Unyielding on Test - Brutes and Scraps(7/13 patch)
By
Aett_Thorn,
Posted on: 2006-07-13 14:36 in Tankers
Sad that it's probably not going.
Good that it was reduced for scrappers and brutes if it's not going.
I hate compromises like the above.
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I also like how this is pretty much saying that one power in the set (TH) appears to be designed to counter anothers penalty. I wouldn't mind it if Tough Hide did something else, but does it appear odd to anyone else that the reason you should pretty much take that power is to counteract another?
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Yes.
It would be interesting if they made a lvl 10ish power for regen that decreased your End recovery by 50 percent so that you HAD to take Stamina to get it back up... er wait...
they might as well just as left it.
what's 1.25%?
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This value matches then unenhanced Defense gained from the Tough Hide passive power in the same power set. The Tanker version remains unchanged, as the values already match properly.
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I'm still chuckling about the mis-use of the word "properly".
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As I learn more about how Invul is designed, the more bizarre it becomes. Why not net out the DEF buffs and debuffs, as others have suggested?
It makes me think that they thought of only 8 powers, but had to fill in 9 tiers. So... let's subtract DEF here (UY) and put it over here (TH), to tone down the potential DEF provided by Invinc. Viola! 9 powers!
Truly bizarre.
Eliminate the debuff in UY and redesign TH into a utility power that would not disturb the DEF/RES balance. It's silly to design a power just to break even.
Something else came to mind other than Tough Hide,
If 1 def = 1 dr:
3.75 -def x 2 = -7.5 -dr
5.00 x 2 = 10 -dr
Base values for dr in unyielding:
scrap/brute: 3.75 s/l, 7.5 other, no psi
tank: 5 s/l, 10 other, no psi
The base +DR vs en/el/tox/nen is countered by -Def now for all AT's.
Yeah, it is a bit of a head scratcher why they have a power in a set just to counter a de-buff in a lower level power. But what kinda utility can be given to Inv? It already has a darn good HP buff/heal, can't have more def/res it seems. A 'Quickness'? Hmmm... What about a PbaoE Fear? Idea being you are so incredably tough your opponents cower in fear... Hmmm... maybe a bit to much like dark.
While I greatly approve of a reduction to Scrapper/Brute Uy pelanties, since they get less res for the same nasty debuff, the debuff's very exsistence is itself an anachronism. It harms the new Uy user to a large extent, while not hurting a high level Invuln as much (although if you could actually test Inv full-on and Inv-full-on but without that def penalty, the numbers would be fairly obvious). Inv as a set has felt like it really does not know what it wants to be anymore. It is still illogical and counter-intuitive that the TH passive barely 'breaks even' with Uy's penalty these days. Uy just does not give enough benefit for this penalty anymore. When it was 20% (Primary base) to all barring psi, and ED didn't exist, we basically needed the penalty, but now it's just an inappropriate penalty that needs to be completely shed.
While this is a positive step overall, it's a very small one, too small really.
I like the change for my inv brute, but I would have been happier with the debuff totally removed. The debuff is still too much of a penality compared to the mez protection powers of the other tank/scrapper/brute sets. For that matter, Unstoppable's crash is so extreme compared to the other tier 9 powers.
Talk about piss poor design! So you have a set where if you take one power you need to take another power to get rid of the downside of the first.
We always knew that this was how it works but now Cryptic even admits this is the way it should work. They are now telling us which powers to pick.
This kind of crap just makes you dissapointed, and it questions wether or not Cryptic has lost control of the game.
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Talk about piss poor design! So you have a set where if you take one power you need to take another power to get rid of the downside of the first.
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You are completely correct but understating the idiocy. The devs have made it a mandatory thing. You CANNOT function as a tanker without unyielding. It simply is not possible without a babysitter, and even then they better not lapse. Thus they have made two power selections mandatory and one of which is merely to make up for a penalty in the first. That is truly an asinine design decision.
Hmm, the "Devs are clueless" theory gains ground by the minute.
Too many alts to list.
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Hmm, the "Devs are clueless" theory gains ground by the minute.
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The real reason the -DEF on Unyielding is a stupid idea is because it is not optional. Once upon a time it might have been. But once upon a time status effects were not as common and the Inv Tanker had more choices about where they got their resistances from. Plus back then the Inv Tank was all about Resistances as opposed to the Def Tank they are now.
I blame it on the Balance Spreadsheet that this game is based around (yes it does exist) that balances the Inv Tank at level 50 surrounded by 10 mobs in melee range.
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I would really love to see the rationale for the debuff in Unyielding and the decision to just patch up that debuff with Tough Hide. It wouldn't be such a big deal if Tough Hide and Unyielding were obtained fairly close to one another, but you have to wait until well into the 20s, and just soak up that involuntary debuff in the meanwhile. Like Burn, it's counter-intuitive to the concept of being a Tanker.
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*sighs*
Would be nice if they took the damage resistance from unyielding and gave it to the passives, making them worth taking. Then, unyielding would be mez protection only, and you could consider skipping it and using BFs instead.
With no unyielding penalty, and with TH, you could make a tougher tank at the expense of being more vulnerable to mez attacks.
It would at least be an option, that way.
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As I learn more about how Invul is designed, the more bizarre it becomes.
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But this isn't about how the set was designed, it's about how it was redesigned; the defense debuff wasn't in the original power that was called Unyielding Stance.
So yeah, you could say it was a bizarre redesign. Or you could just say that calling it a redesign is giving it too much credit and call it a hack job, like with a machete. So with this change they're adding one stitch to reduce one excess cut.
Thats exactly the problem, its not a design, and also not really a hack job.
Its a evolutionary compromise, they tinkered a bit here, a bit there, modified a power, changed that a bit, applied a global change to the whole game, made a little tweak there, another gamewide global "balancing", and the result is what we have now.
A weird hodgepodge of a set without rhyme or reason.
I'm still baffled anyway that they left the -DEF in UNY after the I5/ED massacre at all. After the massive butchering, err, sorry, "reduction for balance" applied to all +RES and +DEF powers, the debuff effectively tripled its magnitude, at least.
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Yes.
It would be interesting if they made a lvl 10ish power for regen that decreased your End recovery by 50 percent so that you HAD to take Stamina to get it back up... er wait...
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Regens have to take Revive to get up if they take MoG! 
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Okay... here's what bugs me the most about this change.
Why does it need to spend a week on test before it makes it live?
The devs push out patches like the House pushes out bills. There are all these extra things that hold back something that was needed yesterday.
Just release the one small bit, let the stuff that needs to actually be tested go to the test server. But things that are common sense changes, and that are mostly server side (I can't see as how this change is anything but server side) get out now, and bypass the test server.
It boggles my mind how they think that this is a good design path. Put a negative in an early power, then make a late power that is solely to remove this negative. Why not just get rid of the negative? Would Unyielding be so hidiously overpowered without that -def? Is it that they can not come up with another power for an Inv tank? I find that it hard to believe that it is the latter. Remove the -def, toss Tough hide, and create a 'Battle Roar' type power that gives you a small end buff for every enemy in a small radious and has a short taunt as well as a small -def or -res penalty on the mobs hit. Have a 90% base accuracy and presto, instant fix for a small hole in Inv (end Recovery), as well as another way to keep mobs taunted. And I came up with that just off the top of my head. I am sure that the devs can come up with far better if they put some effort into it.
The debuff was added when the devs finally listened to reason and stopped the power from rooting the character in place. At one point the resistances available in the power made up for the debuff.
Then the Global Defense Nerf occured and the resistances in unyielding were reduced.
Apparently, the devs seem to think that by taking another power in the set, this would allow the character to break even with this penalty.
But the truth is that you shouldn't need a second power in a set just to break even, but should gain some measure of a benefit, prior to slotting.
The properly balanced way to handle this would have been to reduce the debuff in unyielding in a near proportionate amount to the amount of resistances that were removed from the power.
For Tanks the debuff in unyielding should only be 2.5%, Scrappers and Brutes should be at 1.875% debuff.
Now if a player choosed to take Tough Hide, not only have they surpasses the debuff but have also gained a benefit from the power, prior to slotting. Slotting will then result in a clearly positive boost in performance. As oppossed to the marginal benefit gained now.
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Why does it need to spend a week on test before it makes it live?
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Its bad idea to rush anything to live and make it skip testing just because. Remember updates in CoH go trough a queue, and unless its an emergency hot fix it wont skip ahead of anything. That being told there are other fixes on this patch that may require the extensive testing.
Also this is a power change, and each test release is basically a cumulative of changes done by the balance people, the art people, and the code people. Its not easy to have X thing go before some code that has to be tested troughly in such an environment.
That reason for the debuff is stupid, but i think is actually the reason it got introduced. However I think today the debuff serves a purpose. Without it, invuln tankers will turn into monsters due to the high def plus resist in unyielding they will achieve while surrounded.
What I propose however is that the debuff gets eliminated, and they eliminate .5 def from each affected enemy in invincibility. This means, make invincibility grant a max of 15 unenhanced defense. Yes, this will technically end up being a nerf, since now you will have a max of 31.2 def while fully surrounded instead of the now possible 34 def, but with one enemy in melee range we end up better (17.16 def instead of the current 12.94 def)
now on the Test Server:
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The 5% Defense reduction in Scrapper and Brute versions of Unyielding has been reduced to a 3.75% Defense reduction. This value matches then unenhanced Defense gained from the Tough Hide passive power in the same power set. The Tanker version remains unchanged, as the values already match properly.
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i just thought it was interesting the oft speculated "UY debuff is conveniently close to the Tough Hide base buff" seems to be verified as "intended".
while this is certainly nice for Scrappers and Brutes, who paid a penalty that was harder to overcome, it also kindof implies there are no plans to get rid of the debuff in the near future.