A note on Rune of Protection changes

[BRADICAL]

2 hours ago, Mezmera said:

I mean how easy do we need to make the game?  Log on, take a gondola ride, pet some geese, punch some monkeys, participate in a CC and log off?

The game is already easy. The problem is that it's disproportionately in favor of certain archetypes, and has been for a very, very long time.

Calling attention to that discrepancy isn't the same as demanding that every underperforming archetype be made overpowered all at once, or even that they should be on the receiving end of changes that would ultimately facilitate that. The problem goes deeper, because (blasters aside, I really can't defend the state they're in at all) these archetypes do have powersets that should have more value than they currently do. That's a larger problem with the way the game works and how much power you can squeeze out of the system, and it's unlikely to change in any meaningful way that wouldn't cause a ton of drama among other players.

Support sets work on the low end. Being squishy is fine there, and controllers even make sense on teams running only on SOs. Nobody is pushing the limits or breaking the game by being more valuable than their peers, because most of the power is derived from the powers. In this situation, RoP is an extra break free and might give you a little more breathing room, but the recharge is already too prohibitive to make it anything other than an occasional gimmick.

Go higher and higher and the squishy archetypes begin to see less value in their entire powerset choices. For all the powers a controller has in their primary and secondary sets, very few of them are actually useful here, where a procced out single target hold is one of the best things you can hope for unless you're Plant. Buffs, debuffs and control are all reduced to a novelty, and I don't think I've ever used an actual heal power from a support set in +4/x8 content. Certain squishy characters still have options available to them to push the limits of what they're capable of—RoP being one of the more infamous choices here—that can be layered with some of the solo-friendly advantages of support sets, hybrid melee, procs and a few other things to create the facsimile of a functioning character: by which I mean to say, an unstoppable murder machine.

But a true unstoppable murder machine they are not, because they require constant vigilance and have gaps in their performance, not to mention worse damage. And the tradeoff for these disadvantages doesn't apply here, because there is no value in them. Still, I concede that this game is largely impossible to balance in its current state, because the massive differences in power don't scale at the same rate across every possible level of building. For example, a level 36 Time/X defender can comfortably slot and boost Farsight on just SOs, becoming immensely valuable to a team also playing at that level or limited to SOs. This same degree of power becomes largely redundant at 50 with set bonuses and incarnate powers, which are a fundamental part of the game, and so the defender's usefulness becomes largely based around what else they can do, and the same system that allows a tanker to become an unstoppable murder machine has so far allowed that defender to become, well, sort of decent.
 

8 minutes ago, arcane said:

Right, I’m sure the positive experiences of others in successfully mitigating mezzes with proper tactics are just fabrications, and there’s no chance that any players are failing to avail themselves of some of the tactics at their disposal....

There are no tactics that will save you if you're getting mezzed while standing in the middle of a +4/x8 spawn. You aren't jousting these groups or pulling them around corners. Most of the time, you aren't even fighting them at range, because the distinction is largely meaningless. The entire point of a strong build is to be able to survive in situations like this, to be able to survive the hardest possible difficulty without actually faceplanting. A build that has to run away or use onerous tactics in these very specific cases is non-viable. For builds playing at lower difficulties, not leveraging the power of set bonuses and incarnate powers, this logic doesn't apply.

Otherwise, it's pretty clear-cut, and the only disagreement then is about whether or not it should be possible for a defender to do the same thing that the average tanker or scrapper can do without breaking a sweat, because we've come a long way from the opinion that soloing +4/x8 in itself is overpowered; it's merely what the system allows you to do, love it or hate it.

[PirateCrew]

[edited, was replying to a deleted post...thank you, by the way]

Unless advice is matched to the player, character, and situation, then its value is greatly reduced, in my experience.  I'm not going to give a generic list of anti-mez, or a sentinel's perspective on mez, to a Level 25 rad/rad defender trying to help a tankless team in Moonfire's mission 2, and expect good results.  I would assume everyone commenting here is highly familiar with the list of RoP alternatives - and hopefully all the pluses and minuses of them.   Individuals here are also probably in the best position to discuss playstyles for most ATs in game - and even most powerset combinations, even if never played personally, as the mechanics often share key elements with what we do play regularly.

 

And to Blackbird71's post, that is an excellent concise proposal.  I can also see Coyote's note on #3 being a workable option, but would personally prefer if the mez resist buffs were added via the second (non-IO) route.  A casual player I know would greatly benefit from something like this.

 

 

 

[Dahkness]

I think adding a new alpha incarnate power with mez protection to mag 2 or 3 would be cool. Go for dmg or Mez protection. Fair trade. And RoP still works for the high hitting mez spells. It be nice to pick something other then clarion.
 

After reading a lot of the comments.
It seems players are mad they don’t have enough recourse in the game for mez protection after the nerf. I’m not counting P2W buffs. 

 

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Dahkness

[Blackbird71]

49 minutes ago, Coyote said:

 

1 and 2 seem good to me.

3 is okay, but I could also see just increasing the IO set bonuses for +Mez Resistance so you can get some decent Resistance from bonuses, and then with shortened mez durations and not having to re-toggle, things would be be too bad. Another option would be to find some Pool powers and try to sneak in mez resistance into them... Health already has some Resistance to Sleep, adding some more around some other powers could make this discussion a lot less ... let's say ... urgent for players of squishies.

 

So far as increasing set bonuses, that just improves the game for the higher end of players/characters who use IO sets.  I'd rather see the whole mez experience improved across the board.  No one likes dying to perma-mez chains, at any level/enhancement class.

Edited April 1, 2021 by Blackbird71

[Blackbird71]

57 minutes ago, PirateCrew said:

And to Blackbird71's post, that is an excellent concise proposal.  I can also see Coyote's note on #3 being a workable option, but would personally prefer if the mez resist buffs were added via the second (non-IO) route.  A casual player I know would greatly benefit from something like this.

 

Thanks, but I can't take credit.  That was really just compiling the various ideas others had put forward that I thought had merit.

[Peacemoon]

33 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

 

So far as increasing set bonuses, that just improves the game for the higher end of players/characters who use IO sets.  I'd rather see the whole mez experience improved across the board.  No one likes dying to perma-mez chains, at any level/enhancement class.

Yeah I think this is where we keep ending up. Finding a way which doesn’t necessarily give everyone mezz immunity, but at the same time makes it less lethal and binary.
 

I think we’ve thrown around almost every idea the community can think of. It would be interesting now to hear from the HC team their thoughts on the issue.

 

Although I am not too hopeful. I think after all these years we have conditioned ourselves to accept that ‘squishes’ SHOULD and DESERVE to die if they get mezzed, whilst also believing melee have a right to be immune and a right to not die, and if they do something is not balanced. 
 

I think if a Defender got mezzed and then didn’t get 1 shot by a boss mob, the community would be aghast! 😂

 

A summary of good suggestions I’ve seen (and made):

1) PvP immunity in PvE to protect against chain mezz.

2) More inherent mezz resist to reduce durations baselines 

3) More mezz resist available from powers/IOs to reduce durations. 

4) Offensive toggles not detoggling from mezz to make them less lethal to some powersets.

5) Mezz not detoggling or suppressing any toggles and just allowing them to be maintained at full strength. 

The goal being to lessen the binary divide and draw out a middle ground where players can survive better against mezz when they don’t have complete  mezz protection (immunity).

 

Also mezz if often used as a crutch to make the game more difficult (for some ATs at least), so it would be interesting to find other ways to add difficulty.

Edited April 1, 2021 by Peacemoon

[PirateCrew]

Yep, anything I post is built on all that came before it.  Still, I see particular value in the ability to condense and refine, especially in a way that helps people understand what common ground exists.  It also tends to send us back to the topic, which is occasionally* needed.

 

Faultline's post did wonders for the discussion, sometimes these things also need a sort of explode -> condense -> repeat cycle to really get to the right end state.  I would agree that the devs could now have what they need to take a next step.

Edited April 1, 2021 by PirateCrew

[Ankhammon]

A thought occurs to me that i'm sure many will not like, but what if there were mez resistance thresholds that provided some mez protection?

 

For instance, what if you got to maybe 50% mez resistance and it provided a mez 1 protection? At 100% it provided another and so on.

It would provide a modest amount of mez protection for the support class without being annoyingly large or tied to any particular pool powers.

It would allow for more diversity of characters and power choices and even provide a real reason not to immediately go down the I gotta have more Defense and recharge route in IO'ing.

It's not a get out of mez free card because it would have to be built up by powers or IO sets.

 

Tanks and melee types  wouldn't think that they were being stepped on since it's a small amount an almost no char would be able to get to their standards (Rad/ being the potential outlier in this as it is in many things).

 

Note: The numbers are a generic amount. I did no math to suggest what percentages would work.

[Arbegla]

So I've stepped out of this debate a bit, mainly to cool my head, and also cuz life got in the way. Having caught up on the posts, I do generally like the idea of Mez Resistance instead of just granting Mez Protection.

 

Reducing the duration of the mez, or giving a 'short-cut' way out would go a long way to prevent the 20 minutes of watching your character die that @Luminara experienced. And we already have a 'hard' mez that have a 'short-cut' to it, be it Sleep. If you are healed, or take damage while under the effect of a Sleep mez, its broken immediately. Why doesn't Hold or Stun have a 'short-cut' option to them?

 

Immobilize, Fear, and Confuse aren't used that often, and already have some mitigation built into them. You can still attack while Immobilized, Fear gives you the option to run/attack/do something every time you're hit, and Confuse does the same thing. There are also powers within the Power Pools that grant immunity or resistance to those (Combat Jumping, Tactics, Assault, etc)

 

I'd push hard for a method to reduce the duration of the true hard mezzes (Stun, Holds) and/or give a short-cut option so you can escape from them immediately. Something like after so much damage you escape from a Stun, and become immune to them for awhile, same could apply to a Hold.

 

Or just give us higher Mez Resistance values that correlate to the Mez badges, so the longer we're mezzed, the more resistant we are to it.

[Luminara]

1 minute ago, Arbegla said:

Reducing the duration of the mez, or giving a 'short-cut' way out would go a long way to prevent the 20 minutes of watching your character die that @Luminara experienced.

 

That was addressed in 2005.  The durations of status effects inflicted by minion class critters was reduced across the board.  The purpose of relating that experience wasn't to give an example of what happens when we're mezzed now, but to emphasize the difference in survivability when mezzed and to indicate that I've experienced this issue from every side (well, i've never been a critter, so i don't know how they feel about being mezzed to death by players...).

[Glacier Peak]

26 minutes ago, Luminara said:

That was addressed in 2005.  The durations of status effects inflicted by minion class critters was reduced across the board.  The purpose of relating that experience wasn't to give an example of what happens when we're mezzed now, but to emphasize the difference in survivability when mezzed and to indicate that I've experienced this issue from every side (well, i've never been a critter, so i don't know how they feel about being mezzed to death by players...).

Once upon a PvP time... and does anyone else remember needing 4 (or 6?) breakfrees to escape Telekinesis? 😭

[SwitchFade]

There is so much hyperbole we're swimming in, it's hard to know where the shore is....

 

So many fundamental concepts of system design are being ignored in this debate, by the players, to such a degree that it's actually a bit astonishing. System architecture is within my bailiwick, as a large portion of the disgusting number of hours I spend working encompass system architecture from concept to launch. When we speak of systems, this means any interdependently functioning, interlocking set of actions, activities and/or processes and functions that are set up, used, observed or operated.

 

CoH is a dynamic system. Like all systems, it must have rules, steps, processes, laws and structure, in order to function. No system can exist without these. Make no mistake, the talent that works on this system is not just good, they are, I would wager dollars to donuts, among the best in their respective arenas. From observing the system that the OG teambuilt, that the current team improved on, the people that work on this system are certainly leaders within their fields and innovators. That said, speaking of the system the work on and the rules of it...

 

While these rules/laws are not immutable, the greater and more complex the system is, the more rigid and difficult it will be to alter those rules. As structure is built on top of structure, the foundational pieces become increasingly inelastic, with increasingly lesser degrees of mobility for change. Eventually, they reach perfect inelasticity, where they cannot change, without every structure superior being destroyed.

 

For example, computers use gates that are either open, or closed. 1 or 0. Binary. This, currently, cannot be changed. If one were to ask for CoH not observe this basic rule... Sorry, can't happen.

 

Every basic law of a system is foundational. For example, SOs are the balance point. This will likely not change, ever, nor should it. SOs and basic IOs are homogeneous in their function, the effect something by a percentage increase. Set IOs are heterogeneous and segregated by nature, they cannot be a balance point, as one doesn't exist. This rule is nearly, in my opinion, perfecty inelastic, a change here would be wholesale carnage.

 

Another example being thrown about... A hero is roughly equivilant to 3 even-con minions at launch as a balance point, and, maybe still. Or maybe not due to power creep. Either way, even this basic design rule was a substructure to everything that came after it, and altering it would alter every other system that was created or balanced with this rule in mind. Should a hero be considered equivilant to 3 minions? If not, what would a change impact? The vast nuance is daunting.

 

Another example, "this game has been flawed for a very long time, squishies suffer from mez while others don't, that's bad." My position on this is clear; however, from a system perspective, this is bedrock. Even attempting to alter the fundamental way status works would have a drastic bullwhip effect on EVERYTHING. Make no mistake, ideas like 90 seconds is fine, give everyone a way to achieve status protection like a scrap, change the fundamental nature of how status effects were designed, change it from binary to non, exempt from follow up status effects.... These are not just big changes, they are core system altering. Every other interdependent rule would be altered. Here are just a few...

 

Blaster damage scale: reduced

Controller containment: removed

Defender buff values: reduced

Movement speed changed

Threat generation values altered

Aggro cap lowered

Spawn locations moved

Specialized MOBs remade

Powers durations and effects rebalanced

Missions rewritten

Entire ATs redifined

Powers completely altered

 

This is just the start. All the underlying processes that govern how these interact would have to be changed, rebalanced, rewritten or completely removed and done again.

 

This system is an elegant one and well balanced. Status effects are not nearly as terrible as some are lamenting and how the game has functioned for 27 issues is largely done very well. The change to RoP was one that would have been done before launch, on live, and is well balanced within the system.

 

Yay textwall. Anyone doubting... I invite you to attempt system design on something like.... Oracle. *Wink* it's a bit complex 🤪

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by SwitchFade

[PeregrineFalcon]

So far I've noticed that a great deal of the people freaking out about this change have one or more posts in this thread that have a "When I'm soloing at +4/x8..." in them.

 

If that is anywhere in your argument then I'm talking to you.

 

1) The game isn't balanced around soloing at +4/x8. If that's too difficult for your character the problem isn't Rune of Protection getting nerfed, it's you not realizing that you need to dial the difficulty down.

 

2) You could... you know... actually team up with people. *gasp* Yeah, I know. How dare I even suggest that you might want to consider teaming up with other people, in an MMO no less!

[scottocamp]

42 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

There is so much hyperbole we're swimming in, it's hard to know where the shore is....

 

So many fundamental concepts of system design are being ignored in this debate, by the players, to such a degree that it's actually a bit astonishing. System architecture is within my bailiwick, as a large portion of the disgusting number of hours I spend working encompass system architecture from concept to launch. When we speak of systems, this means any interdependently functioning, interlocking set of actions, activities and/or processes and functions that are set up, used, observed or operated.

 

CoH is a dynamic system. Like all systems, it must have rules, steps, processes, laws and structure, in order to function. No system can exist without these. Make no mistake, the talent that works on this system is not just good, they are, I would wager dollars to donuts, among the best in their respective arenas. From observing the system that the OG teambuilt, that the current team improved on, the people that work on this system are certainly leaders within their fields and innovators. That said, speaking of the system the work on and the rules of it...

 

While these rules/laws are not immutable, the greater and more complex the system is, the more rigid and difficult it will be to alter those rules. As structure is built on top of structure, the foundational pieces become increasingly inelastic, with increasingly lesser degrees of mobility for change. Eventually, they reach perfect inelasticity, where they cannot change, without every structure superior being destroyed.

 

For example, computers use gates that are either open, or closed. 1 or 0. Binary. This, currently, cannot be changed. If one were to ask for CoH not observe this basic rule... Sorry, can't happen.

 

Every basic law of a system is foundational. For example, SOs are the balance point. This will likely not change, ever, nor should it. SOs and basic IOs are homogeneous in their function, the effect something by a percentage increase. Set IOs are heterogeneous and segregated by nature, they cannot be a balance point, as one doesn't exist. This rule is nearly, in my opinion, perfecty inelastic, a change here would be wholesale carnage.

 

Another example being thrown about... A hero is roughly equivilant to 3 even-con minions at launch as a balance point, and, maybe still. Or maybe not due to power creep. Either way, even this basic design rule was a substructure to everything that came after it, and altering it would alter every other system that was created or balanced with this rule in mind. Should a hero be considered equivilant to 3 minions? If not, what would a change impact? The vast nuance is daunting.

 

Another example, "this game has been flawed for a very long time, squishies suffer from mez while others don't, that's bad." My position on this is clear; however, from a system perspective, this is bedrock. Even attempting to alter the fundamental way status works would have a drastic bullwhip effect on EVERYTHING. Make no mistake, ideas like 90 seconds is fine, give everyone a way to achieve status protection like a scrap, change the fundamental nature of how status effects were designed, change it from binary to non, exempt from follow up status effects.... These are not just big changes, they are core system altering. Every other interdependent rule would be altered. Here are just a few...

 

Blaster damage scale: reduced

Controller containment: removed

Defender buff values: reduced

Movement speed changed

Threat generation values altered

Aggro cap lowered

Spawn locations moved

Specialized MOBs remade

Powers durations and effects rebalanced

Missions rewritten

Entire ATs redifined

Powers completely altered

 

This is just the start. All the underlying processes that govern how these interact would have to be changed, rebalanced, rewritten or completely removed and done again.

 

This system is an elegant one and well balanced. Status effects are not nearly as terrible as some are lamenting and how the game has functioned for 27 issues is largely done very well. The change to RoP was one that would have been done before launch, on live, and is well balanced within the system.

 

Yay textwall. Anyone doubting... I invite you to attempt system design on something like.... Oracle. *Wink* it's a bit complex 🤪

 

 

This whole post seems like an ocean of hyperbole.  The game is constantly changing.  Has always been evolving and changing.  Reducing the effectiveness of RoP is a change to the game.  We are giving feedback about current development team game changes. 

 

Possible future changes regarding mez or pool powers or whatever are not going to cause an apocalypse.

[PhoenixV117]

17 minutes ago, scottocamp said:

 

This whole post seems like an ocean of hyperbole.  The game is constantly changing.  Has always been evolving and changing.  Reducing the effectiveness of RoP is a change to the game.  We are giving feedback about current development team game changes. 

 

Possible future changes regarding mez or pool powers or whatever are not going to cause an apocalypse.

They asked for feedback which was 90% against the change yet they’re going with it anyway 😂 why ask for feedback then... 

[SwitchFade]

20 minutes ago, scottocamp said:

 

This whole post seems like an ocean of hyperbole.  The game is constantly changing.  Has always been evolving and changing.  Reducing the effectiveness of RoP is a change to the game.  We are giving feedback about current development team game changes. 

 

Possible future changes regarding mez or pool powers or whatever are not going to cause an apocalypse.

Every person I've worked with who doubts just how complex system design is is always dismissive... Right up to the point their misconceptions and assumptions cause the system to fail in ways they hadn't even anticipated and they realize just how complex and nuanced it is.

 

It may seem like embellishment, all I can say is, from my lengthy vocational experience, it's not.

[BRADICAL]

20 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

Another example being thrown about... A hero is roughly equivilant to 3 even-con minions at launch as a balance point, and, maybe still. Or maybe not due to power creep. Either way, even this basic design rule was a substructure to everything that came after it, and altering it would alter every other system that was created or balanced with this rule in mind. Should a hero be considered equivilant to 3 minions? If not, what would a change impact? The vast nuance is daunting.

I agree that changing any foundational system in this game seems unrealistic at this point, not when you have to account for so many variables and risk the whole thing coming crashing down in the process. That's why I hesitate to propose any change to the way mez currently works. But to outright discourage that change goes against the spirit of what has already been accomplished with CoH, change that we once thought was impossible.

Also, I disagree with the idea that we're still somehow laboring under the impression that heroes are equivalent to 3 even-con minions, or that set bonuses and incarnate powers exist outside the normal structure of the game and its operation. The game has evolved over time, but every archetype still has built-in caps that limit how much of any given thing they can have. Anyone can at the very least infer what impact any given power or effect might have in a wide variety of situations, including how for example a power like Fade might function on the high end, with a high recharge build and the sentiment that such a power should be perma-able because that's the expectation, with every other set as a precedent, for a support power with a long base recharge. That was a deliberate example of taking the IO system into account when designing powers. Similarly, the recharge of a power like RoP takes IOs into account as well, by virtue of it being astronomically high on SOs to prevent it from ever being perma-able. It's acknowledging that such things are possible within the game, and that it would be problematic to allow such a thing to happen, regardless of what impact that has on the power at the SO level.

Fade is a significantly better power with set bonuses and a high recharge build. Most of the buffs and debuffs in support sets are. To say that these were designed without ever taking into account the full spectrum of what is possible in the game is simply untrue. This extends throughout the majority of the character building process.

 

36 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

If that is anywhere in your argument then I'm talking to you.

Hyperbolic language aside, I've made my perspective clear to those willing to hear it. If soloing +4/x8 content (the "maximum difficulty", as far as this game is concerned) is possible within the limitations of the system given to us, then there will be people who do that, and those people are as affected by changes to the structure of the game as anyone else. RoP getting nerfed in this way will most notably affect the performance of my squishy builds that leveraged the power to more comfortably deal with that extreme end of the difficulty spectrum, where melee ATs are already in the meta and won't be affected by this particular change much if at all by comparison. It's valid feedback. For as long as it remains possible to push high end builds and solo +4/x8 content, there will be people who do it, and playing at any difficulty level less than that isn't part of the equation because it would be conceding that the build is non-viable. And if a build is non-viable, you rework it until it's better or you move on to something else.

My defenders are taking a hit to their high survivability uptime. Yes, this is in the context of soloing at +4/x8, something that melee builds have been able to do free of charge for a long time. I'm not complaining that defenders should be able to do the same thing; that's entirely within the hands of the powers-that-be, and what they determine is the fair course of action. What I am doing is explaining that these discrepancies exist in the first place, and that this change will make that very small percentage of builds less viable than they already were.

Feel free to disagree with me for my playstyle preferences (which I confess, I haven't ever shared outside of my very specific feedback about soloing +4/x8 content on builds designed to do so), but be careful that disagreement doesn't start to look like some kind of personal attack. It's not lending much to what is otherwise a pretty informative discussion so far.

[scottocamp]

45 minutes ago, PhoenixV117 said:

They asked for feedback which was 90% against the change yet they’re going with it anyway 😂 why ask for feedback then... 

 

I personally feel hopeful our feedback and this whole discussion will result in a better game.  I am especially grateful for Faultline's candor and perspective.  Broadening the appeal of pool powers, reducing the frustration many players experience with mez effects, expanding opportunities to be creative with AT's and builds - these are good things to advocate for and I am sure the development team will be as responsive to these concerns as possible.  I am not in favor of nerfing RoP without concurrent buffs to other Sorcery Pool powers - but I am otherwise thrilled with 99% of the changes put in place since the game returned.

[PirateCrew]

A caution first - other "official" system designers, of various mixtures of code / mechanisms / human behavior, with their own vocational history, may be present.

Yet that too is falsely exclusive.  System design is a thing all humans do and experience the effects of, regularly.  Everyone is aware of it, and good at it, to varying degrees.

 

1 hour ago, SwitchFade said:

Every other interdependent rule would be altered.

 

This is only true of a system that is constrained to a constant output.  Seen in a simple mathematical form, it's like the formula A+B+C+...N = 1800.  Of course an change to A forces a change to some combination of other variables.  But CoH (and games as a whole) do not require a fixed output, unlike a factory layout that must fit within a building, or a coding project that must fit within a budget.  And even these can be stretched, within a broader system...build a tent to temporarily gain workspace, draw funds from another source - with or without permission.  While games *do* operate within a universe, and thus will consume more electrical energy to operate if made more internally complex, their internal rules are not constrained in the way you've described.  E=mc^2, and so forth, *can* be broken - wildly.  We have observed this repeatedly, and the devs are about to implement movement speed increases without making the zones larger.  If they made Indy Port larger, the N<->S tram time doesn't actually increase.  Improving the status effect resistance of controllers does not necessitate... well... anything else at all.

 

CoH is represented better by A+B+C+...N = X.  All variables.  Still interconnected, but far less constrained.

[Coyote]

5 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

 

So far as increasing set bonuses, that just improves the game for the higher end of players/characters who use IO sets.  I'd rather see the whole mez experience improved across the board.  No one likes dying to perma-mez chains, at any level/enhancement class.

 

Yeah, I would also prefer going with mez Resistance from powers, especially common powers. The reason for putting them in the IO sets is that they're already there, and it would be easy to just multiply all of the relevant values by a factor of X. So it's an easier change to add to IO sets, but a better change to spread them through some pool powers.

[Coyote]

5 hours ago, BRADICAL said:

Otherwise, it's pretty clear-cut, and the only disagreement then is about whether or not it should be possible for a defender to do the same thing that the average tanker or scrapper can do without breaking a sweat, because we've come a long way from the opinion that soloing +4/x8 in itself is overpowered; it's merely what the system allows you to do, love it or hate it.

 

I'm really unsure about how reasonable is the assumption that the system allows an "average tanker or scrapper" to solo at +4/x8 without breaking a sweat. Unless we're talking Council or other similar enemy groups that may not have too much debuffing. Otherwise, I'll claim that any melee character who is soloing at +4/x8 across a range of opponents including Cimerorians, Arachnos, Longbow, and Rularuu (to say nothing of Vanguard, Living Spells, or the Awakened)... is not an average character or player.

 

So it seems more than a bit of an unfair argument to complain about Time Defenders without mez protection, and then compare them to max Incarnate melee characters with a well-above-average build... as if a max Incarnate Time Defender with Clarion can't do pretty well soloing. I do have squishies who run at +4/x8, usually against all content. It's not easy and it takes a good build, but it's not like you're taking a newly level 50 Scrapper with a decent but not top build against Arachnos at +4/x8 and doing it easily.

[arthurh35353]

2 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

This is just the start. All the underlying processes that govern how these interact would have to be changed, rebalanced, rewritten or completely removed and done again.

Except we know this is pretty much BS. Defense amplifiers give (for a hefty INF cost at high levels) +4 mag protection on top of defense and other abilities.

 

Already in the game, would take super little bits of effort to move out of the P2W category and move it to exclusive toggles (like other servers have done). So adding +4 mag protection does not break the game and makes the squishier characters less likely to be held with just one or two mezzing foes. It does make it much less frustrating, I know from experience.  Very annoying to keep up, especially if you aren't actively mission-fighting constantly. Hanging out and RPing before an AE mission or getting ready to do a Task Force with your SG, it's just ticking away with no way to hit pause.

 

That level of mag protection isn't going to make Tanks and Brutes superfluous. At least no more than hefty incarnate powers do anyways.

[BRADICAL]

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

 

I'm really unsure about how reasonable is the assumption that the system allows an "average tanker or scrapper" to solo at +4/x8 without breaking a sweat. Unless we're talking Council or other similar enemy groups that may not have too much debuffing. Otherwise, I'll claim that any melee character who is soloing at +4/x8 across a range of opponents including Cimerorians, Arachnos, Longbow, and Rularuu (to say nothing of Vanguard, Living Spells, or the Awakened)... is not an average character or player.

 

So it seems more than a bit of an unfair argument to complain about Time Defenders without mez protection, and then compare them to max Incarnate melee characters with a well-above-average build... as if a max Incarnate Time Defender with Clarion can't do pretty well soloing. I do have squishies who run at +4/x8, usually against all content. It's not easy and it takes a good build, but it's not like you're taking a newly level 50 Scrapper with a decent but not top build against Arachnos at +4/x8 and doing it easily.

By average I mean that it's more widely possible within the spectrum of what those archetypes have to offer, rather than the quality of the build being played by them. I would never suggest that playing any kind of sub-par build makes sense under those circumstances, only that they're far better equipped to make that push than any squishy characters attempting to reach for the same numbers are.

The point there being that RoP is a pretty useful tool under those circumstances and its nerfing will only really affect the performance of the defender in this case, because melee builds already have plenty of options available to them to reach that level of survivability without relying on a niche power pool. I'm not saying the Time/X defender explicitly needs the power to function, either, but it is demonstrably more effective on them than any other archetype.

Edited April 2, 2021 by BRADICAL

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, SwitchFade said:

So many fundamental concepts of system design are being ignored in this debate, by the players, to such a degree that it's actually a bit astonishing.

Cryptic and Paragon freely ignored fundamental concepts of their own design whenever they felt like it, but never, and we have the patch notes proving this, thought far enough ahead to fully appreciate the ramifications of every change they made.

 

They gave status effects to multiple critters, to lowly minions, with the intent that everyone would have to pay something, in some way, to deal with it.  Tankers and scrappers would have to use their status protection toggles instead of their Defense/Resistance toggles, blasters would have to obliterate the mezzers as quickly as possible, controllers and defenders would have to lock down the mezzers immediately.  And then... they just abandoned that plan.  They changed part of their design, and disregarded the impact on the unchanged parts.  Animation times, to make an example, weren't a balance factor at that time, so the fact that defenders, controllers and corruptors (i'd include masterminds here, but henches can be viewed as extreme damage toggles that don't drop when the character is mezzed, for this discussion) had to pay an animation time tax to deal with status effects wasn't even something they'd considered.  Even when it occurred to them that animation times were relevant and had an impact on the game, they still did nothing to address the discrepancy.  They compounded one oversight with another oversight.

 

The status effect systems in place were created for a completely different model of the game, one that hasn't existed since Issue 1, and only squishies are still expected to adhere to that aspect of that model, while every other archetype runs around in a vastly different model.  You liken this to Jenga, where pulling out one piece puts the whole thing at risk of collapsing, but here we are, almost two decades later, and it still hasn't collapsed, despite everything that's been done.

 

They ignored the fundamental concepts of their own design, and created this problem in doing so.  Not us, the players, and not us, the people pointing out their mistake, them.  Cryptic and Paragon.  Blame the people responsible, not the people responding.

 

[Mezmera]

1 hour ago, PirateCrew said:

A caution first - other "official" system designers, of various mixtures of code / mechanisms / human behavior, with their own vocational history, may be present.

Yet that too is falsely exclusive.  System design is a thing all humans do and experience the effects of, regularly.  Everyone is aware of it, and good at it, to varying degrees.

 

 

This is only true of a system that is constrained to a constant output.  Seen in a simple mathematical form, it's like the formula A+B+C+...N = 1800.  Of course an change to A forces a change to some combination of other variables.  But CoH (and games as a whole) do not require a fixed output, unlike a factory layout that must fit within a building, or a coding project that must fit within a budget.  And even these can be stretched, within a broader system...build a tent to temporarily gain workspace, draw funds from another source - with or without permission.  While games *do* operate within a universe, and thus will consume more electrical energy to operate if made more internally complex, their internal rules are not constrained in the way you've described.  E=mc^2, and so forth, *can* be broken - wildly.  We have observed this repeatedly, and the devs are about to implement movement speed increases without making the zones larger.  If they made Indy Port larger, the N<->S tram time doesn't actually increase.  Improving the status effect resistance of controllers does not necessitate... well... anything else at all.

 

CoH is represented better by A+B+C+...N = X.  All variables.  Still interconnected, but far less constrained.

 

The thing I found neat about this game was how much it was allowing you to use your intelligence and creativity to build characters especially with the introduction of IO sets.  You can tell we have some very intelligent creatures playing this game and that's a total asset to the community.  Some are more helpful than others and some may come off more haughty (raises hand) than they mean but to me there's no need to baby anyone in the crowd, being blunt and forthright does not insult my intelligence and that's how I try to communicate although it'd probably be in a funny tone that doesn't translate to text.  

 

You can tell there's people of various trains of thought here, some are the more focused tinkerers working on the engines and then there's the broader scoped people driving the car who have a good feel for the car but may not know exactly how to build the engine.  A good synergy to win the race requires open communication on all fronts even if it may be hard to hear or even explain in either direction.  

 

I don't mind nerfs so much but I do enjoy diverse creative options which some nerfs it feels like go out of their way to squash especially on things quite outside the norm like the Sorcery pool.  

 

Most times the engine builder is best suited to building the car, but sometimes the driver's input should be heeded more.  

Edited April 2, 2021 by Mezmera