Enemy Damage

[Ultimo]

2 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

You're a lying liar who's lying.

 

There, is that clear enough for you? Either post some screenshots of these damage numbers or you're lying. Period.

 

Go ahead and report my post. It's ok, I'm used to it.

I'm not going to report anything.  I can understand how some of my posts are being misconstrued.

 

The character being hit has 1017.4 health.  Now, this is in the AE, so I understand this isn't a fair test.  However, you wanted me to show you a screenshot.  There it is.

[PeregrineFalcon]

4 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

However, you wanted me to show you a screenshot.  There it is.

And post a screenshot you did. I apologize for calling you a liar, sir. I was clearly wrong.

 

I don't suppose you have a screenshot of that AV that hit you for 11K?

[Ultimo]

I'm afraid not.  But that's part of the point of making this thread, to get away from the anecdotal stuff and do some testing everyone can replicate.

 

In fact, I'm realizing that the numbers really are beside the point.  My position is simply that EBs and AVs do too much damage.  Whether it's 700 damage, 7000 damage or 11000 damage is really not the point.  It's that whatever damage they're doing is too much for many characters to be able to fight against.  Again, not WIN against, just fight.  I refer you to my hockey analogy.  It's playing the game that's fun, not necessarily winning (though, that's fun too).  With enemies doing so much damage, there's no fight, and therefore no fun.

[arcane]

32 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

I'm afraid not.  But that's part of the point of making this thread, to get away from the anecdotal stuff and do some testing everyone can replicate.

 

In fact, I'm realizing that the numbers really are beside the point.  My position is simply that EBs and AVs do too much damage.  Whether it's 700 damage, 7000 damage or 11000 damage is really not the point.  It's that whatever damage they're doing is too much for many characters to be able to fight against.  Again, not WIN against, just fight.  I refer you to my hockey analogy.  It's playing the game that's fun, not necessarily winning (though, that's fun too).  With enemies doing so much damage, there's no fight, and therefore no fun.

Sounds like a skill issue tbh

[PeregrineFalcon]

24 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

My position is simply that EBs and AVs do too much damage.

Look, I understand what you're saying, but you do realize that EBs and AVs do MUCH more damage in melee than they do at ranged, right?

 

Their melee attacks are tuned for Tanks and Brutes and tougher Scrappers, their ranged attacks are tuned for squishies. The entire class (AT) system, enemy classification system, and game mechanics focus around it being like that on purpose. So essentially you're not asking for a small fix, you're asking for all of that to be changed.

 

You're right, the numbers are beside the point. The point is that you didn't stay in your lane and the game mechanics punished you for it. That's not a mistake, that's how it's supposed to work. This game isn't Champions the tabletop RPG, it's City of Heroes the MMO. You can't use one as an example to show why the other game is flawed, just as you can't complain that CoH doesn't have En Passant Capture.

[Glacier Peak]

49 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Look, I understand what you're saying

After going down the same road you're heading, I can tell you personally that there is no destination where the OP will engage in good faith discussion. You can post actual data, free from bias and they will ignore it. You can provide them with strategies or mechanics that will completely alleviate their problems - they will ignore them. You can offer to team with them so you can show them in game and they will ignore it. 

[lemming]

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Champions the tabletop RPG,

Hey now!  I pointed out his Champions example was pretty flawed as well.

[golstat2003]

2 hours ago, Ultimo said:

I'm afraid not.  But that's part of the point of making this thread, to get away from the anecdotal stuff and do some testing everyone can replicate.

 

In fact, I'm realizing that the numbers really are beside the point.  My position is simply that EBs and AVs do too much damage.  Whether it's 700 damage, 7000 damage or 11000 damage is really not the point.  It's that whatever damage they're doing is too much for many characters to be able to fight against.  Again, not WIN against, just fight.  I refer you to my hockey analogy.  It's playing the game that's fun, not necessarily winning (though, that's fun too).  With enemies doing so much damage, there's no fight, and therefore no fun.

 

AVs are meant to be a team fight. Not solo. So no, they are not doing too mcuh damage when they are meant to take on 8 player characters.

Edited August 27 by golstat2003

[Ultimo]

40 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

 

AVs are meant to be a team fight. Not solo. So no, they are not doing too mcuh damage when they are meant to take on 8 player characters.

As I said, I'm not expecting anyone to solo an AV.  What I'm saying is that everyone should be able to put up some kind of fight before they have to either run away or be defeated.

 

Consider this.  My Controller fights an AV.  Scenario 1, the AV hits my Controller once, does 700 damage, and the Controller runs away because another hit finishes him.

Scenario 2, the AV hits the Controller, but does 150 damage.  The Controller has another 650 health, so he throws a couple of control powers, maybe a heal, maybe a debuff.  The AV hits him a few more times, and finally the Controller runs away before he's finished.

 

Maybe it's me, but I find scenario 2 FAR more fun to play, because I had a chance to DO something.  The AV did just as much damage, just not all at once.

I don't know, maybe I've not been clear enough.  Does this help?

[Skyhawke]

Sooooo, you want to bravely run away as opposed to cowardly run away?

 

 

[Ukase]

4 hours ago, Ultimo said:

I'm afraid not.  But that's part of the point of making this thread, to get away from the anecdotal stuff and do some testing everyone can replicate.

 

In fact, I'm realizing that the numbers really are beside the point.  My position is simply that EBs and AVs do too much damage.  Whether it's 700 damage, 7000 damage or 11000 damage is really not the point.  It's that whatever damage they're doing is too much for many characters to be able to fight against.  Again, not WIN against, just fight.  I refer you to my hockey analogy.  It's playing the game that's fun, not necessarily winning (though, that's fun too).  With enemies doing so much damage, there's no fight, and therefore no fun.

First, we must understand and agree that "fun" is subjective. So is "challenge". What's fun and challenging for you may not be fun or challenging for me, and vice-versa. 

I do not see a solution to this "issue". If the powers that be read your posts and agree, then how will the rest of us deal with these HP pinatas for EBs? Will we get bored and find another game? Maybe. Will we ramp up the difficulty and get more xp? probably a bit more likely. Still, what about next week, when the next player with a post count under 20 comes and says it's too hard and not fun? Do they eventually find a level 7 Hellion to stand in for Hopkins? 

 

[Doomguide2005]

1 hour ago, Ultimo said:

As I said, I'm not expecting anyone to solo an AV.  What I'm saying is that everyone should be able to put up some kind of fight before they have to either run away or be defeated.

 

Consider this.  My Controller fights an AV.  Scenario 1, the AV hits my Controller once, does 700 damage, and the Controller runs away because another hit finishes him.

Scenario 2, the AV hits the Controller, but does 150 damage.  The Controller has another 650 health, so he throws a couple of control powers, maybe a heal, maybe a debuff.  The AV hits him a few more times, and finally the Controller runs away before he's finished.

 

Maybe it's me, but I find scenario 2 FAR more fun to play, because I had a chance to DO something.  The AV did just as much damage, just not all at once.

I don't know, maybe I've not been clear enough.  Does this help?

Scenario 1)  Sheesh, I screwed that up.  Forgeting to buff my resistance and overshooting my jumping in to land in melee while not letting my allies know I was going in .... 

Scenario 2) lol, that looked like barely tickled the scrapper.  And why is he emoting reading a newspaper and muttering how this game lacks any challenge in Discord.

 

IF!  you repeatedly used solid and varied tactics and repeatedly got plastered so fast my various Empaths couldn't save you, well then I might see reason to agree and at least look into more testing.  But when I see a support teammate move into melee range of an AV with vastly insufficient buffs or debuffs present to support life ... umm, welcome to triage

Edited August 27 by Doomguide2005

[Burk]

On 8/24/2024 at 12:54 AM, Jacke said:

In a Lambda iTrial on my AR/Dev Blaster, I took an enraged Marauder's Nova Fist and lived to tell the tale.  Several times.

 

It was on the Toon's Power Mastery build while running Personal Force Field.  Which cut the damage so my Toon, with some MaxHP bonuses, had some HP left after taking Nova Fist.  And the Sustain Regen got things back to MaxHP fairly quickly.  Note there's no way I could keep Marauder's aggro with PFF up.  Except maybe putting out my Gun Drone, which likely wouldn't survive Nova Fist.

 

Not quite a useful tactic, but I thought it interesting.

 

Just to let you know, Nova Fist cannot kill anything by itself, only with extra damage from other attacks. It is autohit and does 99% of your maximum health in unresistable damage (https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=praetorians.p_marauder.nova_fist_punch&at=boss_praetorianarchvillain). Hence PFF did nothing against it and max HP bonuses, while usually good, actually increased the amount of damage that you took. Your Gun Drone actually would come out even better since pets only take 49% of their maximum health.

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, Ultimo said:

Consider this. 

Consider not doing that and instead try something else that changes the outcome. Your stated strategies are synonymous with running in to a brick wall repeatedly and expecting to some how not be concussed.

 

For the love of all that read your threads, please just do ANYTHING differently. At least Snarky makes us laugh with their PUG stories!

[Ultimo]

38 minutes ago, Skyhawke said:

Sooooo, you want to bravely run away as opposed to cowardly run away?

 

 

In a manner of speaking, yes!

33 minutes ago, Ukase said:

First, we must understand and agree that "fun" is subjective. So is "challenge". What's fun and challenging for you may not be fun or challenging for me, and vice-versa. 

I do not see a solution to this "issue". If the powers that be read your posts and agree, then how will the rest of us deal with these HP pinatas for EBs? Will we get bored and find another game? Maybe. Will we ramp up the difficulty and get more xp? probably a bit more likely. Still, what about next week, when the next player with a post count under 20 comes and says it's too hard and not fun? Do they eventually find a level 7 Hellion to stand in for Hopkins? 

 

This is true, which is the problem here.  I say I think there's a problem, someone else says they think there isn't... neither is right because it's a matter of opinion (ie. subjective).

 

Now, I'm not suggesting a massive change.  Yes, scrappers and tankers and the like will last longer still, but the damage being done now is such that even scrappers and tankers (lower level tankers, anyway) aren't lasting any longer than the squishies.  However, I've not done those tests yet, so I can't say for certain just how much of a difference there is.

 

29 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Scenario 1)  Sheesh, I screwed that up.  Forgeting to buff my resistance and overshooting my jumping in to land in melee while not letting my allies know I was going in .... 

Scenario 2) lol, that looked like barely tickled the scrapper.  And why is he emoting reading a newspaper and muttering how this game lacks any challenge in Discord.

 

IF!  you repeatedly used solid and varied tactics and repeatedly got plastered so fast my various Empaths couldn't save you, well then I might see reason to agree and at least look into more testing.  But when I see a support teammate move into melee range of an AV with vastly insufficient buffs or debuffs present to support life ... umm, welcome to triage

You're forgetting the character is solo, there are not allies there.  As I've mentioned before, buffing resistance is of very limited value.  My Defender that Hopkins took out instantly was about as well defended as he could be, and it made no difference.  I've also said that the enemies need to remain a threat.  That means a threat to sturdier characters as well.  There's a balance point there that needs to be found.  Strong enough to be a threat to the tough guys, but not so strong that they overwhelm the squishy guys.

 

23 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Consider not doing that and instead try something else that changes the outcome. Your stated strategies are synonymous with running in to a brick wall repeatedly and expecting to some how not be concussed.

 

For the love of all that read your threads, please just do ANYTHING differently. At least Snarky makes us laugh with their PUG stories!

Again, no one is forcing you to read it.

In the end, the character has to attack the enemy, which means the enemy is going to attack HIM.  If the character cannot survive being attacked, there's no game to play.  But, I've said this before.

 

 

Anyway, I think I'll leave it be for now, until I've run some tests with different ATs against more normal foes at even level.

[Shin Magmus]

9 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

Under ordinary circumstances, I'd retract that part of my post, state that I was wrong and apologize... but this doesn't disprove what it I'm saying, it emphasizes it.  Note the lack of the enemy levels in the first post.  He started with a plan to "prove" that enemy damage is excessive, set up a test environment that he could use to demonstrate his "point", deliberately withheld information that might be used to counter his predetermined conclusion, and jumped on the soapbox.

 

That is his modus operandi to a tee.  He's been campaigning to have enemy damage nerfed since he started posting on the old forums in 2006, and it's always gone down this way.  And it's not because he engages in bad faith arguments, he actually believes there's a problem, but because the "problem" is his concept builds which are incapable of performing above -1/x1, slots them in the most abysmal ways, the self-defeating tactics he uses and his denial that the problem is on his end.

 

I've seen him go through exactly the same motions in more threads than I want to remember.  He presents faulty "evidence" which fails to pass the most basic falsifiability tests, and backs it up with "Trust me, bro!".  When asked for screenshots or combat logs, "Trust me, bro!" again, even though he'll try to bolster his position by saying that he checked the combat logs.  When asked for details, he's evasive.  When people point out that damage can been mitigated in a variety of ways, including avoided, he refuses to even address it.  When confronted about discrepancies, or even what's possible in the game, he accuses others of bad behavior.  When he's incapable of defending a statement, he says, "Well, some of you apparently know a little more about the game than I do, so it's possible that things might not have gone that way, but I'm not saying that I was mistaken, just that I may have misremembered."

 

And when he's backed himself into a corner, when he's let it slip that some of the factors in question weren't as he portrayed them to be, and has nothing left, he drops his "You're missing the point!  It's not about who's right or wrong, enemies deal too much damage!" bomb, because that's the agenda.  Adapting the game to his poor build strategies, bad tactics and questionable judgement so he doesn't have to adapt to it.

 

So while I laud your impartiality and willingness to believe, I don't share it.  I've been down this road often enough to know all of the landmarks and the destination.

 

And he posted while I was typing this up.  Exactly the kind of response I outlined three paragraphs above.  Welcome to 2006.

   That's a wrap folks.  OP just took 9999 reputation damage.  Maybe he should have slotted the essential unique IOs to reduce that damage...

[ScarySai]

Respectfully, this is a skill issue.

[seebs]

I remember at one point thinking Ultimo was just very bad at math, but then I noticed the response when people offered corrections on math, or pointed out things like "slotting entirely for endurance reduction actually makes you spend more energy to defeat an enemy than slotting also for accuracy and damage", and what I gradually concluded was that the point is the conversation and attention, not to advance an argument or a position.

[Lunar Ronin]

On 8/25/2024 at 1:32 PM, Glacier Peak said:

Gotta love the search function...

 

 

 

Don't forget classic old blue board threads like these:

 

Defenders balance

 

The State of Invulnerability

 

Damage output?

 

This game is tedious

[Lunar Ronin]

11 hours ago, Luminara said:

And it's not because he engages in bad faith arguments, he actually believes there's a problem, but because the "problem" is his concept builds which are incapable of performing above -1/x1, slots them in the most abysmal ways, the self-defeating tactics he uses and his denial that the problem is on his end.

 

Ding, ding, ding.  When I was going through the old blue boards digging for Ultimo's old threads, I saw a lot of posted builds in 2009 and 2010.  Every single one was SOs only, and this was years after IO enhancements came out.  Granted, it was live, enhancements were a lot more expensive back then, but still.

 

But then what do we have here?

 

 

 

 

 

 

All SOs.  In 2021 and 2023, on Homecoming, where IO enhancements are much less expensive.

 

That's fine.  You can still play on SOs outside of Incarnate content and advanced modes.  But you're not going to solo AVs (with certain exceptions), and you're not going to last long against them solo either.

Edited August 27 by Lunar Ronin

[Shin Magmus]

1 hour ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

 

Don't forget classic old blue board threads like these:

 

Defenders balance

 

The State of Invulnerability

 

Damage output?

 

This game is tedious

Thanks for linking these, big help.  I main Defenders and especially my Poison/Fire, a primary which doesn't provide any tankiness directly through self buffs... but somehow I'm not always dead or getting one-shotted.  I guess I just play my Poison/Fire Defender so much better than Ultimo that I never see these issues.   Truly this must be an issue of skill. 

[MoonSheep]

@Ultimo  i see your point of view that enemies should never have significant damage levels, especially for solo individuals, but unfortunately that just isn’t a feature of the CoH mechanics which has largely had a focus around team play

 

hopkins for example is behind a TF “wall” where you need a certain amount of players to start the TF. it’s only accessible solo because HC removed the “wall” when the private server had a smaller population - it was designed for team play

 

i’ve been playing since 2005 and soloing an AV has always been a mark of a truly strong alt - a feat that not every alt is able to achieve 

 

if you want to solo AVs, there’s a lot of guidance on the forums of the right builds, powersets etc that are capable, but it does require a two way mindset mate. there’s a bunch of stuff i still learn every month

 

the game also does have a mechanic to stop us from being killed instantly, outside of DoT attacks, a single hit wont kill a full HP character

 

an AV - and some EBs - are a significant battle, it takes preparation and coordination especially on lower level teams. when solo, it takes even more thought and tactics

 

the right alt makes a difference. a poison defender for example can easily flatten an AV even in the mid range levels, an empath however would die rather quickly

 

without challenge, the game becomes boring very quickly. challenge can be overcome, dullness is trickier to resolve

[Snarky]

this whole thread is basically "i am a Defender and i want to solo AVs in TFs without help and with no tactics"

 

because if you had a tank, or anybody dealing with his agro..... problem solved.

 

if you did not choose to walk up and spit in his face, problem solved.

 

if you played as part of a team, problem...   nvm.  you will not listen.

 

 

[Luminara]

5 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

You can still play on SOs outside of Incarnate content and advanced modes.  But you're not going to solo AVs (with certain exceptions), and you're not going to last long against them solo either.

 

SOs aren't why he has issues.  How he uses SOs is.  Historically, he hasn't used his slots or enhancements well (that's the nicest way i can say it), and his complaints and arguments are identical to those in the past, indicating that he's still not using slots or enhancements well.

[SeraphimKensai]

I will remind everyone that @Voltak did solo a +4/8 ITF with an Empathy Defender and posted a video of him doing it.

 

Obviously the game is not designed for anyone to solo content designed for 8 people, but with the right build and right person driving crazy things have happened.

 

I personally think if you're going to want to solo task forces you should have to use every reasonable resource at your disposal to be able to do so.