Not to nitpick as you have a valid point, but the Dominators and Controllers are known as mezz classes because they have the availability of more AoE holds/immobilizes/cages, with Mind Control have confuses (nitpick 2, which folks can get as multi-use temp powers).
Which are great for PvE, however, in PvP it is 'lol AoEs.' Single-target is the way to go, and every AT has either a hold, an immob, and a sleep... even if it is an origin power.
Yep NNY you are exactly right but I thin that the Devs, hardworking as they are, live in a vaccuum when it comes to PvP. I don't foresee any balance changes outside of IO modification in the near future unfortunately.
Damage classes should never have got status effects (outside of perhaps the taunt aura of tankers) on TOP of their high damage scales, and on top of that City Of doesn't patch in changes when things seem weighted in a certain direction until MUCH later, if at all.
Examples:
Dominators were underperforming, now many say they are overperforming. My Controllers would love a click that grants me mez protection and doubles my damage. 
That took what, 2-3 issues though?
Fire Blast for Blasters was given a deserved boost and is now the top dog but even that took a while...and then you hear _Castle_ say PvP changes won't affect PvE.
???
It doesn't have to at all. We've seen City of Data and powers have tags when they affect players (if target = player). Just play with those on your internal testing until you get some form of balance, either by boosting other sets to the level of EM or by creating new sets that can rival it.
Oh well, at least Arena play really is balanced
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
Infinity Villains
Champion, Pinnacle, Virtue Heroes
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It isn't for lack of balance, it is simply that killing the opponent faster is much more useful than making them hit you less, making it so they run out of endurance in an extended fight, make their attacks recharge slower... mitigation is good, winning is better.
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Which is in the end, the key to understanding the concept of "balance" in CoX pvp. It is a very correct observation IMO, well put, easy to understand.
But then, take everything you've said, and then apply it to a team vs. team fight this time. Everything is reversed when it becomes a team vs team, instead of the typical lonewolf vs. lonewolf, witnessed in the pvp zones.
The level of protection each ATs give to one another becomes higher and higher as each of their powers create a synergy effect. This time, "killing the enemy" doesn't necessarily collide with "mitigation", since the only way to actually kill someone protected by multiple buffs and debuffs, heals, is to mitigate enough effects on them to become vulnerable enough.
In other words, as I've said, the balance of CoX pvp is entirely geared around team vs team level of fighting, not the usual individual vs individual. And in many cases, becoming a part of such a team is the only way for certain ATs or certain powers to find out what kind of real difference they can make in determining who wins and loses... and what makes this experience so surprising to many people who've never really dabbled in the "team" mentality, is that many of the powers or ATs they've branded as being "worthless" in usual lonewolf vs lonewolf fights, actually now becomes the key to achieving victory.
Tthe problem of "balance" in CoX pvp, is not that it is not unbalanced. [u]Rather, the problem is people refuse to understand the nature of how CoX PvP is balanced out, and then complain about how the developers are doing wrong without actually dabbling deep into what CoX can really offer.[u]
A lonewolf fight, is just no match for a good team-sized battle in pvp zones, at least according to my own experience. There is no one-twoshot fights. The battles are longer, tougher, intense. Every AT, every power finally finds some purpose and meaning inside the team... and when the enemies also become organized to beat your own team, half the fun comes from modifying your existing team with another set of powers to match your enemy's.
But instead of actually trying this, they just ask for developers to make every AT/power to be able to match another AT/power toe-to-toe, in every situation... and this simply isn't how CoX pvp is designed.
It is really no wonder why only some ATs/powers are considered 'useful' in the pvp zones. No wonder why other AT/powers feel neglected or 'unbalanced' - when actually, it is not.
As long as the zones are set up for people to enter one at a time which is the way people enter and are not grouped by the gaming engine into teams or people cannot group and enter in a team envirooment
IE: Fury- WoW
then people will continue to gripe about one on one AT's being underpowered in a certain power set or power vs power.
But to do this they would have to remove the badges in the zones?
I'm surprised. In GW, the asian guilds were the ones that used "Spike" specc'ed team and crushed opposition due to an nth degree of perfection co-ordination. It depended purely on a "Target (random n00b) 1.. 2... 3... ATTACK!" standpoint and housed pretty well.
Same thing goes for the Spike/R-n-G teams in CoH. Damage is still king even in a team environment and will eat turtled mitigation groups alive. Hence why you are expected to roll a blaster primary and a an emp/ or /emp for any PvP SG. This is also why you get "you wanna bring a Brute into the arena? lolz"
Keep tooting the GvG/RvR horn, it still won't convince me that Dark/DM/DA has a place in organized team PvP as it stands now... nor for any other non-op powersets and ATs.
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Add rare recipe rewards to Siren's Call and Recluse's Victory minigames. (#1 with a bullet, not enough ingame reward for PVP in this game)
Siren's Call style bounty system throughout the zones (with rare recipe reward)
Arena map selection feature, including a "Random" selection
Add villain/hero totals to zone /whoall display and include people on /hide in the totals, so players can get a general idea of activity level regardless of /hide
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Bad idea. You already have enough problems with Pve players/Badgers fighting with PvPers, and not in the way the PvPers want them to fight. No rewards of this type should be in PvP.
Well, if they have to defeat other players for it (and not just walk over a spot on the map, click a plaque, stay in the zone for 4 hours), they are PvP'ing and earn the reward normally.
PvP should get rewards just like PvE does. As it stands, fighting AV-level players yields after 2-3 defeats a tier 2 inspiration, 5-6 an obselete SO enhancement (and not even the full selection) -- which require more if you are teamed with 3+ players. I'm not saying better, or even really different, but at least equal to the challenge. Though, counter to that argument, some ATs are more "I Win" buttons than others... >.> <.<
Really, the bounty system is the only thing that FORCES you to defeat another player. If I were to use a model for future PvP Zones or revisions to existing ones.. that is the one I would choose.
I just dislike how you get forced into a SO if you have 6k+ bounty, as opposed to having the decision to pick an SO (and why would you EVER?) or the t2 insps.
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I just dislike how you get forced into a SO if you have 6k+ bounty, as opposed to having the decision to pick an SO (and why would you EVER?) or the t2 insps.
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it can be a quick way to load out on level 23 SOs if the zone's busy one night
Posted from Suggestions Forum...
Ok, Arena PvP hasn't recieved any major support since it came out in I4 (Aside from fixing the major bugs that it released with). The next few suggestions I have don't require any builds to be nerfed, buffed, or any other verb you can think to do to such builds. With that said, here I go.
1. Stats
-Right now the only thing that can be saw from arena post game scores are kills. That's awesome, however you're completly eliminating healers/buffer stats. One of the few things I enjoyed about WoW was the ability to see my Kill/Death ratio, how much damage I've done, points healed, etc. This could be easily implemented in the arena, or hell even put as another stat under the Arena/PvP Tab. Which brings us too...
2. PvP Tab
-Why? The W/L stats can be exploited so easily that it makes the whole system kind of pointless. My suggestion here is to redo the stat system, and create these new formats:
Duels
2v2s
4v4s
8v8s
SG Battles
Gladiator
Team Gladiator
Now some of you may be asking, what's different about this system? It's exactly the same...right? Wrong, here there would be no points to keep track of (No more 1500 points). Instead, the terminal would show those with the best record. This would then stop those people from just doing 1v1s with a partner, winning one and losing the other on purpose, as it would get them absolutly no where in the standings. Which brings me to...
3. Support the Ladder
-As some of you may know, or not know, PvP SGs have increased a lot as of the last couple of months. There is currently a SG Ladder that holds 10 of the best PvP SGs in the game, and a VG Ladder of the same purpose. There also was a Duel Ladder, but since then the creator has left the game, so it died out. What I think needs to happen, is on the official CoH Website (www.coh.com), the rankings need to appear. Secondly, I think that the ladder needs to have more Dev support. Right now the PvP SG Ladder is 100% player run, which is wonderful, but it could be so much more if there were prizes or atleast some prestige with being involved with it.
4. Zone Rewards
-Devs, devs, devs...how could you miss this one? You could have a whole other pool of recipes here, by just adding a reward for reputation! At lv50, what good is a lv53 SO from spending hours in Sirens Call to get 16000 Bounty? What good is spending time in the zones to get 400.0 Reputation? Zero, other than getting a few badges. My suggestion is at 10,000 Bounty, you can select a recipe from either an already made pool, or a new pool. Also, every 100 Reputation you earn, you get a pop up that allows you to get a recipe from the same pool. Now, some of you may be asking, so I can get 4 drops, then nothing? The limit is 400! That brings me to...
5. Reputation
-What is the purpose of putting a cap on this? I understand that the Devs have some sort of beef with end game content (joke! ) but I can't think of one good reason that doesn't make sense of a repuation limit of 10000, or limitless for that matter.
Anyway, what do you guys think? PvP needs an upgrade. It's been nearly 7 issues since there has been one, I think we're due for some support.
Observation Bots :
Perception
During arena matches, the observation bots do not have +Perception. Many PvP Sg's use stealth powers and it is a constant annoyance when your watching a certain person and they disappear and then reappear halfway across the map, or even at all. Now, I would suggest adding a feature to the kiosk menu to enable or disable the +Perception to observers, since people may be communicating on Vent or Skype telling where certain people are in the match.
Travel Speed
Id also like to stress, if not already mention numerous times. The fact that observation bots are INSANELY slow. They have the slowest travel power in the game, along with it unslotted. Observers constantly have to refind the people or person that they are watching since everyone moves incrediably faster than the observer.
/signed to both of the above
I've always liked playing defensive powerhouses in any MMO I play which is why I have always despised PvP as much as I do despite how desperatly I'd love to get into it because PvP is hell bent on preventing me from doing what I do best.
Yes I'm talking about unresisted damage yet again and how pitifully easy it is to just mezz the brute, turn off all my def buffs and begin the beatdown. Same story why my warrior in WoW couldn't catch a break, they always hype the class up for it's great defensive abilities only to hand out easy ways to undermine said defense to everyone and their dog.
Bottom line: Giving people the ability to bypass my defense is like giving me the ability to render a blaster unable to shoot. Shooting is what he does, taking hits is what I do but in PvP, I can't. They try and say it's for balance but personally, I think it's just pandering to the majority.
Maybe I expect too much but I'd love a PvP system where new players and casuals don't feel alienated by all those tiresome obsessives.
<QR>
Reasonable caps for all buffs, self or team applied.
Remove the ability of Power Boost/PBU to add to toHitBuff
Reduce Geas and the equivalent villain accolade to 20% toHitBuff from its curretn 200%
Reduce KB/KU resistance of Acrobatics so that KB can have a role, something like 6-10 from the current amount of 100.
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
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Remove the ability of Power Boost/PBU to add to toHitBuff
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which remove the only way to hit a target for 80% of the dominators.
personnally i suggest an equality between the control set numbers.
i really see no reason why villain side all secondary effect would have their numbers lowered.
It really depends on what can be done easily. If they can cap toHitBuff's (and other forms of buffs) to a reasonable level then powers don't have to be touched, if they can't that's one of the easiest modifications since if you want to modify all of the powers that grant toHitBuffs it takes a lot more work. I'll be honest, I have been puzzled for a long time as to why most of the buffing issues haven't been taken care of via caps, but there may be a problem that prevents that from being used as a primary mechanic.
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
-range debuff stacking from hurricanes to be removed.
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-range debuff stacking from hurricanes to be removed.
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This I don't agree with, if that's taken from Stormies then they will be yet another build that's worthless. Stormies were already hit with a mac truck of a nerf, which was called for since it wasn't uncommon to log into to SC and see the entire bay around the villain base filled with 'em but IMO they actually a little weak rather than being over powered. Stormies can operate in the zones and in the arena, but it takes support now which I think is appropriate.
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
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-range debuff stacking from hurricanes to be removed.
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This I don't agree with, if that's taken from Stormies then they will be yet another build that's worthless. Stormies were already hit with a mac truck of a nerf, which was called for since it wasn't uncommon to log into to SC and see the entire bay around the villain base filled with 'em but IMO they actually a little weak rather than being over powered.
[/ QUOTE ]I was mainly talking about team pvp and hero storm team v.s. villains more specifically. No villain AT has boost range to help counter the -range from storms. You're probably right though, they should be left alone. I just thougt that team pvp was based around teams, and I just couldn't come up with any way a villain team is supposed to fight a storm team. I guess I'll see how a poison team does against a storm team when VORI fights FoL, I think that'll be our best bet.
Storm heavy teams can be beaten by Villain teams, the trick is to spike the Stormie from range before you're debuffed and while the Empath(s) are busy. Its actually easy before APP's to do this with a team of ranged Stalkers. It becomes much harder in the 40+ game because everyone resists S/L damage with the APP shield. Having said all that, HvV balance is so screwed up in the 40+ game that it really doesn't matter. Until buffing can be brought to some sort of relative equality villain teams will always be at a huge disadvantage. Go look at what one Emp can do with Power Boost or PBU and then realize that the only villain AT with Power Boost or PBU is a /EN Dom....its pretty sad.
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
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I would have included support for having separate PVE/PVP builds on the same toon as a wishlist item, but my guess is that's way too much work to ever get done.
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This is my second biggest gripe about COX pvp.^^
My first would be:
The apparent idiocy and lack of any sort of breadth of vision from many PvP'ers concerning making PvP a n00b welcoming environment. If people run off the n00bs and casuals then theyre shortsighted maroons, to be blunt.
Do you want COX pvp to be more active with rookies and casuals? IE: More action, more population, more Dev attention, more fixes/buffs/zones? Then don't be a tard, it's that simple.
As for Arena...pfft.
Arena showcases the huge disparity between AT's and Powersets and effectiveness between them (imbalance).
It often completely turns off casuals who wish to pvp with their non-optimized non-fotm AT/Powersets/Builds.
Don't mean to come off, but those two items right there are our ( me, my friends, some casuals I talked to) big complaints.
Masterminds annoy everybody, sooner or later. Heck, Masterminds annoy themselves.
-ShadowsBetween
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My first would be:
The apparent idiocy and lack of any sort of breadth of vision from many PvP'ers concerning making PvP a n00b welcoming environment. If people run off the n00bs and casuals then theyre shortsighted maroons, to be blunt.
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I think this is much less of a problem now then it used to be. I would say that the majority of the kids that talk [censored] in PvP got bored and left. Most of the people that are here now are the ones that actually want PvP to grow because they truly enjoy it. I have only seen one "pwned" in PvP broadcast in the last four months or so, and that person was ridiculed mercilously for being an idiot.
The only person we have left on Virtue that talks [censored] is Black-Op, but we all know how that goes...
I'm glad to hear it, now if Freedom does the same then I'll be impressed.
Masterminds annoy everybody, sooner or later. Heck, Masterminds annoy themselves.
-ShadowsBetween
One more suggestion from me, and anyone who plays Counter-Strike: Source will see it's brilliance. In SG matches, when you observe what are you really looking for? To the average person they see fire being thrown but it looks very complicated as a lot of things are going on. My suggestion would simply remove all observers, and instead you are in looking at what exactly the person in the match see's. Let me explain, I'm Player A fighting Player B. Someone joins the match as an observer and immediatly see's my UI, my Power Trays, HP, and Inspirations. With a click of a button, they would switch to Player B's UI, Power Trays, HP, and Inspirations.
This would be very beneficial because then that observer, who may not know very much about PvP, could see what the basic movements are and how to play. Also, in the PvP SG Ladder, this could be shown to see who is using illegal inspiratiosn or to just get a better view of the match.
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The problem is that the powersets are compensated for having lower damage by receiving secondary effects: -Acc, -End, -rchg, etc.
However, those secondary effects were nerfed for PvP to become nigh-useless.. such as -End for elec/, /elec, and /kin sets (well, except for hero side) as well as in PPPs.
It isn't for lack of balance, it is simply that killing the opponent faster is much more useful than making them hit you less, making it so they run out of endurance in an extended fight, make their attacks recharge slower... mitigation is good, winning is better.
In addition, the dev's seriously need to stop coding balance in INTERCAL.
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the main problem is that they gave mezz to anybody.
the 2 official mezzer usually end to be killed by a stun or a hold launched by a damage dealer.
things are:
-a dom or a contro launch a mezz.
if the victime is a squishy it's ok, dom and control will need some time to kill it, the squishie has the time to eat inspiration or hope for suppression.
if the victime got a mezz protection it's a wasted power.
-a damage dealer that throw a root/stun/hold on a squishy
now their is a problem. as they have the capacity to 2 shot or 3 shot the target they just immobilized.
this lead to mezz being stronger in the hands of damage dealer than in the hands of the AT that were desigend to mezz (and then are weaker in term of burst damage)
a energie blaster can have AIM+BU+PB+bonesmasher/TF which is IMHO a total nonsense.
a spine scrapper/stalker will root easily a dom/contro. but the contray is impossible. for what i know as it's their only defense a root should work better in the hand of a mezzer.
i think we need to come back to the original description of the AT given by the character creation screen.