BellaStrega

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Working on it...

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Here's the weird thing:

I have a much easier time taking new characters through the starting missions in CoV than I do in CoH. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but CoH just feels more cumbersome somehow.

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You can always send a PM to Statesman complaining about it. It'll go into the pile of THOUSANDS of complaints just like it.

Or you could search for "city of looping sounds" on google, but you didn't hear that from me.

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You could also PM Jonyu, who has been responsive when I've PM'd similar concerns.

For the record, Targeting Drone was recently changed so that you get the graphic and sound when you activate it, but it fades away shortly thereafter.

"Working on in the future" strikes me as similar to "soon." That is, it may happen, it may not. It doesn't really strike me as a definite. It may also be that it was determined that changing it wasn't really necessary.

I think that the basic problem is how debuffs are applied to characters, as I explained in an earlier post.

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Well how is two hurricanes different from two rads making you the anchor for the to hit debuffs? and the damage debuffs? You add any two of something it really shells people. I still don't see why this is necessary anymore.

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Because two hurricanes completely removes a melee's ability to do anything. Two rads with EF + RI can be overcome with inspirations, buffs, and such.

Even without the range debuff, two hurricanes will pretty much floor anyone's to-hit. What's the problem?

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Not that it is going to change. And while you're quoting States he said essentially when this came out that it should impact tankers and scrappers they just weren't sure how to do it and make it balanced and implied that it was a temporary fix (I am paraphrasing).

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No, the "temporary fix" interpretation is wishful thinking.

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I can believe that if there is a coding problem, then we live with this awkward and half-[censored] solution because of the coding problem.

I'm a programmer. I can believe the complexities. But if it's due to a coding problem, then please just say so.

Don't give me that crap about "Blasters aren't meant to melee therefore this is a good solution". That's just crap. Explain why a Blaster's Bonesmasher cannot reach through the Hurricane, but a Tanker's Bonesmasher can. Because the Blaster has OTHER options? Ridiculous answer. OTHER OPTIONS are, you know? OTHER OPTIONS! They're not what I'm using now. Why are two ATs using the same power, where the Blaster is actually using it BETTER (more damage)... and the Blaster's Bonesmasher is vulnerable to range debuffing while the Tanker's isn't?

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Because you do have other options. If a blaster can't hit a sorcerer with Total Focus, the blaster can hit the sorcerer with a ranged attack - and some blaster primaries have stuns or holds.

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"Other options" is a bad answer. They shouldn't affect THIS power. A melee attack is a melee attack, period. The source doesn't matter.

And what of Peacebringers? Do we count them as melee since their main attacks are melee and they have damage shield? Or do we count them as ranged since they have ranged attacks? What if they're in Tank form? What if they're in Nova form?

All sorts of questions that are caused by the silly solution of having range debuffs be AT-specific. If it's that much easier to code it that way, fine, admit it and we'll live with a less than right solution, but don't tell us "this IS the right solution".

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They admitted it was much easier to code this way when it was first implemented over a year ago. The fact is that the ATs with melee attacks that don't get the immunity have access to ranged attacks, so don't act like your only option is to use Total Focus or whine on the forum.

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as i recall, this "tank/scrapper range -range debuff immunity" was to be a temporary fix awhile back. it was originally implemented because ALL tank/scrapper attacks were being -range debuffed--melee and ranged. because of this tankers and scrappers were not able to execute melee attacks at all.

i'm not sure how or why this temporary solution has become the norm.

a much more reasonable solution, and i believe the original solution suggested at the time by the devs, was to make all melee attacks immune to the -range of hurricane and NONE OF THE RANGED ATTACKS.



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It was never presented as a temporary solution.

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Because they can distinguish by AT, and not by attack type.


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wrong.

Check the defense powers sometime, defense only vs melee, defense only vs range.

If the devs are saying that then they are not being truthful, either they cannot tell the difference between attack types or they cannot be getting defense working as documented.

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I believe the reason for this is simple:

Range debuffs are a status effect (all debuffs are, really). So, when hurricane applies its debuffs to you, you get:

-range
-accuracy

Scrappers, brutes, tankers, and stalkers have status protection against range debuffs.

I don't think they can apply a selective status protection so that it only helps some kinds of powers. Otherwise, they really would've done it. This ground was gone over months ago, and I made exactly the same point you did, and it got nowhere then, too.

Who knows, though? It may change.

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There is Scrapper which is Melee, and Blaster which is Ranged.

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Wrong.

Scrappers are Melee and defense
Blasters are Ranged and Melee.

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Yeah, Devices has all those awesome melee attacks. Blasters are ranged damage with a mixed bag of secondaries. They can include really good melee attacks (I've played /energy and /electric, so I know the blapper ways, at least at pre-SO levels).

That's beside the point:

Thematically, blasters are about the ranged damage. Scrappers are about the melee. If melee becomes impossible, blasters have ranged attacks. Scrappers might have EPPs, or one or two ranged attacks in claws and spines, but are otherwise out of luck.

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Read the description as well, blasters are about massive damage at range or close up.

If you want to play a blaster as range only, fine you pay you play. Don't tell other how to play when they are paying to play.

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Hey, just quoting Statesman. Blasters = ranged damage.

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Range needs a limit to which it can be debuffed. I don't even understand the point behind a power that debuffs the range of people right next to you.

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Hurricane debuffs range and accuracy, and teh debuff lasts for 10 seconds after you leave the hurricane.

In PVE, NPC hurricanes lost the 10-second debuff, because it was painful to deal with for ranged and melee ATs.

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The reason is as he stated blasters, kelidens, defenders and controllers have options for ranged attacks that tankers and scrappers do not have.

It may not make "sense" but rarely does game balance make sense outside of game mechanics.

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I don't think this makes sense from a game balance perspective, either. It completely cuts out a Blaster's secondary (other than Devices).

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No it doesn't. It takes two hurricanes to debuff melee range to the point that you can't attack, and if your blaster is in melee range of a Sorcerer with hurricane, you're already getting knocked around. You can run away and blast from a distance.

Melee can...punch or not fight.

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This is a great annoyance for my Blapper too - any chance to help out on that?

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Not likely. You have Ranged options. Many Scrapper, Stalker, Tanker and Brute builds do not have Ranged options. The exclusion to the Range debuff only applies to those AT's for that reason.

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While true, why then do any ranged attacks get immunity to the -range of Hurricane?

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Because they can distinguish by AT, and not by attack type.

It was back before issue 4 when he posted that, so I just stuck "1 year" into the search engine.

Also, back when the change first went in, I argued that only melee attacks should be immune, not melee ATs. At the time, someone explained why it was an engine limitation that couldn't be done otherwise. I realize it's a hindrance to blappers, scraptrollers, etc., but I think the solution that exists currently is probably the best available, even if not equally fair to all.

If that makes sense.

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Sorry, a blaster's role is ranged damage.

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Just out of curiosity, what do you base that on? Who decided that?

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Why, Statesman did:

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I went away from the computer to check on some CoV stuff and *wham* I received 5 or so PM's asking "what is the Blaster's role?"

Answer - Ranged damage. Now, the issue is more specifically - what does a Blaster do that a Scrapper can't already do? Or, even worse, is a Scrapper inherently "stronger" than a Blaster. We want each Archetype to have a well defined role, and part of our Scrapper testing is aimed directly at this.

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Anyway, you're not hindered much by hurricane unless you deliberately gimped yourself by skipping as many ranged attacks as possible. If a sorcerer pops Hurricane, hit him with freeze ray or beanbag or tesla cage or something.

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Energy/Dark - Up to 7. I stopped when I got her to Cap, and then started playing alts.
SS/Invuln - this one's up to 15, but I only started her yesterday.

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Jeez Kali, do you work at all? You post a ton and you play a lot, man I wish I had more free time...

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It takes like two hours to get a Brute to 7th level. It takes a bit longer to get to 15, but we're still talking about the weekend.

And yeah, most of my free time is spent online. This is largely due to living in a rural area, and largely finding interactign with people online to be more entertaining than watching television.

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All these things are wonderful points, if they were expressed in the mission write up. But they aren't. The end result is a mission statement that says go INTO the PvP zone. It doesn't say, there is a safe zone, There is a safety timer, It certainly doesn't say where the contact is, or this is Intro to PvP 101. Plenty of "Go talk to So & So" missions in this game simply give you a mission when you talk to the aforementioned So & So without asking further (a la Security Chiefs).

I'm glad you all provided this info, but its still a sore point in how its being presented.

They want to elucidate on the fine points of PvP to me, put a contact outside the PvP zones that can answer all my questions, not inside. I have a bad taste in my mouth from more than one game with PvP done wrong. My reaction is going to be strong. And if they want to show me the benefits, dont give me limited information and a shove, and a "You MUST go into this place to learn about it". Its poor design when it comes to presenting a completely divergent gameplay experience that has such negative history and connotations.

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File a petition or bug report describing this. Maybe PM a dev about it. You've already started a thread.

I agree - the mission text should be crystal clear, because otherwise people assume the worst and get angry.

In beta, I was wandering around the docks looking at the Coralax - while hidden - when a Penumbra Adjutant shot me out of Hide and the very purple Coralax took me out.

So I go to the hospital, kvetch briefly about this in global chat, exit the hospital, and there's a Penumbra Adjutant shooting me as soon as I'm out the door.

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Is it just me or is this whole "it'd be hard to code" thing a hollow excuse?


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clearly you have never programed professionaly before. If you have you would have quite a bit more sympathy. I would be very suprised if this was just a hollow excuse. I speak from expierience.

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It's probably not unlike the reasons that toxic typed Def hasn't been implemented - the engine isn't really built for it.

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This has always bothered me. I HATE being told what I'm "supposed to be" and I'm sure Blappers do too. The beauty of this game has always been its flexibility. Just look at the term... Blapper. Blaster/Scrapper. You also have deftrollers, scraptrollers, scrankers, etc. There's always been this amazing capacity to blur the lines between the ATs and do something unique and unexpected, and everytime we use the justification that someone is "supposed to be" doing something, we whittle away at that possibility.

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Sorry, a blaster's role is ranged damage. You get really good melee attacks because using them is very risky. However, in no way should you be as good at melee combat as the melee ATs, hence my lack of sympathy for this particular plight.

I used to have an Ice/Energy blaster (back in issue 2), and I found that when I came across a Hurricane-wielding villain, I could use Freeze Ray and have my way with him. Like I said, having your melee attacks reduced in range does not cripple your ability to function. Melee ATs have no choice but to suck up the to-hit debuff in Hurricane, and without the immunity to range debuffing, they can stand next to a Sorcerer and not be able to attack.

If Hurricanes were somehow preventing blappers from functioning at all, then there'd be a point here. However, they don't, and there isn't.

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Is it just me or is this whole "it'd be hard to code" thing a hollow excuse?

Clearly, it's a broken mechanic. It's absolutely ridiculous that blaster melee attacks are debuffed while scrapper ranged attacks aren't. That makes NO sense.

So, logicially, the dev team should either take the time to make it work right, or just scrap the idea entirely and get rid of the range debuff until such a time that they're able to put forth the effort required to make it work correctly. There's no reason for us, the players, to be expected to tolerate mediocrity like this.

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I dunno, because

1) Blasters have alternatives if their melee attacks aren't working. Heck, their melee attacks are their alternatives in most situations.

2) Blasters aren't supposed to be the melee combatants. While they have good melee attacks, scrappers, stalkers, brutes, and tankers really should be better than blasters at melee. In that regard, the range debuff thing makes sense.

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This is a great annoyance for my Blapper too - any chance to help out on that?

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Not likely. You have Ranged options. Many Scrapper, Stalker, Tanker and Brute builds do not have Ranged options. The exclusion to the Range debuff only applies to those AT's for that reason.

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I don't think that is fair.

From a design and coding perspective it seems easier to me to apply a range debuff cap, than apply a check that looks to see what the AT making the attack is.

Simply applying a minimum range that cannot be debuffed bast, say 5 feet since I think that is about the range of most/all melee attacks.

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This was suggested several times when the change was implemented for scrappers and tankers, and it was explained that, no, it's not actually easier from a coding perspective.

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Why is this the conceptual solution? Wouldn't it make more sense to make MELEE attacks, regardless of source, immune from range debuffing?

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...or at least put a minimum range cap in place, even if that shortens melee range. IIRC, that's the fix that was put in place for the mob version of Hurricane in PvE.

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Actually, the fix discussed in this thread (making melee ATs immune to the range debuff) is the fix that was put in place for Hurricane in PvE. I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that this was somehow a PvP or primarily PvP fix, as it was implemented two issues before the arena.

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After doing some testing in the arena with a friend, we came to the conclusion that a blaster's melee attacks (secondary or power pool) were being debuffed to zero. They would only go off if the two characters were actually in physical contact with each other, and the repel on Hurricane is strong enough that you can't do that without a power that resists repel such as Unstoppable. It's literally impossible for a non-melee AT to get a melee attack off against a character running Hurricane.


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That's not crippling for him because he has ranged attacks in his primary. If a blaster can't Total Focus a defender, he can shoot the defender. If a brute can't Total Focus a defender, he can...what...wave Temporary Invulnerability at him?

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Bug. We neglected to give Stalkers and Brutes the immunity to the Range Debuff that Scrappers and Tankers get. I fixed it internally yesterday...it'll hopefully make it to you folks "Soon(tm)"

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Why is this the conceptual solution? Wouldn't it make more sense to make MELEE attacks, regardless of source, immune from range debuffing?

There is no reason why Scrapper ranged attacks are immune to range debuffing

There is no reason why Blaster melee attacks are vulnerable to range debuffing.

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Because it actually makes sense to do it the way you recommend. Melee attacks should not be affected by range debuff, and range attacks should. This makes sense and is internally consistant. However, since this is their vision, common sense, logic, and playability are all sacrificed to make things more according to this warped and unrealistic "vision"

Sorry, I5 and now I6 have left me fairly bitter about the dev team and their lack of understanding about how PLAYERS play their game.

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Actually, it's because there is a technical limitation that prevents them from doing it by attack type, or complicates implementing in that manner. This has already been discussed at length in the past. Basically, what it boils down to is, implementing it in the manner you suggest is more trouble than its worth, and the ATs in question have extensive ranged options for dealing with things like hurricane.

Energy/Dark - Up to 7. I stopped when I got her to Cap, and then started playing alts.
SS/Invuln - this one's up to 15, but I only started her yesterday.

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Other mobs can break my placate on another target. Or that a mob can attack while placate is animating, still be placated and I lose my chance for a crit.

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Any more detail on this so I can get QA to try and replicate it for me? Are there certain critters that do this, or is it a general case? Do any special circumstances need to be met?

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Catwhoorg posted what I've seen as well. if they get their attack off right when Placate is in the animation or if they have a long animation, it will hit me and kill my hide. It happens a lot, maybe 25% of the time.

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In Bloody Bay, I had this happen so many times I was starting to actually use it as a tactic. I was playing an AR/Dev blaster, with Targeting Drone, Beanbag, Slug, Web Grenade, and Burst.

A stalker would sneak up and start AS, I'd shoot him, interrupt the AS, and break Hide. I'd follow up with Beanbag and he'd hit me with Placate. I'd be Placated, the grenade would hit, and he'd be stunned. I don't think this ever broke Placate, but it did keep me from getting defeated on multiple occasions.

Often, I'd use Beanbag first, he'd break free, and then I'd use Slug. Otherwise, the same thing.

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What damage type?

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Pansy.

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Hmm. Is that Toxic damage, like Thorns, then?

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No one has +Res to Pansy.

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HA! I'm a regen scrapper. I don't NEED +res!

i'll just heal it up!



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Get out, or we'll all KO Blow you at once.