Debuff Resistance/Status Protection power pool?

[Luminara]

25 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Sorry, you don't get to use "I can't handle a mission difficulty specifically designed for 8 people while I'm solo!" as an excuse to buff your powerset or AT. Power creep may be inevitable, but that doesn't mean that we have accelerate it on purpose.

 

We were discussing the potential for challenge which exists in the game in the form of mez and how that challenge is not utterly obviated by the existence of status protection.  I gave an example of exactly that.  I have no idea how you went from there to "stop asking for brute buffs".  Seriously, where did that come from?

 

Here's a summarization of the discussion up to this point:

 

 

You said, "I don't think we should allow everyone to be completely immune to mez.  That's power creep!"
I said, "No-one's completely immune to mez now.  I'm mezzed through mag 10 protection regularly."
You said, "NO WAY!"

I said, "I fight enemy groups with multiple critters who can mez, like Carnies, Rikti, Arachnos and Malta.  A character with 10 points of protection to Hold/Sleep/Stun can still be Held/Slept/Stunned, so the challenge provided by mez still exists for everyone, and allowing the minority with zero status protection to stay active through a single mag 3 mez isn't power creep, it's just making the difference between the haves and have-nots less pronounced."

And now, two days later, you come back with the above-quoted material, which has absolutely nothing to do with that conversation.

 

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Ok, so the problem isn't that your character doesn't have enough mez protection. The problem is that you're soloing above your weight class.

 

I play that character at that level and against those enemies specifically because they can do that to her.  It's in keeping with the character concept.  And I know what I'm doing.  Save the HOW2PLAY advice for the newbies, if you would, please.

 

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I see a lot of the folks in this thread in other threads complaining about any character that can't solo at +4 x8, soloing GMs, soloing Lord Recluse, etc. I honestly think that the point of view of the 100 or so people that regularly post on this forum is very far removed from the vast majority of people who actually play this game.

 

Not one person in this thread has complained about soloing, or being incapable of soloing, +4/x8, GMs or AVs.

 

Well, I do have two people on /ignore, but no-one who isn't on my /ignore list has said anything even remotely like that.

 

You're not normally this erratic.  Is something wrong?

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I honestly think that the point of view of the 100 or so people that regularly post on this forum is very far removed from the vast majority of people who actually play this game.

 

Devs could datamine the info and share it. I suspect that a much higher % of players utilize the tools available to them rather than just sticking with SOs all the way to 50. A lot of my recent soloing from lvl 1 to X, however, has been with SOs and very low diff settings up until I could slot perf shifters at least. Steadfast and Glad Armor uniques usually get thrown in pretty early as well to stack with combat jumping and/or maneuvers. But these runs have been hamstrung for very specific reasons.

 

Generally speaking, I like to push my difficulty up to the point where failure becomes a possibility while utilizing the IOs I can along the way to push things higher.

 

We received the new difficulty system because the old one provided none for any half-assedly slapped together build across most ATs. The idea that enemy encounters in this game set to x8 were *designed* for a team of 8 players is as laughable now as it always was. Or rather, even if the design intent was there, it was laughably off the mark.

[Naraka]

26 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

I said, "I fight enemy groups with multiple critters who can mez, like Carnies, Rikti, Arachnos and Malta.  A character with 10 points of protection to Hold/Sleep/Stun can still be Held/Slept/Stunned, so the challenge provided by mez still exists for everyone, and allowing the minority with zero status protection to stay active through a single mag 3 mez isn't power creep, it's just making the difference between the haves and have-nots less pronounced."

 

 

If giving the ATs with zero mez protection another means of getting +3 mag protection is making up the difference between the haves and have-nots, I'm sure welfare would have solved poverty by now, not exacerbated it.

 

If we're actually going to make up that difference, you'd need to help the have-nots while also penalizing the haves because 3 mag protection isn't doing crap that can't already be done. Like giving a $600 check to everybody.  Lol who's rent is that paying for? What about their utility bills and food? C'mon...

 

[EDIT]And just to retort to any accusations of inequivalent comparisons or strawman arguments, I do think, +3 mag protection on a passive pool that takes up 3 power picks to be literal scraps here. It's not a grand solution or a novel concept.  It's not like we don't have options for stuns and holds for 3 power picks already.

 

26 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

 

 

 

26 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

We received the new difficulty system because the old one provided none for any half-assedly slapped together build across most ATs. The idea that enemy encounters in this game set to x8 were *designed* for a team of 8 players is as laughable now as it always was. Or rather, even if the design intent was there, it was laughably off the mark.

 

I've been gone for a while as they implemented a lot of these changes. I'm curious if the new difficulty setting has changed any of the tactics and power-usage at the upper level. Maybe I'll start diving back into "end game" grouping if it does.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Naraka

[Rudra]

5 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

We received the new difficulty system because the old one provided none for any half-assedly slapped together build across most ATs. The idea that enemy encounters in this game set to x8 were *designed* for a team of 8 players is as laughable now as it always was. Or rather, even if the design intent was there, it was laughably off the mark.

I've got a bone to pick with this statement, but beyond this statement, I'm not going to make it. I've already had that argument and all it did was make me unreasonably angry.

 

You are correct though. The x8 does not mean the spawns should take a team of 8 to clear. As has been said in another thread, the x8 only means the game spawns mobs in group sizes it would as if you were a team of 8 players. It does not account for how you build your character. It does not account for your AT or power choices. It simply spawns larger numbers of enemies to match the spawn sizes you would get if you had a larger team. And I believe this was included pre-incarnate because tankers, brutes, and some others were tired of asking for 7 other players to join them and door sit so (s)he could get the enemy spawn sizes (s)he could deal with solo.

 

With that in mind, if anyone is using a difficulty higher than x1 as a basis for a need for this power pool, then your reasoning doesn't work. You are playing at a higher difficulty than the game was stated as being. For those of you citing difficulties higher than x1 to prove mezzes can get through your mez protection, but not necessarily as a reason for this pool to exist? Meh. Some spawns can achieve the protection breakthrough even on the normal +0/x1 difficulty, typically Tsoo in my experience. Your point is still valid though.

 

There has been a lot of discussion as to whether this pool is needed, or if it is just a quality of life bit, or if it is power creep, or if it is progressing the game into even easier territory for those that are already yawning their way through everything. Again, neither for it nor against it, but if the magnitude of protection is low enough, this pool is not really a problem. Any mez protection higher than Mag 2 though, is excessive in my opinion. Firstly because this is a pool and should not be a mainstay or must have pool choice. And secondly because being able to routinely ignore even just lieutenants, let alone a boss regardless of how weak that boss' mezzes may be, is a pretty ridiculous ask considering the game already accounts for it. Squishies have range. They get mezzed? As long as they maintained their distance, they should survive long enough for the mez to wear off and do something even if they are not packing Breakfrees.

 

I'm just one person and this is just my opinion, but there you have it.

[Bill Z Bubba]

18 minutes ago, Naraka said:

I've been gone for a while as they implemented a lot of these changes. I'm curious if the new difficulty setting has changed any of the tactics and power-usage at the upper level. Maybe I'll start diving back into "end game" grouping if it does.

 

I wasn't talking about the new new stuff in Aeon's task force. Only about the change from the old 5 stage system that capped out at +2(maybe 3)/x2 vs the +4/x8 we can now set. But to your point, yea, running that (the Aeon SF) on relentless certainly returned the SG I run with back to the old tactics of everyone utilizing everything they have smartly rather than just steamrolling through without a care.

 

17 minutes ago, Rudra said:

With that in mind, if anyone is using a difficulty higher than x1 as a basis for a need for this power pool, then your reasoning doesn't work. You are playing at a higher difficulty than the game was stated as being. For those of you citing difficulties higher than x1 to prove mezzes can get through your mez protection, but not necessarily as a reason for this pool to exist? Meh. Some spawns can achieve the protection breakthrough even on the normal +0/x1 difficulty, typically Tsoo in my experience. Your point is still valid though.

 

Absolutely valid. But even the standard of "base diff = +0/x1 w/ bosses" no longer has relevance because that was only ever true at lvl 1 using TOs. Not SOs. And TOs aren't available at the store next to Ms. Liberty anymore. So I would have to argue that we as the player community along with the devs need to determine what the *actual* base difficulty should be now for the game we're playing. Sadly, there's absolutely no chance in hell that we'd all come to such a consensus.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Naraka]

15 minutes ago, Rudra said:

 

With that in mind, if anyone is using a difficulty higher than x1 as a basis for a need for this power pool, then your reasoning doesn't work. You are playing at a higher difficulty than the game was stated as being. For those of you citing difficulties higher than x1 to prove mezzes can get through your mez protection, but not necessarily as a reason for this pool to exist? Meh. Some spawns can achieve the protection breakthrough even on the normal +0/x1 difficulty, typically Tsoo in my experience. Your point is still valid though.

 

 

This was a hotly debated arguing point in times of yore.

 

I wasn't around when it was actually being argued but I believe the devs (or *a* dev) was making that point that the game is mostly balanced toward +0/x1 or whatever but I think he lost that argument in the long run. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that people have argued it in the past and likely have created a strict binary on that perspective.  I can't really say what or how difficulty should be distributed, whether it should be +1, x2, +0 or x4. I just know what it's *NOT* balanced around and that is the max.

 

If I were forced to give a concrete answer, I'd probably say sets should be balanced depending on what they are designed to tackle. So a set like Dark Armor might be able to deal with lots of enemies (so x3 or x4) but pay for its efficacy by not being well built to handle foes too higher level (so +0) while sets like Super Reflexes might be able to mitigate tough hits from a strong target easily (+2) but not have many tools to deal with many attacks coming in at once (so x2). Probably a cop-out answer but would at least distract long enough for me to come up with a better answer while you have to pick apart each individual set's balance criteria lol

[Bill Z Bubba]

9 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Absolutely valid. But even the standard of "base diff = +0/x1 w/ bosses" no longer has relevance because that was only ever true at lvl 1 using TOs. Not SOs. And TOs aren't available at the store next to Ms. Liberty anymore. So I would have to argue that we as the player community along with the devs need to determine what the *actual* base difficulty should be now for the game we're playing. Sadly, there's absolutely no chance in hell that we'd all come to such a consensus.

 

Have to do some edits/corrections/expansion on this.

 

As level progress in this game, enemies get more and better abilities which increases the difficulty in a way that is supposed to remain competitive with whatever base standard is in place for our builds. Enemies at the level we have TOs based around that, then DOs, then SOs and HOs.

 

But that was back before temp powers. Back before sands of mu and the black wand. Back before all the new power pools. Back before inherent fitness. You see where I'm going. We're not playing that game anymore. None of us. Even if you are playing at 50 with SOs, unless you've worked very hard at it, you're benefiting from all the power creep (including AT and powerset changes over the years) and because of it, shouldn't be considering +0/x1 at 50 the baseline for ANY character.

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

And now, two days later, you come back with the above-quoted material, which has absolutely nothing to do with that conversation.

Yeah, I was off work yesterday, so I was doing stuff instead of posting on the forums.  😁

 

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

Not one person in this thread has complained about soloing, or being incapable of soloing, +4/x8, GMs or AVs.

As I said, not in this thread people haven't. But I have read stuff like that on these forums. I guess I've just been annoyed lately by the constant "game too easy, bruh" threads, especially when followed up by threads suggesting more power creep.

 

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

You're not normally this erratic.  Is something wrong?

No. Thanks for asking though. Sorry. I shouldn't have been a jerk to you.

 

I has been two days though, as you said. Maybe I misunderstood or misremembered the points of your posts. Perhaps I should just say that I'm against this suggestion and stop bumping the thread.

[Bill Z Bubba]

10 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

As I said, not in this thread people haven't. But I have read stuff like that on these forums. I guess I've just been annoyed lately by the constant "game too easy, bruh" threads, especially when followed up by threads suggesting more power creep.

 

Had another thought on this topic... the reason I don't consider giving mez protection to squishies (I'd still rather every AT have some either from powers chosen or their inherent) as power creep and instead consider it bringing up underperforming sets to par in the exact same way that buffs to AR and Regen would be.

 

11 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I has been two days though, as you said. Maybe I misunderstood or misremembered the points of your posts. Perhaps I should just say that I'm against this suggestion and stop bumping the thread.

 

Well, you could, but I honestly feel like these discussions should be had and continue to be had until we can all at least get closer to the same book, if not the same page. 🙂

[Rudra]

58 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Have to do some edits/corrections/expansion on this.

 

As level progress in this game, enemies get more and better abilities which increases the difficulty in a way that is supposed to remain competitive with whatever base standard is in place for our builds. Enemies at the level we have TOs based around that, then DOs, then SOs and HOs.

 

But that was back before temp powers. Back before sands of mu and the black wand. Back before all the new power pools. Back before inherent fitness. You see where I'm going. We're not playing that game anymore. None of us. Even if you are playing at 50 with SOs, unless you've worked very hard at it, you're benefiting from all the power creep (including AT and powerset changes over the years) and because of it, shouldn't be considering +0/x1 at 50 the baseline for ANY character.

Yeah, I hear you, but I still have 50s that can't fight any higher. So I still disagree.

 

This thread is starting to do some serious wandering now, so I'm just going to drop off it. If this pool gets implemented? Fine. I hope it does so with a Mag 1 limit for mez protection, but at least no higher than Mag 2. And keep the other resists low too. I do seem to be in the minority on this though. If it does not get implemented, I won't shed any tears.

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 minutes ago, Rudra said:

And keep the other resists low too. I do seem to be in the minority on this though.

 

To be fair, the more I've considered it, the more I'm against debuff resistances being added to a power pool. A powerset should provide appropriate debuff resistances for the set in question.

 

So I don't know where a pool based mez protection power should/would go but I wouldn't want to see this pool as is added to the game, regardless of how low the debuff resistance values may be.

[Naraka]

15 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

To be fair, the more I've considered it, the more I'm against debuff resistances being added to a power pool. A powerset should provide appropriate debuff resistances for the set in question.

 

So I don't know where a pool based mez protection power should/would go but I wouldn't want to see this pool as is added to the game, regardless of how low the debuff resistance values may be.

 

Like I said, I think this would have been a good fit for non-inherent Fitness 2.0, amending these ideas to the fitness pool to make it more attractive.

 

The concept of these additives is basically the same as Fitness, acting like a baseline boon to a particular aspect of the character. At the very least, this would be as fair since, if this were its own pool, inevitably the playerbase would view it as mandatory to have for squishies (even though its not) and thus a power pool tax.

 

I'm still of the opinion, you can get by without Fitness, especially with IOs.

[Marbing]

14 hours ago, Naraka said:

[EDIT]And just to retort to any accusations of inequivalent comparisons or strawman arguments, I do think, +3 mag protection on a passive pool that takes up 3 power picks to be literal scraps here. It's not a grand solution or a novel concept.  It's not like we don't have options for stuns and holds for 3 power picks already.

I don’t think anyone claimed it would be a grand solution. Just an extra option for some builds. The sacrifices alone make it not power creep and if you wouldn’t use it as you make clear then I am not certain what or why exactly you are arguing. If you think it’s scraps then don’t use it and move along. 
 

I like out of the box novel ideas as well. I suggested one earlier in this thread. But, it didn’t seem to get any traction and those for this change seem to be set on the 3 mag prot toggle. I wouldn’t mind either solution, because I think it’s a good idea regardless. It gives players more options without being inherently OP. But hey, I’ve said this over and over and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere so I’ll just sum it up with this: I disagree with you. Who cares. 

 

It won’t ever be implemented anyways.

Edited February 18, 2022 by th0ughtGun

[Haijinx]

On 2/15/2022 at 6:38 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

So a buff for blasters (who can already use 3 attacks while mezzed) while still being useless to the other ATs that can't get mez protection at all or at least until late game. No thanks.

 

But, hey, if nothing comes from any of this, we all still have access to the P2W mez protection. Hell, it's even cheap when you get 8 hours at lvl 1. Just make sure you've got some inf waiting in email instead of inspirations.

 

Only sort of 3 depending on the secondary 

 

If you have a Melee T1 in your secondary you are a bit out of luck here.  Unless you get stunned I guess you can dizzily stumble into range to hit Power Thrust. 

[golstat2003]

On 2/17/2022 at 8:51 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Had another thought on this topic... the reason I don't consider giving mez protection to squishies (I'd still rather every AT have some either from powers chosen or their inherent) as power creep and instead consider it bringing up underperforming sets to par in the exact same way that buffs to AR and Regen would be.

 

 

Well, you could, but I honestly feel like these discussions should be had and continue to be had until we can all at least get closer to the same book, if not the same page. 🙂

As you said yourself earlier we’re never going to be on the same page on difficulty for this game. Some want it harder. Some have even suggested a difficulty level that is easier than the base level.

 

At this point I’d be fine with the original suggestion, but doubt it will ever be done.