in order to bridge the enormous gaps in actual performance.

It has opened up a larger and more complicated discussion, but there's zero evidence to suggest that RoP in its current state was ever doing more harm than good.

ADDENDUM: Sorcery also isn't exactly a terrible set in itself. Spirit Ward is actually an enormous amount of effective regen, moreso if you boost it. The problem is that support powers like this are severely undervalued, but it's still substantially better than most "ally heal" powers in the game both in terms of its raw magnitude and effect, outclassing a lot of primary defender powers in the process. But again, there's no value in a single target heal power in this game, so we don't analyze that as closely. Enflame isn't terrible either, but it is terribly bugged, and unless the attack powers in the pools suddenly change Arcane Bolt is pretty much just a given.

Edited April 1, 2021 by BRADICAL

[VashNKnives]

I respect the devs and the hard work they put in this passion project 🙂 I don't agree with the RoP change (or at least the timing), and hope that the origin pools can be buffed and expanded sooner rather than later to continue to spice-up this already spicy game... Meanwhile, I'll just be thankful for the other options we have to enjoy different types of play experiences.

Edited April 1, 2021 by VashNKnives

[America's Angel]

1 hour ago, ForeverLaxx said:

Compared to 500% recharge for "perma"RoP.

  Rune at 500% recharge recharges in 120s. That's not perma.

 

The minimum any power can recharge is 20% of its base recharge value.

[Jacke]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

...I do have a problem with them changing a power because it's "overpowered" . . . because if ROP is overpowered . . . let the nerf wars begin!

 

But @Bionic_Flea, I can't believe you passed up "<Yoda> Begun the Nerf Wars have! </Yoda>"

 

I agree, I am concerned with the possibilities of what could happen.  I think and hope it's unlikely it'll all be mostly bad.

 

As for i27p2, I have Sorcery on a lot of my toons and after this Issue goes live, I'll mull over what to do with them.

 

Just to cut down on respecs, I wish I had a better idea what was coming.

 

 

23 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Melee gets status protection built in so they can do *anything at all.*

 

Yes, but all the parts of the game were made with many other features in mind.  All those Mez-heavy groups got made to be a bigger challenge as you levelled.  The one-shield-at-a-time feature of Issue 0 made that a different headache for all characters.  But it was only really fixed for Melee ATs, then later Blasters.  Everyone still has to worry about Mez, but some ATs worry a whole lot less.

 

And then there's groups like the Cimerorans, who as I recall aren't heavy on the Mez themselves but do a lot of their own Mez protection with Shout of Command.  And a lot of -Def to make all non-Resistance builds without enough Defense Debuff Resistance sweat.

 

Which then means having to go with 2 Destinies, Ageless Radial for the DDR and Clarion Core for the Mezzing, but only one at a time.  'Course, under Level 45, have to find other mitigations.

 

What would Real Super Heroes do in these circumstances?  Take a pass on many non-perma long-recharge powers as too situational.  Not up often enough for the easy stuff, may not be needed for the middlin' mobs, don't last long enough for the hard challenges.  And shell out Inf for the Defense Amplifiers.

 

 

19 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

Blasters have the highest damage scalars for both melee and ranged attacks and are arguable the most squishy. Controllers deal double damage when something is mezzed. I'll give you Defenders and Corruptors, though they do have solo bonuses (30% damage for defenders, and Scourge for Corruptors)

 

They also have MUCH higher buff/debuff values. Except Blasters, who have the weakest.

 

As @Luminara pointed out, Blasters are the least squishy of the squishies.  They have the highest Base HP (about 18% higher than most) and Max HP Cap (about 15% higher than most), most being Defenders, Controllers, and Dominators, with Corruptors a bit higher and Masterminds a lot lower on Base HP.  Which means Blasters get the most out of +%HP buffs and the 75% Resistance cap.  It's not much, but every bit of damage mitigation (Defense, Resists, HP+Absorb+Heals+Regen) helps.  Then they get the best Mez mitigation tools of all the squishies.  And as you mentioned, the strongest attacks to defeat threats the fastest.

 

Buffs and Debuffs can be very powerful, but they have to be handled well and only truly shine on coordinated teams.  Otherwise, the game as it is now is kind of Tank+Spank on Speed Pool.  Aggro holding on the toons who can take the punishment the best while many mobs get Mezzed themselves (will no one think of the poor Minions!) and everyone burning down the house.  Then onto the next group of victims villains.

 

'Course hit an AV or even some EBs or a lot of Bosses especially with special mechanics and things often go pear-shaped.  But if it's in the Incarnate range and / or the team / league is even reasonable, they can often approach the scorched-earth of taking out the Mooks.  Of course, they should really cut their teeth on some of @Linea's 801AE missions to really take their game to the next level.

 

The game has changed.  And it does play a lot differently solo, where it's more like City of Heroes way back when, where you have to take every attack with care.  I have an Incarnated Dark/Rad/Dark Defender who can just take +4x8 Dark Astoria if I'm on my game and using all my tools.  And that includes Rune of Protection.  When I get the time and energy after Page 2 goes live, I'll see how well he still plays.

[Dahkness]

31 minutes ago, Jacke said:

 

And then there's groups like the Cimerorans, who as I recall aren't heavy on the Mez themselves but do a lot of their own Mez protection with Shout of Command.  And a lot of -Def to make all non-Resistance builds without enough Defense Debuff Resistance sweat.

They don’t have a -def range attack but the Bright Novas do. And you don’t see them to often. Hover/fly will fix your problem in an ITF. LTs and minions don’t stay up long. You get fly before RoP. Sorcery gives you more then one way to soften the blow. Not saying fly is the cure to all. Just a small tip to survive better on your DEF toons in a ITF

Edited April 1, 2021 by Dahkness

[macskull]

I have to wonder if the players insisting RoP is the only way they can get mez protection other than incarnates or amplifiers are aware of the existence of support powersets. Specifically, 10 of the 16 support sets give mez protection in some form. It's almost as if the devs intentionally made mez in this game a binary system and then gave four archetypes powersets which were capable of making mez a non-issue on a team.

[Jacke]

3 minutes ago, Dahkness said:

They don’t have a -def range attack but the Bright Novas do. And you don’t see them to often. Hover/fly will fix your problem in an ITF. LTs and minions don’t stay up long. Maybe not rely on just RoP to survive? A little bit more strategic then just brute force? 

 

But what about squishy toons that have to fight at melee ranges, like Radiation Blast?  Or when you in a map corridor and there's no place to stay out of range?

 

I keep squishies upright in Dark Astoria at high difficulty and on @Linea's 801 AE maps (which he always runs at +4x8).  I know about strategy and tactics.

 

 

3 minutes ago, macskull said:

I have to wonder if the players insisting RoP is the only way they can get mez protection other than incarnates or amplifiers are aware of the existence of support powersets. Specifically, 10 of the 16 support sets give mez protection in some form. It's almost as if the devs intentionally made mez in this game a binary system and then gave four archetypes powersets which were capable of making mez a non-issue on a team.

 

I've played with Repeat Offenders since 2005 and they along with @TopDoc wrote the book on tailoring strong team builds and making them work during play.

 

But what about when you want or have to play solo?  And all those affect-others-only powers are dead weight when soloing.  And the game has been made a lot more solo friendly over the years.

[macskull]

Just now, Jacke said:

But what about when you want or have to play solo?  And all those affect-others-only powers are dead weight when soloing.  And the game has been made a lot more solo friendly over the years.

Of those ten sets, five give mez protection to the player while solo (admittedly Elec's is a bit clunky and TA's won't be up all the time when moving at a decent clip, but that still leaves three).

[VashNKnives]

And so they may or may not value RoP as much as the ones without any mez protection? I honestly don't understand your point @macskull

[Dahkness]

4 minutes ago, Jacke said:

 

But what about squishy toons that have to fight at melee ranges, like Radiation Blast?  Or when you in a map corridor and there's no place to stay out of range?

 

Better positioning. I don’t know what to say. ITFs are full of ambushes. I do just fine on my NA/Rad defender. You’re gonna get hit but they can’t touch you if you fly to the roof. Rad blast nuke has a hold built into it. Maybe use that for the alpha before they use there mez protection. Works fine for me. Get LTs and minions as fast as you can. 

[Luminara]

28 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Put the melee in the same position as the squishy. No mez protection.

 

Fantastic idea.  @Jimmy, do me a solid and disable all toggle/click status protections for a week, would you, dear?  Nothing would go further toward highlighting the problems with status effects than this.  Make everyone equal by making everyone a squishie.

 

52 minutes ago, Greycat said:

HOwever, he has to move into melee range to do anything.

 

Critters can move in Co*.  They're not leashed to a specific point on the floor where they spawn.  Little fuckers spend enough time running all over the map when you start to deal some damage to them, so I can say with a high degree of certainty that they can walk over to your melee character.

 

35 minutes ago, Greycat said:

The squishy is attacking. Debuffing, putting holds or confuses or whatnot on the ink men. Debuffing them. Blinding them. Dropping their ToHit. Making them flop around on an ice patch. They get the advantage of attacking *first.*

 

For which they're taxed, paying in animation time.  There isn't a single control, soft control or debuff in the entire game which doesn't have an animation time attached.  The squishie pays by spending time on every single critter he/she wants to control or debuff.

 

Then the squishie pays again with drastically lower damage scalars.  We're playing at a gross disadvantage in damage output because we're "force multipliers".  This ignores that all sets don't have force multiplier powers like -Res, or great defensive powers like +Def/-ToHit, it's just universally applied.

 

And pays a third time with drastically lower HP and "force multiplier" buffs which only affect teammates, controls and debuffs with hit checks (ever wonder why i adored TA for so long?  no fucking around with hit checks on key powers).

 

What, exactly, is the tax on status protection?  Something on the order of 0.26 endurance per second?  What?  No dodge animations interrupting your attack chain?  No damage debuff applied to reduce your damage output as compensation for having always-on status protection?  No HP debuff?  No reduction in Resistance or Defense?  Nothing but that little toggle cost?

 

57 minutes ago, Greycat said:

What is the melee doing? Stuck there not able to attack because they're mezzed and only have melee.

 

You needing to close to melee range in order to use your powers doesn't mean the same thing doesn't happen to squishies.  All controls, debuffs and ranged attacks aren't set to 80' in this game, and all squishie primaries/secondaries don't come with built-in Stealth options.  Squishies are mezzed before they can act in exactly the same manner you're trying to portray melee being affected if they didn't have status protection.

 

You know what the real difference is?  Squishies don't have status protection, so they actually do go through this scenario.  Seen, mezzed, fucked.  There is no range limitation on that, or bonus lube for having a ranged set.

 

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

Melee gets status protection built in so they can do *anything at all.*

 

Story time!

This one goes way, way back.  My first 50, The Black Whip, an Invulnerability/Super Strength tanker, was bopping around the Rikti Crash Site.  Out of nowhere, I hear the sound of toggles dropping.  I'm looking around and I see a blue light.  Sapper hit her with his sappy beam, drained all of her endurance and shut down everything in a split second.  That sapper then proceeded to poke her with his sappy beam gun... for twenty minutes.

 

Twenty minutes.  20.  T W E N T Y.

 

It took that long for the miserable little twat nozzle to defeat her.  All it did was poke her, keep reapplying that mez and dealing a small amount of damage.  Every time I thought the mez was done and started to move away, it poked her again.  I was sobbing by the time Whip collapsed and I could revive at the hospital.  Bawling.  Snot running down my lips, the whole deal, it was disgusting.  It was the worst experience I've ever had in this game.  In any game.

 

Shortly after that, Cryptic toned down mez on critters.  It's something that can't happen to melee characters now, at least not the way that happened.  The mez won't last long enough to prevent one from turning a status protection toggle back on... and if the mez was what shut down the status protection toggle, as opposed to endurance drain, it won't even have to be toggled back on, it'll just start working again, because they also changed how toggles are affected by mez around the same general time.

 

But it can still happen to squishies.  It does.  And squishies don't have 3000 HP, like Whip did.  They don't have auto resistances, like Whip did.  Mezzed squishies can't queue up a high damage attack and one-shot a mezzer when they're free, like a scrapper or brute can.  I've been in both sets of shoes.  I know the deal, and I know that there's a disparity at work here.

 

You need status protection to be able to do anything at all, on a melee character?  The exact same truth applies to any character.  Mezzed is mezzed, friend.  It doesn't matter if you were mezzed from 60' or 6', you're still mezzed.  The problem with the system now is that when your melee character is mezzed, he/she is ten times as likely to move on without a hitch, whereas when my squishie is mezzed, she's in serious trouble.  I can't do anything when I'm mezzed any more than you can, but you can survive being mezzed much better than I can, even if all you do is take a break to make coffee.

 

If mez is supposed to matter in this game, if it's supposed to mean something, why does it only matter, why does it only mean something, to those without status protection?  Why is it only relevant to the characters with the lowest HP, lowest damage scalars, highest animation taxes for dealing with it?  If it's intended to be an important part of gameplay, why isn't it equally important for everyone, rather than only important to squishies?  If mez is supposed to be a cornerstone of the game and something that all players have to deal with, why aren't you paying the same taxes for it that I do?

 

 

[ForeverLaxx]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

the comparisons are irrelevant to me

They're always irrelevant to you because you only support the change due to the backlash against it. You said so yourself in another post. The "average" performance of most pool powers is so low that most of them are essentially ignored simply because Hasten and IO Bonuses related to defense powers like Weave and Maneuvers is so powerful. The only reason people use Weave and Maneuvers instead of Concealment for the same thing is Concealment loses most of its defense for being in combat, you have to turn them off for escort missions, and you can't stack Stealth with Invis (I'm aware this pool is changing this patch). Weave and Maneuvers, by themselves, aren't even that good -- it's what you can do with them in your build that matters and what you can do with your build having RoP is demonstrably weaker than what you can do with Weave and Maneuvers, despite RoP being "stronger" than those in a vacuum. This is why we don't spreadsheet balance.

 

 

2 hours ago, Arbegla said:

You can't actually perma RoP

For some reason, I had thought RoP's recharge was 500, not 600, making a capped Recharge character have only 10 seconds of downtime, hence the "perma" in quotes. This only strengthens my case, though, as it makes RoP worse even in the best-case scenario. And in the best-case scenario, it's still weaker than capped Defenses.

 

2 hours ago, Arbegla said:

But what you get is complete immunity to Mezzes for the duration

And capped Defense gives you a 5-7.5% chance of avoiding all mezz all the time with zero active engagement or additional holes. RoP has, even at the stupidly-high recharge cap, a 30 second window where you can be mezzed. In a more realistic solo scenario, this 30 second window is stretched to roughly 3 minutes of vulnerability. This also assumes you aren't fighting anything with -recharge effects that you're ALSO eating because you opted for Resist instead of Defense, since Defense would ALSO prevent you from getting hit by any -recharge effects that aren't autohit.

 

Besides, you can get "immunity" to Mez anyway through much simpler means than using RoP: Pick a powerset that has it built-in, carry a tray of breakfrees and restock every mission, fill your email with breakfrees, run with a team who slaps you with Clear Mind or something similar, etc. RoP has clear downsides and that's before considering that you have to take 2 powers for your build that don't contribute to it in any meaningful way. Compare that to Hasten (give up nothing), Weave (give up one power, since Tough slots Defense uniques), Maneuvers (give up nothing), and Combat Jumping (give up nothing)/Hover (give up nothing).

 

1 hour ago, America&#x27;s Angel said:

Rune at 500% recharge recharges in 120s. That's not perma.

See above. For some reason, my brain remembered 500 instead of 600 for its base recharge. I put "perma" in quotes as it would have had a 10 second downtime instead of 30 seconds at the recharge cap.

 

---

 

I'm just going to reiterate for this thread that my characters with RoP don't run any IO sets. They'll effectively be "unaffected" by the nerf because I can't currently use those powers in a manner like others can just as those characters aren't running around at the defense softcap. This isn't a selfish "my character is unplayable" argument -- I take umbrage with the supposed reason for a nerf I find to be meaningless and hollow in the face of what players can already accomplish with better builds that insofar as I'm aware are fully supported by the game's current dev team and combat design. That is to say, nerfing RoP because it's "too strong" when it's not meta and does not have the tools to become meta like Defense Cap + permaHasten are is beyond silly.

 

I'm bowing out of this debate with this post. There's nothing more I can say on the matter without running in circles.

[macskull]

10 minutes ago, VashNKnives said:

And so they may or may not value RoP as much as the ones without any mez protection? I honestly don't understand your point @macskull

If the rub with the RoP duration nerf is mostly to do with the status effect protection and not with the resistance, then yes - it stands to reason those support sets with access to self-affecting mez protection would not value RoP as much.

[Apparition]

17 minutes ago, macskull said:

Of those ten sets, five give mez protection to the player while solo (admittedly Elec's is a bit clunky and TA's won't be up all the time when moving at a decent clip, but that still leaves three).

 

And then Radiation Emission, while not giving you protection, gives you a decent amount of mez resistance which you can use IO enhancements to push up if you so desire.

[macskull]

3 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

And then Radiation Emission, while not giving you protection, gives you a decent amount of mez resistance which you can use IO enhancements to push up if you so desire.

That's true, on a Defender it's 216.25% mez resistance at level 50 which is roughly equivalent to cutting mez down to 1/3 duration. Granted there are still some NPC mezzes which will still last a long time even with that (looking at you, Malta stun grenades), but most NPC mezzes do not last that long.

[VashNKnives]

 

3 minutes ago, macskull said:

If the rub with the RoP duration nerf is mostly to do with the status effect protection and not with the resistance, then yes - it stands to reason those support sets with access to self-affecting mez protection would not value RoP as much.

Yes, I agree 🙂 And I guess it is just part of the game that other power combos would value it more. Seems like a balancing point to me... not saying Widows, tankers, or even Trick Arrow wouldn't love it also. Not saying it is balanced either. Just saying it was nice to throw those empaths a bone.

[America's Angel]

What about implementing PVP mez suppression in PVE?

 

This is how it currently works in PVP:

 

Every time a character recovers from a Hold, Immobilize, Disorient, Sleep, or Fear status, that character 
becomes immune to all five of those effects from other players for 15 seconds. Every time a character suffers 
a Knockdown, Knockback, or Knockup effect, that character becomes immune to all three of those effects from 
other players for 10 seconds. These two timers are independent. It should be noted that Confuse effects, while 
technically mezzes, are on a separate 15-second timer than the other mezzes listed above.

 

[Mezmera]

38 minutes ago, America&#x27;s Angel said:

What about implementing PVP mez suppression in PVE?

 

This is how it currently works in PVP:

 

Every time a character recovers from a Hold, Immobilize, Disorient, Sleep, or Fear status, that character 
becomes immune to all five of those effects from other players for 15 seconds. Every time a character suffers 
a Knockdown, Knockback, or Knockup effect, that character becomes immune to all three of those effects from 
other players for 10 seconds. These two timers are independent. It should be noted that Confuse effects, while 
technically mezzes, are on a separate 15-second timer than the other mezzes listed above.

 

 

Any time there's any suggestion of bringing ANYTHING over from the pvp areas it's met with "Don't bring your pvp trash over to my safe space!"

 

I'd assume if they did something like that it would not only affect controls to player operated characters but also how ones controls would affect non players in the same way.  The mez system in any form coming from pvp would need to see controller archetypes and maybe some defenders solely be the only ones with access to actual controls.  This'll be a bigger can of worms than just implementing one aspect I would think.