Pumpkin patch needs a severe nerf

[TheSpiritFox]

You created a GM that eats through pets in less than the amount of time it takes to run out of the aoe, and theres no way to tell its coming until it lands. I get making GMs stronger, but creating a damage patch designed to be dangerous to tanks has created a GM with the ability to delete entire patches of players, as well as lore pets and anything Mastermind in like 4 seconds.  Is the damn thing autohit? Because softcap + T4 barrier core does literally nothing. 

 

 

[Excraft]

10 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

Is the damn thing autohit? Because softcap + T4 barrier core does literally nothing. 

 

Have you tried any of the hard mode TF content yet?  Auto-hit and un-resistable damage is how HC have been creating "challenge" for their hard mode content.  It's done specifically to neuter melee characters already at the soft cap for DEF and RES while making support characters more desirable to have on a team. 

[Player2]

41 minutes ago, Excraft said:

 

Have you tried any of the hard mode TF content yet?  Auto-hit and un-resistable damage is how HC have been creating "challenge" for their hard mode content.  It's done specifically to neuter melee characters already at the soft cap for DEF and RES while making support characters more desirable to have on a team. 

What good are support characters if they get killed by the autohit powers?

[TheSpiritFox]

4 hours ago, Excraft said:

 

Have you tried any of the hard mode TF content yet?  Auto-hit and un-resistable damage is how HC have been creating "challenge" for their hard mode content.  It's done specifically to neuter melee characters already at the soft cap for DEF and RES while making support characters more desirable to have on a team. 

No I havent tried those yet, sounds like I dont really want to at this point. That's lazy as f#u%c&k, no wonder I dont see much hardmode s*h@i#t going down, now I understand why. Because they shortcut it. Meanwhile prismatic aethers are steadily rising in price again because with the new player influx theres not enough of them being farmed from anything to keep the market afloat because no one wants to play missions that completely invalidate their entire build. 

Edited March 12 by GM_GooglyMoogly
Language!

[Krimson]

Yeah, I wasn't too thrilled about the new ability outright ignoring Incarnates. Like, why even have game Lore if you're going to break it because that's the only way you can make things challenging?

[TheSpiritFox]

10 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Yeah, I wasn't too thrilled about the new ability outright ignoring Incarnates. Like, why even have game Lore if you're going to break it because that's the only way you can make things challenging?

A real hardmode would have involved more involved mechanics requiring actual team coordination. Anyone remember Mag from WoW? Clicking the boxes to stop the raid from wiping? Auto hit irresistable damage should only be used to punish failure to engage in game mechanics in a situation like that. I can totally understand how creating boss battles that are raid quality is hard as fuck and would require either tons of time or a much bigger dev team, I get that this is volunteer, but what I cant understand is wasting their time on shit like this. 

 

They pretty much just told me that my main AT, masterminds, I just cant do hardmode stuff on. Pets absolutely DEPEND upon defense and resistance to survive. So invalidating that to hit the melee characters harder disproportionately hits everyone else even harder. 

 

Ive watched Pumkin patch just murder 5+ players at a time if theyre clustered up in range, no recourse. Sentinel tried to run out and died before they got out of it, everyone else was in an attack animation and died before they had a chance to move. 

Thats not hard, thats just unfair. And this isnt WoW so we dont have like a raid warnings mod we can at least let us know an attack thatll wipe us is on the way. If they really wanted to create genuinely challenging content for this game theyd have to redesign a bunch of shit from the ground up. This game was very much not designed to scale up into real raid level challenge, and trying to shove it in after the fact I would like to officially say has failed. I sometimes go days without seeing a 4 star instance advertised, and when they are usually they're just some melee toons begging for /cold corruptors. 

 

Yeah that's good for game health. 

Edited March 11 by TheSpiritFox

[Lockely]

Ideally for something like Pumpkin Patch there should be a telegraph on the ground *before* the spell goes off. They could do it with the same Psuedopet they use for Liquid Nitrogen, but recolor it orange or whatever. Have it go down and as it *dies* the Patch goes down in its place.

[Krimson]

In the end, the changes aren't going to stop me from trying to solo them. I think Pumpkin Patch was designed with Masterminds in mind since MMs can chew through GMs faster than the Corruptors I use. Eventually, I'll see what I can get done. 

[macskull]

1 hour ago, TheSpiritFox said:

A real hardmode would have involved more involved mechanics requiring actual team coordination

Yeah, go ahead and wander into a 4* PuG where no one talks in team chat and let me know how that one goes.

[Monos King]

Maybe something like this would be more up your alley @TheSpiritFox

 

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, TheSpiritFox said:

A real hardmode would have involved more involved mechanics requiring actual team coordination. Anyone remember Mag from WoW?

What I remember are the obelisks from the Cavern of Transcendence, the twin computers in a non-arc mission (from Tina MacIntyre?), and a few other missions that required team coordination. And they sucked. Horribly. Even with the Cavern of Transcendence when someone would count down to make sure everyone clicked their obelisk at about the same time or trying to run off the visual cue that someone had just clicked their obelisk, there were many, many failed runs because of how coordinating actions (does not) work(s) in this game.

 

Edit: Also add the two Reischman TFs/SFs where someone had to slip by insta-dead lasers or the correct AT had to be in the correct spot to hurt Reischman.

Edited March 12 by Rudra

[Indystruck]

[Krimson]

9 minutes ago, Indystruck said:

Trying to hoverblast him with my Rad/Atom Blaster is on the list. 🙂

[Ghost]

5 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

 

 

Ive watched Pumkin patch just murder 5+ players at a time if theyre clustered up in range, no recourse. Sentinel tried to run out and died before they got out of it, everyone else was in an attack animation and died before they had a chance to move. 

Thats not hard, thats just unfair. 

Now you know how Adamaster feels

[Shin Magmus]

7 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

No I havent tried those yet, sounds like I dont really want to at this point. That's lazy as f#u%c&k, no wonder I dont see much hardmode s*h@i#t going down, now I understand why. Because they shortcut it. Meanwhile prismatic aethers are steadily rising in price again because with the new player influx theres not enough of them being farmed from anything to keep the market afloat because no one wants to play missions that completely invalidate their entire build. 

It sounds to me like you're a bit more "lazy" than the devs if you hate ever having any content give you any incentive to move around: and you prefer easy fights where you can just sit still and push buttons while ignoring anything the enemies do...

[TheSpiritFox]

16 minutes ago, ShinMagmus said:

It sounds to me like you're a bit more "lazy" than the devs if you hate ever having any content give you any incentive to move around: and you prefer easy fights where you can just sit still and push buttons while ignoring anything the enemies do...

 Untelegraphed AOE attacks that kill you before you can run out of them are bullshit. We're not all playing brutes and tanks dude. 

Edited March 12 by TheSpiritFox

[Rudra]

39 minutes ago, TheSpiritFox said:

 Untelegraphed AOE attacks that kill you before you can run out of them are bullshit. We're not all playing brutes and tanks dude. 

You could always try not grouping together. Like how in the Underground iTrial, the Avatar of Hamidon is turned away form the league by a Tanker or Brute and everyone does their level best to not be grouped together in case it turns around and blasts the league. (Edit: In fact, that used to be a necessary tactic against the Hamidon. Everyone not hitting yellows scattered to keep the blues from END wiping the league or killing ranged characters.)

 

Edited March 12 by Rudra
Edited to add "by a Tanker or Brute".

[Shin Magmus]

2 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

 Untelegraphed AOE attacks that kill you before you can run out of them are bullshit. We're not all playing brutes and tanks dude. 

I get out of Pumpkin Patch on my Illu Controller reliably when fighting Eochai, even if it knocks me down once.  I have to move in to place Poison Trap, I get hurt, then I back out and am still alive.  It doesn't kill you before you can run out of it.  It's not even that much damage in the grand scheme of things: it just forces you to move (and the intent is that you also move Eochai out of it, but you can beat him even if he doesn't, depending on your character/team).

[Shin Magmus]

14 hours ago, Player2 said:

What good are support characters if they get killed by the autohit powers?

Actual healing, Regen buffs, +Absorb especially (Nature and Elec Affinity shine a lot here), and debuffs to the enemy stats to make them more manageable to kill quickly as well as halting their regen while your team has to reposition.

[Excraft]

17 hours ago, Player2 said:

What good are support characters if they get killed by the autohit powers?

 

Generally, support characters aren't in melee range which is where these intentional auto-hit / un-resistable damage auras are located.  They were designed to neuter melee more than anything else and "encourage" melee players to actually move.  That's in addition to making support characters more desirable/required for a team. 

 

7 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

Untelegraphed AOE attacks that kill you before you can run out of them are bullshit. We're not all playing brutes and tanks dude. 

 

Most all of the auto-hit instant death auras are telegraphed quite well and give you sufficient time to move out of range, unless you're stuck mid-animation or held.  Goldbrickers exploding in the Aeon SF are a good example.  With that said, the Rikti death bubbles in the LGTF are very, very poorly designed.  They're extremely difficult to see, especially given the over saturation of VFX spam that the bubbles get buried under.  By the time you realize you're inside one, you're dead. 

 

I'm generally not a fan of instant death auto-hit stuff myself.  It doesn't make anything "harder", just more tedious and annoying.  I personally think it's unimaginative, but it is what it is here.  I don't think it should be changed or removed as there are people enjoying the hard mode content. 

[Excraft]

13 hours ago, Indystruck said:

 

This doesn't work if you're held/immobilized in some way or stuck in a long attack animation. 

[Lockely]

3 hours ago, ShinMagmus said:

Actual healing, Regen buffs, +Absorb especially (Nature and Elec Affinity shine a lot here), and debuffs to the enemy stats to make them more manageable to kill quickly as well as halting their regen while your team has to reposition.

 

You need to remember OP is coming at this from the perspective of an MM player. We're classified as 'support' as well, though most of our support comes through both our pets and our secondaries, and aren't as strong as a full blown support class in many cases.

Things like Pumpkin Patch just outright delete our pets, and often delete us as we need to be in supremacy range to keep our pets even useful. If my pets get nuked, I have to spend a good 1/3 of the boss's HP bar resummoning and rebuffing, and if I'm not on one of my incarnates with Ageless, a significant portion of my END too. I also lose out on Bodyguard Mode and a significant amount of my own defense as a result.

I won't even play my melee henchmen MMs in anything more than just mobbing or AE anymore. I stick to my Bots and use Group Fly (until I get inevitably yelled at by someone who hasn't disabled it at Null) and try to hang back. Something like that should have, at a bare minimum, a telegraph for counterplay purposes. Both to allow people in animation lock to have a moment to GTFO, but to also allow those of us with Pets the chance to move them before they're killed by the very first tick.

[TheSpiritFox]

5 hours ago, ShinMagmus said:

I get out of Pumpkin Patch on my Illu Controller reliably when fighting Eochai, even if it knocks me down once.  I have to move in to place Poison Trap, I get hurt, then I back out and am still alive.  It doesn't kill you before you can run out of it.  It's not even that much damage in the grand scheme of things: it just forces you to move (and the intent is that you also move Eochai out of it, but you can beat him even if he doesn't, depending on your character/team).

You have alot more base HP than I do.  But even with that, if youre stuck in any long animation, on a troller, corruptor, etc, you're dead when pumpkin patch hits. If youre not at full health already when it hits, youre dead. Nothing about that is a "good" gameplay mechanic. Its stupid, and its lazy programming. 

 

Im also gonna say, why not make it a huge mez? Instead of instant damage, pumpkin patch starts at Mag 1 and increases in mag every second after it lands until it hits mag 10 so that if you get stuck in it you are gonna end up mezzed for its entire duration unless someone teleports you out of it or you get a few clear minds stacked on you or something.  It would still have the ability to take people out of the fight, but would do so in a way that invites team based counter play. And it took me a day of thinking about it to come up with. This is not that hard. 

Edited March 12 by TheSpiritFox

[BlueDagger]

Add a +1 to it being a bit over the top. If you're melee, and not a durable brute/tank you're likely dead.  Ground fire animations are very difficult to move out of fast enough due to the shear number of effect going off in CoH. If you want to keep it that deadly, and make it an anti-solo, then make it a big ol' cone instead so positioning matters.

[Lockely]

13 minutes ago, TheSpiritFox said:

You have alot more base HP than I do.  But even with that, if youre stuck in any long animation, on a troller, corruptor, etc, you're dead when pumpkin patch hits. If youre not at full health already when it hits, youre dead. Nothing about that is a "good" gameplay mechanic. Its stupid, and its lazy programming. 

 

I wouldn't say it's stupid or lazy, the devs are volunteers and not professionals getting paid. It sucks when these things aren't fully considered for things like GM updates, but it's better than the bosses being a 30s punching bag like they used to. But feedback like this is important and they'll get better at this through iteration and updates.