Not_Quite_Even

Yes I want the developers to remove Travel Suppression and Heal Decay. I was finally becoming decent at PvP when these new mechanics rolled in and in my humble opinion sucked the fun out of PvP.

Travel Suppression was one of the primary reasons why CoX PvP was fun. There were then ways to lock down, snare, targets for melee types to wail upon, and there are even more now with the proliferation of -fly, -jump powers like web grenade, air superiority and others. (arguably the inclusion of fitness for free allows people to take a utility power like air superiority or web grenade more easily).

Heal Decay is clunky to me. It falls particularly hard on some sets and not on others. Before Travel Suppression, the way to deal with an empath was maneuver, teleport foe, knock back, mezz effects, or bring lots of friends and just burn through it.

I've played other PvP systems where one character can heal another, and the PvP is still competitive because you can either "pressure" the healer, that is put out so much damage across targets over time that it exhausts the healer's healing resources, or "spike" hit a single target with such a large amount of damage in a short enough time period that the healer can't apply their available resources fast enough. They also have the standard tactics of maneuvering the target out of range/los with the healer, mezz effects, etc.

I think a better solution may have been to look at the endurance costs and/or recharge time of healing powers, so that while a healer type might be able to blunt 1 or 2 spikes, but they couldn't do it indefinitely.

I think a healer should be able to blunt some spikes on occassion. It's fun for me. But they shouldn't be able to do it all the time. Instead with Heal Decay, you have healers that perform more "maintenance" with respect to their healing powers, i.e. topping folks off, rather than the more dramatic and emotionally satisfying clutch save.

I'm not sure if the whole "so I go clipped by some empath rocking heal aura for very little, and so now my healing flames does 1/8 of what it should" was ever resolved, but it seems harsh to punish a player for the "helpful" actions of another.

The only 2 I can really comment on are cold/ice and storm/psi.

Cold/ice. Nice thematic pairing, a very interesting jack of all trades kind of defender. The shields are quite good, not up to forcefields, but powerful and on the same long 4 minute timer so you don't get the buff bot carpal tunal of say, a speed boosting kinetic. It has nice soft control, -resistance, -regen, group wide stealth, and even a recovery buff power. It really is a jack of all trades kind of set.

It's on the painful to solo side as many powers only affect others, and the really cool debuffs that help you solo Sleet and Heat Loss come very late.

Storm/psi. While storm isn't nearly as reviled as it once was, it is still a difficult set. Many powers cause knockback which annoys many players particularly melee types (and kinetics). It has a hard learning curve and people tend to be less forgiving of a stormy learning the ropes than say a cold or an empath. A poorly played stormy will cause all kinds of aggro.

That said, it is one of the more powerful sets out there, and once you get the hang of it can solo or team very well. Just learn your knockback-fu.

The Developers apparently wanted to limit the duration of time an individual was stuck not being able to do anything when they shortened mezz durations. They seem have abolished mezz protection and buffed mezz powers damage scales in an attempt to compensate for the duration nerf.

Unfortunately, Mezz resistance in such circumstances is underwhelming. At its maximum mezz resistance the max 4 second mezz is now 2 seconds or there abouts. When coupled with the wide proliferation of mezzing options across archetypes (and such nifty things like Decimation chance to hold proc) a melee type may find that they don't get a lot of use out of the mezz resistance they do have.

My proposal is this. Instead of Mezz protection or Mezz resistance, Mezz defense. Mezz defense, I believe is a necessary buff to melee types who now are fairly easily chained mezzed to death. This would also enable the developers to "un-nerf" to some extent mezz durations and enable controllers and dominators to fill a more similar role/tactical style in PvP that they do in PvE.

What I imagine would be something like mezz durations are increased 50% from their current PvP level, and a fully slotted mezz protection/defense toggle would provide approximately 20-25% defense to mezz effects.

Break frees could return to a more similar function as they work in PvE. My initial thought is that a tier 1 break free would provide 5% mezz defense and -2 magnitude. So you could still use inspirations to break free, but it would take 1 for a blaster mezz like freeze ray, and 2 for a controller hold, or 3 for a dominator hold in domination or a controller critical hold (I think, might have the math incorrect).

Though, I'll gladly defer to Arcanaville on the math.

Just a thought

Alas, called off due to lack of interest.

Got to say my experience is rather at odds with many.

Squishu brutes? Well my underslotted Dark Armor Brute is kinda squishy in certain situations, but that has more to do with stun resistant mobs (negating Oppressive Gloom), or stacked to hit debuffs (making Dark Regeneration chancy). My willpower brute doesn't seem squishy at all, and I do a lot of overly aggressive, potentially ill advised stuff. And FYI, I have no IO sets.

Chasing Fury? Perhaps if you had one of those really slow animating sets like Axe I could see that, but I've never experienced it. I don't know, but as I get rolling mobs that used to take 3-4 hits, now take 2-3, or even 1 if I can manage to keep Death Shroud up.

Perhaps the best thing, in general, playing on villains as a brute over a tanker in heroes, is most of the time villains don't expect you to save them. I'll take and hold most of the aggro, even on my tauntless willpower brute, but it's a relief not to have the "Shut up and Meat Shield/Taunt Bot" mentality you occasionally get heroside. (I quit kinetics and moved to brutes to avoid the SB MEH! mentality).

But don't care what someone else plays on a team so long as the play half way intelligently. I don't care if the tanker/brute scraps and holds no aggro so long as they don't needless create havoc and over aggro I'm good to go.

YMMV

Recently I've seen more and more people asking for various mayhem missions. It was easy enough to level passed the first couple of Mayhem Mission prior to AE, Meowing, etc. etc.

So as a psuedo public service, I've an alt with the above Mayhem Missions and I thought I'd throw it out here for those who need the badges. My alt's name is "Effreti" and while any spontaneous expressions of pecuniary gratitude are much appreciated, they are neither required nor will they be otherwise solicited.

I will keep the mission open for as long as possible and cycle through as many people as I can before it times out.

Anyway, Atlas Mayhem Mission. Starts 10 P.M. EST. May 27th, 2009. Contact Effreti

King's Row Mayhem Mission. Starts 10 pm EST. May 28th, 2009. Contact Effreti.

Peace.

Winters Rose:

What with all these lazy tanks that don't hold 100% of the aggro? And defeat the mobs for me? And where is there Aid Other? Leadership toggles? Recall Friend? Where is their pile of awakens to get me back on my feet when they fail at their job to prevent all damage?

Once upon a time there was a debate, "What's with all these lazy tanker's without taunt? Why would you even take up a team slot with a tanker without taunt?"

I have teamed with many great tankers. Some had taunt; some did not. All of them were great additions to the team whether they had or used that one particular power.

On a truly "bleeding edge" team, speed boost is actually a hinderance. Things go down so quickly from fulcrum shifty goodness, that the recharge benefit is vitiated by travel time. But speed boost increases travel speed? True, but judging it with the anti-jousting timing is rather difficult, and tends to cause multiple aggro which can lead to team wipes, which leads to less optimal performance.

I'll make a deal with you or anyone else. I'll not tell you how to play your character, and you'll not tell me how to play mine.

Peace

In general, positional defense is superior to typed. There are a couple of holes in positional defense, some psi based attacks like dominate (unless they've changed it) and I think one toxic based attack.

SS/WP can end up with very respectable positional defense with slightly more than moderate investment in IOs without any build sacrifices.

Personally, I just slotted Maco's in my melee attacks and called it good. With over 50% resistance to smashing/lethal and stupidly good regen from Rise to the Challenge, everything this side of an AV in melee is largely ignorable, and I'm running around 25-30% defense to ranged/energy/negative energy so that's pretty well covered (I might have some trouble with fire melee or ice melee specialists, but other than CoTs, I can recall running across any since the 30's or so.)

Occasional and alternating use of Strength of Will and Demonic, maybe popping a Luck inspiration or 2 and it's basically all good.

Of course that all PvE. PvP with diminishing returns, global resistance buffs, and the other stuff is beyond my ken.

One problem with the above GadgetDon, and it's a design problem.

Some people finish an arc and don't want to rate it. Maybe they're just "playing through" or what have you. I'm one of those. I didn't realize until later that whenever I completed an arc and failed to rate it, the individual was getting a 0 star rating.

Personally, I think the interface is counter intuitive. Most ratings are 1-5 stars, with 0 stars indicating "not rated." Unfortunately, the Devs decided on a 0-5 rating scale, and failed to put it in bold print.

Anyway, yes you might be being targeted, but then again you may just be the victim of ignorance/apathy. And you know what they say about ascribing malice to things that could more easily or likely be explained by apathy or laziness.

Nope.

A mob has a chance to drop a recipe.
Then that drop is randomly assigned to a member of the team.

So yes, if Team Member 1 gets the drop from a particular mob, no one else in the Team will get that particular drop from that particular mob. However, it is possible that Mob #2 will also drop something, which might be randomly assigned to a team member other than Team Member 1

The new ranged attacks are a very ill thought way to solve the problem.

If the problem is hover sniping, provide the mobs with web grenade. Melees would still be able to move in to engage, and hover snipers would be grounded. There was never any need for the made up ranged attacks to do such insane amounts of damage.

My solution, providing the melee power sets with an automagic -fly attack that does no damage solves the problem of hover sniping without unfair punishing the people who were doing it "the right way." Their solution is overboard and silly.

Par for the course as that is these days.

Peace

[ QUOTE ]
Fire/Rad isn't a tight build at all especially when you compare it to a Fire/Storm.

Not sure if Fire/Storm are FoTM but they kill just as fast if not faster then a Fire/Rad, Freeze rain + Rain of Fire+ Fire Ball is just awsome. Just make sure to pick up the AoE web nade from the epic pool will make that combo even better.

Like the other suggest, Fire/Rad, Fire/Storm, or Fire/Kin.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, sell me on Fire/Kin. I'm a big fan of kinetics, but unless things have changed:

1. End Drain is still nerfed such that sapping is only vaguely possible with either really odd slotting on things like siphon power and/or with Transference.

2. Unsuppressed movement by Inertial Reduction, Siphon Speed, and Speed Boost is a distant memory.

So in what environment is Fire/Kin working well? Maybe things have changed but people rarely had the grace to cluster up and stand still so I could fulcrum off them, and doing so off of NPC's these days is a death sentence what with the eternal mezzes they dish out.

Supermax,

Thanks for the correction. (gleefully eats crow with tartar sauce), I still think its completely it's a poor design. But hey maybe I'll get more pvp badges by going afk, respecing into flurry?

Questions:

1. If dom pets don't have the mezz resistance instead of protection thing, does that mean that their mezz attacks work like zone NPCs? I see gravity controllers/doms proliferating.

2. Anybody ever use mass confusion on a gaggle of Long Bow Wardens?

3. Last I heard perma-dom in pvp requires something on the order of +200% global recharge, on the other hand both flurry and thunderstrike while in domination dish out more damage than Head Splitter.

But to your question. How will mind/psi perform in PvP? Well assuming you're talking about Super Heavy Weight Events, after you've pumped a truckload of infamy into IOs... don't know. It'll take you a while before you get there, and I gotta believe there's another smash the system, throw the pieces up against the wall and see if any of it sticks rethink in the "soon."

I just can't believe that people are really going to be satisfied with a PvP system as wonky as this one. But then again, I never would have guessed at least half of the things that they actually did to PvP.

NinjaVampyre:

In all seriousness, duh what?

Correct me if I'm wrong but:
Head Splitter is the highest burst damage attack of Broadsword at lvl 50 unslotted: 214 damage, 13.5 End, 2.33 activation time, 14s recharge

The 2nd Highest attack is Disembowel at 155 Damage, 10 End, 10s recharge, 1.8 second activation.

The 3rd Highest attack in Broadsword is Whirling Sword at 141 Damage (AoE), 13 End, 2.67s activation, 14s recharged

Compared to the pool powers of:

Flurry at lvl 50 unslotted: 427 damage, 5.5 End, 3.07 activation time, 3s recharge.

Air Superiority: 257 damage, 6.5 End, 1.5s activation, 4s recharge.

Kick: 288 damage, 5 End, 1.83 s activation, 3s recharge

Boxing: 199 damage, 4.5 End, 1.07s activation, 2.5s recharge

Seems to me that Flurry, Air Superiority, Kick is a far superior attack chain.

Just to add insult to injury, numbers for your defender using the Melee Pools:

Flurry: 237
Air Superiority: 143
Kick: 160
Boxing: 111

It's sad, but assuming no criticals: Broadsword guy produces 510 damage in 7 seconds (actually 6.8 but counting server ticks, etc.) , unslotted discounting criticals. Defender melee-fender: 540 damage in 7 seconds (actually 6.4 but counting server ticks etc.)

The melee-fender has the lowest melee damage modifier (as I recall) of all heroic ATs, and his/her melee chain is not only better burst damage (excluding criticals), but significantly less endurance intensive, and is chainable forever out of the box.

Please tell me I'm wrong Mr./Ms. PvPEC Organizer. Please tell me that melee primary powers are better for melee primary AT's than pool powers for the least melee powered AT. I'll happily eat crow. But unless until Castle or Positron has a major design rethink, this is PvP. Where Pool Powers > Secondary > Primary. Where the most important thing about a melee primary is its "build up" (read Rage) and its range (read Impale, Hurl Rock). Where the default rule of power choice for those who can't or won't take the time is "If you would absolutely take this power PvE, chances are pretty good it's worthless PvP. And If you would almost never consider taking this power PvE, chances are pretty good that it's overpowered in PvP"

If you care to test it, I think I have some characters on Pinnacle I haven't used in ages, I'll free spec into a Pool Power Paragon of Pugilistic Potency and we'll see in the Arena. I'm serious about that. I really do hope that Mids and my limited experience post I-13 with air superiority is wrong.

Globals @Even Flow. Look forward to hearing from ya.

Peace

I'd say....

Spines/Dark Armor. It's just hard to think of a combination with more different set opportunities. Then again, once upon a time it was FoTM until it was replaced by spines/fire.

So truly odd ball, I'd have to go with a Dark/Ice blast defender.

Flurry, speed.

QED

@Even Flow
Freedom Server

1. 5 now, it used be 8ish, but the new changes make me sad and I find myself PvEing to get a glimmer of the things that I miss the most like unsuppressed movement, buffs meaning something, having a better attack chain than flurry, air superiority, kick.

2. Varies. I used to play a stable of defenders, but in today's PvP I'm left with my fortunata, blaster, and occasionally my stalker.

3. Not sure what this means. Generally the competition on Freedom was better than other servers (I'm fairly middling on Freedom, but did quite well elsewhere). I'd give it an 8. With Test being 10.

4. Before or after the changes? Before I enjoyed Team Arena events the most. Now it hardly matters if you're teamed or not. It's all about button mashing damage output, and with travel suppression it's hard to elevate tactics beyond calling a target and blasting it until dead, or it phases.

5. 10. There are jerks everywhere, but I've rarely been in any PvP area where someone who actually asked for help didn't receive it.

6. 0. I know you limited it at 1, but the changes are so counterintutitive it deserves a lower score. I would have never thought in a million years that flurry would be almost twice as damaging as Knockout Blow? Or that due to Diminishing Returns, the Speed Advantage of super speed over flight is less than 20 mph. Similarly I have no idea how much of my set bonuses or even primary and secondary powers will have full or even partial effect.

7. D. Though the incentive to PvP was competition itself, which is largely missing in the current version with travel suppression and the insanity of "Damage Scaling." A fine idea if you put it into place from the beginning, but grafting it on to the system at this point makes for a Frankenstein monster at best.

8. False. No idea who this person is, and have no idea that he/she or they have had any impact at all.

9. B.

10. I think the changes and the way the Developers and the Community Reps handle the changes have caused serious potentially irreparable damage to PvP in this game. At this point, I'm honestly wondering if the design goal isn't to reduce everyone to sprint, brawl, and throw rock as has been suggested, as most of the differences between power sets and AT's become eviscerated in the name of "balance."

Good luck with it, but honest the best thing the developers could do other than have a serious rethink, is to at least provide transparency into the system. A person should know what they're getting when they choose a power or slot a set. I do not think that is the case now (except for some really brainy types like Arcanaville).

Wow.

Unflipping believable. And I thought the whole "Run around with brawl and sprint" was hyperbole. So I suppose now /devices is one of if not the blaster secondary of choice, since blaps are ineffective.

I'm stunned. Guess it's fortunate that in PvPee 2.0 it only lasts 1.7 seconds.

Good game Devs. You've managed to take the Player out of "Player vrs. Player."

New PvP project:
Speed/Flight/Throw Fishes Epic Phailure!

Well, now it's at least balanced across the melee sets (apart from spines and super strength) as now everyone has precisely the same attack chain.

Perhaps they didn't want to go quite as far as limiting everyone to sprint and brawl. But honestly, I don't see that Air Superiority, Flurry, Kick is any better.

The darned thing about it is that it'll work. It'll show up in their data mining (apart from Super Strength and Spines) that all of the melee sets are having more similar levels of kill/death ratio. And thus, they will trumpet how much more balanced and fair the new PvP has become and have "the numbers" to "prove it."

What a sanguine mess.

What's next? All baster attack chains are essentially the same except secondary effects? So everyone goes with Sonic or Psi?

What a shambles.

I've tried and tried, but I can't seem to find any melee primary or secondary attacks that make a better burst attack chain than kick, air superiority, and flurry.

Can this be true? If so, it seems there's no point in running any melee builds other than spines for range and super strength for rage.

I'm with Fallenhero, except where he says /Dark isn't a great pvp secondary.

He might be right, but consider Diminishing Returns for a moment. Basically, the more specialized someone is the more harshly they are treated by Diminishing Returns. /Dark Armor, however, is the poster child for being generally good, and non-specialized.

For my two bits, I would seriously consider /Dark Armor. You'd get solid resistance to everything, including obscenely high Psi Resistance (not a small benefit with all those Fortunatas running about), stealth, perception, and with use of IOs, particularly Blessing of Zephyr, between set bonuses and the like, you could have pretty decent to nearly capped defense and 12 or 16 magnitude Knockback protection.

I was just fiddling about the other night on a Dark Armor/Super Strength "10 Billion influence toon" (not sure the price, probably considerably less, but...) net results before Diminishing Returns:

Defense to every sub category not less than 20%, with Ranged Defense at 43%, Melee 22%, AoE 27%

Resistance, least was Energy at 56% (but offset with 33% defense to energy), Psi was capped well above 90%, the rest 70% except Toxic and Negative which were 60% and 87% respectively.

Call me nutty, but that seems pretty good to me.

1 in 50 still probably wouldn't work. It would just take far too much time for a new pvp-er or someone on a less than top flight build to rack up that many kills. I'm a moderately bad pvp-er on a decently IO'ed and accolade build and have racked up about 30 kills over several nights pvping at least a couple hours a night. No drops.

I know they're concerned about pvp farming (though they apparently actively encourage pve farming) but unless you're pretty darned good at pvp to begin with, it is by far more time efficient (not to mention influence/infamy/other drops profitable) to farm Romans at the Wall, or run lvl 50 missions (particularly if you're one of those ebil fire/psi doms or fire/kin 'troller farmers)

If you really want to use recipes to encourage PvP you'd have to make the payoff matrix better than PvE, which would probably require a drop ratio of 6-10% per pvp kill.

Johnny:

If you want to control the pvp environment, ensure that there's no trash talking, moving, using phase/hibernate, stacked vengeance, or whatever, "Go to the Arena"

Seriously. You can effectively "kick someone" from an arena event. Why do you want in the zones?

Or put another way:

You all ready have the ability to do all the things you want to do. Just bring it to the arena. But nowhere other than the zones can people engage in open zone pvp. If you all ready have a place that has the features you want, why do you begrudge others the only place with the features they prefer?

Not to be mean, but that seems rather selfish and narrow minded. Say what you will about Mission Architect, whether it's a development punt or not, but now that you have the ability to create almost any mission you care to, it seems rather childish to complain about a pve mission. Similarly, if you can go to the arena and set it up almost any way you choose, it seems childish to me to complain about the zones.

Opinions vary, but your position mystifies me.

Suggestion:

Please provide a table or document that clearly and easily sets out how diminishing returns affects powers, set bonuses, and team buffs in the PvP environment.

What I would prefer to see is something like:
1. The first 60% of +recharge applies at 100%
2. The next 15% of +recharge applies at 85%

and so on, until you've capped out.

It would also be helpful if there were some statement relative to the developers' intention for caps for individual and team players.