Bring Balance to Homecoming

[ScarySai]

On 8/10/2025 at 8:05 AM, tidge said:

For example: Seeds of Confusion was an outlier that curb-stomped similar higher-tier powers in other control sets

 

I'd argue seeds was weaker than mass confusion. What made it strong was how often it was up. That + carrion made for some strong killing power, but the set itself had kinda poor lockdown to make up for it.

 

The set also didn't work that well if the mobs you were after couldn't get confused. 

 

Now? The set basically has just as bad lockdown as before and a fraction of its former killing power. Potentially salvageable if coercive wasn't also weirdly hit. Though I do hear it's performing better for controllers than doms atm.

 

Deep Sleep is nice, but spore burst is slow and carrion makes it hard to get value out of it. Mind control, meanwhile, has much more in terms of fallback options when your opening cc doesn't work.

Edited Tuesday at 04:52 PM by ScarySai

[Championess]

3 hours ago, ScarySai said:

 

I'd argue seeds was weaker than mass confusion. What made it strong was how often it was up. That + carrion made for some strong killing power, but the set itself had kinda poor lockdown to make up for it.

 

The set also didn't work that well if the mobs you were after couldn't get confused. 

 

Now? The set basically has just as bad lockdown as before and a fraction of its former killing power. Potentially salvageable if coercive wasn't also weirdly hit. Though I do hear it's performing better for controllers than doms atm.

 

Deep Sleep is nice, but spore burst is slow and carrion makes it hard to get value out of it. Mind control, meanwhile, has much more in terms of fallback options when your opening cc doesn't work.

 

How often you get to use a similar power is a big factor in what makes a power stronger or weaker.  The old seeds had similar mag, duration and target count.  The main differences being one is a cone and the other a target aoe which yeah I'd give the nod to mass confusion here but seeds isnt such a terrible cone.  That one doesn't cause aggro if you want to be stealthy and the other does damage which in the current main playstyle constant damage paired with the best hard control woul be preferable leaves both at a draw here to me. 

 

So then we come to the most egregious of differences, the recharge.  I would feel dirty if I could just walk the map spamming mass confusion every 15s and I don't see how someone could seriously say it's okay to have that type of abusive control limiting the need to use any other power in the set aside from the old creepers with broken proc rate damage.

 

Confusion is the best control in the game and if you're finding it hard to control mobs then no other controls would have great effect either so that's a nonstarter comparison among control sets.

 

Currently sure Plant took a hit in clear speeds but in no ways is it not still a top performer.  You just have to use more than two powers like other control sets had to.  Honestly the 'nerf' we ended up with Seeds still has it as the best control at a slight hit to recharge and duration.  The first iteration they put on open beta was most sufficient.

Edited Tuesday at 08:19 PM by Championess

[tidge]

5 hours ago, ScarySai said:

 

I'd argue seeds was weaker than mass confusion. What made it strong was how often it was up. That + carrion made for some strong killing power, but the set itself had kinda poor lockdown to make up for it.

 

Mass Confusion is a level 26 T9 power; Seeds of Confusion is a level 8 T5 power. In no world where balance is respected should these two powers have been comparable.

[Championess]

16 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

Mass Confusion is a level 26 T9 power; Seeds of Confusion is a level 8 T5 power. In no world where balance is respected should these two powers have been comparable.

 

Let alone the lvl 8 power being objectively so much better statistically than the other.

[Indystruck]

i've got news for y'all about clear mind/enforced morale/clarity

[ScarySai]

On 8/12/2025 at 4:58 PM, tidge said:

 

Mass Confusion is a level 26 T9 power; Seeds of Confusion is a level 8 T5 power. In no world where balance is respected should these two powers have been comparable.

 

That's not really how power balance works. Also, most control sets don't have a t9 control power, weirdly.

 

Anyway, If you look at the set as a whole, plant lacks a lot of what makes other sets good in exchange for clear speed. Or rather, it did. If another set can clear on par with plant now, I don't see a compelling reason to go with plant.

Edited 15 hours ago by ScarySai

[tidge]

On 8/12/2025 at 9:58 PM, tidge said:

 

Mass Confusion is a level 26 T9 power; Seeds of Confusion is a level 8 T5 power. In no world where balance is respected should these two powers have been comparable.

 

4 hours ago, ScarySai said:

That's not really how power balance works. Also, most control sets don't have a t9 control power, weirdly.

 

Step away from the totality of your perception of Plant Control. OTHER control sets were getting their AoE lockdowns at much later levels (typically 18, note that Plant also got an AoE hold at level 18) than Seeds of Confusion's AoE at level 8. If one set has a top tier AoE Control at level 8, future control sets will have to have something similar or otherwise they have to be radically different in mechanics(*1) or otherwise any new control set ends up being inferior out of the gate. Having nearly similar powers, with the objectively better one available 18 levels sooner, completely limits the design space for future sets. My agruement isn't that "boo hoo, Mass Confusion *sucks*", it's that Seeds was literally put at the wrong tier for what it did. 

 

(*1) so, something like Symphony's mechanics... and I think there is a case to be made that a set like Symphony is somewhat mediocre. I digress, but I've played both Symphony and Arsenal and I've found them to be middle of the road... no other control set allowed players to dominate something like a Synapse TF as Plant Control, because of Seeds of Confusion.

 

[skoryy]

Oh nice, we're re-arguing the patch from over a month ago.  How far back can we bring our beefs out?  Who wants to argue that ED was bad?

[Lunar Ronin]

1 hour ago, skoryy said:

Oh nice, we're re-arguing the patch from over a month ago.  How far back can we bring our beefs out?  Who wants to argue that ED was bad?

 

Enhancement Diversification was great.  The timing however was lousy.

 

Enhancement Diversification was obviously in preparation for Invention Origin enhancements.  ED hit with the launch of City of Villains in October 2005.  Invention Origin enhancements landed in May 2007, a year and a half later.  That was a year and a half period where characters were significantly weaker than before with nothing to make up for it.  ED should have been held off until the IO enhancements was ready.

 

I was in a decent sized SG on the Liberty server from Issue 3 through Issue 6.  All but one other in the SG left the game over ED, and as far as I know never came back.

[ScarySai]

3 hours ago, tidge said:

My agruement isn't that "boo hoo, Mass Confusion *sucks*", it's that Seeds was literally put at the wrong tier for what it did. 

 

I don't personally agree with it. My stance was always that mass confusion should have a shorter cd to be on par with seeds, rather than seeds itself being too strong.

 

But that applies to all of the mass ccs. Adaptive recharge is good as a middle point, but wasn't the silver bullet I would have wanted at the time. At the very least, it's pretty game-able. The argument is kind of moot now, eh?

Edited 6 hours ago by ScarySai

[aethereal]

Tier of power is just not a big factor in the balance of the power, sorry.  Tier is mainly a consideration in terms of how to have a relatively smooth leveling expy.

[Championess]

The longer recharging aoe CC's were perfectly fine where they were.  You either break the game all because of one outlier power or you just fix what should have been fixed long ago.  Adaptive Recharge is a fine compromise for those who envy the broken power balance nukes were allowed to be. 

 

The problem with Seeds was completely the recharge.  Having the function to totally lock down the map at whim with just one power and zero consequences coming back your way ever removes any risk playing the game.  

 

And if what level you get these kinds of powers makes no difference okay then lets move nukes up to t1.  If the game can't adapt to a bunch of nukers in a DFB then that's the games fault eh.

Edited 5 hours ago by Championess

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Championess said:

And if what level you get these kinds of powers makes no difference okay then lets move nukes up to t1.  If the game can't adapt to a bunch of nukers in a DFB then that's the games fault eh.

 

The problem with moving nukes to T1 isn't that it'd be overpowered, it's that it'd be a bad leveling experience!  You don't want to have a character who has a nuke but nothing else at level 1.  You'd have multi-minute pauses between each action.

 

Like, look, I'm not saying that there is absolutely nothing to having some exciting powers as the capstone to a set (though plenty of sets really don't have exciting capstones).  But, empirically, I'm sorry, the game does not put very much weight at all to what tier the power is in terms of the overall strength of that power.  Especially like "T4 vs T8."  Placing a power in a tier is almost entirely about not the strength of the power, but laddering the character into a play experience.