PB and WS changes?

[The Trouble]

The Kheldian culture on the forums is primarily: "You need enhancement sets to be competitive."  Here's the bitter pill that I'm having a hard time with lately...  that sentiment is mostly true.

 

I can build a very solid Tanker with just Single Origin Enhancements.  There are power sets that can soft-cap their protective powers with the regular stuff you can buy from stores.  I know Kheldians were designed to require thoughtful play, but other archetypes - Including VEATs - can dip their toe into the min-max metagame without spending the hundreds of millions that we do.  Then, even after a "perfect" build, I can still be seen as sub-par in hardcore communities.

 

This is not the only measure of an archetype... but it does illustrate that something is amiss.  I want more people to enjoy Khelds the way I do, but the generosity of the archetypes' limitations make them a hard sell.

[Jason0162]

4 hours ago, The Trouble said:

The Kheldian culture on the forums is primarily: "You need enhancement sets to be competitive."  Here's the bitter pill that I'm having a hard time with lately...  that sentiment is mostly true.

 

I can build a very solid Tanker with just Single Origin Enhancements.  There are power sets that can soft-cap their protective powers with the regular stuff you can buy from stores.  I know Kheldians were designed to require thoughtful play, but other archetypes - Including VEATs - can dip their toe into the min-max metagame without spending the hundreds of millions that we do.  Then, even after a "perfect" build, I can still be seen as sub-par in hardcore communities.

 

This is not the only measure of an archetype... but it does illustrate that something is amiss.  I want more people to enjoy Khelds the way I do, but the generosity of the archetypes' limitations make them a hard sell.

 

I don't agree. Please do not misunderstand me - everyone has different expectations and enjoys different things and I am in no way trying to devalue your own perspective. Rather, I am asking you to consider a different persepctive.

 

HEAT's were originally designed with SO's. They can be competitive and balanced with nothing more than SO's, however, when discussing this there is one part of the game experience that is more often than not entirely left out - The inherant. CoH was designed as a MMO. Massively Multiplayer Online Game. The vision was always for players to team and do content together. It's not something that is as popular as it once was and the implementation of the invention system made soloing much more viable for all AT's but the fact remains that the core of the game is still designed for team play. 

 

The HEAT inherant was also designed to take advantage of that and really make the AT more powerful and more adaptable than any of the other AT's. The good news is that the inherant does that successfully and very well. Change how you look at team play and use the inherant to its utmost and your entire experience will change. 

 

That said, I am for some tweaks and QoL changes for the AT as I and others have mentioned in the thread already. I am particularly interested in removing reliance on Lightform and status protection built in somewhere but in general I really like HEAT's and I do not want them changed into something unrecognizable. 

 

My 2 cents.

 

Edited February 9 by Jason0162

[MechaCrash]

I see that "can PB knockback be turned down/off" was already brought up, but I am going to echo that one again. I feel like I always have to hold back when I'm using my Peacebringer, because throwing enemies all over the place is not worth whatever damage I can get with the limited AOE I have in human form. I just kind of roll with it in Nova form, as I did with my Warshade back in the day, because I felt that the damage was worth the inconvenience. But human form PB? Absolutely not.

 

A much taller order would be the ability to get extra slots. If I could trade some of my later power picks for more slots, it'd free up a lot of breathing room, because the reason Kheldians feel so much harder to build than any other AT, Soldiers and Widows included, is because you have way more powers in need of slots, so you need to lean on sets and/or HamiOs so you're actually good at anything, instead of being just kind of mediocre all around, and "mediocre all around" just doesn't feel good to play. But I am not realistically expecting this one, because I remember Castle tried to do stuff to grant extra slots back on live, and things broke pretty badly, so this is one I'll call a pipe dream.

[SableShrike]

Just had a wild thought:

 

How would you guys feel about changing the KB effect on Warshades to the Pull effect we see on Singularity or Whirlpool?

 

It makes WAY more sense when you look at what gravity and supermassive black holes actually do.

 

They drag crap in and crush it beyond our time line.

[tidge]

On 2/18/2025 at 5:03 AM, MechaCrash said:

I see that "can PB knockback be turned down/off" was already brought up, but I am going to echo that one again. I feel like I always have to hold back when I'm using my Peacebringer, because throwing enemies all over the place is not worth whatever damage I can get with the limited AOE I have in human form. I just kind of roll with it in Nova form, as I did with my Warshade back in the day, because I felt that the damage was worth the inconvenience. But human form PB? Absolutely not.

 

Keep in mind...

 

On 2/8/2025 at 8:30 PM, Jason0162 said:

HEAT's were originally designed with SO's.

 

And that Nova Form is available really early, giving Kheldians access to more ranged attacks at a level sooner than any other AT (originally, before prestige attacks)... and that Knockback is a mitigation for the terrible defenses of Nova Form. Nova Form makes Kheldians OP, but only for a very limited level range of content, and those are levels that many players breeze right past!

 

@Jason0162 point is a good one. On the days of Live, Kheldians were really quite good using the non-human forms at the levels those forms are available... since Live (on HC) players can get access to their higher tier powers earlier in the build (all ATs) so it isn't like a Dwarf form with all its tricks at level 20 is going to seem all that impressive when a Tanker/Brute/Scrapper isn't going to have to wait much longer (in terms of levels) to get an even more impressive choice of powers.

 

I find it disappointing, but the price Kheldians pay for getting a suite of powers with one form pick is that those powers never get any better, except with slots.

[AmbiguousOmen]

Rather than removing powers from the Forms, as the OP said, I do think I'd support more hybridizing between human and Dwarf/Nova as an avenue to improving Kheldians, but mostly in the other direction:

 

Make the human-only powers that duplicate Dwarf/Nova powers available to human-form as soon as you pick the form power (i.e. give PBs Bright Nova Scatter at level 4 rather than picking the duplicate Proton Scatter at 8 ) and replace these with new powers.

 

Some of the new powers would then be usable in both human and the appropriate Dwarf/Nova form, allowing Novas to have higher-level blasts with better modifiers and Dwarfs to flesh out an AoE chain, and a few of the new powers would help cement an extra niche for the human form. For example, more pet powers for Warshades and more healing powers for Peacebringers. Animations would be recycled as much as possible.