Ever thought about condensing IO set bonuses as a whole?

[kelika2]

More and more powersets are losing their once useless powers

New power sets are having less and less skippable powers

This is causing a tightness in builds that are already there in the cases of Willpower and Super Reflexes

 

Ever thought about condensing the old 6 set bonus for most sets system and bumping it down to 4-5 IOs per set?

This can also mean merging set bonuses themselves to compensate.  Hp/End becoming one, Recovery and Regen becoming one.  Did we really need s/l and f/c set bonuses in one set?

Dont tell me you never looked at the Aegis set and thought gee billy, two fire def bonuses?

And with the new IO sets for travel powers got me thinking, who the hell has spare slots to 3-4 slot super speed or the like?

And while you are in there revamping everything it might also be a good opportunity to look at sets like Gift of the Ancients, Harmonized Healing, Devastation, most resist damage sets

Even doing something like adding End Mod and End Reduction to Centiroles

 

Im not ganna do the math to take into consideration the improbably of theoretically of 1000 character slots and every primary/secondary build on this but freeing up 10~ slots give or take a handful from every build can open up room for shit like spare slots in hover, or spare slots in Health or even the idea of 4/4 and 2/4 frankenslotting everything

 

Also please no anecdotal bits about how you used a set I mentioned in one build 10 years ago and your childhood memories would be altered, because if you do I will bust out my anecdote about a "travelpowerless" SR/MA tank who stacked movement speed bonuses because there was nothing else to do when you softcap yourself at level 20 and have that argument boil down to a locked thread and how Athletic Run is a travel power

[TheZag]

Freeing up 10 slots would make it almost trivial to make a extremely powerful toon.  I dont think the fix for super reflexes softcapping by level 20 is to make it possible by lvl 14.  Yes this is an exaggeration.

 

If sets are being reworked to have less useless powers and new sets are having less skippable powers then the player should be more powerful from those good powers and not need 6 piece bonuses combined down into 4 or 5.

 

Im pretty sure almost every set has powers that can be skipped and still have enough to make a continuous attack chain.  I dont really need my small blast, medium blast, big blast,  cone, ranged aoe, pbaoe, the other big blast and the snipe to make an attack chain.  I could take all those powers and slot them all and maybe they are all good and i dont want to skip any.  But when i want an extra power pick or more slots then its time to choose what i dont really need in order to get something else.  If it becomes possible for every character to have all the things then there arent many choices left on how to build a character,  just if the money was spent to max them out or not. 

[kelika2]

1 hour ago, TheZag said:

Freeing up 10 slots would make it almost trivial to make a extremely powerful toon.

its like that now

[Nerva]

Having a wider variety of strong decisions is only beneficial to the game's health.  It means that every power pick, regardless of which you pick, has real value, and has to be carefully considered.  There's fewer powers, and fewer levels, where you can just go 'oh, this is a freebie' or 'oh, it's obvious what I should do with this one.'

 

It might be irritating to have to consider everything so carefully, and weigh the pros and cons of taking or not taking a given power or slotting at a given level, but overall, the health of the character customization process as you level will be better, because there's fewer 'outright wrong' choices.  Even things that might not be absolutely optimal are at least worth the trade-off compared to their alternatives and can be usable and useful.

 

Even superheroes can't do everything!  Sometimes, you have to accept a tradeoff.

 

Edited December 19, 2021 by Nerva
Small addition

[kelika2]

1 hour ago, Nerva said:

Having a wider variety of strong decisions is only beneficial to the game's health.  It means that every power pick, regardless of which you pick, has real value

Condensing IOs down sets and/or merging bonuses would give value to older sets

Regeneration for instance would benefit quite a bit from universal resist bonuses, or added regen.

Even freed up slots to maximize Revive/add to fast healing/health

[Nerva]

7 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

Condensing IOs down sets and/or merging bonuses would give value to older sets

Regeneration for instance would benefit quite a bit from universal resist bonuses, or added regen.

Even freed up slots to maximize Revive/add to fast healing/health

Regen's a bad example.  It simply needs reworked period to keep up with modern sets; in fact it's needed a proper rework for a long time back when Live was still around.  In the modern meta, regeneration as a form of mitigation has largely fallen by the wayside unless it can also manage significant defense or resistance.  Regeneration and self-healing, alone, are not  wholly viable as a primary form of mitigation (but is quite powerful when layered under a primary form of mitigation, like defense or resistance).

Compressing IO set bonuses wouldn't help regen any more than it'd help any other set.  In fact, it'd widen the gap between regen and other sets as many of them have more diverse IO slotting options than regen.  Sure, you could pack more defense or resistance onto regen.  But you could also pack more regeneration and recovery, as well as defense and resistance, onto every other set.

[kelika2]

1 hour ago, Nerva said:

it'd widen the gap between regen

I disagree since other sets can attain untouchable godhood as it is now

[Nerva]

1 hour ago, kelika2 said:

I disagree since other sets can attain untouchable godhood as it is now

 

That's hyperbole if I've ever heard it.

 

Regen's problem is one that no amount of slotting will ever solve.  Its problem is that relies on recuperating after a hit instead of mitigating the hit as it lands.  In CoH, it's best to either never take the hit in the first place, or minimize it as much as possible, instead of taking it on the chin and trying to recuperate before you get hit again.  If a pack of enemies can kill you in five seconds from full health, it doesn't matter if you can fully heal yourself every six.  Sure, you can slot IOs to gain defense and resistance, and they'll help, but you'd have to be able to slot so much of one stat that your powers are just mules for the IOs, instead of being worthwhile on their own merits.  Your powerset isn't "regeneration" it's "invention enhancement set bonuses" at that point.

 

Meanwhile, powersets that function properly in the current game world - those that can build themselves into good survivability by stacking a few set bonuses on top of existing defense/resistance stats - have options.  They can build to a satisfactory level of survivability, then start slotting for damage, or recharge, or maybe layer a little more defense or resistance on there, just in case of debuffs.  Even if you can only heal yourself to full once an hour, it doesn't matter if the enemies take an hour and ten minutes to kill you.  Or if they're dead before the hour's up.  That's how the strong will get stronger under your idea.  That's how the gap widens.

Point being, trying to fix bad defense sets by condensing IO set bonuses into fewer IOs and allowing you to slot more of them as a result is just a band-aid on a set that really needs a rework, and it just makes the strong that much stronger.

 

Edited December 19, 2021 by Nerva
Fixed some ambiguous wording

[kelika2]

2 hours ago, Nerva said:

mnahyahayahahsmbrahmnahgahamurphl

im too drunk to really read it because this went on fora few hours but my kat/regen does ok because slotting for ranged def and using 5/6 purp and 50+5 def io for that melee def avalanche to technically need a secondary to process the idea of maybe even thinking about how others build their characters for XX-situation

 

but i sit back and think about a really resistant IO build with regen and thinking that is how its meant to be because Wolverine does his heroic moments powering through that kinda shit that translates into CoX-speak in a sense of high hp/high resists+innate regen

 

somewhere, really deep down, and discarding the primal urge to get the last word, you know there are characters RIGHT NOW who hit the ceiling and will not benefit much from my suggestion to further themselves more while allowing to not bridge the gap, but leap across the gap to see what we know is the ceiling

 

blasters making use of their "new" heal/regen toggles

support ats considering other build ideas

tanks thinking about +dmg builds

there are so many god damn ideas that can be opened up by the thought of the thinking behind considering of the possibility of opening up your mind that you are unable to comprehend due to set-in-your-ways that can theoretically be opened up but cannot because you will surface-thought level reply to this that wont even be considered conceptually thought of until hours after you hit Submit Reply but too embarrassed to correct yourself as you move onto the next thread to power level your post count up to wanting to open up your thought process as a self-defense mechanism you stopped reading a long time ago didnt you.

 

Another thread into the void.

[Clave Dark 5]

12 hours ago, Nerva said:

Having a wider variety of strong decisions is only beneficial to the game's health.  It means that every power pick, regardless of which you pick, has real value, and has to be carefully considered.  There's fewer powers, and fewer levels, where you can just go 'oh, this is a freebie' or 'oh, it's obvious what I should do with this one.'

 

It might be irritating to have to consider everything so carefully, and weigh the pros and cons of taking or not taking a given power or slotting at a given level, but overall, the health of the character customization process as you level will be better, because there's fewer 'outright wrong' choices.  Even things that might not be absolutely optimal are at least worth the trade-off compared to their alternatives and can be usable and useful.

 

Even superheroes can't do everything!  Sometimes, you have to accept a tradeoff.

 

I think there's also something t be said for "does this power fit my character concept or not?"  You might skip that cone for single target specialization, or not as well.  It's like choosing between Flight or Super Jump.  It's nice to get to choose and not make a "dumb" choice because "I didn't know that Spin was so weak" or whatever.

[Nerva]

 

4 hours ago, kelika2 said:

im too drunk to really read it because this went on fora few hours but my kat/regen does ok because slotting for ranged def and using 5/6 purp and 50+5 def io for that melee def avalanche to technically need a secondary to process the idea of maybe even thinking about how others build their characters for XX-situation

 

but i sit back and think about a really resistant IO build with regen and thinking that is how its meant to be because Wolverine does his heroic moments powering through that kinda shit that translates into CoX-speak in a sense of high hp/high resists+innate regen

 

somewhere, really deep down, and discarding the primal urge to get the last word, you know there are characters RIGHT NOW who hit the ceiling and will not benefit much from my suggestion to further themselves more while allowing to not bridge the gap, but leap across the gap to see what we know is the ceiling

 

blasters making use of their "new" heal/regen toggles

support ats considering other build ideas

tanks thinking about +dmg builds

there are so many god damn ideas that can be opened up by the thought of the thinking behind considering of the possibility of opening up your mind that you are unable to comprehend due to set-in-your-ways that can theoretically be opened up but cannot because you will surface-thought level reply to this that wont even be considered conceptually thought of until hours after you hit Submit Reply but too embarrassed to correct yourself as you move onto the next thread to power level your post count up to wanting to open up your thought process as a self-defense mechanism you stopped reading a long time ago didnt you.

 

Another thread into the void.

You probably shouldn't post while drunk; you seem to have a bad penchant for projecting.  There's no personal motive on my part against you; I just generally see this idea as blanket bad for CoH and I'm trying to explain why.

 

I have very carefully considered your point.  And what it amounts to is just cramming more modifiers into existing space.  You claim it would fix 'old sets' when in reality, most 'old sets' do just fine in current content.  It's just a few outliers - particularly among defense sets - that are seriously underperforming in overall play because they haven't evolved to keep up with the game's design.  Your Kat/Regen scrapper illustrates my point on why Regeneration is underperforming, pretty much exactly.  This character is 'doing okay' because you have Divine Avalanche, which provides a layer of melee defense and lethal defense on top of your regeneration.  Your build is functioning because you used your primary set to cover up a hole in your secondary; but that doesn't mean the secondary isn't bad.  The fact that you had to cover a hole with the primary to make it work only illustrates the deficiency.

Let me give you an example of the right way to fix an underperforming set.  When Super Reflexes started failing due to the preponderance of -def (nearly every goon with an assault rifle or a sword can inflict it), it was reworked to harden it against defense debuffs and layer some resistance under it, but only if the user's HP is already falling.  It is now one of the strongest positional defense sets in the game.  That's a good fix for an underperforming set.  It's targeted, it identifies exactly what the set needs to function in the modern meta, and fixes just those problems, without compromising the identity of the set.

 

Meanwhile, your idea would be a blanket, across-the-board increase of power for literally every set in the game.  Doesn't matter if it's underperforming, doesn't matter if it's overperforming, doesn't matter what the ramifications are, MOAR POWAR.  It runs the risk of snapping the existing balance of the game in half, just to 'fix' a couple sets that in reality need targeted reworks to evolve with the current state of the game.

 

If your idea was implemented as described, the 'old sets' that you say are underperforming would still be underpowered.  Oh sure, they might be able to cram in enough procs and single-slot-bonus IOs to reach proper survivability, but then again, all the other sets out there can now do the same thing too, but spend less space on it.  In turn, that space they save gets crammed with +damage or +recharge or +recovery, and now the old sets are still underpowered because everybody else is ultra-survivable and hits harder, while the underperformers are just ultra-survivable.  If we were to take your idea to the point of absurdity and compress things further, the gap would only widen further, because the only limitation to dealing more damage is the point where the game crashes.

[kelika2]

3 hours ago, Nerva said:

projecting.

Its only Projection if its true, otherwise it would just be a lie.

God-tier characters can only get so much stronger with the proposed idea

Everyone else has a chance to catch up

[Luminara]

The Invention system was designed this way purposefully to maintain a degree of balance.  We're not supposed to six-slot every power, which is why, to highlight one glaringly obvious example, we don't get enough slots to do so.  We're not supposed to gain six-slot bonuses for every power, either, we're supposed to make choices about which powers need more slots and which can function well with fewer.  This is part and parcel of the balance within the game.

 

Don't hold your breath.

[Nerva]

46 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

God-tier characters can only get so much stronger with the proposed idea

Everyone else has a chance to catch up

 

Enhancement slots are the single most precious build resource in this game next to power picks themselves.  Being able to save just a few of them has a huge impact on literally every build.  Don't even kid yourself - if suddenly you could get six-slot IO set effectiveness with just 4 slots, every last person would be dropping slots from powers that just mule sets, frankenslotting extensively, and/or using the freed-up slots to pack in procs they'd normally skip over.

 

Well-performing powersets are well-performing powersets because they can use their enhancement slotting effectively and efficiently; they don't have to take bad powers or unnecessary slots in mediocre powers, or dip into pools just to mule sets that patch up their holes.  Allowing strong sets to suddenly save slots is going to make them that much stronger; they're not going to magically get less efficient at using enhancements.  Nor will this idea magically strengthen weaker sets to compete on the same level as stronger ones; anything that a weaker set is benefitting from, the stronger set can also benefit from.

[kelika2]

42 minutes ago, Nerva said:

Being able to save just a few of them has a huge impact on literally every build.  Don't even kid yourself

I said that in the OP.

 

42 minutes ago, Nerva said:

 pack in procs

There are only a few builds currently that can take advantage of a lot of dmg procs, but thinking every build/person will go strait to procs is kinda silly

 

42 minutes ago, Nerva said:

Allowing strong sets to suddenly save slots is going to make them that much stronger-

-the stronger set can also benefit from.

If you can give an example that would be great, but then consider the % of players playing that when taking into consideration all the other builds out there.  In the extreme chance you dont want to do it because I dont want to do it, godhood characters are already a thing and will not benefit as much as you think they will because this is a suggestion with no math, proof or anything else to go on

Edited December 19, 2021 by kelika2

[Nerva]

23 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

There are only a few builds currently that can take advantage of a lot of dmg procs, but thinking every build/person will go strait to procs is kinda silly

Strawman argument.  I didn't say everyone would be packing in procs.  In fact, it was one of several things I said people might be doing if this suggestion became reality.  You are picking and choosing and taking statements out of context to try and discredit me.

 

If you're going to argue my points with me, then argue the points I actually made, thanks.

 

23 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

If you can give an example that would be great, but then consider the % of players playing that when taking into consideration all the other builds out there.  In the extreme chance you dont want to do it because I dont want to do it, godhood characters are already a thing and will not benefit as much as you think they will because this is a suggestion with no math, proof or anything else to go on

Okay.  Let me give you a really, really, really basic example.

 

Let's say your current build has a power that's six-slotted to get full IO set bonuses.  This suggestion gets implemented, and you can now drop two slots from it.  Do those slots have to stay in the same power?  Do they even need to stay in the same powerset?

 

No.  Respecs are a thing.  Those slots can go damn near anywhere else in the build you want.  They can go into your other powerset.  They can go into a pool power.  At higher levels, they could go into an epic pool power.

 

Letting strong powersets save slots - and they will save slots, just like weak sets will, and they will save more of them because they're more efficient with their slotting to begin with - means that they will still outpower you.  The only thing that's changed is the baseline.

 

In nearly any AT with a defense set and almost any combination of powersets, the most power is obtained by devoting enough slotting to become functionally immortal, and then throwing everything else you have into straight offense.  Your idea would allow strong sets, who can already devote more of their slotting to offense than the average, to devote even more slotting to offense.  And there's no upper limit to that, except the damage and recharge caps.

 

Now, how about you give me an example of how a powerful AT & powerset combination wouldn't benefit from saving slotting as much as a weak one.

 

Edited December 19, 2021 by Nerva
Small correction

[kelika2]

4 hours ago, Nerva said:

Strawman argument.

This is the second time you used a fallacy call incorrectly.  Strawmanning is when you misunderstand something on purpose, meanwhile out of everything you listed, procs, was the only thing I was going not going for.  I wanted to frankenslot, I wanted to have some mules, I wanted breathing room for some sets.  That was the point of this thread.

 

4 hours ago, Nerva said:

Let's say your current build has a power that's six-slotted to get full IO set bonuses.  This suggestion gets implemented, and you can now drop two slots from it.  Do those slots have to stay in the same power?  Do they even need to stay in the same powerset?

This happens even now, you can 6 slot a level 49 power with this.  Cleaning up and tuning at 50 is not anything new

 

4 hours ago, Nerva said:

Letting strong powersets save slots - and they will save slots, just like weak sets will, and they will save more of them because they're more efficient with their slotting to begin with - means that they will still outpower you.  The only thing that's changed is the baseline.

Now, how about you give me an example of how a powerful AT & powerset combination wouldn't benefit from saving slotting as much as a weak one.

And once more, you can only build yourself to be so strong before theoretical diminishing returns sets in.  Right now a def capped and s/l capped brute is attainable, adding a possible 10-15% resist to everything else is a drop in the bucket to what is available now.

[Nerva]

1 hour ago, kelika2 said:

This is the second time you used a fallacy call incorrectly.  Strawmanning is when you misunderstand something on purpose, meanwhile out of everything you listed, procs, was the only thing I was going not going for.  I wanted to frankenslot, I wanted to have some mules, I wanted breathing room for some sets.  That was the point of this thread.

Strawman Argument at Wikipedia:
"The typical straw man argument creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition through the covert replacement of it with a different proposition (i.e., "stand up a straw man") and the subsequent refutation of that false argument ("knock down a straw man") instead of the opponent's proposition."

 

Strawman, Definition 3, at Dictionary.com

"a fabricated or conveniently weak or innocuous person, object, matter, etc., used as a seeming adversary or argument"

 

You are arguing a point I did not make, by removing context from a statement of mine.  Therefore, you are guilty of setting up and attacking a Strawman argument.  Please do not try to correct me until you know your facts, please, I can, have, and will call you on it.

 

For that matter, the previous time I called you out, on projecting?

 

Psychological Projection at Wikipedia:

"In its malignant forms, it is a defense mechanism in which the ego defends itself against disowned and highly negative parts of the self by denying their existence in themselves and attributing them to others, breeding misunderstanding and causing untold interpersonal damage. A bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target, or a person who is confused may project feelings of confusion and inadequacy onto other people."

 

You accused me of being embarassed to correct myself.  I edit over 60% of my posts without hesitation.  You accuse me of power-levelling my post count, when I don't even have a tenth of the posts you do.  You've accused me of stopping reading midway through, when I have meticulously attempted to respond to every point you have tried to make.  Yet you're the one quote mining my posts to set up strawmen, editing my quotes to be gibberish, and making only minimal effort to edit clear mistakes.  You've accused me of everything that you are likely guilty of.  That's psychological projection.

 

I was willing to let it slide initially, because maybe you don't understand the words you're using, but after this much disingenuous attacking of my character as a person and a poster on this board?  I can't assume good faith anymore.

 

I am going to make one more attempt to convince you of how bad this idea is.  And then, for the sake of my wellbeing, I am out of this thread and I'm going to let it rot.
 

1 hour ago, kelika2 said:

This happens even now, you can 6 slot a level 49 power with this.  Cleaning up and tuning at 50 is not anything new

 

And once more, you can only build yourself to be so strong before theoretical diminishing returns sets in.  Right now a def capped and s/l capped brute is attainable, adding a possible 10-15% resist to everything else is a drop in the bucket to what is available now.

This is not a matter of 'cleaning up' or 'tuning.'  This is straight up power creep.

 

Diminishing returns don't mean anything when you can get the full benefit of your IO sets in fewer slots, and then shunt those slots you save towards filling a different cap.

 

If I'm defense capped, the extra slots can focus on resistance.  Or recharge.  Or damage.  Regen.  Recovery.  Literally anything else.  There are too many caps to fill, no character can fill every last one of their caps on their own power.  As a result, there's always some cap that's not maxed out that you can shunt enhancement slots to, if you have slots to spare.  This is entirely why having slots to spare is so powerful!
 

Yeah, sure, I could slot defense into Super Reflexes until I'm so far above cap it's ridiculous, but why by all the spiders in Arachnos would I ever do that?!  If I could cut two slots out of every six-slot set I have slotted, lose nothing by doing so, and move those slots elsewhere, and stick appropriate enhancements in it, that's exactly what I'd do.  It's a no-brainer decision!  It doesn't matter if those slots shifted are used for procs, frankenslotting, the content is irrelevant.  Because if you get them on a poorly-performing powerset, everyone else will get them even if they're on a powerful powerset.  They will use those slots differently, naturally, since each powerset slots differently, but they'll still be using those slots to get stronger.

 

No powerset exists in a vaccuum, and enhancement slots are build-wide.  If a person doesn't need any more slotting in, say, Stone Armor, they're going to stick those slots into their melee set, or a pool, or an ancillary, or whatever.  They're going to get stronger, simply because they have more free slots to work with.  Point is this: a poorly-performing powerset is poorly performing because of either poor theory behind it, or inability to make good use of the slotting it offers.  If you give them more slots, or let them save more slots, they're still going to use those slots just as badly as all of the others.  Until you fix the underlying problems of those powersets, they're going to remain weak by comparison to other sets, because those sets use their slotting possibilities better!

 

Edited December 20, 2021 by Nerva
Fixing misspellings and rewording for clarity; plus a small addition

[kelika2]

19 hours ago, Nerva said:

Strawman Argument at Wikipedia:
Psychological Projection at Wikipedia:

Yes I googled them before posting, you relaying what they are and what I know in such a needlessly lengthy way didnt add anything.

 

19 hours ago, Nerva said:

This is not a matter of 'cleaning up' or 'tuning.'  This is straight up power creep.

Lower tier sets benefiting more than a higher tier set is a power creep, but you are making a mountain out of a molehill.  SR/regen would benefit much more than say willpower.  But again, since this is a suggestion with no hard numbers, most of your post is just theoretically going to the worst case scenario for no reason.

[kelika2]

I just noticed that over 25% of posts in Suggestions and Feedback got nuked.

Wonder why

[Six-Six]

@Nerva, could you share your build? I'm curious on how you frankenslotted Maturity, Patience and Eloquence. Must've ended up with some very nifty set bonuses. Good on ya, mate.

[kelika2]

@arcane

About a month ago S&F was around 100k posts

[Alchemystic]

15 hours ago, kelika2 said:

I just noticed that over 25% of posts in Suggestions and Feedback got nuked.

Wonder why

 

I'm sure you'll find out soon enough buddy

[Glacier Peak]

I think this suggestion has run its course. 

[GM Impervium]

18 hours ago, kelika2 said:

I just noticed that over 25% of posts in Suggestions and Feedback got nuked.

Wonder why

 

Because people are too in love with their ideas to accept criticism, and others are too heckbent on Proving Someone Wrong on the Internet to let anything go. It stops being a discussion and exchange of ideas, and turns into arguments which eventually devolve into semantics, because people HAVE to be RIGHT.

 

Which is where I come in. Keep it kind next time, folks.