Mezz Protection for All!

Sounds more like a possibility on a Dominator set. Control/Weapon. Or something.

And yes, viva la diversity.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Sword + Pistol obviously, once dual pistols rolls out. Ranged attacks from pistol, melee from katana.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Not that hard to find at all, really. Just look at the patch notes on Paragon Wiki.

here's a list of them.
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Category:Patch_Notes

But at the same time, they removed what made Rad Blast stand out when they proliferated it. The first two attacks were standardized to match most of the rest of the tier 1 and 2 attacks in other blast sets for blasters. Yes, the DPA of those two attacks was dirt, but I was hoping they'd find a more creative solution that didn't destroy the feel of the set like standardization did.

Now it's just a rather lackluster AoE set. It doesn't outshine Archery or Fire Blast in AoEs, and it's pretty much 100% standard in the single-target department. All it's got going for it is the debuffs and the stun on CB.

While I would have personally preferred a different approach to handling NB and X-Ray, I would say that your adjectives to describe blaster Rad Blast do not match my experience playing blaster Rad Blast. Just because they altered the set to make it more appropriate for blasters does not in any way make the game more generic.

Personally I don't mind powerset proliferation, or at least the idea of it. When I was mentioning normalization I was pointing out specific scenarios (pet recharge, for example, which despite its intentions has not had a positive effect on any of my characters and has resulted in several hundred million inf wasted buying purples on my MM). In theory, powerset proliferation is nice because it opens powersets to different ATs so you can play the same powerset again but it feels different because of the nuances of each individual AT. Defenders, Corruptors, and Blasters all have access to Sonic Attacks but due to the way those ATs combine powersets, damage modifiers, and inherents, the way the character plays is different even if they're using the same powers. My only qualm with powerset proliferation is messing with powersets when they're being proliferated - Psi Blast got hosed badly when it was proliferated to Blasters and Rad Blast, while not quite so bad a port, got "normalized" as well.

I'd have been happy with changing the recharges to 3 and 6 seconds (well, I'd much rather have had them left alone in the port but ah well, I expected something was going to change). The consequence of the port to Blasters is the set looks the same and they're the same powers, but it doesn't feel the same. You're playing Rad, but it doesn't feel like the Rad you've played before on Defenders and Corruptors - I had lots of fun with my Rad/EM during closed beta before they adjusted the recharge times, couldn't stand to play it afterward, and seeing a few higher-level Rad Blasters in action on the live servers has only cemented my decision to stick with Fire/EM instead of making a Rad/EM.

In a more on-topic note, I maintain that bringing back base raids and the CoP trial (and by association Items of Power) will qualm the issues players are having about mez protection. Get a sufficiently powerful SG base and enough SG members together and run the CoP trial until you get the Monument of Iron IoP, stick it in your base, and as long as you're in SG mode you've got mag 3 status protection (hold, immob, sleep, and stun) for all your SG members.

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

If I'm understanding you right you're already herding rikti - lvl 54 Rikti - something most scrappers (the forum scrappers who herd rikti into pylons and then burn them down aren't indicative of most scrappers who play the game) have trouble doing. You're doing it without mez protection and you're using that as an example of why having mez protection would help?

In that situation having mez protection would help, but it's not something that someone should expect to get. Overall this IS a team game and while they've made it easier to solo, and opened up new solo *challenges* (+2 x8 isn't supposed to be moar xp mode, it's supposed to be HARD). So if you're already at least moderately successful on something that's supposed to be really really difficult, in this case even fighting lvl 54 Rikti, (something we used to not even be able to do at all in missions) then why do you need mez protection?

Hey, Stalkers are okie dokie. I like my DM/Nin, even though nobody ever wants a stalker for anything and think they suck. A real shame horrible players flocked to it for the l33t 1-shot Assassin Strike for looooooolpvp, and gave the entire AT a reputation it never recovered from even after Castle was forced to give buffs since Banes/Night Widows would've completely eclipsed the old gimpier stalkers.

Ninjitsu on a scrapper would be pretty awesome though. Love how it's far less tight than an /SR. No real reason you can't have *good guy* ninjas. Especially not when you'll have goodguy Ninja MMs in GR. Heck, good guy *demon summoning* MMs in GR...

I seriously doubt Cathedral of Pain will ever be done. That's just a promised part of CoV that Statesman never lived up to, and Posi is like 'yeah, we're not doing that' after he got promoted. I'd love to see what the trial was going to be like just sans Items of Power reward, though. Unless it was just going to be a massive zerg rush of Rularuu inside the big death star room or something, like a respec reactor room on crack. Man, blueside respecs are boring.

The actual issue with Stalkers is that they don't excel at anything in particular. The only thing they can do really well is kill one (possibly two) enemies very fast. Then they have to scrap.

In order to be good at killing one or two enemies very fast, they lose AoE prowess. Of the four melees, they have less AoE potential than all of them. Some of the sets, like Energy Melee, have no AoEs at all.

They don't fit in the standard progression of the four melees. Specifically, Stalkers do too little damage for their defense. It's my belief that the more defense an AT has, the less damage it should do. That should be a logical progression, but instead it looks like this:

Most defense to least:
Tanker
Brute*
Scrapper
Stalker

* = Brutes have the same values as Scrappers, but have more HP. They also have higher caps. I have a Brute that can self-cap S/L resist with an accolade. Without it, she can still hit 82%. No Scrapper can do that.

Most damage to least:
Brute
Scrapper
Stalker
Tanker

Stalkers do 1.00 damage with 10% crit rate. Scrappers do 1.125 with 5% crit rate (more on various powers, but 5% basic). With those values, Scrappers do 118.125% damage and Stalkers do 110%. Stalkers DO get higher crit values while teaming, but in teams their value is lessened because they have less AoEs. Their BU also does less of a boost.

If Stalkers are supposed to be the single-target kings, their damage should reflect that. They should have at least a damage scale of 1.125. This would allow them to "scrap" for more damage than Scrappers, at the expense of less defense and less AoEs. Really, it just makes sense. They have less defense, so they should do more damage. Stalkers should be that step between Blaster and Scrapper. Instead, they're there defensively but nowhere near there offensively, except for that first burst. A +100% from BU instead of +80% might help, but between those two things, AS might need to be tweaked slightly.

Stalkers are still unpopular even after the buff. I doubt it's the reputation they carry. Doms were unpopular except for the high-end permadom builds. Now they're quite popular. Stalkers are unpopular because other ATs do everything they do better.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Except be Ninjas

In all seriousness, it's mostly true. I love my Claws/Ninja stalker, but I do hate it at times when he feels somewhat useless on teams where we're not wailing on a big AV or somesuch. The good thing about Claws is that it has a ranged component, and Ninja adds in some nice litte tricks.

An increase in base damage would be very nice, especially given the major lack of AoEs in Stalkers. My Biggest gripe is Eviscerate in Claws. Seriously, the HORRIBLE animation, for a single target attack? It used to be a cone, what the heck was wrong with that...?

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

This is why an ElM Stalker is good. Like any Stalker, AS is there for hard targets. The rest of the time, it's all about the AoEs, with LR not taking you out of Hide.

Either getting buffs or gulping some insps first before starting the herd really helps. Having 1 level of mez protection would be *nice* but wouldn't break the game. If you do it wrong no amount of mez protection is going to save you. Dead is dead.

Herding with a troller is far different than herding with a tank, it's not very easy to last toe to toe, so you've got to use the environment and your teammates as ways to help you out. Doesn't break the team aspect of the game either, it just makes your team work better when done right.

On the face of it, proliferation has the theoretical idea of expanding sets to get people the toys that they want. Unfortunately, the flip side of it is that people start comparing individual powers and the devs are forced to normalize those powers to make them comparable, without proper justification to power differentiation amongst a whole set.

This also has the added incentive from a developer perspective since normalization of powers makes it easier to balance those powers for other purposes, like PvP. Whilst this is a good thing to make gameplay more predictable, it has the hidden effect of making the different sets more similar than different.

An example would be troller powers, confuse and deceive were normalized in time to become equivalent, although it could be justified that they should have different activation times (as they were previous) since they are attached to different power sets (mind and illusion). It is harder to consider the overall powers sets in their totality when there is pressure to make the individual powers across the sets act similarly.

That means that some great powers from one set won't get ported across to another due to problematic build issues (ie. being overpowered). While there are justifiable reasons to do so, pulling out some signature powers and substituting them with power that 'fit' more in line with the AT they are being ported to runs the risk of making proliferation more of a dress up a powerset exercise as something new.

IE, imagine fulcrum shift on a /kin MM. Reducing the buff would really reduce the demand that people have for proliferation of /kin to MMs. Speed boost already stopped affecting recharge on pets...hence my extreme reservation about powerset proliferation.

That is the opposite of conformity. When proliferating powers the devs are being wise enough to see how they fit into their relative ATs and making adjustments as necessary. Rather than just keeping things the same, they make changes.

I don't even know what your last sentence is supposed to mean. Are you trying to say that +recharge affecting pets was changed because of fears of eventual /Kin MMs? It was changed because of AI issues and they wanted to eliminate Hastened/Speed Boosted Lighting Storm and Volcanic Gasses (amongst other powers).

I also do not have to imagine FS on a MM. Since you can do it right now, I have seen it.

Inspirations or not, you still did one of the hardest things in this game on an AT that's not built to take that kind of aggro, on an enemy that mezzes....a lot. There aren't too many things, even in the end game that are THAT hard to do. Sure there are tricky enemy groups, but in a game built to team, it's already amazingly friendly to solo.

Of your changes to mez protection, I could, to some extent, agree, but that's a game design problem and not applicable at this point. IF you could enact those changes to mez protection then I would think about arguing for scaling mez protection out. There's one other problem I have with your inherent mez protection for squishies and that's a fairly minor problem. Scrappers have to, sometimes, wait for lvl 16 for their mez protection. Why should squishies get it right away? And how do you balance, say, defenders, when teams with 3+ buffers/debuffers already absolutely destroy content....is it even possible to encode a power that acts differently on a team than it does solo?

For all this talk about powerset generalization, this would start genericizing (spelled wrong I'm sure and I dont' want to look it up) AT's. Solo, a scrapper doesn't have much of an achellies heel, but in a team environment, defenders, controllers, blasters, even tankers, do much better than that AT does. So after this mez protection is enacted, and scrappers start asking for more of a role on teams, do we give it to them?

I guess I just don't understand why you would even need it. Yes, it's harder to solo on the different AT's than on a scrapper, but I've always felt like I had more to do on a team with all the other Archetypes. Scrappers have one mode, and yes it's a fun mode, but the other AT's are far far more dynamic. Mag 4 Mez protection makes me pretty much unmezzable except for some of the absolute worst foes (some of which are a nightmare on scrappers too) on my MM. Why does a Rad defender, who already has a whole lot of tools to neuter foes need mez protection?

Mag 1 stun will tend to last for...what? Coupla seconds? Tops?

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Don't care. It drops my offensive toggle and then I'm dead. It is really aggravating when it is some minion dressed up like a rent a cop. I know, there are legions of players that don't have problems with this when they play a defender, and they don't even consider it playing if it isn't set for +4/8. I do, and don't mind admitting it.

I don't have any problems if minions can't stun. When they can, and I'm out of breakfrees, I tend to die.

Let me, as a defender, get an extra +1 mag against stunning, so that the sucker punch from a stray minion doesn't lead to a concrete kiss. If I get overwhelmed by a flock of them, then that's my bad. I can get an extra mag against holds, and the bad AI when you are slept (AI tends to ignore you, and my toggle recharges) does me ok when I get snoozed. Its the adhoc minion stun that isn't ramping up my fun factor.

Yeah, target all the Rikti first! Oh, wait...you say "the mezzer" as if there's only ever one.

Targeting mezzers first only works when the entire group doesn't have some sort of mez. In the late game, it's fairly common for most enemies to have mezzes of some sort, so you have to target the worst mezzer and hope all the others don't screw you over.

Seriously, name all the late-game villain groups where 50% of all enemies don't have mezzes. My main argument is that mezzes are over-used in the late game. The easiest way to rectify this is to give squishies a bit of mez protection in their APPs.

It's also worth noting that popping a breakfree doesn't mean infinite protection. When a lot of mezzes are being thrown at you or when a very long mez is present, one isn't always enough.

I'm uncertain how an offensive toggle dropping can lead to death. Can you explain?

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Glad to oblige.

Say I'm running a toggle that is blanketing my targets in a yucky black cloud that makes them miss. A lot. Then I get stunned, and the yucky black cloud she's a go "poof" and they start hitting me again. It takes suprisingly few of those hits to be dead. Sure, my self heal can keep me alive, if it hits. Suprisingly how often those "ifs" can come home to roost. I always seem to come up with the fuzzy end of the 5% chance.