A re-look at AT Balance

There has been a lot of arguments over how over powered one AT is over each other, how some can solo very well, and others group better and what not. It seems commonly accepted to punish those ATs that group support well by making their solo experience less pleasant. Perhaps we should go back to basics, and really think this through a bit more...

In the beginning there was CoH and it was good....

Giggles, I wanted it to sound a bit Bibilical...

You have two, opposing ATs in overall characteristics: Blaster and Tanker; the rest were hybrids of these two opposits.

The Blaster was damage personified...
The Tanker was the immovable wall...

Both Ats had a balancing disadvantage to their godlike abilities; this were:

Blasters could hit like a Howitser, but had a glass jaw.
Tankers were nearly immune to damage, but hit like a wet noodle.

In time, many tanker players, complained at their lack of damage, and their damage was considerably increased, to the point that Tankers are a pleasure to play in either solo or group format. Tanker powers are in general a splendid mix of high damage resistance, great defenses, superb resistances to status effects, self healing, self rezzing, and often self buffing as well in the form of augmented accuracy and damage.

The Blaster, did not receive a lot of improvement, unlike the tanker, and became a very maligned AT, for while it hit somewhat harder than a tanker (20%), they had little damage resistance, little defense, no status effect protections, and like the tankers they did had a means to buff themselves in the form of augmented accuracy and damage.

I believe at this time, this is not right balance wise. Let me explain my thoughts...

A Tanker does 20% less damage than a Blaster, but a Blaster does not have 20% less protections than a Tanker. This simple lack of symetry is what I am talking about.

While Blasters can achieve some resistance to damage, mainly via auxiliary pools and epics, their overall spectrum damage resistance is maybe about 20% of what a Tank gets to enjoy across the board. So if we were to be fair in the trade off, damage versus resistance, should not the Blaster be afforded better damage resistance, defense, and status effect resistances? Shuld they not be 80% of the tankers? That would mean that if a Tanker is soft capped to 90% damage resistance, should not the Blaster be Softcapped to 80% of the Tanker's 90% soft cap? That would be like a 75% Damage resistance soft cap, and since a Tanker has MAG 12 status effect resistance, should not the blaster have like a 9 MAG resistance?

If we believe that Blasters should not have such formidable defenses, then should they not do much more damage than a tanker does than a mere 20%?

Same argument can be said for Controller and Defender allocations.

While Controllers have holds and Defenders have Debuffs to serve as Pseudo Armor or protection, they are not nearly quite as reliable an deffective as the real thing that Tanks get to enjoy. So neither side should do the same or less damage than a tanker, which unfortunatley Defenders are saddled with. While its true a Kin could debuff the target so its damage would appear to be better, remember that Kin is one build in many as Defendrs go, and that Kin has no resistances of any sort like the good ole Tank does. Also in the case of Controllers and Defenders, their powers work good against minions, but their effectiveness greatly decreases as the mob becomes tougher, such as nearly negleable when fighting say EBs or AVs, while a Tank's defenses are still as good regardless.

If we are going to have fairness in AT class balance, we need to ensure that all the classes have effectively, not paper, capabilities. A Defender's damage should always exceed the damage of a tank, regardless of buffs or debuffs beign present, too many Defenders 'buffs does not even apply to them! having their buffs apply to themselves would be a good thing to happen. Some may say its game unbalancing, I ask how? If a Defender can buff themselves to effectively do Blaster damage, and still hss the same lack of real protections than the Blaster has, where is the unbalance? In effect the only real difference between the Blaster and the Defender, is that the Blaster needs no gimmicks to get its damage, just like the Tanker needs no gimmicks to get its protections; while teh Defener and Controller needs its gimmicks to approach the damage (Defender) as a Blaster or Damage mitigation (Controller) as the Tanker does.

Scrapers are actually a hybrid as well, do more damage for melee range and more protections cause of melee range. I feel Scrapers as a whole are ok, but need to have their Defense abilities raised a bit more.

The table below shows some of the trades, between classes with a sort of symetry to it.
The table shows Resistance soft caps, defense soft cap, status effect MAG resitance, and base damage modifier.
.......................Resistance.....Defense..... MAG......Damage
Tank 90 50 12 0.6
Scraper 75 50 9 0.8
Controller 20 25 6 0.7
Blaster 20 25 6 1.0
Defender 20 25 6 0.8

Now the values are arguable, and really need to be discussed. For example some may question, why the Defedner have 80% damage effectiveness. One must consider their so called defenses, are not 100% reliable, their opposition does not start debuffed, the effects of debuffing takes several rounds to accumulate and be effective, and such debuffs are not as significant as mobs increase in toughness, Lts, Boss, EB, AV. Some may say, the Defender can buff, the reply, sure they buff everybody but themselves! and the number of buffs they can give themselves once more is not that much more effective or exciting.

Something that is worth mentioning, is there should be an overall capability measure, say 1. Each class regardless of AT, when the day is over, all should have a 1 effectiveness. It should not matter if they have 100% reliable defenses, 60% reliable defenses, 20% reliable defenses, 100% damaging capability or what not. What matters as you investigate each mix, that final result is 1.

The issue is how much weight you give the Tankers protections, they are there all the time, they protect the same versus AVs, EBs, etc.

How much weight you give to the Controllers' holds as an equivalent protection? The hold, has to hit, is not automatic hit, it has to affect the creature, unlike some ATs, MOBs have resistances to Status Effects. A Boss with MAG 3, can't be held by a Controller within one or 2 tries, will the Controller live long enough to hold the boss before being pummeled to death? Surely the weight of a Hold when compared to the Tanker's resistance can not be the same, and should be less, but how much more less?

In the same vein, the Defender Debuff, does not even have the stopping action of a hold, so it in itself is even weaker, so in the great scheme of things, what should the Defender's protection weight should be? Obviously less than the Tanker and Controller.

The Blaster don't really get Controller or Defender abilities, what si this lack of defenses worth in the grand scheme?

The above assortment of defensive abilities, need to be matched with damage so at the end of the day, the balance is there and fair.

If we were to say for instance that Tanker defense is 1, Controller Defense is 0.8, Defender Defense is 0.6 and Blaster Defense is 0.4, it could easily set the damage bvariations to be: Blaster damage 1, Defender Damage 0.8, Controller Damage 0.6 and Tanker 0.4.

Once more this are just cookie cutter numbers, there is likely other considerations to be taken.

Hugs

Stormy

There's really too much here to get into, so I'm going to have to pick and choose what I respond to. Sorry about that.

Don't forget that tanker damage was only ever increased from 75% damage scale to 80%.

That's not much. That's not significant, but it was enough.

Aett and the others have covered it. "Balance" needs to be in context of both teams and solo play, but team play balance is the more important, imo. Anything more to say has been covered by the previous posters. I like the way it is now.

I have read some very good replies, but...

I don't believe an AT should be punished for its superb team support abilities, at the expense of soloing.

1. I stand on the belief all ATs should be very good at both solo and team settings.

2. I also stand on the belief that being both good at solo and team are compatible.

Lets me address my first belief, while certain AT approaches can make it easier to solo than others, it should be cosmetic not drastic. I still point the amount of damage a tank can resist or avoid is consistent and reliable, the Controller and Defender's damage mitigation is not. The fact of having less reliable damage mitigation powers than a tanker, demands a balancing ability of some sort, that actually works, so they can both solo and group as well as the tank.

I saw a poster wisely noted: If a Blaster had all those protections, why would they need a group? Great observation; question: Why does a tanker need a group today? They don't.
Don't believe me? Wait till I16 comes out, and watch how many lonely tanks at group equivalents of 8 going at it, that should prove the point...Some solo to group balance, ah? If you want to farm, do you have a hard time deciding between a Defender and your Tanker? While the question is plainly sarcastic, no one in their right mind would solo farm with a Defender (there are some very special exceptions), the Tanker avenue is much more user friendly and reliable. In fact, I would contend that both the Tanker and Scraper are excellent examples of ATs that does both Solo and Team wonderfully well. I think its time, all the other ATs could do both Solo and Group just as wonderfully well, and I am now including corruptors, dominators, etc.

Now, if we are going to be so group minded, and say that should rule over solo ability, then use the solo nurf bat across the board then. Why should a Tank require MAG 12 status effect when solo? Why should a tank has such high soft cap damage resitance when solo?, why should a tank has such high defense soft caps when solo? How you justify these really nice level of abilities, why should a tank be able to self rez? self heal? where is the dependence here?

Lol half of the defenders primary powers does not even apply to them as is, while a tanker's primary powers are all fully useful in both solo and group settings, is this truly fair?

Just some food for thought...

Hugs

Stormy

The tanker wants a team because he solos slower, on average, than higher damage ATs. The blaster wants a team because he has a higher risk of death than more defensive ATs. The scrapper wants a team because the team is more likely to be able to keep him alive than his being well-rounded will. The controller wants a team because he is much more effective with allies, and he is a proficient force multiplier. The defender wants a team because his force multiplication powers do not function on himself, because he knows that he makes a team much more effective.

The team wants a tanker because a tanker will, with the support of the rest of the team, be able to survive encounters as pointman. The team wants a blaster because the blaster's ability to defeat its enemies will enhance the team's ability to survive, its rate of completion, and its ability to defeat extremely difficult enemies. The team wants a scrapper because it will do significant damage with a minimum of outside support. The team wants a controller because a spawn that is unable to fight back is unable to kill it, and because the controller will enhance its ability to kill it. The team wants a defender, because the defender will greatly enhance the team's ability to survive and to defeat its enemies.

The tanker's protections extend only to himself, instead of the entire team. The defender/controller/corruptor can make seven people extremely scary, but not himself - this is why buff/debuff is allowed to be so potent, precisely because it requires outside support to reach its full potential.

Or are you proposing that buff/debuff should be eviscerated as well?

Lastly, an AT shouldn't be punished for its ability to solo, especially when its abilities in a team are somewhat limited.

I am seeing some good replies and others are just replying to be negative, regardless...

The fundamental disagreement is, some believe that some ATs should be made to be subservient to others in the form of a support class, and as a reward for that, they will be very good at being subservient/support, and very, very mediocre at solo. A paradigm I do not subscribe to, while correctly stated by others current developers do subscribe to (that does not make the practice automatically right, even the terrorists at 911 had a good reason in their minds for what they did; but we would be reluctant to agree with them, for it).

Incidentally, I believe a reason for forums, is because developers are not beyond making mistakes or having bad ideas, and thus forums are there for players to post recommendations for change, as I am doing here.

The game was not initially designed as a two class of hero, the real hero and the support character. It was designed were different styles of power sets would complement each other, so that the final effect would be an effect greater than the sum of the components. It did not had, the philosophy of "great Group AT, therefore mediocre Solo AT", it was originally an any AT can solo great, and team even better.

Many of the replies above, tells about the good reasons why different ATs should want to group, and all those reasons are very good. But not one, really justifies why should one or more ATs should be handicapped more than others, because their powers lend themselves for group support better than others.

I recall a poster saying tankers wants groups so they can be buffed to kill mobs faster, why? If we are a team, is it not the function of the Scraper and Blaster to do the fast killing and not the tank?


Another one, perhaps being a bit of a smart allec, used my statement that as a Defender I could solo, and thus shoot myself on the foot. If this was not malicious, then the statement was issued with out much thought behind it or shows a lack of willingness in trying to understand the other side of the argument; but then not all of us can be diplomats either, ha ha ha. Sure a Defender can solo, but most watch extra, extra, extra carefully how they approach a group and execute their battle at all times, a mistake and oversight on a dozen or so conditions will result with certain death, something a Tanker never has to worry about at all, not even 1 condition. When I fight EBs with a Tanker, sure it takes me a bit of time, to take them down, while a Blaster (if not held, stunned, etc) may defeat the EB quicker, yet with a Defender, which when I do engage an EB, my damage is so comically low (Dark/Storm) and the effects of my debuffs so marginal, that its simply boring to take him down, is kinda like the Defender's version of Reichman; but I do recognize I can take him down, but the time differentials are too great and simply not just.

Hugs

Stormy

Huh?

My Rad/Sonic DEFENDER takes great offense at your position that he cannot solo effectively. When his build is finished he will be capable of killing Giant Monsters....by himself.

There are outliers in every AT, that happens to be just one of them. Against a single hard target my Rad/Sonic defender is almost invincible, but against large groups he is vulnerable, because there is no guarantee that his debuffs (which are what give him that ability versus a hard target) will affect all of the mobs in it. A Tanker is great against a large group of less powerful enemies, but his damage output is low enough that he will be in a stalemate against most hard targets.

Point being, both of the characters mentioned there are extremely good at one thing, while having difficulty with what the other excels at. They are balanced in that. If you combine the two of them, you now have a duo that excels at both things.

Now add a Fire/Fire blaster into the mix, giving you: Invuln/Axe Tanker, Rad/Sonic Defender, Fire/Fire blaster. I've covered what the first two are good at, what that blaster is good at is killing a lot of targets at once, but he lacks mitigation, making him vulnerable to their counter-attacks. The tank directs enemy fire toward himself, which keeps the blaster and defender safe. The defender makes the enemy weaker, which helps keep the tank and blaster safe. Not having to worry about reprisal, the blaster is now free to level his full power against the enemy, rather than taking defensive measures, which defeats them faster, thereby keeping the tank and defender safe.

Alone, each character is good at a particular thing and all 3 can solo.

Together, both their safety AND speed of defeating enemies increase by a large margin.

I don't know about you, but I'd call that balance.

Once more I seen some great posts, especially well backed up, not just a cheap shot.

If I ruffled some feathers, I extend to you my apologies...

Aett made a very strong case, in which there is a large variety of capabilities within each AT, the issue capability may not be present in certain AT combos, while others do have issues. Thus making an in-between ATs balancing more difficult to obtain, and in this case even to discuss.

It is an extremely valid point, that while trying to improve the weaker within an AT combo woes, the stronger within the AT combo would suddenly grow unbalanced. That is fixing the EMP to have more teeth, would truly unbalance say a Kin, Rad or Sonic who has plenty of teeth.

I hear the balance at the time to be "ok" in the game, status-quo, as a rule is always ok, especially for those used to it, in fact many of us go thru life accepting things as they are, simply because thats how its always been, and frankly does not occurs to us that there may be another better way.

When I hear balance, we all too easily agree that Scrapers, Blasters, Tankers, Controllers, and Defenders are more solo effective in this order. We are used to this, and we find it acceptable, but think of how quickly a Scraper can clear alone a mission, and the time it would take a Controller to do the same, also regard the level of difficulty they both can do it. A Controller's hold, is less likely to work, and remain (when it does work) as the mob level increases and rank of the mob as well (try holding an EB solo versus say a minion). I believe the time to do this, should be roughly the same, give or take say 15%, for both and truly any AT.

Another poster, wisely mentioned the word "Risk". Now that is truly a very good measure as well. A Scraper has excellent damage resistance, good defenses, and good status effect resistances; they can walk into any room and clear it out, with minimal risk (unless its a malta room full of zappers). Yet they can walk into a room, and go, oh my, there are more than I thought, and get out safely, break aggroe and re-address their approach. Now take the Controller, if they waltz into a room (big mistake for the AT), they are going to get pounded, status effect: held, immobilize, stun, etc). To survive the mistake, they may have enough time to click a break-free and maybe still live long enough to get out of the room and break aggroe, and then wisely re-look at their approach. Notice that for the Controller, they had to rely on an inspiration, something the Scraper did not. The Scraper's armor, defense, mag status effect resistance is always there for them and works against all comers; the Controllers holds, have in general to successfully hit the target, and the target has to fail to resist the hold. If the targt is a minion, hitting them is normally not much of an issue, and holding them is fairly reliable; as we go up the chain of command, the hitting becomes increasingly less reliable, and the chances of holding them also becomes much less reliable. Thus the Controller, unlike the Scraper, must really approach each room with a much higher degree of cautioness than the Scraper; thus it should be evident that the Controller is at a higher risk than the Scraper in my opinion. Once survivability is handled, so the AT can deal in damaging their opponents, the Scraper hits hard, very hard. Yet here is were the diveristy in Controllers make comparison difficult, a Fire/Kin will area abuse the mobs and deal with the room much faster than the Scraper will ever hope for, but take a Gravity/Storm Controller and now the Scraper is faster at it. Tough as AETT mentioned to balance this situation.

An issue that comes from this is simply: "Because there is an AT combo that works well, we don't dare to do anything for those that does not?"

Some have addressed this question, by simply stating "Yes". The rationale is somewhat acceptable, it goes to the trade off, I don't buy, they can't solo as well, but watch them group support!

If you think about it, what I am asking as a rebalance, is not really a total departure of the roles and functions of the class, just adjustments for the AT power sets, so the Solo mission completion times are roughly equivalent. It can be done, and not be game unbalancing. Its a matter of thinking each set through. For instance, the Defenders secondary, their damage dealing, does not need to be as good as the blaster, but really, does it need to be the weakest in the game? Why not let the Defedner be the back-up Blaster when no Blasters are available? I believe someone suggested Tanks needed the damage ability if there were no Blasters available, kinda like a stop gap thing (which is a good idea, incidentally, but the stop gap abilities needs to be given to other classes as well)

In the case of the defenders, nurfing their damage with a 0.6 modifier is too much, sure they should be weaker than a blaster, but must also be weaker than a tanker?

Blaster with the abusive use of status effects, became extremely weak, since practically all mobs basically had status effects at snipe range, so finally their Defiance was changed , so at least they could continue fighting at a reduced effectiveness level.

I believe the devs, know there are problems with the current balance, but as most of us, not sure how to address it without breaking the balance.

I doubt as a whole, that AT wide corrections would work, as AETT pointed out, ATs have too much performance disparities among them. So perhaps the answer is in the power sets themselves, that may need adjustments. For example the 0.6 damage penalty could be adjudicated to Rad, Kin, Sonic primary defenders, and a 0.8 to the other defender types, who don't have real means to boost their damage. Tankers have great variations, Fire Tankers have a lot of issues that really needs to be addressed for instance, issues that needs to be addressed at the fire primary and not as AT wide compensations.

Hugs

Stormy

no changes need to be made. even the book that comes with the game says that some power sets are easier to solo with and some work better with a team. and honestly, the devs won't take the time to try to program a modifier for certain powers sets if you take a certain power set to go along with it, as per your example in your last paragraph.

Penny, you have some very valid points, but lets talk about the controller a bit...

Yes, as you said "Once" the controller holds the mob down, its cake. You are absolutely right, and could not be more right. But the key word is "Once", thats the catch I been talking about all this time with regards the Controllers' use of hold as their means of protection, when compared to the tankers and scrappers protections that provides the benefit without condition. But what happens to the controllers, when they are trying to get to the "once" held situation? Sure a one shot hold on a minion is assured, as if they posed any serious threat to the Controller, but a Boss with MAG 6 status effect protection will require the controller, given she hits the boss 3 times in a row to finally affect the boss; what you call those 2 rounds of helpleness? I will give you this, its actually a bit exciting, wondering if you will live long enough to get the next hold attempt.

The melee classes protections are unconditionally present and working, and have in general no worries at all from status effects. The other classes' protections are all conditionals, and don't even have any status effect protections. These are huge differentials! No wonder Scrapers can say, the Freakshow's status effects are too weak, and thus both Tankers and Scrapers are calling these mobs weak and unchallenging. Often the players calling for tougher and more challenging content are usually melee classes, and they are right, perhaps these classes are too ubber and as a result the mobs are too weak, while other non-ubber classes experience a much greater risk and challenge, and may not be too crazy about making the mobs even tougher.

Penny its tough to balance things out, the ATs themselves have too many shades of grey, which is both a terrific strength (variety) and a horrid weakness (ability discrepancy). A poster said, its too much work for the devs to address each class power set at a time, probably true, the issue is more work for the devs to do, but I never thought of them as lazy, and perhaps the adjustments needed are not as devastating work wize as we may think. Yet the possibility of all classes soloing being able to roughly being able to complete missions in the same amount of time is possible, why not pursue it? Maybe leveling out the challenge may also be a good thing, won't you say?

Hugs

Stormy

DPS is the factor here. some at's do more dps then others. oh well. the at's are fine as they are. as for the comment about it may be less work then we think, im going to guess that you have no idea about programming code. also not to mention, how many bugs this would throw into the system and break it causing sever down times. ever heard the saying, if it isn't broke don't try to fix it? that very much applies here. at's are designed differently for a reason. if they weren't this would be called City of Tankmages. not a game i would want to play and definately not a game the developers wanted to make.

I've read over this and see no point to his idea of "balancing". The current game is balanced as it is across the ATs.

Stormy (if I may call you that ),

Controllers use more than 1 hold: AOE hold and other goodies in their primary like a pet (32+) and immobilizes PLUS a secondary to mitigate damage/etc. Scrappers don't have all those tools and I don't limit my playstyle to a single hold. How do you balance the effects of Crush to Smite? Wormhole to Midnight Grasp? Lift to Shadow Maul? What about other sets like Fire melee, Claws, Broadsword, Katana to Earth, Fire, Ice control sets?

Have you ever heard of Ill/rad controllers and what they can do? It would be great if my scrapper could do what that type of controller does.

And of course, scrappers, tanks, and the other ATs red side (you can't forget red side if GR truly means side-switching) have constant status protection. In all honesty, please answer me that if they didn't, what fun would a tank have rushing in to absorb the alpha strike and taunting the mobs to attack them if they were held all day long?

Some toons are good solo and some are good for teams. That is the balance already built in the game.

And what is with this time to complete missions? Take a toon like my ice/ice tanker which has a very slow time to complete a mission and put her on a team with a bunch of blasters and watch how fast missions go. Or my dark/therm corr vs. my fire/rad corr? The latter rolls over mobs compared to the former but they are the SAME AT. How about my fire/rad corr vs. my ice/cold corr, which has holds in the primary? My son/kin corr is pretty fast too compared to my WS or my ice tank but is slow compared to my Widow.

Does changing tohit debuff mean increasing damage or lessening recharge time? Where do other secondary effects like -rech, -regen, -res, +def, +res, etc. all fit in to balance?

Edit:
Stormy,

There have been changes to ATs - blasters, stalker, khelds, and lately doms. Specific powers/sets have been tweaked (aka the perpetual regen nerf , ET animation, /EA, etc.). I feel (and hope you agree) that the devs are *always* looking at ATs and powers/sets in relation to their vision of the game. If balances need to occur, then specifics should be brought up (Like ice/ tanks can't perform the same feats as all other tanks therefore ice/ tanks need X, Y, Z suggested changes). Saying balance ATs is just too vast to figure a balance out IMO.