For the love of boxing and kick

[ThatGuyCDude]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

You are comparing a prestige power that back on Live you had to play the game for 7 years to get to pool power attacks that everyone got access to immediately. Yes, on HC we don't have to wait years of account time to get the prestige powers, we can just get them for free from the START vendor, but that is still a false comparison. Prestige powers serve a different purpose than pool powers despite their overlap. Prestige powers also cannot be enhanced while pool powers can be. (Edit: And prestige powers ignore your global bonuses whereas pool powers do not.)

It's not a false comparison, it's absolutely apt as the travel powers from the START vendor you yourself referenced were ALSO prestige powers (or in some cases cash shop powers).

The history doesn't matter (and don't try to school me like I wasn't there), those powers are available to everyone at the start *now*.  That's a paradigm shift, and the powers available for selection on level up need to be changed to address it.  Why would anyone willingly take a power pool intro attack when--even unenhanced--a prestige attack outperforms them in virtually every regard?  Even the challenge builds I've run were out of desire to see how ridiculously bad those attacks actually are: again, they're traps designed to trick new players into wasting a power pick and having to respec, and that's bad game design.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

It's not a false comparison, it's absolutely apt as the travel powers from the START vendor you yourself referenced were ALSO prestige powers (or in some cases cash shop powers).

Except I'm not comparing them to anything. Just stating that players buy them so they don't need to use a power slot choice on them.

 

1 hour ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

(and don't try to school me like I wasn't there)

And I am supposed to know who all played when and for how long? The comment was relevant to my point, so I made it. It has no bearing on when you played or for how long.

 

1 hour ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

Why would anyone willingly take a power pool intro attack when--even unenhanced--a prestige attack outperforms them in virtually every regard?

So let's run a comparison.

 

                                           Sands of Mu                                                   Boxing

Accuracy:                                                1                                                           1

Range:                                             7 feet                                                     7 feet

Cast Time:                             3.07 seconds                                          1.07 seconds

Root Time:                             3.07 seconds                                          1.07 seconds

ATBE*:                                        .5 seconds                                             .5 seconds

Recharge:                                 16 seconds                                            2.5 seconds

END Cost:                                       10.66                                                         4.42

Effect:                         Cone (45 deg. angle)                                          Single Target

Max Targets:                                         5                                                               1

Secondary Effect:       Formula -ToHit                                                     Mag 2 Stun

                                  (-7.5% per game)          (per game) +100% recharge to target

                                                                                            (per game) -10% regen

                                                                                        (per game) -10% recovery

                                                                                             (with Kick) Mag 3 Stun

                                                                                          (with Cross Punch) -END

                                                                                           (with Cross Punch) -REC

% Secondary:                                  100%                                                          10%

                                                                                                 (per game) unstated

                                                                                                 (per game) unstated

                                                                                                 (per game) unstated

                                                                                                         (with Kick) 35%

                                                                                          (with Cross Punch) 100%

                                                                                          (with Cross Punch) 100%

Damage:                                   Formulaic                                                  Formulaic

                                    (28.86 x4 on level 50 MM)                (15.68 on level 50 MM unslotted)**

Slottable Enhancements:                      No                                                         Yes

Affected by Globals:                             No                                                         Yes

 

So the only advantage I see Sands of Mu has over Boxing is just its damage. (Edit: Oh, and it can hit up to 5 targets.)

 

*- Animation Time Before Effect

** - Damage improves if you take Kick and/or Cross Punch, which I did not on my MM.

 

 

 

Edited May 27 by Rudra
Edited to correct "Shadow Maul" to "Sands of Mu". And again to add ** note.

[kelika2]

And thematically someone who has super reflexes wont be much of a street boxer or a thug kicker or even someone who can take a hit would just go strait to Weave. 

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, kelika2 said:

And thematically someone who has super reflexes wont be much of a street boxer or a thug kicker or even someone who can take a hit would just go strait to Weave. 

Says who? Especially since their Super Reflexes secondary already covers their super reflexes. (Edit: The Fighting pool isn't the Super Reflexes pool. There is a separate power set that covers that. So maybe the super reflexive character decided to dabble in some boxing or learn how to throw a better kick, learn how to take a hit for when his/her/their super reflexes isn't quite enough, and so learns the Fighting pool.)

Edited May 29 by Rudra

[Herotu]

On 5/27/2024 at 3:31 AM, Rudra said:

So the only advantage I see Sands of Mu has over Boxing is just its damage. (Edit: Oh, and it can hit up to 5 targets.)

The "only" advantage is that it can do more damage to more targets. When you consider that it's an attack power, I'd say that's it's primary function. 

 

The only thing it's better at is it's primary function. 

[Rudra]

7 hours ago, Herotu said:

The "only" advantage is that it can do more damage to more targets. When you consider that it's an attack power, I'd say that's it's primary function. 

 

The only thing it's better at is it's primary function. 

Because no attack has the primary function of controlling the battlespace or debuffing enemies. And those attacks that debuff enemies don't do less damage than those attacks that don't. Obviously.

 

Edit: By itself, Boxing inflicts 4 debuffs. And as far as I can tell, 3 of those debuffs always apply.

Edited May 29 by Rudra

[PeregrineFalcon]

Four debuffs? Four? Since when?

 

Looking at the wiki Boxing: has a small chance to stun foes, and has a small chance to drain a tiny amount of Endurance (1) and lowering Recovery (2) slightly, but only if you have also trained Cross Punch. Stun's a mez, not a debuff. Draining a tiny amount of Endurance is technically a debuff and lowering Recovery, even though it's also just tiny amount is also technically a debuff. Where's the other two?

 

Bottom line: if they doubled Boxing's damage and also doubled the chance to Stun it'd almost be worth keeping in my power tray.

[Greycat]

7 hours ago, Herotu said:

The "only" advantage is that it can do more damage to more targets. When you consider that it's an attack power, I'd say that's it's primary function.

 

It (and the other P2W attacks) are also unaffected by the Rage crash in Super Strength, as it's not "your" power.  (And takes long enough that you're not "doing nothing" during said crash for very long.)

[Rudra]

14 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Four debuffs? Four? Since when?

 

Looking at the wiki Boxing: has a small chance to stun foes, and has a small chance to drain a tiny amount of Endurance (1) and lowering Recovery (2) slightly, but only if you have also trained Cross Punch. Stun's a mez, not a debuff. Draining a tiny amount of Endurance is technically a debuff and lowering Recovery, even though it's also just tiny amount is also technically a debuff. Where's the other two?

 

Bottom line: if they doubled Boxing's damage and also doubled the chance to Stun it'd almost be worth keeping in my power tray.

In the game under Detailed Info, it also lists +100% recharge, -10% regeneration, and -10% recovery as debuffs it inflicts. Without Kick or Cross Punch. (Edit: Cross Punch adds -2% END and -5% recovery.)

 

(Edit again: I agree that Boxing's damage is excessively low even with its debuffs, but I still say that the debuffs need to be factored in for whether the power is good or not. Even doubling its damage should keep it below primary/secondary set attacks. [I think. I haven't gone through them all to check.] But it isn't as worthless as everyone says it is. And I most definitely oppose trying to merge the pools to skip the prerequisites or anything else that would bypass them.)

 

Edited May 29 by Rudra
Edited to add missed "%".

[Luminara]

26 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Bottom line: if they doubled Boxing's damage

 

Since I had Mids' open, I cleared the character I was working on and ran a quick analysis using the brute archetype.  Boxing's DPA for brutes is 24.01 without the Fighting pool synergy bonuses (31.22 with).  Doubling its damage would give it higher DPA than most of the primary attacks, and with Fighting synergy, better DPA than all attacks except Energy Transfer, Freezing Touch, Greater Psi Blade, Seismic Smash, Knockout Blow and Clobber.

 

That wouldn't be balanced.

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 minute ago, Luminara said:

That wouldn't be balanced.

You are correct. I was using info from the post above comparing Boxing to Sands of Mu, and I made the mistake of simply comparing damage without considering animation time.

 

In any case, Boxing's debuffs appear to be so small as to be not really worth mentioning. 10% chance for a mag 2 Stun for 4 seconds. That will basically cause a minion to skip 1 attack. -5% Recovery for 5 seconds. That will literally have zero effect in PvE ever.

 

In any case, unless the damage is increased, or the mezs/debuffs are increased to point where a player actually notices them, Boxing and Kick still aren't going to be staying in people's trays and we're going to keep getting threads like this one.

[tidge]

4 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

Since I had Mids' open, I cleared the character I was working on and ran a quick analysis using the brute archetype.  Boxing's DPA for brutes is 24.01 without the Fighting pool synergy bonuses (31.22 with).  Doubling its damage would give it higher DPA than most of the primary attacks, and with Fighting synergy, better DPA than all attacks except Energy Transfer, Freezing Touch, Greater Psi Blade, Seismic Smash, Knockout Blow and Clobber.

 

[Luminara]

5 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

[tidge]

10 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

 

4 minutes ago, Luminara said:

[MsSmart]

On 5/26/2024 at 2:09 PM, Rudra said:

You can't compare what a pen and paper table top game does to a video game. Table top games have a game master that runs the game and tailors everything to the players. Video games do not. So they must be designed to be playable regardless of whether a player chooses to play solo or run with a team and regardless of what AT that player chooses and what powers from what power sets in whatever AT the player goes with. Which is a massive range of possibilities from the best to the worst, and the game has to be designed to run itself against that in a manner that doesn't drive players away. So let's say players can take any tier 1 pool power to unlock any tier 2 pool power to unlock any tier 3 pool power. What do we get?

 

Well, let's assume the player is making a Scrapper. You only need 4 powers to build an attack chain with, but we'll go with 5. Some armors you can skip multiple powers from, but we'll say the player takes 8 of them. So that is 13 of their 24 powers chosen for their build. That leaves 11 powers from pools. So we start with Hasten for the Holy Quad. That unlocks Tough. That unlocks literally everything else. So now we also grab Weave, Maneuvers, Combat Jumping, and Unrelenting. So now we only have 5 more powers to choose. Our END cost is pretty high and we still lack ranged attacks, so lets dip into the APPs. Let's grab Conserve Power from Energy Mastery. That unlocks Physical Perfection. Now all APP powers are unlocked. So we grab Targeting Drone and Moonbeam. Now we still have 1 more power we can choose. So we take Mace Beam for our 2nd snipe attack or we can take our choice of Summon Widow, Psionic Nexus, Summon Guardian, or Ice Elemental. Maybe we don't care about having a sniper though, so instead we take two pet summon powers. Because of course no one is ever going to do that and throw what little game balance we have left out the window.

 

(Edit: And before anyone says "But what about travel powers?", I didn't forget them. They buy those at the START vendor.)

Actually you can, because you talking about design philosophy. This game with a synthetic game master, does exactly what you described, look at the scenarios or missions built, they are custom made to the various character concepts, sure some of these concepts can be quite cookie cutter, but still valid concepts.

 

I actually like your concept of the scrapper build, actually becoming well rounded. Now you made a very bold statement about sending the game out of balance, I would dare believe you are being a bit over dramatic about it. Because the game is about choices, you give up something to get something, and the value of that new something, is truly in the eye of the beholder. You can't just judge the new power while ignoring what you gave up for it. For example lets talk IOs, if  you decide to only use 5 out of the set of 6, so you can add, say a chance for DPS, you very definitely gave up some of the strongest buffs of the IO set to gain a percent chance of additional damage, is that like wow game balance going to the toilet?

[Rudra]

4 minutes ago, MsSmart said:

This game with a synthetic game master, does exactly what you described, look at the scenarios or missions built, they are custom made to the various character concepts,

Where and how? The missions/arcs are not built around various character concepts. They are built to a baseline expectation of what players can build in the game. So there is no game-made tweaks to address the various character concepts or builds a player may come up with. If they were custom made to the various character concepts, then the missions would all function radically different depending on what the player(s) bring to it. But they don't. If you bring a lone Controller to a mission, the mission runs the exact same as if you brought a lone Tanker to the mission. The game doesn't care if you have a full team of 8 petless MMs that only took powers from the power pools or if you have a full team of 8 fully tricked out Defenders supporting each other or anything else. It looks at team size, which can be 'spoofed' by the difficulty settings to a larger team than you actually are, and it looks at the mission holder's chosen level shift settings. That's it. No custom made for various character concepts scenarios or missions outside of HEAT/VEAT specific arcs. And even those don't care what you bring to the mission, it's just the story that is custom for the HEATs/VEATs. The only thing that can be claimed to be custom are the Quantums the game spawns for HEATs. No other character concept or build comes into play.

 

12 minutes ago, MsSmart said:

Now you made a very bold statement about sending the game out of balance, I would dare believe you are being a bit over dramatic about it.

You are free to believe whatever you want. I stand by comment. The overuse of Judgements and other incarnate powers to fast clear level 45 content at no risk would be my main point about balance in the game dying.

 

14 minutes ago, MsSmart said:

For example lets talk IOs, if  you decide to only use 5 out of the set of 6, so you can add, say a chance for DPS, you very definitely gave up some of the strongest buffs of the IO set to gain a percent chance of additional damage, is that like wow game balance going to the toilet?

Why would I take IOs as an example? What does that have to do with power pool powers, their effectiveness, their prerequisites, or how players can better optimize their characters for a game they are already over-optimized to deal with the content when those prerequisites are taken out? The desire to do away with prerequisite powers from the power pools, or to just make all the pools one big pool, or to replace some of the prerequisite powers with more powers like Hasten, Tough, and Weave except expanded to cover more resists and status protections is all about squeezing as much power into a character as possible. Between this and the requests for more enhancement slots for characters, that takes away the very costs you are citing.

 

19 minutes ago, MsSmart said:

I actually like your concept of the scrapper build, actually becoming well rounded.

That build was intentionally not well rounded. So we obviously have different ideas of what a well rounded character in the CoX game is.

[Communistpenguin]

On 5/18/2024 at 2:41 PM, Rudra said:

The level cap increase from 40 to 50 was a red side thing. Blue side was always level 50. Red side was capped at level 40 when released, though I don't remember the specific reason why and it was announced as a temporary level cap.

Necro response, but this is not true. When he game shipped, the cap was 40. Issue 1 brought the cap to 50. 

[Rudra]

39 minutes ago, Communistpenguin said:

Necro response, but this is not true. When he game shipped, the cap was 40. Issue 1 brought the cap to 50. 

 

On 5/18/2024 at 12:53 PM, megaericzero said:

On 5/18/2024 at 12:41 PM, Rudra said:

Red side was capped at level 40 when released, though I don't remember the specific reason why and it was announced as a temporary level cap.

If I had to guess, Grandville wasn't done yet since it was a big marquee addition for Issue 7 (the issue after COV's release). Paragonwiki lists that Issue 1: Through the Looking Glass (which added Peregrine Island and the Rikti Crash Site) raised the hero level cap from 40 to 50 as well.

 

On 5/18/2024 at 12:54 PM, Frozen Burn said:

On 5/18/2024 at 12:41 PM, Rudra said:

The level cap increase from 40 to 50 was a red side thing. Blue side was always level 50. Red side was capped at level 40 when released, though I don't remember the specific reason why and it was announced as a temporary level cap.

 

They didn't have the lvl 41-50 content ready by the time they had to release, if i recall correctly. 

 

Looking at the timeline, i6 "Along Came a Spider" (CoV) was released on Oct 27, 2005.  It was June 6, 2006 (~7 mos later) that i7 "Destiny Manifest" was released - which gave us Grandville and the Patron Pool powers, mayhem missions, and Recluse's Victory (a 4th PVP zone).

 

On 5/18/2024 at 1:17 PM, Rudra said:

On 5/18/2024 at 12:53 PM, megaericzero said:

If I had to guess, Grandville wasn't done yet since it was a big marquee addition for Issue 7 (the issue after COV's release). Paragonwiki lists that Issue 1: Through the Looking Glass (which added Peregrine Island and the Rikti Crash Site) raised the hero level cap from 40 to 50 as well.

 

On 5/18/2024 at 12:54 PM, Frozen Burn said:

 

They didn't have the lvl 41-50 content ready by the time they had to release, if i recall correctly. 

 

Looking at the timeline, i6 "Along Came a Spider" (CoV) was released on Oct 27, 2005.  It was June 6, 2006 (~7 mos later) that i7 "Destiny Manifest" was released - which gave us Grandville and the Patron Pool powers, mayhem missions, and Recluse's Victory (a 4th PVP zone).

Thanks for the reminder. I forgot about that.

 

[Communistpenguin]

Blue side was also level 40 when it shipped. The quotes you provided specify red side, but blue side did not get level 41-50 till the first update. 

 

https://cityofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Issue_1

 

"The level cap of heroes was raised from 40 to 50"

[Captain Fabulous]

/powercreep

[Captain Fabulous]

1 minute ago, Communistpenguin said:

Blue side was also level 40 when it shipped. The quotes you provided specify red side, but blue side did not get level 41-50 till the first update. 

 

https://cityofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Issue_1

 

"The level cap of heroes was raised from 40 to 50"

Yup. When the game first released the level cap was 40, Peregrine Island and epic pools didn't exist yet. They came later.

[Rudra]

8 minutes ago, Communistpenguin said:

Blue side was also level 40 when it shipped. The quotes you provided specify red side, but blue side did not get level 41-50 till the first update. 

 

https://cityofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Issue_1

 

"The level cap of heroes was raised from 40 to 50"

 

43 minutes ago, Rudra said:

On 5/18/2024 at 12:53 PM, megaericzero said:

On 5/18/2024 at 12:41 PM, Rudra said:

Red side was capped at level 40 when released, though I don't remember the specific reason why and it was announced as a temporary level cap.

If I had to guess, Grandville wasn't done yet since it was a big marquee addition for Issue 7 (the issue after COV's release). Paragonwiki lists that Issue 1: Through the Looking Glass (which added Peregrine Island and the Rikti Crash Site) raised the hero level cap from 40 to 50 as well.

 

[Chris24601]

Personally, if something were to be done with the fighting pool, I’d replace both boxing and kick with buffs to brawl (which has an alternate kick animation for weapon users).

 

I know it already does this as a minor side buff, but I’m saying make the buff to brawl the actual focus of the power and thereby replace the extra click power with an auto power that makes brawl better.

 

Also maybe include the kick animation along with the left and right punch in brawl’s default animation rotation… or make it a customization option; standard, left only, right only, kick only, punch/punch/kick mix).

[OverkillEngine]

On 5/29/2024 at 2:36 PM, PeregrineFalcon said:

In any case, unless the damage is increased, or the mezs/debuffs are increased to point where a player actually notices them, Boxing and Kick still aren't going to be staying in people's trays and we're going to keep getting threads like this one.

 

Or unless they can pick something other than Boxing/Kick as a pre-requisite. I'll concede that it's "OK" to have one of the possible pre-requisites be utterly abject dreck for anyone aiming for a build above meme-tier. And if one is taking all the powers in Fighting, said build is *very* meme-tier.

Just not both/all the choices.

[arcane]

4 minutes ago, OverkillEngine said:

And if one is taking all the powers in Fighting, said build is *very* meme-tier.

There’s nothing “meme-tier” about a double synergy Cross Punch. It’s quite meta in some circles, even.