Sweeping defense changes

[Doomguide2005]

4 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

What powers? I would love to look at them in City of Data.

See the HCwiki article on "Limits" the section about Debuff Resistances.  It mentions how Damage Resistance resists both damage debuffs and resistance debuffs.  

 

Edit:  There's another spot where it's mentioned but I haven't located it yet 

 

Edit2:  It's in the Article titled Resistance (Mechanics) section about Resistance to Resistance Debuffs

Edited January 25, 2022 by Doomguide2005
Typos cleaned up

[Doomguide2005]

3 hours ago, Gobbledegook said:

So i guess if an invulnerability Scrapper had say 85% s/l resist in a build he would be 10% over his cap at 75%, but that would actually help them if they were debuffed? as they would have that extra to lose. The same would apply to defence.

 

So extra wouldn't be a waste?

     Yes it would create a buffer.  The other important thing is the game apparently always checks your base resistance (i.e. the 85%).  So it wouldn't check vs 85%, then against whatever would be left after you subtracted out the debuff from 85%, etc..  No cascade resistance failure.

Edited January 26, 2022 by Doomguide2005

[Brutal Justice]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

So now you have a team of incarnates in an incarnate mission, where they have a 14% tohit buff for being incarnate enemies, and no matter what extra defense you throw in from all the powers in the game that buff defense, they all become completely meaningless and all tanks and brutes are being hit at least 14% of the time, EATs 16.5% of the time and everyone else 19% of the time. And that's just for even level incarnate minions, of course.

I’ve said many times that 14% to-hit would need to be removed.   It’s only there to counter the lack of a hard cap anyways.  By adding it The live devs and homecoming devs have clearly shown they understand the 45% soft cap to be an issue.  

[Brutal Justice]

2 hours ago, Wavicle said:

 The idea that def and res sets are wildly out of balance simply does not reflect my game experience.

They are not on tanks or brutes.    They are on scrappers, stalkers, and sentinels.  

 

How would it not be out of balance when you have a change from 90% to 75% but keeping 45% constant?   

 

75% takes 2.5x more damage than 90%.  45% takes the same damage as 45%.  

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

I’ve said many times that 14% to-hit would need to be removed.   It’s only there to counter the lack of a hard cap anyways.  By adding it The live devs and homecoming devs have clearly shown they understand the 45% soft cap to be an issue.  

 

And all the other various tohit buffs in non-incarnate content.

 

Then defense debuffs across the board will need to be rebalanced.

 

And of course, rebalancing every defense granting set/power on the player side. I mean, yea, Elude is pretty useless as is but at least the DASF difficulty modes give it *some* reason to exist.

 

So we're back to square one. A massive undertaking in changing values across enemies and player sets all to deal with the ramifications of a change that is arguably detrimental on its face.

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

How would it not be out of balance when you have a change from 90% to 75% but keeping 45% constant?  

 

The answer lay in why the defense hard caps are currently between 3.8 and 5 times the softcap, depending on AT.

[Brutal Justice]

6 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

And all the other various tohit buffs in non-incarnate content.

 

Then defense debuffs across the board will need to be rebalanced.

 

And of course, rebalancing every defense granting set/power on the player side. I mean, yea, Elude is pretty useless as is but at least the DASF difficulty modes give it *some* reason to exist.

 

So we're back to square one. A massive undertaking in changing values across enemies and player sets all to deal with the ramifications of a change that is arguably detrimental on its face.

No need to rebalance when this is already the world a resistance scrapper lives in.  

 

I showed you you tons of numbers with DDR and level shifts.  I used 50% ddr and 95% ddr.  Your beloved super reflexes with its 95% ddr was still way out in front of a scrapper at 75% resistance.  

 

Pure hyperbole not backed by math.  

[Brutal Justice]

6 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

The answer lay in why the defense hard caps are currently between 3.8 and 5 times the softcap, depending on AT.

What answer is this?   How 90% equals 75%?

[Haijinx]

16 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

They are not on tanks or brutes.    They are on scrappers, stalkers, and sentinels.  

 

How would it not be out of balance when you have a change from 90% to 75% but keeping 45% constant?   

 

75% takes 2.5x more damage than 90%.  45% takes the same damage as 45%.  

 

All those other ATs already have less HP as well. 

 

Plus there is the fact that DEF buffs are just generally more omnipresent than Resist Buffs.   Those Resist Tankers and Brutes are ALSO benefiting from the Defense thats all over the place.

 

Or are you playing on weird teams where you aren't saturated in Leadership spam? 

[Haijinx]

I've lost count of how often I've heard people cheer on someone dying so they can trigger Vengence.

 

They are skipping Primary and Secondary Powers so they can have Vengence and a second travel power.  That is how easy this game is.  

[Bill Z Bubba]

9 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

No need to rebalance when this is already the world a resistance scrapper lives in.  

 

I showed you you tons of numbers with DDR and level shifts.  I used 50% ddr and 95% ddr.  Your beloved super reflexes with its 95% ddr was still way out in front of a scrapper at 75% resistance.  

 

Pure hyperbole not backed by math.  

 

And that's how you completely ignore a point and reality, folks. If the incarnate tohit buff has to be removed, then all tohit buffs have to be dealt with.

 

9 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

What answer is this?   How 90% equals 75%?

 

Wow.

[Doomguide2005]

28 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

I’ve said many times that 14% to-hit would need to be removed.   It’s only there to counter the lack of a hard cap anyways.  By adding it The live devs and homecoming devs have clearly shown they understand the 45% soft cap to be an issue.  

     The hard cap (caps technically since it also varies by AT) exists.  It might not be the value you wish it to be or think it should be but it does exist.  Repeatedly claiming it doesn't weakens your credibility.

[Bill Z Bubba]

9 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

I've lost count of how often I've heard people cheer on someone dying so they can trigger Vengence.

 

They are skipping Primary and Secondary Powers so they can have Vengence and a second travel power.  That is how easy this game is.  

 

Do you feel that there should be some kind of global mitigation nerf because of it?

[Haijinx]

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Do you feel that there should be some kind of global mitigation nerf because of it?

 

No.  It was suporting the idea that no one on Teams is living in a "Resist Armor only" world.  They are instead being Spammed by Manuevers. 

[Luminara]

20 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

No need to rebalance when this is already the world a resistance scrapper lives in.

 

The game isn't balanced around scrapper Resistance caps.  Stick that in your spreadsheet and figure it out.

[Doomguide2005]

35 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

They are not on tanks or brutes.    They are on scrappers, stalkers, and sentinels.  

 

How would it not be out of balance when you have a change from 90% to 75% but keeping 45% constant?   

 

75% takes 2.5x more damage than 90%.  45% takes the same damage as 45%.  

So why change defense rather than resistance?  Why in your thoughts is it better to try and enforce a defense of 40 (disregarding whether it's hard or soft for the moment) rather than make the resist cap 90% for all?

[Haijinx]

9 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

So why change defense rather than resistance?  Why in your thoughts is it better to try and enforce a defense of 40 (disregarding whether it's hard or soft for the moment) rather than make the resist cap 90% for all?

 

Interesting.  This probably would change overall balance a lot less than the defense cap.  

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

So where are we actually at on this discussion?

 

We've got the nerf crowd. Nerf defense, nerf IOs, nerf incarnate powers, nerf level shifts, nerf procs.

 

We've got the buff crowd. We know the devs are in this camp with the caveat of "always make it optional," but this doesn't really change anything because it's optional. At least it does give those at the bleeding edge a chance to get curb stomped.

 

We've got the crowd that doesn't agree or care about the premise. So what if it's too easy? That's the point! So give us that clear map button usable once every 10 minutes! Or it's not too easy! Play with SOs at max diff sometime and see how easy it is. And then they join the aforementioned buffed crowd for a TF on relentless and turn into a fine red paste at first contact.

 

That about sum it all up?

Edited January 26, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Haijinx]

56 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

So where are we actually at on this discussion?

 

We've got the nerf crowd. Nerf defense, nerf IOs, nerf incarnate powers, nerf level shifts, nerf procs.

 

We've got the buff crowd. We know the devs are in this camp with the caveat of "always make it optional," but this doesn't really change anything because it's optional. At least it does give those at the bleeding edge a chance to get curb stomped.

 

We've got the crowd that doesn't agree or care about the premise. So what if it's too easy? That's the point! So give us that clear map button usable once every 10 minutes! Or it's not too easy! Play with SOs at max diff sometime and see how easy it is. And then they join the aforementioned buffed crowd for a TF on relentless and turn into a fine red paste at first contact.

 

That about sum it all up?

 

What about the "MEH, not like you have a choice" crowd? 

 

Basically -->

Should Nerf alot of the power creep, but can't.  

Should redo mechanics to take advantage of the fact a computer can be a lot smarter than a "to hit" table, but can't fix mechanics. 

Buff? lol.  But should buff the low performers just to be fair, I guess. 

Optional Difficulty only is not really a fix to your game balance, but its all we can get, so I guess optional is better than nothing. 

 

So in the end you get:

- fix the low perfoming sets, ATs, etc.

- Optional harder contnet.  

 

Which is what the Dev have done/are doing.  Its really the only path availible, anyway. 

 

Its just galling that some people think that means the balance stuff is being "fixed"  

 

[Wavicle]

Defense is less consistent. It is also impacted by enemy rank and level more heavily than res.

 

They are balanced, it’s just more complex a balance than “x=y”.

[arcane]

I don’t think non-Brutes/Tankers with 45% defense are particularly balanced. They seem like they’re in god mode to me.

 

That being said, you’re absolutely off your rocker if you don’t see how much more prevalent defense debuffs are in this game than resistance debuffs. Defense is constantly under pressure and requires constant monitoring whereas Resistance basically never moves outside of very specific content.
 

Brutal Justice is not so off base that his proposal has zero common sense to it... but he seriously lacks nuance and no balancing effort is going to work under those circumstances.

Edited January 26, 2022 by arcane

[Brutal Justice]

19 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

So why change defense rather than resistance?  Why in your thoughts is it better to try and enforce a defense of 40 (disregarding whether it's hard or soft for the moment) rather than make the resist cap 90% for all?

In order to slow power creep I would prefer to bring the over performer down rather than bring the under performer up to the level of the over performer.  

 

If we broke mitigation into 3 categories, regen/hp, resistance, defense.  I would rank them in that order of performance for a scrapper, with regen at the bottom and defense at the top.  

 

Ideally I would try to bring regen up to resistance and defense down to resistance.  They would never be fully equal, which is fine, somebody is always at the top or bottom, but they would be closer to each other.  

 

I feel  I have to state that this is just a hypothetical situation to illustrate a balance ideology, and to answer your question, as I am sure it will be nitpicked.  

[Wavicle]

46 minutes ago, arcane said:

I don’t think non-Brutes/Tankers with 45% defense are particularly balanced. They seem like they’re in god mode to me.

 

That being said, you’re absolutely off your rocker if you don’t see how much more prevalent defense debuffs are in this game than resistance debuffs. Defense is constantly under pressure and requires constant monitoring whereas Resistance basically never moves outside of very specific content.

 

That's why it's balanced. Because it's a paper thin god mode that can be easily stripped away AND it's basically available to everyone, with varying degrees of investment.

[Doomguide2005]

@Brutal Justice

Thanks appreciate the response and from that standpoint (bringing the bottom up and the top down to meet a closer equilibrium in the middle) it makes sense as an approach to the overall issue.

[PeregrineFalcon]

20 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

In order to slow power creep I would prefer to bring the over performer down rather than bring the under performer up to the level of the over performer.

I understand your point of view, and I don't entirely disagree with you. I do think that fixing the power creep will require a little more in depth and complexity than what you've proposed, but I don't think that your solution is inherently wrong.

 

However, I think that the developers have chosen to solve the exact same problem as you, just from the other side of the equation. By raising the inherent ToHit of critters in the Challenge Mode content, they're doing exactly what you recommend. Raising NPC's ToHit lowers PC's softcap, it just does it from the other end of the equation.

 

So it appears to me that the developers are already doing what you want. Lowering the softcap. They're just doing it in a way that's less obvious to the players and only in end game Challenge Mode content.