Focused Feedback: Epic / Ancillary Power Pools

[Chaos Ex Machina]

On 1/20/2024 at 8:55 AM, ScarySai said:

 

Hear me out: If you turn that black hole power into a vacuum like axe cyclone instead of a clone of the worst intangible power in the game: this pool will be really fun.

 

Good proof of concept for dark miasma, if it works well enough.

DO THIS PLEASE IT WOULD BE INCREDIBLE

 

Very thematic as well

 

Have wanted to take the power because of theme but it is just not useful and will probably make teams hate you

Edited January 27 by Chaos Ex Machina

[FupDup]

Quote

Patron > Mu Mastery > Conserve Power (Corruptor/Defender) - Changed to Energize. Recharge lowered from 600 to 240s, end cost increased from 9.75 to 13. Now accept Healing enhancements and sets

Given that Corrs and Fenders had Conserve Power replaced by Energize, could Tankers and Scrappers get similar treatment in their Energy Mastery pool?

[ScarySai]

Arctic breath was fine as it was, change it back.

 

I do not accept "Angel thinks it's too short" as a valid reason to add a second of cast time to a power, sorry.

Edited January 28 by ScarySai

[KaizenSoze]

Changing Arctic Breath to only a 13% shorter animation. Rather than the, build 1, 37% animation shortening, without changing anything else about the power...

 

Well, it would be nice if there was a change in damage, recharge, or endurance costs.

 

[Coyotedancer]

The Bonfire adjustment is definitely better, at least on a Mastermind. I actually saw a few more of my x6-sized spawns bouncing this time around, and some of them even landed on their bums multiple times. It's a bit more helpful as a "runaway-stopper" now. 

 

 

 

Edited January 28 by Coyotedancer

[Thraxen]

2 hours ago, FupDup said:

Given that Corrs and Fenders had Conserve Power replaced by Energize, could Tankers and Scrappers get similar treatment in their Energy Mastery pool?

Replace conserve power with just about anything and I’d be happy. Never pick it.  Never. 

[Videra]

8 hours ago, ScarySai said:

Arctic breath was fine as it was, change it back.

 

I do not accept "Angel thinks it's too short" as a valid reason to add a second of cast time to a power, sorry.

Thirding this. Ya'll made arctic breath feel nice to press, why are you essentially reverting this for no reason?

[MoonSheep]

From a Dominator perspective it looks like the mastery revamp has hit quite hard and reduced the effectiveness of most powers that they're not really an "epic" poolset anymore, but more of a "ehh, okay" poolset choice

 

I have the following feedback to contribute:
 

Ice Mastery

As with the feedback on dark mastery below, the icon power colour seems a bit odd. It has been changed to match.. invulnerability? Not feeling it

 

Sleet - I did used to love my defender strength sleet but understand why it was nerfed. Upping the recharge time from 90 seconds to 120 seconds feels to be unncessary though

Hibernate - Always been a meh power and today is no exception. Swapping this out for the scrapper version could be fun

Frozen Armor - Fine

Hoarfrost - Almost doubled to a 9 minute recharge? Why even bother having it. I'll just bring some inspirations instead

 

Dark Mastery

Visually I don't like the power icon colours, it's out of sync with other dark powers within City of Heroes. Red graphics with a dark colour is usually for CoV Patron powers. In my opinion this needs adjusting to align with other Dark Blast, Dark Melee and Dark Control powers

 

Murky Cloud - No resistance to Smashing or Lethal was a bit surprising, but maybe the fire/cold/energy/neg resistance will come in handy for some

Tar Patch - This sounded exciting when announced on the forums, a 3 minute recharge feels a bit long

Darkest Night - A base 11.25% -To Hit feels a bit pointless, enhanced it will push around 15% which is sort of useful I suppose, but nothing to get excited about

Umbral Torrent - Forgettable like most Mastery attacks

Soul Consumption - A great power in principle, made pointless by the 10 minute recharge

 

I'm looking at my mind/fire dom and thinking of respeccing the build to not take a mastery choice when the update comes out, they've all been watered down to the point where they're not really worth having. That reads like quite a kneejerk statement, but I think I'd prefer to have Fold Space than any of the powers on offer

 

I like to be consistent with my feedback, so I will spin my usual line for the past 4.5 years: This patch has an opportunity to review the popularity of each archetype and bring balance to the number of people choosing each one. Dominators tend to be quite infrequently played compared to more popular ATs, these nerfs are likely to further deepen that trend

Edited January 28 by MoonSheep

[Sovera]

I *really* wish that Tankers could ditch Recharge Power for Superior Conditioning that Brutes get.

[fiend]

I wonder what the reasoning was behind using Black Hole in the blaster dark epic. I don't know if there's anyone who plays and uses /dark anything that seriously considers taking the power once they know how it works (though this is anecdotal, probably a result of me usually playing with my damage-obsessed min-maxxer friends). Maybe there's a black hole rework on the horizon we just don't know about yet, and they're adding it in another place in advance?

 

That said, It's not entirely useless, there's a place for extreme gimmick builds, but it definitely is a headscratcher at first glance. Maybe it's for someone's speedrunner build idea where they want to use black hole, then phase shift from stealth, to effectively silo and solo-fight a small number of targets in the phase realm? I could see that.

Edited January 29 by fiend

[Zartan]

I was testing out my controller today and quickly noticed that psionic tornado seemed to take much longer to recharge. After checking the power info, I was shocked to see the recharge is now DOUBLED. I understand the radius nerf with the other buffs, but making it have the same cooldown as savage leap is just way too much.

[Onlyasandwich]

I've been struggling to articulate my response to why most of the significant recharge nerfs seem unjustified.

 

I can appreciate why having a formula for translating powers into epics is useful from a balancing perspective. However, it ignores the power budget available in the pool itself, as well as how these powers fit into the playstyle of the overall build. Attributing set values to how "powerful" something like hoarfrost is compared to a soul drain is pretty tough, but the distinction is there whether we assign it perfectly or not. 

 

One solution is to homogenize them to the point where primary differences are in theme only. This is boring.

 

Another would be too embrace the subjectivity and grapple with questions like:

• Is this power fun and useful in its current form? Do people even bother with it much in its current, pre-nerf state? 
• Does  having access to this power imbalance the class in some way?
• How popular and useful are the other powers in this pool compared to other pools? 

I'm sure these questions are indeed a part of your balancing process in some way, but the impression I get is that the formula is the primary tool in this pass. 

 

[Sovera]

I'm of the opposite camp, but hey, there's room for us both, @Onlyasandwich. I WANT things homogenized so that people DO choose on aesthetics and personal preference instead of 'welp, Fire does more damage, so Fire'.

 

But the trend is 'lets make it all equally bad', which, okay, I'll grant that it is homogenized, but

[Parabola]

2 hours ago, Onlyasandwich said:

I've been struggling to articulate my response to why most of the significant recharge nerfs seem unjustified.

 

I can appreciate why having a formula for translating powers into epics is useful from a balancing perspective. However, it ignores the power budget available in the pool itself, as well as how these powers fit into the playstyle of the overall build. Attributing set values to how "powerful" something like hoarfrost is compared to a soul drain is pretty tough, but the distinction is there whether we assign it perfectly or not. 

 

One solution is to homogenize them to the point where primary differences are in theme only. This is boring.

 

Another would be too embrace the subjectivity and grapple with questions like:

• Is this power fun and useful in its current form? Do people even bother with it much in its current, pre-nerf state? 
• Does  having access to this power imbalance the class in some way?
• How popular and useful are the other powers in this pool compared to other pools? 

I'm sure these questions are indeed a part of your balancing process in some way, but the impression I get is that the formula is the primary tool in this pass. 

 

I've been thinking along these lines too. I totally get the idea that they don't want player a using a power from an epic pool outshining player b who has that same power from their primary. But, a lot of these powers are pretty marginal in the first place. You can easily tell that by how infrequently you see them.

 

The earth epic for brutes and tanks is a case in point. Are there really a secret legion of characters out there using these powers and making earth controllers feel bad? I've never seen it mentioned. We should be encouraging people to branch out and select interesting epic powers not rendering them all not worth the opportunity costs of taking or using.

 

I'm smiling to myself a bit because I take focused accuracy on 99% of my melee builds and that has actually been buffed. I often want to use something else but the debuff resistance is just so useful. Now I'll be able to run it more cheaply and have even less interest in the alternatives. I really don't think this is the right way to be moving though.

[WitchofDread]

18 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

From a Dominator perspective it looks like the mastery revamp has hit quite hard and reduced the effectiveness of most powers that they're not really an "epic" poolset anymore, but more of a "ehh, okay" poolset choice

 

I have the following feedback to contribute:
 

Ice Mastery

As with the feedback on dark mastery below, the icon power colour seems a bit odd. It has been changed to match.. invulnerability? Not feeling it

 

Sleet - I did used to love my defender strength sleet but understand why it was nerfed. Upping the recharge time from 90 seconds to 120 seconds feels to be unncessary though

Hibernate - Always been a meh power and today is no exception. Swapping this out for the scrapper version could be fun

Frozen Armor - Fine

Hoarfrost - Almost doubled to a 9 minute recharge? Why even bother having it. I'll just bring some inspirations instead

 

Dark Mastery

Visually I don't like the power icon colours, it's out of sync with other dark powers within City of Heroes. Red graphics with a dark colour is usually for CoV Patron powers. In my opinion this needs adjusting to align with other Dark Blast, Dark Melee and Dark Control powers

 

Murky Cloud - No resistance to Smashing or Lethal was a bit surprising, but maybe the fire/cold/energy/neg resistance will come in handy for some

Tar Patch - This sounded exciting when announced on the forums, a 3 minute recharge feels a bit long

Darkest Night - A base 11.25% -To Hit feels a bit pointless, enhanced it will push around 15% which is sort of useful I suppose, but nothing to get excited about

Umbral Torrent - Forgettable like most Mastery attacks

Soul Consumption - A great power in principle, made pointless by the 10 minute recharge

 

I'm looking at my mind/fire dom and thinking of respeccing the build to not take a mastery choice when the update comes out, they've all been watered down to the point where they're not really worth having. That reads like quite a kneejerk statement, but I think I'd prefer to have Fold Space than any of the powers on offer

 

I like to be consistent with my feedback, so I will spin my usual line for the past 4.5 years: This patch has an opportunity to review the popularity of each archetype and bring balance to the number of people choosing each one. Dominators tend to be quite infrequently played compared to more popular ATs, these nerfs are likely to further deepen that trend

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

1. I hope the lack of S/L res in murky is an oversight otherwise I can't see the set being taken much.

2. Tar patch on a 3 min cd is stupid. It will just be limited to every few mobs packs or bosses and that is no fun!

4. Umbral torrent - waste of time.

5. Darkest night is redundant. Doms have enough end issue as it is let alone an expensive toggle that arguably is useless on a dom.

6. The fact soul consumption is on a 10 min cd is a slap in the face. Nobody will ever use it.

 

To be frank, I can't see anyone actively choosing to use this set. It doesn't offer any competitive benefits when compared to the other epic pools. It's probably the worst. I'd rather even taken soul mastery for dom instead of this.

 

It seems doms are getting 0 love. Ever.

[Dispari]

The lack of S/L RES/DEF isn't an oversight, it's intended as an alternative option to some of the other epic sets. With this patch there are two dark sets, Dark and Soul, and they're intended to offer different powers and options for different builds. Some people might want the more exotic damage types instead.

(Not saying I agree, just we talked about this in closed beta and that was the why. I would rather epic sets gave you a choice between the options with a power lockout system so you can't have both, but here we are)

[WitchofDread]

@Disparithat is fundamentally stupid. That completely writes off thst whole mastery set. I would absolutely LOVE to see stats going forward about how many people actually use this set going forward. Ridiculous.

[tricon]

Feedback on the new Dark Mastery Epic pool for Dominators. 

 

Murky Cloud is ok power if you go with a ranged def build and add it to the mix. I would rather have a higher energy and negative scaling because its easy to get fire/cold with the winter and purple sets. 

 

Tar Patch is a very good power but the 3min makes no sense. You have increased the cd of sleet  to 2min and IMO Tar Patch should have the same cd, I would rate Sleet even higher in power rank, so adding another minute to this power seems odd.

 

Darkest Night and Umbral Torrent. Skipped both. I don't think with our primary set this power add anthing to a build. Torrent a cone with a knockback is meh,

 

Soul Consumption, The cool down is quite high, not sure if the power design was with perma domination in mind, not everyone runs with extra recharge to the roof. I would prefer it if it lost some of the extra time. Powers like Unleash Potential and Adrenal Booster run with 600sec. the same cd would fit better for this power.

edit: Frell it, its late here, somehow I can't count the time 😛 Soul Consumption has the same cd  as the 2 powers with 10min. No idea why I thought the timer was shorter 

 

Odd combination of powers and certainly not my first pick, when you have ICE/PSI epics. 

Edited January 30 by tricon

[DreadShinobi]

Maybe using the terms ancillary, tertiary, or patron to refer to these power pools and discontinuing to refer to them as "Epic Power Pools" could clear up some confusion around their placement in the game. As you waited 35 levels to unlock them only to find out many of the power options, while following general guidelines for consistency, are often so gutted to the point of being impractically unusable. The recharge penalties on some powers do not feel like they make them balanced, they feel like enormous red flags saying do not pick this power. If you do not have damage procs or recharge IO set bonuses to offset their penalties they can be excessively lackluster to pick up for a casual player or leveling up build. Many of these powers call into question intended IO usage and is the game being balanced around SOs or IOs -> at lvl 35-49. They feel like a trap for newer players. 

 

Should the goal be to balance these powers to a metric that makes x% weaker than primary/secondary version... or should a higher priority be to make more pools viable choices and more powers within those pools be viable choices. 

[Coyotedancer]

The design direction really does seem to be "Yeah, these are just little pool powers, so *of course* they're Not All That", doesn't it?

 

I was a little reluctant to just come out and put it like that, but... well, the overall trend looks like it looks.

[arcane]

23 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

The design direction really does seem to be "Yeah, these are just little pool powers, so *of course* they're Not All That", doesn't it?

 

I was a little reluctant to just come out and put it like that, but... well, the overall trend looks like it looks.

As it should be.

[Coyotedancer]

6 minutes ago, arcane said:

As it should be.

 

Eh. I can't really say that I have strong feelings about that design choice either way.

 

while I don't think any power pick should be so watered-down that it feels pointless to have or to use it... I'm also fine with pool powers not being in the same league as our regular primary or secondary picks. There's a balance point in the middle somewhere. That probably ought to be the target. 

[Flying Code Monkey]

3 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

The design direction really does seem to be "Yeah, these are just little pool powers, so *of course* they're Not All That", doesn't it?

 

I was a little reluctant to just come out and put it like that, but... well, the overall trend looks like it looks.

 

I'm less reluctant, since that design direction would be flawed.  As I recall, the Ancillary sets were originally inaccessible until 41+.  Despite some common themes (fire, darkness, cold, etc.) they follow intentional structural asymmetries that are specific to each applicable archetype.  Unlike Power Pools, which (as we all know) are the same for everyone able to access them.  Ancillaries have always provided options for either reinforcing your Primary/Secondary selections or for expanding beyond them.  The choice of Ancillary is a meaningful decision, just not one that happens to be locked in from level one.

 

Here's some basic armor, since your AT doesn't normally have that.  Here's a debuff ability, since your AT often lacks that.  Here's some ranged blasting.  Here's some other effective personal buffs.  You can tell me that a Controller Ancillary Fire Blast would be somewhat less damaging than a Blaster Primary Fire Blast because their archetype modifiers are different and I'd say yeah, that's reasonable.  But in a game with heroic-ability themes, there's no other meaningful basis for one of them to be puny.

 

Assigning them common names seems like a thoroughly unnecessary change (Ice Mastery, Arctic Mastery, etc. are not the same set), but that's a cosmetic detail.

[fiend]

4 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

The design direction really does seem to be "Yeah, these are just little pool powers, so *of course* they're Not All That", doesn't it?

 

I was a little reluctant to just come out and put it like that, but... well, the overall trend looks like it looks.

This has always been the case, not just for epics, but for regular power pools too - except for some select standouts that are either accidentally or intentionally the "correct" picks in most cases. The original devs really did their best to avoid having anyone potentially rely on power pools more than their primaries/secondaries. We've seen what happens when a power pool ability is "too good" - it ends up mandatory in nearly every build (i.e. hasten). It was the same way with the Fitness power pool, which eventually had to be made default because it was so good.

 

If the torch is being carried along the same path as the original devs, then this is the way to go. Anything else would be an enormous meta shake-up, and HC seems to be trying to keep things pretty close to vanilla, just modernized a little bit. It'd be pretty far out of the usual if the epic pools weren't "one fine or at least passable power, a situational pick or two, and some obvious always-skips"

[Shin Magmus]

On 1/25/2024 at 5:52 PM, ScarySai said:

Spirit shark could use a teal circle at five stacks

 

also: find it odd to nerf bonfire now, since it's been falling out of favor for awhile now. Most fire blasters go soul now, it just works better.

It's another targeted nerf at me because my Fire/FF Controller slaps and deals good damage despite the AT 😞.  Gotta bring that power level down a little.