Futurias

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2. We'll be putting in a check that prevents "one shotting"; if anything occurs within a fraction of second that brings a player from 100% Hit Points down to 0, we instead give the player 1% Hit Points.

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So then anything that has DOT damage can take that 1% away and you still die.

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Where is there a DOT that does 100% damage on its first tick?

And unless those DOTs are incredibly fast you *still* have time to click some GREENs as your health is dropping.

Ie. *NOT* being one-shotted.

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No, it was a move that had to be made for other reasons that unfortunately affected endurance draining heroes and villains.

But, carry on. How would you like Statesman to rectify this situation? What would be better for you than a verbal apologize? 40 lashes?

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I believe, for example, setting Bosses and LTs back to 100 endurance would be a good starter, until the 'proper' fix came down. The immediate problem was with EBs, not the Bosses and LTs that had been fine for two years up til this point.

But, hey, 40 lashes would be good too. By this point, Geko deserves it.

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Actually, putting Minions/Underlings at less Endurance may be appropriate actually. Perhaps 75END for Minions, 50END for Underlings.

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When Giant Monsters get tougher (Issue 7), this number will drop to 10%(or more), encouraging more teams to fight them. The rewards will be increasing as well.

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Problem with this...some monsters are set up for just one group:

Babbage: Ambushes team doing Synapse TF
Krakken: In Sewer Trial, must be defeated four times at bottom even if you can avoid the Krakken in the scaffolding
Adamastor: In instanced mission at end of Numina TF
Kronos: Surprise ambush after exiting mission, and then in surprise timed mission.
Quarry: Two of these must be defeated in an instanced mission in the Eden trial.

I may be an exception, but I don't find giant monsters in need of a buff. My only complaint is with how often they spawn.

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Zone Giant Monsters are getting the buff. GM's that are mission-specified (like the ambush ones, or the Eden trial, etc) are not being touched. Those GMs are "arch-villain" level, i.e. made to be beaten by 1 team.

Zone Giant Monsters are the GM's that appear randomly (or triggered) in zones. This does not include the ambushes that are triggered from missions.

This change will be both CoH and CoV.

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Hey, Positron? Is there any QoL fix for Monsters spawning in badly cluttered zones that effectively make them invisible?

I have *yet* to see the Eden Giant Monster ever spawn, as I think it gets lost in the trees?

I know they are supposed to be rare, but impossible to find seems unfair.

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I recall a rumor that Manti would switch sides in the comic to coincide with the fall from grace/redeemed villain content becoming available.

It was just a rumor, and I think it was a player that said it, not a redname.

</wild speculation off>

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I was just *noting* the timing there. Sheesh.

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Guys, guys, I mean c'mon, this story is straight from the Superhero Comic-Book Plot Generator(tm).

Y'know, the one where the impulsive, doesn't-follow-the-rules member of the superhero team is publicly kicked out by the straight-arrow leader. The fallen hero ends up associating with a villain organization and even joining it in an apparent attempt at betrayal. Then, at some climactic moment, his true allegiance is revealed and we find that the whole scenario was a ruse to have the hero infitrate the villain's operation to to thwart the evildoer's plan.

Ho-hum. Been there, done that. Sounds like something Statesman would cook up. The man hasn't had an original thought since he came up with his latest costume layout, if you can call that original.

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You could be right, but it would be really cool in two issue (and about the time that i7 hits) that Manticore really does go evil and become one of the SF contacts in CoV.

And speaking of TF/SF contacts? How about adding the CoHero signature heroes to PI, the Hollows and FBZ?

That could be fun!

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More of a bug really, but this thread has talked about it. I have tried with two diffeent Heroes to buy the temp powers from Chilly, the bartender. I don't loose any influence, nor do I get a temp power. Well one time he did take my 1000 inf, but I have never gotten a power from him. Others on my team can. My enhancement trays have an opening, mu insp trays have an opening, and yet I have no access to them. What's the trick?

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They are in your "power" list, but you have to manually drag them to your different trays. More irritated me that I had to do that than anything else.

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There is at least one exploit which I can think of off the top of my head. You can target anybody in your friends window who is nearbye just by clicking on their name. That would allow you to target a hidden stalker friend or any other hidden friend for that matter. Even unhidden friends that were near enough could be found behind buildings or walls.

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And "friending" does not requiring an authentication (Ie. permission) to complete.

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"Congratulations! You earned the Heart of Light Badge.
You may now access the costume part Toga at the Tailor."

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You got that too? Now to go test it really quick!

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Even if FF gave mitigation that was better than every other Defender primary, FF would still be overall a worse set without some offense-boosting ability.


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I'm unclear as to why. Or rather, what that seems to imply is that all defender primaries have to have basically the same amount of offensive benefit, because that's by so wide a margin the most important benefit, that no amount of defensive benefit can overcome an offensive lag.

But if they all have roughly the same amount of offensive benefit, they have to have the same amount of defensive benefit as well, or else there will be a marked defensive imbalance. They'd all have to provide, in possibly different ways, basically the same benefit. That seems to be an extreme point of view.


Or is it that *any* offensive boosting capability, however small, is somehow critical to the viability of the FF set for defenders. If so - if the issue is its mere presence, and not its relative equality with the other sets - I'm genuinely curious to know what the rationale is.

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Except for the mezz protection (which Sonic kind of shares) defensively, Force Fields *isn't* that much better. And with no offensive ability (and too many knockback effects) you get a power set that most people only take four powers or only use four powers most of the time.

And as Sonic has the same thing *plus* an offensive boost, it just doesn't work out fairly.

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Be it -DAM RES or a personal +DAM of some sort, it effectively makes those sets with a +30% (or more) type damage boost effectively gimpy.

They don't all have to be group beneficial, but FF getting a "focusing lens" single-target bubble that you cast on an enemy that boosts your damage against him (and maybe *only* your damage) would make FF a much more viable soloer.

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Why not a -def? That'd be thematically correct. Make it massive enough and I'd imagine it'd be especially helpful at lower levels, especially before SOs, say.

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Because a power that is only "good" at low levels has real problems later on.

"Oh, that power? Just respec out of it at level 22 when you get SOs."

I can easily see it now.

I still think that if every Defender Secondary was lowered to the current amount because of our primaries, *every* primary had better have some sort of boost ability to damage.

Be it -DAM RES or a personal +DAM of some sort, it effectively makes those sets with a +30% (or more) type damage boost effectively gimpy.

They don't all have to be group beneficial, but FF getting a "focusing lens" single-target bubble that you cast on an enemy that boosts your damage against him (and maybe *only* your damage) would make FF a much more viable soloer.

Just a weird thought, if all Defender secondaries are decreased in damage so that a 30% Damage Resistance Debuff from a few Primary power sets can't equal or exceed Blaster Primary Damage, should *all* Defender Primaries have an equivilant 30% boost somewhere in there, even if it is only for the defender themselves?

This may mean taking a look at AR/Devices too.

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This number is off, Enervating field no longer debuffs 37%. It's 30% which is equal to Tar Patch -DAM RES.

65% * 1.3 = 84%.

So 84 * .9 = 75.6% which should be "identical" almost statistically blaster damage. This does ignore having to run toggles to do that and such.

As it was specifically made impossible for Defender to match Blasters damage due to debuffing, I think the 65% versus 100% blaster damage is suspect.

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Futurias, the reason the number looks suspicious to you is that he (Mieux) included the accuracy boost for the Defender -- which, while certainly relevant -- isn't likely to show up in the DPS/DPE comparisons you cite.

In most cases, both characters are going to have capped accuracy, or at worst the Blaster is going to have a 5-10% disadvantage. Targeting Drone will impact results, as will Build Up/Aim. That covers pretty much every Blaster, and so far we're ignoring the sizable damage boosts from Build Up/Aim.

Defender damage IS 65% of Defenders'. Realistically, no Defender will equal or surpass a Blaster's damage output, although you can get fairly close with certain builds.

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No, they *really* did an exhaustive test of DPE and DPS and blasters ended up being very superior.

We did forget to plug in animation times, buff powers (end and animation times) and the fact that Blaster get a (25%?) bonus on attacks for endurance compared to everyone else too.

Oops. This is rapidly becoming complicated.

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In Issue 7, all mobs will have a 50% base to-hit chance while higher ranked mobs will get an accuracy bonus to their attacks. Take AVs. Their base to-hit now is 75%. In Issue 7 it will be 50% with a 50% acc bonus. With no defense that works out to 75% final to-hit. But defense comes in before accuracy buffs so here's how it will work for FF defenders and controllers in Issue 7:

Defenders bubbles three slotted give your teammates 39% defense to all
Controller bubbles three slotted give your teammates 29% defense to all

Put that into the Issue 7 formula for an AVs to-hit:

Defender: 50-39=11*1.5=16.5

Controller: 50-29=21*1.5=31.5

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True!

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Not correct, actually. The values you are using are actually too high. You are using the 100% value for defense rather than the 50% you plug into equations.

29% Defense * 1.25% = 36.25%

But the new improved equation is actually using 50% - 1/2 of the "old style" = base total * rank * purple modifier. So...

50% - 29% = 21% * 1.5 = 31% accuracy for Controllers.
50% - 36.25% = 13.75% * 1.5 = 20% accuracy for Defenders.

So not a 91% increase from the example that used the wrong defense numbers but a 55%. The numbers were just too good!

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Blaster damage 100
Defender damage 65 * 1.37 (Enervating Field) = 89

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This number is off, Enervating field no longer debuffs 37%. It's 30% which is equal to Tar Patch -DAM RES.

65% * 1.3 = 84%.

So 84 * .9 = 75.6% which should be "identical" almost statistically blaster damage. This does ignore having to run toggles to do that and such.

As it was specifically made impossible for Defender to match Blasters damage due to debuffing, I think the 65% versus 100% blaster damage is suspect.

This was very thoroughly tested by Rad defenders at that point and the just could not get that close DPS or DPE. A lot of Beta guys specifically quit the AT at that point in disgust.

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Err, you have a good point!

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No problemo! It's probably just a reflexive reaction. And probably a "trained reflexive action."

Dang Pavlov!

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I know this horse has been kicked long since it went to the glue factory. May I make a suggestion regarding Clear Mind and empathy. In light of _Castle_'s pronouncement that Clear Mind was to be a quick fix not a long term buff (and I will completely ignore the supposition that this is why it needs to have a 4 second, could be four hours, too darn long activation). There are TWO possible defender powers that could be just copied over to the empaths' Clear Mind power: Clarity (which would admittedly look funny for an empathy defender to use) and Increase Density. I vote for increase density. I don't think the empaths would mind the subtle changes in the attributes of the powers if it were to reduce the activation time substantially. The usual artistic application of the purple effect instead of the kinetic orange-yellow shouldn't take too much adaptation. In my amateur opinion, this could be done with a patch before a complete Issue of revisions were released. Yay? Nay?

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I love how empathy/ went from a preemptive buff set to a reactive one post ED. And apparently it was always meant to work that way..

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Um, as this is an *animation* problem with the power and the duration is not changable (only control powers can have this enhancement), this has *nothing* to really do with ED.

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66% of "blaster damage" has been bandied about, but I'm not totally convinced of this. Most of the time it appears to be closer to 50% of "blaster damage."


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Futurias, there's a simple test. It will take 5 minutes, more if you have to recruit strangers.

Get an Energy Blaster and an Energy Defender to shoot the same badguy with the same attack, slotted for the same damage. I recommend a grey-con CoT, because it's funny, but any enemy will do.

Otherwise, you're not really "arguing" so much as "stating a fringe belief."

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It would probably be better to get a Defender, Blaster and Corruptor with energy blast to test that out with identical slotting (or even easier, no slotting) and hit Sirens Call.

Hmm. I may have to make a couple of alts and get them up to 15 and do some testing.

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i think that part of the issue with the overlap between controllers, defenders and blasters best illustrated by Castle's statement that a defender's weaker control in certain powers from their primary when compared to a controller is balanced by their greater damage. This is patently absurd since the damage is so miniscule compared to other attacks and the control aspect of the power itself. i've used Force Bolt to play Hellion golf with my FF defender because i know i can hit a -30 mob more than 6 times without "arresting" it. Yet i can use Force Bolt to reduce a mob's ability to retaliate to almost nothing when fighting +4's with both my controller and defender. This means that Force Bolt has at least as much utility for my Gravity/FF controller as my FF/Rad defender, if not more.

Similarly, the secondary effect of most defender blasts does not synergize well with defender primaries, and in most cases where it does is such a minor effect that defender's increased secondary effect is nowhere near enough to compensate for the drastically lower damage. Yet most controller secondaries work very well at complementing and increasing the DPS/efficiency of the controller's primary.

While i can't claim to have done a DPS comparison, when playing it certainly feels like controllers are far closer to a blaster's DPS than defenders in most cases, even if this is not actually true. Honestly, i think defenders could receive a lower damage penalty to their secondary and still not outdamage a blaster who also uses both their sets to complement each other.

Even with 75% blaster damage i don't think that an Empathy/Electrical defender would outdamage an Electrical/Devices blaster, or a Radiation/Energy defender outdamage a Fire/Energy blaster.

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This really is seems to be the crux of the problem. Controllers got a very large boost to solo damage with Containment as part of losing their stacking pets putting them suddenly up in a much higher damage bracket.

With the right debuffing sets, they can get to near blaster/scrapper levels of damage.

Defender were made to be specifically unable to even "match" Blaster DPS. 66% of "blaster damage" has been bandied about, but I'm not totally convinced of this. Most of the time it appears to be closer to 50% of "blaster damage."

The way I understand the developer philosophy is that all powers normally work at 100%, modified by AT bonus (and rarely, penalties.)

Controllers and Dominators get a 25% bonus (to duration and also control crits) to all control powers. Usually they have 7+ powers that they get this bonus. Controllers also get have containment which is a double (base?) damage.

Tankers are best at "self only buffs". This translates to a 25% bonus to defense and resist powers in 7+ powers in their primary.

Blasters and Scrappers are "damage" with things being a little skewed to Blaster to do more damage most by power set design and scrappers getting a crit bonus. This is around a 25% damage bonus (or better.) Controllers were the lowest damage at about "50% of blaster damage" which containment neatly does away.

Defenders are supposed to be best a group buffing and debuffing. This affects probably the least amount of powers in their primary and secondaries compared to all the other base ATs. Forcefields is arguably the worst off with only 4 (and relatively only 3) powers that get the bonus. They also have a fair penalty to damage, because debuffing can increase their damage (even though not all primaries can increase damage this way.)

Corruptors don't actually seem to have a speciality, but are built around a general compatibility of 100% buffs/debuffs and controls with their (roughly) 100% damage. Seen in this light, Corruptor are probably the best balanced of the ranged class, when their primaries synergize well with their secondaries.

Masterminds are a bit hard to quantify easily, but with 100% debuffing/buffing and controls in their secondary, it's easy to see why meat shields that do damage synergize well too.

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The intent is probably for Defenders to be way better than Blasters at endurance drain, but you're right. An Elec/Elec Blaster, using his whole suite of endurance-sapping powers, ought to at least take a significant bite out of AV endurance. For that matter, I'm not even sure Defenders can make much of a dent in AV endurance.

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No, not even with kinetics can a defender really make a budge of AV endurance.

This led to a weird power bug with Arahkn (SP?) where she would spam an PBAOE leach that would refill her hit points. It's a power that costs 50 endurance, so the *player* version is hardly ever taken. But she was able to spam it, making it impossible for anyone to fight in melee with her at all.

This seems to be not the case (at least she doesn't spam that power anymore.)

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Well like I said I could be off-base here, but I always thought the standard way of comparing AT dmg numbers, and that testing had born this out, was to use Blasters as the 100% baseline. In such a scenario Tankers are at 80%, Defenders 66%, etc. If the 66% is not "66% of Blaster dmg" then what is it 66% of? What you're saying is that Defender powers do only about half the dmg of their Blaster counterparts. I do not believe this to be the case.


Edit: Thanks for the confimation BlueEyed, thought I was going crazy there for a minute.

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They used to, but as CoV hit Beta and numbers were being thrown about, they changed to a 100% base and then ATs got "bonuses" against that base.

Ie. Controllers are 125% on control, Tankers are 125% self-buffs, Scrappers and Blasters are 125% damage and Defenders are 125% buffs/debuffs. Everything else (with notable exceptions of Defenders blasts) is supposed to be roughly 100% "base".

A lot of the CoV archtypes are listed doing things as 100% (like Corruptor or Mastermind secondariers at 100%.)

Scourge and Fury make determing "rough" damage base, but scourge seemed balanced at about 100% damage and fury (with heavy buffing) seems to end up at about 125% damage.

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It's 65% of Blaster base damage, Futurias. This can *easily* be verified with an unslotted level 25 En/ Blaster and /En Defender. Costs for the same powers are the same and probably have been so since i4/i5. The availability of Aim and Build Up alters this, of course, as does slotting.

65% Defenders, 112.5% Scrappers, 100% Blasters, 80% Tankers.

Originally, EVERYONE BUT DEFENDERS hit weaker. However, Blasters were basically debt machines. So they went from 80% of their current damage to 100%. That brought defenders down a few notches (as did the various redutions to -res powers). Then Scrappers, Blasters, and Tankers all got buffed to their current levels.

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Well, I know for a fact that my Dark Blast against Assault Rifle was 1/2, easily.

Just remember that the developers have sorta switched gears on how they describe the percentages. It used to be everyone was compared against the best as a percentage. Ie. Blasters were 100% and people were Tanks were 80%, etc.

This is *exactly* the same number ratio as Blasters being 125% versus someone that is 100% BTW.

They then changed things to describe the ATs that go bonuses on "what they do best" as 125% against the "base" level of 100%.

IIRC, Defenders were *already* at 66% of the prebuffed Blasters 100%, though I could be off a bit. Blaster were then buffed to 125% damage (as were scrappers.)

Tankers were later boosted, as their old damage of 75% (against 100% I believe) was too low.

Just two ways of looking at the same numbers, and it confused the issue.

We certainly aren't doing 82.5% of a blaster 125% though. No way is that matching any numbers out there.

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The problem is that Defender secondaries are 66% damage 125% buffs/debuffs, while Blasters are 125% damage and 100% buffs/debuffs.


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Ive seen you quoting other numbers like this in this thread. Im not sure but I dont believe these numbers are correct. I was under the impression that the way the scale works is that Blasters are at 100% dmg, everyone else is based off of that. If Blasters are doing 125% and Defenders are 66%, then Defenders are doing only about half the dmg of Blasters which I dont believe is correct.

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Actually, the developers have been stating for a long time that they didn't decrease everyone elses damage, they just buffed Blasters and Scrappers damage (ie. 125% damage.)

The problem was that Defenders had already been set to 66% before that.

I've seen several times where my Defender was easily only doing half the damage compared to an AR blaster, which I checked to see where moderate versus moderate damage.

Defender are actually doing about 1/2 the damage of Blasters before any external buffs/debuffs are applied.

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Yes, it is untrue.
Secondary effects/debuffs work BETTER for Defenders than for Blasters. Granted, most Blaster-shared Blasts don't have a secondary effect that can be changed in value, but it's visible in Electric Blast.

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I forgot about that. You're talking about the boost in end drain that Defenders got for the /Elec blasts I assume right? I think that came in I5 or I6. To me, that kind of confuses things.

You have to wonder if the devs just like to complicate things. Wouldn't it just be easier to say give Defenders the Blaster powers at 65% across the board for both damage and secondary effects? Want to know the damage of a shared power? Easy, 65%. Want to know the secondary effect of a shared power? Easy, 65%. If they see a problem with balance AFTER doing that then it could be addressed but why make it more confusing than it needs to be?

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The problem is that Defender secondaries are 66% damage 125% buffs/debuffs, while Blasters are 125% damage and 100% buffs/debuffs.

And the secondary debuff/buff effect can be largely ignored on top of this.

The few powers that are debuff/buff in nature are usually only 2 out of 9 powers, where as the damage of the blast sets is usually 7 out of 9.

Defenders being better out of 2 powers by 25% would not be unbalanced. It even fits the "better at buffing/debuffing" credo versus damage.

At least until you remember that blasters are almost *twice* as good at damage as a defender. Even with a 30% increase with a -damage resistance debuff, that only gets *some* defender up to 81.25% of a blasters 125%.

To protect Blasters damage, Defender's own secondary damage role was made a joke.

Post level 38, Defender become the low damage AT behind everyone. The decision to buff Controller damage with containment sounded like a good idea. 50% really was too low, but 50% x2 is suddenly 100% base damage, that several of the controller secondaries all them to buff too by 24%.

Suddenly, the *LOWEST* damage AT is now doing almost blaster's 125% damage.

And the non-damage buffing Defenders are now doing about 1/2 the damage of everyone else.

No wonder Force Field Defender feel like they are getting the shaft.

That's because they are.

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The devs have long maintained that they think Defenders were the most balanced AT aftter realease, and I strongly agree with them. Unfortunately, they have screwed around with the game immensely in an effort to "fix" all the other ATs, and in what I consider typical fashion, they have been all but blind to the collateral affects of those changes. Defenders are no longer well balanced in respect to the rest of the game. Absolutely every other AT has moved from its initial postion relative to the others. And of course all of them moved relative to the environment thanks to I5+ED. By leaving Defenders where they were, they are now beginning to no longer fill the role they originally were created to fill.

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While I think that all in all that the developers are fairly happy with the ATs now, it's for the wrong reasons.

Basically, from what I can tell, Defenders are built on 125% debuffs, 66% damage and 100% mezzing and self buffs. You get some skewed numbers because of this.

Basically, they are happy with the most *gimped* AT for balance. That must mean they actually feel that every other AT is overpowered by their own numbers.

I really don't see how they are going to "fix" this issue myself.