Melee/Support class?

[BrandX]

5 hours ago, ShogunGunshow said:

Rebirth has this, it's called a Guardian AT. In their case, they basically use an Assault (from Dom) primary and a rejiggered support secondary that has some Support powers swapped out for Defenses to keep them from eating floor. Energy Aura and Kinetics are hybridized, for instance.

 

The passive is that enemy defeats give the Guardian and nearby allies 5% temporary HP and resistance to loss of control effects, stacking three times.

 

I've yet to do much testing on it to see how well it works. On the outset it seems like a bit too spread (melee+ranged primary and defense+support secondary) but some of the ideas seems solid.

 

I would go straight melee, that way the Epic Pool could be range and control, maybe with a self buff in there as well.

[Lazarillo]

On 11/19/2021 at 12:35 PM, ShogunGunshow said:

I've yet to do much testing on it to see how well it works. On the outset it seems like a bit too spread (melee+ranged primary and defense+support secondary) but some of the ideas seems solid.

Do you want to see how damage and support can mix together on one AT as smoothly as chocolate peanut butter?

Do you like playing VEATs, but wish they had a wider variety of powersets?

Do you like playing Dominators, but hate feeling the push to "permadom"?

Do you like playing Titan/Dark Brutes, but feel like endurance management just isn't enough of a challenge?

Ask your Character Creator if Guardians are right for you!

 

(Seriously, they're neat, not overly strong, but fun, but as noted in my previous post, I doubt HC would add them or anything close, sadly, for fear of being accused of ripping other communities off)

[RogerWilco]

I kind of like how my Engineer in Star Trek Online plays.

I put down turrets, shields, healing auras, make The Floor Is Lava!

 

It is also a bit similar to how my MM with Nature plays, with the Wild Growth and similar PBAoEs,

or my Electrical Defender with Faraday Cage or my Blaster with Ice Cage.

I also like

It also reminds me a bit of the totem shaman's from World of Warcraft.

 

I could see such a class work in some form. A class that focusses a lot on PBAoE, some buffs and some AoE. A bit of an inverse Mastermind.

I don't think making it very mobile is the right answer, both because CoH's engine has trouble making mobile AoE look good (I'm thinking Hurricane), and that it would be hard to balance.

Making it put down static AoEs and PBAoE's it would make for some more involved decision making and party members that need to pay attention if they want the buffs.

Maybe it would be too similar to some existing stuff, there are many power sets I haven't played yet.

 

But I like how my Engineer in STO needs to think about where to place things. I could imagine both a support and an offensive AT very focused on such powers.

[Major_Decoy]

9 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

Do you want to see how damage and support can mix together on one AT as smoothly as chocolate peanut butter?

Do you like playing VEATs, but wish they had a wider variety of powersets?

Do you like playing Dominators, but hate feeling the push to "permadom"?

Do you like playing Titan/Dark Brutes, but feel like endurance management just isn't enough of a challenge?

Ask your Character Creator if Guardians are right for you!

 

(Seriously, they're neat, not overly strong, but fun, but as noted in my previous post, I doubt HC would add them or anything close, sadly, for fear of being accused of ripping other communities off)

The request for a melee/support class (specifically, I recall mostly "I want a melee kineticist") dates back to the live servers.

[Peacemoon]

We don’t need a new AT, we just need defenders and corrupters to be able to pick melee sets as well as ranged.

[Naraka]

Odd. I would have sworn someone necro'ed this thread.

[xl8]

On 11/17/2021 at 1:00 PM, Tyrannical said:

they would have to be revised in order to adapt to the new melee oriented style of play.

No they wouldn't. Players would adapt their play style.

[Marbing]

Okay, and hear me out, what about Support/Armor! 😮 

All your attacks come from pool/epics! 😮

 

THAT SOUNDS SO AWESOME!

 

 

This is a joke, I am bored. 


Melee/Support should be doable. But is the juice worth the sqeeze?

[Naraka]

I've read some of the suggestions for Melee/Support and while a straight port of those set types could be entertaining for players that like challenge, I have a feeling it wouldn't be as popular as some might expect.

 

Of the suggestions I've read, I do enjoy the prospect of this one:

 

Not saying it's the best, but I feel it has a more carved out concept than most.  Being an 'interceptor', it seems like a paladin-like AT that blends its armor powers and support powers together while the AT inherent enhances the primary melee attacks to apply additional "crit" damage + another stack of the secondary effect (so more END drain when your Electric Melee attacks "crit", more -ToHit when your Dark Melee attacks "crit", etc).  So you've got some mechanical differences in play compared to other melee ATs as well as other buff ATs which should be the goal here.

 

I think the main downfall of this suggestion is, combining the armor and buff powers to create a hybrid set kind of constrains concepts.  In the thread, he combined some obvious sets like Kinetics and Energy Aura into Energy Flux as well as Storm Summoning and Electric Armor into Storm Flux but then there's some outliers like Poisons combined with Bio Armor which might not be the correct conceptual concept for a player wanting to melee while using poison debuffs.

 

Also, it seems, rather than just making it a support that hits stuff in melee range, he tried to push to make the AT fulfil a tank role along with Tanker, Brute, Mastermind and your off-tanks.  While not needed, I don't think there are enough ATs pushing for that role...and even if not good at it, it can still work as a force multiplier for a team.

[MsSmart]

Sweetie, if i understand right, I can't really support this suggestion, because:

 

If this is done, then there would be no need for the support classes, since they are too vulnerable and this new class would have the plusses of the support and the status effect, resistance and defense protections that the support simply do not get.

 

If this is done, I am done playing the second hand heroes (support who the wimpiest status effect auto defeats them) and play the real heroes that can go in and beat up the enemy and smile after the butchery.

 

Truth be told, when I want challenge in the game, I play a support class. When I want to abuse the game, I play a melee class. I have o desire to blur this line.

 

Sue

[Rudra]

Either the melee support AT will outshine the current supports, or it will be phenomenal garbage compared to them and not be used. So yeah, gonna say no too.

[Naraka]

3 hours ago, MsSmart said:

Sweetie, if i understand right, I can't really support this suggestion, because:

 

If this is done, then there would be no need for the support classes, since they are too vulnerable and this new class would have the plusses of the support and the status effect, resistance and defense protections that the support simply do not get.

 

If this is done, I am done playing the second hand heroes (support who the wimpiest status effect auto defeats them) and play the real heroes that can go in and beat up the enemy and smile after the butchery.

 

Truth be told, when I want challenge in the game, I play a support class. When I want to abuse the game, I play a melee class. I have o desire to blur this line.

 

Sue

 

That's why I actually like the idea I linked to. Mainly because as a melee support, it is aiming to be *NOT* vulnerable (i.e. the tank) but at the same time, only have a limited amount of the pluses of the support.  For example: the pluses of Kinetics support is mostly Speed Boost, Transfusion and Fulcrum Shift...so just limit the melee/support so it only gets Transfusion and a muted version of Fulcrum Shift.

 

3 hours ago, Rudra said:

Either the melee support AT will outshine the current supports, or it will be phenomenal garbage compared to them and not be used. So yeah, gonna say no too.

 

On the other-hand, as far as being outshined by the other supports, that's sort of the point. The other support (Defender, Corruptor, Controller, Mastermind) will still have their place and still out-support the suggestion I'm pointing to...but those that don't want to be limited by the lack of mez protection and personal vulnerability would have an option to help their team via both support AND tanking. 

[Rudra]

10 minutes ago, Naraka said:

On the other-hand, as far as being outshined by the other supports, that's sort of the point. The other support (Defender, Corruptor, Controller, Mastermind) will still have their place and still out-support the suggestion I'm pointing to...but those that don't want to be limited by the lack of mez protection and personal vulnerability would have an option to help their team via both support AND tanking. 

Yeah... that is what I am against. Supports aren't supposed to be tanking. If they are going to be support types, I would rather they retained the current support vulnerabilities. If the melee support can tank and it has the primary supports people want, using your example of Transfusion and Fulcrum Shift, then why bother playing any other support? Because the other supports get Speed Boost? If the melee can spam AoE heals as part of the attack chain, AND use Fulcrum Shift to further enhance the team regardless of muted or not, AND hold the line soaking damage while ignoring mezzes, then you are your own team. The other supports are not needed any more.

[Wavicle]

As much as I want this myself, I think it's pretty clear there would have to be a MASSIVE redesign of most of the Support sets in order to do this.

 

Maybe someday.

In the meantime, Night Widow, Bane Spider, and Peacebringer are your best bets.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Wavicle

[Naraka]

3 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Yeah... that is what I am against. Supports aren't supposed to be tanking. If they are going to be support types, I would rather they retained the current support vulnerabilities. If the melee support can tank and it has the primary supports people want, using your example of Transfusion and Fulcrum Shift, then why bother playing any other support? Because the other supports get Speed Boost? If the melee can spam AoE heals as part of the attack chain, AND use Fulcrum Shift to further enhance the team regardless of muted or not, AND hold the line soaking damage while ignoring mezzes, then you are your own team. The other supports are not needed any more.

 

Not to mince words here, but Kinetics is primarily there for Speed Boost and Fulcrum Shift.  Having one missing and the other muted does not equate to a one-man team nor does it invalidate other support, much less a Kinetics support.

 

Why? Because spamming an AoE team heal is practically worthless in the grand scheme of things. Having a muted Fulcrum Shift just means you can complement a real Kinetics user to assure damage cap OR add extra damage if another support is present. To point out the difference of a muted Fulcrum Shift, the directed suggestion has a 10-target cap and a smaller radius on the target-per +dmg and the ally +dmg buff. You're not going to reliably hit every teammate or keep max targets for your buff in range.

 

While I can understand your apprehension, you can't just ignore the points presented to attempt to appease those problems. 

[Rudra]

Agree to disagree. I'll let more sensible heads than mine debate the pros and cons of this.

[Naraka]

3 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Agree to disagree. I'll let more sensible heads than mine debate the pros and cons of this.

 

Understandable. I do feel, if anything, the tanking role has become saturated in power so, unless it could deal similar damage to a furied out Brute, the AT might actually be considered weak. 

 

Overall, I think the difficult part is going to be making the AT seem powerful while filling a role but not overshadowing anything, not so much the roles it's taking.

[Koopak]

So the way iv always envisioned this AT working best has actually been as a pretty 1:1 of Support/Melee, where the support scale it has is the lowest of any AT, call it like 0.9, 0.8 or something and reduced range. Then the way the Inherit would work is it would build +special and +range from melee attacks, forcing you to get into melee and, with an optimized attack chain allowing you to get to a relative scale of say 1.1 like Cor? Numbers tweakable. The kicker would be that the buff decays so fast that you can only get one, maybe two support powers off before you need to be back at the melee boppery to maintain max power. Similarly applying buffs could provide +damage, leading to cycleing playstyle.

My intent here is for the AT to be relatively squishy, Stalker or Sentinal max hp, so that its support set can make it tankier but the main purpose is to get into melee and attack despite the risks to yourself, so that you can provide the best possible support. Another synergistic change here might be to make all the rez powers in support sets double as self rezes for this AT. The end goal either way is this AT should only be able to really rival the other support ATs by putting itself at risk.

I feel this lines up with the fantasy most people want from this kind of AT, charging into the fray, heedless of the danger it puts them in, because by doing so they can better protect their teammates. While also minimizing the potential for the AT to outshine or invalidate other ATs.

This all said I don't expect a new AT to even be given serious consideration until after Sentinal gets reworked, which sucks because as great as Sentinal is for certain character concepts It kind of a big mess that I don't think will be solved without a lot of experimentation.

[Naraka]

5 hours ago, Koopak said:

So the way iv always envisioned this AT working best has actually been as a pretty 1:1 of Support/Melee, where the support scale it has is the lowest of any AT, call it like 0.9, 0.8 or something and reduced range. Then the way the Inherit would work is it would build +special and +range from melee attacks, forcing you to get into melee and, with an optimized attack chain allowing you to get to a relative scale of say 1.1 like Cor? Numbers tweakable. The kicker would be that the buff decays so fast that you can only get one, maybe two support powers off before you need to be back at the melee boppery to maintain max power. Similarly applying buffs could provide +damage, leading to cycleing playstyle.
 

 

I don't think this design can work. Because the different support sets have different applications, properties, and strength and weaknesses, such an inherent would be somewhat decent on certain sets or downright unwieldy for others. Not only that but it emphasized a strategy of staggering your support after your attacks. This is just not useful when your support is supposed to be used tactically, which means the circumstance in which you want or need to use your support is going to vary wildly. Sure, you can say this will play into the combat considerations of the AT, balancing the needs of their support with the bonuses of their inherent... But support isn't always a shift in combat thus is a fickle point of the AT to lean on here. 

 

The more simple and static direction for the inherent to target would be the melee powers. More standardized, application is the same and easier to balance.

[biostem]

The trick, IMO, is how to make being in melee both rewarding and survivable.  I totally get people wanting this setup from a theme/concept standpoint, but we need to look at things from a mechanical/gameplay perspective as well.  For instance, sonic, FF, or even elec can get status protection and defense or damage resist.  Could an empath spam heals or buffs enough to last in battle?

 

This brings me to an interesting idea - what if this AT had, as its unique ability, something called "mirror", which was a targetable but invincible pet of sorts - when you used a buff on it, it would cast it right back at you.  This would mean that you could clear mind or speed boost yourself, effectively.  As a balance for this, the "mirror" could recast the ability at a reduced level of effectiveness.  This would then mean that you could support yourself with your buffs a lot more effectively, thereby allowing you to stave off defeat.  The downside would be that certain sets get no benefit from this inherent, (so maybe just omit them from the selection or otherwise adjust them to compensate).

Edited March 28, 2022 by biostem

[Zepp]

Look in my sig for info on proposed archetypes. (I know it may be a tad out of date, but let me know and I will update it.

[Menelruin]

16 hours ago, biostem said:

The trick, IMO, is how to make being in melee both rewarding and survivable.  I totally get people wanting this setup from a theme/concept standpoint, but we need to look at things from a mechanical/gameplay perspective as well.  For instance, sonic, FF, or even elec can get status protection and defense or damage resist.  Could an empath spam heals or buffs enough to last in battle?

Well now I have another weird idea.  What if we do the armor/buff secondary folks have suggested, but the more enemies near you, the stronger your buffs?  As for offense, maybe make it so all attacks have a secondary effect (not just obvious ones like Fire or Ice), and the more allies near you, the stronger those secondaries? 

[Koopak]

On 3/28/2022 at 3:25 PM, Naraka said:

 

I don't think this design can work. Because the different support sets have different applications, properties, and strength and weaknesses, such an inherent would be somewhat decent on certain sets or downright unwieldy for others. Not only that but it emphasized a strategy of staggering your support after your attacks. This is just not useful when your support is supposed to be used tactically, which means the circumstance in which you want or need to use your support is going to vary wildly. Sure, you can say this will play into the combat considerations of the AT, balancing the needs of their support with the bonuses of their inherent... But support isn't always a shift in combat thus is a fickle point of the AT to lean on here. 

 

The more simple and static direction for the inherent to target would be the melee powers. More standardized, application is the same and easier to balance.

You aren't wrong but to me that just means you need to make sure the unbuffed scales are not garbage, if you need to spam your heals on emp or whatever, that should be still viable even if its weaker than other supports.

Personally i think the biggest issue with what i outlined is actually the work to make sure the inherit interacts with the support skills in a useful manner. As you said some support sets do not scale properly with current versions of +special (since this is kinda a fake stat anyways) The main goal here is to make being a melee AT actually meaningful rather than just a Defender with a sword.

 

 

10 hours ago, Menelruin said:

Well now I have another weird idea.  What if we do the armor/buff secondary folks have suggested, but the more enemies near you, the stronger your buffs?  As for offense, maybe make it so all attacks have a secondary effect (not just obvious ones like Fire or Ice), and the more allies near you, the stronger those secondaries? 

The issue with this is it mandates some form of taunt in my opinion. Else controlling the number of nearby enemies becomes problematic, particularly in a group lacking a dedicated tanking AT. This could work with some small taunt aura and threat scale for the AT comparable to say a scrapper, letting it be 3rd on the list for threat generation, but eh. I've never been sold on the necessity of mixing armor and support, I think that will just lead to another Sentinel situation where you cant do either well enough to be useful. People generally overestimate the amount of damage you take for being in melee, giving easy access to AoE defense solves 90% of it unless you have aggro specifically.

Personally if I was going to change off the Support/Melee pairing, id only do it to change Melee to Assault, and that mostly because it would give some range flexibility and give us a second AT that uses Assault sets finally.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Koopak

[Marbing]

I’d rather see assault/pets, that sounds promising if done right.

[Naraka]

30 minutes ago, Marbing said:

I’d rather see assault/pets, that sounds promising if done right.

They need to reassess pet ATs. Maybe a new AT would be the excuse to do that but that's a separate topic.