Oedipus_Tex

I agree with you on this.

IMO the issue the hold nerf created is that some sets leaned on them much harder than others. Ice, Gravity, and Mind specifically. The key point here is that for the most part some sets can achieve hard-ish lockdown most of the time, while others struggle.

This is part of why earlier in the thread where I was talking about how I would "nerf" Plant Control, part of that deal would be reducing the recharge of all AoE holds from 240 to 180, both to cushion the blow to Plant and to bring other sets closer to it in terms of lockdown potential.

This is a fair point, although to some extent I disagree. The elephant in the room for me is that knockback as it was implemented was not sufficient in many cases. The issue there was the assumption that the interuption of enemy powers was enough to justify the scatter, and the act of knocking back itself shouldn't impose further penalties on the enemy (in terms of time loss, -defense, damage, -resistance, or other penalties). I think it's still concievable to think of how knockback could work and be useful. After all, knockback is useful in some other games, for various reasons. One of the simplest ways would be if there was a much stronger connection between knockback distance and the time it took to stand up again.

Regardless, I think we have to be really careful of lumping all knockback powers into a single category. In my mind Bonfire has/had very little in common with Power Push or Gale.

I feel I should prepare you for the extremist POV that is likely to follow your post.

There are a few people impressed that AVs and a few mobs here and there have knockback protection. It either hasn't occured to these folks that anything that stops Bonfire also stops other knock patches, or they don't care. In the end, Bonfire doesn't quite provide total, unbreakable control all of the time. The important point is that it doesn't need to. Just the fact that 1 Bonfire is better than 4 Ice Slicks stacked on each other should raise eyebrows.

The power doesn't need to solo groups on its own or completely lock out every possible enemy to be overpowered. The developers could have given Ice Slick or Earthquake 100% knockdown, but didn't, for a reason. They could have given Wormhole knockdown, but again declined. They could have put highly reliable, extremely powerful control powers into Blaster and Mastermind APPs, but again didn't. They could have let Repulsion Field do eternal knockdown, but patched it out. They could have given Bonfire the Recharge and Duration of a balanced knockdown patch, but didn't, because it has never functioned as a standard knockdown patch.

In the end, there are some people unwilling to admit anything is even capable of being overpowered, because they have no standards by which to make the claim. They are essentially arguing from an emotional place rather than a logical one.

Ice Slick is a different ball game.

Ice Slick has a .08 chance 5 times per second to knockdown an enemy. This translates to a roughly 57% chance to knock the enemy down every 2 second interval compared to Bonfire's 100%. And Bonfire lasts 45 seconds to Ice Slicks 30, and Recharges in 60 to Ice Slick's 90.

How about 2 Ice Slicks on top of each other? That would be 1-(.92^20), or 81% chance.

3 Ice Slicks on top of each other? 1-(.92^30), or 91%.

4 Ice Slicks on top of each other? 1-(.92^40), or 96%. Well, at least with 4 Ice Slicks we're getting closer. If only it could be perma'd with a single Recharge IO and do damage it might 1/4th as good as Bonfire.


[NOTE: These numbers are somewhat fudged out of necessity and actually even more embaressing for Ice Slick than it may seem. The reason is that an enemy with a Ranged attack only needs one decision tick to get full benefit from the power. If they are able to begin the animation for the attack before falling, then the power still goes off even if they fall halfway through animating it. Animation time lost when the enemy is animating an attack is basically less "meaningful." They were going to be locked in an animation anyway; it doesn't matter whether it was falling or not. This is all somewhat complicated by the fact that during a fall the enemy also has temporary protection from falling again. Bonfire avoids this issue entirely because the pulse rate of the power closely matches the vulnerability point in the knockdown animation.]

I don't doubt that you and several other people understand that. I'm not sure if the general population does, though.

Part of the reason it sits firmly in my mind is less from looking at personal mitigation from armors and more from looking at Support sets. Specifically, thinking about it less from the "How do I survive" aspect and more from the "How likely is someone else to drop after activating this?" perspective. The huge +Regen component in Recovery Aura specifically definitely helps people but also has trust issues built into it that make its contribution hard for me to correlate directly to personal armor. In addition, I can clearly see if someone isn't doing much healing. With Defense/Resistance often people just throw a shield on you and there is much more limited element of timing or psychology that plays into it.

But the other place I really notice it is with low-ish HP ATs like Dominators. In TPN there is an enemy that can almost kill most of my Doms in one hit. Regen and healing help me there in only a very moderate way, because they flat like me instantly if they hit. While that result is predictable with some types of examinations, I'm not sure the playerbase as a whole considers those things when reading about how great Drain Psyche is (even though it is a great power for other reasons.)

It must be terrifying to live in a world where other players are constantly conspiring against you.

I'm particularly alarmed that you seem to believe that if the change is made, it's not because the change is good or the power was overpowered, but because of a bunch of whiners. Whatever else one may think of the power balance process, I think the developers probably take some level of offense at the idea that they nerf powers just to shutup a subset of posters.

"Hyperbole" only applies if the statements being made aren't actually true.

The power not functioning against enemies with knock protection isn't a situation that applies uniquely to Bonfire. It's something that applies to all powers that cause knockdown. And that is the fatal flaw in the argument that Bonfire is balanced: it is significantly, overwhelmingly, out-of-this-world better than other knockdown patch and patch-like options (to say nothing of other control powers), to the point of obvious imbalance.

Whether you personally value control powers or not, the fact remains that control powers have balance considerations, and one of them is not "Is this a top farmer?" Control is valuable to the developers. It is theoretically possible for a set to have NO damage and still have control that is too good.

Basically arguing that a few enemies with knockback protection balance this power is akin to arguing that enemies with autohit powers justify increasing the Defense in Superior Invisibility to +100%. Not defense powers across the board, mind you, just Superior Invisibility, because it happens to be the power under the microscope at the current moment. The fact that that value is completely out of alignment with the rest of the game isn't important. In this POV, there are auto-hit powers; therefor its balanced.

Agreed, again. Especially on the point on Tornado above. I think new-Tornado is really powerful, but doesn't rise to the level of broken that Bonfire does.

Total sidenote, I wonder if a Immobilize set that adds -kb or removes it is on the table for later.

A good way to nerf/fix several of the sets is to buff the AT as a whole by partially undoing the massive AOE hold nerf from several years ago. I would look to slash AoE holds from 240s recharge to 180 across the board. This move by itself with help tremendously with sets like Ice, Gravity, and Mind, who are currently somewhat behind mainly because they have control holes the original change introduced.

In addition, all sets would have to follow these new rules:
- Everyone with an AoE immobilize must use the same base damage + bonus (not x2 damage like Plant currently does at complete random)
- Seeds of Confusion uses the same base accuracy and duration as Stalagmites/Flashfire (down from its 36 second duration to 14). It can keep its 30 second faster Recharge because its a cone. In return, the person who originally designed this power must sign a waiver stating that he or she will never drink whiskey shots while designing powers again.
- Confusion now sets Containment.
- Damage from Containment can no longer exceed the base damage of the power x2. This rule applies no matter how much +damage or -resist is applied to the situation. You still get bonus damage from the core of the power, but Containment doesn't increase as dramatically with it.


I agree with you on that.

I would too.

It's an interesting situation though. With some people saying Bonfire is okay with the proc, I wonder what what uptweak they think is needed to Ice Slick. I'm imagining something like -KB to IO recipe converter. You cast it ad knockdown converts to a free IO in your inventory. It would be balanced by the fact that your recipe list eventually gets full and you can't get any more. (The conversion would happen more slowly than a Fire Brute can farm, so it would be balanced.)

I wonder why Jolting Chain isn't. That's something that always bothered me about that power.

The Confusion in Arctic Air seems like a major candidate for being promoted into ignoring it too, actually, given how that power works.

If they remove the proc, you can still do this, but in a somewhat more balanced way.

See, (and this part is definitely not directed at you--I'm just bouncing off your post and addressing no one in particular) Bonfire's autohit nature and ability to disable +20 enemies exists with or without the proc, but requires you to find circumstances to take advantage of it. The main change the proc gives is the ability to use that capability without any kind of set up or strategy. [Note that Ice Slick and Earthquake also do not degrade against +level enemies. This is a standard feature of all knock patches.]

So, the weird conclusion from this (again not quoting anyone in particular) is that Bonfire is "overpowered" with the proc but "useless" without it. That's a level of anti-knockback zealotry I can't put my support behind. The fact that knockback converted to knockdown makes Bonfire "better" is an obvious truth, but only because from the get-go the power was designed to make you seek circumstances to best use it for total lockdown.

If Fire Control as a set was really struggling and in dire need of another all the time control power, I would feel differently. IMO the power is truly optional. In another thread Arcanaville summed this up beautifully by saying that a power with some adherents and some detractors is a mark of success and not failure if the set itself functions well with or without the power, like Fire Control does.

What I have to add is really strange to me though, is that a lot of people bring up manipulated circumstances, like Fire farms as examples, then simulataneously neglect to account that manipilated circumstances benefit Bonfire as well. To snake back to my comment above about how you can indeed level a character with Bonfire, consider this: conference map, drag enemies through a door and toss Bonfire. They will not be getting up for the remainder of the fight. It worked beautifully for my Rad/Fire/Fire Blaster and still will when this inevitably gets fixed.

It's also because of the above that I don't want the pulse rate for Bonfire reduced or it turned into a generic ground patch. It does what it does beautifully. If you disagree, it may just not be a power for you. The power has excellent recharge and duration and basically requires one slot. The fact that some people don't like it does not make it useless, and the fact that its in a set like Fire Control means there are powers much more deserving of worry about buffing.


[EDIT: I left the word "not" off the first sentence which changed the meaning and made it sound like I was directing that you, when my point was that I wasn't. Sorry about that if it seemed confusing.]

You're right. It's actually been explicitly patched out of a few powers. You would be the one to probably know, but are you aware of any powers that are explicitly immune to the purple patch as a matter of design? I can only think of three: Repel, Repulsion Field, and Whirlwind.*

It's explained in this comment Issue 3 patch notes:

Basically, those three powers are made exceptions to the Purple Patch to prevent what Bonfire does now. All of three of them involve considerably more risk (you have to stand on top of the enemy) and have smaller radiuses than Bonfire.


[*After posting this I thought of a few more. Ice Slick, for example. No matter how much higher you are above the enemy, it never converts to knockback and throws enemies out of the slick. Tested as a level 51 versus level 1 enemies. I think most other knockdown patches (EQ, Liquefy, Sleet, etc) work this way as well.]

It doesn't matter whether it can stand up to a farm Brute. This kind of argument is inherently flawed.

ToHit is balanced around rules for balancing ToHit.
-Recharge is balanced around rules for balancing -Recharge.
+Defense is balanced around rules for balancing +Defense.
-Resistance is balanced around rules for balancing -Resistance.
Knockdown is balanced around rules for balancing Knockdown.

We are having a conversation about balancing Knockdown.

It's now true, nor has it ever been, that if a powerset can show another set outfarms it, can kill AVs faster with it, or generate rewards faster in any capacity, that it can get whatever values it wants in its powers. We cannot stick -1000% ToHit in a power and say, "Well a Brute outfarms it, and you still get hit 5% of the time, so it's fine." That's a very destructive kind of argument that knows no end. It's basically arguing that the value of the thing being argued about isn't even high enough to have rules to balance.

In this case, in the big picture, we're talking about the value of Control itself. If Control itself isn't worth balancing, the Controller AT boards seem like the last place to make that case.