Peacebringer Changes to go with Animation Canceling Fix

[Steampunkette]

So hey! Peacebringers suck. Really badly. At every role. 

 

There's no reason to take a PB on a 4 star unless they're doing the animation-canceling damage dump that you already intend to fix. Without even that function, PBs will be essentially a carry in 4-stars since they're not as damaging as even a Dominator, marginally more durable than a Scrapper, and have very little in the way of support or control to offset their greater weaknesses. Yes, they can form-change into a Squid to do good ranged damage, but 4 attacks in exchange for suppressing all toggles and being unable to use pool powers or anything is a wild exchange.

 

So my suggestions are as follows:

 

1) Give 'em .95 in humanform for both ranged and melee damage. So they're still stronger in their forms, but with less versatility, and the humanform is at least useful.

2) Give them a 500% damage cap like damage dealing archetypes. This gives them a higher ceiling to make them more attractive to Kinetics-centric teams.

3) Give them Brute HP values. Bigger than a Scrapper, less than a Tanker, to reflect their reliance on Damage Resistance.

 

And the big one, probably the most controversial:

 

4) Kill Cosmic Balance as a single inherent and give them three toggled inherents with a 0 end/sec cost. The choices are Offensive, Defensive, and Balanced. Offensive toggle provides procs in the same way Shinobi does "Critical Hits". Defensive adds Punchvoke to attacks and a regen bonus. Balance is basically Cosmic Balance.

 

The goal, there, is to essentially allow you to pick what Archetype you're calling on from the various previously-bonded characters. Even in the different forms.

 

And then, since you plan to do the same kind of mechanics-fix with Warshades... Buff them up this same way. Only make their offensive toggle Scourge instead of Crits and their Defensive toggle provide straight healing per attack instead of regen to play up the "Lifesteal" identity.

 

The end result?

1) Humanform PBs aren't as bad at survival as before, though a Brute is still going to be more survivable and deal more damage when capped (.95x500 is 475, .75x700 is 525)

2) PBs in general will have a better functionality as off-Tanks, but still lake the Aggro-Aura of even a Scrapper.

3) Being in humanform won't be as much of a DPS detriment, though a Blaster, Brute, Scrapper, Sentinel, or Stalker will still do more damage.

4) In Squidform they'll be able to "out-damage" Blasters while capped, but only have 4 attacks, and not be as able to cycle or specialize in ST vs AoE. Especially since Bright Nova Bolt does tiny piddly damage.

 

These changes are also a ton easier to implement than the "Use all Powers in All Forms" suggestions, since they focus on changing up the AT's scalars rather than digging through spaghetti code.

[foosbabaganoosh]

Hey as a PB main I'll take any buffs I can get! Absolutely love the idea of cosmic balance turning into a bio armor evolution-style select.

 

It does kinda suck that harder (star) content starts to prevent the viability of any archetype. It seems like an issue with balancing if you're forced to be a specific archetype/power combo if you want to realistically run star content. Now I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who will say "Hey I've done 4 star content with all classes and combos!", but to your point more often than not it's an objective handicap due to the high requirements of star content and the specific lack of what's needed (or heavily desired) by certain classes/combos. I specifically avoid any and all star content with my PB because I feel anxious that people would see me as nothing but dead weight (for the spot-on points you mentioned), and that's even if they would let me run it instead of saying they'd prefer a cold dom instead.

 

The PB is so fun to play due to its versatility and being able to fill what's needed in the moment, but it does feel like they could use a touch of TLC. The animation-cancelling method should honestly be fixed because it is clearly not how this game was intended to be played, and is an incorrect benchmark for "PB potential". You seem to have laid it out perfectly where aspects of the three forms need to be brought closer to the top of their specific fields to make their versatility more appealing, without making the class too OP altogether (the three form separation kind of handling that balance). I imagine the HEAT are probably closer to the bottom of the total population spread, and I don't think these changes would shift the dynamic in such a way that it would interfere with other classes. If you still want to focus on damage, blasters and scrappers. If you never want to die, brutes and tanks are still king. Any other archetype has such different playstyles that they wouldn't be encroached on if PBs were slightly better at what they do. I don't really see a downside to slightly buffing PBs (bias acknowledged), and it would solely improve the experience of playing them.

 

And they're supposed to be special dammit! Why would you have an epic archetype that gets slept on because it's seen as underperforming? Help it out! Honestly would love anyone to challenge these points because maybe if there's no real dissent on this then maybe there's an actual chance the devs take it into account.

 

Edited Thursday at 10:07 PM by foosbabaganoosh
Spelling/grammar

[Chris24601]

At this point, I almost feel like the only thing that can ever “fix” PBs and WSs would be to create new PB/WS themed power sets for the other ATs because the degree of pushback on making any changes that would actually fix the ATs proper makes them impossible to fix.

 

You’re never going to appease the human-only, bi-form, and tri-form players at the same time and balancing the AT between the differences in output between those three styles is nigh impossible.

 

At least if you stripped the Human-form concept out so it could be better expressed by a scrapper, tank, sentinel, or blaster, etc. then you’d only need to worry about balancing for bi- and tri- style play with “human only” being the equivalent of a playing a petless mastermind.

 

 I dunno… I’m just getting tired of pretty much every proposed change to try and fix the ATs gets a mountain of downvotes so why don’t I try suggesting something completely different.

[foosbabaganoosh]

1 hour ago, Chris24601 said:

At this point, I almost feel like the only thing that can ever “fix” PBs and WSs would be to create new PB/WS themed power sets for the other ATs because the degree of pushback on making any changes that would actually fix the ATs proper makes them impossible to fix.

 

You’re never going to appease the human-only, bi-form, and tri-form players at the same time and balancing the AT between the differences in output between those three styles is nigh impossible.

 

At least if you stripped the Human-form concept out so it could be better expressed by a scrapper, tank, sentinel, or blaster, etc. then you’d only need to worry about balancing for bi- and tri- style play with “human only” being the equivalent of a playing a petless mastermind.

 

 I dunno… I’m just getting tired of pretty much every proposed change to try and fix the ATs gets a mountain of downvotes so why don’t I try suggesting something completely different.

 

Yeah wait, I'm confused, why would proposed changes receive downvotes (OP post included?). I can't imagine that it's coming from any PB user, because there's no way someone who plays a human-only PB would have an issue with the other forms receiving buffs (let alone their human form as well). At least as a tri-form user I cannot imagine being incensed that human form receive a buff to make it more viable. And for that matter, I don't get why a non-PB user would be against this, why would they care? Making PB a more viable class does not detract from other classes in any way.

 

Why is proposing that an underperforming class receive a mild buff inherently met with downvotes?

[Chris24601]

12 hours ago, foosbabaganoosh said:

Why is proposing that an underperforming class receive a mild buff inherently met with downvotes?

I dunno. Ask the three who downvoted up above to a single upvote on the opening post.

 

I just know it’s consistent. If a fix to PBs gets proposed it gets tons of downvotes.

 

So, yeah, I’m at the point of just proposing radical things just to what the heck will actually move the needle a bit.

 

Right now it’s make Human-only viable via PB-based power sets for the other ATs (with a melee set with some 40’ attacks like Claws plus an armor set being probably the ideal… because I’m old enough to remember when PB blasts only had a 40’ range in human form)… but at this point I’ll back nearly anything for PBs.