Anti-mez buff powers...why so fickle to use?

[biostem]

27 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

n those days, there were no ranged status effects

What!?  There has always been ranged status effects.

 

28 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

just about all minions and above have a ranged status effect, often AOE, and oh boy do the spam them

Um, no.

 

28 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

star content

You lost the argument right there;  The game is not and should not be balanced around the higher difficulty "star-content".

 

29 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

severely limiting their taunt aggroe

What does this mean?  If a tanker/brute didn't take or doesn't use taunt, that's a failing on that particular player, not the ATs or powers.  I'm not sure what you mean by "taunt aggroe", though - powers with a taunt component generate aggro from enemies or otherwise place the taunter toward the top of that enemy's aggro list.  Add into this that almost all, (if not all), tanker or brute, and even some scrapper armors, IIRC, contain a toggle that constantly re-applies a taunt effect to any nearby enemies.  Now, that has a limit, so you can't expect a lone tank/brute to hold aggro from dozens of enemies at once, so if a team is engaging multiple groups as once, that again falls on the team getting in over their heads.

[Rudra]

40 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

And not giving support any status effect protection, because in those days, there were no ranged status effects, which could be arguably agreed to.

What? There were lots of ranged status effects. Just like now. Melees got mez protection because being melee, they have to close and be noticed by everything which will then turn around and try to immediately mez and murder them. Ranged on the other hand can hang back, identify the mezzers, and take them out while only aggroing the spawn they attacked.

 

40 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

But look at today, that environment certainly does not exist, just about all minions and above have a ranged status effect, often AOE, and oh boy do the spam them.

No, they really don't. Yes, there are specific factions that are mez heavy, and pretty much every faction has at least one mob type that has mezzes, but they aren't anywhere near as prolific or expansive as you are claiming beyond specific high level factions.

 

40 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

Lately it seems the devs concept of increased challenge, is to increase even more Status Effect attacks on support, thus killing them faster and now the melee is challenged because they have no support.

Then hang back and let the meat shields handle it. Tankers for instance taunt everything around them just by attacking. Have your team's Tankers smack your enemies if they lack Taunt.

 

Edit:

Also, what does

40 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

You were right, until the devs decided the up the challenge, mostly at the support types, by severely limiting their taunt aggroe,

even mean? Supports don't have a taunt aggro to severely limit and Tankers haven't been nerfed by the current devs for their ability to taunt as far as I know of.

 

Edited August 31 by Rudra

[Doomguide2005]

     I started in issue 3 and by issue 4 I had multiple support characters so you are saying they introduced ranged mez sometime before that period because my Controllers and Defenders were certainly getting mezzed at range from their first day beyond the creator.  Heck I can remember one very frustrated Kin/Psy loading up an entire tray of just breakfree type inspires (15 i think) because i got so annoyed by getting slept and held (in particular) by Fungoids at range before I could move in to use Fulcrum Shift (or anything at all it seemed).

     And every character creates aggro simply by existing.  You don't have to do anything even on a Defender except be perceived to elicit aggro.  Taunt and taunt auras just generate greater amounts of threat causing their foes to preferentially attack them.  Don't believe me just move within a spawn and stand there.  See how long you can do that before one of them pops you.  Or do I misunderstand you?

[OverkillEngine]

9 hours ago, arcane said:

I could get on board with a modest duration increase, but I can’t get on board with turning single targets into AoE’s for reasons others have already covered well.

 

Hell, I would love buff/debuff duration enhancements. Then there would be an additional layer of choices to be made in terms of uptime other than just recharge while allowing us the flexibility to reduce some tedium.

Though one complication would be is I dang well know some powers would have to be flagged with "unenhanceable duration" just like some are for recharge or otherwise doing so becomes a T0 choice.

[biostem]

22 minutes ago, OverkillEngine said:

I would love buff/debuff duration enhancements

Hmmm.... there are some IOs or set bonuses that shorten status effect durations on player characters - could something be applied to NPCs, but in reverse?

[Rudra]

24 minutes ago, biostem said:

49 minutes ago, OverkillEngine said:

I would love buff/debuff duration enhancements

Hmmm.... there are some IOs or set bonuses that shorten status effect durations on player characters - could something be applied to NPCs, but in reverse?

Wouldn't work as far as only affecting NPCs. Any boost in that regard will boost the power's duration when used against any target. Even if in a PvP set enhancement because it would be in the PvE portion which still applies to PvP.

 

(Edit: Yes, mez durations are shorter when used in PvP, but enhancements only look at what the base value is, not what the target to be affected is. So you would still get the same boost regardless of versus NPCs or PCs, it is just the base duration that would be different that the boost would be applied to.)

 

(Edit again: Besides, the way those enhancements reduce mez duration is by increasing the character's mez resistance. So you would need to reduce mez resistance on the target to increase mez duration in this manner.)

 

Edited August 31 by Rudra

[tidge]

12 hours ago, DrRocket said:

Lately it seems the devs concept of increased challenge, is to increase even more Status Effect attacks on support, thus killing them faster and now the melee is challenged because they have no support. In some star content, the baddies have an un-resistable and auto hit teleport (feels like cheating to me) to them (so much for range) and drop in an intense defense debuff field (got to rub salt in the wound) and then (of course) subject their victim with spam holds from many different baddies; and then you are surprised they died almost instantly? There are those melee that arrogantly say to the unlucky support zap, learn to play the game, but truthfully what is there to learn from completely arbitrary activities?

 

 I'm not buying what your selling, but I have a different perspective about Controls (hard/soft) and a different imagination about how the Live devs perceived them.

 

Originally, on Live it definitely seemed to me as if the devs thought that players being able to control mobile enemies was something like an "auto win". So many control powers had recharge times, accuracy, endurance costs, levels of availability, etc. baked into them... mostly ignoring that controlling enemies wasn't the same as defeating enemies. Pre-ED kinda was a way around this... but I think this was just one more thing that motivated ED. There was another round of dev panic when PvP was introduced, because some 'controls' that had been mostly ignored turned out to be PDGood in PvP (Stuns).... I write this just to point out that in-game, controls have always been viewed from many perspectives.

 

On the flip side... and this is where I think my perspective is somewhat unusual... some of the players felt that their characters were too easily victimized by enemies with controls, and so later in the game's life certain ATs ended up getting (IMO, disproportionate) attention to make playing those ATs easier... specifically Blasters, which can cast T1/T2 attacks while controlled, plus all have sustains for endurance, plus have much improved nukes (over Launch). I sorta feel that if Blasters didn't have it so relatively easy (compared to other ATs) and the original toggly/inherent ways for certain armors to shrug off controls (and keep in mind, players no longer detoggle most powers when controlled) , then there would be a more even appreciation of what is happening with critter controls.

 

I write the above to explain my opinion is not that the Homecoming Devs are specifically trying to drive a sort of "trinity" style play in Hard Mode, it's more that they've got an uphill battle to make a hard mode given what exixts in the game (ToHit, Damage, Healing, Controls).

 

I don't think it would make sense (or be popular) to remove status protection from armors, or strip Blasters of their inherents, or nerf the effects of Domination.

 

13 hours ago, DrRocket said:

... the baddies have an un-resistable and auto hit teleport (feels like cheating to me) to them (so much for range) and drop in an intense defense debuff field (got to rub salt in the wound) and then (of course) subject their victim with spam holds from many different baddies; and then you are surprised they died almost instantly? There are those melee that arrogantly say to the unlucky support zap, learn to play the game, but truthfully what is there to learn from completely arbitrary activities?

 

I had proposed in the past to give support types some status effect protection, since range can help in some very minor and inconsistent way and melee may do their job of protecting them (not something to take to the bank), so I noticed a trend as such Tank 12 protection, scrapper 8 protection, thus I suggest support 4 protection; it is something - not as dramatic as the tank or as solid as a scrapper. But at least a compensation for the abusive use of holds.

 

There are enough different things here to parse that I'm not sure I could dive in... if Homecoming didn't make it so easy for so many players to get enemies to the point where many of the enemies only hit players 5% of the time, I'd be more open for more of the squishy ATs to get some of the love that Blasters got (either T1/T2 casts while controlled, improved "nukes", but these are slippery slopes). Homecoming also made it easy for players to get powers like Rune of Protection... a power that had to get 'nerfed' because it was simply too good.