Debuff Resistance/Status Protection power pool?

[Yomo Kimyata]

This came to me in a fever dream, so bear with me.  I am perfectly content with using the tools we have to manage the risks we face, but I see a lot of posts on this section and elsewhere that demonstrates many people are not.  Rather than advocate an approach that says, "Everyone gets the best advantages from every set," I was thinking of some sort of trade-off in the form of giving up power picks and/or slots.

 

I haven't gotten into any ideas of amounts or balance or how/if these could be slotted, but I was thinking something like:

 

Lvl 4:

Regeneration Resistance

To Hit Debuff Resistance

 

Lvl 14:

Status Effect Protection

Recovery Debuff Resistance

Defense Debuff Resistance

 

Just an idle idea.  You'd still be restricted to choosing at most four different pools, and you'd need two (or more) picks to reach the really useful stuff.

[Mezmera]

Well I'd think the allowed slotting would go something like

 

Regen: Healing sets

Tohit: Tohit sets

Status Effect: Knockback (like acrobatics)

Recover: End Mod sets

DDR: Defense sets

 

Along with enhancing the resistance values maybe the powers could give some small values along with the protection like recovery or minor defense.  As far as if this seems like an attractive pool, meh.  Armor characters already have these abilities in their powers so that's half the population not going to use this pool.  

Edited February 14, 2022 by Mezmera

[Marbing]

I don’t know if this was the intent originally but this would be cool if they were auto powers. Would be less work for the devs since they wouldn’t need any animations or effects. Just an icon and some background math applied to your character. 
 

That being said how do you make this useful without being a must have? I think it can be done and certainly seems intriguing as it could open up more build diversity, which is a good thing.

 

What would the Pool name be? Resiliency? Hardiness? Grit? Idk…

 

EDIT: realizing now though, there may not be a way currently to slot these powers…

Edited February 14, 2022 by th0ughtGun

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 hours ago, Mezmera said:

Well I'd think the allowed slotting would go something like

 

Regen: Healing sets

Tohit: Tohit sets

Status Effect: Knockback (like acrobatics)

Recover: End Mod sets

DDR: Defense sets

 

Along with enhancing the resistance values maybe the powers could give some small values along with the protection like recovery or minor defense.  As far as if this seems like an attractive pool, meh.  Armor characters already have these abilities in their powers so that's half the population not going to use this pool.  

 

Every FA and DA user would end up with this pool. NIN and NrgArmor would take it just for the DDR.

 

Make them passives except the mez protection which should be a toggle slotable for end reduction. Granting no more than around 4 pts of status protection.

Make the 4 passives all have very low base values but slotable as you have shown.

 

I'm not sold on regen and recovery, however. That would allow for some serious IO abuse.

[Mezmera]

3 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Every FA and DA user would end up with this pool. NIN and NrgArmor would take it just for the DDR.

 

Make them passives except the mez protection which should be a toggle slotable for end reduction. Granting no more than around 4 pts of status protection.

Make the 4 passives all have very low base values but slotable as you have shown.

 

I'm not sold on regen and recovery, however. That would allow for some serious IO abuse.

 

It just seems like a very situational pool altogether.  It would be hard to tweak it just right so that it's an attractive pool with strong values but not overwhelmingly good to the point its a must take for some characters while being useless for others.  Plus support characters provide pretty much all of this in buffs so you're marginalizing support yet still when the game is already quite solo friendly already.  

[arcane]

I don’t think the mez protection will ever happen considering they cited not liking that players were saying “Just take RoP” for status protection before they nerfed its uptime.

[Bill Z Bubba]

11 minutes ago, arcane said:

I don’t think the mez protection will ever happen considering they cited not liking that players were saying “Just take RoP” for status protection before they nerfed its uptime.

 

Then why didn't they just strip the mez protection from it? DR side was too OP as well? I'd agree but then it should have never been added to the game in the first place.

 

Personally, I think having to wait until Clarion for mez protection for squishies is absurd. Then again, I've though the way mez works in this game absurd since I started playing it.

[arcane]

12 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Then why didn't they just strip the mez protection from it? DR side was too OP as well? I'd agree but then it should have never been added to the game in the first place.

 

Personally, I think having to wait until Clarion for mez protection for squishies is absurd. Then again, I've though the way mez works in this game absurd since I started playing it.

I don’t think they are against mez protection of all kinds, just against squishies having complete/perma mez protection in one power. RoP wasn’t even perma but it was still a bit much.

 

I take your position on mez protection with a grain of salt considering you favor both solo play and melee far more than the average middle of the road dude 😉 oh and you hate inspirations.

Edited February 14, 2022 by arcane

[Bill Z Bubba]

5 minutes ago, arcane said:

I take your position on mez protection with a grain of salt considering you favor both solo play and melee far more than the average middle of the road dude 😉 oh and you hate inspirations.

 

or do I favor melee/solo BECAUSE I hate how mez works here?

[UltraAlt]

Most power sets already have some level of this worked in to varying degrees.

Some of this also already is mixed in among the various power pools.

Also base buffs cover all or most of this as I recall ... I don't use base buffs that often.

IO set bonuses ...

And then there are inspirations....

 

 

[arcane]

16 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

or do I favor melee/solo BECAUSE I hate how mez works here?

Dunno, but I think any implication that all AT’s should have non-inspiration/incarnate access to mez protection is kind an obvious non-starter so that’s just that.

[PeregrineFalcon]

51 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Personally, I think having to wait until Clarion for mez protection for squishies is absurd. Then again, I've though the way mez works in this game absurd since I started playing it.

And what happens to Sentinels if Blasters can perma mez protection?

 

33 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

or do I favor melee/solo BECAUSE I hate how mez works here?

I completely agree with you on this. Mez was done horribly wrong in CoH. However, and I'm sure I've said this before, this is something the devs should have addressed back in 2004. I don't think that the Homecoming devs can "fix" it and still have a game that resembles City of Heroes come out the other end of the process.

[Major_Decoy]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

I don’t think the mez protection will ever happen considering they cited not liking that players were saying “Just take RoP” for status protection before they nerfed its uptime.

RUNE OF PROTECTION. Ok, that make so much more sense. I had been parsing it as Rise of the Phoenix.

 

But would be kind of interesting, a Rez that provides status protection and, as long as you die in a timely fashion, it's permanent.

[Bill Z Bubba]

6 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

And what happens to Sentinels if Blasters can perma mez protection?

 

Same thing as now: blasters will still faceplant far more than sentinels for 49 levels.

 

7 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I completely agree with you on this. Mez was done horribly wrong in CoH. However, and I'm sure I've said this before, this is something the devs should have addressed back in 2004. I don't think that the Homecoming devs can "fix" it and still have a game that resembles City of Heroes come out the other end of the process.

 

My new Bane SoA gets mezzed and knocked around far more than I expected he would and that's an AT that comes with built in mez protection. 6 whole points when you have both armors. Course now that I'm looking I see it has 0 pts to knock. Explains that issue. My main Sent (bio) is sitting on 8.3 with 9.33 to knock. I don't see how easy access to 4 pts of mez protection will change the balance of the game at all while it will make the random mez not nearly the PITA that it is now.

[PeregrineFalcon]

11 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I don't see how easy access to 4 pts of mez protection will change the balance of the game at all while it will make the random mez not nearly the PITA that it is now.

But we currently have easy access to mez protection in the form of Inspirations, IOs, Combat Jumping, Acrobatics, and Rune of Protection.

 

And, if this pool idea gets added to the game, people will start posting that this pool should be made inherent, just like Fitness was. We know this is true because of the threads proposing that Hasten be made an inherent.

 

Besides, I thought you were against Power Creep.

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

But we currently have easy access to mez protection in the form of Inspirations, IOs, Combat Jumping, Acrobatics, and Rune of Protection.

 

And, if this pool idea gets added to the game, people will start posting that this pool should be made inherent, just like Fitness was. We know this is true because of the threads proposing that Hasten be made an inherent.

 

Besides, I thought you were against Power Creep.

 

I don't consider inspirations to be anything but what they are: a temporary measure. What IO grants mez protection? Can't think of one. Plenty of mez resistance but that means fark all. CJ for Immob, ok. Acro for KB and 2 pts for Hold, sure. Where's the Stun and Sleep protection? And RoP is also a temporary measure only up 1/3 of the time.

 

Hasten still isn't inherent. Never will be.

 

I am against power creep. The tank buffs are a prime example of power creep that did introduce problems with AT balance. But I'm also for QoL changes that make sense. What I don't get is the, in my mind, completely unreasonable stance that squishies shouldn't get mez protection at all when 4 pts will only be enough to shrug off a single hold. Hell, even Def - FF - Dispersion Bubble gives 8.65 pts to Hold, Stun and Immob. The other defenders can't even access 4 pts from a pool?

 

If anything, it would be a QoL change that does nothing to end game AT balance. On top of that, it would soak up another power pool slot reducing the number of other pools they can access. And those in the future asking to make it inherent can go eat rocks.

[Marbing]

If done in a way that requires 2 power choices for the mez prot power and the mez prot power isn’t super high then I don’t see how this would introduce power creep. 
 

I don’t like power creep either but I think that phrase gets thrown around too liberally and often just means “change = bad!”

 

This pool can be done right to give players an extra set of options without being a default go to. 
 

4 mez prot to all may be too high though…

Edited February 14, 2022 by th0ughtGun

[Luminara]

5 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Mez was done horribly wrong in CoH.

 

Yes and no.  Mez was part of a trifecta of design choices which were all made to work together: toggle mutual exclusivity, mez, and extreme power effects.  With all three in place, critters posed a real challenge to every archetype.  Tankers and scrappers had the option to shrug off mez, but it cost them their other damage mitigation toggles, so they were facing a threat no matter how they played.  Blasters, controllers and defenders lacked that option, but were given abnormally strong power effects in its place, allowing them to both progress at a (theoretically) comparable pace solo and offer value to teams.  Like a table with three legs, it was stable.

 

Then Cryptic took a Sawzall to one of those table legs, toggle mutual exclusivity.  Not that they can be blamed for that, as it really was a bad design choice.  It violated their basic design principle of allowing players to log in, bounce around in a few missions and log back out with a sense of satisfaction.  The melee archetype players really were taking one kick in the groin after another with toggle mutual exclusivity and the inability to predict which toggle was "most" useful in any given situation, because every situation was fluid and constantly changing.

 

But the entire game was designed and balanced around that table having three legs, and in removing one of those legs, they created multiple other issues.  They could've made only status protection toggles mutually exclusive with other toggles and achieved their goals of promoting teaming and easing the frustration of constant toggle juggling (and with toggle suppression, it would've been a huge quality of life improvement, allowing players to skip turning anything on or off other than the status protection toggle).  They should've gone through the entire game and revamped mez, but instead, they just reduced it a bit so non-melee archetypes weren't quite as likely to be perma-mezzed as before.  And they would've realized that a lot of over-powered abilities could be scaled down and retained their value, if they hadn't developed a "mez is challenge" tunnel vision.

 

So now, yes, mez is done horribly wrong.  But that's because the design philosophy was reliant on that trifecta, and 1 + 1 + 0 != 3.  Now mez isn't an encouragement to team, it's an annoyance for the minority of archetypes with neither inherent access to status protection nor personal bodyguards to defend them when they're being mezzed/take the mez for them.  Mez ceased to be the great leveler, the universal threat, the reason for "I ain't teamin' wif no-one!" players to team, and became a punishment for playing a defender or corruptor (like having shit damage output solo wasn't punishment enough).

 

Yes, I know that you know all of that.  Others don't.  And I haven't bitched about mez yet this year, so this was a good place to start.

[Bill Z Bubba]

8 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Yes and no.

 

Sounds more like just yes since the base design across the board was horrible. But a question... how did they rationalize practiced brawler? It was a click, which meant SR would have been able to use it while still having a defense toggle on.

 

So very glad I didn't start until issue 1. Toggle exclusivity would have had me turn right around and never play.

Edited February 15, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Bill Z Bubba]

18 minutes ago, th0ughtGun said:

4 mez prot to all may be too high though…

 

That's the question. What mag do bosses usually throw around? Thinkin it's mag 3. So that would be fine, too. Any lower than the average boss mag for a single mez, however, and it's worthless and shouldn't even be considered.

[Luminara]

9 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

But I'm also for QoL changes that make sense. What I don't get is the, in my mind, completely unreasonable stance that squishies shouldn't get mez protection at all when 4 pts will only be enough to shrug off a single hold. Hell, even Def - FF - Dispersion Bubble gives 8.65 pts to Hold, Stun and Immob. The other defenders can't even access 4 pts from a pool?

 

Case in point: my human-form Peacebringer with perma-Light Form has always-on mag 3.1 Hold/Sleep/Stun/Immob, and that's sufficient for me to prefer playing that rather than any of my defenders or corruptors, despite the ten year long animation time on Incandescent Strike (which sucks and swallows when it misses), and crap AoE output from Solar Flare and Luminous Detonation.

 

And as much as I love that character, I fucking hate playing her.  She's so slow.  So damn slow.

 

I'm reminded of the time I was jumping along in the Rikti Crash Site with my Invuln/SS tank and was tagged by a sapper.  After my blue bar went bye-bye, that sapper spent the next 20 minutes poking me with his cattle prod, keeping me perma-Stunned.  20 minutes.  20 goddamn minutes.  That's how long it took for that thing to defeat my character, and I never had a single chance to escape.  I was sobbing when it was finally over.  So here's a thought: maybe that should happen to everyone.  Triple all critter mez values for a day and allow them to perma-mez everyone.  I'm willing to bet my boots that the justifications for denying squishies status protection would vaporize faster than liquid helium in a hot skillet.

[Marbing]

3 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

That's the question. What mag do bosses usually throw around? Thinkin it's mag 3. So that would be fine, too. Any lower than the average boss mag for a single mez, however, and it's worthless and shouldn't even be considered.

I think you are right, and because of that I would set it at mag 3, enough to cover ONE hold/stun. But would it be against ALL or just hold, stun, sleep? maybe hold, stun, sleep, KB (though you do already get significant KB resist from Acrobatics). 

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 minutes ago, Luminara said:

which sucks and swallows when it misses

 

[Naraka]

2 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Then again, I've though the way mez works in this game absurd since I started playing it.

 

Yeah, it's pretty unfair that most melee get to completely ignore mez and Tankers don't even know how mez works, they just know they never worry about it.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, th0ughtGun said:

I think you are right, and because of that I would set it at mag 3, enough to cover ONE hold/stun. But would it be against ALL or just hold, stun, sleep? maybe hold, stun, sleep, KB (though you do already get significant KB resist from Acrobatics). 

 

I'd be fine with Hold, Stun, Sleep. I'd prefer it be to all. I'd still never take Acrobatics and I'd still almost always take Combat Jumping. The first is complete crap by any definition and I marvel at anyone ever taking it. The second is a very low cost defense IO mule with a huge buff to combat maneuverability.