"Balancing" the various Archetypes; their Inherents; and their ATOs.

[Bionic_Flea]

I appreciate the detailed and reasonable consideration by @Maelwys and those that have responded.

 

While there are many good ideas, my personal pet peeves are :

 

1. Vigilance - Probably the worst of all inherents.  In addition to your suggestion, I would add a small boost per teammate to enhancement values to defense, resist, heal, and end mod like we get from Agility Powers.  One percent of each per teammate gives a maximum of 7% enhancement.  That lets defenders defend marginally better scaled to the amount of people they have to defend.  
2. Brute ATOs - Probably the worst ATOs "procs" especially when compared to the other melee classes.  Stalkers and Scrappers won the ATO lottery and tanks did almost as well.  I'm not entirely sure what to do here, but my thinking is to make the fury ATO build faster and let you get to 110% fury if constantly fighting.  I'd give the second one a little +MaxHP and +MaxEnd to help keep that frenzied pace going.
3. MM Pets - Probably the biggest difference between leveling up and 50+ end game.  MMs do incredibly well solo and in teams . . . as long as you don't go over +2.  The Tier one appear at -1 level up until level 18, presumably because now you have a third pet.  I would make them go back to -1 at level 35 and then even level at 50.
4. Fonts and Orbs - Agree with invulnerability but instead of movement speed I would have them appear next to the target.

Edited Tuesday at 09:22 PM by GM_GooglyMoogly
Sorry - I accidentally hit the edit button.

[ThatGuyCDude]

The Fury generation proc for Brutes and the Opportunity generation proc for Sentinels do not produce enough of the resource to make a difference; their proc rate would have to explode or the amount generated would need to be quintupled (which would make the archetypes damage-spiky and thereby force them further onto the toes of the archetypes they're thought-space-fighting with).  I say dump 'em.  I... suppose the Sentinel one wouldn't be so bad if it were global, as you (the OP) suggested.

For the Brutes... Brutes are proc monsters.  This is because their proc damage is scaled up by their fury damage boost.  Replace the fury ATO with a copy of the Arachnos Soldier ATO effect, wherein all of their attacks have a 12% chance to do a psychic damage proc.  Replace the Regen/Recovery ATO with one that gives a 12% chance for attacks to inflict range reduction; it leans into Punchvoke and makes Brutes better at kiting enemies (a lateral survival shift, letting them use distance as mitigation much more often than a Tank would).

On the same tangent as Bionic Flea, Defender's Vigilance should also boost team Regen rate, so that their support heals (and the team's own) are more effective the more people are in the party and so that they are further distinguished from Corrupters as the "healer" archetype (even if their power set doesn't have a single heal, the party will notice their green bar is better off for the Defender being there).

Edited Tuesday at 10:02 PM by ThatGuyCDude
-range got interpreted as a line break. <_<

[BasiliskXVIII]

4 hours ago, MTeague said:

My hot take is that there are too many Archtypes to make true AT balance achieveable except by neutering them all. (which is undesireable). Slice it no matter how you want, a few AT's are going to be regarded as a bad choice by the min-maxers. Because players are really, really, really, good at finding any possible item to leverage/exploit/build upon, whatever phraseology  you prefer, often far better than game content designers.  Despite the devs best intentions, we WILL find a way to make some subgroup of AT's outperform others. Always.

Sure, but you shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good. I don't think you'll ever get perfect balance either. The game isn't designed for it. Some ATs specialise in some content, others in other content, and the idea that any given character will perform to identical metrics as the next is impossible. There's too many variables and too many knobs to tweak.

 

But that doesn't mean that identifying the outliers and bringing them closer into line with the rest is a fool's errand. Comments like this read as "we'll never get it right, so there's no point in trying to improve," and I think that's ill-considered. Balance work isn’t about making every AT perform identically, it’s about making sure no one feels like they screwed up by rolling a concept they love. If the gap between outliers is narrowed, players who aren't tied to the highest damaging builds and the most efficient farms get more freedom to play what excites them without feeling like they're actively being punished for playing the character they wanted to play instead of the one that's optimal. That’s worth pursuing, even if perfection’s off the table.

[MonteCarla]

Love this in-depth analysis, @Maelwys

I pretty much agree with everything you've written on the procs and their usefulness.
Some of them favour certain powersets.

The Minor Heal PBAoE for Defenders is great for Force Fields or Sonic Resonance, but a bit of a drop in the green healing ocean for Empathy.

The Mastermind ones are better for primaries with an extra pet like Thugs and Demons, due to the very weird sliding block puzzle that is Mastermind pet slotting.

 

What has always bugged me is the set bonuses, especially where Recharge is concerned.

Mastermind's can split Mark of Supremacy 3 ways, and add in 4 pieces of Command of the Mastermind to get 4 recharge bonuses out of the sets, 25% while levelling, 40% at level 50.
Defenders and Corrupter can split Vigilant Assault and Scourging Blast 3/3 to get 3 recharge bonuses. (Kheldians can do this too, I see)

Most ATs get two Recharge bonuses from their ATIOs.

And poor old Controllers and Dominators (who love recharge the most!) are left with 1 Recharge bonus, because Overwhelming Presence and Dominating Grasp have terrible set bonuses, as well as underwhelming (and concept-breaking) pseudo-pet procs. I doubt its common to build these low HP classes for +HP or Smashing Resistance, but that's what we get!

(Oh, and Tanks and VEATs also only get 1 Recharge bonus too.)

 

My Defenders/Corrupters celebrate turning 50 by getting an extra 11.25% Recharge when they catalyse their sets.
My Controllers and Doms get only 1.25% extra, although they do get very good Purple set opportunities to compensate.

That never felt fair to me.

 

 

[Lancek]

Mastermind's shouldn't have to waste 6 Pet Slots for the Defense/Resist IO's.

[MonteCarla]

14 minutes ago, Lancek said:

Mastermind's shouldn't have to waste 6 Pet Slots for the Defense/Resist IO's.

 

What if.. Mastermind ATOs could be slotted in Mastermind attacks? 

That would ease up the slotting crunch for non Thugs/Demons MMs considerably.

[tidge]

6 minutes ago, MonteCarla said:

What if.. Mastermind ATOs could be slotted in Mastermind attacks? 

That would ease up the slotting crunch for non Thugs/Demons MMs considerably.

 

It used to bother me that the MM ATO had to go into the henchmen, and I've lived with this for so long that my next statement may be without much perspective: There aren't really that many better options for henchmen than the MM ATO, certainly not when compared to which sets can be slotted into the MM attacks. I'd still want Accuracy, Damage and Endurance Reduction in henchmen., and the bonus structure of the MM ATO sets is pretty good: +40% global recharge for three 2-slots, and one 4-slot investment.

 

IMO the "slot crunch" comes from the global aura pieces like Recharge Intensive Pet and Pet Damage sets, not really from the MM ATO pieces.

[FupDup]

For the Sentinel Opportunity Strikes ATO, what I would do is rework it to instead give a chance to apply the vulnerability debuff instead of just refilling your "rage" bar slightly quicker. Depending on the squeamishness of our overlords, this could either be full strength or a little reduced compared to the inherent clicky. 

[BZRKR]

I like the ideas being discussed in this thread, and hope that something cool can come of it.

My semi-serious Brute ATO idea if the morning is:

Replace the increased Fury generation proc with a copy of the Dominator Fiery Orb proc, except name it "Fury Orb". It'll appear right next to the target most of the time because the attacker is in melee. It's literally the Brute's Fury made manifest. It would look cool at least 🙂