Scale Exemplar Enhancements Values better

[srmalloy]

17 hours ago, Rudra said:

No, they are asking for the exemplared IO values to get boosted to match SO enhancement strength.

Not to match, just raise the bottom end so that a fully slotted power will have its ED-capped values scaled better against what a low-level character is getting from slotting SOs, rather than the TOs the exemplar scaling was designed around. Increasing the scaling factor for level 9 from 0.219 to, say, 0.4 would increase the damage for a power slotted to 95% damage increase when exemplared to 80% of the damage increase of a level 9 character that had put one slot in the same attack and slotted two damage SOs in it.

[Rudra]

Why? The exemplared 50 still has +5 levels of powers (so 2 or 3 powers the at level low level character does not get access to depending on level), all of their enhancement slots earned up through level 50 still granting enhancement bonuses, and all their set bonuses depending on slotted sets and exemplared level. (Remember that purple IO sets always give their set bonuses even if you exemplar down to level 1. So do PvP sets.) The missions were not made more difficult to account for everyone being able to slot SOs out the gate if they can get their hands on them. The exemplared 50 isn't struggling to do the lower level content or at any increased risk while doing the lower level content. And I have yet to see an exemplared character get out-performed by an at level character. So as far as I can tell, @Luminara is right about the OP.

 

Edit: From the homecoming explanation about the exemplar system. Note that I did not highlight anything. It was already highlighted on the page.

        The system degrades the character's Enhancements, even in cases where a character would already have six SOs or comparable IOs in the power in question at the lower, Exemplared level. This is an attempt to balance the fact that the character will have more slots overall. For example, a level 26 Storm Summoning Defender cannot have more than one slot in Tornado, but he can have six slots in Steamy Mist. A level 50 Storm Defender who's Exemplared to 26 can have six slots in both. His Tornado will be stronger than the naturally 26 Defender's, but his Steamy Mist will be weaker.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Exemplar_Effects_on_Enhancements

 

Edited March 20, 2023 by Rudra

[Arbegla]

My main concern is from a pet oriented aspect, so MMs and other pet classes that deal with Exemplaring down frequently. Masterminds already deal with the purple patch against mobs the most due to the way pets scale, and with the enhancement values of pets being affected by the Exemplar values you end up getting pets that definitely perform less than what they did at a native level.

 

Masterminds also have the least amount of 'extra' powers and suffer the most from Exemplaring, due to the 'true' level being the level at which they receive their pets, i/e, you only get the third T1 pet at level 18, you only get the second T2 pet at 24, etc. Mastermind Pets also don't get access to set bonuses, so the argument for 'Well just slot set bonsues!' falls flat, as you're only relying on enhancement values for your pets, and not other factors.

Granted, changing the whole system just to 'balance' Masterminds doesn't seem worth while, which is why I wanted to suggest it work for all characters.

[Rudra]

19 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

My main concern is from a pet oriented aspect, so MMs and other pet classes that deal with Exemplaring down frequently. Masterminds already deal with the purple patch against mobs the most due to the way pets scale, and with the enhancement values of pets being affected by the Exemplar values you end up getting pets that definitely perform less than what they did at a native level.

 

Masterminds also have the least amount of 'extra' powers and suffer the most from Exemplaring, due to the 'true' level being the level at which they receive their pets, i/e, you only get the third T1 pet at level 18, you only get the second T2 pet at 24, etc. Mastermind Pets also don't get access to set bonuses, so the argument for 'Well just slot set bonsues!' falls flat, as you're only relying on enhancement values for your pets, and not other factors.

Granted, changing the whole system just to 'balance' Masterminds doesn't seem worth while, which is why I wanted to suggest it work for all characters.

You're joking. I've exemplared my MMs frequently. If you get the third pet at level 18, and you exemplar down to level 13, you still get the 3rd pet, which the level 13 MM doesn't have. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that if the +5 levels would put you at a point where the T1 or T2 pet  power would have more pets? You get the more pets. I routinely have more pets while exemplared than I did at level. And the pets don't perform worse because they are exemplared down either. They still get the benefits of their slotted enhancements, which they can have more of than the at level MM on their pets depending on what they exemplar down to. (Edit: On top of the greater number of pets.) Your argument still fails.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Rudra

[Arbegla]

Just now, Rudra said:

You're joking. I've exemplared my MMs frequently. If you get the third pet at level 18, and you exemplar down to level 13, you still get the 3rd pet, which the level 13 MM doesn't have. And if the +5 levels would put you at a point where the T1 or T2 pet  power would have more pets? You get the more pets. I routinely have more pets while exemplared than I did at level. And the pets don't perform worse because they are exemplared down either. They still get the benefits of their slotted enhancements, which they can have more of than the at level MM on their pets depending on what they exemplar down to. Your argument still fails.

 

I'm talking this the pets you get at your actual level.. Like your second Battle Drone at level 6, third at level 18, and the second protector bot at level 24. Those you do not get if you exemplar down below those levels. Do a DFB and summon your battle drones. If you're right, you should get 2 battle drones (you're level 1 at the start of the DFB) and you don't. You don't get the second battle drone until you're actually level 6.

Yes, if you're exemplared to level 9, you get access to the Protector bot (a level 12 power) where a true level 9 character wouldn't, but you also don't get 3 battle drones exemplared to level 13, even though its 5 level lower then when you should get them (level 18)

[Rudra]

Even with that being true, you have yet to explain what problem this fix solves. No exemplared character that I know of struggles to do any exemplared content. You still have more enhancements available regardless of what level you exemplar to. You still get your set bonuses if you don't exemplar more than 3 levels below them. You still get the set bonuses of the very rare enhancement sets regardless of what level you exemplar to, which are way powerful set bonuses. You still get the set bonuses of any PvP IO sets you slot regardless of what level you exemplar to as well. ATOs grant their set bonuses as far down as level 7 and Ouroboros won't exemplar you below level 9. If you team with someone lower level than that, you still get all your enhancement slots plus 5 levels worth of powers. What is this fix supposed to fix? You have yet to answer that beyond "well, it doesn't seem fair that my level 50 is doing less damage from enhancement bonuses than the at level lower level character". Which is only true if you exemplar below level 32. And even at that, dual effect, triple effect, and quaternary effect enhancements are not subject to the exemplar degradation until their listed bonus is higher than the exemplar system says it should be, so those don't degrade until some time potentially well below level 32. What is the OP supposed to fix? What can you not do or are struggling to do because you are exemplared?

 

Edit: From the exemplar system page:

Due to Step 1, you can use up to level 25 Dual-Aspect IOs, level 43 Tri-Aspect IOs, and level 50 Quad-Aspect IOs and suffer no bonus reduction unless you Exemplar to level 20 or lower. (Those breakpoints are only accurate for Schedule A benefits. Schedule B's are higher, C's and D's are lower.)

Edited March 20, 2023 by Rudra
Edited to change "too" to "to as well".

[Arbegla]

The game isn't balanced around IO or set bonuses, so the argument that you can frankenslot using dual/tri/quad aspect IOs and also retain set bonuses from PvP/Purple/ATO/Winter IOs falls flat as well. The game simply isn't balanced around those things.

 

Last I checked, the game is balanced around SOs. And the current exemplar scaling has your character perform worse then SOs at certain low level break points. That's the argument I'm making. Yes, you get more powers (1 - 3 more depending on when you exemplar down to) and yes you have access to more slots (up to the max you have at level 50) but the value of your enhancements are worse then when you were the native level. I noticed this the most on my MM when my Battle Drones had only a 24% boost to damage at level 9, due to scaling even though I have near ED levels of damage in them at level 50.

[Rudra]

Not at low levels it isn't. At the lowest levels, it is balanced around TOs. Then as you get higher in level, it is balanced around DOs. Then when you get high enough in level, it is balanced around SOs. SOs used to not be availalbe until fairly late in the game. So content where SOs did not exist at the time are not balanced around SOs. They are balanced around TOs or DOs.

 

Edit: Hence the repeated comments that the game was not made more difficult to match being able to slot SOs earlier than before.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Rudra

[srmalloy]

5 hours ago, Rudra said:

They still get the benefits of their slotted enhancements, which they can have more of than the at level MM on their pets depending on what they exemplar down to.

So, taking for purposes of argument that an MM exemping to 13 gets three T1 pets, compared to the level 13 getting two, the exemped MM gets those pets one level lower than the level 13, and exemp scaling means that their six-slotted set with 95% damage bonus is now a 32% damage bonus, while the level 13 likely has put two slots in the power, level 15 SOs are +2, so 75% damage bonus, and an Acc in the third slot. Attacking with a level disadvantage and doing 75% of the damage, does the extra minion bring the effectiveness back up to parity, given the reduced to-hit from attacking relatively higher-level mobs?

[Rudra]

Parity for what? Assuming the level 50 MM exemplared down to level 13, the exemplared MM still has 50 levels worth of enhancements compared to the not exemplared MM's 13 levels of enhancements. The exemplared MM still has 18 levels worth of powers as compared to the not exemplared MM's 13 levels of powers. The exemplared MM still has full use of set bonuses from Hecatomb, Ragnarok, or the other purples at level 13 as compared to the not exemplared MM's no purple sets because they can't be slotted until level 50. The exemplared MM probably has full suites of ATOs still giving their full set bonuses which the not exemplared MM probably does not have. And the kicker? The exemplared MM is still only facing content designed with the expectation that the character will have Training Origin enhancements slotted. Not Single Origin enhancements, Training Origin enhancements.

 

The argument is: because now all characters can have SOs at all levels (which was power creep when requested), all characters need to retain the equivalency of SOs at all levels. Which is false. As provided in the linked Exemplar Effects On Enhancements, exemplared characters are subject to degraded enhancement bonuses to provide balance against the not exemplared lower level characters. The devs say so on the page explaining the system. (Edit again: And that is with the consideration that the lower level character is using SOs. So even with the lower level character using SOs, the scaling is still meant to provide parity.) So the argument is to throw out what balance is still retained. So what parity are you talking about? The scaling is designed for parity. Because as stated by the devs on the explanation page, exemplared characters still have the advantage while exemplared down, so enhancement reduction is applied to provide parity. And that is without adding in things like retained set bonuses while exemplared.

 

Edit: Also, your argument is appropriate to a MM pet suggestion thread because MMs deal with that regardless of exemplared or not. Yes, MM pets suffer level penalties making it harder to keep them alive and harder for them to hit targets as the MM levels and gets more pets of that tier. And that was done with game balance in mind as well. That is not a "the MM exemplared down" issue, that is a "I'm playing a MM" issue.

 

Edit yet again: Besides, as @Arbegla pointed out, the exemplared MM only has any additional tier pets the level shifts afford, not any extra tier of pets. So the exemplared MM and the not exemplared MM have the same number of pets per tier, but the exemplared MM gets their tier 3 pet while the not exemplared character does not. Which is why I routinely have more pets while exemplared than I did while leveling up.

Edited March 21, 2023 by Rudra

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

So, taking for purposes of argument that an MM exemping to 13 gets three T1 pets, compared to the level 13 getting two, the exemped MM gets those pets one level lower than the level 13, and exemp scaling means that their six-slotted set with 95% damage bonus is now a 32% damage bonus, while the level 13 likely has put two slots in the power, level 15 SOs are +2, so 75% damage bonus, and an Acc in the third slot. Attacking with a level disadvantage and doing 75% of the damage, does the extra minion bring the effectiveness back up to parity, given the reduced to-hit from attacking relatively higher-level mobs?

 

The exemplared mastermind will only have two T1 and one T2 henches.

 

But those henches will also have EndRdx slotted, so they won't be pausing mid-combat to recover, unlike the lower level mastermind's.  The exemplared mastermind's henches will have the first upgrade on them, and that upgrade will be slotted with Defense or Resistance enhancements if they're one of the revamped sets, which means they'll be more durable than the lower level mastermind's.  The exemplared mastermind will have access to the T7 power that they took at level 18, the lower level mastermind won't.

 

Oooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, pity those poor exemplared masterminds with Gang War and Hell on Earth and Maintenance Drone!  They're so underprivileged!  We have to help them!

 

🙄

[Rudra]

Let's take a look at these hypothetical MMs. For this example, I am going to use Ninjas/Dark Miasma. Assuming the exemplared and not exemplared MMs chose the same powers and slotted the same way, we get this:

 

Level 13 MM                                                                                       Level 50 Exemplared MM with Legacy Pre-Revamp Build

Call Genin: 6 slots                                                                                 Call Genin: 6 slots

Twilight Grasp: 2 slots                                                                           Twilight Grasp: 6 slots (Going for the ToHit debuff + heals like I did with my MM)

Aimed Shot: 2 slots                                                                               Aimed Shot: 5 slots

Tar Patch: 1 slot                                                                                    Tar Patch: 3 slots

Train Ninjas: 1 slot                                                                                Train Ninjas: 1 slot

Darkest Night: 3 slots                                                                           Darkest Night: 3 slots

Fistful of Arrows: 2 slots                                                                       Fistful of Arrows: 4 slots

Call Jounin: 3 slots                                                                                Call Jounin: 6 slots

                                                                                                            Howling Twilight: 5 slots

                                                                                                            Shadowfall: 6 slots

                                                                                                            Maneuvers: 3 slots

 

That is just the powers the exemplared MM has. That is not taking into account the rest of the powers that may or may not have sets that grant bonuses as far down as level 13. Assuming the level 13 has SOs slotted in every power, the level 13 is still outclassed by the exemplared MM. Now, you can play around with the slots all you like, but that level 13 MM only gets 2 enhancement slots every odd level starting at level 3. So that level 13 only gets 12 added enhancement slots to assign, and those slots are limited by when they are gained and the powers the player wants to slot them in are gained. The level 50 MM has 38 added enhancement slots from original placement while leveling just in the powers the exemplared MM has access to for being exemplared down to level 13. So yes, the level 13 MM is outclassed by the exemplared MM even with enhancement bonus reduction in effect.