Hardmode TFs - Confuse Protection

[brass_eagle]

With the recent overhaul of confuse powers and their durations, they are decidedly more balanced when compared to one another and much harder to abuse stacking (glares at old Seeds of Confusion)... Will the blanket 10 mag confuse protection be revisited for currently available hard mode TFs? If not, will it be considered when designing new hardmodes / 50+ content?

 

At the time, I hated the protection but understood why it was implemented. The mobs are powerful and confuse might trivialize parts of the TF (despite this being implemented first on the ITF, where control is meh thanks to Centurion's Clarion-like shout).

 

However, it's a blanket punishment for control in general. Control is already punished in incarnate content due to powerful enemies, and it is rarely sought out for any hardmodes.

 

Just a thought -- I'd hate to see future, or any content slap the band aid on punishing control. Part of the problem is control is often binary in this game. "On or off" no in-between. I realize that. I don't have an answer for it really. Thinking outloud. 

[Cobalt Arachne]

That Confuse protection has been a part of Advanced Mode since *Issue 27, Page 4, after the balance issue was made known to me during a 4* Dr. Aeon Strike Force run I was participating on with a Dominator who trivialized the entire thing.

 

The primary reason it is not allowed in Advanced Mode is because many Confuse effects do not cause enemies to aggro, allowing it to be setup with 100% reliability on every single pack of enemies with zero risk or consequence and hurts the enjoyability and challenge of the content.

 

There's very little strategy involved using Perma-Domination Dominators to make Confused buffed-up critters delete themselves without any risk to the team.

Unfortunately, it also takes away from the role of the Tank in the team whose job is to absorb the alpha attacks from enemy packs, because you can preemptively neuter everything by having them be Confused before each pull.

Edit: My memory was wrong; I could only remember which TF I was on, but the date was wrong.

[Bionic_Flea]

15 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

The primary reason it is not allowed in Advanced Mode is because many Confuse effects do not cause enemies to aggro, allowing it to be setup with 100% reliability on every single pack of enemies with zero risk or consequence and hurts the enjoyability and challenge of the content.

 

I get that confuse powers can be cheesy and overused.

 

But completely neutralizing confuse (and controls in general) are a real kick in the pants to Mind, Plant, and other sets.  Could we at least have a particular critter that was easier to confuse and worth confusing?  And maybe make a different critter(s) get very offended at the mental intrusion and get aggroed to whoever tried to confuse it.  That would create strategic targets to strike and others to avoid.

Edited yesterday at 03:14 PM by Bionic_Flea

[srmalloy]

27 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

And maybe make a different critter(s) get very offended at the mental intrusion and get aggroed to whoever tried to confuse it. 

Just defining Advanced mode as removing the "enemies will not notice this attack" aspect of the Confuse powers leaves them as a tool to use against opponents while preventing the 'set up with impunity' aspect that is being addressed by making them useless. And this could be propagated to regular factions as an additional degree of difficulty for high-rank mobs — so an AV might notice that one or more of their guards has been Confused and aggros on the attacker, while the rest of the spawn remains clueless until they start attacking the AV. 

[lemming]

17 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

Unfortunately, it also takes away from the role of the Tank

This part is what I object to.   So, taking away a role from the Dominator and Controller is OK?    I think there's a place inbetween to work toward.

[biostem]

53 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Just defining Advanced mode as removing the "enemies will not notice this attack" aspect of the Confuse powers leaves them as a tool to use against opponents while preventing the 'set up with impunity' aspect that is being addressed by making them useless.

Another option could be to have confuse powers give enemies a chance of attacking their allies, instead of it being a guaranteed thing, or otherwise adjust it so they notice and aggro on players as normal, just that the damage has an X% chance to be applied to a random nearby enemy instead...

[Championess]

Back when Aeon came out before ITF where confuse protection got adjusted up I'll say my Mind dom did make it quite the cakewalk, although there were instances where I just had to dps since control gets thrown out the window at times like when they start venging.  

 

It's no easy task to play a control character well and make as much of an impact as the meta toons.  When I hit those critters with aoe controls I catch more aggro than a blaster nuking and at least with nukes you're eliminating targets so learning to survive on control in these 4stars is a good skill to develop.

 

I think the HC team needs to wrap their head around just what ATs they choose to feel impactful and not in these.  It gets a little mundane hearing that 'we can't go ruining the tank role, such and such' and then all the best successful team comps are an alpha aggro, 4 colds, a kin, nature and some blasters.  No we don't want to begrudge the players that regress to the meta lest they need to learn some more tricks, who in turn exclude other ATs because they feel less efficient.

Edited yesterday at 05:50 PM by Championess

[Cobalt Arachne]

2 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Just defining Advanced mode as removing the "enemies will not notice this attack" aspect of the Confuse powers leaves them as a tool to use against opponents while preventing the 'set up with impunity' aspect that is being addressed by making them useless. And this could be propagated to regular factions as an additional degree of difficulty for high-rank mobs — so an AV might notice that one or more of their guards has been Confused and aggros on the attacker, while the rest of the spawn remains clueless until they start attacking the AV. 

Unfortunately, (aside from the fact I'm not on the Powers team and so I am not allowed to make any changes to anything on players, I can only touch critters), the "Do Not Aggro" is a singular flag that applies to the entire power and is not conditional.

 

To implement this suggestion would involve duplicating every single player Confuse power in the entire game, turning all of them into Redirects, just in order for it to behave differently in a separate context.

 

Generally if the only possible solution is "duplicate every single thing" it's not considered viable and the dev team leads are going to veto it.

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, biostem said:

Another option could be to have confuse powers give enemies a chance of attacking their allies, instead of it being a guaranteed thing, or otherwise adjust it so they notice and aggro on players as normal, just that the damage has an X% chance to be applied to a random nearby enemy instead...

I think removing the 'enemies will not notice' flag would be simpler to code than adding an entirely new combat logic coding specifically for confused mobs and only in Advanced mode. Remember that confusion works both ways, so they'd have to change the target designation for confused players — randomly changing who gets blue and orange target markers instead of just flipping colors or randomly applying damage to nearby targets. Much simpler to just remove the flag. 

[Cobalt Arachne]

1 hour ago, Championess said:

It gets a little mundane hearing that 'we can't go ruining the tank role, such and such' and then all the best successful team comps are an alpha aggro, 4 colds, a kin, nature and some blasters. 

This statement suggests to me you aren't very familiar with 4* content at all, as there is almost ALWAYS a tank AT in serious runs.

 

What you're describing is the 4* speed run meta; Acting like that's the ONLY team composition that can clear 4* content is straight up incorrect.

 

Every test cycle I lead multiple test runs of 4* content and I let people bring anything they want, and we've finished all of them, every single run.

 

You don't need a composition filled with meta unless you're literally trying to speed run it as fast as possible.

[Cobalt Arachne]

3 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

I think removing the 'enemies will not notice' flag would be simpler to code than adding an entirely new combat logic coding specifically for confused mobs and only in Advanced mode. Remember that confusion works both ways, so they'd have to change the target designation for confused players — randomly changing who gets blue and orange target markers instead of just flipping colors or randomly applying damage to nearby targets. Much simpler to just remove the flag. 

You would have to convince one of the Powers team devs to make this change as it then impacts player balance and only they are permitted to change that.

 

Being honest, I don't think they would be very receptive, the idea of universally changing how Confuse works via hard coded power system changes simply so it can function freely in a very small subset of content is not a small ask.

 

As soon as a discussion changes to "change this on the player's end" it becomes a Powers team topic, rather than a Content team topic.

[Rudra]

11 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

I think removing the 'enemies will not notice' flag would be simpler to code <snip> Much simpler to just remove the flag. 

Remove that flag and you give a giant middle finger to solo players, particularly in the earlier levels. That do not notice flag is why my Dominators are able to look at a densely packed area the game requires me to be in for the mission, and not have to crap myself when my confuse power fails to take hold on the target.

[Cobalt Arachne]

Also want to make clear, there is literally no universal stats to enemies in Advanced Mode that makes them less vulnerable to Mez, except for Confuse.

 

Holds, Stuns, Sleeps, Fears, Immobs, etc should all work the **exact** same in 4* content as they do on regular Level 54 enemies.

 

I never felt that Control needed any challenge added, so there was never any kind of universal anti-Mez stats added, the only exception was Confuse solely because it doesn't generate aggro.

[Cobalt Arachne]

3 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Could we at least have a particular critter that was easier to confuse and worth confusing?

...You mean like the Golden Brickernauts in Advanced Mode Dr. Aeon that have instant-vulnerable to confuse during their countdown and can cause their explosion to instantly clear the entire room of enemies if used correctly?
https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=v_goldbrickers.golden_brickernaut_hm.brickernaut_countdown&at=boss_elite

 

3 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

And maybe make a different critter(s) get very offended at the mental intrusion and get aggroed to whoever tried to confuse it.  That would create strategic targets to strike and others to avoid.

This is not possible, the 'Do Not Aggro' flag exists on the power at the top level and is not conditional and simply excludes the power from notifying the critters AI.

It's a per power thing, not a per critter thing.

[biostem]

33 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Remove that flag and you give a giant middle finger to solo players, particularly in the earlier levels. That do not notice flag is why my Dominators are able to look at a densely packed area the game requires me to be in for the mission, and not have to crap myself when my confuse power fails to take hold on the target.

I think he was referring to doing that *only* in the context of the star content, not in normal gameplay...

[biostem]

2 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

This is not possible, the 'Do Not Aggro' flag exists on the power at the top level and is not conditional and simply excludes the power from notifying the critters AI.

It's a per power thing, not a per critter thing.

Then, perhaps, some other manner of *not* invalidating an entire category of powers needs to be investigated...

[Cobalt Arachne]

16 minutes ago, biostem said:

Then, perhaps, some other manner of *not* invalidating an entire category of powers needs to be investigated...

The only way I can think of would require tripling (x3) every single Confuse in the game by turning them into a Redirect and two separate conditional powers.
Something the Powers team would never sign off on, and the Dev team leads would surely veto that implementation for a number of reasons.

Which is why the final solution became simply prevent Confuse from being too centralizing in Advanced Mode by adding a base protection.
If people are really dedicated to the idea, you could bring two Perma-Dom Dominators and work in tandem to instantly overcome that Mag 10 protection on any critter. Two Controllers would also work, though they would have a slight ramp-up time (which isn't a problem, since no aggro).
To my knowledge almost all player Single Target Confuses are Mag 3, which doubles to Mag 6 in Domination, so two applications would hit Mag 12 and instantly Confuse any ST critter through their Mag 10 base protection.

But I know that's not what people want/are asking for.
They want to be allowed to drop their big, satisfying Domination-boosted PBAoE Confuses into fresh spawns to render them crippled instantly.
Unfortunately, as it stands, Confuse at that level is far too powerful to be allowed in Advanced Mode if it can deployed 100% risk free.

If the Powers team were ever to remove the "No Aggro Flag" from Confuses (which as Rudra stated, would be a MASSIVE nerf to their solo capabilities, not a solution I would be in favor of), or new Code team developments make it possible to conditionally control that flag, I'd be happy to reconsider the balancing.

[Maelwys]

10 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

This is not possible, the 'Do Not Aggro' flag exists on the power at the top level and is not conditional and simply excludes the power from notifying the critters AI.

It's a per power thing, not a per critter thing.

 

IIRC the "don't aggro" flag can be overwritten by outside rider effects like procs.

 

So a simpler solution might be to grant the participants of the content in question a dummy 100% proc effect which only applies to their confuse powers (it could be coded as a confuse set enhancement) and which inflicts a negligible offensive effect that causes the target(s) to notice the caster.

[biostem]

3 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

But I know that's not what people want/are asking for.
They want to be allowed to drop their big, satisfying Domination-boosted PBAoE Confuses into fresh spawns to render them crippled instantly.
Unfortunately, as it stands, Confuse at that level is far too powerful to be allowed in Advanced Mode if it can deployed 100% risk free.

So it's ok to invalidate a certain class of power?  I don't understand your stance.  Have you considered having special enemies that can use status protecting powers on their allies?  What comes down to blanket immunity is an easy out instead of actually tackling the problem...

[Cobalt Arachne]

23 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

 

IIRC the "don't aggro" flag can be overwritten by outside rider effects like procs.

 

So a simpler solution might be to grant the participants of the content in question a dummy 100% proc effect which only applies to their confuse powers (it could be coded as a confuse set enhancement) and which inflicts a negligible offensive effect that causes the target(s) to notice the caster.

I'm not super familiar with procs, they aren't something we use much on critters. I'll dig into this; I'd have to coordinate with Powers team in order to make this possible too.
 

If this solution proves workable, I would be willing to drop the base protections on LT and Minion rank enemies.

[Championess]

49 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

This statement suggests to me you aren't very familiar with 4* content at all, as there is almost ALWAYS a tank AT in serious runs.

 

What you're describing is the 4* speed run meta; Acting like that's the ONLY team composition that can clear 4* content is straight up incorrect.

 

Every test cycle I lead multiple test runs of 4* content and I let people bring anything they want, and we've finished all of them, every single run.

 

You don't need a composition filled with meta unless you're literally trying to speed run it as fast as possible.

 

Yes there's always an alpha aggro control 'tank' which doms can control lots of aggro themselves when played well, hence the confuse nerf. 

 

On the contrary I'm quite familiar with these 4stars, I've tanked them lots of times on a hohum tank, Bio scrapper and when the team feels frisky even my Shield stalker.  Before the nerf to confuse I had brought many pugs through an Aeon on my Mind dom.

 

I did not say teams couldn't complete it, I said 'best successful'.  Sure you can bring any joe schmo through it and complete them in however long the team can stomach to endure it.  The majority of runs that get played teams are looking for a very base composition and it always tends to be certain of things.  

 

As an observation to me it seems odd that we make it objectively harder for a certain AT to do its job because it might outshine all the Cold Corruptors you see.  I enjoy playing these at times it just seems silly to say HC doesn't have some control over the meta when they go raising the bar for certain powersets resulting of more entrenchment to a meta

 

[Cobalt Arachne]

35 minutes ago, biostem said:

So it's ok to invalidate a certain class of power?  I don't understand your stance. 

When it can outright invalidate specific content with zero risk? Absolutely.
Phantom Army isn't allowed to be universal god tanks for the exact same reason. There's anti-Phantom Army measures in place for pretty much every raid boss.

My stance is:
We restrict the strength of anything that can circumvent mechanics in a way that isn't conducive to the designed purpose of the content.

[Cobalt Arachne]

Edit: I was completely wrong on this, I'll take the L for my memory leading me to the wrong conclusion.

Apologies to @Championess for the unfair/incorrect assumptions.

Edited yesterday at 08:40 PM by Cobalt Arachne
Cobalt assumed and made an ass of themselves.

[Championess]

I do say though beyond all of this I appreciate these that you and the team put together @Cobalt Arachne.  

[Championess]

1 minute ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

If you're going to throw logical fallacies at me, I'm not going to bother responding to you any more.
Please respond and quote a post from me where I said the reason we restricted Confuse in Advanced Mode is because we wanted Support to remain the meta.

 

Never said you did.  I take it was because you saw how well aoe confuses did on these, particularly Plant's.