Soyuz

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the cycle goes on further, but perhaps if people didnt abuse powers in the first place the dev's wouldnt have to go through and change things so much. Part of it is the fact that this game is a PvE game thatis trying to PvP - thus changes need to be made, the other part is quite simply the players fault (not everyone, but you know who you are).

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This is partly what ticks off the long term Stormers, the ones who've played the set since release, who have suffered through the difficulties in finding teams because "Storm causes scatter" or "Storm isn't a good healer" or "Storm doesn't have a rez" or "Storm doesn't have any good buffs". Then PvP comes along, suddenly you're perceived as a FOTM PvP min-maxer, then they nerf your set.

There have been plenty of other nerfs in this game which were blamed on PvP, but which were actually pretty ambiguous. This one, IMO anyway, isn't. If CoH was still PvE-only, I don't think Hurricane would have been changed, nor would everyone be whining about how overpowered it is. They didn't start doing that until the arena came along.

Cheers,

~R~

This seems like a good time to chime in with a couple of PM's I received from _Castle_.

On why the power was more effective against players than it was against mobs:

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Well, the AI cheated. That's how it was able to escape. Basically, when it gets into a spot where it can't move, it cheats until it is in an open area again (roughly -- there are a bunch of variables in it, so it doesn't always happen.)

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So basically, the AI won't let itself be trapped, probably to stop mobs getting hung up on terrain. AI can be pretty thick sometimes.

On whether there's any fix in the works to make the power behave in a more similar manner in PvE and PvP:

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No promises, but I've spent today looking for alternative fixes. Nothing that worked, mind you...but I am looking.

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So yes, they know they've hit the PvE game hard and are looking for ways to sort that out. No, they haven't found one yet - but at least they're looking at it.

Cheers,

~R~

I've PM'ed Castle on this issue, but it's worth pointing out (again) that Hurricane's repel function always has been much more effective in PvP than it was in PvE. It's not at all unusual for a mob to escape from a Hurricane corner-pin, but a player has almost no chance of getting out unless he was a vertical movement power or Teleport.

That's why I'm so steamed about this issue. The power always behaved differently depending on whether the target was a player or a mob. Now, instead of fixing that disparity, they've simply reduced the effectiveness of the power. That hits the non-PvP Storm user (especially the Storm Defender, who lacks other control options) very hard indeed.

Cheers,

~R~

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I liked trying to push mobs in corners, dammit. It wasn't as if they couldn't run by me often enough anyways to make it challenging.

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See, this is what puzzles me.

In PvE, mobs cornered with Hurricane will eel out from under it with surprising ease. You actually have to work to keep anything cornered with the power. Disoriented mobs are by far the worst right now, and are practically guaranteed to escape from a hurricane pin. It's been that way since the game was released.

When PvP came along, Hurricane really surprised me (not that I PvP much). I could get people pinned with it and they'd stay that way. I actually did a bit of testing with a friend of mine who also has a stormy on the go, because I couldn't believe that the repel's effects could be so different dependent on the target. However, in practice it turned out that he could easily pin me and there wasn't a whole lot I could do to escape. It didn't seem that the power was working the same way in PvP as I was used to it working in PvE.

So what's different? If the power's the working the same way in both contexts, it has to be the mobs.

Over on test right now, it's a lot harder to keep mobs pinned with Hurricane than it is on live, and it's not all that easy on live. Change the mobs so that they respond to repel more like players and this change could be fine. Otherwise it's just making a difficult set even more tricky to play in PvE.

Cheers,

~R~

Could be another of those oh-so-fun decimal place errors. Perhaps someone entered his bow's 140% accuracy mod as "140" instead of "1.4".

Cheers,

~R~

So however you look at it, unless Tormentoso got the streak from hell (feasible, but highly unlikely) that many Luck inspirations means that Chimaera should have been missing him on almost every hit. Definitely something up there.

Cheers,

~R~

The defence cap is 350%, IIRC.

Not all sets with a redraw or "pop" animation get an accuracy bonus, but those which do get a bonus of 5%. To bust through capped defence that would have to be on the order of a 375% bonus (plus the EB's 75% base, minus 350% defence = 100% to-hit).

Incidentally, MA (no redraw) has a 10% bonus. The idea that accuracy bonuses are strictly to do with redraw times is a bit of a myth IMO.

I've gone up against Infernal, Chimaera and Dominatrix with an SR scrapper. None of them hit anything close to 100% of the time and SR can't post anything close to 350% defence, even in Elude. This is therefore a bug - just a very, very nasty one.

Cheers,

~R~

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Why is this the conceptual solution? Wouldn't it make more sense to make MELEE attacks, regardless of source, immune from range debuffing?

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...or at least put a minimum range cap in place, even if that shortens melee range. IIRC, that's the fix that was put in place for the mob version of Hurricane in PvE.

After doing some testing in the arena with a friend, we came to the conclusion that a blaster's melee attacks (secondary or power pool) were being debuffed to zero. They would only go off if the two characters were actually in physical contact with each other, and the repel on Hurricane is strong enough that you can't do that without a power that resists repel such as Unstoppable. It's literally impossible for a non-melee AT to get a melee attack off against a character running Hurricane.

I'm the Stormy, by the way (see sig). He's the one with a Blaster for his main. Just so you know.

Cheers,

~R~

I do occasionally use shift+num to select team-mates, but not very often. I can see how a dedicated Empath or FFer might use them far more frequently than any of my characters do, though.

I never use the ctrl+num bind, though. So far I've never played a character that's given me cause to.

Cheers,

~R~

/em sparkup
/em bogart

Cheers,

~R~