Sweeping defense changes

[Lazarillo]

9 hours ago, Wavicle said:

imagine being able to run the hardest difficulty content in any other game without getting the best loot first.

I'd rather imagine that than imagine only one type of build is considered the right way to play this one.

[ShardWarrior]

No.  This game does not need sweeping defense nerfs.  The HC folk are moving in the right direction by adding higher difficulty levels to content. 

[Wavicle]

30 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

I'd rather imagine that than imagine only one type of build is considered the right way to play this one.

Well since neither is true, either way you’ll have to use your imagination.

[Lazarillo]

4 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Well since neither is true, either way you’ll have to use your imagination.

If neither is true, why is it that a Scrapper would "get annihilated" on Relentless without doing so, according to your claim?

[Wavicle]

Just now, Lazarillo said:

If neither is true, why is it that a Scrapper would "get annihilated" on Relentless without doing so, according to your claim?

Because you’re conflating two different things.

 

Saying that in order to play the highest difficulty content you have to have a build using the best loot and saying that there’s only one kind of build you can use are two different things.

 

You could build your character in many different ways, but if you’re building it with just vendor trash enhancements then you shouldn’t expect to be able to easily complete the hardest content in the game.

[Lazarillo]

2 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Saying that in order to play the highest difficulty content you have to have a build using the best loot and saying that there’s only one kind of build you can use are two different things.

Apologies, I called them your words, but they were Doomguide's.  This is where I take issue:

  

14 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

A Scrapper with hard capped defense of 40 would almost certainly get rapidly and thoroughly obliterated on Relentless settings.

...again, if that's the case, then anyone not building to have more than 45% defense right now is doing it "wrong", and I take issue with that.

[Wavicle]

6 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

Apologies, I called them your words, but they were Doomguide's.  This is where I take issue:

  

...again, if that's the case, then anyone not building to have more than 45% defense right now is doing it "wrong", and I take issue with that.

I think you’re taking him too literally.

 

You could have a successful scrapper with only 40% defense… If, if, that isn’t all they have. If you had 40% defense and also some damage resistance and healing, I think you’ll be fine.

Edited January 24, 2022 by Wavicle

[wjrasmussen]

On 1/22/2022 at 1:17 PM, golstat2003 said:

 

Well maybe in 2072.  . . If we're all still alive and we aren't all avatars in a virtual reality version of City of Heroes . . . being accidentally broadcast in the Italian Senate . . .LOL

I thought it was going to be Defense Caps are Too High.

[Doomguide2005]

1 hour ago, Lazarillo said:

Apologies, I called them your words, but they were Doomguide's.  This is where I take issue:

  

...again, if that's the case, then anyone not building to have more than 45% defense right now is doing it "wrong", and I take issue with that.

 

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

I think you’re taking him too literally.

 

You could have a successful scrapper with only 40% defense… If, if, that isn’t all they have. If you had 40% defense and also some damage resistance and healing, I think you’ll be fine.

Relentless is not going to be kind to anyone running with hard capped at 40 defenses which is what Brutal Justice is proposing.  My response is solely directed at this idea.  Currently a build regardless of its actual defense can get buffed to counter the buffs given to Relentless foes encouraging teaming and the value of support characters.  Right now a casual player with teammates can get buffed a ton between Maneuvers, Barrier, Force Field, Cold, Fortitude, etc., etc.. and be successful because all those buffs can have an effect.  Change that to a hard cap and well it's going to get a whole lot dicier regardless of how uber or casual the player/build is because 40 defense is a pretty low bar to achieve via ally buffs and largely not going to cut it vs a Relentless spawn and being a HARD cap can't be improved.  To really deal with it you start needing to look at specific team makeups ... something I'd think is also not very casual friendly.

[Wavicle]

For sure. I would not support AT specific Def Hard caps unless (A) that cap was around 60 or 65 and (B) the game was fully redesigned with these caps in mind.

[Andreah]

17 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

the game was fully redesigned with these caps in mind

And if the game were to go a complete redesign of this magnitude, we'd go deeper into the attack calculations than just trying to band-aid hard caps on folks.

 

I'm a fan of conjectural design changes as a means for understanding the game better and also for forums entertainment, but as a matter of practice, I'm against almost all of them because even if they would narrowly address the problem they're aimed at, they usually would break vastly more things. It's like medicine, "First, do no harm."

[Wavicle]

CoH 2

[Bionic_Flea]

39 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

For sure. I would not support AT specific Def Hard caps unless (A) that cap was around 60 or 65 and (B) the game was fully redesigned with these caps in mind.

We already have AT specific defense hardcaps from 175 to 225.   https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Limits

[golstat2003]

2 hours ago, Andreah said:

And if the game were to go a complete redesign of this magnitude, we'd go deeper into the attack calculations than just trying to band-aid hard caps on folks.

 

I'm a fan of conjectural design changes as a means for understanding the game better and also for forums entertainment, but as a matter of practice, I'm against almost all of them because even if they would narrowly address the problem they're aimed at, they usually would break vastly more things. It's like medicine, "First, do no harm."

 

Especially with the insane sphagetti and string cheese code this game is built on. I highly agree. As others have said "leave it alone, just give us harder content".

[Brutal Justice]

The entire game would not have to be redesigned.  In fact, only the end game is CURRENTLY being designed with a direct effort to overcome the lack of a defense hard cap.  Added to-hit to effectively raise the soft cap is only needed because of the lack of a hard cap.  Auto hit powers are only needed because of the lack of a hard cap.  

 

The end game game difficulties are unfairly targeting defense builds!   

 

The current end game/incarnate to-hit levels would not be necessary with a hard cap.  Where outside of these areas do you commonly face such defense targeted counter measures?   Rularuu?  Nemesis? They have one unit that can either be taken out first or last depending on the unit.  Devoured earth?  Kill one “pet”.  

 

The main portion of the game would not need to be redesigned.  Only the portion that is CURRENTLY being designed.  

 

Currently in the main portion of this game, a scrapper at the soft cap lives 3x longer than a scrapper at the res hard cap.  A scrapper at 40% defense still lives several seconds longer than a 75% res scrapper, dropping to pretty much equal at +4.  

 

Are these resistance scrappers already requiring the entire game to be redesigned?  No. People sure make it seem that way though.  

[Wavicle]

2 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

We already have AT specific defense hardcaps from 175 to 225.   https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Limits

 

Perhaps those should be lowered to like 100-150?

For the purpose of making it easier for the devs to build new difficult content.

 

Perhaps it's not necessary.

[Wavicle]

16 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

Currently in the main portion of this game, a scrapper at the soft cap lives 3x longer than a scrapper at the res hard cap.  A scrapper at 40% defense still lives several seconds longer than a 75% res scrapper, dropping to pretty much equal at +4.  

 

However, the res scrapper can easily add a big chunk of defense, while the def scrapper has much less access to additional res.

You are asserting a need for def and res to be mathematically matched at their respective caps that has not been demonstrated to be necessary.

 

Perhaps it FEELS to you like there should be more direct parity, but in practice neither resistance based nor defense based scrappers (not to mention squishier ATs) are actually being constantly outperformed at the highest levels (or lower), so far as I am aware. I think you would first need to demonstrate otherwise for the suggestion to really be taken seriously.

Edited January 24, 2022 by Wavicle

[Aurora_Girl]

FINE YOU GUYS JUST COMBO THE WHOLE THING TO "TANK"

 

TANKS GET 100 TANK

BRUTES GET 80 TANK

SCRAPPERS GET 60 TANK

 

NOBODY ELSE GETS TANK MAKE TANK GOOD

[macskull]

7 hours ago, Brutal Justice said:

Currently in the main portion of this game, a scrapper at the soft cap lives 3x longer than a scrapper at the res hard cap.  A scrapper at 40% defense still lives several seconds longer than a 75% res scrapper, dropping to pretty much equal at +4. 

Your argument keeps coming back to a variation of this, which is based off spreadsheet math rather than the reality of how the game is played. It's been pointed out to you multiple times that dramatically reducing defense hard caps 1) kneecaps defense-based builds, 2) reduces build variety, 3) eliminates the usefulness of many support powersets, and 4) doesn't actually solve even the perceived problem because tohit debuffs still exist. For a great case study in what happens when you impose harsh limits on character survivability and the ability of support characters to actually provide support, take a look at this game's Issue 13 PvP changes.

[jacknife2058]

I suppose they could just eliminate Tough and Weave from the fighting pool which have become the cookie cutter pool powers (mainly as Set Mules). Maybe replace them with -Dmg and -ToHit debuff attacks ("Disarm" and "A Handful of Sand" for example). Granted it doesn't solve the Incarnate related issues, but that's what "Incarnate level content" should do.

Edited January 25, 2022 by jacknife2058

[Gobbledigook]

I do think DDR should probably be a bit lower on some sets. A shield Tanker is nigh invulnerable to Cascading defence failure whilst still having very high resists buffed by IO set procs. Shield also provides extra damage making it a more damage orientated set yet it is also one of the top survival sets as well, that does seem a little imbalanced. It also has extra +max health.

 

Super Reflexes is king of DDR but it does have a lot of resists available to it also, either from the set or IO's. 90% defence and 90% resists is achievable on a Tanker although they would probably be at 30-40% health. Still huge though. Some saying they can afk in an ITF. A resist set could not.

 

Willpower has little DDR and the defences will be stripped easily leaving some resists and healing. The healing can also be debuffed. The set offers no extra damage at all. It is weaker than Shield defence and offers no extra dps.

 

A resist set will have any defence it has built stripped from it very easily. Even 90% resists is not enough for some content. Any healing the resist set has, can be debuffed to ineffectiveness also. Resist sets do not have +max health either unlike a few defence sets.

 

Defence also provides more defence vs debuffs.

 

I think avoiding 95% of all attacks and then mitigating that 5% by a further 70-80%  is superior to taking 10% damage all the time.

 

Having played all Tanker sets i do believe there is a small inequality between resist and defence sets. That is why Shield is picked by many top end builds, Shield/EM for example as both are OP lol. But i am not exactly sure how to fix it.

 

Perhaps the Ageless Radial incarnate should have the DDR removed. My stone tanker with 80%+ resists, 60%+defences, 55+regen, 3500+health and 70%+DDR with the incarnate Radial thinks so anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 25, 2022 by Gobbledegook

[Doomguide2005]

@Gobbledegookone bit that I only became aware of recently favors Resist based mitigation.  Namely damage Resistance is what resists Resistance debuffs (not new knowledge) but the Resistance caps are not the upper limit for resisting debuffs.  A Scrapper with 100%+ damage resistance to Energy for example will still take 25% of incoming energy damage (capped at 75%) but when hit by multiple Melt Armors will be 100% immune to the debuffs.  The Scrapper with, to pick a random number, 60% Energy Damage Resistance is going to get debuffed by those same Melt Armors and watch as his Relentless foes send his numbers rapidly downward.

 

EDIT:  In otherwords this whole topic is way too complex to make sweeping changes to defense without inviting complete disaster.

Edited January 25, 2022 by Doomguide2005

[Gobbledigook]

1 minute ago, Doomguide2005 said:

@Gobbledegookone bit that I only became aware of recently favors Resist based mitigation.  Namely damage Resistance is what resists Resistance debuffs (not new knowledge) but the Resistance caps are not the upper limit for resisting debuffs.  A Scrapper with 100%+ damage resistance to Energy for example will still take 25% of incoming energy damage (capped at 75%) but when hit by multiple Melt Armors will be 100% immune to the debuffs.  The Scrapper with, to pick a random number, 60% Energy Damage Resistance is going to get debuffed by those same Melt Armors and watch as his Relentless foes send his numbers rapidly downward.

Yes i had forgotten about that. 

[KaizenSoze]

2 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

A Scrapper with 100%+ damage resistance to Energy for example will still take 25% of incoming energy damage (capped at 75%) but when hit by multiple Melt Armors will be 100% immune to the debuffs.  The Scrapper with, to pick a random number, 60% Energy Damage Resistance is going to get debuffed by those same Melt Armors and watch as his Relentless foes send his numbers rapidly downward.

Sorry, I am probably just misunderstanding your comment.

 

I know there are powers that provide resistance to defense debuff aka DDR. Ageless Radial for instance.

 

Are you saying that there is a power(s) that provides resistance to -resist? Not to be confused with exceeding the resist hardcap. Example, scrapper resist hard cap is 75% if you exceed that to 100%, then you have a 25% buffer to -resists. That in my mind is not debuff resistance, just buffer. Debuff resistance would be if you were hit with -20% resists and you had 50% debuff resistance, then final -resist would only be -10%.

[Bionic_Flea]

59 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

Are you saying that there is a power(s) that provides resistance to -resist?

 

Yes,  Which gives us this lovely sentence:  Resistance resists resistance reduction.