Tic-Toc

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I've read the post on redesigning Hamidon several times, and, you still we not need a defender. As long a controller secondaries do not scale to defenders, the same way defender secondaries scale to blasters, no mission in this game will require a defender.

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You mean defenders aren't useful?

Oh good, I can stop teaming with them then.

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From the article:

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The Problems
<ul type="square">[*] Hamidon raids are a hotspot for griefing[*] Hamidon raids reward Leeching [/list]

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It's unclear to me how this new implementation solves these problems. The word "leech" (and variants) doesn't occur again in the article. Griefing is explained away by this vague bit:

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We’ve also changed the way Hamidon spawns Mitochondria to protect himself as he’s damaged. This change will prevent a raid from ever reaching the dreaded sea of orange names or “yellow dawn,” which also greatly reduces the impact of rogue players attempting to grief a Hamidon raid.


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So what's to stop a lone griefer from training giant monsters on the raiders? Or monkeying with Hami or mito aggro?

Instancing would have stopped both griefing and leeching much more decisively, but

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We recognize that Hamidon raids are a big social event as well as a PvE encounter. They're a unique opportunity for a lot of players to congregate in one place and fight one common enemy. Because of this, we chose to not go with an instanced trial.


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I'm not sure how 50 random people defeating Hami is any more social than 50 people who know one another doing it. If you instanced it, it would still be x people (where x is however many required to defeat Hami) being social. As it stands now, it will be x people and (50-x) griefers, leechers or gawkers.

I don't know, but it seems like instancing was eschewed for questionable benefit in a case where it would have solved two explicit problems.

Scrap

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How often is Lusca griefed? When people actually get together to take him down I mean, how often does someone show up to grief? Never. Why? Because it's not a rare occurance and it's not something a player can actually affect. That's something a lot of people are overlooking. People grief because it's effective. If there's no longer an effective way to grief at Hamidon raids, then they won't grief them.

The raid zones (Hive/Abyss) will instance at a much lower number than any other zone in the game. Estimations are at around 40 players. This means it's very likely that anytime enough people get together for a raid, a new instance is going to open. I think it's very likely that there will always be at least 2 instances, possibly 3, 4, maybe 5 instances when this first goes live and everyone's trying to raid at the same time.

That means that Hamidon is no longer just one thing in one place at one time as a big target for some griefer. That automatically makes it much harder for a single person to grief a raid.

Add to this that Hamidon is spawned by player action...presumably he can be spawned at any time. It's very possible that when Hamidon is defeated in Hive 1, he could be immediately respawned in Hive 1 and defeated again. There could be 4 zones open with back to back Hami raids in all of them. That also makes Hamidon raids a lot less unique.

Third, and most importantly, no more monsters in the hive when Hamidon spawns. The vast majority of griefing is done by someone pulling GMs into the raid party. No more GMs, no more hold phase, no more yellow mito spawn. So griefing will consist of what exactly? Jumping around talking about how everyone smells bad? /ignore player. They can't cause a failed raid because there won't be a failure point for raids. You can either defeat Hamidon or you can keep at it until you do. Hamidon never wins. That simple.

As for leeching, you get too many players into a raid zone that aren't going to be helping then the raids won't succeed. You can't leech from something that doesn't succeed. Leeching only works now because you can jump in on the tail end of a raid that's going to succeed whether you help or not and get your free reward. You can get it for any number of accounts you can log in on. With a zone cap, that's not going to happen. If you don't get there early, you're not going to be a part of that raid and you're not going to get in later.

So really that only leaves the possiblity of someone who's been involved in the raid the whole time crashing or being mapserved at the tail end. Yeah, I know the possibility of dropping from a zone exists, but let's be really honest about this. How likely is it that swarms of players are going to hang out on the door for 2 hours or however long it takes to raid, trying to click on Hive 1, Hive 2, or Hive 3 so they can slip in just in case someone DCs? Sure, it's possible...but is it really that likely? I just don't see it as happening. That's too much work to avoid doing any work. I'm willing to just wait and see if that's actually a common problem before demanding they implement a solution to prevent it (and postponing Issue 9 going live for even longer). I'll give you it's likely to happen initially just because the game's always a bit fidgety after a new issue, and everyone's going to be clamoring to get in to see the new Hamidon. But when things finally settle down into a predictable pattern of raids, I really don't think this is going to be an issue.

There's also lots of ways that we as players can prevent a lot of that ourselves...things like, oh...maybe not allowing known leechers to be members of our global channels where we plan and organize raids. Maybe not announcing in those global channels that the raids about to be over. If they don't know when and where a raid is going on, they'd have to be really motivated to monitor the player searches or just hang out at the hive entrance 24/7 waiting for their opportunity. I've yet to meet that level of dedication in someone trying to avoid doing something.

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Interesting article. I noticed the 50 player cap too. I never raided Hamidon before, how many people could you get in there before?

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I think the Hive instances at about 200, give or take 20-30.

This Hamidon looks to be interesting to fight. It'll be good to shake up the good old "clear mitos, hold Hamidon, kill Hamidon" strategy. It's served us well, now it's time to move on.

Wait a second, I just spotted a flaw in the set up.

Max members in an SG: 75
Max amount of characters in the Hive/Abyss: 50

So... Does an SG make a Hive 2 and do a 32/33 man raid in each?

Fun idea: The Hami-race. Spawn two or more Hives/Abysses and see who finishes first. You only need 50+N characters to create N instances. (Leave one character in Hive 1, 50 goes to Hive 2, spawns Hive 3 and so on.)

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A while back Statesman explained the reason that SGs cap at 75 members is because they felt bases couldn't handle more than 75 players at one time. Everyone countered that no SG actually had 75 individual players on at the same time, and most SGs were actually comprised of a much smaller number of players with multiple alts as members.

Now you're saying that raids shouldn't be 50 people cap because SGs can have 75 people who want to raid? Have more people started playing since then? Does this SG membership cap now actually make sense?

You want a larger zone cap on the hive, or do you want more SG members? Cause we can't really use the same arguement to justify both.

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IR is not a travel power. It's a movement buff, and it's an AoE buff, in the same category as AM, RA, and other such buffs. If they root you, there's a pretty good chance IR will, too.

If not, then hey, it's one of those aforementioned exceptions! Awesome.

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Y'know that's utterly ridiculous. So what is the distinction between a "movement buff" and a travel power? What is Super Jump [hint: a +jump movement buff]? What is Super Speed [hint: a +run movement buff]? How bout flight [hint: a +fly movement buff]?

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One's a click, the other is a toggle. One affects allies, the other affects yourself only.

Those are pretty substantial differences.

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No, it could be an exception. There are already exceptions, there's no rule that says "No more exceptions!"

I can't think of a good reason to keep Inertial Reduction rooted. It's a travel power and it's damn annoying to have to land every time it's about to expire so you don't fall out of the sky.

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It's not a travel power, it's a jump height/speed buff. That's an admittingly small, but crucial distinction. I see no reason why IR should be made exempt to rooting and not other click buffs other than you find it a bit inconvenient to use perma.

I think the goal here is to not have many exceptions and instead make sure that there is a set of rules that govern what roots and doesn't root, and make sure everything adopts them.

Who knows though, maybe your plight will be heard.

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Unless of course it got an exception based upon the fact that it's not a combat power but a travel power, and therefore should be unrooted, much the same way the self+ally heals got an exception.

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Then all PBAO self/ally click buffs would be unrooted...

IR isn't a self buff, it's an self + ally buff...so it would fall under the catogory of powers that root.

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The simple math is
2X the damage and to-hit buff and
2X the crash

I.E. 2X the crash not just the downtime but the endurance drain too. I think this is what you are saying.

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Right, that's assuming everything's working as it should. Having stacked rage negate that endurance cost would be broken.

Stacking rage gives you 2X the damage and to-hit buff. That is balanced by having 2X the crash. Simple math there; twice the benifit, twice the penalty.

2X the damage and to-hit buff and 2X 1/2 of the crash (ie, avoiding the edurance cost) is nothing other than a bug.

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Using End recovery powers is fine; having the power itself negate the crash isn't.

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With all due respect _Castle_, Rage has worked like this for nearly 2 years now, why the heck does it have to be 'fixed' after all this time?

Stacking Rage to avoid the end crash is a penality in of itself, since you experience the def debuff/no external action period more often.

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Can they use that logic for all long standing bugs, known and unknown?

Think of the time it would save them!

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but doesnt that make it an exploit too according to some?
Nice, so skill is an exploit, and usuing powers as designed is an exploit......... Guess leveling is an exploit!!!!!



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Maybe you should actually read Castle's response before going off the deep end.

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Oh no, this is in response to people like Tic Toc, and jennikins, you know people that think skill is an exploit, I grabbed Arcanavilles post to highlight the absurdity of "EVERYTHINS AN EXPLOIT" that people like to go to when the chips are down and they didnt think of it first

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If you would go back and re-read my follow up post, you'd see that it was just a simple misunderstanding on my part. I thought someone was suggesting that using endurance recovery powers would allow you to avoid the endurance crash, not simply recover from it simultaneously and avoiding any of the negative aspects of the crash.

Big difference there. One's an exploit, the other is just good strategy. My point being that an exploit is an exploit, regardless of how much skill, timing, or luck it takes to pull it off. This particular case is clearly not an exploit, so it's a moot arguement.

I see how Rage buffing powers outside of SS might be a problem, but I imagine that's something that's not possible to fix. Only solution there might be to rebalance the powers in SS and reduce the boost from Rage to compensate.

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BS. It's exploiting a bug. No matter now much skill or cleverness it requires to pull off, it's still an exploit.

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I am curious as to how anything mentioned in the post Flea was replying to is an exploit.

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if it was reference to this:

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There is a "known trick" to defeating any and all End crashes IF you have an end drain power: As your bar is on its way down, pop the end drain power. You have about a 1/2 second window where if you pop the power you still have enough Endurance to use it. It's hard to do and hard to time.

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That's clearly an exploit if it prevents the endurance crash. Unless I'm just misreading that though, maybe the crash still happens and you lose the endurance, but you regain the endurance simultaneously. If that's what's being described then I appologize for misunderstanding the post.

BS. It's exploiting a bug. No matter now much skill or cleverness it requires to pull off, it's still an exploit.

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IMO rage is slightly overy powered as is and I play many a */SS or SS/*.

My fix would be simple. SS on its own (ie no pools etc.) with rage is about = to other sets give or take. It is when you can apply rage to powerpools too that you can really min max things to out of hand levels (I.E. tanks with BI chains &gt; scrappers including level modifiers).

Just remove the "effect only self" from the crash and have the crash do -80% damage - 20% accuracy for 10 seconds and have a - 25 endurance crash. Now To balance it rage only effects SS powers. So brawl, boxing, AS, dmg aura's, epic/patrons, etc. are not effected by rage. I think rage balances SS but adding that balance to pools and other outside of SS attacks can be overpowering.

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That change is effectively a buff to Rage. We'd be going from being able to do zero damage to enemies to being able to do at least 15-20%. It would also allow taunt and auras to function again as well as powers like invincibility contributing it's defense buff or the ice armor's aura that does slow (don't remember if it's CE or Icicles, sorry), etc.

Obviously, Rage doesn't need a buff of any kind. It's already arguabely better than the other secondary build up powers despite the relatively minor crash. All of the QoL changes I wish they'd make to the power would, of course, require the penalties to be balanced in other ways that are at least as severe as the current ones (if not possibly more).

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No Leave it like it is. WHy does every one have to complain. its an 80% damage buff and a 20% acc buff. WHat more could you ask for. Sure you cant fight for 10 seconds. But if youre not completely stupid, you could easily have decided t owait before you jumped into that next mob with Rage blinking. And if you slotted correctly, any group of mobs would be dead by the time it crashes. It's way better than Build Up which only lasts 10 seconds. Be thankful for what you have and quit complainging.

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I'm not really complaining, just saying I wish things would have been done differently.

And I'm sorry, but rage lasts for 3 minutes. I don't fire off rage, fight a group of enemies, wait for rage to crash, fire it off again, and then move on to the next batch. I'm constantly moving from group to group and then dealing with the rage crash when it comes. I don't even notice the defense debuff, and the endurance crash will only occasionally get me and drop some toggles if I'm not watching for it. But that 10 seconds of not being able to attack anything really interferes with me playing.

I would personally much rather deal with an even a longer penalty, as long as it didn't completely stop me from playing.

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The crash still hits you, AND you lose 10 seconds from the next rage cycle. Stacked rage ftl.

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The crash still hits as far as the ASO and the Def penalty. What you avoid is the -25% endurance crash.

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No, you still lose the endurance as well.

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My thoughts about the old version of rage are based on not running perma-unstoppable. Believe it or not, you could not run that gimmicky build and still be unkillable in those days.

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Errr I beg to differ. I was herding through Unstoppable crashes back in the perma-Unstoppable days. In fact, I died once due to an Unstoppable crash (back then) ... ever (and that was due to a slow that kept me from overlapping Unstoppable).

Using UY to mitigate Rage's crash back then was annoying because you would get disoriented by a mob hitting you with Brawl (happened quite a bit to me at any rate) and then watch all your toggles (and then life) drop like a stone. Doable ... but I prefer the crash today generally speaking. Much easier to play around.

I would much rather have your #1 suggestion (although I would argue that would make Rage overpowered when compared to Build-Up from other sets).

I don't like the multiple debuff scenario ... it would make Rage basically useless in PvP (and most likely a build killer) and I could think of many PvE instances where you it would hurt worse then the old mag 5 disorient (anything that could stack slows for instance).

Camo: No, stacking Rages does not mitigate the Rage crash.

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Multiple debuffs is better than not being able to attack at all.

My thoughts about the old version of rage are based on not running perma-unstoppable. Believe it or not, you could not run that gimmicky build and still be unkillable in those days.

How would I change Rage's crash for now. Not sure, I could think of a few things that might work.
1) A 800% damage debuff. Enough to basically zero out your damage output for 10-15 seconds. You'd at least still benifit from taunt, and punch/aura-voke and be able to continue doing your job as a tank, but your damage would be nill.
2) A massive recovery debuff. Might be mitigated with CaBs, but I'm thinking there would be some way to reduce how much endurance a CaB could give you while under the influence. I know that there's a MM Poison power that debuffs regen as well as how much health you get from respites or self-heals.
3) Speed, Accuracy, Recharge debuffs...all more easily mitigated by buffs, accolades, other powers, etc.

Basically, the two things that drive me crazy about the Rage crash right now is not being able to taunt, and having some mob (or player in PvP) with a tiny sliver of health left and not being able to plink them down.

Conceptually, a damage/accuracy/recovery/recharge debuff would make a lot of sense. That's pretty crippling in itself, sure you could mitigate parts of them, but very unlikely that you could mitigate all of them at one time...certainly not by yourself.

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Trust me, guys, the Rage penalties now are far better than they used to be. The original Rage penalty was that you were very suseptible to mez attacks for the 10 seconds, but that was nearly unplayable. You would get mezzed, then die. (This was before Break Frees were set up the way they are now.) The next one they tried was making your end fall to 0. Unfortunately, this pretty much had the same dead effect that being mezzed did when you were in a mob heavy situation.

As annoying as that Rage drop can be sometimes, believe me, it could have been alot worse.

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Sorry, but I disagree. The penalties for Rage used to be so easy to mitigate they were moot. I don't recall ever dying because of being mez'd after a rage crash. It was very rare that the rage crash was even enough to counter Unyielding's mez protection, allowing me to be mez'd at all.

I personally hate the 10 seconds of 'Affect Self Only'...it's extremely disruptive to me. I certainly can't argue that it's not warranted, just as a QoL issue I wish they would have implemented a different penalty. It's arguabely not really enough as is anyway.

Very good question, my guess would be no. Since the debuff on Rage isn't an attack from another mob, I would think that it wouldn't go through the normal checks. Really a question for Castle.

I found this program to be very easy to use, and it doesn't overlay text or other garbage on your gif if you don't register it.

Animated GIF Banner Maker 1.41

Better than Gif Construction set or Advanced GIF animator at least, but there are a TON of freeware or shareware programs out there for GIF editors...I just stopped at the first one that did what I needed and didn't require me to pay for it right off the bat.

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Correction:
All aspects of Invincibility EXCEPT the taunt effect are working. The Taunt effect, however, appears to only be effecting minions. This is true for all auto-taunt effects, including Gauntlet.

Interestingly, while researching this problem, I discovered that Gauntlet from pool powers like Boxing or Air Superiority have, apparently, never worked. That'll be fixed as well.

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No wonder I've always felt the Gauntlet inherent power was worthless. My tanker dips heavily into pool powers for extra attacks (Boxing, Kick, Air Superiority, and Flurry).

Not that I find Gauntlet especially useful with my Super Strength attacks either, mind you. Gauntlet should be pulled and replaced with an ability similar to brutes' Fury power... except, instead of increasing damage as your meter builds, tankers should increase resistances.

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No no no no and NO. We wanted more aggro control, we asked for more aggro control, we got more aggro control. Leave our aggro control alone.

Wait, first fix our aggro control and then leave it alone.

I do not need or want more resistance, I can get buffs or inspirations to do that, I can't improve my ability to taunt otherwise.

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_Castle_ just acknowledged that Invincibility is bugged. The taunt is apparently not working properly either.

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Correction:
All aspects of Invincibility EXCEPT the taunt effect are working. The Taunt effect, however, appears to only be effecting minions. This is true for all auto-taunt effects, including Gauntlet.

Interestingly, while researching this problem, I discovered that Gauntlet from pool powers like Boxing or Air Superiority have, apparently, never worked. That'll be fixed as well.

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i hate to grind salt, but this is the main reason that i wish there were a small notation like a small light red (for anger hehe) on those effected.

i am a full time taunter, but i can see that if i were a puncher the problem finding who to punch next being that not everyone is effected by one punch...

oh wait. Does gauntlet follow the rules of taunt, "5 tops"?

anywoo, good job on finding the bug there. thx for the hard work.

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I believe gauntlet will only affect up to 5 targets. You can certainly have more than 5 taunted at one time, I'd assume up to the max aggro cap...but only 5 at a time with one attack

minor to-hit debuff, minor damage increase.