Theory On Favoritism Whatchamacallit
By
aqshy2004,
Posted on: 2006-04-24 18:20 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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*"The Deal" is the original concept that if you want to deal damage, your ability to withstand incoming damage is reduced and vice versa. The better you do the one, the less you are able to do the other.
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What about Brutes? Or Dominators?
Brutes have both. Doms have neither.
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Brutes seem to have the same exemption that Scrappers got.
As for Dominators risk/reward, keep in mind that protection you can provide to your whole team counts more than protection that only helps you, as does AE count more than ST damage. Dominators have a primary that is the best team protection available (with pet!) and a secondary with some noteworthy AE. Plus, they are getting some kind of boost in I7, which means the devs feel they may have underpowered them.
Bah! Always talking about the bas ATs, never mentioning the Kheldians. Us much-ignored Peacebringers and Warshdes never even get thought of when deciding what to fix next.
I mean, sure we're "Epic" and all...but our resistances are around those of a Defender (human form), our health that of a Blaster (squid form), and our damage that of a tank (lobster form). And that's not mentioning that we get two-shoted by anyone with a purple-red gun! Now how are we suppossed to solo, hmmm?
And my point? Trying to prove that though you may think you may have it bad, someone always has it worse, you just never think of them because you're too busy thinking of yourself.
P.S., I think Kheldians are fine the way they are.
To help others, first you must be able to help yourself.
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Every AT thinks it is getting short shrift. 3/5 have to be wrong about that.
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It reminds me of the WoW boards--every damn class thinks that they're the worst. Shamans hate being shamans, hunters hate being hunters, mages....you get the point. I think it comes down to 2 basic things:
1. People take these game WAY TOO SERIOUSLY!
2. Everyone wants to feel like the underdog so that, if they do succeed, they can say "I got to 50 as a soloing Empahy/Psy Blast who only took Mental Blast and my only power pool is Leadership and I played with my nose because my hands got bitten off by ferrets."
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"We try to keep a close eye on everything in the game and impliment balance changes where needed. If any set or AT, regardless of popularity, is underperforming or under-represented, we try to discern why and make changes to bring it up to par."
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Yes of course. In theorie.
The truth is that it's not exactly true. Some power sets need to be reworked. Some AT specific Inherent power need to be completely changed and updated. We all know that. Does it mean its going to happen? Probably not.
Why? Because players, as a whole, are asking for new stuff. New powers, new zones, new missions, new cotumes pieces, new new new!!! Most players are not interested in tweaks and updates. They want more for their money not a better TA set. And since that's what most players want, that's what the Devs are working on, that's what we're going to get with each and every issues.
And that's alright. Satisfied paying customers is what NCSoft is looking for. We are few, they are many. We may hate them, but they, not us, are what's keeping this game going.
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Every AT thinks it is getting short shrift. 3/5 have to be wrong about that.
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It reminds me of the WoW boards--every damn class thinks that they're the worst. Shamans hate being shamans, hunters hate being hunters, mages....you get the point. I think it comes down to 2 basic things:
1. People take these game WAY TOO SERIOUSLY!
2. Everyone wants to feel like the underdog so that, if they do succeed, they can say "I got to 50 as a soloing Empahy/Psy Blast who only took Mental Blast and my only power pool is Leadership and I played with my nose because my hands got bitten off by ferrets."
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Yeah it seems that they are a bunch of nooblers, wanting the game to be easy on relentless. . lol. You see a lot of that crap on the Dominator boards.
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So I got bored and pondered.
You know how Tankers tend to complain that they often don't get anything from the Devs, while Scrappers seem to revel in the splendor that is yummy stuff?
I think it deals with population amounts of characters. The more played Archtypes are put into the queue ahead of others when it pertains to fixes and new stuff.
Yes? No? Pie?
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You need to get your facts straight. If anything the devs would seem like they hate scrappers not like them best. No AT has gone thru as many drastic changes and nerfs as much as scrapper have. Tanks are actually a little lower now than scrappers were back in issue 3 as far as stats go. If you look at all of what scrappers went thru can you still say they are liked more?
First we had the resist cap change a very unneeded change, this was before we had sonic defenders in the game so it was not like anyone short of an invul scrapper could actually still get 90% resist. So what was the point of the change? It is not stepping on the tankers toes because you are looking at 3 minutes at most for this so called G4WD-M0D3. That is hardly tanking at all. Along with this change we lost perma-unstoppable along with tankers so no net change there.
Next was the regen stealth nerf on intergration, all that partial enhancement heal crap. Next we lost perma-mog and perma-elude. Although this did not hurt regen too badly this change butchered SR. This made you have to take the passives and aid self if you wanted any chance of real survival. A little before this time they butchered invincebility, this power has been changed so many times I cant even tell if it works or not. If they could make it work on all damage -psionics like the way it did before issue 3 but not stack with itself then we might have something worthwhile. But as it is now you get little benefit from this power as a scrapper and alot of unneeded aggro. I could if they removed the aggro portion of the power from scrappers then it would not be stepping on tankers toes with that.
Finally we have issues 5 and 6. We lost almost everything that made us not squishie. As it is now the only thing that seperates us from the squishies is the sleep portion mez protection because some squishies can get higher resist and defense than we can. Issue 5 added damage buff change was just a slap in the face because they gave us damage they would be just taking it back in issue 6 when this ED madness came into the game.
So after reading this do you still see scrappers as being the favorite??? I know tankers when thru alot of things, I was there for that too because I got tired of being nerfed as a scrapper so I switched to tanking. Now that everyone other than stone-tankers are squishie or semi-squishie you might as well play as a squishie now.
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
I agree with a previous poster. If you don't like the archetype, stop complaining and go play something else that you will enjoy. That's what everyone does in life, tackle things where they can be productive. Now, if you want a challenge, then by all means, go for it, but don't use an archetype and then turn around after watching someone else do something, and say that you want to be just as effective. Things don't work that way.
I don't think there is favortism as well. It might be that some things are harder to correct than others. Either way, complaining does nothing, but eventually comes back to bite EVERYONE in the [censored], as it did with I6. You want balance? Someone gets gimped. Then they complain, and the cycle repeats itself.
I myself am partial to scrappers. I used to love playing a blaster, but found out I could take on groups of no more than 5 even cons. Orange lieutenants could easily kill me, and reds were big no-nos. It was a crawl. But I am enjoying the scrapper archetype.
I remember pre I6, where tankers would herd and fire tankers would kill +4 and +5 bosses without a sweat. I didn't think a darn thing, only cool, they'd be awesome to team up with. I thought they were overpowered, but my thought was, "Hey, maybe I should make one of 'em up."
It's funny actually. I could understand it if everyone only had one hero. Your complaints would then be legitimate. However, my response is, if you have ample time to complain about others, use that time to go a create another hero, and use it's advantages for yourself.
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Yeah, Since Issue 2, Scrapper's main problem is GETTING dev attention.
Don't worry regen scrappers. 
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Are you kidding? Some poor regen scrapper accidentaly taunted the devs, and the entire secondary hasn't been able to lose dev agro for the last handful of issues. 
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The problem with Regen as a secondary is that the manner in which it was implemented inherently doesn't scale; ignoring the deaths from taking a ton of damage in a single alpha strike, healing quickly as a defense breaks down to two categories: if you regen faster than you're taking damage, you look godlike, and if you take damage faster than you regen, you're dead if you can't drop opponents quick enough to move into the other category. Everything the devs have done to the powerset has just run the breakpoint back and forth, and there's a very fine line between survival and faceplanting (and it's far too easy to go quickly from 'fine' to 'debt' if you judge things wrong).
If you took Instant Healing and changed it so that it made each hit act like illusory damage -- i.e., for each hit you take, a second or two after the hit you 'instantly healed' part of the damage, then what you'd have would be a defense that would scale the same way that Resistance and Defense did, and could be balanced against them -- 40% Resistance, 40% Defense, and 40% Instant Healing would all, over time, protect a character from 40% of the incoming damage. Unfortunately, doing a rework this fundamental to a powerset seems to be more than what the devs are willing to do, since it would entail rebalancing the other powers in the set as well.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
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Yeah, Since Issue 2, Scrapper's main problem is GETTING dev attention.
Don't worry regen scrappers.
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Are you kidding? Some poor regen scrapper accidentaly taunted the devs, and the entire secondary hasn't been able to lose dev agro for the last handful of issues.
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The problem with Regen as a secondary is that the manner in which it was implemented inherently doesn't scale; ignoring the deaths from taking a ton of damage in a single alpha strike, healing quickly as a defense breaks down to two categories: if you regen faster than you're taking damage, you look godlike, and if you take damage faster than you regen, you're dead if you can't drop opponents quick enough to move into the other category. Everything the devs have done to the powerset has just run the breakpoint back and forth, and there's a very fine line between survival and faceplanting (and it's far too easy to go quickly from 'fine' to 'debt' if you judge things wrong).
If you took Instant Healing and changed it so that it made each hit act like illusory damage -- i.e., for each hit you take, a second or two after the hit you 'instantly healed' part of the damage, then what you'd have would be a defense that would scale the same way that Resistance and Defense did, and could be balanced against them -- 40% Resistance, 40% Defense, and 40% Instant Healing would all, over time, protect a character from 40% of the incoming damage. Unfortunately, doing a rework this fundamental to a powerset seems to be more than what the devs are willing to do, since it would entail rebalancing the other powers in the set as well.
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I have even suggested this myself as a better fix for regen, it actually fits the name better than the current instant healing does. This would finally balance invuls and regens on similar ground. Our main toggle would still be integration because without it we would still die like invuls do when they get overwhelmed.
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
"Hmmm Toggle IH". I thought I broke LOS on that Dev, but he wont stop chasing me with that damn nerf bat. "Hmmm ED" Must break arrgo, must find new sacrafice for nerf bat. "Hmmm AS" Thats right devs you dont see me anymore 'waves hand' "these are not the regens you are looking for" 
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Yeah, Since Issue 2, Scrapper's main problem is GETTING dev attention.
Don't worry regen scrappers.
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Are you kidding? Some poor regen scrapper accidentaly taunted the devs, and the entire secondary hasn't been able to lose dev agro for the last handful of issues.
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The problem with Regen as a secondary is that the manner in which it was implemented inherently doesn't scale; ignoring the deaths from taking a ton of damage in a single alpha strike, healing quickly as a defense breaks down to two categories: if you regen faster than you're taking damage, you look godlike, and if you take damage faster than you regen, you're dead if you can't drop opponents quick enough to move into the other category. Everything the devs have done to the powerset has just run the breakpoint back and forth, and there's a very fine line between survival and faceplanting (and it's far too easy to go quickly from 'fine' to 'debt' if you judge things wrong).
If you took Instant Healing and changed it so that it made each hit act like illusory damage -- i.e., for each hit you take, a second or two after the hit you 'instantly healed' part of the damage, then what you'd have would be a defense that would scale the same way that Resistance and Defense did, and could be balanced against them -- 40% Resistance, 40% Defense, and 40% Instant Healing would all, over time, protect a character from 40% of the incoming damage. Unfortunately, doing a rework this fundamental to a powerset seems to be more than what the devs are willing to do, since it would entail rebalancing the other powers in the set as well.
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This is only because of the way most people have learned to play Regen. They jump in dumbly and if the enemy DPS isn't over their Regen rate they survive and if it is, they die. That's a silly, self defeating way to play Regen. Diving in, taking some damage, diving out and letting your Regen heal you, then diving in for more increases the "defense" Regen provides.
When the infamous Regen video was released (which admittedly had far greater problems), there was this huge outcry of people who criticized States for keeping away and letting his Regen heal him to finish off the mobs he did. I never understood this for a moment. Are we so dumb and spoiled that we expect to stand and press attack over and over until we win? It just seems silly to me that people keep talking about the binary nature of Regen. As far as I'm concerned, the "stand and kill" portion of Regen should be noticably lower than other sets. The kill and come back for more portion should be unrivaled by any other set in the game.
DOOOM!
Ya'll also got criticals early on and a damage buff in I5. Perma-elude was a buff to bring SR into line with the more powerful sets. Dark had its animations changed so the armours would stack. Katana had its animations redone so they weren't simply rehashes of broadsword's. The integration "stealth nerf" was due because the devs had mistakenly introduced a "stealth buff" -- the "nerf" was just a bug fix. And there are others I'm probably missing.
It's like the bubblers who say that detention field is the worst power ever, even though it replaced something worse -- a third single target def buff -- previously, (neg) energy and fire / cold were separate buffs.
It's easy for us to point out the bad, but we also tend to forget the good.
FWIW, I remember having my fire tanker (low 20s) in a Counicil mission just after BA got its taunt aura. I remember being in the middle of one spawn, having the blaster aggro a second around the corner, and running over to grab the aggro from him. And then ... it hit me. I had 10 mobs trailing behind me, 10 new mobs aggroed on me, and just about to BBQ everything with burn without having to use provoke. And nothing was hurting my tanker that HF couldn't handle.
I remember, very clearly, telling my teammates this was so good the devs couldn't possibly let it go on. And then they started giggling like school girls and suggested I start grabbing two or three spawns at a time for AoEs.
*shrugs*
And, no, I'm no fanboi; most of my posts have had the general theme of "[censored] were the devs thinking with FF ...". I'd just like to point out, before the thread gets locked, that sometimes the devs do buff ... and do listen to player feedback.
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When the infamous Regen video was released (which admittedly had far greater problems), there was this huge outcry of people who criticized States for keeping away and letting his Regen heal him to finish off the mobs he did. I never understood this for a moment. Are we so dumb and spoiled that we expect to stand and press attack over and over until we win? It just seems silly to me that people keep talking about the binary nature of Regen. As far as I'm concerned, the "stand and kill" portion of Regen should be noticably lower than other sets. The kill and come back for more portion should be unrivaled by any other set in the game.
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That's extraordinarily biased and unfair. What people were objecting to was that Statesman was stacking the deck. Regen is a healing set. Sure, I could go into a mission, get just close enough to aggro a couple of mobs, kill them rinse and repeat. I would probably be immortal then.
But if you're going to nerf Regen for being overpowered, then DEMONSTRATE that it's overpowered. Often times the devs trot out the tired excuse that someone could just turn on their toggles and go through the mission without any thought. Well if that's true then don't use as your evidence a Regen using tactics. We said at the time that Regen was harder than most people gave it credit for. Statesman's video just showed that you CAN'T play like godmode.
Now as for the second point in this paragraph, you can't make Regen's "stand and kill" portion lower than the other sets and at the same time make it's "kill and come back" portion better. They work together. The devs tried just what you describe. Basically Regen has very little regeneration outside of its clicks. Far less protection than Invul and SR. But add in the Reconstruction and DP click and it goes above them. Only problem is that you can't make Recon and DP have such long recharge that you have to do hit and run because there is still some regen there to fill the game. Unless you're suggesting that the meagar constant regen we have now be nerfed further. Hell then you're basically back at Issue one regen where all you have is Dull Pain and Reconstruction.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
I didn't mean for that post to come off quite as bitter as it did, I just tire of the binary concept most people have with Regen. The immortality line just doesn't work for me, because there are ways around that. I just hate that so many people base the set purely on what you can do if you just stand there and swing.
I also didn't mean to make it sound like I think Regen needs to be nerfed further (though I said as much, didn't I...?). I think it's right about where I described. If I try to dive in and stand and kill, I tend to go down faster than my counterparts. When my health drops too low, however, I can get away to reduce the incoming damage, which puts me back in the fight almost immediately. All in all I think it works about right.
I just disagree with the immortality line. I agree it exists, I just disagree it makes Regen as binary as many would claim. I know far too many Regenners who use the immortality line as their cutoff point, and refuse to find ways to push past it, which frustrates me to no end.
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I didn't mean for that post to come off quite as bitter as it did, I just tire of the binary concept most people have with Regen. The immortality line just doesn't work for me, because there are ways around that.
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Without naming names, the one poster with the "Regen is like Snowboarding -- you either look fabulous, or you're dead" line?
Yeah, that one always irritated me as being wholly incorrect. Even champion riders wobble here and there; the skill is in recovering.
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I just disagree with the immortality line. I agree it exists, I just disagree it makes Regen as binary as many would claim. I know far too many Regenners who use the immortality line as their cutoff point, and refuse to find ways to push past it, which frustrates me to no end.
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I find it telling that in the aftermath following I6, the Regen players of my acquaintance have seemingly congealed into two populations: the players who still manage to remain wholly survivable and use the set skillfully and purposefully, and those who eat floor at every possible opportunity.
Suffice it to say -- I find it to be evidence that the powerset was previously allowing any Joe Schmoe with a copycat build mini-Godhood status.
agreeing with BurningChick re: EvilRyu!
How can you possibly discuss Scrapper history without mentioning criticals, and then lt/boss criticals?
I mean really.
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I find it telling that in the aftermath following I6, the Regen players of my acquaintance have seemingly congealed into two populations: the players who still manage to remain wholly survivable and use the set skillfully and purposefully, and those who eat floor at every possible opportunity.
Suffice it to say -- I find it to be evidence that the powerset was previously allowing any Joe Schmoe with a copycat build mini-Godhood status.
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That was Issue 5. Issue 6 and ED did almost nothing to Regen. One of the more annoying things about ED is that people ascribe the benefits of Issue 5 (which was a painful, but well targeted general nerf) to it because the issues ran back to back.
And you can't question the skill of any Pre-I3 Regen IMO. Getting to 28 in the old days was one of the toughest things you could do in this game.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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I just disagree with the immortality line. I agree it exists, I just disagree it makes Regen as binary as many would claim. I know far too many Regenners who use the immortality line as their cutoff point, and refuse to find ways to push past it, which frustrates me to no end.
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On this point. To put it another way, what you're seeing is some players just playing to the difficulty level. There really isn't much reward in playing above the immortality line. With your combat abilities any decently built regen can handle Invincible.
To be honest, I don't push myself much anymore because there's no more mountains to climb. My Old School Regen soloed the Kronos Titan and a number of other AVs and Monsters. It was harder than most people think, but hey, it's just not possible anymore.
My new school Regen is doing well, the low level game is much easier than the first time. The set is all around more even in its power progression. So it's easy to learn quickly what you can and cannot do. I don't see why it's problematic to play to your abilities. In all Statesman's examples of play that's what he does.
When do Regen players just get to have fun and stop being accused of wanting godmode?
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
and then you were a god after it. big woop!
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agreeing with BurningChick re: EvilRyu!
How can you possibly discuss Scrapper history without mentioning criticals, and then lt/boss criticals?
I mean really.
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The reason I did not discuss criticals is because that is something you almost no control over as to when and when you dont get them. You can only up your chances of crits by killing bosses, the only thing crits really did was push us more into the boss killing role because crits encourage boss killing. The second damage buff we got is pretty much non-existant now due to ED. You wont really see the benefit of it without outside buffs.
I never really considered regen overpowered even back in issue 2. I looked at it like this you go thru 28 levels of hell just to finally get a power that puts you on par with all the other scrappers. The early regen game sucked bad before intergration got healing. After the issue 3 changes I never did any task forces, soloed and dueoed with a close friend all the way to 28. Anytime I teammed before 28 it was instant death due to bad players. After the loss of toggle instant healing, I found myself relying on dull pain, instant healing and mog just to get by because your regular healing just is not good enough. This is where I see there is a problem with the set. Having to be so clicky just to live just does not fit my play style. I hate the fact that you have to count how long before your buffs expire to know if you need to run or not. Seriously with ED in place I can see that they should change a few things back, either make all of regen fully enhanceable or give us back toggle instant healing.
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
On PAR?
No. Just no!
Additionally, you do know that click buffs are getting expiration warnings (blinking or something) in I7?
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And you can't question the skill of any Pre-I3 Regen IMO. Getting to 28 in the old days was one of the toughest things you could do in this game.
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You never played a pre-issue3 controller solo before the pets I assume
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and then you were a god after it. big woop!
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Actually you had to wait until you got your 31 slots for godhood, and by that time you earned it!
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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And you can't question the skill of any Pre-I3 Regen IMO. Getting to 28 in the old days was one of the toughest things you could do in this game.
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You never played a pre-issue3 controller solo before the pets I assume
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Yes, I did. Slower than the Regen, but safer. Of course mine is an Ill/FF (who still hasn't got to 50 despite being an I1 character) Being able to go PFF anytime you want and hold mobs makes for a slow but easy life.
And RANGE. Good lord, I just lol at the Blasters when they say range isn't a defense. I remember when I first started going up against Sorcerors with Frosty and Cute. The bastids would teleport and my girls would just turn to face them and most times would still be in range of their blasts/holds. Hurricane? What frikken hurricane.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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*"The Deal" is the original concept that if you want to deal damage, your ability to withstand incoming damage is reduced and vice versa. The better you do the one, the less you are able to do the other.
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What about Brutes? Or Dominators?
Brutes have both. Doms have neither.
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The Deal was tossed out the window long before there were Brutes or Doms. And it's nothing to do with having "both". It's a sliding scale, the more offensive capacity you have, the less defensive you have and vice versa. Risk vs Reward. You take the greater risk (lower defensive capacity) you get the greater reward (higher offensive capacity). When the devs boosted Scrapper offensive capacity, capping out at 500% while Blasters, the "Offensive Juggernauts" capped at 400%, things went all to hell, and the devs have been trying to fix the mess ever since.