A little interested but wondering if the mega nerfs are still in this version of the game.

[CometCometh]

Pretty much as the title states, I am wondering if the mega nerfs are still in the game. For context, I used to play a ton of CoH/CoV back in the day. One of the reasons I quit, along with many others, was the terrible ham fisted approach of the mega nerfs. When the developer thought it was best to nerf everyone instead of buff the weaker performers up the game was done for me. It went from City of Heroes to City of Bystanders. This was when the developer decided it was "balanced" around heros basically being able to take out 1-3 basic enemies at a time. Maybe a Lt. Getting more than few enemies on you meant death. Of course at one point some builds and power sets could literally wipe out entire zones and that was a bit much, but when the game was nerfed into the ground some formerly strong builds were pointless to play. Some builds would insta nuke groups of basic enemies and Lts in single hits and would take a little more to drop "bosses" down. The developer thought it would be "better" to have "epic" fights all the time. Which meant instead of instantly nuking even basic enemies, you would have to spend minutes killing them. The decided that almost every encounter should be "group" based to do anything and killed solo play practically.

 

So my question is what is the state of the game right now? Is everything still in the super nerfed state and thus not worth my time or do you actually feel Heroic at later levels of a build? Can you be solo and still wipe out groups living out the power fantasy or do heroes have to spend 5-10 minutes defeating the equivalent of a purse thief in higher level zones?

[Glacier Peak]

I feel super when I play. There's only Incarnate trials, Hamidon, and now some 4-star Hardmode content that requires my brain to function beyond the keyboard face rolling you're describing.

[Nuc]

Since the game is based on the same code as the live servers at the time of shutdown then yes, stuff like Enhancement Diversification and the Global Defense Nerf are still in the game. However, with stuff like Invention Sets and Incarnate Powers it's still possible to create ridiculously overpowered characters if that's your goal. It just takes a bit more time/effort/inf is all

[Frostbiter]

If by mega-nerfs you mean Enhancement Diversification then yes, that's still there. Today's characters are several orders of magnitude stronger than Live characters though. Mostly due to the true goodies (Enhancement Catalysts, Boosters and ATOs) not being in the cash shop anymore and all recipes and IOs being available by a variety of means.

[cranebump]

If you want to be invincible, there's ways to do it. I solo a lot, and don't see solo play as being killed off on default settings. If anything, you're likely to have to pump up the diff to get the level of challenge you want. I'm a pretty casual player, but I've been defaulting to +0/x2 for every toon, and cruising along through most of it (those low level Vahz can be a bit of a pain, if you're not careful).:-) 

[CometCometh]

I never got around to later DLCs and expansions. I stopped shortly after CoV release and the cross server PVP arena patch. This was all so long ago so my memory is a bit fuzzy on bits. I know I came back once near the end with my max level Fire/Ice tanker and literally couldn't take down basic enemies solo that were 10+ levels lower without spending minutes at a time trying. The character one point could pull an entire max level hazard zone and kill it all. That was too much, but the nerfs basically made the damage output barely a tickle, and I would be insta-popped by almost anything my level as a tanker. It was basically unplayable to play my jumping fire/ice tanker concept of the Comet Cometh I had back then at that point. That was the CoH side, but my Villains basically ended up with the same treatment. My scapper died to everything I tried fighting. My blaster felt like he was shooting snot rockets that tickled targets instead of rad beams. Basically the game was miserable to play and every single person I knew quit basically over the same issues. The forums were filled with people calling the game City of Bystanders for a reason. Well I am less excited now that I was if everyone here is saying the game state is basically the same. I'll give it a try anyhow.

Edited January 17 by CometCometh

[arcane]

If that highly distorted narrative is truly how you see the game’s history, something tells me you’re going to see it that way still, in spite of objective reality.

 

The game’s overarching history is full of massive buffs with a rare sprinkling of slight nerfs.

Edited January 17 by arcane

[Doc_Scorpion]

4 minutes ago, arcane said:

If that highly distorted narrative is truly how you see the game’s history, something tells me you’re going to see it that way still, in spite of objective reality.

Quoted for being the ever lovin' truth.

[lemming]

I was playing yesterday and someone asked if Regeneration was still over powered...

 

Depending on what you mean by Meganerf, maybe a perusal of https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Patch_Notes

 

On HC it's easy to build up a fairly tricked out character in comparison to live.    I think I had maybe two decently built up chars on live, here, couple dozen and the only thing stopping me right now on most of the others is taking a little time to place enhancements.

[Skyhawke]

Mega Nerfs sounds like a great name for a Kinetics/Dark Defender.

[Nuc]

31 minutes ago, CometCometh said:

I know I came back once near the end with my max level Fire/Ice tanker and literally couldn't take down basic enemies solo that were 10+ levels lower without spending minutes at a time trying.

 

That's either massive hyperbole or a skill/build issue. Either way, they're on you and not the game. A competently built character of ANY archetype has never needed that long to kill a grey mob.

[CometCometh]

13 minutes ago, Nuc said:

 

That's either massive hyperbole or a skill/build issue. Either way, they're on you and not the game. A competently built character of ANY archetype has never needed that long to kill a grey mob.

 

Nope. I can give a list of the remembered nerfs specifically for my fire/ice tanker. I had dozens of characters, but don't remember all the nerfs and what I was capable of before. So previously upon release of the game the Fire branch for Tanker had Burn which would make a patch of fire on the ground and do massive dot damage. It was literally the first nerfed introduced to the game. They reduced the damage a tiny bit and added a fear effect to the enemies hit by burn so they would try to get out. To use burn after than you had to get provoke to counter the fear effect. Until the nerfed provoke to not override fear effects. I was also using Ice so I could drop an ice patch first to make enemies slip and then drop burn. So they couldn't get away with the fear because they were slipping. Then they nerfed the ice patch so that the slip effect check was less frequent. At one point the slip check only ever happened once per enemy. So they could slip once ever and never again. I think they reverted that a tad later because the power was basically unusable at that point. Then the damage from Burn continued to be nerf over and over and over. It started doing tickle damage at one point. 

 

Let me put it this way, before all the major nerfs to Burn and Ice patch, I could literally pull an entire hazard zone 20+ levels above my character, jump into a dumpster to get the enemies to stack inside each other as they followed me in while jumping, and they would immediately start slipping and burning until death. Only the toughest bosses had a chance to escape or would take a long time to kill. Those weren't worth killing so I would move on to grabbing all the respawns instead. Again, that was probably too strong, but literally being able to take out hundreds of mobs in a few seconds was fun. My blasters couldn't do that, but they zoomed from group to group and literally 1 shot a group many levels above it as well. Basically many of the power sets, not all, had a massive AoE damage ability that could be used to 1 shot enemies 10+ levels above your current level. That was all nerfed into the ground at one point. I know some nerfs were lightened back up, and then some re-nerfed at some point. I know this because I came back one shortly before the game was closing. Got on my max level fire/ice tanker and tried to kill some mobs. Even a group that was 20 levels lower than me without bosses I couldn't kill with probably wasting a huge amount of time trying. I was wondering if the game was still in that state or not.

[arcane]

1 minute ago, CometCometh said:

Even a group that was 20 levels lower than me without bosses I couldn't kill with probably wasting a huge amount of time trying. I was wondering if the game was still in that state or not.

It has never been in that state.

[Nuc]

25 minutes ago, CometCometh said:

 

<snip>

No, you absolutely shouldn't play

 

Edit: OK, that was probably a bit harsh. But honestly, if you're expecting the game to be anything like what you described then you're going to disappointed. Seriously, being able to herd up an entire zone of mobs 20 levels above you and burn them all down with 1 button is only probably OP to you?

 

By all means, try the game out again but you really, really need to temper your expectations. You can absolutely make builds capable of doing outrageous things, you just can't completely break the game any more.

Edited January 17 by Nuc

[lemming]

13 minutes ago, arcane said:

It has never been in that state.

Yea, I remember tanks being a bit longer to beat down stuff, but 20 levels diff, no.  Even if you hadn't slotted any enhancements.  Your memories are off in both directions.

 

My current Ice/Ice tank can sit in the middle of +4/x8 of some groups (especially council) and everything will die of frostibite if I just walk away for a bit.  Don't have a fire/* tank, but they'd be fine.     Tanks got over tuned actually for offense, but against most stuff, they're almost impossible to get killed.

[CometCometh]

25 minutes ago, Nuc said:

No, you absolutely shouldn't play

 

Edit: OK, that was probably a bit harsh. But honestly, if you're expecting the game to be anything like what you described then you're going to disappointed. Seriously, being able to herd up an entire zone of mobs 20 levels above you and burn them all down with 1 button is only probably OP to you?

 

By all means, try the game out again but you really, really need to temper your expectations. You can absolutely make builds capable of doing outrageous things, you just can't completely break the game any more.

 

Yah, originally Fire for tanks and Ice was pretty OP. Then again, that was the case for a lot of power sets for all the archetypes. Actually my first character was an Earth/Earth Tanker in beta until I saw a fire tanker lower level than me smash a bigger group of mobs in seconds compared to what took me a couple minutes to do. Then I saw a blast fly by and do the same. And other champs. I was like, this Earth/Earth tanker sucks. And truth be told they did in beta and the early portion of the game. They were one of the massive under performers. For the first couple of years most patches were nerfs and not buffs. Cryptic/NCSoft were on a mission to make everything as bad as the Earth/Earth tanker in terms of performance instead of bringing up the performance of the crap power sets. 

 

I am not saying I want the crazy days of my fire/ice tanker being able to kill off an entire hazard zone at once, even if it took about 30 minutes running around using provoke to gather them all up, of enemies many levels above. I don't want it to be at the point though where the character couldn't kill anything even at max level with hammadon enhancements and BiS stuff at the time. The character was literally unplayable unable to beat up anything. Hence why I was asking if the mega nerfs were there or not. I wasn't asking for the crazy OP numbers to be back. Just not the crazy buttcrack numbers.

[Chrono-Bot]

1 minute ago, CometCometh said:

max level with hammadon enhancements and BiS stuff at the time.

 

 

...we don't have best in slot anything?

[CometCometh]

There were BiS enhancements for certain builds and archetypes.

[Chrono-Bot]

Ah, I see what you mean now!

[Snarky]

2 hours ago, CometCometh said:

Pretty much as the title states, I am wondering if the mega nerfs are still in the game. For context, I used to play a ton of CoH/CoV back in the day. One of the reasons I quit, along with many others, was the terrible ham fisted approach of the mega nerfs. When the developer thought it was best to nerf everyone instead of buff the weaker performers up the game was done for me. It went from City of Heroes to City of Bystanders. This was when the developer decided it was "balanced" around heros basically being able to take out 1-3 basic enemies at a time. Maybe a Lt. Getting more than few enemies on you meant death. Of course at one point some builds and power sets could literally wipe out entire zones and that was a bit much, but when the game was nerfed into the ground some formerly strong builds were pointless to play. Some builds would insta nuke groups of basic enemies and Lts in single hits and would take a little more to drop "bosses" down. The developer thought it would be "better" to have "epic" fights all the time. Which meant instead of instantly nuking even basic enemies, you would have to spend minutes killing them. The decided that almost every encounter should be "group" based to do anything and killed solo play practically.

 

So my question is what is the state of the game right now? Is everything still in the super nerfed state and thus not worth my time or do you actually feel Heroic at later levels of a build? Can you be solo and still wipe out groups living out the power fantasy or do heroes have to spend 5-10 minutes defeating the equivalent of a purse thief in higher level zones?

Every Dev staff of anything will tweak it. Some will not like the tweaks.  I still sting from the Brute nerfing

 

 

Having said that the Homecoming team seems bent on offering up enjoyment for free.  Take the recent performance upgrade to assault rifle. Always a low performance set, in my opinion it is now one of the funnest.  And indeed, with my limited amount if gaming time the only set I currently play.  
 

Make your own judgement.  But do look around deeper first

[Yomo Kimyata]

You can still be invincible, but it's BS.  Here I've got it 6-slotted with defense SOs and I only get a few % to my defense instead of the 120% that it promises!

 

[Judasace]

2 hours ago, CometCometh said:

Pretty much as the title states, I am wondering if the mega nerfs are still in the game. For context, I used to play a ton of CoH/CoV back in the day. One of the reasons I quit, along with many others, was the terrible ham fisted approach of the mega nerfs. When the developer thought it was best to nerf everyone instead of buff the weaker performers up the game was done for me. It went from City of Heroes to City of Bystanders. This was when the developer decided it was "balanced" around heros basically being able to take out 1-3 basic enemies at a time. Maybe a Lt. Getting more than few enemies on you meant death. Of course at one point some builds and power sets could literally wipe out entire zones and that was a bit much, but when the game was nerfed into the ground some formerly strong builds were pointless to play. Some builds would insta nuke groups of basic enemies and Lts in single hits and would take a little more to drop "bosses" down. The developer thought it would be "better" to have "epic" fights all the time. Which meant instead of instantly nuking even basic enemies, you would have to spend minutes killing them. The decided that almost every encounter should be "group" based to do anything and killed solo play practically.

 

So my question is what is the state of the game right now? Is everything still in the super nerfed state and thus not worth my time or do you actually feel Heroic at later levels of a build? Can you be solo and still wipe out groups living out the power fantasy or do heroes have to spend 5-10 minutes defeating the equivalent of a purse thief in higher level zones?

 

I hear they're going to nerf regen again.

[Oubliette_Red]

I'll just recommend that you download and hop into the game and see how it actually plays. Who knows you may actually have fun.

 

[Azari]

28 minutes ago, Judasace said:

 

I hear they're going to nerf regen again.

Who says? And why? Regen is fine. It seems like people hardly use it outside of PVP anyway. Nerfing Regen again would only serve to piss people off. Literally nobody is complaining about regen being OP these days. I sincerely hope there are no regen nerfs planned.

Edited January 17 by Azari

[Doomguide2005]

24 minutes ago, lemming said:

Yea, I remember tanks being a bit longer to beat down stuff, but 20 levels diff, no.  Even if you hadn't slotted any enhancements.  Your memories are off in both directions.

 

My current Ice/Ice tank can sit in the middle of +4/x8 of some groups (especially council) and everything will die of frostibite if I just walk away for a bit.  Don't have a fire/* tank, but they'd be fine.     Tanks got over tuned actually for offense, but against most stuff, they're almost impossible to get killed.

Hell I have a scrapper that can do that (well stand indefinitely amongst) for sure against Cimerorans at +4/×8 and probably several other foe groups as well.  And no unless you were lvl 32 (or perhaps lower) you were not rounding up maps worth of foes that were 20 lvls over you as the game capped at Invincible notoriety which would yield +2 and +3 mobs.   Mathematically the statement is obvious hyperbole as there have never been level 60 or 70+ foes for an endgame Tanker to take on.  Only level 54s that appeared consistently that I know of were Rikti (and brought about what became known as the RWZ challenge).  What ED and the global defense nerfs took away has long since been equalled and surpassed by IO sets, Incarnates and many quality of life changes occurring after i6 or so.