Your Opinion on Sets and ATs that Over or Underperform

[Apparition]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

It’s light years ahead of the three I listed as definites 🙂 

 

Holy hell, Electrical Affinity???? Someone has never done a truly hard task with vs without one.

 

Seismic Blast and Sonic Manipulation are also high end sets.

 

Nerve Alpha is fine, but Resilient is not 🙂

 

Yeah, I have no idea why anyone would rate Electrical Affinity nor Sonic Manipulation underperforming.  They are both excellent. Deafening Wave in Sonic Manipulation is bugged right now but it’s already internally fixed, and other than that Sonic Manipulation is one of the top three Blaster secondaries IMO.

[Zeraphia]

1 hour ago, Onlyasandwich said:

Mind Control on Doms is solid, but I have never felt it approaching something like say Plant. What is your perspective on what makes it OP?

So there's a few things going for it that no other set really has in its totality:

 

-Permanent ST Confuse AV's. The only set that can rival that attribute is Dark. I get how Dark can also be a top tier set, and it is, but I feel its cast times overall make it a lot slower and less fluid than Mind Control is.

-Dominate is a far better proc mule than Plant's hold. Activation is much shorter, and can be chained much better than Plant's.

-Plant has Seeds which is broken, but Mind has several things in its arsenal as well. Mass Confusion can be up about every 2-3 mobs, but Terrify (the Cone fear power) is up every mob, and can be used multiple times a mob. That power is also one of the best proc mules in the entire game. 

-All of Mind Control's actual controlling power comes off extremely fast and effectively whereas a lot of other sets have a "windup" time before the CC gets applied. 

 

Mind is what you'd call "S tier" on Dominator, but it's probably one of the worse ones for Controllers. This is because of the way Domination works and how Containment still doesn't apply to the Fear cone. Domination doubles the magnitudes of all of its long-lasting short-animation powers and allows them to continuously stack and snowball out of control. Controllers don't get that luxury. It's quite binary. 

[Uun]

17 minutes ago, zenijos10 said:

I agree on Cryonic Judgement. It is objectively the worst judgement power.

Objectively? Looking at the t4 core powers, all do 345 base damage, with 4 having a 20% chance for 129 additional damage and 2 having an 80% chance for 17 DoT every 2 seconds. That leaves the size of the AoE and the max targets hit. Cryonic can hit more targets than 4 other judgements and has the longest range (along with Vorpal). I've got Cryonic on several characters and find it works well if you stay at range.

 

	Range	Radius	Arc	Sq Ft	Max Tgt
Cryonic		120	45	5,654	32
Ion	80				40
Mighty		50	360	7,854	24
Pyronic	80	40	360	5,027	24
Void		50	360	7,854	24
Vorpal		120	120	15,079	30

[Zeraphia]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

It’s light years ahead of the three I listed as definites 🙂 

 

Holy hell, Electrical Affinity???? Someone has never done a truly hard task with vs without one.

 

Seismic Blast and Sonic Manipulation are also high end sets.

 

Nerve Alpha is fine, but Resilient is not 🙂

Unfortunately, I just have to disagree. The numbers mathematically tell the story about Energy Blast but I'll outline why:
 

1. Inherently what this set's specialty is (knockback), is not desired by a good portion of the community. Some may argue that they find it fun and they play the game for themselves and don't care because it's their time not yours. This point will leak into other points, but this is a noteworthy start because you must understand that to even pick this set, you'll definitely cause groans and dismay among people you team with who do not care for the knockback effects. 
2. Because it does knockback, it means that melee hits are out-of-range for you in most enemy circumstances. So, this means it's actually anti-synergistic with some of the best DPA hits from your secondary pools for Blasters, and ANYTHING to do with Fire Manipulation is just out of the question. Fire Manipulation is also arguably one of the best secondary pools for Blasters. Being forced out of this is not ideal. So no matter how you sliced that, not being able to go into melee range is always a DPS loss. Even if you were to build it so that it wasn't, the build paths to getting that are tedious, and if you picked any other blast set, you'd come out with more damage or at least a more desirable secondary effect than just the cc of the knockback.
3. SO EVEN IF 1 and 2 were not bad enough, the killer of the set is Power Burst. So Power Burst is the standard rotational high damage blast after the Sniper is out in most blast sets. It's comparable to Blaze, Cosmic Burst (the better version of it), etc. So why is Power Burst so bad? Because of its secondary effects and DPA. This power kills the set. So, it automatically causes knockback to the enemy which goes into point #2, but also means even if you were to "fix" that flaw, you'd come out with having to slot kb->kd into it which means that for literally any other Blast set, you lost a chance for a damage proc to improve your damage. Cosmic Burst gets -def so at least there despite them being the same long animation, at least you don't have to bother kb->kd'ing it, you can just slot straight in Achilles heel (one of the best procs).

 

So the TL;DR of the set is that no matter how you sliced it, this set is the lowest damaging set in terms of build pathing potential in all of CoH for Blast sets. The problem is, if you decide to keep the knockback, you lose out on melee attacks. If you try to kb->kd the entire set, it's all a net loss in terms of what you could've gained in procs. In short, simply, Radiation Blast is quite literally the same set, but a different secondary that does a lot more damage.

[TheZag]

Several of the buff sets especially have gone from overperforming to underperforming without having had any changes.  Having someone with force field was amazing back in the day but now alot of players have their defense capped without outside buffs.

 

I dont think empathy was ever really overperforming but its healing is hardly necessary now and by extension the regen buff as well.  Pretty much everything empathy offers is available to anyone through set enhancements.

 

Of course low level content exists and high level players without set enhancements exist as well but this isnt the 'whats good with only SOs' thread.

[zenijos10]

10 minutes ago, Uun said:

Objectively? Looking at the t4 core powers, all do 345 base damage, with 4 having a 20% chance for 129 additional damage and 2 having an 80% chance for 17 DoT every 2 seconds. That leaves the size of the AoE and the max targets hit. Cryonic can hit more targets than 4 other judgements and has the longest range (along with Vorpal). I've got Cryonic on several characters and find it works well if you stay at range.

 

	Range	Radius	Arc	Sq Ft	Max Tgt
Cryonic		120	45	5,654	32
Ion	80				40
Mighty		50	360	7,854	24
Pyronic	80	40	360	5,027	24
Void		50	360	7,854	24
Vorpal		120	120	15,079	30

Counterpoint accepted. Thanks.

[Zeraphia]

3 hours ago, arcane said:

Holy hell, Electrical Affinity???? Someone has never done a truly hard task with vs without one.

 

Seismic Blast and Sonic Manipulation are also high end sets.

So the reason EA scores very low for me is because (and my friend said the exact same reasoning you did for it) there are just sets and playstyles that could do that same "uber hard" content, they may not be as good as it in some cases, but will do 95% of the rest of the content a lot better. Cage is a clunky power, some people love it and have adjusted to it, but I think having to recast something repeatedly is rather annoying. The healing is okay but not better than other sets. Understand that while I don't care for the set and I think it's worse than other support sets, I think support sets as a whole are in a good spot right now and are valuable regardless. Even Sonic and FF have their places and they are both respectable for their niches. I just think in comparison to what other sets do, it isn't as good as them.

I'll get comments telling me I'm wrong and that's okay. I've played the set and formed my own judgements on it and done task forces with it many times. 

 

Seismic Blast is very mediocre and the T9 "ultimate" feels probably like one of the worst T9's in the game. It's better than Energy I'll give it that, but it's not a good set to me. I think other sets do similar things but provide better damage and/or utility to teams than the knockdowns. I wouldn't call it high end. It's definitely not anywhere near Fire Blast, Water's level of AoE/utility, Dark's sustain and team utility, doesn't deal damage comparable to Elec Blast's rework, etc. 

 

Sonic Manipulation I can't say anything good about. On paper, it looked really good, my friend and I were excited for it on release, I played it and well... Oof. That set just sucked. Endurance management was horrendously bad. The -res was not substantial enough to notice, the AoE power was horrible, and I genuinely found nothing good about the set at all. I think there are just a lot better secondaries than it. 

[zenijos10]

6 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

Unfortunately, I just have to disagree. The numbers mathematically tell the story about Energy Blast but I'll outline why:
 

1. Inherently what this set's specialty is (knockback), is not desired by a good portion of the community. Some may argue that they find it fun and they play the game for themselves and don't care because it's their time not yours. This point will leak into other points, but this is a noteworthy start because you must understand that to even pick this set, you'll definitely cause groans and dismay among people you team with who do not care for the knockback effects. 
2. Because it does knockback, it means that melee hits are out-of-range for you in most enemy circumstances. So, this means it's actually anti-synergistic with some of the best DPA hits from your secondary pools for Blasters, and ANYTHING to do with Fire Manipulation is just out of the question. Fire Manipulation is also arguably one of the best secondary pools for Blasters. Being forced out of this is not ideal. So no matter how you sliced that, not being able to go into melee range is always a DPS loss. Even if you were to build it so that it wasn't, the build paths to getting that are tedious, and if you picked any other blast set, you'd come out with more damage or at least a more desirable secondary effect than just the cc of the knockback.
3. SO EVEN IF 1 and 2 were not bad enough, the killer of the set is Power Burst. So Power Burst is the standard rotational high damage blast after the Sniper is out in most blast sets. It's comparable to Blaze, Cosmic Burst (the better version of it), etc. So why is Power Burst so bad? Because of its secondary effects and DPA. This power kills the set. So, it automatically causes knockback to the enemy which goes into point #2, but also means even if you were to "fix" that flaw, you'd come out with having to slot kb->kd into it which means that for literally any other Blast set, you lost a chance for a damage proc to improve your damage. Cosmic Burst gets -def so at least there despite them being the same long animation, at least you don't have to bother kb->kd'ing it, you can just slot straight in Achilles heel (one of the best procs).

 

So the TL;DR of the set is that no matter how you sliced it, this set is the lowest damaging set in terms of build pathing potential in all of CoH for Blast sets. The problem is, if you decide to keep the knockback, you lose out on melee attacks. If you try to kb->kd the entire set, it's all a net loss in terms of what you could've gained in procs. In short, simply, Radiation Blast is quite literally the same set, but a different secondary that does a lot more damage.

If you base Under or over performing mostly on damage, then you might be right.  However for blasters who want to add some decent control to go with their secondary can get a lot of mileage from knockback to knockdown in nrg blast. It nets a great deal of survival for the team while still doing decent, but not excellent damage when comparing across all power sets.   For corrupters and defenders, the soft control of knockdown can be extremely powerful when it comes to keeping a team alive. 
 

NRG blast can’t compete with the top tier blast sets on damage, but when done right it does add a ton of survivability to not just the player but the team.  It doesn’t perform badly it just doesn’t perform the way a lot of people want to play. I for one enjoy the odd set that does this and feel it performs well both Solo and in a group.

 

It is nowhere near the level of under power of the sets in the true gutter, like mercs. 

 

[arcane]

1 hour ago, Zeraphia said:

Unfortunately, I just have to disagree. The numbers mathematically tell the story about Energy Blast but I'll outline why:
 

1. Inherently what this set's specialty is (knockback), is not desired by a good portion of the community. Some may argue that they find it fun and they play the game for themselves and don't care because it's their time not yours. This point will leak into other points, but this is a noteworthy start because you must understand that to even pick this set, you'll definitely cause groans and dismay among people you team with who do not care for the knockback effects. 
2. Because it does knockback, it means that melee hits are out-of-range for you in most enemy circumstances. So, this means it's actually anti-synergistic with some of the best DPA hits from your secondary pools for Blasters, and ANYTHING to do with Fire Manipulation is just out of the question. Fire Manipulation is also arguably one of the best secondary pools for Blasters. Being forced out of this is not ideal. So no matter how you sliced that, not being able to go into melee range is always a DPS loss. Even if you were to build it so that it wasn't, the build paths to getting that are tedious, and if you picked any other blast set, you'd come out with more damage or at least a more desirable secondary effect than just the cc of the knockback.
3. SO EVEN IF 1 and 2 were not bad enough, the killer of the set is Power Burst. So Power Burst is the standard rotational high damage blast after the Sniper is out in most blast sets. It's comparable to Blaze, Cosmic Burst (the better version of it), etc. So why is Power Burst so bad? Because of its secondary effects and DPA. This power kills the set. So, it automatically causes knockback to the enemy which goes into point #2, but also means even if you were to "fix" that flaw, you'd come out with having to slot kb->kd into it which means that for literally any other Blast set, you lost a chance for a damage proc to improve your damage. Cosmic Burst gets -def so at least there despite them being the same long animation, at least you don't have to bother kb->kd'ing it, you can just slot straight in Achilles heel (one of the best procs).

 

So the TL;DR of the set is that no matter how you sliced it, this set is the lowest damaging set in terms of build pathing potential in all of CoH for Blast sets. The problem is, if you decide to keep the knockback, you lose out on melee attacks. If you try to kb->kd the entire set, it's all a net loss in terms of what you could've gained in procs. In short, simply, Radiation Blast is quite literally the same set, but a different secondary that does a lot more damage.

IMO even if you slot sudden acceleration in every single power, which IMO is not quite necessary, it easily comes out ahead of Sonic and AR.

 

Obviously you shouldn’t knock things away from you if you plan to follow up with a melee attack, but that’s a synergy issue you can get around by not making bad combos. Same with /Sonic. It forces you to blap to be effective, but that’s not a problem if you think about synergy before picking your combo.

[Zeraphia]

7 hours ago, arcane said:

IMO even if you slot sudden acceleration in every single power, which IMO is not quite necessary, it easily comes out ahead of Sonic and AR.

 

Obviously you shouldn’t knock things away from you if you plan to follow up with a melee attack, but that’s a synergy issue you can get around by not making bad combos. Same with /Sonic. It forces you to blap to be effective, but that’s not a problem if you think about synergy before picking your combo.

So Sonic, yes. But Sonic provides very substantial -res buffs to teammates via utility that is undeniable. You are contributing a lot of damage to a team by taking that set, not just looking at your own damage.

 

I believe AR actually pulls ahead of Energy Blast in terms of DPS, but EB's nuke is better than AR's... "T9."

[ArchmageMC]

The worst set in the game has to be mercs pets for MM. You could cut the CDs of all their moves including the pets to 25% of what they are now, and they'd still be the worst. And unlike say, Ninja, they don't have anything to make up for how bad they are. (Ninja have little to no inherant def/res buffs making them squishy and are end hungry, but if they can get those defenses and end like with say, /nature, they put out scary deeps. )

Mercs would need an entire overhaul to be usable.

[arcane]

19 hours ago, Zeraphia said:

So the reason EA scores very low for me is because (and my friend said the exact same reasoning you did for it) there are just sets and playstyles that could do that same "uber hard" content, they may not be as good as it in some cases, but will do 95% of the rest of the content a lot better. Cage is a clunky power, some people love it and have adjusted to it, but I think having to recast something repeatedly is rather annoying. The healing is okay but not better than other sets. Understand that while I don't care for the set and I think it's worse than other support sets, I think support sets as a whole are in a good spot right now and are valuable regardless. Even Sonic and FF have their places and they are both respectable for their niches. I just think in comparison to what other sets do, it isn't as good as them.

 

Just btw, the night I realized EA is awesome:

 

Did runs of one of those ultra hard AE missions. 801 or similar, might’ve been Voltak’s not Linea’s?

 

Run 1. We have two Times. Everyone knows Time is OP. Seems like a good bet. We get rekt over and over and we can’t do it.

 

Run 2. Both Times (myself and another) switch to EA’s. We steamroll those missions no problem.

 

Conclusion. EA must only be undervalued because we play such easy content that survivability isn’t a challenge. It’s absolutely insanely good at keeping an entire team alive, with big fat absorb bars to boot. It eclipses Empathy and provides better offensive buffs than that too. 

[arcane]

10 hours ago, Zeraphia said:

So Sonic, yes. But Sonic provides very substantial -res buffs to teammates via utility that is undeniable. You are contributing a lot of damage to a team by taking that set, not just looking at your own damage.

 

I believe AR actually pulls ahead of Energy Blast in terms of DPS, but EB's nuke is better than AR's... "T9."

Agreed I guess. But Sonic is so depressing to play on a Blaster. That -res does something but it’s very hard to perceive. So what it “feels like” in practice is absolutely the worst damage of any blast set. If you’re assigning it value based on the -res, you realize you’re probably contributing more playing it as a Defender. Which still feels like a slog outside of AV fights.

 

Agree with your assessment vs AR. And here’s why I don’t think Energy is that awful. It has aim, a heavy hitter, a TAoE, a snipe, and a traditional nuke. Unlike many sets, it isn’t completely missing a piece. Some sets are good enough to compensate (Ice and Water live without snipes, Beam and Dark live without a TAoE), but my opinion is that the missing pieces in Sonic, AR, and maybe DP (sans proc build) now I think about it… really put them in a place where they are no better and likely worse than Energy.

 

Force Feedback can have some nice applications too.

Edited April 8, 2022 by arcane

[tidge]

22 hours ago, zenijos10 said:

I agree on Cryonic Judgement. It is objectively the worst judgement power.

 

...when not fighting fires.

[DougGraves]

I only play at lower levels (below 35) and mostly at the very low levels (below 20) and do not play with IO sets.  So my judgement is based on the actual powers, not on what you can do with IOs.

 

I now play only dark for defender.  The cone fear and howling twilight makes it basically a controller + defender in one set.

 

For controller and dominators I only use plant and electric.  Seeds of Confusion and Static Field are fantastic early aoe controls that you can use every encounter.   Earth would be good with earthquake, but it sends clockwork and lower level enemies flying so it is not effective in some missions.  Hopefully the redo on knockback fixes it.

 

For tanker I now just play radiation defense.  A solid set that has no END problems from the start.

[Neiska]

My two cents for what its worth, and to play armchair philosopher with builds a moment - 

 

First off, what is/is not OP or weak I would say depends on the content as well as difficulty. You could say "X is OP during +4/8 raid content" but can struggle in other areas. One should also keep in mind that a build might be fantastic when solo, but lackluster on teams, or vice versa. I think we would all agree that some of the strongest team support builds can be abysmal to solo. So I think it's important to clarify first what kind of content as well as difficulty, to start. Personally I try to see +2/8 as "normal" and anything beyond that as a sort of hard mode or extra content, because -

 

General thoughts -

1. Not all ATs/Builds/Powersets can even perform at +4/8 level (at least solo), regardless of the inf and time invested or what their incarnate levels might be.

2. As much as people like to focus on things like pylon times or soloing AV/GMs, this is also sort of a trap in linear thinking as if nothing else matters aside from times/damage. If that is all we want to compare, then we might as well toss half the ATs in the garbage bin before we even begin.

3. I have noticed things like "Total Effectiveness" are largely unaddressed or ignored when comparing builds. Lets take Soldier of Arachnos as an example. They usually have iffy single target damage, but pretty respectable AoE damage. But no one brings up how their mere presence gives some of the strongest team toggle buffs, or how one /Kinetics' presence can also boost everyone's damage significantly, despite both being usually regarded as far from OP. Another example would be Masterminds, where I often see or hear people call them underwhelming, where I consider them to be one of the most powerful AT's in the game. True, they certainly won't win any damage contests, but they have several features that no other AT has such as flexibility in builds and playstyle, or the fact as much as people like to say tankers can target 16 enemies at a time, a single MM can engage more than twice as many targets all on their own. (48 targets per MM.) Personally my favorite thing about Masterminds is you can do so much with them in a single class. 

4. Personal preference plays a very significant part on what is or is not OP. What one person considers soloing a GM/AV to be the height of accomplishment, another player might value clear times, or effective build cost, playstyle, and so on. Not everyone is going to have the same priorities.

5. I would also like to highlight that some builds can be utterly devastating one minute, but the very next feel like they contribute nothing. Let's take /Plant as an example - on a normal team, Seeds might very well be OP and make the missions utterly easy. But you take that same /Plant and put it on a very speedy all out damage team and the targets might die too fast for /Plant's uber-ness to even come into play. This is just one scenario off the top of my head, but I am sure there can be others.

6. Let us not forget that some powersets change wildly depending on the AT in question. Let's take Savage Melee for example - Phenomenal on Brutes, but regarded as subpar on Scrappers. Or Super Strength - Good on Tankers, iffy on Brutes.

 

There is however a few general powers/ATs that I feel could use some number tweaks -

1. Mastermind - Mercenaries - famously weak, even among other MM pets.

2. I do think all the Epic AT's could be updated - Widows, SoA's, Peacebringer and Warshade. Just some number tweaks and perhaps power adjustments would be all that's needed.

3. I also think some ATs in general seem to lack oomph or a niche. Sentinels come to mind, Defenders as well to a point. I hasten to add I don't think these are bad per say, only they don't really have much to call their own or set them apart from other ATs. Just about anything they can do, others can also do but better in most circumstances. I also shudder at the idea of trying to solo one of these on max difficulty.

 

Just some thoughts from me.

[arcane]

1 hour ago, Neiska said:

My two cents for what its worth, and to play armchair philosopher with builds a moment - 

 

First off, what is/is not OP or weak I would say depends on the content as well as difficulty. You could say "X is OP during +4/8 raid content" but can struggle in other areas. One should also keep in mind that a build might be fantastic when solo, but lackluster on teams, or vice versa. I think we would all agree that some of the strongest team support builds can be abysmal to solo. So I think it's important to clarify first what kind of content as well as difficulty, to start. Personally I try to see +2/8 as "normal" and anything beyond that as a sort of hard mode or extra content, because -

 

General thoughts -

1. Not all ATs/Builds/Powersets can even perform at +4/8 level (at least solo), regardless of the inf and time invested or what their incarnate levels might be.

2. As much as people like to focus on things like pylon times or soloing AV/GMs, this is also sort of a trap in linear thinking as if nothing else matters aside from times/damage. If that is all we want to compare, then we might as well toss half the ATs in the garbage bin before we even begin.

3. I have noticed things like "Total Effectiveness" are largely unaddressed or ignored when comparing builds. Lets take Soldier of Arachnos as an example. They usually have iffy single target damage, but pretty respectable AoE damage. But no one brings up how their mere presence gives some of the strongest team toggle buffs, or how one /Kinetics' presence can also boost everyone's damage significantly, despite both being usually regarded as far from OP. Another example would be Masterminds, where I often see or hear people call them underwhelming, where I consider them to be one of the most powerful AT's in the game. True, they certainly won't win any damage contests, but they have several features that no other AT has such as flexibility in builds and playstyle, or the fact as much as people like to say tankers can target 16 enemies at a time, a single MM can engage more than twice as many targets all on their own. (48 targets per MM.) Personally my favorite thing about Masterminds is you can do so much with them in a single class. 

4. Personal preference plays a very significant part on what is or is not OP. What one person considers soloing a GM/AV to be the height of accomplishment, another player might value clear times, or effective build cost, playstyle, and so on. Not everyone is going to have the same priorities.

5. I would also like to highlight that some builds can be utterly devastating one minute, but the very next feel like they contribute nothing. Let's take /Plant as an example - on a normal team, Seeds might very well be OP and make the missions utterly easy. But you take that same /Plant and put it on a very speedy all out damage team and the targets might die too fast for /Plant's uber-ness to even come into play. This is just one scenario off the top of my head, but I am sure there can be others.

6. Let us not forget that some powersets change wildly depending on the AT in question. Let's take Savage Melee for example - Phenomenal on Brutes, but regarded as subpar on Scrappers. Or Super Strength - Good on Tankers, iffy on Brutes.

 

There is however a few general powers/ATs that I feel could use some number tweaks -

1. Mastermind - Mercenaries - famously weak, even among other MM pets.

2. I do think all the Epic AT's could be updated - Widows, SoA's, Peacebringer and Warshade. Just some number tweaks and perhaps power adjustments would be all that's needed.

3. I also think some ATs in general seem to lack oomph or a niche. Sentinels come to mind, Defenders as well to a point. I hasten to add I don't think these are bad per say, only they don't really have much to call their own or set them apart from other ATs. Just about anything they can do, others can also do but better in most circumstances. I also shudder at the idea of trying to solo one of these on max difficulty.

 

Just some thoughts from me.

I guess I’m bored at work today so my thoughts on your thoughts, as if you asked 😉

 

“General thoughts”

1. I don’t agree for general content unless arbitrary standards are applied like “must achieve a high end completion time”, “must be able to solo AV’s and task forces”, or “even carnies need to be a breeze. But you kind of account for this in (2) and I agree those arbitrary standards are restrictive and silly as they render half the AT’s unplayable. But for basic general content? If I can solo +4x8 on an FF defender or an Ice controller or whatever, I’m not sure about the notion that there’s any AT/combo that can’t do it at all. 
 

2. Well said. I value variety and have level 50’s of every single AT/powerset with the exception of a few MM primaries and dom secondaries I haven’t gotten to. So I find those kinds of standards pretty lame personally, as they would basically disallow me from playing the majority of the possibilities. Not to mention teams are kind of a thing and nothing sucks in a team in this game.

 

3. I also think some people here do a bad job of looking at the context. One example of a pet peeve here is the extent to which people trash Kheldians. The truth is, their single target damage is trash. BUT their AoE damage and survivability are *easily* exceptional unless compared to the most overpowered sets/combos in the game. 2 awesomes out of 3 is NOT irredeemably bad. Unless, again, you have absurd standards that makes half the game unplayable. In which case, that’s on you. If you have those standards, fine, but simply accept that most of the game will never work for you *only because of your own choices*.

 

4. Nothing to add, clearly true.

 

5. True but, I have never liked this notion that “everything is dead in 2 seconds so I didn’t get to use all my powers” constitutes a serious problem. So I find your example a little meh 🙂 I think if your team made a mob dead in a heartbeat, there is no way that is a problem (outside of the argument that the game is too easy). Your team did the job. Good.

 

6. Yep. Mind Control is probably the most obvious example in the game, due to how badly it interacts with containment while being a pretty awesome set in the other context.

 

“AT thoughts”

1. Yes

 

2. Yes but see (3) above. Need tweaks but not at all convinced that they are in as bad of shape as people here say.

 

3. Yes. Example thought: Sentinels will never be Blasters nor will they be Tanks. I think though that if Opportunity is overhauled in such a way that it really has a noticeable effect for the team, perhaps that “awesome against hard single targets” could be a nice niche for them to fill since they obviously can’t be buffed to feel like Blasters or Tankers for balance reasons. Epic AT’s also clearly need more purpose. As I said, I don’t think they suck as much as people say, but they certainly don’t fill any single role that other AT’s don’t do a bit better.

Edited April 8, 2022 by arcane

[Neiska]

3 hours ago, arcane said:

I guess I’m bored at work today so my thoughts on your thoughts, as if you asked 😉

 

Hehe I was at work too so Yay for forum posting at work!

 

I largely agree with your replies. My only reply is regarding your point #3 - I really don't see much "trash talking" about any class or even powers really, except the meme nerf regen and buff mercs. My only complaint about Kheldians specifically is that I team with so few of them to see what they are capable of. I don't think I have ever teamed or even seen a fully bankrolled, full t4 incarnated Kheldian of any sort, since homecoming began. It could be they are mechanically bad, or if they just have a stigma too. Whatever it is, I see more Sentinels, Defenders, Widows, etc etc than I see SoA's or Kheldians.

 

I hasten to add that I don't consider either of these bad. SoA's are actually one of my favorite AT's, I just tend to solo more than team, and SoA's seem to be more team focused. But I made one that can solo +4/8 just fine, and can even quasi-farm. Basically I just focused on sustain instead of recharge, and treated the pets more as dps cooldowns than actual pets like I would a Mastermind or other Recharge Pet class. Once I stopped trying to make pets work for high solo difficulty, that gave me lots of room to focus on other things - defense, resists, endurance, etc etc etc. I do have a "crabbermind" build saved, since you can have 3 builds per character I just swap between them as needed - one for solo play (petless), and one for team play (with pets, where solo sustain isn't so important)

 

One thing that did occur to me is I do wonder if a lot of the opinions in the game are cases of "moment envy." As in, Player A sees an AT in its element at its defining moment - (A blaster nuking an entire spawn, or a tank seeming immortal, or a scrapper doing astounding damage, a brute just being a wrecking ball, etc) and goes "wow that is so cool!" and decides to roll one, only to discover that the same AT falters elsewhere - that Immortal tank taking forever to down an elite boss, that blaster splattering, that scrapper having difficulty with mezz, so on.  That's what I try to think about when I think about ATs, an AT at its best in its moment, doing what its best at. This is where Kheldians are sort of in a grey area, they are more or less "stance dancers", able to full fill different roles. (I know we don't have roles here, but you know what I mean) - they are fluid, adjustable, able to act differently in different situations which can make them hard to really measure fairly, because their "niche" is that fluid adjustability, even mid-combat. Personally one thing I value greatly in a build is consistency. I like having a character that will perform more or less the same when under different circumstances and enemies. I am also aware that high DPS is usually "burst" and is anything but consistent. The stars align and you can rip apart worlds, but if they don't you can stumble over sandcastles - I personally dislike that sort of play, but I can understand how others like it. I would just rather have smooth repeatable performance than that random off chance of godhood. (which is likely why I main Tankers, Masterminds, and SoA's, they all feel very consistent to me no matter the difficulty or activity.)

 

I still think out of all the ATs, Kheldians and the other Epics need the most updating. Far as I'm aware they are more or less the same as when they were first released with no significant changes. If I had one thing I could change, I would give Crabberminds a Taunting tool, even if it was a weak aura or even a quick recasting provoke with higher target caps. That alone would make Crabberminds much more viable to solo at higher difficulties endgame. Far as Kheldians go? Well, mabye give them the option to "specalize" in a form to enhance their favored stance somehow, sort of like the Bio Armor or Staff Fighting mechanics. Just something for them to focus and build on if they wanted to, maybe to catch them up to other ATs that can perform that "role". But that's just me musing.

 

Think I killed enough time though, almost time to go home. Happy Friday!

[KaizenSoze]

7 hours ago, Neiska said:

There is however a few general powers/ATs that I feel could use some number tweaks -

2. I do think all the Epic AT's could be updated - Widows, SoA's, Peacebringer and Warshade. Just some number tweaks and perhaps power adjustments would be all that's needed.

Generally in agreement.

 

VEATs get one good pool Soul, one ok pool Mu, and two bad ones, Mace and Leviathan.

[Zeraphia]

20 hours ago, arcane said:

3. I also think some people here do a bad job of looking at the context. One example of a pet peeve here is the extent to which people trash Kheldians. The truth is, their single target damage is trash. BUT their AoE damage and survivability are *easily* exceptional unless compared to the most overpowered sets/combos in the game. 2 awesomes out of 3 is NOT irredeemably bad. Unless, again, you have absurd standards that makes half the game unplayable. In which case, that’s on you. If you have those standards, fine, but simply accept that most of the game will never work for you *only because of your own choices*.

I will grant you, they are exceptionally good at AoE damage. They are not the best, they're not quite Fire/Fire Blaster or something but they're good at that. The problem is that VEATs exist, and Fortunata is kind of just the better version of everyone. Survivability? Pure resistance-based sets without the ability to toggle a majority of defense toggles is still squishy in a lot of content. Fortunata? They have defense for everyone and they bring massive defense buffs to the entire team. Fortunata also far exceeds the single target DPS of both HEATs. Fortunata also doesn't even trade the AoE, she gets Psi Wail, PsiNado, Spin, etc. and gains controls. 

 

Khelds need a lot of work. They need help, atm they're in the same place to me that Sentinels are of "outclassed," in every way except fun to solo with. I think their animations on their single target rotations being cut (especially with the new Dark and Energy changes...) would help bring the set into viability but they'd still need to address their build pathing to allow people to bake more defense into their kit because as nice as resistance is, you need a baseline of defense.

[arcane]

1 hour ago, Zeraphia said:

I will grant you, they are exceptionally good at AoE damage. They are not the best, they're not quite Fire/Fire Blaster or something but they're good at that. The problem is that VEATs exist, and Fortunata is kind of just the better version of everyone. Survivability? Pure resistance-based sets without the ability to toggle a majority of defense toggles is still squishy in a lot of content. Fortunata? They have defense for everyone and they bring massive defense buffs to the entire team. Fortunata also far exceeds the single target DPS of both HEATs. Fortunata also doesn't even trade the AoE, she gets Psi Wail, PsiNado, Spin, etc. and gains controls. 

 

Khelds need a lot of work. They need help, atm they're in the same place to me that Sentinels are of "outclassed," in every way except fun to solo with. I think their animations on their single target rotations being cut (especially with the new Dark and Energy changes...) would help bring the set into viability but they'd still need to address their build pathing to allow people to bake more defense into their kit because as nice as resistance is, you need a baseline of defense.

85% resistance and only unable to toggle defenses if using their mode with blaster damage mods or higher HP*. Human forms can easily run solid defenses. And obviously comparing one’s AoE output to a fire blaster is an absurdly unrealistic way of deciding how worthwhile one’s AoE output is 🙂 but yeah, you’re approximately right.

 

I don’t see how they aren’t viable already? Shouldn’t die and nukes groups like crazy, where’s the issue? “Not quite as good as other things that fill similar roles” is not at all the same thing as “not viable”. Confusing those two things is a logical error. Viability means able to contend with the content (effectively and efficiently I suppose); it doesn’t mean being high tier. Kheldians are 110% capable of contending with the content. Same goes for Sentinels. They need a smidge of love to make them feel like they have a special role, but, in terms of performance, it’s completely insane to go so far as to say they aren’t viable. In a game with a bajillion character slots, it’s ridiculous to suggest that a character isn’t viable just because something else can do similar things measurably better.

 

I will give you this one: they need more help as shapeshifters than they do as human forms. I think you’re implying that by acting like they’re not allowed to have defenses at all.

Edited April 9, 2022 by arcane

[Zeraphia]

56 minutes ago, arcane said:

85% resistance and only unable to toggle defenses if using their mode with blaster damage mods or higher HP*. Human forms can easily run solid defenses. And obviously comparing one’s AoE output to a fire blaster is an absurdly unrealistic way of deciding how worthwhile one’s AoE output is 🙂 but yeah, you’re approximately right.

 

I don’t see how they aren’t viable already? Shouldn’t die and nukes groups like crazy, where’s the issue? “Not quite as good as other things that fill similar roles” is not at all the same thing as “not viable”. Confusing those two things is a logical error. Viability means able to contend with the content (effectively and efficiently I suppose); it doesn’t mean being high tier. Kheldians are 110% capable of contending with the content. Same goes for Sentinels. They need a smidge of love to make them feel like they have a special role, but, in terms of performance, it’s completely insane to go so far as to say they aren’t viable. In a game with a bajillion character slots, it’s ridiculous to suggest that a character isn’t viable just because something else can do similar things measurably better.

 

I will give you this one: they need more help as shapeshifters than they do as human forms. I think you’re implying that by acting like they’re not allowed to have defenses at all.

I think maybe I didn't clarify this, but I wasn't referring to PB/WS as the archetype itself being "unviable" rather I called the attacks they have unviable. The current versions of both of these powers have been reworked on other ATs, and as a result, it feels very weak to compare Luminous' melee abilities to Energy Melee's reworked abilities as well as the WS/DM counterpart. They were given reworks for a reason.

 

Also to edit: just because it's on the blaster scalar, DOES NOT IN ANY WAY MEAN they are anywhere close to Blaster-level damage. Blasters have snipes. Blasters also have access to lots of different blast sets that are well, better than Energy Blast (the Luminous equivalent) and as a result, many Blasters will severely out-damage a Kheld. DPA matters a lot more than just the damage you see on a power. If an attack does 500 damage, but takes almost 4 seconds to activate versus another AT's 300 damage but 1 second to activate, the latter will far out-perform the former. 

 

In short: the problem to me with Khelds are that Energy Melee and Dark Melee have both received numerous significant buffs that have made those sets a lot better than their previous versions, meanwhile Luminous and Umbral's melee attacks have received no buffs at all. Shapeshifting causes you to lose all of your toggles. Human form is both the best and worst of both worlds at the same time, and clearly counterproductive to what the AT was designed to do: switch forms.

 

Dark Extraction needs tweaking. My mind probably can't be changed about this point. That power feels awful and it's too tied to the identity of Warshade, they rely way too much of their damage on it, and they either need to make that pet a lot more reliable and better or they need to revamp it altogether and buff the rest of their kit.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Zeraphia

[arcane]

23 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

I think maybe I didn't clarify this, but I wasn't referring to PB/WS as the archetype itself being "unviable" rather I called the attacks they have unviable. The current versions of both of these powers have been reworked on other ATs, and as a result, it feels very weak to compare Luminous' melee abilities to Energy Melee's reworked abilities as well as the WS/DM counterpart. They were given reworks for a reason.

You’re not going to get any argument from me on their single target capabilities.
 

Each has only one attack that can ever possibly hit like a truck, and that’s if and only if you slot them as proc bombs with Hecatomb, Unbreakable Constraint, and more. And even then the most impressive hit - Incandescent Strike - is an infamous corpseblaster the devs won’t even give the Total Focus animation buff.

 

Only hope left is I need to try to revise my build and see how high I can get my Radiant Strike average damage with optimal proc slotting. Which was hard to do initially because Kheldians can’t just skip recharge bonuses. 

[JacksonRooks]

On 4/7/2022 at 12:55 PM, Zeraphia said:

Unfortunately, I just have to disagree. The numbers mathematically tell the story about Energy Blast but I'll outline why:
 

1. Inherently what this set's specialty is (knockback), is not desired by a good portion of the community. Some may argue that they find it fun and they play the game for themselves and don't care because it's their time not yours. This point will leak into other points, but this is a noteworthy start because you must understand that to even pick this set, you'll definitely cause groans and dismay among people you team with who do not care for the knockback effects. 
2. Because it does knockback, it means that melee hits are out-of-range for you in most enemy circumstances. So, this means it's actually anti-synergistic with some of the best DPA hits from your secondary pools for Blasters, and ANYTHING to do with Fire Manipulation is just out of the question. Fire Manipulation is also arguably one of the best secondary pools for Blasters. Being forced out of this is not ideal. So no matter how you sliced that, not being able to go into melee range is always a DPS loss. Even if you were to build it so that it wasn't, the build paths to getting that are tedious, and if you picked any other blast set, you'd come out with more damage or at least a more desirable secondary effect than just the cc of the knockback.
3. SO EVEN IF 1 and 2 were not bad enough, the killer of the set is Power Burst. So Power Burst is the standard rotational high damage blast after the Sniper is out in most blast sets. It's comparable to Blaze, Cosmic Burst (the better version of it), etc. So why is Power Burst so bad? Because of its secondary effects and DPA. This power kills the set. So, it automatically causes knockback to the enemy which goes into point #2, but also means even if you were to "fix" that flaw, you'd come out with having to slot kb->kd into it which means that for literally any other Blast set, you lost a chance for a damage proc to improve your damage. Cosmic Burst gets -def so at least there despite them being the same long animation, at least you don't have to bother kb->kd'ing it, you can just slot straight in Achilles heel (one of the best procs).

 

So the TL;DR of the set is that no matter how you sliced it, this set is the lowest damaging set in terms of build pathing potential in all of CoH for Blast sets. The problem is, if you decide to keep the knockback, you lose out on melee attacks. If you try to kb->kd the entire set, it's all a net loss in terms of what you could've gained in procs. In short, simply, Radiation Blast is quite literally the same set, but a different secondary that does a lot more damage.

 

Problem here is that you don't know how to play the set, simple as. Try learning to position yourself so they hit walls, get combat jumping or combat teleport to close the gap on KB'd enemies...Yeah, if you just think you're going to stand in one spot and click away, you're going to suck. But that's you being bad, not the set.

[arcane]

3 minutes ago, JacksonRooks said:

 

Problem here is that you don't know how to play the set, simple as. Try learning to position yourself so they hit walls, get combat jumping or combat teleport to close the gap on KB'd enemies...Yeah, if you just think you're going to stand in one spot and click away, you're going to suck. But that's you being bad, not the set.

Meh, I defended the set but more because I don’t get upset over slotting Sudden Accelerations. Probably because on live I had to do high maintenance stuff to make Tornado etc awesome so I realize how blessed we are to have those procs at all. Not to mention what it does to Bonfire.

 

You *can* play your way and master the knockback, but I’ve become too lazy over the years for that. I don’t totally blame people for not wanting to bother with constant attention to positioning. I do however think they’re acting like complete weenies when they act like slotting 2-4 Sudden Accelerations makes an otherwise cool/awesome set completely intolerable 🙂