Sgt_Liberty

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How it is balanced

Tanks defense

Brutes scrappers offense.

Tanker vs Brute

Brute has fury... this makes a big difference in dmg out put.

Thus a brute can kill an opponet faster then a tank, so in a very real way they have a defense through offense ... a dead mob cannot do dmg.

In a mob of 10 my brute will kill 3 mobs when tank kills 2.

I will kill 8 mobs due to fury by the time a tank can kill 5.

This means a tank is taking a reduced dmg from 3 mobs where I am taking 0 dmg thus 100% resist becuase mobs are dead.

Apply this to stalkers too.

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Isn't *that* particular balancing equation (defense vs damage) already done by the fact that Brutes and Scrappers get 75% of Tankers Def & Res?

Are you saying that the devs are *intentionally* trying to further reduce S/B defenses by giving them a proportionally higher def debuff in UY? A "you guys are so good we're going to kick you again!" prize?

LOL. I guess it's *possible*, though the reasoning strikes me as a bit...convoluted. Wouldn't a simpler solution be to just up Tanker damage or reduce the % of res and def that scraps and brutes get to say, 70%?

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Becuase -6.5 is 75% as effective as - 5 on a negative scale.

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No, that's not how that works. The 75% ALREADY balances the powersets effectiveness.

The debuff is a penalty based upon offsetting the +Res that unyeilding provides. Since Unyeilding is 75% as effective as the Tanker version, it offers 75% of the resistance, which means it SHOULD only have 75% of the debuff, which is NOT 6.5, it's 3.75.

It only has 75% of the resistance to offset, so it only needs 75% of the debuff, not 25% more, which is what you have.

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I look forward to a detailed explanation of how this will work.

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QFT

Paging Positron, the Powers Systems Wizard and resident Tron Look-Alike-Costume Contest winner.

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If I understand the fix right you will still be facing AV's then.

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And my point was this isn't easier for all ATs this is just easier for certain ATs or certain builds.

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I am 100% in favor of encouraging and rewarding teaming. I hate mandatory teaming.

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Well now having an AV spawn requires a certain size team. Even if the team could beat an AV with say 3 people it requires you get a fourth or fifth. Now we have Mandatory Team Sizes in order to get an AV. Either that or Mandatory Difficulty Increasing to get an AV.

and PFF is very nice but far from no risk. Its a toggle first of all. So if anything hits you with a toggle drop/hold/sleep/mez/etc your toast.

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The number of people, and/or difficulty requirement are not onerous. Missions are still completeable with large teams at high difficulties, but you don't even need that to spawn the AV. The difference between a +0 and +1 AV are practically nil, so you can easily grab 3 people and do it.

And the phrase was "No APPRECIABLE Risk". PFF is much like using some of the Tanker 32 / Scrapper 38 powers. Yes, something might kill you with that running, but it'd take an act of god or doing something incredibly brave/stupid to do so. There aren't any "Toggle Drops" in PvE, and Dispersion Bubble provides protection from Hold and Disorient. There's no "Mez" status effect, and only Sleep attacks can both remove toggles AND not be protected against by Dispersion.

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WOW!! OMG!!! YOUARETEHBEST!!!

PvP is still awful compared to the other PvP choices out there(5 million customers=doing something right).

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Umm? I've played the "5 MILLION CUSTOMER" game, and neither the PvE or PvP can compare. Can you transform into a flying squid while your opponent jumps 100m in the air and a third person irradiates you while running 80mph?

No?

Not as good, sorry.


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Can a mage punch my warrior's armor clean off?

No?

Then CoH's PVP can't be as good, can it?

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But then, a Mage wouldn't even get any benefit from that if he COULD punch off your armor. Aside from a friendly Mortal Strike Hello...

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Try teaming with a stalker or two. You'd be suprised at how effective we are in later levels for removing "problem" mobs before they can cause the relentless gods of SMASH a problem.

I pretty much get stuck on nullifier/Specops detail in any given longbow group due to my heavy mez protection (Kuji-In-Rin), and the ability to utterly annihilate at least one of them as soon as the battle begins (AS).

See? We DO have a team function!

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Being the Brute's bat boy? (the guy who hands the baseball bat to the guy at bat, not some strange Batman reference ).

I believe the concensus is that SS is pretty much just as good as EM. Having a killer complete attack chain by 10, nearly perma Rage, lots of Knockdown for mitigation, a Ranged -Fly, and largish PAoE are all great things.

Stone Melee on the other hand... well it certainly has the visual oomph, but with the recharges and end costs, it doesnt seem very Fury friendly to me.

Perhaps it's time to share the Origin of Sgt Liberty with more than just the Justice Server...

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Smashing damage is very resisted in the end game.

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Not really.

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What about Hasten? Does that affect Henchman Summoning recharge? (don't plan on it for my MM, but curious).

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Recharge buffs applied to you, affect your powers. Since the Henchman Summon power is YOUR power, it will recharge faster with things such as Hasten, Speed Boost, Accellerate Metabolism, etc.

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I grabbed a copy of the "Defender Issues" post a couple weeks ago and am working through it in my spare time. Considering the length of it, I will probably have gotten through it sometime in Janurary.

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Did they give up on assigning a Developer rep to every AT and just them all to you .

You are one exceptionally motivated individual.

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Actually the deal is this:

We removed Recharge Enhancements from all Henchmen powers because it WOULD affect the recharge rate of the summoning power itself, and NOT the recharge rate of the Henchmen's powers.

This is inconsistent to ALL other Enhancements that are slottable for Henchmen... the Enhancements ALWAYS affect the powers of the Henchmen, and not the summoning power itself.

To avoid confusion, we just removed the option.

And I believe it was a good call, seeing as how many people would be confused as to how it would work if we left it alone.

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I'm pretty sure I had suggested it before, but if you had put the text in the Minion description that all enhancements affect the MINION's Powers and not the Power itself you could have avoided confusion AND given my Commando Full Auto more frequently .

Honestly, I'm surprised that there still isn't short help to that extent already considering how oblivious people seem to be about Endurance Reduction enhancements. The REAL cost is with Upgrading. The minions themselves cost very little end for as fast as you can summon and order them, as you usually recover half it's cost by the time they're ready for action.

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Sorry about this screw up. I wanted you guys to test it before it went to Live to see if it made MM's too powerful.

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What's truly screwed up is that within two weeks of game launch you're already eyeballing who gets nerfed first.

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Whoa settle down there cowboy. It's a valid concern since it ended up being put on test without a patch note or letting Positron know it was up there to tell us. A couple of us hopped onto test and gave it a whirl, and stuff on Training Room usually cooks for 2-3 weeks before going Live.

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Against anything aside from Smashing (Zombies), Lethal (Robots), or Smashing/Lethal (Mercenaries), Ninjas have the upper hand. They have some mitigation vs other set's None. They also can get some sweet stacking going on with Force Fields.

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First of all I thought robots were energy (says so in character builder). Also explain the mitigation? Is this in their attacks? All sets have bonuses against certain damages. Bots have the best overall against lethal/smash and hefty psionics among others. Perhaps I am not following well enough.

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He was referring to their innate resistances.

Also Bot attacks only do energy/smashing. And they absolutely 0 smashing resists (cold/lethal/psi).

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Yeah, I was referring to the damage that the Henchmen can mitigate. Ninjas have Positional Defense (like Super Reflexes) of 7% for the Tier 1, and 14% for the Tier 2 and 3. So even though against the foes that the Mercs/Zombies/Robots have resistance to (primarily Smashing, Lethal, or both) Ninjas have far superior mitigation against pretty much every other damage type, since they recieve their +Defense no matter what.


The damage that henchmen are capable of DOING...

Necromancy - Toxic, Negative Energy, Smashing, Lethal. AFAIK, all Necromancy pets are capable of doing Negative Energy since they all can get Siphon Life or Drain Life with Dark Empowerment.

Mercenaries - Smashing, Lethal, Fire. (Smashing only comes from Medic's Frag Grenade and Commando's M30 Grenade. Fire only comes from Commando's Flamethrower)

Robots - Energy, Smashing, Fire (Assault Bot can have Ignite)

Ninjas - Smashing, Lethal, Fire (Oni)

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Defense based henchmen : a lucky hit means you have to reuse the power in question because your hench is now splat.

Resist based henchmen : A Generic hit means you have to use a health restoration ability on your hench.

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Thought this might need some explaining.

To me, I'd rather have to 'work' at maintaining my henches (or, having another hench work at maintaining them) than have to resummon them on a lucky hit.

As a sidenote, I thought Robot henches had resistance as a base (And Defense from the Protector bot buffs)?

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Against anything aside from Smashing (Zombies), Lethal (Robots), or Smashing/Lethal (Mercenaries), Ninjas have the upper hand. They have some mitigation vs other set's None. They also can get some sweet stacking going on with Force Fields.

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I've played 94 levels of Super Reflexes since Release. Resistance is NOT better than Defense. The powersets that had just defense were inferior to the sets that had Resistance not because of the intrinsic value of either attribute, but because the sets themselves contained too much mitigation.


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Pre-ED, resistance was much better than defense. Now that ED has hit, someone will have to run the numbers again. But past experience is def starts to break down much faster when pushed, while resistance keeps you alive. Back in the day when we had 90% resist as our cap this was all too apparent. You could tank mobs 10 levels above with some support. The same was not true of ice tankers....

In any event, for PvP defense blows. Accuracy enhancements scale much faster than do def buff. Keep in mind that accuracy wasn't even affected by ED (who slotted more than 2 accs anyway??).

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That's because Damage doesn't scale equally to accuracy. Within the +0 to +4 range (where you should be fighting) it's a non issue. And, yet again, the sets that had +Res just had more mitigation in general. Ice couldn't cap it's +Def, or stack it's toggles when there was still a 90% +Res cap that was easily reachable by tanks.

Accuracy enhancements are actually pretty crappy in PvP, only ToHitBuffs really matter. In addition, base to hit in PvP was lowered to 50% instead of the previous 75%. You should have a look at all the SRs who can run around unhittable in Warburg, where not everyone and their grandma has Focused Accuracy.

And Positrion: Based upon play in Beta and up to 22 on Live, I don't think there will be a major increase in damage potential until post 32, when the final upgrade hands out more powers, or until 27-28 for Mercs/Robots when they get their DPS Henchman slotted. Most of us aren't high enough to test that yet.

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And Resistance is NOT better than Defense, they're fairly comparable.

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Except that when fighting high level mobs low defense values are completely negated while resistance still functions...

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I've played 94 levels of Super Reflexes since Release. Resistance is NOT better than Defense. The powersets that had just defense were inferior to the sets that had Resistance not because of the intrinsic value of either attribute, but because the sets themselves contained too much mitigation.

The Medic, while good, is not so great as to single handedly mitigate all the incoming melee damage from a Freak Tank. It's easy enough to keep them at range or running in a "panic" on Caltrops, or even to get them to agro Acid Mortar. Switching targets as Freaks are wont to do further reduces the number of hits the minions will take.

Really, Freakshow, while dangerous if they close, are not nearly so bad at range. The Grenade is unpleasant, but not unworkable.

Ninjas don't have the option to not engage in melee, though they'll do better damage in general than the equivelant Mercenary (except probably Commando, who is a beastly damage machine of doom).

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Mercs have like 40% Smashing/Lethal resistance

Edit: In other words, yes they are fairly superior to Ninjas because Resists > Defense.

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Mercs have 20% Resist to Smashing and Lethal ONLY, that scales up to 28% Resistance to S/L somewhere in the 20s. Commando has token resistance (7%) to Fire, Cold, and Toxic.

And Resistance is NOT better than Defense, they're fairly comparable.

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MMs were able to solo at that difficulty during beta with the bug in place. It's just a matter of how fast.

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Yes but now I can clear a relentless mission in the time it took me to clear a heroic mission before the bug was fixed. I just took down a +3 freak tanker (And I am Mercs) VERY fast compared to before. It used to take 5 minutes, now it took like a minute.

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Now that's what I call an improvement!

Really, this isn't better than a Scrapper, so I doubt it's nerf bait.

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There was a bug found near the end of beta where it was realized that the Upgrade powers did not benefit from Enhancements in the Henchmen powers.

This was fixed and was in the version that was on test last week. Unfortunately the patch note did not go with it, AND no one told me the fix was up there.

Anyway, long story short is that the fix is now LIVE, and your Henchmen should be fully Enhanced when you use your Upgrade powers.

Sorry about this screw up. I wanted you guys to test it before it went to Live to see if it made MM's too powerful.

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Not sure if this is too powerful but I can solo on relentless (Hardest difficulty) at a decent rate. I am a merc/traps Mastermind.

Edit: I am currently 27 with all of my SO's. Once I hit 32 it may become a blood bath with all my AE's.

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MMs were able to solo at that difficulty during beta with the bug in place. It's just a matter of how fast.

Booya! I thought I recognized that 9 mb download...

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So, right now on live our robots are actually more powerful non-upgraded than upgraded?

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no

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I dont have my notes from beta but techinally that is true. In the 30s, fully slotted with SOs the drones most powerful attack was its stock [censored] slap. Followed by its stock laser. The heavey laser did LESS damage than the stock. And the upgraded pulse did even less.

SO yes, you were actully doing less damage by having it cycle throughn less powerful attacks. The most effective use was to put them in melee range and just have them beat targets.

I stopped equiping and upgrading drones all together.

I still think we need MORE damage overall.

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It really depends on the recharge times of their default attacks. If they can chain the defaults in less than the time it takes to activate the upgraded attacks, then they'll do less damage. If the recharge of the default attack is longer than the activation of the upgraded attack, then they'll do more if they are upgraded.

Plainly the green glowing you have has made you favored amongst your fellow man .

Thanks Posi!

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Personally, I'm a fan of shadows.

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You're far too good at that! Noone likes a tease!!

Holy craps, you just about made my week States!

Sarge gives you a hearty thanks!

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First, a big thank you to everyone who played on the Training Room server and helped I5 to be one of our best launches ever! We’re extremely happy about how I5 went live.

Second, we’re still scouring the boards for bugs and other issues, but we’ve finished making large changes to the power sets. We’ll still be looking at issues as the arise. For instance, there are issues with Defense builds; we’re going to look at that problem more carefully (the Damage Resistance Inspirations are a step, but there's a little more to come).

Thanks for all your great feedback!

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I want to say, this post tells me you've been listening despite the (previous) silence on the issue. I know I, and I'm sure others as well, appreciate it. And, you've outdone yourselves again with Croatoa, I've never encountered a contact mission as inately difficult as the "Stop 30 Firbolg" mission.

Is this a move back towards the City/Hazard combo zone that Peregrine Island used to be?

That was pretty awesome. I'm seriously pumped to start getting these.