Bill Z Bubba

I like swipe.

Need an alternate for eviscerate as well. Might as well port them over to scrappers, too.

A forum search would have gotten you an answer as well.

But that would imply that the mods are randomly reading said rep comments. Why would they bother? What are the odds that they'll actually happen upon a nasty comment now?

If the posters don't see the comments, the PMs to mods about said comments stop immediately.

But if I leave a rep comment that's a string of cussing that would make a sailor blush, what are the odds that they'll ever see it?

In other words, if we can't see the comments, then the ability to comment should be nuked to save hard drive space.

but... but... however will I know when I've posted something that causes violent emotion in others?!?!

Joe,

Would you agree that increasing the PB damage modifiers would have absolutely zero affect on those that choose to build toward control now?

I could be a claws scrapper, take darkness mastery and slot for KB and dump every slot I could into the APP powers and call that control based by your statements.

But it would still be a damage based archetype, correct?

Jade_Dragon,

I agree with your view of the Cottage Rule. As I stated earlier, I overstated it. Add mez resistance to the shields, for example, would not break that rule, but as Dechs Kaison reminds us, it will not happen because it steps on the dwarf form.

Here's another point to ponder regarding whether it will be acceptable for PBs to have a higher damage modifier than a WS.

Dark Extraction versus Photon Seekers. As a warshade, I can have two of these out at a time while running my way through a mission. They increase my ranged damage output *considerably.* Photon Seekers, on the other hand, are a one shot deal. Fired off and gone. Not to return for a considerable amount of time.

Increasing the PB human form damage modifiers will also help correct That disparity.

So now we're up to:

WS: Eclipse can allow capped dam-res for both nova and dwarf forms.
PB: Can increase HP for both nova and dwarf forms.

WS: 11.25% to 112.5% damage buff for 30 seconds every 120 seconds (loses 1/10th duration for a single shift)
PB: 72% damage buff for 10 seconds every 90 seconds (loses 1/3rd duration for a single shift)

WS: 1 to 2 (3 in extreme recharge builds) floating gunboats vastly increasing ranged damage output
PB: 3 dumb drones for single massive damage burst

Aenima by Tool

New thread is up.

AO, I discount anything Geko said because too much has been changed to correct too many of his design decisions. Anything he had to say is irrelevant beyond historical reference.

Historical Information - I created Celmor the Peacebringer the day that Issue 3 went live and introduced Kheldians to City of Heroes. Back then, Kheldians had a persistent dam-res debuff on them, voids and quantum gunners were actually a threat, you couldn't shift to dwarf while mezzed, all your human form toggles were shut off by mez instead of suppressed and human form damage was worse than it is now.

I pushed Celmor to 50 before Issue 5 landed. Possibly before Issue 4. During that time he was changed from tri-form to bi-form to human-only and back again several times in an attempt to find some combination that I didn't consider substandard for soloing. All the while being told various combinations of "they're a team based AT." I've never accepted that. I continue to find no reason to accept it now. Celmor was wiped from existence twice. Once at 50 and again at 30.

As per recent changes and statements made by the devs, the latest view pushes nova/dwarf use as the "intended" playstyle for Kheldians.

In this post, I plan to show that this belief is flatly untrue when concerning the Peacebringer Archetype by showing that the forms are, instead, nothing but supplemental and situational.

The Primary Form for the Peacebringer is the Human Form. It is the form you have at level 1. It is the form you drop to when you turn off all your powers. It comes packaged with everything one would expect a standard damage dealer to have for a character in this game in order to get through the provided content. Almost.

Like a blaster, it has both single target and aoe ranged attacks and lacks mez protection. Like a scrapper, it has both single target and aoe melee attacks and has damage resistance toggles, a hit point buff and a self heal.

Unlike its counterparts, it has also been given a single target heal ally. This last addition appears to be a nod toward the "jack of all trades" concept. Some might argue that the PB also has control with Pulsar, but there are many damage sets that also have a pure control power. Super Strength has Hand Clap, Stone Melee has Fault, Dark Melee has Touch of Fear, and so on.

More than anything, the Human Form Peacebringer can easily be described as a Blaster/Scrapper hybrid that's been given a superior version of Aid Other and Aid Self as part of the archetype's power sets.

This brings us to the two powers that make the Peacebringer stand out from its blaster/scrapper cousins: Bright Nova and White Dwarf.

Bright Nova is a toggle power assigned to the Peacebringer AT that is available at level 6. Using this power grants you a damage buff, a tohit buff, a recovery buff that just surpasses the cost of the toggle, permanent fly and 4 attacks that use a slightly better than blaster level AT ranged damage modifier. While this toggle is activated, all of your damage mitigation abilities are shut down. Any passives you have in the human form cease to function. All other primary form powers are blocked from your use.

White Dwarf is a toggle power assigned to the Peacebringer AT that is available at level 20. Using this power grants you considerable damage resistance to all but Psi, a substantial hit point buff, 3 attacks at the VEAT melee damage scale, a self heal, a taunt and teleport. It is saddled with the same negatives that come with the nova toggle.

As stated earlier, current developer statements along with some player agreement state that skipping these two powers out of the 26 available to the Peacebringer is akin to a Mastermind not taking the three powers that grant the mastermind his 6 henchmen. Such a statement implies that a Peacebringer is not only gimped without those two toggles, but that he Should be gimped without them.

I don't share this viewpoint. I feel that given the other 24 powers accessible to the Peacebringer, skipping the two form powers is more like a claws/sr scrapper skipping Focus and Quickness. Yes, there will be lessened performance in doing so, but gimp is hardly an accurate description of what you're left with. Or at least, Should be hardly an accurate description.

Due to the fact that the PB human form has so few powers that carry over to the forms, unlike its cousin the warshade, I believe the case can be made that the belief that the forms are integral to the PB rather than supplemental and situational is an invalid belief and should be tossed aside to allow for changes to be made to the Peacebringer to bring it more in line with the other archetypes this game offers or at least more in line with its cousin, the Warshade.


Dwarf and Nova: Integral or not?

The human form PB has three dam-res toggles that when slotted with SOs amount to 35.1% dam-res to S/L/F/C/E/N as well as a passive that slotted provided another 17.55% dam-res to E/N. It also comes with a dull pain clone that provides dam-res to T with a value of 23.4% when slotted.

With all taken and slotted, we are left with:
35.1% DR to S/L/F/C
52.65% DR to E/N
23.4% DR to T

This is on top of the heightened HP from Essence Boost and a considerable self heal from Reform Essence.

In times of need, Light Form can be used and stacked on the existing dam-res, pushing the human form to the dam-res cap to all but psi with a single dam-res SO slotted. Even without that SO, all but psi are capped except toxic which would be at 75.9% if Essence Boost is also up.

When White Dwarf is enabled and fully slotted, you have 58.5 DR to all but psi. If Essence Boost is stacked on that, toxic DR is pushed to 81.9.

I find these numbers interesting. The human form can attain higher levels of damage resistance than the "tank" form provided. While it does also gain mez protection from the form, its damage output is drastically reduced mostly due to losing access to buildup and partly due to having 7 less attacks to work with. Couple that with the fact that it loses all ranged damage capability and you even lose the mitigation provided from range. Even without the use of lightform, the human form's DR to Ene and Neg is only ~6% less.

And yet I'm supposed to find this single power/form integral to my survival? I don't even have access to it for the first 19 levels of my existence.

Integral? No. Can it help? Absolutely. The extra S/L dam-res on top of the heightened hitpoints, further heightened if you pop Essence Boost prior to shifting into Dwarf, on top if the Dwarf's own self heal and mez protection obviously make the power desirable as a way to keep yourself standing when things get rough.

Please note those words: Desirable when things get rough. Situational and supplemental. Necessary? Hardly.

We move on to the Nova form. Available at level 6, this power is possibly closer to a "necessary" toggle due to the primary form's low damage output. Why is low damage an issue for the Peacebringer's primary form? In the early game, the mechanics of success are extremely basic, especially for an AT with a damage primary and mitigation secondary. You have to be able to dish out enough damage to defeat your enemies before the incoming damage surpasses your mitigation and you suffer defeat instead. That's all there is to it.

Nova form's inherent tohit and damage buffs coupled with a higher ranged damage modifier allows the PB to drastically increase his damage output but at the cost of his damage resistance. The question is whether the loss of the dam-res shields, access to temp powers and necessity to shift out of nova to gain the two powers available for carryover, essence boost and buildup, are actually worth the extra damage output and whether the disparity between nova and human damage is wider than it should be.

Buildup is a 72% buff for a PB and lasts 10 seconds. It takes about a second to cast. Down to 9 seconds of buff. I'm attempting to get all of the animation times for shifting, but the general consensus has always been 3 seconds for going into nova or dwarf form. Down to 6 seconds of buff. Not factoring in Arcanatime for any of this, that means I'm going to get a single round of nova blasts off before the buff period is over. Factoring in arcanatime, we're probably going to be lucky if we can get off a single blast after the two aoes.

Essence boost is obviously a much larger boon due to its much longer duration, but it is also coupled with an extreme recharge time making it near useless before level 22 and SOs.

But is it necessary? No. Even as is, one can solo a Peacebringer from 1 to 50 on the lowest difficulty. Does the Nova form supplement the AT's damage output? Yes. Is it also situational?

There's the rub. As it stands, the human form damage output is so low that not taking nova form to carry you to level 22 for SOs, or possibly level 18 for Incandescent Strike, while not gimped, isn't fun. Being stuck at the minimum difficulty and running out of end and nearly meeting defeat every spawn where you must rest between each spawn is not fun. Perhaps it is for some players, but I'm not one of them. Not when I'm attempting to play and enjoy a damage dealing archetype with a mitigation secondary.

With Issue 13, the human form damage modifiers for melee and range were increased to .85 and .8 respectively. While many of us were happy with this buff, I don't feel that it was enough for the Peacebringer.

The balance point the developers must reach is whether that damage output versus mitigation is set high enough to remain fun for the player, but low enough to provide a worthwhile challenge while maintaining the premise put into place that team based ATs solo slower than ATs better designed for soloing.

The question is: What's a Peacebringer? Does it bring massive control to a team? No. Does it bring any team buffs/debuffs? It has a single ally heal. One that would be considered weak by the ATs designed with buff/debuff powersets. Does it bring aggro management? Some, yes. Its dwarf form comes with a taunt that requires a tohit check. Do the powers available to the PB tell us what the role of the PB actually is?

Yes. As stated throughout this post, the Peacebringer is a damage dealing AT. As a damage dealing AT, it is unique in that it has the OPTION to take one power that radically increases its damage output at the price of radically lessened mitigation and the OPTION to take another power that gives it mez protection, increased HP and dam-res at the cost of its damage output.

Those are handy options to have around but this particular archetype is NOT designed to have them be considered integral and mandatory.

If form shifting was the "intended design" plan for the Peacebringer, then the forms should have been inherent and accessible at level 1. Even with vastly reduced starting values that ramped up with level. The human form itself would have been designed to be properly integrated with form usage.

This is not the case. Rather what we have been given are forms haphazardly slapped onto a fully functional human form which was then "appropriately" nerfed in the name of "balance."

And now The Wall: Welcome to the Cottage Rule. No change is going to be made to Peacebringers that drastically changes the form and function they currently utilize.

We're not going to get mez protection in the human form. We're not going to get a Build Up overhaul to turn it into long duration buff more useful to to forms. We're not going to get human form toggles on the squid or any of the other Many ideas we've thrown out here.

This leaves our options VERY limited.

And that's where I find myself back at square one. How do we alter the Peacebringer enough to bring it on par in overall performance with its cousin the Warshade without drastically altering the set itself?

The answer comes from the archetype's role: Damage. Should we buff nova damage more? No. It already surpasses blaster damage before SOs.

Should we buff dwarf damage? Can't. That goes against the "give up damage for more mitigation" role of the power.

That leaves the Peacebringer Primary Form as the area we should buff.

No nerf to the inherent needed.

No reason to give the same buff to Warshades since they are the superior tri-former and thus the superior Kheldian when working as designed.

Buff the Peacebringer Human form Ranged and Melee damage modifiers to VEAT levels and call it day.

Thanks for your time, everyone.

I'll be covering exactly that in a new thread later tonight. It is an opinion that the PB human form benefits the nova and dwarf forms enough to consider the forms anything more than situational and supplemental.

If tri-forming is the intended design then the PB human form powers are badly designed for EVERYONE attempting to play the archetype as per the "intended" design especially when placed in comparison to its cousin the warshade where its human form has several powers that directly and for large portions of time benefit the forms.

It was primary build human only until 17 where I cranked up the secondary build for triforming. She's 20 now. Took stamina on the primary build and dwarf on the secondary.

I'm taking Obsidian's advice and changing the course of my efforts toward specific changes to the peacebringer. Even with my distaste for the still low human form damage output, I'm not so blind that I can't acknowledge the AT on the whole and what that means to its balance.

As it does appear that almost all of us see the same disparity between PBs and WSs, where WSs seem far better designed to utilize the forms, I'm currently writing up a proposal on PB specific changes.

For those on the bad in PvP side, have yall dove in recently? I remember SR also being painfully useless in PvP, and I expected it to be even worse now with PvP diminishing returns, but it seems that the new anti-accuracy/elusivity business is having some positive effect.

Course... it could also be blind luck with opponents not leveraging against SR. There was one /rad that spanked me rather quickly last week.

Stories with SR:

RWZ Challenge: Level 54 spawn, 3 bosses + associated LTs and Minions, no insps: Done
Rikti Pylon soloed without insps: Done
Solo +4/x8 with bosses scanner missions: Often done
Last two times I was called into an Arena 1X1 match: 5-4, 5-2: Done
Last FFA: I had 8 kills versus the next two highest with 4 kills each out of 6 or 7 players in the match: Done
And I'm a carebear.

Can I do all that with SOs? Hell no. SR squishy? Also hell no.