Possible ways to help support classes

[Wavicle]

The basic conflict is over the idea that Support need DPS and Tanks, but Tanks and DPS don't need Support.

I am perfectly happy with the idea that nobody NEEDS anybody but that everybody has something of value to contribute.

 

I think with buffs targeted at the sets that need help achieving that is possible. And that's the direction HC has been heading already.

Trick Arrow turned around entirely. I look forward to seeing more of the same.

[Zeraphia]

I don't like the way you phrased the introduction to this topic, and I knew you'd get the steadfast "and what you do think is wrong with supports" by the phrasing... BUT...

 

I actually kind of like the idea here. However, I think this should apply to specific sets. Empathy and other almost pure ally-buffing sets really could use a buff like this to improve overall survivability. I think this could end up being a daunting task rerouting powersets and buffs to be TAoE, but I really think sets like Empathy/FF need it. I'll be honest, I'm still a little on the fence for where this could lead the game down, but I believe this is on the right track to help defender/corruptor with some lackluster solo combos. 

[Alchemystic]

43 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

That's true, but in most of those games the tanks and dps needed the support in order to complete team content.

 

I'd argue that the same can be said for CoH, for the most part.

 

I've found that even if the traditional role of playing support for DPS/tanks starts to become less of a necessity in late game, support archetypes can still cooperate with each other to great effect, which debunks the whole 'supports need non-supports to fight their battles' argument.

 

Edited April 24, 2021 by Tyrannical

[Apparition]

5 minutes ago, Tyrannical said:

 

I'd argue that the same can be said for CoH, for the most part.

 

I've found that even if the traditional role of playing support for DPS/tanks starts to become less of a necessity in late game, support archetypes can still cooperate with each other to great effect.

 

Exactly.  Honestly, I feel like both a bit of a selfish jerk and useless when I bring a melee character (either DPS or tank), to a team.  If there's one other melee character on a team (whether DPS or tank), I'll usually switch to a Blaster or Corruptor instead, depending on what's needed.  So I very rarely play melee characters. :P

 

To me, that's what I see as the trade off.  Melee (DPS and tanks), are great solo... not so much on teams.  Vice versa for "squishies."

Edited April 24, 2021 by Apparition

[MTeague]

56 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

The basic conflict is over the idea that Support need DPS and Tanks, but Tanks and DPS don't need Support.

I am perfectly happy with the idea that nobody NEEDS anybody but that everybody has something of value to contribute.

 

I think with buffs targeted at the sets that need help achieving that is possible. And that's the direction HC has been heading already.

Trick Arrow turned around entirely. I look forward to seeing more of the same.

 

I guess it depends what you call need. 

 

Debuff centric support doesn't need anyone else if they choose to solo..... within limits.  My Storm/Sonic defender can pretty much trounce most story arcs solo at +2x4 with bosses.  True, that's not +4x8. Do I care about that? No. +4x8 is purely "it would be nice if" for me, I don't even have that as an "I ought to be able to" for my Scrappers or Tanks or Brutes.  And, I do slot my characters out the wazoo with sets. So there's that angle to.  But "DPS don't need support" already says to me, "they're going wild with sets."  At least in the case of blasters. 

 

But a Sonic Resonance Defender?  I wouldn't want to try it solo. 

 

I mean I have seen screenshots of solo empath defenders doing weird-wild-stuff.  At 50. Fully kitted out. With incarnates. 

I wouldn't want to solo an Empath through say, First Ward, from levels 20-29 when you still don't have most of your eventual slots, no superior enhancers, etc.

But Archery/Trick Arrow, yea, I could see that being done no problemo. 

 

It's not so much the entire AT. 

But the Team-Buff-Centric subivisions thereof.

[Leogunner]

8 minutes ago, MTeague said:

Debuff centric support doesn't need anyone else if they choose to solo..... within limits.  My Storm/Sonic defender can pretty much trounce most story arcs solo at +2x4 with bosses.  True, that's not +4x8. Do I care about that? No. +4x8 is purely "it would be nice if" for me, I don't even have that as an "I ought to be able to" for my Scrappers or Tanks or Brutes. 

 

On that bar, perhaps recalibrating the game overall so +4/5x8 would be mostly a team dedicated settings across the board.

[MTeague]

1 minute ago, Leogunner said:

 

On that bar, perhaps recalibrating the game overall so +4/5x8 would be mostly a team dedicated settings across the board.

The devil is firmly in the details. As a big picture idea it sounds good to me. 

But I'm not sure how you get a Tank/Brute to NEED help at higher difficulties without punishing the bejeesus out of the buff-centric support sets even more at middle-sy difficulties.

[Mezmera]

54 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

Exactly.  Honestly, I feel like both a bit of a selfish jerk and useless when I bring a melee character (either DPS or tank), to a team.  If there's one other melee character on a team (whether DPS or tank), I'll usually switch to a Blaster or Corruptor instead, depending on what's needed.  So I very rarely play melee characters. 😛

 

To me, that's what I see as the trade off.  Melee (DPS and tanks), are great solo... not so much on teams.  Vice versa for "squishies."

 

Ever been the lone dom on an unplanned all melee Khan?  Thank god for Weaken Resolve and the Achilles proc.  I was mashing that as soon as it recharged.  

Edited April 24, 2021 by Mezmera

[EmperorSteele]

5 minutes ago, MTeague said:

The devil is firmly in the details. As a big picture idea it sounds good to me. 

But I'm not sure how you get a Tank/Brute to NEED help at higher difficulties without punishing the bejeesus out of the buff-centric support sets even more at middle-sy difficulties.

I think maybe at higher levels (like 45+), start giving baddies slightly higher stats, and have +1, +2, etc be exponentially a little more challenging than they are now. For instance, if a Level 54 minion has a default ~75% chance to hit, just building up to 45 defense, aka the "soft cap", is still going to leave you vulnerable to a bit of damage.

It wouldn't punish solo squishies playing at +0/x1 too much, but anyone playing at +4/x8 would end up needing some help.

[Apparition]

3 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

 

Ever been the lone dom on an unplanned all melee Khan?  Thank god for Weaken Resolve and the Achilles proc.  I was mashing that as soon as it recharged.  

 

I haven't played a Dominator since Issue 7, so no.  Dominators are great, just not an AT for me.  The only time I've only played on a really melee heavy team (more than four melee characters), was back on an all melee STF/MLTF before Incarnates.  The majority of my friends feel the same way about melee characters on teams that I do (that they're less useful on teams than Blasters or Support), so if there's more than one or two melee characters on a team and they're on a melee character, they'll switch as well.

[Mezmera]

Just now, Apparition said:

 

I haven't played a Dominator since Issue 7, so no.  Dominators are great, just not an AT for me.  The only time I've only played on a really melee heavy team (more than four melee characters), was back on an all melee STF/MLTF before Incarnates.  The majority of my friends feel the same way about melee characters on teams that I do (that they're less useful on teams than Blasters or Support), so if there's more than one or two melee characters on a team and they're on a melee character, they'll switch as well.

 

The best of all worlds if you're playing melee is an EM stalker with Force of Will pool.  Stupid damage AND you can debuff if you're stuck in these situations.  Think I came back from something as the PUG were organizing the thing, looking up I saw a bunch of melee and rather than quit out I moved that debuff higher into my chain.  Reichsman sure is a slog though with a dom as the only debuffer just so you know.  

[Leogunner]

11 hours ago, Apparition said:

 

Exactly.  Honestly, I feel like both a bit of a selfish jerk and useless when I bring a melee character (either DPS or tank), to a team.  If there's one other melee character on a team (whether DPS or tank), I'll usually switch to a Blaster or Corruptor instead, depending on what's needed.  So I very rarely play melee characters. 😛

 

To me, that's what I see as the trade off.  Melee (DPS and tanks), are great solo... not so much on teams.  Vice versa for "squishies."

 

I personally dislike when people do the "roster shuffle" unless something very difficult comes up (to which one can also just lower the difficulty).  Learning to adapt to what the team is doing is part of the challenge rather than prescribing what the team needs.  I hear all this hoop and holler about how people can complete content with any combination of ATs and part of doing that is using what your characters have, regardless of AT.  Just because you're a DPS or a Tank doesn't mean you also don't have support or control lobbed somewhere in your powerset combination.

 

 

10 hours ago, MTeague said:

The devil is firmly in the details. As a big picture idea it sounds good to me. 

But I'm not sure how you get a Tank/Brute to NEED help at higher difficulties without punishing the bejeesus out of the buff-centric support sets even more at middle-sy difficulties.

 

10 hours ago, EmperorSteele said:

I think maybe at higher levels (like 45+), start giving baddies slightly higher stats, and have +1, +2, etc be exponentially a little more challenging than they are now. For instance, if a Level 54 minion has a default ~75% chance to hit, just building up to 45 defense, aka the "soft cap", is still going to leave you vulnerable to a bit of damage.

It wouldn't punish solo squishies playing at +0/x1 too much, but anyone playing at +4/x8 would end up needing some help.

 

As a hypothetical rebalancing, I'd also want to rebalance -1/-2 as a viable setting meant for solo as well, possibly aimed for characters with more AoE focus.  There have been other threads talking about ideas to make foes more dangerous in groups but maybe for another thread.

[Haijinx]

10 hours ago, Leogunner said:

 

On that bar, perhaps recalibrating the game overall so +4/5x8 would be mostly a team dedicated settings across the board.

I don't see why its such a hard sell that the highest difficulty setting for the standard game in an MMO should be intended for Teams 

[Leogunner]

17 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

I don't see why its such a hard sell that the highest difficulty setting for the standard game in an MMO should be intended for Teams 

I think, for the most part, it is.  It's just once you get into the mid-to-late 30s that it starts to change.  Correct me if I'm wrong.  Even on my Tankers, I wouldn't be doing +4x8 in the lvl 20s but it's very doable in the 30s.

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, Leogunner said:

I think, for the most part, it is.  It's just once you get into the mid-to-late 30s that it starts to change.  Correct me if I'm wrong.  Even on my Tankers, I wouldn't be doing +4x8 in the lvl 20s but it's very doable in the 30s.

 

I think this is true.  If you wanted to do max difficulty reliably at say level 25, you'd need both a full team and a fair amount of support, along with a scattering of IO bonuses throughout the team.   And you'd still need to keep on your toes. 

 

And this sort of balance feels more like the dynamic in other MMOs, as a general threat per encounter level. 

 

But for some reason people at least judging by some very vocal status quo defenders around here, do not want this dynamic to continue up into the endgame.   I'd argue that not even a hint of this dynamic exists by the time you have a "fully done" build and incarnates at T3+ playing such content as ITF, etc.  No wonder Support feels left out.  

[Night]

This game is not difficult. And no, this is not an invitation to whine about making things harder or bringing in nerfs. It's a good thing. Any combination of ATs on a full team can deal with any situation. A full defender TF is a breeze with all the buffs and debuffs flying around, so having multiples or even an entire team consisting of one AT isn't a problem either. People even used to have 1AT SG coalitions consisting of entire supergroups formed of people using only one the same archetype per supergroup and had plenty fun with doing content that way.

 

There are so many archetypes to fall into a varied way of playing, so you're not lobbed into the boring and uninspired trio of tank/support/DPS that so many other games stick to. If you don't enjoy playing a support AT in a fully IO'd out team of incarnates, perhaps try a different AT to better fit your wants? I main a controller, and while groups vanish before I can slap down more than one power, I don't find it something to complain about, I know where my strengths and powers lie and I know if I tried taking down that entire group solo it'd be a slog. When the group gets to multiple bosses or an AV, I can floor its stats and turn it into a walking health bar without an issue while the rest of the team beats it down, and that feels satisfying and powerful. Being able to choose any of the ATs and still fit easily into any team setup is a good thing and works for the much wanted power fantasy.

 

But to bring myself back on topic, I don't think the sets need those changes. By design the support sets mainly affect your teammates or enemies and not yourself, unless it's an AoE buff centered on you like Shadow Fall, Regenerative Aura or Healing Aura. While it's easily possible to solo on a support AT with the right setup and lowered difficulty, it will always be a slog cause that's not what they were designed for and that's not where they shine, and it's something to keep in mind.

[arcane]

15 hours ago, Wavicle said:

The basic conflict is over the idea that Support need DPS and Tanks, but Tanks and DPS don't need Support.

I don’t believe it’s been demonstrated that Blasters or Dominators really need or do not need help any more or less than Support AT’s do. I personally have yet to find a powerset combo that couldn’t be made independent with a build and set of tactics geared towards soloability after some 70ish characters on HC. If you really want to solo, the tools are already there, and it certainly doesn’t need to get even easier. And note that, of those 70, probably half are the four support AT’s as support is my favorite and most practiced style.
 

IO’d and Incarnated Melee AT’s, sure, but good luck trying to unwind their invincibility without burning the whole thing down with it.

Edited April 24, 2021 by arcane

[Doomguide2005]

4 hours ago, Haijinx said:

 

     

Nevermind me, being an idiot mostly making your point ... 🤪

 

About the only thing to add is you really don't need 8 or IOs or sets.  At 4 or 5 characters you can start to overwhelm foes reliably even at +4/×8.  4 GM Empaths are at or ridiculously close to the softcap, endless endurance, ~+220% damage etc..

Edited April 24, 2021 by Doomguide2005
Doh

[Haijinx]

11 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

     No but you might need to start looking at certain sets or AT combinations.  Of course that is running up hard against the idea of bring what you want and it'll work. 

     Many of the Repeat Offenders SGs would be dominating on SOs only by the mid-20s.  4 GM Empaths at lvl 25 are all at the softcap, readily hitting +4s, near endless endurance, around 220% damage etc.. That's not to say those sets wouldn't get more potent, they certainly would but that's how 'broken' they are and how easy the game is.  And my friends and I had a 5 character team that was slaughtering +4/×8  Arachnos by the early to mid 20's in Faultline.  Doubt there was much that would have slowed that group down much (1 scrapper, 4 defenders -> DM/WP, Dark Miasma/Arch, Dark Miasma/Dark, Cold/Dark and Sonic/Dark).  And that started as, "Let's all do something Dark, call it the Twilight Brotherhood".  About the only added non-random influence was me convincing the one friend to grab Cold with me knowing I was doing Sonic Resonance.

     So yes I'd say yes you need multiple support sets.  IOs and sets definitely not required but helpful.  But for large teams you really don't need any particular support set or combo of.  For smaller teams it might get increasingly helpful but required not so sure.

 

 

This is true, with LOTS of support, you can do max difficulty at fairly low levels.  And you don't need pesky things like tankers or DPS classes or IO bonuses or anything.  All opposition will be crushed before anyone is killed.  Either because you have so much survival powers stacked that no one can die, or you have so much Enemy reducing powers stacked they all melt like American Cheese in the microwave to even defenders' modest blast effectiveness.  Or Both.  

  

Edited April 24, 2021 by Haijinx

[Wavicle]

I *don't* want to scale back the ability of people to make their toons unkillable gods with IOs and Incarnates. I *like* that. I can make my support toons just as unkillable. That was the promise of the first mission of Mender Ramiel's arc, and I'm happy with how it is fulfilled.

All that is required to "fix" the endgame is to make harder enemies (Carnies, Rularu, IDF, etc) worth MORE XP than easier enemies (Council, Romans, and so on) so that people WANT to run the harder content which DOES call for having Support toons around. Then continue to make content that is hard enough it calls for Support even with kitted out Tanks and DPS.

 

I do think the change that just went in to Rooting, allowing Buffs and Heals that don't interact with enemies to be cast while moving, is a great change for Support classes. More of that, thanks.

Edited April 24, 2021 by Wavicle

[PeregrineFalcon]

I've long thought that the best way to increase difficulty at end game would be to increase the amount of damage that 49+ enemies do. And at each level above 48 their % bonus damage is larger. Something like 49s would have a +5% damage bonus over now while 54s would do +30% more damage than they do now. Or something like that. I'm just guessing on the numbers here.

 

No increases to their defenses or hit points, just their outgoing damage. That just slows missions down and makes them a boring slog.

 

If done right this would make teams desire a tank more (tankers are also support ATs). Also, if the enemies can do enough damage to threaten a tank then that will automatically make teams want defenders and controllers on their teams as well. Boom. Support ATs, and teams, both become more desirable at higher difficulties.

[Wavicle]

We would still trounce them in seconds without higher hp, resistance, absorption, something.

[arcane]

4 hours ago, Wavicle said:

We would still trounce them in seconds without higher hp, resistance, absorption, something.

Yes, and, considering melees these days are built not just to survive but to have their health bars never move.. the damage increase would have to be substantial to really threaten them as opposed to just making them have to click their heals/inspirations here and there.

[arcane]

15 hours ago, Wavicle said:

All that is required to "fix" the endgame is to make harder enemies (Carnies, Rularu, IDF, etc) worth MORE XP than easier enemies (Council, Romans, and so on) so that people WANT to run the harder content which DOES call for having Support toons around. Then continue to make content that is hard enough it calls for Support even with kitted out Tanks and DPS.

Support this but also add more merits as some players are more motivated by those.

[Haijinx]

Not sire what level it is exactly.  But its definitely not the lower level game that's the problem.

 

Cox has a great feel at lower levels.  If anything its a shame the 2x xp boosters are free.  Since it makes that part go so fast.

 

And on topic, its where support classes really shine on PUGs, TFs, etc.