[ QUOTE ]
When I mentioned a stormer swooping in it means we were already in the middle of a fight and he decided to drop in. It doesn't mean that he affected every single one of us, but it does mean that those of us affected had no clue why our attacks were not working all of a sudden. The affect of hurricane negated all of the attacks of those in its range and while everyone was trying to figure out where that stormer went/was we got killed by a large group that followed him in.
That stormer most likely would just jump in and jump out, leaving the lingering effect of his -range/acc debuff on us long enough to get us killed, but staying alive because he ended up out of range (or most likely went into invis).
I said we had lost before, which means we didn't complain as soon as we started losing (to paraphrase your kind way of putting it). It was when we kept losing due to the same swoop/drive by tactic (abuse of hurricane comes in here) that we began to complain.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'd have to agree on this. It was silly how easy it was to do this. The speed you can move through and disrupt the battle was too fast. It's a suprise attack, and you're gone before they know it, and they're probably still travel-suppressed from having been fighting. Snipes get LOS broken since the hurricane doesn't need to stick around, they can just go around a corner, and ranged attacks were already reduced in rage and accuracy from the suprise debuff. Click to-hit buff powers take too long to activate since I'd already be gone by the time the animation ended.
The other parts of hurricane that got nerfed didn't bother me nearly as much.
I just found this post pretty funny pertaining to Hurricane. Kind of says exactly what point I was trying to make, but from a stalkers view, If you don't want to be splated by stalkers...go with the ice tanker. Ice tanks and stormies (and FF inside PFF) are about the only thing my EM/Nin stalker avoids. With the changes to hurricane....stormies are getting removed from the list.
That was taken from the splat stalkers thread, posted by Badgehound.
Question now is, how long before the dev's nerf ice tank because of the 100's of noob stalkers that complain they can't kill them either?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
When I mentioned a stormer swooping in it means we were already in the middle of a fight and he decided to drop in. It doesn't mean that he affected every single one of us, but it does mean that those of us affected had no clue why our attacks were not working all of a sudden. The affect of hurricane negated all of the attacks of those in its range and while everyone was trying to figure out where that stormer went/was we got killed by a large group that followed him in.
That stormer most likely would just jump in and jump out, leaving the lingering effect of his -range/acc debuff on us long enough to get us killed, but staying alive because he ended up out of range (or most likely went into invis).
I said we had lost before, which means we didn't complain as soon as we started losing (to paraphrase your kind way of putting it). It was when we kept losing due to the same swoop/drive by tactic (abuse of hurricane comes in here) that we began to complain.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'd have to agree on this. It was silly how easy it was to do this. The speed you can move through and disrupt the battle was too fast. It's a suprise attack, and you're gone before they know it, and they're probably still travel-suppressed from having been fighting. Snipes get LOS broken since the hurricane doesn't need to stick around, they can just go around a corner, and ranged attacks were already reduced in rage and accuracy from the suprise debuff. Click to-hit buff powers take too long to activate since I'd already be gone by the time the animation ended.
The other parts of hurricane that got nerfed didn't bother me nearly as much.
[/ QUOTE ]
there are a couple things to remember here...
1) this was a fight with a group and the stormer swooped in to help. while the team was distracted. essentially any toon could have done this...a kin with fulcrum shift, a dark with darkest night, a rad, a sonic a forcefield toon. all of them would have had an enormous impact on your fight if they were playing their toon well and got what amounted to "a free shot."
2) the fact that this group was unaware that the debuffs were applied until it was too late had as much to do with their surviveability as the debuffs themselves. if you're aware this debuff is applied, you can reposition for closer ranged attacks or tactically retreate 'til it wears off. i can see this altercation serving as a learning experience for the group in question, although most likely a painful one.
3) hurricane most likely didn't "negate all attacks in its range." it probably debuffed the range on the powers of non-melee toons. so tanks, scrappers, brutes and scrappers were still able to attack. non-melee toons could have attacked too, had they known to close range with their targets.
4) the fact that the group "kept losing to the same swoop/drive by tactic" is worrisome. i'm assuming this group tried to address this issue, but nothing is mentioned of it in the above post. i'd be curious to know solutions were explored besides complaining.
5) i'm not sure what the "this happens too fast" stuff is about. everyone has access to the same movement powers in this game. if the storm was giving your team such problems, why not just follow them and kill them? how could it be that the storm repeatedly "surprise attacked" the other team? wouldn't they start to get the idea after awhile that the storm was gonna do his/her thing? could nothing be done about it 'cuz it happened too fast? i'm sorry, but this doesn't sound like a very strategic criticism of a power. furthermore i'd be curious to hear what tactics were explored as a counter to this perceived threat. did the team consider spreading out a bit? did non-melee toons take to the air? did you guys send a spines scrapper/stalker after the storm to slow him/her down? from the sound of it the team just sat there and was repeatedly surprised by the storm and their exploitative tactics. i really have a hard time buying into this.
[ QUOTE ]
Question now is, how long before the dev's nerf ice tank because of the 100's of noob stalkers that complain they can't kill them either?
[/ QUOTE ]
I figure they'll get around to Ice Tanks and Slows after they nerf all repel powers, df/sc, EM (Castle said not in i7 so probably in i8), and then slows. They'll probably do to slows what they did to end drain.
Currently roleplaying, badgehunting, and laughing at the PvPers of CoX. lol, PvP.
Truedusk - Human Rogue
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Question now is, how long before the dev's nerf ice tank because of the 100's of noob stalkers that complain they can't kill them either?
[/ QUOTE ]
I figure they'll get around to Ice Tanks and Slows after they nerf all repel powers, df/sc, EM (Castle said not in i7 so probably in i8), and then slows. They'll probably do to slows what they did to end drain.
[/ QUOTE ]
Just the thought of nerfing Ice Tankers still boggles the mind. 
Apologies if this has been mentioned before...
But has anyone pointed out how Hurricane is *still* an aggro magnet for all the NPCs in the PvP zones? All you have to do is nick a mob and the entire spawn will descend on you with great vengeance and furious anger. Before, the risk/reward ratio wasn't so bad to have that power running. Now, is it really worth it? Are those NPCs gonna be repeled like they are in PvE? Are they going to get into melee like all the melee ATs are able to now?
So what then, drop the Hurricane so you can get a mercy AS before you get street debt?
DestineeFable's Guide to an MSTF run (fixed!)
My latest AE madness
[ QUOTE ]
Apologies if this has been mentioned before...
But has anyone pointed out how Hurricane is *still* an aggro magnet for all the NPCs in the PvP zones? All you have to do is nick a mob and the entire spawn will descend on you with great vengeance and furious anger. Before, the risk/reward ratio wasn't so bad to have that power running. Now, is it really worth it? Are those NPCs gonna be repeled like they are in PvE? Are they going to get into melee like all the melee ATs are able to now?
So what then, drop the Hurricane so you can get a mercy AS before you get street debt?
[/ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
5) i'm not sure what the "this happens too fast" stuff is about. everyone has access to the same movement powers in this game. if the storm was giving your team such problems, why not just follow them and kill them? how could it be that the storm repeatedly "surprise attacked" the other team? wouldn't they start to get the idea after awhile that the storm was gonna do his/her thing? could nothing be done about it 'cuz it happened too fast? i'm sorry, but this doesn't sound like a very strategic criticism of a power. furthermore i'd be curious to hear what tactics were explored as a counter to this perceived threat. did the team consider spreading out a bit? did non-melee toons take to the air? did you guys send a spines scrapper/stalker after the storm to slow him/her down? from the sound of it the team just sat there and was repeatedly surprised by the storm and their exploitative tactics. i really have a hard time buying into this.
[/ QUOTE ]
------------------------
Just to be very clear on this, this is all in regards to hurricaners that ONLY use hurricane+Bf+a travel power, and nothing else. They intentionally avoid using anything else because they can apply hurricane to an entire battle in seconds without getting travel suppressed, then run away to reapply the debuff after the 10 seconds are up. Meanwhile villains can't chase since they've been battling and are travel suppressed.
Hurricaners who stay and fight are not a problem at all. If anything, /storm defenders need a buff.
My main is ill/storm, and I've seen this happen from both the dealing end and the receiving end.
------------------------
I did give some thought to this:
This is a long post because I had spent a long time mulling this over trying to justify doing this myself. If I could find reasonable ways of being stopped, I wouldn't have to feel bad about doing it.
Naturally all of the suggestions from the quote above were thought of, but they don't work. You can't send fliers after them because they have Snow Storm to -fly you. It's auto-hit. Spines is effective only if they don't bring break-frees, but these running huricaners are already running because they don't want to give villains a chance to fight back, of course they'd bring break-frees. Spreading out means the running hurricaner won, because it's disrupted the villain team's effectiveness with minimal risk of retribution which is exactly their goal.
Part of the problem is poor villain composition of course, but that's the playerbase's problem and shouldn't be considered. Let's make the very strong assumption that we always have the necessary villain team composition and power loadout. For this discussion, let's assume there's dominators and corrupters available as needed.
Let's assume the hurricaner has already done the swooping and caused grievous annoyance to the enemy team. Hopefully only one swoop+run is needed to alert the villains that this is not a stay+fight hurricaner, and must receive special treatment to be brought down. Let's also assume that the villains are highly organized, communicative, and can stick to a role, this isn't too unreasonable to expect on some servers.
Now, the villain team is annoyed and has rallied their teammates to wait outside the fight to kill the hurricaner on the return trip. These villains who are waiting can't contribute to the battle at hand because using their attacks would travel suppress them so they can't go after the hurricaner when it shows up. This means those waiting are removed from the fight because of the hurricaner.
Killing runners is tricky. Mezzing won't kill them, breakfees are cheap and plentiful. You need to use slows instead since BFs can't protect against them. There aren't many /effective/ slow powers that can be used on someone running away, there's a very good one in Snow Storm, but that's a /storm power, in fact, the chaser can count on being hit by this until the stormer escapes out of toggle range. But this only happens when one player is chasing the hurricaner because the long animation time of snow storm will get them killed if multiple enemies are chasing. Multiple enemies chasing the hurricaner, means that the hurricaner has taken multiple enemies out of the fight into a long chase. Removing multiple enemies from the fight like this is the goal of the swooping hurricaner anyway, they're not unhappy with this outcome. Also, if enemies hit by this 10-second debuff leave the fight to shake it off, the hurricaner also got what it wanted.
Note also that attacks supress travel powers, so whatever attacks are landed, have to be enough to either slow the hurricaner down enough to be killed, or hurt hard enough to kill them outright. One player can't do this since it's too slow, you fire one attack, get suppressed, and the hurricaner, still unsuppressed gets farther away. Also note, if one player is moving at a hypothetical 10 units per second, and the another is chasing at 10 units per second, then the two players will never close unless the second player finds a shortcut to get to where the first player is going, but the first player knows where its going, while the second does not.
Let's assume the hurricaner isn't using Fly, because Fly travels slowly and there's an abundance of -fly powers. These are easy to kill if you have flying villains with ranged -fly attacks.
What kills a superjumper? A -jump power. However, this -jump has to be able to hit a runner, because you can't put one down and ask the hurricaner to run into it, the problem at hand is that the hurricaner has already been constantly moving, dropped -jumps won't stop it. There are -jump attacks that can be used on them, but there aren't many.
What if they're using SS? The -fly and -jump won't stop them, and again, a ranged slow attack has to be enough for villains to kill the SSer while the villains are travel suppressed. If the hurricaner has SS, they're probably going to get away.
What if they're using teleport? No -teleport attacks. Not a big factor, the problem at hand is hurricaners who only hurricane then run. They probably won't want to do this with teleport, too difficult, they'd probably only use teleport to escape, if they do escape there's not much you can do. Let's ignore phase shift because of the long recharge.
Some more problems: If the battle is near the hero base, you've got very little time to catch them and act.
Even bigger problem, if you do kill the running hurricaner, they just need to respawn and continue to swoop, so your anti-running-hurricaner squad has to remain constantly in place until this running hurricaner chooses to stop. If the battle is near the hero base, killing them doesn't delay them anymore than if they had simply escaped to return later. If it's far from the villain base, it buys a brief respite.
-----What DOES work?:
All the above does not mean there's no way to kill this swooping hurricaner! 2 things can kill most of these swooping hurricaners.
-Cast a -jump power on the ground, then have someone TPFoe the hurricaner onto it. The TPFoer gets debuffed, but then a 2nd villain can now kill the hurricaner! If it's a flier, hit it with -fly as well.
-Have the waiting counter-attack villains buy up temp power web grenades and use them on this runner. However, these have crappy accuracy so +acc powers are recommended. (Keep in mind that if you use buildup and/or aim, the enemy would need to be TPFoed back since they'll escape during the animation).
SSing and teleporting huricane runners are rare since they're probably only taken as back-up travel powers. They'll get away, but there aren't too many of these in the first place.
--------------------------------------
Yes, I have thought up counters, but look at how awkward they are to employ and how many assumptions were needed to carry them out.
The poster that had brought this up (DuskA) was from the X-patriots on Virtue. I'm on the same server, I'm pretty sure I've seen the same running hurricaners that he's got in mind. Heck, I might've been one of them before I stopped doing it after I realized how difficult it was to counter.
easiest way to stop anything especially stormers is having a ice/traps and ice/cold single them out. getting hit with infrigidate + web grenade = you better get prepared to die cause you arent moving anywhere and your defense is debuffed to hell. hope hes got teleport or hes dead for sure
the main problem really is not enough dominators and corrupters fighting for the villains. as long as villains keep bringing nothing but stalkers and brutes they will continue to get owned by hero teams who seem to always have support toons in numbers. same thing would happen to a hero team made up of all scrappers fighting a team of controllers
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
/em wonders when the devs are gonna realize that Force Bubble has the same "problem" that convinced em to zap Hurricane.
[/ QUOTE ]
The worst parts about getting debuffed by hurricane was the nasty to-hit debuff and its -range. The -tohit was easily countered at the higher levels(FA, AIM, BU, etc). The -range was the only form of mitigation against ranged toons for the Storm summoning set. It made only since that storm should be able to keep melee out when they are so vulnerable to everything else.
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, the only thing I really wanted to change in this mess was the ability for Repel Fields to effectively trap a player against geometry in Base Raids. I'm aware other powers have the same problem. I'll address those individually, though -- the same type of change made to Hurricane can be made, but for the most part, those powers have fewer aspects to them that Hurricane does. That makes getting them right considerably harder.
[/ QUOTE ]
So first... why the change to the ACC debuff? Was that a second issue being dealt with that has (in effect) created a double kick in the jimmy to Stormies?
Second... yeah it sucks being pinned against a wall/geometry, but that's what the power was designed to do. It pushes and pins. What else is it supposed to do? There's lots of powers I don't like what they do to me in PvP and PvE, but I thought we were supposed to deal with the challenge. We can't help it if the bases are nothing but corners and geometry. We work with what you give us.
I don't like getting 1,2 shot by blasters or stalkers
I don't like getting stuck in a Tar Patch
I don't like getting detoggled by EM
I don't like the insane damage generated by brutes in melee
I don't like being debuffed by Enervating Field or Radiation Infection.
I don't like being grounded by Air Superiority.
I don't like losing in PvP.
So what? They are facets of the game, it's up to us to deal with them. It's up to the devs to *fix* the problem of an exploit, not punish people for honest play.
Really, it's not the repel effect from Hurricane or TK that was causing the problem. It is people TP'ing them into the corner while a Repel effect was active and then pinned them into that corner. What if repel field generated an interrupt effect for TP Foe? Problem fixed, and you can still repel people in a melee honestly.
Base pinning? Tough noogies. If the defending team built a base that allows for pinning and sticking people, that's TACTICS. The other team attacked them voluntarily. They have to deal with their decision. The attacking team is pinning people? *shrug* Defenders need to build a better base.
DestineeFable's Guide to an MSTF run (fixed!)
My latest AE madness
shifty, i respectfully disagree with your analysis.
you realize that, if you are correct, it should be nearlyimpossible for any mob to catch any other mob that happens to be running away.
my experience is that this is not true.
and, even if it were, it would point to a problem in the way travel powers and travel power suppression work in the game. i don't think this has anything to do with hurricane.
in the case of the fleeing storm guy/gal with bfs who's not attacking, i would send 2 toons after 'em. you'd lose them from the fight for awhile. but they'd kill the storm. send a stalker and a dominator or corrupter...use a combination of immobs and slows...the storm, all by himself against a smart team, isn't gonna last long.
I played against a couple stormers today. Hurricane seemed to work fine without being the all devouring power that it was. I even got pinned against a ventilation duct on a roof by a defender.
Although the number of times I Seismic Smashed the Kinetic guy running Repel makes me think that power maybe needs to be buffed. 
[ QUOTE ]
I don't like getting 1,2 shot by blasters or stalkers
I don't like getting stuck in a Tar Patch
I don't like getting detoggled by EM
I don't like the insane damage generated by brutes in melee
I don't like being debuffed by Enervating Field or Radiation Infection.
I don't like being grounded by Air Superiority.
I don't like losing in PvP.
[/ QUOTE ]
I don't like being ASed
I don't like being feared
I don't like being taunted by a granite tank
I don't like when an ice tank uses hibernate
I don't like being tpfoe'd up into the air or off a building
so on and so on...There are plenty of powers that are a pain, hurricane was one of them. There are plenty of ways around them. And some people just cant deal with certain powers...a defender is going to have a very tough time taking down a regen scrapper, a stalker is going to have a very tough time ASing an ice tank, a dominator is going to have a tough time dealing with someone that has a lot of bf's, a brute is going to have a tough time building fury in a 1v1 fight. Its the nature of the beast.
[ QUOTE ]
Its the nature of the beast.
[/ QUOTE ]
Thanks for reiterating my point. There's lots of stuff that counters other stuff, there's lots of stuff that some AT's can't handle. Nerfing the effect and ignoring cause is not the answer IMO.
DestineeFable's Guide to an MSTF run (fixed!)
My latest AE madness
[ QUOTE ]
yeah it sucks being pinned against a wall/geometry, but that's what the power was designed to do.
[/ QUOTE ]
No, it's quite clear that is NOT what the power is designed to do, AS EVIDENCED BY THE HURRICANE NERF.
Comparisons suck. We're discussing Hurricane because it sticks out above the crowd, not because it compares well to the crowd. It is above and beyond irritating. SO what the hell is the point of comparisons?
[ QUOTE ]
No, it's quite clear that is NOT what the power is designed to do, AS EVIDENCED BY THE HURRICANE NERF.
[/ QUOTE ]
No, it shows people were not prepared for the exploit others found in the power. People wined. Instead of fixing the exploit, the devs gimped the power for everyone. And now, everything related to repel is going to suffer.
Which is a shame.
DestineeFable's Guide to an MSTF run (fixed!)
My latest AE madness
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
yeah it sucks being pinned against a wall/geometry, but that's what the power was designed to do.
[/ QUOTE ]
No, it's quite clear that is NOT what the power is designed to do, AS EVIDENCED BY THE HURRICANE NERF.
Comparisons suck. We're discussing Hurricane because it sticks out above the crowd, not because it compares well to the crowd. It is above and beyond irritating. SO what the hell is the point of comparisons?
[/ QUOTE ]
the fact that the devs nerfed hurricane does not necessarily imply it was functioning other than as intended.
consider, for example the "hurricane bug." in pve hurricane will occasionally pull mobs instead of push them away. this has been a problem with the power since i1 and has not been fixed. anyone looking at hurricane while it's pulling mobs away instead of repelling them can tell you the power isn't working as intended...it's intuitive. yet the devs have not fixed it.
are we to conclude then, that a power that sometimes repels mobs and sometimes pulls mobs in is working as intended? no.
and yet the devs saw fit to nerf the repel on hurricane.
right after the introduction of city of stalkers.
when hurricane was one of the few powers that gave stalkers problems.
seriously...
why do you think hurricane got nerfed?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
No, it's quite clear that is NOT what the power is designed to do, AS EVIDENCED BY THE HURRICANE NERF.
[/ QUOTE ]
No, it shows people were not prepared for the exploit others found in the power. People wined. Instead of fixing the exploit, the devs gimped the power for everyone. And now, everything related to repel is going to suffer.
Which is a shame.
[/ QUOTE ]
qft
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I haven't had time to get on test, but I was wondering what people are reporting about the changes to hurricane. Anyone have any stories?
[/ QUOTE ]
This is as good a place to put this, as any:
I checked in a few Hurricane changes today that QA is going to look at. In Theory, these changes should mean that for PvE, Hurricane acts Exactly as it did before the previous change, while in PvP, it should act exactly as it does currently. Hopefully this change will get a green light from QA -- I've spent quite a bit of time on it over the last few days.
[/ QUOTE ]
I hope very much to see this get "green lighted" and happen. I personally give a rat's [censored] about the PvP aspect of the game (yes, even as somsone with both CoV as well as CoH), and things like this that change something fundamental about a core power in a set I dearly love that remove FUN from it due to PvP concerns for PvE play just quite frankly piss me off.
[/ QUOTE ]
I don't give a rat's [censored] about pve. Why should they change hurricane only for pvp? If it's fair in pve, then it's fair in pvp.
[/ QUOTE ]
Thems fighting words
Ok so by your logic that would mean pve needs to be equivilnt ot pvp.
Do you get hurdle at level 1?
Is flight a detoggle proof click power imune to disorients?
can you form a team consisting of 16-20 players?
does your range greatly exceed the range of any sniper sloted with HOs?
doyou have infintent endurage far exceding 100?
do you have several thousand hp (on a blaster)
do your defeenders an blasters have elemental armor to complment their powers with fire resistance for say a fire blaster on par with a tank or scrapper?
Can you mix and match powers to your liking. Ie can you make a sr/regen/spines paragon protector?
Does your pvp mele classes gain acess to ranged guns just as powqewerful as their melle weapons?
by your logic then all thepvp beneifs shoud be in pve
Blasters doing unresistable dammage
controlers containign for 3x not 2x
and so on.
PvP and PvE are vastly different. But hey if your so into pvp pick a time,. i'll get my knife. And we'l ahve soem real Player Vs Player.
AE # 67087: Journey through the Looking Glass - Save the World
LLX VirtueVerse! - Check out my crazy Toons
This is the size of group that we have balanced AVs for, 6.
-Positron 06/07/06 07:27 PM
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
/em wonders when the devs are gonna realize that Force Bubble has the same "problem" that convinced em to zap Hurricane.
[/ QUOTE ]
The worst parts about getting debuffed by hurricane was the nasty to-hit debuff and its -range. The -tohit was easily countered at the higher levels(FA, AIM, BU, etc). The -range was the only form of mitigation against ranged toons for the Storm summoning set. It made only since that storm should be able to keep melee out when they are so vulnerable to everything else.
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, the only thing I really wanted to change in this mess was the ability for Repel Fields to effectively trap a player against geometry in Base Raids. I'm aware other powers have the same problem. I'll address those individually, though -- the same type of change made to Hurricane can be made, but for the most part, those powers have fewer aspects to them that Hurricane does. That makes getting them right considerably harder.
[/ QUOTE ]
I don't have time to read the entire thread because I have to get to work.
Sometimes when I'm playing my Stormy mobs will spin off in a direction I don't intend. Having been on the pinned end of a Stormy I know for a fact that it's exploitable. However, the tick recduction is a bit harsh.
So, how about this, we combine the two aspects of Hurricane and solve the problem. In PvP if an opponent is pushed up against the geometry for more than two pulses the Hurrican "picks them up" and carries them around the effect to the other side. I'm only talking about PvP here. I understand this will be difficult to impliment but it's a solution for all sorts of problems and not just Hurricane.
My appologies if this has been mentioned already, as I said, work.
I LOVE HURRICANES
Oh my.
reading some of these old replies makes me laugh some.
I miss storms...
With the nerfing of TK and Force bubble, it would render even more people useless for Base Raids.
Lets see.
Currently we have most of the other Masterminds rendered useless because they and their pets can not hit much, could be countered if inspirations that the MM uses applied to all pets, but that with the bodyguard feature might be a bit off putting to others.
Dark secondary and possibly traps are ok, but not really effective. Arrows and Poison I have yet to see used in any memorable fashion in a raid.
TK, Force Bubble, and Hurricane do 2 things, denial of entry until you munch on 3+ inspers, mob control. You can take away the knockdown effect, the trapping them in a corner??? What are inspirations for?
Also every inspiration has a counter, Reds Vs Greens and Oranges, Purple shields Vs yellow Targets .what counters break frees? Oh, Nothing, they are so you dont get stuck by other characters!!!!
I think you already have a solution to your problem, you might make the knockdowns less severe, but they are not trapped, if they are raiding and LV 38 in the case of Mastermind Force bubbles, they should have enough room for 10 or so break frees.
If you make these powers less entrapping then have them do heavy damage or something at/near the center. Denial of location is huge in a raid. I am not sure how many Raids you have been on, but against good teams I do not expect the Generator to last more then 15 minutes, usually 5. Without space denial this amount of time would be less, without breakfrees it would be more and with these powers it would be more.
I think you are seeing a problem that does not exist in your standard high level raid. If you go this rout there is no reason to spend prestige on items that will be useless in 12 minutes anyway.
If secure Base Vaults have real vault doors, and you can place Generators behind them with huge accurate turrets protecting them??? Then Ill shelve all my location denial characters and play a melee type, as that seems to be all PvP is really about.
I think you have a lot more balancing to do before you start taking out peoples one or two tricks that can be easily countered.
All that said, other then the Lag and Disconnections, I think the base raids are the best thing since sliced bread, but too many ATs have limited function and Melee types rule the day. It could be a lot better, but they are fun as hell right now so thanks, just take a step back and think about what you are fixing, perhaps a recall to base (putting the toon back at their bases raid teleporter) is all that is needed. Annoying yes, but fulfills the function of defending (keep these freaks out of our base) !!!
I would still like a counter to breakfrees, but that I think is like pissing in the wind.