Arcanaville

I'm ok with you calling SR strong against psionic also, because I'm just going to tell Synapse we should make SR as strong against psionic as GuyPerfect's guides say it is.

I had a list once of all the high level critters that wield non-positional psi and I recall it being longer than four. I'll have to go back and look again.

However, lets just take Carnies. Illusionists spam it, and Master Illusionists spam it, and Master Illusionists summon three pets that spam it. That's fairly unique: a boss that spams an attack you have zero protection from, that also casts three pets you have zero protection from, that attack while phase shifted.


I can't find my old lists, but off the top of my head these critters have non-positional psionic attacks that deal damage (as opposed to just mezzes).

High level Critter Types with non-positional psionic damaging attacks:

Carnival of Shadows Illusionist
Carnival of Shadows Master Illusionist
Circle of Thorns Possessed (Psionic)
Circle of Thorns Madness Mage
Fifth Column/Council Vampyri Equinox Adjutant
Fifth Column/Council Vampyri Equinox Archon
Rikti Mentalist
Rikti Mesmerist
Paragon Police PPD controller

That doesn't count things like named bosses or other unique critters.

Four of the high level groups you face (assuming you count Fifth and Council as basically the same group) have significant non-positional psi damage. Counted as a distinct damage type, I would bet its not the least common damage type in those critter groups.

The actual number of distinct powers that are typed Psionic_Attack only is not high, but the flip side is that the devs created a lot of mind controller-like critter types in lots of critter groups, from the Tsoo to the Rikti. In fact, it isn't long before an SR scrapper fresh out of the tutorial runs into the Lost. I'm sure not every SR scrapper has heard of non-positional psi, but every one of them has run into a lot of it over their leveling career. Probably more than Cold damage and similar to Toxic damage.

I wouldn't presume Stone = Granite and put it in the weak category even with the disclaimer, but I very specifically wouldn't classify Super Reflexes as strong against psionics. A significant percentage of psionic attacks are non-positional, and SR has zero protection against those. In fact its a specific long-standing complaint I have lodged with the devs that SR's description and other comments about SR clearly indicate the set's intent was to "dodge attacks regardless of damage type" but non-positional psi breaks that intent in a non-trivial way.

It might accidentally get insta-boosted and leave a gap in the attack chain.

I don't think there's a "balancing" problem with Tankers. Brutes themselves are an outlier in many ways, but comparing to other peer archetypes in general I don't see very many archetype-wide numerical problems.

I think the larger problem with Tankers is that there are too many melee archetypes all crowded into a small functional box, particularly Scrappers, Brutes, and Tankers. In the long run, while no solution will be a perfect one, the best thing I think that could happen would be for the devs to think about modifying Scrappers and Tankers to put some distance between them and Brutes. And given both what I think would best benefit the archetypes in general and what the current dev team seems to think in terms of how they approach balancing, I would try to carve out a unique playstyle option for tankers that neither Brutes nor Scrappers can really leverage, even if performance-wise they are similar (with the same powersets and the same melee archetype structure, they are always going to be).

So the question for me is really: what should Tankers do uniquely different than other archetypes, including melee archetypes, and how should they be constructed to deliver that.

The way I see it, Tankers advantages should start on their defenses, and the fact they should be able to get the best defenses at the lowest cost. I think their defensive strength itself is more or less fine in general, but there's lots of room to improve them in terms of their cost.

Defenses cost endurance. Even with inherent Stamina, they can cost a lot. If a tanker can't run his toggles, or runs his toggles and that eats into his ability to do anything else, those toggles have a burden I don't think they should have to that degree. That's exacerbated by the fact that the tanker damage mod in effect means every tanker kill costs more endurance than a similar scrapper or brute kill. Their lower damage modifier penalizes them once in terms of lower DPS: I don't think it should do so twice in terms of also significantly lower DPE. I'd do something so that in effect Tankers could run their defenses mostly without significant endurance cost, whether that be through an endurance discount inherent or bonus recovery or lowered power costs or whatever. I'd also add a little more so their effective DPE was higher: comparable to scrapper and brute DPE in absolute terms.

I also think that in the same way I see Blasters as offensive specialists not just damage specialists, and "offense" has a lot more meaning than just points of damage, I see Tankers as aggro and defensive specialists but that doesn't necessarily mean taunt and higher resistances. Squishies can be protected by defender bubbles, or controller controls. Why would they want to be protected by Tankers? And I come back to a strange problem with tankers that goes back years to a conversation I had with The_Foo and Tankers: the most dangerous place to be in a team is standing next to the tanker. While drawing maximum aggro, he's probably bringing down a ton of attacks on himself, and those attacks include AoEs. You could be vaporized standing "behind" the tank. The best place to be is very far away from the tank. That doesn't fit with the concept of the tanker protecting anyone.

At the time, I suggested a reverse bodyguard-like effect for tankers where anyone standing within a certain radius of the tank got a certain amount of protection, sort of like how mastermind bodyguard works but in reverse (the suggestion also predates masterminds and CoV, so it wasn't called "reverse bodyguard" initially).

Today, I might consider a different idea that combines new mechanics with a way to play off of Brutes. Brutes generate fury as they are hit or attack, and fury buffs offense. The opposite effect for tankers would be as tankers are hit or attack, they buff their own defense. But their own defenses are already designed to be strong enough to tank, so that doesn't make as much sense or is as useful as Fury. But an alternative is this: for each attack the tanker uses he buffs his surrounding team mates with absorb shields. What's more, the strength of the shield rises the closer to the tanker you are.

In this case, the tanker is defending team mates by attacking, and its safer to be closer to the tanker than farther away, to a point. Its a different way to protect teammates than defender buffs or controller controls, and its an active mechanism: it rewards attacking, and the reward is something that doesn't just overbuff the tanker.

I don't mention that to say that's exactly what I think Tankers need. Rather, what I think they need is something unique, and something that provides players with a unique playstyle reason to play them, and that provides a unique contribution to teams. That might work, that might not be palatable to other players. But the core concept is to add unique gameplay, not necessarily higher numbers, although of course in some cases certain numbers can be higher to implement the unique gameplay.

That would either require a heads up two weeks in advance or two heads up one week in advance.

Or possibly one head twice as up.

The fact that Brutes have lower *actual* defensive numbers for Tankers separate from their maximum caps is something you seem to think is irrelevant, but I can assure you the devs do not. The moment you start talking about the point at which tankers and brutes are living consistently at their defensive caps, you've just cut your own legs out from under you, because the devs interpret that situation as outside the normal range of game balance.

I would strongly advise you to come up with arguments that don't involve that position, while the devs are responsive to actually hearing them. Kicking Tankers down the road to address Blasters first is actually one of the best things that could have happened to Tankers, because it implies the devs want to do things that required more time and/or more tought than they had available and decided to spend more time on it. As I was telling blasters for months that would be the best time to sharpen your arguments and tune them for the devs, who are the only people that matter when it comes to scoring points with arguments.

The day before the coffee talk, Arbiter Hawk told me exactly the same thing he said about DP during the coffee talk: Drain Psyche is a power far too powerful that they would never let people have today, but for that specific power it would also be too much trouble to nerf for too little benefit.

Arbiter Hawk had no particular reason to lie to me in that context.

The nasty catch to pencil cones is that they benefit stronger players. I wish both power bolt and power blast were pencil cones: I'd take a hit in damage but I would get to hit multiple targets with them. At the difficulty levels I play on, I can easily beat the AoE factor of 1.195. But the average player would probably have a more difficult time doing that with a blaster.

Expect high resistance on that one. Because altering the cone formula changes many different powers simultaneously, even if restricted to only blaster attacks. And restricting the change to only blaster attacks would itself be an uphill climb.

If I had to guess, I would guess that what bothers Diellan the most, having thought about it myself, is the fact that the conical modification of the spherical AoE formula doesn't converge to the single target formula in the degenerate case, which is the issue for piercing rounds. Even factoring in the fact that the AoE formulas represent something other than a literal AoE measurement, that's always been an itch I've been unable to scratch myself.

Its possible for Energy Manipulation to get perma-22 but its not easy. An incarnate can get there with enough global recharge (basically, you need 360% recharge in BU to reduce its recharge to about 25 seconds, which is then the duration of BU and Power Boost back to back).

More importantly, everyone seems to be assuming that you need perma-22 to get perma insta-snipe, but that's also not true because snipe itself has a recharge and you don't need the tohit buff while its recharging. In effect your target recharge is not based on the duration of BU and PB, its based (roughly) on the duration of BU, PB, and the recharge of snipe which allows for less recharge to still work.

I hope they don't know what I'm thinking.

The devs are using the word correctly. Because psionic damage is handled specially, as an exotic damage type, its often a weakness in otherwise extremely strong defenses. In the standard game, that's not a large issue, and psionic dealing powersets do not get any special buff or penalty for that exotic nature. But in incarnate content, that exotic nature is of higher prominence, and the devs feel that warrants careful handling of incarnate powers that deal psionic damage.

Whether you agree with their explanation or not, its entirely reasonable and follows the conventional meaning of the terms used.

I would say the fact that its definitely treated differently than most other damage types is what makes it exotic. Exotic isn't synonymous with rare.

Drain Psyche is a high risk high reward power. But it is so high risk and so high reward that it places itself outside the norm of the game's design: far outside the ability for the average player to even begin to leverage. And that means on the one hand its far too powerful for min/maxers, and on the other hand far too risky for lower skill players.

That doesn't "balance out." Some powers have constant stable performance regardless of who uses them. Some reward skill. That's fine, to a point. Drain Psyche steps over that point, straps on a jetpack, and shoots off into the sky.

That's separate from the fact it does certain things the devs as a rule don't allow generally allow in a standard power, including enhanceable regen debuff, and literally smashing into the caps for regen and recovery.

That's not what happened. Sniper attacks are being buffed because the devs felt sniper attacks needed improvement. Sniper attacks period. Although this was announced as a blaster improvement, its not a singularly blaster improvement. Its an improvement to snipes.

That's not a guess: Arbiter Hawk confirmed the changes were meant to improve sniper attacks across the board, and not intended to focus exclusively on Blasters.

There's some other stuff related to blasters they aren't ready to announce yet. Some directly related to improvements to blasters, and some ... not directly related to improvements to blasters.

They require exactly one: Aim or TD. If the devs make reasonable changes to blaster tohit mechanics, probably BU as well. Everything else is min/maxing, and min/maxing is never required.

Just like how right now no one ever uses devices because it sucks so badly?

More likely, some people will do that, and most people will ignore them, and there will be a few more /dev blasters in the world.

Its probably also a historical quirk from the days when toxic typing didn't exist and it was sometimes handled as untyped (it was sometimes handled as fire also).


Just so there's no confusion, I know you're aware of this but when speaking in this technical context, its important to note that attacks have attack typing, and damage has damage typing. Some of the damage types coincidentally have similar names to attack typing, but they aren't the same thing. No "damage" can be typed to bypass defense, because damage doesn't engage defense at all. Attacks do, and whole entire attacks are either typed with types that can be defended against or they don't, and this is completely independent of damage.

With just a couple of rare exceptions, there are no toxic typed attacks. That means whether you have or don't have toxic *defense* is irrelevant. From an attack and defense perspective, toxic doesn't exist.

From a *damage* perspective, *if* the attack lands *then* if the damage is typed toxic, you need toxic resistances to resist it.


Defense blocks attacks, all or nothing. Resistance blocks damage, and only the kind its typed to affect. When we look at an attack before it hits us, the bundles of damage inside it are invisible to us. Its a ranged attack, or a smashing typed attack or a psionic typed attack or an AoE attack. Except for the rare exceptions GuyPerfect notes, there are no toxic attacks. So there's no toxic attacks to defend against either.

The way I look at attacks in CoH is that an attack is like a MIRV. Its a warhead with a lot of warheads inside of it. Defense attempts to intercept the attack while its still one container of stuff you can't see inside. If defense fails, the container opens up and all the little warheads hit you. Resistance works on each individual warhead separately, based on what it does: smashing damage, toxic damage, tohit debuff, terrorize, etc.

I think its simpler than that. I think its basically this:

1. Arbiter Hawk wanted to make it insta with Aim, and perma with TD.

2. He could have just flagged those two powers to redirect snipe to insta-versions. The end.

3. He realized if he made it based on tohit buff rather than locked to just those two powers, it would be *better* because there would be more opportunities for players to get the bonus.

4. But he set the limit to 22% so that while Aim worked and TD worked, it wasn't trivially easy to make most other options work.

5. Defender and Corruptor tactics are a bit easier than they probably should be, but that was a compromise and AH probably didn't think those two possibilities were really that critical so as to invalidate the entire exercise.

6. Tohit debuffs also make this meta game more tricky, but that was the price for making it more accessible.

1. According to Arbiter Hawk, energize will have 120s recharge, and scale 1 endurance discount that lasts 60s. That's the exact endurance discount Conserve power has now, but it will be trivially easy to perma in I24, as Caulderone mentions above, because it will last longer in I24, and recharge faster.

2. Its *also* going to get a heal *and* +regen. You will have to slot for those if you want to maximize them, but even in your current build it will work fairly well without any changes.

3. Power Boost boosts the strength of heals among other things. That's why /energy blasters that take aid self love the power. And guess what: energy manipulation is getting a heal in energize.

4. Power Boost *also* happens to boost tohit buffs. Like the ones that will be making sniper blasts insta-cast in I24.

There is not a single player in existence that has conserve power in energy manipulation that could *possibly* be getting worse in I24 due to the changes Arbiter Hawk announced. When CS becomes energize, it will lose nothing, gain heal and regen, and recharge faster. That's a gift from the gaming gods. The only downside, if you can call it that, is that you might want to slot it more than now. But you don't have to: it will be better in every way in I24 regardless.

Not addressing playstyle, specifically addressing numbers only.

Both BU and Aim have 1.17 cast times. That's 1.32 arcanatime rooting. The buff duration is 10 seconds so barring other factors like lag you're losing over 13% of the buff duration of whichever one you cast first. That's a lot.

Staggering BU and Aim isn't "spreading out the buff" because each power's uptime is usually low in most builds. Rather, its allowing for two bursts over cycle time instead of one. The question is whether its better to have two smaller bursts than one larger one.

BU has +100% damage and Aim has +62.5% damage. Now there will always be times when stacking is better and staggering is better, but the question is how often is each likely to be true. In this case, the context is best asked within the context of snipe.

Snipe does 2.76 scale damage. From level 20 to level 50 that ranges from 48.8% of minion health down to 40.1% of minion health. Slotted snipe plus BU deals between 118% and 144% of minion health, which is a kill. Slotted snipe plus Aim deals between 103% and 126% of minion health. That's also generally a kill.

Against Lts, slotted snipe plus BU deals between 59.3% and 72.3% of Lt health. That's not a kill. But slotted snipe plus BU plus Aim deals between 71.9% and 87.6%. That's *also* not a kill. So the difference between stacking and not stacking won't be the difference in a one-shot kill attempt on an LT most of the time.

How much faster will stacking BU and Aim make a kill? Well, looking at just averages for a minute, BU+Aim will increase damage relative to just BU from about 2.95 to 3.575. That's an increase of 21%. So it should decrease the amount of time to make a kill by about 18.5% (1/1.21 would be the new kill time). But it has also reduced the amount of time you have to make such kills by 13.2%. And its *also* reduced the frequency at which you can get any sort of burst by half.

In effect, saying its so critical to survival to stack Aim with BU now that its worth giving up a large percentage of the total strength of both powers is tantamount to saying you're likely going to be dead 30 seconds from now, except for special circumstances. If you are in that bad of a situation, stacking isn't actually helpful in the long run, because there's no long run.


Stacking BU and Aim still won't be a broken way to play, its just that on top of having dubious burst benefit and objectively provable damage over time deficit, it will also reduce the percentage of the time that snipe is insta-casting by half. Just like stacking BU and Aim currently reduces the frequency of burst frontloading by half.

Addressed above:

This was specifically in reference to a comment about Blazing Aura.