Lakanna

Well, the quotes have been very specific: the game has not been made harder. They've never once said that future content won't be made harder becaues of IO'd monster-toons. Would they do that? I don't know, but the fact that their response is aways exactly the same suggests to me that they are leaving it open. I know they said that there will be content in GR that's far more difficult that anything in the game now.

Of course, the right team will probably still shred content without IO's. Team synergy can bring more to every character than any amount of IOs, purples, accolades, etc. I just have bad memories of Guildwars, where each expansion came out with new skils, new synergies, and power creep that made old content pitifully easy and some of the new content painfully hard.I really would like to see this NOT happen in CoH, but as people IO out characters, and as long as IO's are not considered part of game balance, I believe that it might be inevitable.

This mainly. i even got +repped from someone who's on the other side, saying I was fun to argue with. When the arguments actually get nasty, I tend to lose interest, but actually holding a discussion is a lot of fun.

Of course, I also got -rep from anonymous twice. I'm an idiot who should shut up because I have no idea how to play.

Once? nope. Once is a thrill. I get mezzed occasionally on my scrapper when i'm doing things I shouldn't. it's exciting to have something unexpected in the middle of a battle.

It's tedious when every battle has mezzing. Play for a while, stand around mezzed, play for a bit, stand around mezzed. It's annoying being stopped, dead, because some mook threw a stun grenade at you, over and over and over.

What I want, since you asked, is for mez to be less ridiculous. To allow it to be a challenge for melee at times, without being completely overused to the point where breakfrees are mandatory for anyone without it. I would LOVE to see mez simply reduce your effectiveness, without removing your ability to react completely. Blaster Defiance is good: you can still act, albeit not as well. The binary nature of mez in this game, cbined with the fact that some AT's have essentially nothing to fear from it at all, means that those without mez protection face a massive weakness, and it's one that is given to nearly every high-end enemy group, and at least one member of every villain group starting at around level 20. It's not a strength of melee that they get mez protection, it's a designed weakness of ranged that they do not. And having a large, exploitable weakness in a game that has large numbers of enemies that exploit that weakness isn't a whole lot of fun, at least for me personally.

According to Claws, perception range is 50'? Is that correct? Radiation blast (shared with blasters) get a 40' cone knockback and a 40' ranged stun. Archery gets an AoE knockback at 100' and a single-target stun at 60' range on a base 20s recharge/15s duration. Dark gets the aforementioned mag 2 stun, and an 80' cone knockback. Electric gets a single-target 50' hold. All of these are useful at times. none of them are a solid, even single-target, hard control except electric. Ice, of course, has a pair of holds that can stack quickly; sonic has a cone sleep that is simply amazing control for a defender; but that's 2 sets of all the defender secondaries that have reliable hard control. If you take out knockback, most defender secondaries have very little if any control available to them.

bah. I KNEW I should have looked that up. I was certain that hurl boulder stunned. Absolutely certain. And wrong. They do still carry knockback, but I dont consider that a serious control option: it's useful to be sure, but not something tha you can count on and not something you can build a strategy around.

Why is it an "I WIN!" button for squishies, but business as usual for melee types? Here's a question, how many enemies have melee-only mezzes? How many have ranged mezzes? How many can now, since the nice new "feature" of I15, get a single attack off no matter whether you catch them by surprise or not?

This is the onyl reason I got involved in this thread: people are saying that mez protection would be overpowered on squishies, but when you look at the squishies that have it, or have it partially, it doesn't make them more powerful. It makes them more fun.

Look at the new defiance. On paper, it gives less of a bonus and less of a maximum bonus than the old defiance, and yet blasters are overwhelmingly in favor of it. I can't say that being able to keep fighting while mezzed is the only reason, but it certainly affects the way a blaster plays. It makes them able to play their characters, where before, it was "pop a breakfree or stand still for a while."

Look at Dominators. Even with non-perma mez protection, they aren't overpowered. They're (now) a relatively well-balanced class. Perma-dom no longer boosts the AT's offense to godly levels, which is what a lot of the complaints abotu perma-dom was about. Does the fact that certain Dominators have permanent mez protection even raise an eyebrow? No, not really. The difference between parma mez protection and not? Huge in terms of enjoyment and fun. not so much in terms of raw power.

And Controllers with their epics. I don't know if Indomitable Will can be perma'd, but I'll wager that the difference between a controller who has full-time mez protection and not isn't that much in terms of real power. but enjoyment of those characters is huge. I took it on my illusion/emp, and being able to shrug off mezzes, even for a short time, really makes me enjoy that character a lot more.

All the VEATS were build with mez protection. They solo well, add a lot to teams, and are, to me, a blast to play. Even the Fortunatas and the ranged crab builds. The entire AT was built right, to me: no glaring weaknesses, and especially no weakness to mez. Their mez protection isn't an "I WIN!" button, but it does help out when the AI attempts to play it's own "I WIN!" button. And the AI does have them: play around them, or they wipe the floor with you. Stacked, chained mez is an automatic win for the AI unless mez protection is brought into play, although to be honest, I very rarely see an enemy who will do this. Anathemas from the lost will chain-hold at times, and MIs/ Dark Ring Mistresses have been able to do it.

Mez protection isn't about power. It's about getting rid of the annoyance factor. And while melee types don't need to be annoyed by stuns and holds, what disappoints me isn't mez, but that some people insist that others must be annoyed by it, must deal with it, but others can't be bothered with it. If mez protection isn't overpowered on a claws/regen scrapper that can solo a Rikti Pylon or a SS/Stone tanker that can solo an entire map set for 8, how can you suggest it's OP for a defender, corruptor, or blaster, most of whom will never come CLOSE to that level?

And if you're willing to admit that power differential isn't a good reason to keep squishies from getting mez protection, then what else is there? "Vision?"

So we're balancing around IO's now? And saying that a scapper should be able to do everything a squishy can, and more, or something is broken?

And defenders in general? Some powersets get mez protection. Some get proactive mezzing. some get both. Some get neither. The sets that get neither are STILL in the same boat as your tanker: no mez protection gets them killed.

I'm noticing you're specifically singling out controllers, the one non-melee AT that actually has serious mitigation through active mezzing itself. You won't talk about blasters or defenders?

Stone melee can stack stuns, AoE knockdown, and gets a mag 3 hold. Super strength can stack stuns and has an AoE knockdown. Dark Armor gets AoE fear and stun powers, and Dark melee can take another single-target fear to stack. And scrappers and tanks have the mez protection to actually use the melee-range powers without fear of being mezzed.

Dominators. Fortunatas. Tanker epics. You were saying?

Since Power Push counts as personal mitigation, does Focus and shockwave? Or hurl/hurl boulder with their ranged stuns?

Squishies have to sacrifice MORE to get even a minimum of protection? lower HP, no damage resistance/defense, far lower survivability, and damage that is, at best, above a scrapper by a small margin? But yeah, I gave it all up, see above. Too bad that squishies weren't a good fit for me, but being mezzed is completely boring, frustrating, and it's disappointing that people actually want to see other people forced to deal with such a terrible mechanic if they happen to enjoy blasters/defenders/corruptors.

Well, since we were discussing SOLO ability in the examples, the team gets along just fine.

Ah, and you need to do this on a melee character? I love my scrappers and brute. They're FUN in a way that my squishies are not, and mez is a huge part of the reason why.

And defenders and blasters are designed to require that protection. Being dependant on a team to have basic functionality, and having to hold back even when on a team because you draw so much aggro is pretty sad. The worst thing in the game is to be chain-mezzed and unable to react while an enemy slowly chips your life away. And sometimes, quite frankly, even tankers bite off more than they can chew. It is at those times, specifically when I need to be contributing my best to a team, that I am most likely to be drawing aggro. The tanker can't "protect the team" all the time, every instant, and when things go bad, they tend to go bad for squishies first.

Old joke on the blaster boards: when the blaster makes a mistake, he dies. When the tanker makes a mistake, the blaster dies. Unless you team with only perfect tanks who never make a mistake, you will get into situations where you WANT your blasters doing damage, not standing around as statues.

Fire/Rad is about the safest controller you can make. And controllers in general are a very safe AT: they fulfill the same function on a team as a tank, preventing damage, and their role is VERY proactive. They're the safest, if not the fastest, solo squishies, and probably beat out tanks for levelling speed solo.

Not -A- mezzing enemy. Entire groups of them when all you have is a single-target mez that happens to aggro the entire group. And no way to protect or defend against the crippling mez that comes back. I don't mind dying because they simply did more damage than me. I dislike dying because there was nothing I could do to prevent it, short of leaving a mission to buy more break frees.

Of course there are things other AT's do that scrappers can't. Claws was saying that certain AT's were doing things that scrappers would find challenging, and I was pointing out that that is the way it should be. Scrappers do not need to be godlike, capable of meeting every challenge in the game, and neither does anyone else. However, there are some things that certain ATs should be able to do that scrappers cannot. If scrappers CAN match every feat every other AT can pull off, then why play anything else?

Power Push: I never took it. Total Focus, with its 3 second animation, and stun, are both melee range, hardly the "proactive mez from range" that ALL squishies seem to have in your eyes. And Power Boost boosts duration, not mag, meaning you still need to stack stuns to neutralize a boss. Are YOU deliberately misconstruing how these powers function? Because for me, they have always been a last resort power for when something gets too close, NOT an opener to take out a threat, and certainly not from range.

He pointed out a scrapper set that NEEDS mez protection because it has no way to mez enemies actively. I pointed out that not all squishies have this either. But if a katana/regen scrapper NEEDS mez protection because they can't mez first, what of most defenders? Fire blasters? Why is it a need on one person and a silly idea on another, because the "no way to mez in advance" idea either doesn't hold up, or holds fine and makes my point.

I reread it, and he carefully quilified the word "dumb" and couched the italicized intelligently in a softer sentence. Calling someone dumb because they don't agree with you isn't a great way to make your point, though. Good call on pointing out my omission of Power Thrust. Now how about the page full of omissions I covered on my last post? it's going on in both sides, you see.

I quit playing my blasters. Seriously just quit. I play controllers, scrappers, and brutes now. My defenders and corruptors are often created specifically to team, soloing them is just not fun. So yeah, I adapted. I started playing the AT's without that single, crippling, and near-omnipresent weakness.

The thing about Malta is synergy. Sappers mez, titans mez, gunslingers mez, tac ops mez... I'm trying to avoid talking about them, as it just gets dismissed as "well, since malta are a problem, then change malta." Good on you for being able to take out gunslingers one after the other though. Must have taken quite a bit of patience and planning for every single boss group. Assuming that each boss spawned with other malta and not alone, then that's not an easy task.

That's with perma-PA. Spectral terror is a fear, and like all fears, will allow counterattacks. MOST controllers don't have multiple taunting pets, and even MOST illusion controllers don't have perma-PA. An extreme example indeed.

Funnily enough, you're the one advocating changing playstyle instead of changing the game. In that situation, I'd do what I do on my defenders: find a team. Find a mission not quite so stupidly stacked with mez. In other words, I'd have to change the way I play to avoid the mez. Why is it different when it's a tanker?

Still an outlier, though. Change the example to a defender instead, see what happens. Again, there are outliers, but MOST defenders in the situation you describe for the tank, wind up with the same results: no mez protection means death.

That you know of. And you mention ONE blaster that did it, and multiple scrappers. Whether its invuln or DA, the fact remains that a blaster did it, a scrapper, and possibly multiple scrappers, have done it. I don't see hw this is really relavant

Because Fire/Kin farmers pick their maps, and farm them relentlessly. You dont' see fire/kins farming carnies, malta, Rikti... noticing a pattern here? They farm behemoths, Family, sometimes Council and sometimes Freaks: all mez-light groups, and ones where the mezzers CAN be picked out and locked down first. Farming is about minimal risk for maximum rewards, and mezzing enemies are too much of a hassle. Are you saying you've never noticed what maps fire/kins run, or did you forget to mention it?

Stacked debuffs work wonders on a single target. If you build a character specifically for single-target damage, you can solo a Rikti Pylon too, something that folks without mez protection would find... challenging. Which GM's, by the way? Are you saying that "a well built rad/sonic can solo ANY GM" or are you saying that "if you build a rad/sonic specifically to take out a small number of easy Gm's, it can be done that way?" you're implying the first, and the second is the truth.

"If a scrapper can't do it, it SHOULD be too tough for any non-melee AT?" Seriously? What next, point out that squishies can deal with the Vanguard Sword while melees have trouble there? There SHOULD be things that some AT's can do that scrappers can't. that's the entire POINT of an AT system.

Most? so would you advocate mez protection for those who can't? i have an energy/energy blaster that has only unreliable knockback for personal mitigation. BTW, did you know Sappers resist energy damage? Or the fire/fire blasters that you mentioned earlier: they're in the same boat as your katana/regen scrapper, why can't they get protection?

And we end with an indirect insult to the intelligence of anyone who wants mez protection for squishies. And your conclusion that "some people can do it" is wonderful, excapt that earlier, you posted that essentially, some scrappers can solo the ITF, and at least one blaster can. Just because something is possible, does not mean that it should become the baseline for the entire game. or that it should remain that way.

This wasn't specifically mentioned, but it could be that it affected bosses dropping Pool C and D recipes as well. And the numbers have generally been about right since I9: when I16 came out, a relatively benign (although it's impossible to say for sure how much it affected things) problem with the code essentially caused drop rates to go way down. The bug has been around since I9, but the drop rate was fine in general before I16. We can probably assume that Pool A will stay where it is now, maybe even climb a bit, until it gets fixed on Live.

We'll see after that. If things go as I think they might, I'll be laughing the whole time.

Quite honestly, I wish I could share your conviction that the devs would ever consider something "too rare" and adjust the drop rates accordingly. however, i have seen no evidence of this, and have seen plenty of evidence that they want to KEEP IO's at least somewhat rare. (TF merit rebalancing went both ways, but the AE ticket cap was strictly punitive, and the changes to AE rewards are entirely downward.)

Seems to me that as much as they say otherwise, those that want the market to continue to be the best way to earn INF and get shinies, are getting exactly what they want from the devs: scarcer items, higher sale prices as a result.

Edited to remove inflammatory opinion.

Thank you for sticking with this, even when your tests showed nothing wrong. I'm greatly relieved that even when you couldn't see any problem, you listened to us when we said that there really was. Thanks for taking us that seriously.

Great work for everyone who posted. Archie and EarthWyrm did most of the heavy work, but I'm glad to see the community actually pulled together and came up with a LOT of data.

And yes, once it hits live, I want to know what it was too. My guess is inspirations: when the tray filled up, salvage and recipes followed for a few mobs, then dried up again.

Probably, except for the robots, which now launch their poison gas missle pretty frequently. Also, robots- resist psi damage pretty heavily. Since I15, they've changed up some mob AI to make them use their attacks more. this means that where once you could kite to keep them at a specific range, now they just blast you with their mez whenever tehy feel like it. How long ago did you run that arc?

-shrugs- malta are malta, and MOST characters find them annoying. Thing is, there are several groups that I habitually avoid on squishies, not because I can't deal with them, but because they're jsut tedious to solo. Malta tops the list, but Carnies are there, along with Rikti and Rularuu (holds on Lt's, and massively high accuracy to boot.) It's not that it cannot be done, as you have proven. It's that, soloing without mez protection, there are far more groups that just aren't worth going up against.

What mez ability does a defender, controller, or corruptor have when they're held or stunned? The main problem with mez effects is that they cause a cascading failure: you can't fight back, you can't defend yourself, and the situation will always get worse when you're mezzed. Either you have a crutch (breakfree) or you tend to get overwhelmed and unable to do anything about it. Being helpless isn't heroic, or even fun.

My blaster fights in melee, and can pull aggro from all but the best tankers I've seen. I'm terrified of Marauder, because he comes after me. In dozens of fights against him, I've seen exactly ONE tank who could keep his attention the entire fight. Every other time, I see rocks flying at me. Having a higher inherent threat mod doesn't mean that you'll automatically be able to hold aggro when your teammates are putting out a healthy dose of damage. And having a lower threat mod doesn't make you safe from splash damage, damage from additional groups, or damage when your damage output simply overwhelms the tanker's taunt values.

Are you absolutely certain that you're using "minority" and "majority" correctly? I don't think there's any way to be certain that people who just skip the market entirely aren't the majority. I highly doubt that "market forum regulars" is the majority of the playerbase though, and I DO remember seeing a poll a while back, where quite a few people who posted described the market not as something they do because they enjoy it, but rather as a necessary but not especially fun part of character development.

ah, so THAT's why scrappers and brutes are so rare, those "high levels of fail."

Wait...