PeteX

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The reduction in Tohit Debuff enhancements was not supposed to happen until I7 when the new formula for determining probability to hit is released.


In other words, the debuff effectiveness gets a buff in I7.

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Nope. The to-hit calculations going in for I7 are for mob to-hit only. The to-hit calcs in PvP for players will remain like they are today.

Thank you tons Castle. I think Storm Summoning (particularly for defenders) is probably the most sensitive to changes that impact the "feel" of the set. It really is appreciated that you kept at it.

*removes pins from the _Castle_ voodoo doll*

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Personally i would prefer they remove the repel from the pvp version rather than mess with the pulse time. After all, if players can eaily get thoguh the repel, whats the pint of it being there? Just remove it and leave the pve repel as it used to be.

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I agree with this. The repel really isn't much in PvP now, so might as well just get rid of it altogether and return the PvE hurricane to what it was (you know, useful for defenders).

Gutting Storm Summoning in PvE is unacceptable.

I don't think they have drawn any line as of yet. That is why some of us are posting here.

It often indicates that they are reevaluating the change if they do not post any blurb at all (particularly since States asked Castle to be pseudo-rep for a while), or that perhaps Castle is testing in PvE to see what he thinks.

My suggestion to you, Super_Villain, is to allow us to post our concerns how we see fit. When NCSoft starts paying you to moderate their forums, then you can come on here and dictate what the community can and cannot post.

However, for now, all you are doing is derailing this thread with an off-topic discussion about how we should be posting on this subject. You know, doing precisely what you are lecturing about?

If you wish to post your view on hurricane several more times, feel free. Posting off-topic criticisms of all the other posters in this thread is bordering on trolling.

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Now let's assume that it WAS possible to change how Hurricane worked in PvP without affecting PvE. If that was possible, and they STILL changed it so it affected PvE, then odds are, they wanted it that way. We can assume this based on the idea that in the past, it has been stated by Red Names that they if they can avoid a PvP nerf that didn't require PvE adjustment by only adjusting PvP, they would do so.

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My guess is that they took the quickest path to solving the problem rather than spending the time and resources searching for a 'better' solution.

Hopefully this is going to be one of those cases where they roll it back to the drawing board to actually find a good solution instead of simply dinking with some numbers for a quick and dirty fix, then leaving it to rot and fester.

Is there no way to add some type of repel suppression for players instead of gutting hurricane in PvE? Like give everyone an inherent repel resistance that increases the longer the player is being repelled in PvP? That way they can eventually get out of it if they are repelled for extended periods of time?

As much as I get irritated by hurricane in PvP, I would much rather leave it like it was than gut the power completely and destroy the whole feel of the Storm Summoning powerset.

My opinion is that you need to reverse this until you can find a good solution to the problem that doesn't screw over the power and powerset in PvE.

This was a very poor solution.

Leets were kinda funny.

I do agree that Longbow gets old. All PvP missions are longbow, and now the mayhem missions too?

CoT definitely gets the "most annoying enemy group" award with all the slows, debuffs, and such. At least the phasing was toned down.

Mayhem missions should all be against DE!

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Christ on popsicle stick people. Do I need to carve "PvP is not balanced for one on one encounters and never will be" into people's monitors before this starts to get through?

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Hurricane's problem in PvP is precisely that. On a team with multiple people running hurricane + Kinetics + stacked clear minds, it is extremely difficult to stop without having multiple spine scrappers take them out.

Nobody else can really put the damage output needed to stop them when teams are involved.

So no, the lone stormy sitting there with his finger up his nose isn't a problem for much of anyone.

If heroes are able to crossover and villains get blasters, then stormies will not be as big of a deal. But right now there is a select handful of villain builds that can work together to stop them. The mass amounts of other villain builds have no chance against teams stacked with trollers/fenders/blappers.

Okay, so I have a question. I was fighting a scrapper 1-on-1 with my Rad/Traps corruptor. I'm pretty sure he was regen, but my memory is foggy.

Anyway, I had mortar out (~25% resist debuff) and several of my attacks scourged on the scrapper.

However, instead of the two numbers being identical (doubling my damage as in PvE), the second number was 25% less than the first. Anyone care to explain that?

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To sum up, Caltrops can be a very powerful tool in PvE and PvP, but in PvP players have quite a few 'counters' to the effect. It is not meant to be an "I Win" button.

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The question is, are the few counters to Super Speed and Super Jump working efficiently enough?

The -fly powers are doing pretty well. Super Speeders and Super Jumpers are practically impossible to counter. Having ground targetted counters with a casting animation is not nearly as effective as hitting the ranged web grenade "I win vs flyers" temp power. And yeah, Super Speeders can run over caltrops all day long without being slowed. So what is their counter if it isn't the area slows? And is this counter available at merchants for any AT to buy?

Even when hit with Infrigidate, Snow Storm (2 slotted for slow), Benumb and an Ice Blast, players can still consistantly be out of snow storm range in about 3 seconds even with me flying (with 1 SO) trying to keep up.

I agree Caltrops should not be an "I Win" button, but neither should SS and/or SJ.

I only played the set up to 7, but I must say I'm surprised by some of these changes.

Ignoring the glaringly obvious issues (Entangle now worst level 1 power choice in the game -- or tied with Gale at least), I must say that I already felt like the set was a bit boring at low levels.

Spamming Ice Arrow was kinda fun, but that and glue was all that I felt contributed. Flash array (a.k.a. smoke grenade) is okay if we have nothing else to waste a power slot on, but when I used it I saw no noticeable effect on accuracy and the -perception must be fairly inconsequential.

It would be nice to have a level 1 power choice that either did something useful or didn't require 6-slots for any noticeable effect (Flash arrow).

Also looking at the recharge times, have you considered how the set will feel when played? Having all long recharge powers just doesn't feel very defender-like to me. I guess it will be heavily slanted towards offenders (as it has no really good powers besides -resist, which now requires two powers) since blasting will be about the only thing the defender can do most of the time due to excessive recharges and required power stacking.

I must say I'm pretty disappointed that our "new sets" have sooo many recycled powers (smoke gren and nerfed web grenade? gimme a break). And the issue is made worse by the fact that the recycled powers are even stripped of fun and/or usefullness (web grean with no -recharge, tar patch with no -resist, Smoke gren with a longer (it seems) recharge, etc).

And I must agree with the others that these changes do nothing to change the "controllerlike" feel of the set. Let's be honest, all you did was weaken it and make it less interactive by excessive recharge times.

Statesman:

I appreciate you posting this. With the Unofficial Storm Summoning thread being on the boards since release, I honestly was starting to feel that you just do not put much weight into defender concerns. The fact you feel defenders are fine is a little concerning, considering I cannot think of another AT that gets turned down by teams daily based on their chosen primary power set.

I would think that of any developer, you would be concerned about that. Surprisingly you have not been thus far.

I will say upfront that the only defender I have played to a significant level is my Storm/Psy defender (currently 40).

For the record, I have not neglected my secondary at all. In fact, my enhancements are probably split about equally between primary and secondary. Of course, psy is pretty crap-tastic, especially in the late game, so I still feel that I do less damage than any other AT after pets come into the picture. Hell, a good Fire troller puts my scrapper to shame, damage wise.

Now, I have a level 50 scrapper (DM/DA), and have teamed with many defenders since beta. I duoed with my friend's SKed Dark/Elec for a long while too (with both my Def and Scrapper). My thoughts are that in the later game, many defender abilities become unneeded for a team. Healing becomes less important. Buffing becomes less important. Debuffing becomes less important. Powers that worked really well in the early levels (i.e. Hurricane) become outclassed by villains as the defender levels up, and teams start facing tougher, higher level opponents. My friend mentioned numerous times when he duoed his Dark/Elec with my Scrapper that he felt useless, unneeded, and bored. It was basically true. It was slightly safer for my scrapper (Dark Armor isn't the greatest set), but by and large he didn't add anything truely significant to my fights (this was before the uber tar patch buff).

Team strength is primarily determined by your tank. The highest level/number of villains your team can take on and defeat is primarily determined by what the tank can take. Defender abilities really don't influence this in the later game. They do in the early game, but by late game the defender powers do not have enough of an impact to change that. I feel that is a problem.

The main thing defenders seem to add toward the higher end game is damage. Resistance debuffs (though many can reach their caps anyway), Damage Buffs, and even endurance boots for some select sets.

However, if you look at my storm defender, the only thing he can significantly add is Freezing Rain, which is a resistance debuff, and some damage via Lightning Storm. However, the fact that the storm version of damage resist debuff causes scatter and fear makes it quite unwelcome most of the time in teams. It's a fact. Geko seems content with that, but it is a huge factor in the later game.

Add in the fact that /Storm controllers do the exact same damage with Tornado and Lightning Storm, can lock down enemies to remove the scatter of FR, and I just cannot see how a Storm defender is in any way better than a Storm Controller.

Other than FR and LS, my Storm defender generally just adds some smallish buffs via Steamy Mist, and then simply blasts. I have some smallish endurance drain resistance in O2 boost, but the duration is so short that it is pointless to try and keep it on the team. While several of my powers are "okay" in select situations, by the end game the powers are just not significant. Hurricane is good if I need to corner a boss, but there is no way I can debuff a bunch of +3's with it, without getting myself killed in the process. Not on a large team anyway.

I think several defender sets (both primary and secondary) are much more beneficial to a team than others, which is hiding the issue many defender sets (both primary and secondary) are facing. When was the last time a scrapper was denied a team because they were SR or Dark Armor? It certainly does not happen every single play session as it does with my Storm defender.

Statesman, while I can understand your point-of-view that if several defenders are still desired, that it's just a smallish issue with a few sets. But if those sets are being denied teams, what exactly is more imporant in the game? That, or tweaking some numbers on other AT sets issue after issue?

Last week I was lucky enough to join an Eden team through these forums. We were actually defender heavy, with three kineticists on the team (two defenders, one troller). And then there was my Storm defender.

Before we began the team was bragging about how great the team was, and listing the abilities we all added to the team. The only person there who didn't get any mention was my Storm defender. I thought they just didn't realize what I could add, and chalked it up to the few stormies around.

Well let me be honest. I was dead weight on that team. I used O2 a few times (not that it was needed with 3 kineticists), and used snow storm. I had steamy mist running, but that didn't seem significant.

My storm defender was massively outclassed by the kineticists. Lightning Storm? Useless. Nothing lived long enough for that stationary storm to do anything, other than the big baddie himself. My slows were pointless, as everything died nearly instantly.

Honestly, the only part I felt I added to was slowing the walls, but even there the kineticists did it much better with Siphon Speed.

A day in the life of a stormy.

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Um I have an Idea....

Go make a Storm/Psychic defender and play on the main public servers.

That will give you and all the other developers a quick view of what you are hearing about defenders.

In fact try to get in a task force of somekind....that will really let you see what the defender community is refering too...very quickly.

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Excellent suggestion. I have thought the same numerous times in the past. I think the developers need a big reality check when it comes to defenders.

I will say that I don't want defenders to become necessary. No AT should be absolutely necessary (even though tanks pretty much are). However, it would be awfully nice if my defender added something significant to a high level team besides padding the number of bad guys the tanks/trollers/blasters get to arrest.

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I dunno if States had anything to do with Dark Miasma changes actually, though I suppose as head honcho, he must approve all changes. THe only dev post we ever got on the matter was, I think, from Geko.

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Yeah, I don't think States ever touches defenders for some reason. That is left to Geko, unfortunately, who responds with crap like "it's realistic" that your power is useless in team situations.

I mean, if a thread as large as the storm summoning thread were in the tanker forum, it would have been addressed by States several months ago.

Anyway, here is hoping they finally fix blasters, and without relying on gimmicks like Super Speed. I really, really wish they would take the "root" off of blaster powers. I think that would be an excellent start!

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I see someone never played Altered Beast.

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I played Altered Beast (and the sequel). My version wasn't narrated by Elmer Fudd, however.

I feel cheated!

WoW was a really fun game that I played for a while. However, one of the things I really disliked about it was the loot. It caused greed to show up all of the time.

Look at the number of posts generated about these enhancements. PvP, KSing buds, Unfair to scrappers, etc.

Loot causes players to fight against each other rather than with each other. I was so happy to return to CoH after WoW to avoid all of that crap associated with loot. Looks like this game goes drastically downhill after 45 or so. Too bad, so close.

As far as the arena is concerned, I was excited about it at first. The more I hear about it the less interested I become. When does Issue 5 come out again?

I must also add my praise for Striga. I was pleasantly surprised with the entire zone.

The Council base "Wolf's Throat" was very well done. I really wish this type of "outdoor indoor-feel" area could be included in future zones. It is refreshing to be able to "street sweep" in a cool looking base area, complete with wall turrets, AA-guns and the like.

And yes, that vamp mission mentioned was extremely cool. Very nice touch on that.

I would also like to comment that after all of the flat labs, caves, warehouses, etc. that more missions built vertically would be really nice. Some ourdoor areas of Striga are built this way (bridge and council base comes to mind), which isn't done much in the rest of the game except maybe TV. That non-Striga tram mission which takes place in a factory or whatever is a good example.

Traps are good. We need more!

My only complaint with Striga was that I found many of the hunt missions extremely difficult to solo with my Defender, and it would be nice to have a few smaller spawns around to help with those.

I want a permanent wolf pet!

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Since I got into beta ive been asking for a straight up punching powerset for scrappers. since BETA!.. can I get an answer?

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This is at least the third time States has posted that a punching scrapper set is coming. Once in beta, and now twice since.