Focused Feedback: Epic / Ancillary Power Pools

[WindDemon21]

18 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

Still not seeing. The devs stated the bonfire changed affecting non-epics was not intended? Not finding that. Anyone have the link?

You're right I'm no longer seeing it anymore either. Possibly one I saw that was deleted? I swear I saw it. Regardless this:

Epic > Fire Mastery > Bonfire (Blaster/Mastermind) - Knockdown rate has been reduced while using KB2KD enhancements

Specifies ONLY the epic version, doesn't state for the controller/dominator versions, and those versions weren't listed in the powers changes thread either.

[Britannic]

Increased cooldowns (even with global recharge reduction factoring in) on some of these powers while not increasing their potency feels at odd with other areas of the game. Honestly it'd be nice if they felt like mini Incarnate/Signature powers, long recharge but very potent when you need them.

[Tigraine]

3 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:

As a rule, I don't like this how you can have a character with a certain slotting that can never go back if they respec or unslot the IOs. It creates a weird dynamic where one build can do something if planned before a patch but nobody else ever can after that. I'd much rather somehow any power that changed unslots the enhancements in it into a tray or something. I still have an old shelved arch/ta blaster that has a lotg in oil slick arrow, it's.. very weird.

 

Or you know, they could adhere to the cottage rule and not change the fundamental function of powers, and then there would be no need to re-slot because the powers should accept the same enhancements.

[Crimsanotic]

11 minutes ago, Tigraine said:

 

Or you know, they could adhere to the cottage rule and not change the fundamental function of powers, and then there would be no need to re-slot because the powers should accept the same enhancements.

 

The cottage rule is honestly only used as a defense when it suits the argument. Cryptic, Paragon, and Homecoming break the rule many times.

[PeregrineFalcon]

Please explain to me where the developers broke the Cottage Rule in Page 7.

[Tigraine]

3 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Please explain to me where the developers broke the Cottage Rule in Page 7.

 

If a power is changed to the point that it takes different enhancements (and doesn't take ones that previously slotted in it), that's a pretty clear violation of the cottage rule.  It indicates that the power has moved into a completely different category than it was previously, or has gained or lost significant key mechanics.

Edited February 6 by Tigraine

[Sovera]

It's a fictitious rule invented by different devs from two decades ago who broke it when they felt it should be broken. Lets please not treat it as a sacred text we should kneel to.

[SwitchFade]

7 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:

You're right I'm no longer seeing it anymore either. Possibly one I saw that was deleted? I swear I saw it. Regardless this:

Epic > Fire Mastery > Bonfire (Blaster/Mastermind) - Knockdown rate has been reduced while using KB2KD enhancements

Specifies ONLY the epic version, doesn't state for the controller/dominator versions, and those versions weren't listed in the powers changes thread either.

Darn, I was hoping! As far as I can tell, the change to bonfire was intended to be global, even though the notes called our epic only

[golstat2003]

52 minutes ago, Sovera said:

It's a fictitious rule invented by different devs from two decades ago who broke it when they felt it should be broken. Lets please not treat it as a sacred text we should kneel to.

 

Agreed. But I'd still prefer the devs be cautious when drastically changing powers that folks already use as a general rule. At the very least they should data mine how many folks have that power and are using it in their build before making drastic changes. This ofcourse does not mean that they can never completely change a power, but those already using it should definetly be taken into account.

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 hour ago, Tigraine said:

If a power is changed to the point that it takes different enhancements (and doesn't take ones that previously slotted in it), that's a pretty clear violation of the cottage rule.

Nope.

 

Try again. Try harder.

[Shin Magmus]

Just as an aside, a bunch of the new ATTACKS are perfectly fine, but new buff and utility power variations in Recharge time are downright stupid.  Corrs/Defenders getting their iconic and somewhat broken Soul Drain nerfed to Spirit Drain is at least understandable... so hey now it's still a damaging attack on a 120s CD that gives you a buff objectively superior to Build Up.

 

"Oh hey look, they're also letting us just take Build Up in Ice Mastery.  Let's just check the numbers and-"

 

Build Up has a 180s CD compared to Spirit Drain's 120s.  This is objectively wrong and bad design.  Nobody will ever take Build Up.  If these 2 powers had identical CDs of 120s each, then Build Up would still be the inferior power 99% of the time but it would at least be usable as often.

 

I have an Ice Blast Defender and I'd love to take Ice Mastery for theme but not with a 3 minute CD Build Up and a 9 minute CD Hoarfrost.  Nobody is going to take those powers, and I can't honestly believe any of the devs think that we would. 

[Tigraine]

6 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Nope.

 

Try again. Try harder.

 

Quote

Being constantly offended doesn't mean you're right, it means you're too narcissistic to tolerate opinions different than your own.

 

[Cheli]

The problem with the 'cottage rule', aside from those pointed out prior, is that it straitjackets making changes that are for the better of the game when interpreted conservatively. How far do you go in determining what the 'core functionality' of the power is to adhere to the rule? Were the changes to energy melee breaking the 'cottage rule' because being slow to the point of uselessness was part of the 'core functionality' of energy transfer? Obviously this is a bit of an edge case for the purpose of making a point, but it underlines the fact that the people who came up with the rule aren't working on the game anymore and trying to divine how they would have handled changing currently-existing powers is silly. Are we trying to make the game better or are we trying to fulfill what we imagine might have been the wishes of people who worked on it over a decade ago?

 

I can understand and sympathize in some respect, as I myself really don't like powers changing so drastically, constantly, to the point I have to worry about respeccing or 're-learning' the game, the way WoW changes fundamentally every 3 months. I hate that. I despise it. And I'd really like it if that was avoided. But I don't think retuning powers to function well should be avoided because 'this is what the devs said 17 years ago'.

 

That said I don't think soul drain being changed is bad because of 'cottage rule', I think it's bad because it's unnecessarily changing the power to conform to other outmoded design considerations from 15+ years ago, and appears (going by the track record, anyway) to be doing so mostly arbitrarily to make a power choice that the HC devs know is popular significantly less so. I feel more that epic pool powers should be closer to how soul drain works than to how the aforementioned 9-minute hoarfrost works.

[Ice Ember]

15 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Please explain to me where the developers broke the Cottage Rule in Page 7.

Telekinesis

 

 

[Ice Ember]

5 hours ago, ShinMagmus said:

Just as an aside, a bunch of the new ATTACKS are perfectly fine, but new buff and utility power variations in Recharge time are downright stupid.  Corrs/Defenders getting their iconic and somewhat broken Soul Drain nerfed to Spirit Drain is at least understandable... so hey now it's still a damaging attack on a 120s CD that gives you a buff objectively superior to Build Up.

 

"Oh hey look, they're also letting us just take Build Up in Ice Mastery.  Let's just check the numbers and-"

 

Build Up has a 180s CD compared to Spirit Drain's 120s.  This is objectively wrong and bad design.  Nobody will ever take Build Up.  If these 2 powers had identical CDs of 120s each, then Build Up would still be the inferior power 99% of the time but it would at least be usable as often.

 

I have an Ice Blast Defender and I'd love to take Ice Mastery for theme but not with a 3 minute CD Build Up and a 9 minute CD Hoarfrost.  Nobody is going to take those powers, and I can't honestly believe any of the devs think that we would. 

 

 

There are many powers I will skip because of stupid long recharge times. 

[Carnifax]

On 1/27/2024 at 10:09 PM, Booper said:

We won't do that. But, if you currently have a character with that power, you can keep it slotted with melee AoE sets. Spirit Drain will keep those enhancements when it goes Live. If you respec or unslot those enhancements after Spirit Drain goes to Live, you won't be able to put them back.

 

Are you sure about this? Doesn't tally with what I am seeing.

 

I jumped onto Beta over the weekend and checked the change and it looked to me like the Oblit set bonuses I'd slotted here weren't available. 

 

Beta is back up so I've checked again, I've two sets of Oblits in Dark Consumption & Soul but can only see one 5% Recharge and one 3.75% melee def bonus. 

 

So it's looking to me like you definitely lose the set bonuses from keeping melee slotting in the new power. 

 

 

There's also a 3.75% drop compared to Live

 

[SeraphimKensai]

Arsenal Mastery should be renamed to Weapon Mastery in spirit of the great global epic pool thesaurus name nerf.

 

I'm still against making Dark Mastery's Soul Drain unable to be made perma despite having been able to since issue 3 for Defenders and issue 18 for Corruptors. As I said before I'm alright with the rename to Spirit Drain and allow to to be used as a targeted AoE. I understand the discrepancy between the differences between soul drain from dark mastery and soul mastery, so I'd be in support of equalizing them with the existing base recharge and buff uptime of Dark Mastery's soul drain.

[ScarySai]

19 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:

Specifies ONLY the epic version, doesn't state for the controller/dominator versions, and those versions weren't listed in the powers changes thread either.

It was changed, epic version was buffed in the newest build to be less bad, but it's still kinda bad after the nerf.

 

Very unlikely to bother anymore without a cast time reduction.

Edited February 6 by ScarySai

[PeregrineFalcon]

13 hours ago, Sovera said:

It's a fictitious rule invented by different devs from two decades ago who broke it when they felt it should be broken. Lets please not treat it as a sacred text we should kneel to.

All rules are fictitious things invented by people. And all rules occasionally need to be broken when necessary. Neither the Cottage Rule, nor the Prime Directive, are supposed to be sacred texts or life-long ideologies. They're just important rules that you only break when necessary.

 

2 hours ago, Cheli said:

The problem with the 'cottage rule', aside from those pointed out prior, is that it straitjackets making changes that are for the better of the game when interpreted conservatively. How far do you go in determining what the 'core functionality' of the power is to adhere to the rule? Were the changes to energy melee breaking the 'cottage rule' because being slow to the point of uselessness was part of the 'core functionality' of energy transfer?

You make a good point, but no, the change to Energy Transfer did not break the Cottage Rule. Energy Transfer's core functionality was "high-damage attack with a stun". Currently it's a "high-damage attack with a stun." Its core functionality has been preserved.

 

1 hour ago, Ice Ember said:

Telekinesis

I'm not sure if this is an example of breaking the Cottage Rule or not. As Cheli pointed out, determining the core functionality of a power can be a little tricky sometimes.

 

One could argue that its core functionality was "ranged control", or that it was "ranged hold." The new version does seem more in line with the name of the power which, for me, makes it difficult to decide. Ultimately though, it's still no longer a ranged hold, so I guess that I have to say that Core Functionality has changed, if only slightly.

 

Which is just a long-winded way of saying "you're right."

[Shin Magmus]

This thread is about the Ancillary / Epic Power Pools, and we should be giving feedback along the lines of how to make those powers better for all players and how to bring underperforming pools up to the level of the others: i.e. how I mentioned that Build Up's 10s dmg buff will be worse than Spirit Drain's 15s dmg buff (and it's also an attack, another advantage) in 99% of cases... so Build Up should have the same CD or slightly lower CD than Spirit Drain.  We should be trying to get numbers adjusted to make it so players have a meaningful choice (the ideal, not current) instead of only having one good choice for a function (Spirit Drain dumpsters Build Up and Soul Drain right now, cleanly killing Ice Mastery and Soul Mastery).

 

Yet another Cottage Rule fight is just so stupid... and even if you use semantics to make it seem like the new Telekinesis(TK) breaks the Cottage rule: the old TK was a literally broken power that didn't even help teams in almost any context.  Trying to herd enemies with TK was several hundred times harder than trying to herd enemies with Hurricane or Force Bubble, for objective mechanical reasons based on how the power worked; Old TK sucked ass.  The biggest problem was that fringe enemies would "get away" from the target of TK and that broke all the work you were trying to accomplish.  Now fringe enemies are "pulled towards" the target of TK, so in a way you can use it how the devs on live probably wanted you to.  This is one of the only really good changes we're getting in a sea of mediocrity so don't fight about that power.

[Chris24601]

18 minutes ago, ShinMagmus said:

This thread is about the Ancillary / Epic Power Pools, and we should be giving feedback along the lines of how to make those powers better for all players and how to bring underperforming pools up to the level of the others...

Then I would suggest that the best way to do THAT would be to stop treating the Ancillary/Patron pools like red-headed stepchildren who need to be beaten down lest they outshine the primaries and secondaries.

 

With the changes made to primary/secondary power access, you're now able to slot the entirety of your Primary/Secondary powers by level 32; IF you're even taking all of them.

 

Making the back half of leveling (given the slowdown at 35+ compared to the earlier levels 35 has always felt like the mid-point for most characters to me) into some drudgery where you're not getting something defining, but low-tier powers you're probably using mostly for carrying set bonuses (or are edge-cases falling outside the metrics) because they can barely compete with your T1-3 powers you've had since the singles is NOT the way to go.

 

When you unlock Mu Mastery for a Scrapper and pick up Mu Bolts, it should NOT be making a little "fizzle" sound (seriously... the Mu Mystics get these satisfying boom/cracks to their bolts and you get "fisssss"), doing less damage than your T1 attack with twice the recharge... and the rest of the power continue the trend. Just using them is sub-optimal unless you, for some reason, can't actually get into melee distance with a target.

 

But that's where we're at with them now; powers that are only good for cosmetics in trash fights because they're not allowed to match the capability of your main powers despite having to wait 35 levels to get them. Its to the point where I actually look at levels 35, 38, 41, 44, 47 and 49 as "Dead" levels because I have to pick a near useless power, vs. the levels where I get more slots to fill out actually useable ones.

 

That's NOT the sort of thing you want as the reward for pushing through 35 levels just to unlock them; a "That's it?"

 

I mean, if you don't want them to be any better than the basic pool powers; why even bother locking them to level 35+? Even if you took them at ordinary pool tier levels none of them would be competing with your primaries or secondaries for usefulness.

 

In short, I think the entire CONCEPT of the Epic/Ancillary pools and their metrics needs a sound looking at.

[Thraxen]

Laser beam eyes auto hit in pvp?

[WindDemon21]

2 hours ago, ScarySai said:

It was changed, epic version was buffed in the newest build to be less bad, but it's still kinda bad after the nerf.

 

Very unlikely to bother anymore without a cast time reduction.

Still pointless. And yes I was just going to say the power even before without the nerf stll needed the cast time reduced to at least the 1.67s cast that the EXACT same animation uses on neutron bomb. Likewise for how pointless the nerf on quicksand was in the epic as well. Even Prior that power REALLY needed it's cast time reduced to the 1.17s animation that also, ALREADY exists on crush/gust.

 

(and while at it fix ground zero too and the flashfire/flash freeze cast times as well)

[golstat2003]

I think one thing that's coming out of this feedback is that many of the ancillary/patron powers are just not worthy of being considered a level 35+ pick when compared to other primary and secondary picks you've been using for many levels prior to access to the "epic" powers.

I for one admittedly only take many of them for the set bonuses and places to get Resistance bonuses by using them as mules. Apparently I was not the only one. LOL

 

The patrons especially I often have a hard time justifying them if they are not needed in my build.

 

Surely somtehing the HC team can look at in the future (yes it's too late for this Page).

 

EDIT: And to be fair this is not a knock agains the HC dev team. Paragon SEEMED to have some really ass backwards ideas that the ancillary/patron pools could not be competitive with the primary secondary picks where possible. I vehemently disagreed with that idea and still do.

Edited February 6 by golstat2003

[Chris24601]

21 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

Surely somtehing the HC team can look at in the future (yes it's too late for this Page).

What's NOT too late for this page? Undoing some of the nerfs to powers that, even on live, aren't outperforming your t1-3 powers.