Not_BC

So, just to jump in again ...

Yes, emps are BEASTS on small teams. And, on the flip side, I'd argue that bubblers are comparatively weak on small teams, but shine brightest on large teams. And, FWIW, there is a type of balance in that -- the devs are content to have certain sets do better than others in some situations. When the devs re-balance things, they tend to do it in situations where some sets are (nearly) always better than others and some sets are (nearly) always worse than others. To me, that does NOT describe the situation with defender primaries.

Your statement that "Debuffs > Buffs" is wrong, mostly because it's FAR too general. Adds? AVs? Large spawns? Small spawns? KB-heavy teams? Solo? Small teams? Large teams? Raids?

(De)buff sets have /never/ had an exhaustive balance pass, while almost every other class of powers has had a balance pass. This strongly suggests that the devs are largely happy with how (de)buff sets compare against each other. No one has ever publicly done an analysis of intra-set (de)buff performance (we've had some e-peen waggers say they have, but they've never, as it were, shown us the money), so it's most likely the devs haven't either; instead, they seem to be relying on data-mining to gauge performance, numbers that the players have no access to.

FWIW, the simplest buff to Empathy is to set the RAs to 30' (currently, IIRC, 25') and call it a day.

I've had a couple Lambdas fail immediately after the cut scene.

But only when some people go dancing with Marauder.

Technically, it's more complete mez protection than FF offers since it covers everything Dispersion Bubble covers, as well as KB and Repel. With 50% more magnitude.

As for the trash heap? Again, not my words. Maybe je-saist's, but not mine.

My words, for the record, amount to "increasingly marginalized".

No where, I repeat, no where did I say that 2-click buffing a team would make FF less desirable to play. I challenge you to find that quote.

What I did say is that changing other ST buffs, specifically mentioning ID, to being AoEs would continue the long process of eroding FF's niche of providing AoE mez protection and damage mitigation. I singled out ID because, as it stands, it's impractical to keep on more than a couple people.

Yup, since about day 1 or 2 with my other account, Burning Chick. Hundreds of hours spent playing a FF defender, also. And probably close to 2k playing (de)buffers of various stripes.


Again, you're deliberately misreading me. And, again, I challenge you to find the quote where I say "Incarnate buffs are killing FF." What I did say is that they are, along with a handful of other changes to the game, marginalizing FF. But "marginalizing" is a whole different word than "killing".

And your point? All sets with shields and, IIRC, mez protection buffs get them early.

Traps? Sorry, how long have YOU been playing for?

Again, Traps?

FWIW, ID is on a one minute timer with a 3 second recharge. Making it perma and, unless the devs have changed the mechanics of ST mez protection buffs, STACKABLE.

So, yeah.

I've actually thought this one through, and it wasn't a knee-jerk reaction on my part.

I don't think most people would even notice.

It's not uncommon for my dom with all of CJ's +def to cruise to 40% def in trials, with gusts up to the hard cap as people tap Barrier. Adding more def past 45 / 54 isn't doing much.

No, the increased prevalence of of damage mitigation and mez protection have eroded FF's niche to the point where there's little performance reason to bring a bubbler along versus bringing, well, almost any other buffer that can bring some combination of mitigation / mez protection and a handful of other goodies. You can't even trot out the old argument that having a passive primary like FF leaves lots of time to blast versus a clickie set like kin.

For a very short while on Freem (less than a day), people actually were using LFG to form trials. But, within a day, it was faster to get a league going in Pocket D. It wasn't that people were unwilling to use LFG, it was that /b in a co-op zone proved to be a much, much better tool for running successful trials.

Lest we forget, we weren't always able to invite people by clicking on their names in chat -- clearly, CoH players are willing to use new tools when they prove superior to existing tools.

FWIW, I think that having a participation metric for trials evolved out of a need to have the server police open missions for obvious leeches. If the primary tool for joining trials were LFG, having a participation metric would be a big deal since you have no way of knowing if you're teaming with a known leech or not. Since the players have by and large ditched LFG, the need for a participation metric is lessened because we have tools available for policing ourselves.

I think you're right; I don't think the devs anticipated that the primary way for people to join trials would be /broadcast in co-op zones. That's a pretty solid indicator of how poor the tool is for joining content.

I hope the devs pull a rabbit out of a hat and improve LFG to the point where it's a viable option for putting together teams and leagues compared to /b.

Edit: and that an improved LFG is good enough to win back users already soured on it.

Seriously? I was expecting far more from the LFG tool, things that are, IME, pretty standard for most A-list MMOs -- it's missing what are, IME, some pretty basic options: form group; join group; start with X members; open to all; open to coalition; open to SG.

The management tools once a league has started, however, are good.

But as a tool for getting groups together? *shivers* It's awful.

RoF on my high recharge fire dom has an average recharge time of 18 seconds in HeroStats, faster if I'm Johnny on the Spot and I remember to hit Hasten.

FWIW, the sheer face-melting ability of having a near-perma rain + all the DoT of a fire / fire / fire build? Jebus. I've seen entire teams have lower DPS.

With regard to one target rains ...

That's really, really freaking weird to me. I didn't even know an AoE patch could be set to fire an effect on one target.

Edit:

Totally unintentional first post after a red name!

Thanks for the clarification.

Fair 'nuff.

But, IIRC, Seeker Drones will make stuff hit less often and for less damage than Tough and Weave.

Cryptic billed CoV as a standalone game (making CO the studio's third MMO); everyone else saw it as an expansion. CoV was an old engine with new content tacked on to it.

Maybe Paragon is going back to its roots and will release a new engine designed to run old content. As others have pointed out, they've hired, seemingly, everyone needed for a game except writers.

Lord knows the game needs a tuneup under the hood if the devs continue to move towards raid content. Heck, the game needs new character models (c'mon, it's 2011 -- mittens?), non bi-ped critters, bases need a reboot, there've been hints for years about cross-server teaming, and, well, you get the idea. At a certain point, it's probably more efficient to start from scratch with a new engine than to continue working on the current one.

So ... maybe CoH 2 is more like CoH 2.0.

My fire tanker has Ice Storm, my SS / Fire has Mu. When Ice Storm is up, it's very, very nice. But the Mu powers recharge much faster.

My gut feeling is that Ice Storm would probably outpace Mu on high recharge builds, [edit]or at least be competitive because the fast DoT ensures that mobs are tagged with the max possible number of procs.

On the other hand, the vast majority of the PvE game IS a mindless zerg where the right answer to any given situation is most likely "more AoE". To say "Trials and raids are supposed to be about learning the best tactic" is a little twee considering that trials and raids represent less than 1% of the PvE experience.

The game was designed as a fast-paced zerg from the outset, and the devs have, if anyting, dumbed down the tactics needed for any given situation almost from release (I could discuss this at length, but it'd be a monumental threadjack). To expect the playerbase to do a 180 and embrace a different style of play when the old one, by your own admission, works is ... interesting.

What I'm saying is that slapping a timer on something forces the mindset of "gotta' get it done fast" on most players, and that instinct, aided and abetted by the very design of the PvE experience from 1-50, works against the marginally superior style of: perhaps we should ponder the relevance of, perchance, a different tactic whereby we use all our allotted time to the mutual benefit of all particpants; to whit we move spawn by spawn as a team and send as many miscreants off to their unjust rewards as possible.

Scrapperlock has a very, very strong hold on this game.

Edit for an additional thought: teamwork could be encouraged if goody boxes and their attendant spawns became progressively tougher, either with distance from the door or with the remaining boxes and their attendant spawns being buffed as the other boxes get defeated.

Tactics is golden in BAF since it protects against Confuse.

I think this gets the heart of at least one problem with the rewards: because participation is required to get a non-thread reward, it is, IME, pretty logical for players to assume that, to get better rewards, you have to participate more.

Actually, yes, the devs implemented a nasty design flaw in Lambda -- they put the "gather temps" phase on a timer. That encourages players to zerg -- it's just in the nature of the gaming beast. If you have 5 minutes to complete a task, completing it in 3 is better than completing in 5. When players see see the numbers tick down, they assume "GOGOGO!".

The devs, I believe, failed to consider player psychology in their design of these two aspects of the trials.