Bottle_Rocket

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Dammit, nothing beats all three.


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Water!

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Yes.

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Rock!

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With the overall decrease in the power of defensive buffs, this power had to be weakened or Radiation would be too strong compared to other Defender primaries and Controller secondaries.

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Right. Lower the Damage Debuff. That's fine. Just leave the Damage Resistance Debuff alone. The above reasoning does not justify the reduction of the Damage Resistance Debuff.

Seriously. Changing them both sounds a lot like a "I'd rather just change this one number rather than write more code" decision.

Is EF the only one that debuffs the Damage output of the MOBs? To my knowledge, TP and Rain only debuff the MOB DamRes.

i.e. Hero DamRes and Defense were reduced across the board. EF mitigates incoming damage by reducing the damage ouput of villains, therefore it is a form of damage mitigation much like Hero DamRes.

However, if that IS true, I'd politely ask that the DamRes Debuff of EF be raised back to where it was before I5 and you can keep the Damage Debuff where it is now. I would be totally okay with that.

I'm not buying the "toggle difference theory" when compaired to all the other Defense/DamRes changes in I5.

Doc Rock

I had some time to test it out (level 40 Blaster). For reasons posted over and over in this thread, the buff really needs to start kicking in sooner. I couldn't even tell if you (the Devs) have changed it since my first test.

I went into a mission and let one minion pummel me down. It seemed like it took forever to get that Defiance bar to move. I defeated that minion at around 25% health. I then went around and started attacking other spawns while hovering just under "green". So, yeah, kinda exploitable... until I faceplanted on the 2nd or 3rd group (yay!). As a Blaster, playing with half your Health is just asking for debt (as we already knew.. but it's the test server.. so, meh). When things go bad for a Blaster, it goes bad REALLY quickly. Halving your Health is like cranking up the difficulty another notch or two. Furthermore, for the increased risk I was getting about a 0% buff half the time (just from 1 slotted Health).

Then I started playing for real. I could go a whole mission without seeing a buff to damage. On the other hand I might get a 160% buff right before I faceplant (yay!). Honestly, I'm more likely to never see a Defiance buff. I did get into the red when I was up against a Boss. Guess what happend. Right, the shot missed and I faceplanted (yay!).

If your set on Defiance my suggestion is:

100% Health: 0% <--- little risk unless something goes terribly wrong (ex. held)
60% Health: 10% <--- little risk unless something goes moderately wrong (ex. stunned, slept, etc.)
50% Health: 30% <--- entering high risk Vs. large numbers
40% Health: 100% <---entering high risk Vs. Bosses or Lt.s
30% Health: 250%
20% Health: 375% <---entering high risk Vs. minions
10% Health: 500% <---extreme high risk Vs. fluffy bunnies
5% Health: 1k%* <---Might as well faceplant if you do anything other than heal...yay!

*I'm kidding about the 1k%, but it might as well be for how much good it would do.

High risk means "the next shot could kill you". I based these "levels of risk" on experience rather than rigorous testing. I admit I could be off a bit. I welcome others to give more serious feedback. Also note, most of my experience playing my Blaster has been solo on the Rugged setting. Just recently I stepped up to Invincible, but I might step back down.

I can understand why the numbers I listed above aren't what we see implemented. It really could be pretty exploitable based off my testing. However, as it is now, it's pretty non-existent. I'm not sure you can even balance this power based on Worth Vs. Exploitability.

I don't know, it really is counter-intuitive. It could go live as is and it wouldn't make much of a difference, but keep an eye on the spike in Blaster deaths when you data-mine. However, I have faith in the Devs and think that y'all could come up with something more useful for Blasters. Crits, while random (and unexploitable), are much more useful IMO.

...or you could always change the AT name to Gamblers.

I love CoH and will keep playing it, but this design change is a "head-scratcher".

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Also remember that the Freakshow will work for anyone who provides sandwiches and a keg.

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What's wrong with that?

Oh, crap. Does that mean I am potentially Freakshow??

They paint it on the walls sometimes too. I just recently saw it in the mission where Nemesis is selling weapons to the Freaks (one of the coolest looking maps ever... mostly due to lighting).

Techno-anarchy.

All thoughts about whether or not this power is useful put aside:

This is too buggy to test at the moment. Not only is the Defiance bar too slow to update, it is also effecting my Health bar. I would be falling to my knees while still appearing to have some health left. This new ability is currently more of a hinderance than a benefit.

OK, so back to usefulness. Taking into consideration that the above problems are bugs and will be worked out. I can't see how this new ability will help Blaster survival much. One bad hit can take me down to 40%, in that situation, I'm not going to stick around for another 60% worth of damage. Just not going to do it. Every time I tried on test, I died before the damage bonus kicked in. 6 times, 6 different spawns of varrying difficulty. Actually, to be honest, in one test I think I got a 20% buff right before I died.

Yeah, I know it wasn't a very big test, but 6 of 6 is not good odds. I will test some more, but the Health bar lag was really getting on my nerves.

Some people (mostly non-blasters) have been saying that this new ability is just gravy. They say that it won't harm, just help. Not much help, but some help. Actually, if it encourages Blasters to stick around when they should run, it is doing more harm than good. If it encourages healers to not heal the Blaster, it is doing more harm than good. Any Blaster that thinks it's a good idea to take the enemies alpha strike against team-sized spawns, really needs to get their head checked.