Dersk

Take the long term player perspective and shove it. I've been here since April '04 and to suggest my opinion is more or less valid than someone that's been here 3 months simply because of time is absurd.

I think the idea combats the demand for and utilization of low and mid level content... content that not only adds to my personal enjoyment and appreciation of the gameplay and story but also the appreciation of those factors for newer players. City of Heroes does a better job of keeping veteran players mixed with newer players across the game than any other online game I've played.

I wholeheartedly believe other games ignoring the low-mid content, or using it solely as a means to propel people to the "high end", is what caused some of them to die out.

Some people are just not satisfied unless they are at the highest level with the best gear/abilities/widgets. I cannot drop the feeling that this is a significant portion of reason for the popularity of total respecifications. Devaluing most of the game so people can play the "high end" quicker is, in this noobs opinion, the wrong focus.

Higher prices devalue the inf sinks from activities such as crafting IOs or purchasing other enhancements (SOs, DOs, TOs) and in turn makes crafing IOs more profitable. They also devalue the influence faucets of defeats or 'vendoring' loot such as recipies, enhancements, or salvage.

This creates a relative benefit for those that have access to smaller direct sources of inf, such as lower level characters, who now make comparable incomes to higher level characters that pariticipate in similar activities as their low influence rewards are trivial compared to the value in salvage they get. This can benefit higher level farmers depending on what and how they are farming, though those that see the bulk of their income coming from sources such as vendor prices for common recipies will suffer.

Those that suffer the most are those that rely entirely upon direct inf sources such as mission completion awards and defeats yet still rely upon the market for enhancements and other products.

Since teams have bonuses that apply to defeating enemies but not to the salvage and recipies acquired from those defeats, large teams are indirectly devalued financially compared to solo play, though whether teaming is in the end more profitable than soloing for an individual still depends on the character and team makeup.

Which one are you? You appear to be complaining so I'm thinking you're typically teaming in high levels and let your salvage inventory overflow while continuing to purchase new enhancements. My advice: stop.

The method advertised in thread's original post does not distinguish between the damage mitigated by going from 0% defense to 5% defense, 40% to 45%, or 45% to 50%, as it all cases, the same amount of additional damage is mitigated. And it's true for a certain amount of DPS.

100% resistance only 'mitigates' the damage that is actually applied, so in the method used by the orignal poster, being able to regenerate that amount of hitpoints is equivalent in that instance to 100% resistance.

So yes, it's broken. Very broken.

Buying a recipe and making profit off of the sale of the finished enhancement does more than simply provide the service of finding and crafting that enhancement for the customer.

In the instance where there is someone already doing this activity, an additional marketeer moving in increases the selling price for the recipe while decreasing the selling price for the finished enhancement, both of which should be considered favorable by anyone that doesn't care to invest much time into the market.

There are only "obscene" profits made from the crafting of enhancements when there are few, or one, people pursuing those recipes. Those profits should attract more marketeers, which would stabilize the costs due to the competition.

This only becomes a problem where there are few, or one, people investing in a niche. However, in my experience, in situations where one person can reasonably control an item that same item is extremely under supplied and the (typically) high selling prices for that enhancement are the only way to keep any supply in the market.

More than once I've seen a particular enhancement that spans 15~20 levels available at only two of those levels. I feel no guilt for purposefully putting up such enhancements for sale at inflated costs. I've even bought some from myself on other characters because I was the only one that had them up for sale.

It doesn't matter how much something costs when there are none for sale. Any long time red-side player can tell you that.

They're so cute when they cry.

Today my shield/stone got hit by a longbow warden's dominate (does not check against positional defense) for more damage than he had max hitpoints due to autohit -res. He got rezzed back up, and was hit by levitate (which ignores positional defenses as well) for 2203 damage, awarding me a debt badge.

I just thought I'd throw that anecdote out there.

Well, this isn't a statistical analysis, but I've seen several who are essentially looking a gift horse in the mouth because this doesn't come with extra slots. It ranged from "please?" to "omg this sucks". I had to edit my signature specifically for this level of whining.

I actually laughed at that one.

Aaaaand that's about where I stopped reading that thread.

The situation isn't so much not worth enhancing but rather that the benefits of using the default enhancement slot are less than if that slot could be placed elsewhere.

Some examples of where I wouldn't care if I lost a default slot:

Taunt, travel powers, minor resist passives (rpd, permafrost, etc), wet ice, phalanx fighting, grant cover, health, rez powers, aim, speed boost, increase density, force bolt, stealth, vengeance, mastermind pet upgrades, gale, bonfire, and quicksand. I could probably come up with a dozen more if I looked through my characters, and all those are powers I'd pick not because they are a prerequisite to another power, except perhaps gale.

Then, it's not just the ability to move that default enhancement, but also to postpone it. That would allow me to use enhancements in more efficient locations at low levels where enhancements are at a premium and then later add a few enhancements to the powers that don't need it as much.

I often make use of slotting those powers late in a build or when I get around to pursuing set bonuses, but it isn't strictly a utility that makes sense due to forced prerequisites, though there is the advantage there as well.

And to add a chance for +end to the user for the targeted attacks.

I just want an insider leak so I can sell off my oblits and kinetic combats before the change.

Even if all defense set bonuses were scrapped it wouldn't be as bad as enhancement diversification, even if you're talking only in terms of ED's effects on survivability. Though, that is a bit of a complicated matter for comparison's sake considering the changes to defense calculations in i7.

While I'm favorable to a form of diminishing returns on defense and resistance (i.e. two 50% defense buffs equate to 75% cumulative defense), the fact that the several additions of new IO sets repeatedly added new ways to increase a character's defense suggests the developers don't even see this as a problem. Until they see it as a problem, there's no need for a solution.

I also challenge the notion that the developers consciously gave us the amount of available defense bonuses deliberately and also deliberately gave us a smaller portion of resist bonuses. I'm sure each 3.13% defense buff is intentional, but blasters with 45% ranged defense or defense soft capped dark armor characters doesn't seem to me to be the goal.

To suggest that we are given defense bonuses so liberally because of how they are occasionally so thoroughly nullified requires the developers to both acknowledge and accept how devastating these effects are on characters whose mitigation is predominately based upon defense. That line of thinking conjures the notion that we got a lot of defense from the new PBAE sets because things like rularuu eyeballs and quartz pets rip though defense anyway. To the contrary, I'm not sure those in charge of such matters even fully realize the effects of those types of situations.

That's not the only way to correct the imbalance. Defense set bonuses could be (and I'd propose should be) reduced in either availability or magnitude.

It's only bad taste to mock poor people because they're poor. However, if you mock their accent, attire, or spending habits, you can get your own primetime television show.

Not to be argumentative, but we are getting extra slots. We're getting the four slots that automatically come with each fitness power for free. Every character will be able to use four more enhancements than they can now.

While I can't agree with anyone asking for extra slots, I have liked the idea —several years old now— to remove the free enhancement slot we get for each power and instead add an extra enhancement slot to the following level. If we want to throw in the obligatory one enhancement slot into a power we can, but we could also leave some power unslotted and therefore divert slots to areas we may want them more.

I'd love to know how you plan on doing that.

We aren't balancing anything here. Although, you're welcome to try.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=132369

Brute Stone 218
Brute Energy 207.4

?_?

See, I can do it too.

Beyond the semantic point here, I'm not so sure what the value of this distinction is. It's 'more damage' in the form of a larger base damage, faster recharge, less endurance, or whatever metrics you wish to use... in exchange for hitpoints. In any situation where energy melee could or can outdamage any other melee attack set, it's doing so by sacrificing hitpoints. Take that out, and energy melee cannot outdamage fiery melee, and any changes to the activation or damage of energy transfer cannot change that.

Also, that's not so much my argument as it is the argument of "a lot of people in these forums" which I recall you seeing before. I try to avoid quoting that portion of the player in my attempts to remain free of rabies, but I know you know that stance.

The 'it doesn't sometimes work' wasn't in reference to the random chance of disorients, in case it wasn't clear. In battles against enemies with unusually high status protection —such as fights with elite bosses and arch villain where single target damage is most valued— we see energy melee performing worse than all sets with respect to mitigation and survivability... even more so than fiery melee.

So, if the lack of mitigation is the explanation for insisting on giving fiery melee the 'best' damage, any single target damage advantage energy melee obtains over fiery melee while making use of energy melee shouldn't be viewed as a 'balance' problem or uncalled for per se. Sacrificing survivability for extra damage is not something that is monopolized by fire.

What would be clearly unbalacing is for energy melee to outperform fiery melee without energy transfer, and that isn't what's been offered.

I like to think that if the drawbacks of energy transfer are acceptable for the strengths of the power, any damage advantage obtained by its excessive use should inherently be acceptable because doing so also causes excessive penalties to be applied at the same time. If that's not true, then energy transfer needed a change to something other than the animation time, and still needs it.

I consider resists a red herring that continuously distract scrapper lovers who have never played a non smashing/lethal set. That should be an issue of content design, not powerset balance.

Considering significant portion of energy melee's damage is coming from an attack that damages the user, as well as energy melee having arguably the worst AE damage of any melee set, there are a lot of people in these forums that have expressed exactly that in therms of single target damage. Even then, fiery melee would have significantly better AE damage and overall more efficient damage per endurance. I deliberately ignore the crackpots asking for large sums of AE damage.

While it's all nice and wonderful to simply place the attack set with the least mitigation as the set deserving the highest single target damage, one must weigh energy melee's damage it inflicts upon its own user against the benefit of disorients which, like most controls, don't always work.