issue 27 Focused Feedback: Attack Typing Adjustments

[Astralock]

1 hour ago, Marshal_General said:

I think part if that is the stigma from other games where the leader is expected to know every nuance of the dungeon/TF. It is also what keeps people from being healers and tanks.

 

Yep.  Tanks in particular, but healers also are expected to watch hours of video of each dungeon and raid before ever stepping foot inside of them and know them intimately.  Screw that.

[ivanhedgehog]

2 hours ago, Marshal_General said:

I think part if that is the stigma from other games where the leader is expected to know every nuance of the dungeon/TF. It is also what keeps people from being healers and tanks.

I like dfb as a "team leader tutorial" because it is plug and play. I am learning tanking in wow and it is a pain in the butt.

[MoonSheep]

1 hour ago, ivanhedgehog said:

I like dfb as a "team leader tutorial" because it is plug and play. I am learning tanking in wow and it is a pain in the butt.

 

pickup veng on your tank and instead of worrying about deaths on the team, yearn for them, orchestrate them 😛 

[ivanhedgehog]

3 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

 

pickup veng on your tank and instead of worrying about deaths on the team, yearn for them, orchestrate them 😛 

you dont need to, there are enough idiots that head out on their own and dont want tank or support help....until they are about to drop that is

[roleki]

On 8/16/2022 at 9:11 AM, Astralock said:

 

Yep.  Tanks in particular, but healers also are expected to watch hours of video of each dungeon and raid before ever stepping foot inside of them and know them intimately.  Screw that.

 

Hence the beauty of CoH in 2022.  Nothing is 'needed' and nothing is a hinderance.  Teams no longer have to fellate the tank in the hopes they don't ragequit and leave the other 7 players unable to continue.  TFs can pull out of the station without an EMP.  If a side-effect of the "ATs don't matter" flexibility is that I can solo 4/8 stuff on a Fire/FF controller, that's not nearly as bad for the game as forcing specific team compositions as a requirement in general content, especially in an environment where the playerbase isn't nearly as vast as it was during live.

 

But really, de-emphasizing S/L def isn't that big of a change; it's not like they're suddenly making oxygen poisonous and pushing cyanide as a vitamin.   Some things we're used to stomping on with impunity MIGHT hit harder with SOME attacks.  If your preferred build can't handle such a minor change, how could it possibly have survived the harder content that people keep clamoring for?  Put it this way, for all the doom and gloom in this thread, I bet people are still running endless PI radios vs. Council long after P4 drops.  There'll still be DIB/DFB spam in LFG.  As long as it never devolves to "50/4 PI radios lf healer pst" or some variation thereof, I'm fine with it and really have a hard time imagining why anyone else would be so wounded by the very idea of it - especially if they haven't even tried it on test.  The people reporting back, they're not lying!  It's not that bad!

As for people asking why this change, and why now... it's possible that this change clears a path for future development in an area we're not even thinking of on this side of the executable.  Maybe it's just the result of a wild hair doing what wild hairs do.  Hard to say, when the devs aren't. 

 

But if I had a tinfoil hat - and I do - I would point out that making exotic damage types more of a concern for the average build may push people to think of slotting the 5th and 6th pieces of a set to address that damage, whereas now those slots might have been filled with procs; that would in effect free the devs from having to make an even more unpopular move, like overhauling the proc system.  Or maybe they were hoping that the Attack Typing adjustment would combine with the new aggro behavior to simultaneously sideline procs and make farming a little more hands-on, and maybe even make FF great again in the process.

In that light, the real question isn't "Why are the devs doing this?" but rather "Why do you hate FF so much?"

[Sakura Tenshi]

It’s a total side note, but perhaps positional defenses should be a little more common in future sets which use defense? As is, most defense buffs we get that are not from full power sets (so really just Nin, SR, and Shield) grant bonus defense to all types, which makes sense as they’re supposed to be a decent choice regardless of your AT and power selection.

 

That also being said, can Heightened Senses in Willpower become positional defense based? It never made any sense that it was typed defenses when “heightened senses” implies you’re dodging rather than are so tough hits glance off you harmlessly.

[Wavicle]

2 minutes ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

That also being said, can Heightened Senses in Willpower become positional defense based? It never made any sense that it was typed defenses when “heightened senses” implies you’re dodging rather than are so tough hits glance off you harmlessly.

I always took it to mean that you were using your awareness to be on the lookout for attacks that used damage types you were less resistant to.

[arcane]

2 hours ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

That also being said, can Heightened Senses in Willpower become positional defense based? It never made any sense that it was typed defenses when “heightened senses” implies you’re dodging rather than are so tough hits glance off you harmlessly.

Problem is you’d have to pick between Melee/Ranged/AoE because Heightened Senses is balanced around not giving you full defense coverage. And then what would happen is: WP would become even stronger vs S/L damage and even weaker vs F/C/E/N. Don’t think that’s best for the set.

[Sakura Tenshi]

@Wavicle and @arcane

Awww... I'll deal. Just always had driven me nuts, ever since live.

Edited August 17, 2022 by Sakura Tenshi

[arcane]

9 minutes ago, Night said:

 

So is this terrible and unnecessary change in game now on live? It's still in this feedback thread which the patch notes link to, but it is NOT in the actual patch notes, which seems like it is not in game and has been rightfully walked back on.

This extremely intuitive and logical change is in the patch notes, sir

[arcane]

1 minute ago, Night said:

You are not a dev, still waiting for even one reply from a dev to explain the reasoning behind this. For the entirety of this thread, no reason was ever provided

The reasoning is pretty obvious if you think about it for 2 seconds..

[arcane]

13 minutes ago, Night said:

You are not a dev, still waiting for even one reply from a dev to explain the OFFICIAL reasoning behind this. For the entirety of this thread, no reason was ever provided

I mean I don’t think they owe it to you to state the obvious, but you can continue to feign ignorance if that’s your thing 🙂 

[WindDemon21]

On 7/12/2022 at 2:03 PM, The Curator said:

Attack Typing Adjustments

NPC Attack Type Adjustments

• These changes only apply to NPCs attacking players, not the reverse.
• The attack typing on all NPC attacks have been revamped to only utilize a total of two defense types: Positional & Primary Damage
• Attacks that were a 50/50 split are set to use the most exotic damage type per priority brackets (S/L < F/C < E/N < P/T). If an attack is split into two types in the same priority bracket, the most fitting type according to the power's concept decides.
• Various grenade/explosive powers that were formerly Lethal/Smashing have been set to Fire/Lethal instead.
• Enemy Energy Melee was previously 40%/60% Energy/Smashing, it is now 60%/40% Energy/Smashing and targets Energy defense.
• Added Toxic hit checks to many attacks that previously only had positional checks (like zombie vomit spits), which makes them easier to avoid with Defense.
• This does not change any Mind Control powers; whose set gimmick is that they bypass positional defenses and only use Psionic defense.
• EXAMPLE: Previously, attacks checked for defense typings of any damage types involved in the attack. For example, most Ice Blast attacks are  Cold/Smashing and when checked against a player's defenses, it would look at both Cold and Smashing defenses and use whichever was highest.

After this adjustment, an attack will only target the defense of the attack's highest damage type. Using the aforementioned Ice Blast, those attacks will now only target Cold defense, even though they have a Smashing component, as Cold is the majority damage in those attacks.

Player Attack Type Adjustments

Ranged Attack powers that should have been tagged as AoE Attack

• All/Electric Affinity/Empowering Circuit
• All/Electric Affinity/Energizing Circuit
• All/Electric Affinity/Insulating Circuit
• All/Electric Affinity/Rejuvenating Circuit
• All/Electric Control/Chain Fences
• Redirects/Galvanic Sentinel Discharge: Also changed the MaxTargets to 16 and removed its MaxTargetsExpression which was set to 16.
• Controller & Dominator/Gravity Control/Propel
• Dominator/Martial Assault/Trick Shot
• Epic/Munitions Mastery/LRM Rocket
• Mastermind/Mercenary/Spec Ops 2/Flash Bang
• Mastermind/Mecernary/Spec Ops 3/Tear Gas
• Mission Maker/Zombie/Projectile Vomit
• Sentinel/Ice Armor/Moisture Absorption: Updated Description to reflect it is an AoE attack.
• Arachnos Soldier Proxy/Heavy Burst

Melee Attack powers that should have been tagged as AoE Attack

• All player or Mastermind pet attacks flagged as Melee Attack that were Spheres or Cones with an arc of at least 30 degrees has now been set to AoE Attack.
• Electric Melee/Thunder Strike: This power is an exception and uses different rules for different powers.

Explosive Arrow and M30 Grenade 

• No longer does smashing damage, replaced with fire damage
• These attacks are now tagged as AoE/Fire (previously was AoE/Smashing/Lethal)
• The PvE damage is now 50/50 for Fire/Lethal. Scourge is now all Fire damage.

Ughhhh f'ing really? Just pushed it through. God this was a HORRIBLE change. Bad move devs...

[MoonSheep]

3 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:

Ughhhh f'ing really? Just pushed it through. God this was a HORRIBLE change. Bad move devs...

 

what do you feel isn’t right about this change?

[WindDemon21]

11 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

 

what do you feel isn’t right about this change?

*broadly gestures to all the posts describing it previously*

[MoonSheep]

4 minutes ago, WindDemon21 said:

*broadly gestures to all the posts describing it previously*

 

this is a focused feedback thread, can you be more specific with how you found it to be a negative change?

[WindDemon21]

9 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

 

this is a focused feedback thread, can you be more specific with how you found it to be a negative change?

Are you trolling? There is literally 12.5 other pages that explain it prior to this.

[MoonSheep]

5 minutes ago, WindDemon21 said:

Are you trolling? There is literally 12.5 other pages that explain it prior to this.

 

and most of the people who actually bothered to test it and post meaningful feedback found that the change is minor, impacts only a small group of enemies and is mostly imperceptible

 

if you have testing which shows otherwise please do post it, this is not a debate thread

[WindDemon21]

1 minute ago, MoonSheep said:

 

and most of the people who actually bothered to test it and post meaningful feedback found that the change is minor, impacts only a small group of enemies and is mostly imperceptible

 

if you have testing which shows otherwise please do post it, this is not a debate thread

Correct, it's a feedback thread, which I have given, and many others have prior to this. Just cause you don't care doesn't mean it's not there to many others of us. Your lack of concern about it, doesn't make our points moot.