Issue 27 Page 4 - The End of Procs

[Ratch_]

On 2/22/2022 at 2:02 PM, Troo said:

Is there a list of individual Proc outliers?

None that I know of but I think generally the problems powers are ones that either circumvent the standard frequency (Irradiated Ground/Burn), powers with innately high accuracy and provide some form of self sustain (radiation therapy), and any sort of Aim/Build Up power utilizing Gaussian.

Irradiated Ground and Burn proc interactions are issues within the powers themselves and the pseudo pets they create.

Radiation Therapy with proc slotting doesn't suffer from the usual constraints of needing enough accuracy, and in a lot of cases does a strong enough job of providing sustain without any enhancement. The 60s recharge is also in a nice sweet spot of high enough recharge to keep the PPM high while also still retaining a decent cycle rate.

Aim/Build Up with Gaussian is in my mind one of the most glaring cases however, when it comes to utilizing a proc in a power vs when you don't purely due to the PPM formula itself. Because these powers are standardized to have 90s recharge, you hit a sweet spot of being able to slot a +5 recharge enhancement to get the recharge low enough alongside global recharge, while also retaining the 90% ceiling. With one additional slot, you can either slot in Gaussian which will essentially provide you with another cast of your power for free, or slot in another +5 recharge to shave off 3-5 seconds...

I don't really have issues proc slotting in things like Infrigidate or holds or really any attack found but I could understand how some can take issues with having the ability to change a non-damage power into a damage one. I actually like the consistency of Gaussian's in build up like powers and seeing stupid damage from Burn/Irradiated Ground. I enjoy these interactions, but if you were to ask me which the Individual Proc outliers could be - these 4 come straight to mind and I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see them changed.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Ratch_

[Naraka]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

 Many of us spend hours arguing about balance, turn small threads into monstrous arguments, and we aren't even talking about a game that's truly balanced, we're ignoring gross imbalances like these and hissing and spitting at each other over damage output and soft capped Defense and telling ourselves that we're protecting an existing balance... that does not, in truth, exist.

 

You say that like it's a bad thing.

 

While I have my qualms about the game, me discussing it on a forum and turning small threads into monstrous arguments is benign and, IMO, healthy. Nothing even has to change, except maybe people's opinions and perspectives.

[MoonSheep]

On 2/21/2022 at 4:14 PM, Troo said:

With the current popularity of procs, is the reining in of their effectiveness still in the works?

 

I believe this was mentioned a while back and folks would likely appreciate a heads up.

Nothing like putting time and effort into something that is taken away. Sure procs are currently a bit broken (is this debatable?).

 

Maybe a timeline? example: "To be addressed but not soon^tm"

 

 

 

i’d imagine it’s quite a small majority of people running min/maxed procced out builds. i’ve never been much of a proccer but slowly coming round to it

 

less seeding of the market to increase prices would be a nice change though, helps get that Sense of Achievement™ when things aren’t pretty much free

[oedipus_tex]

4 hours ago, Luminara said:

Toggles on support characters do not suppress, they shut off.  And they have maximum target caps.

 

That's not balanced.  That the characters with the highest HP pools and status protection can be permitted to use suppressible damage mitigation toggles with no target cap, but support characters, who have half to a third the HP pool, are required to turn toggles back on, thus forcing them to wait out the recharge time and the animation time, and have target caps which guarantee failure beyond a certain amount of aggro, is not logical or rational.

 

 

That's an interesting way to put it. I mostly agree. I'm still glad we can shut enemy toggles down fairly easily. We're the superheroes tho, I'm fine if our toggles work differently.

 

IMO player toggles that do not do damage should not detoggle. I think the standard is for them to also suppress, but I'm not even sure that there's a major balance reason they should do that. The toggles are mostly not any stronger than click buffs and debuffs, and those don't disappear when caster is mezzed.

 

That said, I do think there's an additional difference between debuff and mezz toggles and self affecting buff toggles. Self affecting buffs (mostly) only benefit the caster, while debuff toggles help all teammates and pets. But it's definitely the case that we can compare debuff to debuff and buff to buff, and for sure there's some room there for reeval.

[Black Zot]

2 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

 

less seeding of the market to increase prices would be a nice change though, helps get that Sense of Achievement™ when things aren’t pretty much free

 

You mean it gives the haves something to hold over the have-nots so they can say "I'm better than you".  That's the ultimate effect of an unseeded market and price inflation; don't try to pretend otherwise because we both know that's bullshit.

[macskull]

5 hours ago, ScarySai said:

It's this stupid idea that how speedruns are handled is how everyone should handle content. The actual speedrunners don't even think like this, just people blindly following something without understanding it.

The funny thing here is speedrun teams will usually have 2-3 "support" ATs filling slots.

[macskull]

2 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

less seeding of the market to increase prices would be a nice change though, helps get that Sense of Achievement™ when things aren’t pretty much free

The only non-super pack items seeded on the market are invention salvage and I don't recall a time where those have ever been selling for the prices the seeded items are listed for. If I wanted to have to grind for every enhancement for every build I'd go play on a different server.

[MTeague]

2 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

helps get that Sense of Achievement™ when things aren’t pretty much free

 

I mean, I can half-understand this. I played WoW for eight years of progression raiding. There were definite senses of achievement when you went from "oh dear god not this boss, no, we're just going to spend the next three hours wiping nonstop" to "Okay It's coming together". to "YES! Got You You Sonofabi**ch!!!!" to "Dude, we have this boss on FARM." Same thing even when you defeat a long and arduous single player game, whether Darkest Dungeon, or one of the Civilization games, or Diablo 2 on Hell.  And of course, there's Dark Souls. 

 

But I never felt a sense of achievement in getting loot / gear.

Just in defeating the boss / fight. 

 

Still. We don't always have to find achievement in the same aspects of a game. I would not want to see CoH change to be super grindy to acquire IO's or to build a base, etc, though. I served my time in EverQuest and WoW. I don't need to deal with a grindy MMO ever again. 

Edited February 24, 2022 by MTeague

[ScarySai]

28 minutes ago, macskull said:

The funny thing here is speedrun teams will usually have 2-3 "support" ATs filling slots.

I'm assuming they meant something like controllers/doms, but you are correct, yee.

[Replacement]

On 2/22/2022 at 7:52 AM, Luminara said:

Some powers can be slotted as "proc bombs", and the proposed solution by those same people is to grind damage procs into dust, rather than address the powers themselves to make them perform less like outliers, because kicking entire archetypes in the balls is a better solution than bringing individual builds into line, and even that is predicated on the presumption that these people can reasonably prove that there is a problem... which, to date, no-one has done.  The attempts to do so have been shown to be deliberate efforts to misrepresent the entirety of the situation, with facts swept under the rug, cherry-picked datum held up and loudly proclaimed as the end-all and be-all of evidence... the epitome of scientific misconduct, which would have those people permanently barred from publication if they tried to submit the same "research" in a respected scientific journal.

Hello from page 2.

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=defender_buff.cold_domination.infrigidate

 

Infrigidate did nothing wrong.  It is a fine design for a simple tier 1 ST debuff.

 

The fact that its particular recharge nearly guarantees any proc, and can take nearly a full suite of procs (4x damage + -res) isn't at all this power's fault.

 

It seems a strange thing to portray this simple truth as cherrypicked data: powers like this were fine, and Defenders were nearly fine, before this beta PPM system entered the equation.

 

Hiding behind procs is keeping your favorite weak builds from getting proper buffs. The kind of buffs that don't require you to have Bopper's spreadsheet handy just to feel strong.

[ScarySai]

38 minutes ago, Replacement said:

Hiding behind procs is keeping your favorite weak builds from getting proper buffs.

 

I really doubt this, you would have to assume the worst of the HC devs to come to this conclusion. The idea that something like rad blast can't be buffed because it can be heavily procced is nonsensical at best. Fire blast, war mace, energy melee and ice blast can use procs too, and are the actual best sets in the game.

Edited February 24, 2022 by ScarySai

[Naraka]

1 hour ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

That's an interesting way to put it. I mostly agree. I'm still glad we can shut enemy toggles down fairly easily. We're the superheroes tho, I'm fine if our toggles work differently.

 

IMO player toggles that do not do damage should not detoggle. I think the standard is for them to also suppress, but I'm not even sure that there's a major balance reason they should do that. The toggles are mostly not any stronger than click buffs and debuffs, and those don't disappear when caster is mezzed.

 

That said, I do think there's an additional difference between debuff and mezz toggles and self affecting buff toggles. Self affecting buffs (mostly) only benefit the caster, while debuff toggles help all teammates and pets. But it's definitely the case that we can compare debuff to debuff and buff to buff, and for sure there's some room there for reeval.

 

I've put forth a different idea before but if it's not a buff, It's bound to be unpopular...

 

But I think enemies, from minions to EBs should have more self toggles or toggles in general. Ontop of that, a unique mechanic, I guess you could call it "Drop Factor", would then be a balancing point to make encounters somewhat less predictable and more reliant on simply paying attention.  How it'd work is, certain effects (mostly mezzes but there'd be some that would just be additional effects to special powers) would simply have the chance to drop a toggle. The only innate protection to the effect is not obtainable and only AT specific (looking at you, Vigilance) that would not only cause your toggle powers to have a hierarchy of what might drop first (things like mez protection would be near the bottom), but also how likely it would occur to you once certain conditions are met.

 

I think having toggles be more than just set-and-forget is necessary to create some avenue of equity in play. It's because you can set-and-forget such powers that they are balanced haphazardly. But if they required player attention, making sure you haven't been depowered, suddenly the bridge between Tanker and everyone else isn't quite the chasm it once was...and not done so artificially but organically and tactfully.  Further still, it emphasizes click buffs as being immutable and thus has a niche use outside of just making them stronger than a toggle (*cough* armor tier 9s *cough*). Of course, this is going into territory I don't think players would even bother to consider. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 hours ago, Naraka said:

I think having toggles be more than just set-and-forget is necessary to create some avenue of equity in play.

 

 I think I take mez protection to keep my toggles from dropping. Soooo, no.

 

Also, see new sig. This is why I think this game has become fucked up all to hell and back. At 40 I have no incarnates. No purples. Cruising Bricks radios. Soloing at max diff without a care in the world at a completely comfortable clip. Enjoying it. Sure it's fun to be an unkillable god even before the god mode powers and enhancements come into play.

 

There's no fix for any of this.

 

And to answer the earlier question, numerical purity would mean the more mitigation you have, the less damage you can do and vice versa. It ain't rocket surgery.

 

Edit: To add for the record, 1st mish in PI at lvl 41 was against Arachnos. Had to eat some blues when CP was down, had to eat a green against the +5 spawn with the +5 toxic tarantula. Oh, the horror.

Edited February 24, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[MTeague]

3 hours ago, Naraka said:

I think having toggles be more than just set-and-forget is necessary to create some avenue of equity in play. It's because you can set-and-forget such powers that they are balanced haphazardly. But if they required player attention, making sure you haven't been depowered, suddenly the bridge between Tanker and everyone else isn't quite the chasm it once was...and not done so artificially but organically and tactfully.  Further still, it emphasizes click buffs as being immutable and thus has a niche use outside of just making them stronger than a toggle (*cough* armor tier 9s *cough*). Of course, this is going into territory I don't think players would even bother to consider. 

 

It's an interesting idea, and I'd cautiously be interested in seeing how it could play out. 

 

But keep in mind, those tanks are tanky because of their toggles, and they're going to have a LOT of attacks coming in on them fast and frumious. Even a low % chance for an attack to drop a tank's toggle could get nasty when they've got 16 mobs wailing away on them.  I'd also find it interesting in the reverse direction if enemy mobs had toggles and it was easier to take them down if you could drop their toggles. Suddenly Sleeps and the like become team-friendly.  The trick is finding the balance that would make it "nice to have" without making people feel gimped without. 

[MoonSheep]

5 hours ago, macskull said:

The only non-super pack items seeded on the market are invention salvage and I don't recall a time where those have ever been selling for the prices the seeded items are listed for. If I wanted to have to grind for every enhancement for every build I'd go play on a different server.

 

ah, perhaps it’s the feature where the availability of a recipe/IO replicates itself across all levels that has dramatically suppressed findings - having a purple drop just isn’t as exciting thesedays

[oedipus_tex]

I mentioned it upthread, but one proc I think exposes the limits of the system is Gaussian's Chance for Build Up.

 

IIRC the proc was originally intended to give you a chance for bonus damage about 20% of the time you hit Build Up or Aim. It's currently triggering more reliably than that. It's only 1 PPM, but most powers you would put it in have base recharges longer than one minute, so it fires reliably. Because you can chain the proc reliably into a nuke or your highest damage attack, that one proc may add more opening salvo damage than was intended. 

 

This gets back to the idea that for some procs, averaging them out over time may not be the most balanced way to go. I don't have a better system up my sleeve, but this particular interaction causes my nose to alert.

[nihilii]

To this day, I still think the proc hate is misguided.

Procs generally have diminishing returns. The more procs you slot, the less set bonuses. If your proc build does 10% more damage, it's generally at a 20-50% efficiency cost in other areas.

The only reason this can seem broken is because 1) damage is so overwhelmingly useful, and 2) there's many external tools to patch up those efficiency costs.

Making a proc build is generally more interesting than a traditional build. It takes some thinking to meet standard goals, and sacrifices have to be made. Proc builds tend to be weaker defensively, and that ought to be another plus in a game where people frequently complain difficulty isn't high enough.

 

It's important here to remember A LOT of the things you take for granted on a build filled with set bonuses, isn't a given the heavier you rely on procs. Powers may not recharge as fast as you expect for the attack chain you want to run. 95% tohit against +4? Harder to get to without all those +15% accuracy set bonuses and with attacks that have much lower native slotting for accuracy. Permahasten? You're going to have to work a little harder for that too, with less recharge set bonuses. Endurance? Attacks will have less endurance reduction as well. "I'll just pick Focused Accuracy and Conserve Power"? There's an opportunity cost to that too, say goodbye to Shadow Meld, Moonbeam, Gloom, Ball Lightning.

 

In fact, "opportunity cost" should be the first word in these discussions. All too often, proc naysayers treat procs as free damage, as if there was a special setting called Proc Build you could unlock, where you would be given extra free slots for procs exclusively.

 

It's strange to me many voices against procs don't run proc builds. If you believe proc builds get the most bang for their buck, you should run proc builds exclusively. This is a far different scenario from (i.e.) tw/bio being overpowered (a couple years back), or fire farms being the optimal progression path; because maybe we want more diversity than playing just one character combo or one mission. But proc builds or standard builds get to experience the whole gamut of content and of power combinations. So there's really no reason not to play one, if one believes they're OP. Do you also vow never to use Hasten because Hasten is too strong? Probably not.

Anyway. It wouldn't take much nerfing to turn procs weak enough going for a traditional build would always be the superior option. At which point there's basically no option. Traditional builds are well figured out at this point in the game, so it's not too big of a deal to adapt.

But it would basically kill the Mids metagame, for a purpose I still struggle to see. We'd end up with top end characters slightly weaker offensively and a fair bit stronger defensively - making for an even more turtle up endgame, outside of gamebreaking special rules (unresistable damage and the like).

 

I can sympathize with "I don't like procs because they work in arcane counterintuitive ways." I'd rather the next step not be "let's nerf them into the ground so they're useless and I don't have to figure things out", but rather "let's explain the system better and perhaps tweak it to be more intuitive, so it keeps the same mechanical depth but also becomes more inclusive".

Edited February 24, 2022 by nihilii

[Marshal_General]

7 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

 I think I take mez protection to keep my toggles from dropping. Soooo, no.

 

Also, see new sig. This is why I think this game has become fucked up all to hell and back. At 40 I have no incarnates. No purples. Cruising Bricks radios. Soloing at max diff without a care in the world at a completely comfortable clip. Enjoying it. Sure it's fun to be an unkillable god even before the god mode powers and enhancements come into play.

 

There's no fix for any of this.

 

And to answer the earlier question, numerical purity would mean the more mitigation you have, the less damage you can do and vice versa. It ain't rocket surgery.

 

Edit: To add for the record, 1st mish in PI at lvl 41 was against Arachnos. Had to eat some blues when CP was down, had to eat a green against the +5 spawn with the +5 toxic tarantula. Oh, the horror.

Except that doesn't really work. I have had my taunt aura turned off too many times without ever being CC'd on my tanks.

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

I can sympathize with "I don't like procs because they work in arcane counterintuitive ways." I'd rather the next step not be "let's nerf them into the ground so they're useless and I don't have to figure things out", but rather "let's explain the system better and perhaps tweak it to be more intuitive, so it keeps the same mechanical depth but also becomes more inclusive".

People seem to have largely ignored my proposal back on page 2 or so of making procs have a percentage chance to fire and then giving powers a materialized multiplier to that chance, but I really think it does a good job increasing legibility of procs, removing some of the senseless quirks of PPM, and allowing us to tame a few powers that may be genuinely overpowered with procs without nerfing all procs into the ground (which, I agree, is not warranted).

[Naraka]

8 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

 I think I take mez protection to keep my toggles from dropping.

 

 

You take mez protection so you don't get mezzed. I guess that part isn't even important anymore lol

 

8 hours ago, MTeague said:

 

It's an interesting idea, and I'd cautiously be interested in seeing how it could play out. 

 

But keep in mind, those tanks are tanky because of their toggles, and they're going to have a LOT of attacks coming in on them fast and frumious. Even a low % chance for an attack to drop a tank's toggle could get nasty when they've got 16 mobs wailing away on them.  I'd also find it interesting in the reverse direction if enemy mobs had toggles and it was easier to take them down if you could drop their toggles. Suddenly Sleeps and the like become team-friendly.  The trick is finding the balance that would make it "nice to have" without making people feel gimped without. 

 

It was a rough post to get the point across but there should be some kind of mechanic that makes one immune to getting multiple drops back to back. There could be other QoL to assist like some visual or audio cue telling the player something changed when a drop occurred.

 

I've leveled a couple tanks without stellar endurance management so getting your toggles dropped is concerning but not an instant death sentence. Just a little bit of breathing room can get you back in the saddle, maybe even needing your team to give you breathing room in certain encounters.

 

I certainly understand it's an unpopular opinion that won't go anywhere but what isn't an unpopular opinion is the overall popularity of such mechanics. Most MMOs relegate toggles to mode changes or something minor, not the core of the combat. They're not intuitive to combat and even less so if they run on an endless resource (looking at basically 100% of builds...) with no consequence.

 

[Naraka]

6 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

I mentioned it upthread, but one proc I think exposes the limits of the system is Gaussian's Chance for Build Up.

 

IIRC the proc was originally intended to give you a chance for bonus damage about 20% of the time you hit Build Up or Aim. It's currently triggering more reliably than that. It's only 1 PPM, but most powers you would put it in have base recharges longer than one minute, so it fires reliably. Because you can chain the proc reliably into a nuke or your highest damage attack, that one proc may add more opening salvo damage than was intended. 

 

This gets back to the idea that for some procs, averaging them out over time may not be the most balanced way to go. I don't have a better system up my sleeve, but this particular interaction causes my nose to alert.

That's one of the reasons I mentioned up thread, what if procs add +rech bonus resist (if it doesn't exist, make it). Granted I said if having 3 procs in a power gave that power, effectively its base recharge regardless of global rech or slotting, maybe that resistance could be weighed differently for different procs.

 

I personally love Gaussian's, so I slot it often. If it only went off 20-30% if the time? Eh, maybe not so much. If slotting it in Build Up on my melees forced the base cool down of BU but you get the proc 80-90%? Still would always get it for my Stalkers but it'd start being more of a case by case study.

[Glacier Peak]

Looks like all the regulars have been getting their post count padded in this silly thread, I'mma get mine now too! At least its nice to see some level of passion in this community, even if every day less and less people are on the forums or in game...

[tidge]

Many, many times this:

3 hours ago, nihilii said:

Procs generally have diminishing returns. The more procs you slot, the less set bonuses. If your proc build does 10% more damage, it's generally at a 20-50% efficiency cost in other areas.

The only reason this can seem broken is because 1) damage is so overwhelmingly useful, and 2) there's many external tools to patch up those efficiency costs.

Making a proc build is generally more interesting than a traditional build. It takes some thinking to meet standard goals, and sacrifices have to be made. Proc builds tend to be weaker defensively, and that ought to be another plus in a game where people frequently complain difficulty isn't high enough.

 

As established in Homecoming, the current working of %procs allows for a tremendous amount of freedom in character design space, and that freedom isn't hurting anybody. The HC game is FUN! Abstractly, I grok why folks might think the game could be tuned differently... even if the measures by which such adjustments could be judged are nearly completely subjective... but why yuck in someone else's yum?

[Brutal Justice]

9 hours ago, MTeague said:

 

It's an interesting idea, and I'd cautiously be interested in seeing how it could play out. 

 

But keep in mind, those tanks are tanky because of their toggles, and they're going to have a LOT of attacks coming in on them fast and frumious. Even a low % chance for an attack to drop a tank's toggle could get nasty when they've got 16 mobs wailing away on them.  I'd also find it interesting in the reverse direction if enemy mobs had toggles and it was easier to take them down if you could drop their toggles. Suddenly Sleeps and the like become team-friendly.  The trick is finding the balance that would make it "nice to have" without making people feel gimped without. 

There are already quite a few toggles that get dropped when you get mezzed.  Some of them are even quite important.  Rise to the challenge drops if you get mezzed.  They are not just damage toggles either, they often apply -dam or slows or regen/res that aid in survival.  

 

Bio has 1 +res/regen, 1 -dam

 

Dark has 1 dam aura, 1 stun, 1 fear/-tohit

 

Electric has 1 damage aura

 

Energy has 1 -rech/+rech

 

Fire has 1 damage aura

 

Ice has 1 -rech/-dam, 1 dam aura

 

Invuln has 0

 

Radiation has 1 -tohit/-defense/+rech

 

Regen has 0

 

Shield has 1 +dam/-dam

 

Stone has 1 damage aura

 

Super reflexes has 0

 

Willpower has 1 +regen/-to-hit

 

It’s  also not too uncommon for tanks to get stunned or held at levels below 35.  Resistance tanks often get stunned or held even at level 50 by the likes Malta or carnies.

 

 I took two tanks into some 801 missions recently.  Ice armor and dark armor.  The dark tank would get insta stunned and pasted.  The ice tank would cascade with its 50% DDR.  These missions are not the norm, but for people to suggest that, not you MTeague, tanks don’t already have to deal with some issues of toggles dropping  must only be playing meta sets with meta builds.  They want tanks to drop toggles?  Simply hard cap defense and let more of those mezzes and defense debuffs through.  Done.  

[Marshal_General]

I have lost toggles on a tank without being mezzed. It may just be feature of the AVs in the SSB.