Sorcery Pool Updates in Issue 27, Page 2

[Mezmera]

9 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

1: Obviously we're not sticking to what was on live, but as has been pointed out, the existence of power creep does not mean that adding more power creep is therefore fine.

 

2: Over selected does not necessarily mean overperforming. Fire Brutes are overrepresented also, but it's not because they're SO GOOD. It's because they've got a particular niche.

 

3: Me too. I expect it will come, but it's going to take time. The devs have said they want to get the "under the hood" stuff done so that they CAN implement more and harder endgame material. The tanker changes, the blaster changes of the previous patch, the MM changes of this patch, are all part of that.

1: Yeah I actually don't like power creep but I do like the ability to use the creativity afforded me with power selections and IO's. 

 

Arbitrarily removing recharge from a power with a big cost to obtain which if I'm taking RoP I'm slotting it well enough to get the best bang for my buck.  No one wants their actual OP powers (nukes as an example) to have such a limitation so I don't think it's exactly fair to compare a power to Shields godmode which most shield players hardly even use but for the bonuses.  

 

2: Yes I've teamed with spines/fire brutes spec'd specific to farms who were doing regular content and getting beat up pretty well and then there's the fire blaster obliterating the map in a single bound.  Again its just apples and oranges.  I don't want to tell the brute how to play any more than the blaster.  

 

3: Agreement 

 

  

Edited April 15, 2021 by Mezmera

[DreadShinobi]

5 hours ago, arcane said:

You’re entitled to that opinion, sure. But I am confidant that my opinions are more in line with the current and past devs’ design visions, so I’m not too worried they’ll be strongly considering power-creep-heavy proposals.

I disagree that your opinion is any more valid than anyone elses.

 

Suggesting balance between archetypes is not power creep. The current mez system is extremely binary and should not be meant to put half the archetypes 'in their place' while the other half don't just have an eased experience with basic combat mechanics, they ignore it completely 100%. 

 

My suggestions have all been that mez protection and survivability options, tools, and build choices should be more widely proliferated, AND enemy factions should more widely be able to challenge an increased level of protection tools that has an effect on ALL archetypes. Current CoH mez mechanics and challenges are so binary to the point that there is little scale between archetypal difference, it is zero or 100% immunity button mash til everything is dead around you. My suggestions are for more tools for the zero to be able to adapt to a challenging situation some of the time, that the 100% immunity cases have to consider how they adapt to different combat situations more often, and that enemy abilities would be looked at so that even if you have mez protection or soft capped defenses or whatever that it isn't just a faceroll over your keyboard.

 

Proliferating mez protection is not a power creep proposal. It is an archetypal balance proposal targeting a system that is highly discriminatory.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Paragraph 1: I was under the impression

 

Under the impression?  You're using hearsay as your debate points?  Do you know the mechanics and math, or not?

 

1 hour ago, arcane said:

that the “purple patch” more or less mitigated the entire gap between buffers and debuffers

 

The purple patch brings some parity to debuffing in comparison to buffing, but it doesn't neuter debuffing to the extent you believe.  Take Radiation Infection when used by a defender.  It can be enhanced to ~49% easily, which only drops to ~23.5% on +4 foes.  It's still ridiculously strong.  Meanwhile, the Force Field defender, who can't self-buff, is limited to ~15.5% for the comparable power, Dispersion Bubble, enhanced maximally, because he/she can't use his/her other +Def powers on him/herself.

 

The purple patch doesn't even out the buff/debuff differences, it just makes them a little less drastic.

 

1 hour ago, arcane said:

that debuffs’ value tapered off pretty well outside of I guess mainly -res/-regen.

 

You guess?  If you don't actually know what's going on under the hood, why are you arguing about how things should be changed?  How can you reasonably suggest something like reducing buffs to 1/4th value if you don't know what they're really worth in relation to other options?

 

All debuffs are affected by the purple patch.  That includes -Res and -Regen.  -ToHit, -Defense, -Damage, -Recharge, -Special, even debuffs flagged as irresistible, it's all reduced by the purple patch when used on critters above the player character's level.  The greater the level differential, the lower the final value of the debuff.  And despite that, there are many debuffs which are still ridiculously strong against anything below an AV, and some which are still fantastic even at that tier, and they still function without the "no, you can't use this to benefit yourself" restriction applied to buffers.

 

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Paragraph 2: I’m sensing the setup of a “two wrongs make a right” argument.

 

Support archetypes are forced to adhere to a rule set which was modeled around and based on toggle mutual exclusivity being the standard in the game.  The purpose of support sets containing ally-only buffs was specifically to complement toggle mutual exclusivity, and the purpose of toggle mutual exclusivity was to promote teaming.  Toggle mutual exclusivity was removed and the game was redefined around an entirely different set of rules, except for support archetypes.  The archetypes with the lowest HP, lowest damage output, no status protection and slowest progression were left with the legacy restriction of not being able to use their own powers on themselves, for no reason beyond Cryptic's determination that they weren't unplayable as they were, so there was no reason to bring them into the new rule set unless or until they reached that point.

 

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Did you perhaps consider that the immense power of IO’s/incarnates etc. that you mention here are another perfect reason we don’t need any more power creep?

 

And that is exactly the mentality that I'm referring to in the paragraph above.  "Everyone else is good, maybe even too good, so we're not going to address the glaring problems with these archetypes."

 

No.  NO.  Fucking over entire archetypes and all of the people who play them just because it would be inconvenient to deal with the other problems in the game?  NO.  Repair the foundation of the house by addressing the discrepancies in support archetypes (lack of status protection forcing them to spend inordinate amounts of time animating low or no damage mez of their own just to prevent themselves from being mezzed (which is functionally scarcely better than being mezzed), inability to benefit from many of their own buffs), THEN work on fixing the house itself (tone down power creep, or add sufficient challenge to the game to justify power creep).

 

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Paragraph 3: Yep, confirmed. This is a “We already have power creep and therefore should never try to constrain further power creep. We already have imbalances so the concept of balance should be thrown out entirely.” Sounds thoroughly fallacious to me. This is your standard “throwing the baby out with the bath water.”

 

If the only way you can maintain the status quo is by deliberately keeping someone at the bottom of the heap, you're maintaining the wrong status quo.

 

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Oh, and discrimination? Really?

 

Applying one set of rules to one group of people, and a different set of rules to another group of people, while expecting them to work together within a common framework, is discrimination.  You're online, Google it.

[Wavicle]

16 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Support archetypes are forced to adhere to a rule set which was modeled around and based on toggle mutual exclusivity being the standard in the game.  The purpose of support sets containing ally-only buffs was specifically to complement toggle mutual exclusivity, and the purpose of toggle mutual exclusivity was to promote teaming.  Toggle mutual exclusivity was removed and the game was redefined around an entirely different set of rules, except for support archetypes.  The archetypes with the lowest HP, lowest damage output, no status protection and slowest progression were left with the legacy restriction of not being able to use their own powers on themselves, for no reason beyond Cryptic's determination that they weren't unplayable as they were, so there was no reason to bring them into the new rule set unless or until they reached that point.

 

I was not aware of this history, and it sounds super plausible given the Cryptic/NCSoft history of which I AM aware. I'm inclined to agree with this line of reasoning despite my misgivings.

[Wavicle]

We're way off topic now.

 

I'm happy with where Sorcery is now on Beta. Any repercussions it has relevant to AT balance need to be addressed at the AT/Power Set level.

[DreadShinobi]

2 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

We're way off topic now.

 

I'm happy with where Sorcery is now on Beta. Any repercussions it has relevant to AT balance need to be addressed at the AT/Power Set level.

I think it was right to look at the discrepancy between RoP functioning at an SO enhanced level vs an IO level. I also believe that the RoP change sets a precedent for future game balance decisions, and that does make the discussion around the mez system and how it interacts on a very uneven level between archetypes have a relevant place in the RoP discussion. Yes we all did just fine before RoP existed. I only have RoP on a couple characters. RoP's addition to the game was a welcome one and one where there should be more tools that function similarly as build choices. RoP's addition to the game brought light on mez discrepency between archetypes that was long overdue to take place.

[America's Angel]

  

6 hours ago, Neiska said:

@Wavicle - First, i wasn't asking for myself. I don't even take RoP anymore, and I haven't in a year. But there has been discussions ingame that more or less is a  "now what?" among the DPS centered folks, and I haven't seen any "well there is X, Y, or Z" at all. Which was my entire point in my post, was "well, what options do they have now?" because there doesn't seem to be many alternatives. I don't play squishes though, so I am uncertian what to tell them.

Tell the casuals to build for defense softcap, buy the p2w mez amplifier + put the blaster mez ato in their sustain. (Or any toggle that will take it. They should have a damage aura.) This should give them enough mez protection.

 

Tell the hardcore to do the same, but build for recharge and procs instead of defense. Have them chug purple and red insps until they are softscapped for def and hardcapped for damage. (They can email themselves insps to do this. Also remember, you can buy bigger insps in the market/from luna in Ouroboros.)

 

My fire/fire blaster can solo AVs in like 60 seconds, solo the ITF in 20-25 minutes, and has never used rune. Your friends should be okay. 👍

Edited April 16, 2021 by America's Angel

[Cheli]

1 hour ago, UberGuy said:

 

All of what what @arcanesaid makes said makes sense to me, but with respect to this question, the answer is: our devs. At the end of the day, they decide, because they're running the server and updating the code and data. We hope they seek our input (and I believe they do) before making a change, but at the end of the day, they're set the boundaries on what "balanced" is in this environment and they make the final call on what to change or update, if anything.

 

That's just how it is. This isn't a democracy. Good luck finding a game that actually is. Even stuff you can download yourself for free and easily set up and modify has an admin, and at the end of the day, what the admin(s) say decides how things work.

Yes, this is the obvious answer, but I'd prefer if people just said this instead of pretending "what devs say" is always equivalent to "overpowered".

 

The nerf to TW is already a large deviation from the state of the game at shutdown, so anything beyond that is just subjectivity people are pretending is some objective standard of "balanced".

[arcane]

Can anyone weigh in on how Enflame is proccing on test now?

[UberGuy]

47 minutes ago, Cheli said:

Yes, this is the obvious answer, but I'd prefer if people just said this instead of pretending "what devs say" is always equivalent to "overpowered".

 

The nerf to TW is already a large deviation from the state of the game at shutdown, so anything beyond that is just subjectivity people are pretending is some objective standard of "balanced".

 

If you can put numbers to it, it's not subjective. You can compare things, and people did. In fact, players like @Galaxy Brain put a lot of work into creating repeatable, measurable testing scenarios, which he shared openly. By those measures, TW came out significantly ahead. (Edit: Notably, it still came out ahead after the changes, just not by so much as before.)

 

The devs here are not subject entirely to historical precedent. I think they try hard to plot a line based on what they see as past precedent, but even if they did so perfectly, some things would deviate, because balance in CoH was never easy, and the Paragon Studios dev team was not perfect (and apparently didn't get final say in all balance decisions anyway). Our current devs can claim to try and track the pre-sunset balance trends and still adjust things that existed pre-sunset, both up and down.

 

Let's also not forget that TW was not free - you had to pay for it on the Paragon store even if you were a VIP subscriber. That was the top tier of cost - VIPs got access to most things simply by being subscribers. I find it very easy to believe that Paragon Studios (or, more likely perhaps, NCSoft) were very interested in making sure that the most expensive things were also performance wise  the best. That legacy is hard to maintain in an environment where everything is free. And that's not even touching the philosophical question of whether actual P2W is healthy for a game. (Spoiler, I believe it is not.)

 

Just because our devs aren't running a CoH balance commune doesn't mean they're making their decisions entirely arbitrarily. Having final say allows that, but does not necessitate it.

Edited April 16, 2021 by UberGuy

[arcane]

The implication that Defenders have somehow been “fucked over” makes no sense to me as none if my 14 lv 50 Defenders seem to be struggling. Can someone please tell me what I’m doing wrong.

[America's Angel]

9 minutes ago, arcane said:

Can anyone weigh in on how Enflame is proccing on test now?

Procs every 10s.

[arcane]

Just now, America's Angel said:

Procs every 10s.

Cool. Just never trust a toggle or pseudopet without some testing these days.

[America's Angel]

6 minutes ago, arcane said:

Cool. Just never trust a toggle or pseudopet without some testing these days.

It procs well. Good place for the annihilation -res proc. It's pretty much perma 12.5% -res:

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by America's Angel

[Cheli]

9 hours ago, UberGuy said:

 

If you can put numbers to it, it's not subjective. You can compare things, and people did. In fact, players like @Galaxy Brain put a lot of work into creating repeatable, measurable testing scenarios, which he shared openly. By those measures, TW came out significantly ahead. (Edit: Notably, it still came out ahead after the changes, just not by so much as before.)

 

The devs here are not subject entirely to historical precedent. I think they try hard to plot a line based on what they see as past precedent, but even if they did so perfectly, some things would deviate, because balance in CoH was never easy, and the Paragon Studios dev team was not perfect (and apparently didn't get final say in all balance decisions anyway). Our current devs can claim to try and track the pre-sunset balance trends and still adjust things that existed pre-sunset, both up and down.

 

Let's also not forget that TW was not free - you had to pay for it on the Paragon store even if you were a VIP subscriber. That was the top tier of cost - VIPs got access to most things simply by being subscribers. I find it very easy to believe that Paragon Studios (or, more likely perhaps, NCSoft) were very interested in making sure that the most expensive things were also performance wise  the best. That legacy is hard to maintain in an environment where everything is free. And that's not even touching the philosophical question of whether actual P2W is healthy for a game. (Spoiler, I believe it is not.)

 

Just because our devs aren't running a CoH balance commune doesn't mean they're making their decisions entirely arbitrarily. Having final say allows that, but does not necessitate it.

 

You'd have a point if the majority of paid sets were "pay to win". Many of them were decidedly not. Fire significantly outclasses water, dual pistols, beam; with a good build claws or high-rech dual blades beats purchasable melee sets outside TW pre-nerf. Support is a different story because I think the variety in what support sets can do differentiates them more than can be expressed by simply tiering them, but kin and sonic are some of the stronger sets imo, easily comparable in their own ways to time which everyone thinks is busted. (Was time purchasable? I think it was? Memory foggy, lol.)

 

There's always this assumption of nefariousness in these situations, particularly TW, where I think it's far simpler to assume otherwise; TW was only the huge dps outlier on builds that essentially allowed you to ignore its wind-up mechanic, which required serious investment and system mastery, something even developers of games often do not have.

 

If you want to argue there's some objectivity to nerfing ROP I'm all for it, but I haven't seen any of that in several threads worth of discussion beyond "the devs just think it's too strong", which by definition is subjective. Which, like you said, it's their server. But by its use rate it was not meta-defining by any stretch, at least, particularly considering it exists inside of a system where a large number of players have simple ways to completely ignore the effects ROP grants temporary resistance to. This is a "warriors flying breaks the rules of reality! Meanwhile, wizards conjure giant fireballs and rain cats over the plains" situation.

[UberGuy]

2 hours ago, Cheli said:

You'd have a point if the majority of paid sets were "pay to win". Many of them were decidedly not. Fire significantly outclasses water.

 

This is an aside we shouldn't fall down the rabbit hole on, but that feels entirely subjective to me in the sense that this statement appears, to me, to have a very narrow view of what defines success. DPS? Sure, Fire hands down. Overall utility while, say, soloing or leveling up? I don't think Fire is even close.

 

As for the rest which is on-topic of Rune, I'll agree with the position I infer from you that an objective position is harder to see with Rune simply because the "balance landscape" of mez protection for ATs that lack it in their core powersets is extremely muddy. Everyone can find examples to cite of why such ATs should or should not have access to this. In such scenarios, any position ultimately can be seen as subjective.

 

In my view, the assertion that "high-uptime mez protection on squishies is strong" is sort of an "originalist" perspective. Whether that's good or bad clearly varies based on what player you ask. What I will point out, though, is that it looks like the version of RoP we're getting doesn't take away access to that mez protection. Instead, it reduces the up-time ratio.

 

There are players posting about how the new up-time ruins the power for them and makes taking it pointless (especially for the power and pool picks). IMO, that is a conclusion loaded with subjectivity - if it was that good, that critical to character performance before, the changes shouldn't make choosing it or not that binary. Especially given that while the rest of the Sorcery Pool used to be pretty crap (like, actually broken), real effort was made to address this.

 

In a scenario where pretty much everyone's take is subjective there's no real value in complaining that anyone else lacked an objective justification for their choices. I'm just glad that the devs made a decision that was measured (they could have done much worse to RoP), did it after listening to players at all, and made an effort to cushion the downgrade of one power with upgrades to related ones. All of that could have played out very differently.

Edited April 16, 2021 by UberGuy

[MJB]

I keep hearing that people don't like that mez effects only affect half of the AT's. The solution is then obvious imo, lower the mez protection granted in armour powersets so everyone gets affected by mez's's's's's's's. 

 

Pretty sure the only reason this wasn't originally the case is because mez's's's's's's used to detoggle everything, but now that they just suppress I think it would be balanced.

Edited April 16, 2021 by MJB

[Chance Jackson]

On 4/10/2021 at 7:44 PM, Mezmera said:

 

Awesome!  Can we apply this rationale to t9 nukes as well in the short future please.  Since we're fixing OP things and all.  

Pls don't 

[arcane]

It sounds like one of the core arguments for a massive buff to squishy AT’s is that they underperform as a result of lack of mez protection. Problem is, this doesn’t match the experiences of countless players.
 

I would not guess from my since-launch experience that the bulk of the playerbase would be in agreement that Stalkers > Dominators > Blasters > Defenders, for instance, which would have to be true if performance were directly correlated with extent of mez protection.
 

Ultimately, I see no evidence for the claim that lack of mez protection is really hurting any AT’s. I do see a LOT of evidence that a subsection of players refuses to avail themselves of resources like break frees or teaming, but perhaps that’s another conversation.

[Carnifax]

14 hours ago, Wavicle said:

We're way off topic now.

 

I'm happy with where Sorcery is now on Beta. Any repercussions it has relevant to AT balance need to be addressed at the AT/Power Set level.

This is my take too. Slightly irked by the fixed recharge on RoP now but the changes to everything else are pretty good, especially since Ward keeps its initial "save spike". 

 

My original point was "If you're doing this to RoP then the other powers need a buff, cos the Origin pool powers are kinda urrgh". That was done. Happy days.

 

Now about Experimentation and the other one.... 😂

[arcane]

I’m already pretty happy with Experimentation on live so a buff to that will be cool af. I think it’s already pretty thoroughly underrated outside of the PvP’ers that obviously know it rules. Force of Will though I do struggle to justify outside of Mighty Leap on a few characters that don’t need Combat Jumping.

[Mezmera]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

Force of Will though I do struggle to justify outside of Mighty Leap on a few characters that don’t need Combat Jumping

 

Leaping travel (best all arounder imo).  Drop an Achilles proc into that ST debuff and now it's -27% resist 90% of the time, great for AV fights. Unleash Potential is a far better defense option than CJ, well slotted you get 20% defense to all and powerboosting nets you another 10%.  Underrated set for sure.  

[arcane]

12 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

 

Leaping travel (best all arounder imo).  Drop an Achilles proc into that ST debuff and now it's -27% resist 90% of the time, great for AV fights. Unleash Potential is a far better defense option than CJ, well slotted you get 20% defense to all and powerboosting nets you another 10%.  Underrated set for sure.  

Somehow never even thought of power boosting it. Good call.

[Cheli]

13 hours ago, UberGuy said:

 

This is an aside we shouldn't fall down the rabbit hole on, but that feels entirely subjective to me in the sense that this statement appears, to me, to have a very narrow view of what defines success. DPS? Sure, Fire hands down. Overall utility while, say, soloing or leveling up? I don't think Fire is even close.

 

TW wasn't nerfed based on evaluation of intangibles about support or usefulness while leveling, it was nerfed because its damage output in high-level builds far outclassed other sets. I'm just applying that criteria to other sets, and by that metric, fire blast, fire manip, claws, DB, etc. significantly outclass "pay-to-win" sets.

[UberGuy]

1 hour ago, Cheli said:

TW wasn't nerfed based on evaluation of intangibles about support or usefulness while leveling, it was nerfed because its damage output in high-level builds far outclassed other sets.

I don't think you looked at what Galaxy Brain's tests measured. It wasn't just a DPS test. Yes, TW won on that measure alone too, but there was more to it than just DPS.