BurningChick

I believe we're now working under the assumption that nothing will get moderated, yes?

Cute kitty -- black cats don't get much love at the shelter, but we've had 3 and they're AMAZING pets.

I helped with getting Repulsion Bomb changed from ally-targetted KB + stun to mob-targetted KB + stun + damage to mob-targetted (low mag) KB + stun + damage.

That's about it.

My only other lasting contribution was, during i5's beta, that we slot Dark Servant for ToHit debuff.

So. A series of contributions to a power in a set no one plays. And a suggestion that no one remembers as having come from me 'cause I was one of ...those ... FF people.

The ease of teaming and the sense of community did it for me.

I looked for the BAZINGA!, saw Zwill's confirmation instead ...

Man ...

The hours I've spent here. Running 3 AM TFs while up with a baby.

Swapping PMs with the devs over FF.

Running with the Carl and Sons on Pinnacle, then the Repeat Offenders on Freedom.

The people.

The craziness.

Occasionally the drama.

I haven't honestly sat down and played the game since November(?) so this doesn't come as a real shock to me.

But first, THANKS! to the devs for giving me a great time.

THANKS! to the community for being the best I've seen.

And thanks, Arcanaville, for once trying to edumucate me about DR in PvP.

And here's hoping that everyone at Paragon can smoothly transition to something new.

You know what cracks me up? We had the devs telling us, from release to just after CoV, that "distance = defence". No ambiguity. And in one particular case where Statesman compared FF to Sonic (long since deleted ), he made a forceful pitch that mitigation in any form is always beneficial.

But this is the same dev team that also gave players more powers that grant KB protection to mobs than grant KB protection to other players.

The devs' mixed reactions to KB seem to mirror those of the players.

FWIW, when Statesman did his comparison of FF to Sonic in I5 (post long since deleted), I spent a few hours taking his advice and tried to leverage Repulsion Field and Force Bubble to improve my FF/rad's performance. In general, I could reduce incoming DPS on my bubbler pretty well. All well and good. But, over the course of a mission, my bubbler would take MORE damage on the KB- / repel-heavy missions because I had reduced my outgoing damage by a larger amount than the incoming damage.

And one final thing ...

The last stand of the KB defenders has usually been "mob positioning tool." But ... you know what? No dev has ever, AFAIK, said that. The party line has always been about creating distance and using that distance to increase performance, a function that KB largely fails at during most team play and nearly all solo play. But immobs, slows, and low mag KB all succeed where KB fails.

I believe that this IO is a tacit admission that one of the game's original design decisions is inherently flawed.

And now I'm just waiting for the devs to do something, anything, that'd make me want to respec my bubbler into Repulsion Field, Force Bubble, and the cage.

Bonfire, like its close cousins, the toggled PBAoE KB powers, doesn't appear to have a target cap.

OK, I'm going to go on the record and say that this is nucking futs. I just ran my fire dom with this proc in Bonfire. Nucking. Futs.

A large AoE? No target cap? Damage? One-shot neutralizes an entire 8-guy spawn? Autohit? Fast recharge? Long duration?

Devs, it's stupid powerful. If you keep it, you gotta do something about the toggled KB powers -- they are inferior in every single way possible (smaller AoE, more end, no damage, high mag KB). And if you're gonna nerf it, do it like ... last week.

I never really liked either power on my ff / rad -- they both mucked up Irradiate too much.

And my free pass was always PFF.

If you're wondering about the potential for damage mitigation, my not-very-scientific tests (done waaaaay back in I5 or I6) show Force Bubble reduces incoming damage a fifth or so, Repulsion Field by a third.

To me, this is a situation that simply screams for a dual build. Do a couple newsies with RF and then do a couple newsies with FB. And see which one suits you. When it comes to powers that are idiosyncratic at best and counter-productive at worst, you're well off into the dark forest of personal preference.

Edit: one neat thing about Repulsion Field -- its KB effect has a duration effectively allowing you stack KB with Force Bolt. A /really/ determined bubbler with an awful lot of endurance can KB otherwise resistant mobs.

On the other hand, the devs' have many years' worth of datamining defender performance. It's entirely possible that the inadequacies that we the players see in individual sets don't translate into actual performance differences from 1 - 50 + incarnates.

Or, at least, the differences show up in specific cases (i.e., the insta-gibs and confuses in the incarnate trials marginalise FF). But if you gave FF *shiver* a heal or massive -regen to compensate for lacklustre performance in the trials, would you bork up FF's SO performance?

FWIW, the devs still seem to be sticking to the party line that the game is balanced around SOs, and FF is absurdly effective in the vanilla game. We assumed that "the game is balanced around SOs" meant "no nerfs," but it's possible that the devs meant "no nerfs AND no buffs."

Edit: it's also possible that the devs don't any particular sets as "underperformers" -- rather, they may view some as "overachievers" and don't wish to embark on a wide-ranging series of nerfs.

I remember when i4 hit Test and looking at the Arena interface -- I was surprised to see options for ladders and rankings. I was thinking, "Wow, it looks like the devs went all out." And then I realized that those options were simply hooks for future systems. And those systems never showed up.

That, to me, pretty much sums PvP in CoH: unfinished; unpolished; poorly supported.

Although ... "poorly supported" is a phrase that doesn't quite capture what happened on the dev side. When i4 hit, people said "rewards," "zones," "minigames," and "objectives", things that were all implemented with i6 and i7. And still, masses of people didn't show up. Or they showed up for the sole purpose of farming rewards.

On the community side? Egg nerf. So few people in the community, so much rage.

There's a weird toxicity involving PvP that is tough to summarize. There's something about a sprawling powers system that's tough (probably impossible) to balance, lack of dev interest to constantly or at least consistently work on PvP, and the game's overall casual-friendly PvE experience and something less than casual-friendly PvP experience that all adds up to "meh."

I like Arcanaville's reasoning on behalf of CoV.

I'd toss buff stacking and defence into the ring.

And toss in a side of AoE zerg-fest. Players often say things like "mob positioning tool" when talking about repel and KB, but the simple truth is that those powers were supposed to be about keeping mobs away, not clumpingthem. The devs completely buggered up the single target, tactical game (in alpha, there were even targetted body shots, apparently) which, in turn, buggered up such concepts as "distance as damage mitigation" (it's usually MORE dangerous to spread mobs out because you fug up AoEs) which in turned marginalized an entire class of powers.

PvP's an obvious one, as many have mentioned.

*I* regret that the devs let bases slip into irrelevance for the majority of players. For that matter, I don't even bother with SGs on new toons, and can't remember the names of the ones my older toons are in.