Balanced

NPC Allies:

Having just gone through the Katie Hannon TF, where the tendency of NPC allies to get stuck caused us quite a bit of trouble, I'd like to make a request. I'd like to be able to use Recall Friend on NPC allies. Actually, I'd like for them to register as team members for purposes of buffs and powers (like pets do), but it's mainly for Recall Friend. It would be really nice to be able to 'port them out of whatever bit of geometry they manage to get stuck in.

I can see game-mechanic reasons why this might not be allowed for hostage escorts in general, but it makes perfect sense for allies.

Off-topic: Folks, there's a topic for discussing tanker concerns. Your tanker questions and proposals might be better-received there.

I've been doing some testing on Flash Arrow. The results have been displeasing. From my Consolidated thread post:

My subject was a L5 (even-con) Blood Brother Slugger. I let him take 200 swings at me, counting only those when the debuff animation was in full effect on him (discarding the first and last sample of each application of Flash Arrow). At no time did I stack Flash Arrow.

Misses: 104/200 --> 52%
Hits: 96/200 --> 48%

Even allowing for the small sample size, Flash Arrow provides no detectable to-hit debuff. I /bugged it. It's useless as a combat power in its current state. Its only possible use is as a kind of poor-man's Stealth, and it's not even good at that--it should, by all rights, be autohit, but instead it has the standard 75% accuracy. It doesn't even get the 5% weapon-draw bonus.

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I've also done a fair amount of more general playtesting with my L18 TA/A. We still have to slog through these levels to get Stamina and permaHasten, you know. It continues to be grueling.

On those occasions when all my debuffs are available, I can get through a fight with three basic white minions with minimal damage, although doing so leaves me almost entirely drained of endurace. When Glue Arrow is unavailable, and I rely on Poison Gas Arrow for damage mitigation, the same fight leaves me carrying substantial damage as well as critically short on endurance.

Mezzers are becoming increasingly problematic; I'm running into Yellow Ink Men now. With no functional accuracy debuff, the closest thing I have to mez protection is Ice Arrow. Ice Arrow delays the inevitable mez a bit if it hits, but during the downtime on the hold, I invariable get slept/held. One memorable encounter involved a Yellow Ink Man and an Ancestral Spirit, both +1 to me--a standard spawn in a mission on Heroic. I was forced to run away and exit the mission to rest repeatedly, usually while my remaining pixel of health flashed warningly at me.

I've also spent a bit of time SKing a friend's L5 Dark/Sonic defender. I found it disturbing that with fewer powers, fewer slots, and operating a combat level below me, he seemed to defeat our foes more quickly and easily than I could. He had little difficulty finishing off a named Tsoo boss and mopping up his flunkies after I got faceplanted. He had neither Darkest Night nor Tar Patch at the time.

Which reminds me--the prevalence of Dragonfly-type Tsoo bosses and lieutenants has made it still more obvious to me that Glue Arrow (its other problems aside) desperately needs a -Fly component; a -Jump would be appropriate, too. This would be both logical and thematically consistent.

On the whole, TA is definitely underperforming. Its damage mitigation is inadequate for soloing on Heroic, and its damage increase effects don't decrease the time require to defeat mobs enough to compensate, even when the long recharge periods don't leave them unavailable for a given fight. In combination with the also-underperforming Archery set, it's downright painful.

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Well, you know that short, concise writing is

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"...a sacrifice, if we may say so, to the god of Brevity, whom all historians, indeed, all who work with the written word, ought to worship. We cannot say too little on this subject."

--Paarfi of Roundwood

I knew these changes were planned, so I've held off on posting to this thread until I could try them out.

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Removed Recharge debuff from Net arrow.

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Huzzah. Entangling Arrow is now officially worse than Web Grenade. A primary power should be better than a secondary power, at least if they're at the same tier, and this one was weak to start with. Give it something else. It could be a narrow cone, so you can get two or three mobs in it, maybe. Or it could cause knockdown--an automatic knockdown on impact, and a minor chance to cause knockdown throughout the duration (as they try to move and trip on the net). It still wouldn't be much of a power, but it would help out the */TA controllers, who are forced to take it.

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Added the ability to add Accuracy Enhancements to Flash Arrow.

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Well, it's a start. It would have been better to make at least the defender version autohit. If the defender version were autohit, and the controller version took accuracy enhancements, it would nicely differentiate the two sets. It would also be consistent--Smoke (which is very similar, except that it's a debuff in a controller primary) is autohit, while the equivalent secondary power, Smoke Grenade, is not.

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Reduced base Accuracy of Ice Arrow. It was 120% of normal and should not have been.

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Correcting the accuracy is fine.

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Increased recharge and decreased duration of Ice Arrow. Reduced Slow debuff.

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The duration/recharge ratio was decreased drastically. It will no longer keep even a minion out of a fight; I have expressed my opinion on this in the Petrifying Gaze thread. My reservations are, if anything, stronger in this case; Ice Arrow is the only tool a TA defender has that can actually neutralize a foe. That ability was absolutely necessary for my bowfender, at least until Acid Arrow became available, because the only way he could finish a fight with a lone +1 lieutenant (a common foe in his Heroic solo missions) was to freeze it repeatedly while his endurance slowly recovered.

The new version functions more like a single-target -Recharge. It doesn't prevent attacks, it just delays them a few seconds.

Of course, it's still better than Petrifying Gaze, because it has a secondary effect (however minor). However, it's no longer worth having before SOs become available.

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Swapped availability of Ice arrow and flash arrow.

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I have no objection to this. The original version of Ice Arrow was a bit more control than a defender should really have at level 1. And, of course, there's not much point in taking the new version until around L22, anyway.

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Reduced Duration of Poison Gas Arrow's debuff to 20 seconds, and the duration of the cloud to 20 seconds.

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Any basic debuff--and this is a core debuff of TA--should at least last for the duration of a reasonable solo fight. 20 seconds seems to be just a bit short--it will typically last if I'm fighting 3 even minions, but not long enough to finish a minion+lieutenant pair, even with their resistance debuffed. 30 seconds is a reasonable duration for this power, I think.

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Removed Recharge debuff from Poison Gas Arrow. Reduced its duration and reduced the chance to sleep.

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This change was particularly painful with Glue Arrow unavailable most of the time. Can we get something to replace the -Recharge? Otherwise, this power is going to look awfully shabby next to the likes of Enervating Field or Darkest Night. Thematically, -Regen would make sense, but it may be overpowered if -Regen is all-or-nothing. -Recovery would be interesting, too, and offer some interesting combo opportunities with Electric.

I couldn't tell if the chance to Sleep a foe was reduced, because I've only seen the "choking" emote about 10 times in 17 levels to start with. Did something that unreliable really need to be reduced? Why not just remove it and make the debuff better?

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Reduced Duration of Glue Arrow from 45 seconds to 30 seconds.

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Again, I think 30 seconds is not unreasonable. It should last through a typical solo fight. I did have it lapse a few times before a fight ended last night, but it wasn't unmanageable. However, see my comments on recharge times.

Can we pretty please have a -Fly on this power? Flyers apparently ignore the -Speed on it, which reduces its utility considerably in some cases. Wiith part of a spawn slowed, and the rest moving at full speed, it actually makes scatter worse--the opposite of its intended effect. I'm really coming to loathe clockwork oscillators now.

It'd be nice if it had the same range as Poison Gas Arrow, too. I don't care which range you choose, I just find the "Out of Range" message annoying when I'm trying to lay down debuffs.

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Reduced Damage Resistance debuff of Acid Arrow and Disruption arrow.

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OK, so now we have to stack the two powers to get a -Res approaching that of Enervating Field. In itself, that's not so bad. Was the recharge time on Acid Arrow also increased? I found myself having to wait for it much more often, but I didn't time it. It wasn't too onerous, but it would be a bit much on top of the other changes.

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Increased Recharge rate of Disruption Arrow to 120 for Defender and Controller.

Increased Recharge time of Glue Arrow to 120 seconds from 20 seconds. (Dev note: balancing)

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These are the changes I have the biggest problem with. I have no objection to preventing these powers from stacking. That's perfectly reasonable. After all, the core debuffs from Dark and Rad don't stack, right? Of course, Lingering Radiation and Tar Patch can stack a bit if you make a point of slotting for it...but those are completely different, right?

My objection is to the approach taken to prevent the stacking. These are not "they all fall down" nuke powers. They're debuffs. They're the heart of a TA defender's job. These changes prevent us from doing a substantial part of that job 75% of the time. Even with the slow, endurance-strained pace of my TA/A, Glue was only available every second or third fight. As a result, a substantial portion of my damage mitigation was gone, and I had nothing to take up the slack. In teams, it was even more pronounced, because teams tend to go from one fight to another faster; more often than not, I felt reduced to what other ATs have often accused defenders of being--a gimped blaster.

If you really feel that the debuffs should never, ever be allowed to stack, then make them not stack. Fix the code, for the love of Knuth! You've changed pets so that a new activation replaces the old pet. Most buffs have always had a mechanic that prevented a single hero from stacking them on the same target. Apply one of those mechanics to the debuffs--just pick one. Either would be far better than these interminable recharges.

TA is a debuff set. It doesn't buff. It doesn't heal. Its control elements are matched or exceeded by other debuff-heavy primaries. If a set is going to be this focused on debuffing, then it should debuff better than any other set. If it doesn't, then why would anyone ever want a TA defender on a team? Look at the set in light of these changes and try to come up with an answer for that.

I like the changes in principle, but--as nearly everyone else has said--the tacked-on feel of the new portals is bothersome. It would be much better to have a couple more mole points, accessed via a menu from the one in FBZ.

Failing that, could we at least have some in-game justification for the new portals? Maybe a plaque explaining how they came to be, or a contact you have to visit to unlock them? Ideally, of course, the explanation would be tied somehow to the things heroes have been doing in the Shard.

For example:

"Thanks in part to heroes like yourself, Dr. Huxley's Kora research has borne unexpected fruit. She has discovered that the Kora fruit and the strange vines that connect various regions are actually all part of a single massive plant that spans the entire Shadow Shard. The visible portions of the plant are connected by an intricate network of dimensional conduits. She has worked with Portal Corp scientists to find a way to commandeer a few of these conduits for our use. The mole points are safer, of course, but these new portals provide quicker transport for those hardy enough to face the hazards of the Shard head-on."

Something like this explains how the portals work, why they look improvised, why they terminate near the vines, and why the mole points are still in use. It also has the benefit of making it feel like we've been accomplishing something in the zone. Now all we need to know is why one of them apparently requires an air compressor to function...

Well, it says they used it (however ineptly). Another group could, possibly, have wrested it away from them in the confusion. But, yes, this confirms that the Pantheon was in control of it at some point.

I had the impression that we already knew the Pantheon was behind the event, anyway. Perhaps I was just assuming it.

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That's Positron-Glider.

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If I'm the only one who get's that joke, do I get pie?

"Yeah, you'll never mess with a guy with a Positron-Glider strapped to his back, huh?"
-Bill Murray, Ghostbusters

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Except it was "positron collider", not "glider". I was going to try to work in a joke about Posi getting a deal on vehicle insurance from Geko, but lynch-mob considerations deterred me.

Oh, and I think you're mixing two lines--part of yours comes from Venkman's line about them having "an unlicensed nuclear accelerator strapped to our backs".

I am such a geek.

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Although it would be nice if my own culture, beyond ninjas and anime, was well represented, creating a zone based on Momotaro seems impractical, at best. If they had made a zone with shaggy monsters, and called them Japanese shaggy monsters, heck, that would have been cool with me.

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An entire zone might be impractical, yes--but what about a section of a zone? Say a cultural/historical/entertainment sort of district? A zone with several museums (so they can move all the priceless displays out of those warehouses and office buildings), a zoo, an aquarium, and...a Japanese-themed botanical garden, centered on a shrine.

Each sector could have very distinct activities:

1) Art heists from the museums.
2) DE mutating and releasing animals from the zoo (because we really need more zones with DE ).
3) Sharks with frikkin' laser beams produced in the aquarium.
4) All sorts of trouble centered on the shrine--maybe Crey wants to bulldoze it to put in a water park, and the spirits start wreaking havoc on them. Or a kitsune decides Freaks are funny, which is actually a more frightening thought.

Might I suggest that we at least wait and see exactly what Cryptic has done with the mythology in question? I'm as prone to wild speculation as anyone here, but a single screenshot of a single mob is not much to go on. Given Jack's credentials in matters mythological, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Also, as I've pointed out before, folklore attributes many strange powers, including shapeshifting, to various sorts of Sidhe. Who are we to decide what forms they can and cannot take? Or to guess what changes the Tuatha de Danaan may have undergone in their long exile?

Cap, the reason people are complaining about the level range for Croatoa is that they want something to fill in the known content gap in the high 30s. A lot of people run out of missions around L39, and have to go through a fair amount of boring grinding to unlock the L40+ content.

The expansion zones were planned out well before that content gap became known, however. It would not be a simple matter to increase the level range for a zone--just bumping the villain levels up isn't enough. Even if they did it, it would require extensive retesting internally. That means a substantial slip in the release schedule, and not just for this issue; at least one future issue, the one which is currently slated to hold a 30-40 or 35-45 zone, would have to be redesigned as well. It's not practical for the dev team to screw up months of work to appease a vocal minority of forumites who have characters in the high 30s. I'd rather wait than get two zones that had quick hacks in them to swap the ranges around.

In short, I understand why people are griping, but I don't expect them to get what they want. Maybe the devs will add some individual missions to existing zones in the 35-40 range to help them out--it's certainly a possibility with new mission types being added.

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I have a problem with the "children of Danu" being a villain group. The Fomors I can understand, but I always thought the Tuatha de Dannan were supposed to be "good guys."

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Well, not necessarily. They were sort of a mixed bag from the earliest accounts. Some were basically decent (as long as you were on their side). Others were...well...not so nice. Take the Morrigan, for example. She personified lethality, with overtones of terror and "venomous animosity".

Consider also that we are not necessarily dealing with the original People of Danu--for the most part, we'll likely be encountering those descended from them after they were banished. All sorts of fey creatures could be lurking about, some of them quite ill-disposed toward humans. On top of that, some sidhe were said to be shape-shifters, so there's no telling what they might look like (until we get more screenies, anyway).

I wonder if the Cauldron, the Spear, and the Sword will turn up? Given that Ireland hasn't sunk beneath the waves, I presume that the Stone is accounted for to some extent.

Here's a fun trick with hover/fly and the boombox emote:

If you trigger the boombox while just a few feet off the ground, then turn off hover during the animation, you'll drop to the ground and begin dancing while the boombox floats in midair. With careful positioning, you can place a boombox on another character's shoulder.

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I once encountered a pair of Rikti who were commenting on recent events in the story arc - Rozen and Stren.

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I stumbled across these two last night. It's a good thing I was stealthed, because I was laughing too hard to fight for a bit.

By the way...Rozen and Stren are dead.

Just a thought, but...is there any chance the spycams could have the "judge" emote enabled? It would be fun to be able to display a scorecard rating a PvPer's actions. The coin-toss might be good, too, with an observer acting as referee in a match.

This is most exceptionally cool. I envision hide-and-seek style matches with a mix of fighters and spycams on each team, so that the observers can take a real role in the match as spotters. Will fighting characters be able to assist on their teams' cams to target the foe the observer is watching?

It also means that much of the code will already be in place, ready to be reused, for the idea I put forth in the CoV forum about running reconaissance drones from the supercomputer in your HQ.

There have been some good suggestions for Faultline--a contact, maybe a fence of some sort, a hospital--but why not take it a step further? This would be difficult to implement, but I think a lot of players would find it appealing:

Make Faultline the front line.

It's clear that the villains have the upper hand in the zone; that's why there are no conveniences there. Give heroes an incentive to push them back, with real, tangible results. Track the total xp earned in the zone (to keep high-levels from gaming the system). If the total crosses a certain threshold, respawn the zone with footholds--safe areas with an infirmary (a hospital, but in a temp structure like a tent or Quonset hut), a field trainer who buys enhancements at a good price, and a contact who sells skittles and gives generic missions--and maybe even loans you "weapons" (temp powers) occasionally. As long as the xp total stays above the threshold each day, the conveniences stay in place. If the heroes let up, they go away and have to be re-established. Maybe even have some buildings restored or ramps added if the zone stays in the green for long periods of time.

Like I said, it might be a pain to implement, but it would be cool. Haven't we all wished, at one point or another, that we could see a real effect we have on the city? We beat up a swarm of villains, only to have more appear moments later--a necessary game mechanic, but disheartening. Having a few places where there are signs that the war on crime can be won would be a great motivator.

Let's bear in mind that not every villain has grand schemes or overweening pride. There should always be room for smaller motivations and criminals that are more like twisted antiheroes than archvillains. Vengeance is an obvious motivation for such characters, but there are others--obsession with a particular person, a never-ending search for the ultimate challenge, or even the well-being of a loved one who can only be saved by leading a life of crime. Such characters may join (or be forced into) a criminal organization, but only as a means to their own ends.

Even in comics, the bad guy isn't always a villain in his own eyes.