Arcanaville

Its not that hard to land on the Sun if you can get people to breathe plasma and not burst into flame.

My suspicions though is that our devs didn't conclude such as system *couldn't* be fun, but rather more critically it would be difficult to make it fun in our game. Particularly at the time it was scrapped. The problem with the skill system as I understood it was that it was an interactivity-based system: it allowed players to interact with the environment in different ways. And that requires generated environment to interact with. And the way our missions are generated, the only missions in which the skill system would be remotely interesting would be the ones that were hand-crafted to leverage them, and that could easily triple the time it took to create them. If most missions only trivially leveraged the skills system, it would have a ton of wasted depth. Imagine the problem people now have with the invention system, or the incarnate system, with lots and lots of redundant salvage, but affecting not just the crafting side of the system but the execution side of the system as well. That's probably what caused the devs to conclude it wouldn't be fun.

When you consider that common invention salvage didn't give the devs pause, and the almost purposeless incarnate salvage variety didn't give the devs significant pause, I believe the fact that the devs back then decided the skills system would probably be too trivialized says something.

I don't really know how to have fun doing it any other way. I try to keep my enhancements from expiring and I slot inventions of opportunity (mostly what drops that I think I can use) but I don't plan builds until I reach the late 40s generally.

It doesn't seem to be logically necessary that just because the Quills of Jocas can separate someone being powered by a well from that well, it can somehow disconnect the Battalion from the many wells they apparently have either consumed or hijacked.


Doesn't Prometheus also refer to the Battalion as a race of beings also? I don't think its likely he could be wrong about that.

Based on some experiments I did last night, that actually seems to be the case: there's always a ragdoll directive and an FX directive when hitting critters with attacks, but they don't always seem to initiate a MOV themselves. Actually, they rarely initiate a MOV themselves. Mostly, I tend to see BLOCK_X moves if anything.

I think the SSOOCS was eventually displaced by the invention system, but I don't think it morphed into the invention system directly.

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

- Sun Tzu

The problem with that is that the devs seem uncomfortable with how strong the passives have to get to be interesting in the first place. In CoV beta, where they were first introduced, they actually went from 0-25% instead of 0-20% as they do now, but literally between the last day of beta and the first day of headstart they dialed them down to their present value. Making them slottable would require reducing their base strength which would weaken them for players that don't slot, and it would make SR even more slot hungry.

What makes a bit more sense to me is to give PB the Kuji-in Rin treatment: give PB slottable Psionic resistance. Its only one power instead of three, and the number of slots involved drops. And it fills in a questionable hole in SR in non-positional psi (SR has no protection at all against that; even Invuln has Dull Pain protection against psionics). PB is rarely heavily slotted, so there's likely to be lots of opportunity to slot PB for psi res *and* slot res procs for most SR characters (factoring in the fact the slots have to be taken from somewhere to do this).

Some version of that (perhaps not that total) would be the fourth way that occurred to me.

If you see a road runner running past your house, I would recommend unplugging your computer.

You could try using the AE where you can set starting emotes for various critters in custom missions.

Requiring targets in melee range is technically a limitation of AAO, but not a practical one for a power given to melee archetypes. Meanwhile its average strength is far higher than Build Ups because it doesn't cost activation time. Build Up costs 1.32s of zero damage for every +100% damage buff for 10s it grants. That cast time cost is often overlooked when computing BU's true damage over time benefit. For SO slotting, the simplified calculation not counting cast time for BU slotted down to 45s recharge is +22.2% damage buff, or about 11% net damage increase over time assuming approximately +100% damage slotting. But factoring in the cast time, BU's benefit drops to only 8% net damage increase or about +16% damage strength. AAO beats that with one target in range.

The theoretical maximum performance of Build Up, at the recharge cap of 500% recharge, is 1.32 idle, 10s of +100%, 8s of no buff. At approximately +100% damage slotting, that is +38% damage strength, or 19% more net total damage. If you can average four or more targets within AAO, you will beat the best that BU can do under the numerically best possible conditions.

In PvE Fiery Embrace has the same uptime as Build Up and Aim: its up 20s with 180 recharge, which is identical uptime to Build Up's 10s of buff with 90s recharge. It also has lower cast time and far lower per cycle time. Slot BU with SOs and you spend about 2.8% of its total cast time rooted and unable to attack. FE slotted similarly spends only 1% of its total cycle time similarly rooted. The net result is that slotted with SOs, even though FE delivers a slightly lower buff (45% additional base damage vs BU's +100% damage strength, roughly 50% additional damage overall) it delivers more overall benefit: 8.9% vs BU's 8%. For all higher recharge regimes, FE gets increasingly better than BU.

Power Siphon also beats BU, and many prior analyses of FU which are a bit more complex due it its effect on attack chains have concluded that FU is at worst equal to BU, and almost certainly better.


I also get the feeling you think Blasters have a higher damage buff modifier than Scrappers. If so, that's false. Both have a 0.125 melee damage buff modifier. BU buffs both by +100% damage. Oh, but BU buffs Blaster tohit by 15% and Scrappers by 20%. That's because Scrappers have a tohit self buff modifier of 0.1 and Blasters have a tohit self buf modifier of 0.075. BU is always better for Scrappers than Blasters, albeit primarily in its accuracy improvement. Its equal in the damage area.

Comparing Blaster secondaries to Scrapper primaries, every Blaster secondary has Build Up except for Devices (which has no comparable power) and Dark (which has Soul Drain). Every Scrapper primary also has Build Up (same damage buff, higher tohit buff) except Claws (Follow Up), Dual Blades (similar to FU), Dark Melee (Soul Drain), Kinetic Melee (Power Siphon), Staff (which has forms), Street Justice (whose BU analog buffs less damage but improves combos), and Titan Weapons (same).

So if we consider BU to be the baseline, two Blaster secondaries are exceptional: Devices which is lower and Dark which is higher. If we assume Follow Up is no better than BU (and most analyses including mine over the years have said its likely better) then the exceptional Scrapper primaries become Dark and Kin which are both provably higher (than BU), and Staff, SJ, and TW.

If we say Staff's self damage buff is lower, the question is where do SJ and TW fall. Given their self damage powers are intimately tied with combos, this is probably a non-trivial issue to convert into an apples to apples comparison, but its highly unlikely the net contribution of Combat Readiness and Build Momentum is to be significantly lower than BU. Particularly because they have about 2/3rds of the damage buff of BU besides their combo effects.

Conservatively - very conservatively - this is a draw. In reality, FU is stronger than I'm giving credit for and SJ and TW are almost certainly better than I'm giving credit for, or just plain incomparable. Worst case scenario is a tie. Its almost certainly a win for Scrappers.

That leaves the other side of the equation: Blaster primaries vs Scrapper secondaries. Here, Blasters do have more actual powers, but that power is Aim: Aim's damage buff is not very high in terms of net overall buff over time. Remember that BU was only increasing damage by 8% under SO conditions and its maximum possible benefit was only 19% (i.e. about +38% damage buff). Aim's going to be lower than that. And its competition is going to be Fiery Embrace and Against All Odds, both of which are stronger than Build Up, much less Aim. In fact, if you're thinking that a straight simple average across the board is the correct way to compare, then saturated AAO alone is going to come close to beating Aim across the board. Lets assume FE grants about 8.8% net damage, or about 17.6% damage strength equivalent, and AAO is saturated at +81.25%. That means averaged across nine scrapper secondaries that is about +11% damage buff.

Aim's average buff slotted with SOs is about +7.8% damage buff. If every blaster primary had Aim, the average would be 7.8%. But AR and Dual Pistols don't. So unless you believe AR and Dual Pistols have something that is an equivalent to Aim but twice as strong, Scrappers are actually going to win this one also.

Perhaps you think its unfair to presume AAO is saturated. So lets work backwards. The Blaster average with no Aim in AR and DP is actually +6.5% on average due to Aim. How many targets does AAO need to average for the Scrapper average to tie that value? Its when AAO is generating about +49.7% buff, which occurs at 5.4 targets.

When Shield averages 5.4 targets in AAO, it and FE alone can combine to provide a greater average benefit to nine scrapper secondaries than Aim can when ten out of twelve blaster primaries have it.

So even though all I said was that Scrappers get the strongest and the most variety of damage self buffs, if you want to average the self buff amounts for both Blasters and Scrappers, something I would not necessarily consider a valid comparison, Blasters still lose.

Except that wasn't nine questions, but one: what if every single one was true simultaneously?

And while lots of people have, over the years, opined that blaster aoe was somehow better tactically, that blaster damage was somehow stronger visually, that blaster offense was superior apparently, the fact that those conjectures have to be true against the fact that practically every base number the devs have control over do *not* grant blasters those advantages is telling.


These are the damage self buffs available to Blasters:

Build Up (and its clones)
Aim (and its clones)
Soul Drain


And for Scrappers:

Build Up (and its clones)
Follow Up (and its clones)
Soul Drain
Power Siphon
Fiery Embrace
Against All Odds

That doesn't count things like Form of the Body, and if you throw Brutes in there you also have Rage. So Blasters get Aim which Scrappers don't get. Scrappers get Follow Up, Power Siphon, Fiery Embrace, and Against All Odds which Blasters don't get. I'd say Scrappers get a much more diverse, much more interesting, and numerically much stronger set of damage self buff powers.

I don't think the devs are open to allowing us to attack while not being there.

How long would it take for such an effect to ramp up?

In that case, Champions Online is already CoH3.

(The aborted MUO was CoH2)

They can, and they do, and they should. They can continue to improve things, but they have to be aware of the limits of their existing playerbase while they do.

I don't think its any of those things.

I think its highly unlikely that project is CoH2.

So thinking out loud about mez. An interesting question to ponder is why mez kills. I think it kills blasters because the only way blasters survive is to keep attacking, either defeating or disabling attackers. Shut off offense, and blasters become extremely vulnerable (preventing movement is another problem) Defiance 2.0 attempts to partially mitigate that by giving the blaster offensive options even while mezzed.

But it kills melee for different reasons. That's all part of it, but the bigger issue is that it detoggles them, stripping most of their protection away. They get mez protection to prevent that from happening at all.

So we have attack while mezzed, and mez protection. And then we have the controller version, which is alpha mez them before they can mez you. Are there any other ways to reduce the threat of mez besides those three?

The simple answer is yes, in theory, but just because there's a reason to do so, doesn't mean that reason makes that a high priority item to actually do relative to all other things the devs want to do. The farther behind older sets get in theory relative to newer sets, the higher that priority likely becomes. At some point, they'll probably look at them, but that point may be many newer sets into the future, and possibly years down the road. It depends on how much of a difference there actually is, and that's going to be informed by how well the newer sets perform, and how popular they are in terms of being played, relative to older sets. The longer the older sets can "hold their own" against the newer ones, the less likely the devs will prioritize revamps.

It should also thematically buff all enemies within range to the resistance cap, the damage cap, and the health cap, and make them very, very angry.

Its explicitly designed to do so: this was discussed when Alpha was being beta tested. It is an explicit feature of the Alpha slot that each alpha ability would interact with the other powers in the incarnate system in different ways, presenting a choice to the player within the system itself.

That's one of the reasons Alpha exists at all: its the only way to buff the other incarnate powers.

Recharge is the exception, not the rule. The incarnate powers are exempt from recharge buffs because they are balanced around particular uptimes. Like Strength of Will for example. Since recharge can't buff SoW, should we make all enhancements stop buffing all powers?