Why do HEATs feel like fail?

To the person who had this to say:

Quote:

Odd. I thought gaming was about having fun and wasting time.

Clearly you are probably quite miserable when you feel your gaming sessions are a waste of time.

I hope you feel better knowing you deducted rep points.

Personally, I think the next hero Epic should be Longbow, and the next Villains epic should be Arachnoids. That way everyone could be frustrated equally.

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho

I would much rather see Vanguard as the next Epic classes (Wizards FTW!). They can even cross sides easily.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

I think the next EAT should be something new and not rehashed. Ohohoho.

And on the subject of Shadow Cysts - I no longer fear them, after watching an uncoordinated sewer team at level 6~ take one down without trouble.

I think that in summation of this thread, we should all agree that whether or not any AT is a failure or success, is a matter of perception and since perception is also a matter of context and context is a matter of direction, and direction is a matter of will, people who wish to perceive a certain AT as a failure will always find reasons to do so, and people who wish to perceive that AT as a success will find reasons to do so.

THE END.

Here we go again.

If I had freedom to fiddle with the HEATs, there are a few design decisions I would definitely reconsider. The first form unlocking at 6, the second unlocking at 20, and other key powers coming available relatively late makes the low level HEAT experience rather unrepresentative of the set's potential. As often as the complaint is made that the level 24 branching on the VEATs basically requires you to level a character entirely unlike what you will eventually become, I would say from my experience on my warshade that at several levels (notably 6, 20, 32, and 38) the powers that became available so thoroughly changed the potential of the character that a respec would have been welcome.

Once you get Nova, whatever human form attack powers you picked up and perhaps slotted to get you through the first 5 levels are obviated, and those slots would be better put into the Nova attacks. Then, once Dwarf form becomes available and mez starts to become common, a Dwarf focused build becomes attractive. Then Stygian Circle makes you regret picking up Fitness, and then Gravitic Emanation makes you regret dropping Nova as you now have an AoE mez to disable enemies before blasting them. Then you get Dark Extraction, and Dwarf-tanking with fluffies in tow starts looking hot again. But at 38, you get Eclipse, and tada, human or nova form becomes as tough as Dwarf (aside from the mez issue, of course).

Obviously this is an entertaining progression to some people, but the point is that while there's certainly a fair amount of build flexibility in a Warshade who has access to all their powers, that flexibility is not at all in evidence at the start, and the radical shifts in the AT's capability through the levels can be very confusing to anyone who has experience with any of the other ATs, whose sets tend to be directed along the same line from first to last tier. There's diversity, sure, but the first few powers in most sets tend to set the tone of what the character will be doing for their entire career, and are generally useful all the way to 50. Even VEATs with their level 24 branching tend to keep several key powers from their primary and secondary, or equivalent powers in their branched forms. After several key levels, however, a Warshade can happily discard the powers that have been key to their play up to that point, and continue on using powers that were completely irrelevant until that point.

I don't know how it goes for Peacebringers as I haven't played one to the level where I can speak on the point, but my experience with a Warshade made me glad that I had a pile of vet respecs to burn on rebuilding the character with each successive change, and I'm not done yet. This wouldn't be a design problem at all if the game were more generous with respecs, but the way they are awarded is consistent with the idea that they should be needed perhaps once or twice in a character's progression to 50, mainly to fix egregious mistakes. The position that Warshade power progression puts players into is whether they want to 1) use respecs, 2) have a build that looks like an egregious mistake until they get the key power that makes it work, or 3) have a build that looks like an egregious mistake after they get the key power that obviates everything that comes before it.

Of course, there is no obvious solution to this problem. The enormously effective, game-changing powers sprinkled through the Warshade sets are padded out with a wide variety of other powers which can be described as anything from situational to just plain sub-par, and frontloading the strong powers would result in a bizarre and unworkable power progression. Putting Nova and Dwarf as level 1 picks would not go amiss since the forms are so key to the overall AT strategy; allowing a respec into one or more form powers at 24 would let you rebuild your human form power selections around your form choice, although it's really not possible to evaluate the effectiveness of human form as a whole until the game changing powers at 26, 32, and 38 become available.

Now I'm just going on and on, though. TLDR: Warshades change a lot as they level, and their build flexibility isn't revealed until all their powers become available, before which building toward certain goals doesn't result in a functional character.

Here (as predicted) we go again.

As is often the case, EvilRyu has stated his case in an inflammatory and questionably factual manner. As is often the case, he has provoked a response that is likewise inflammatory and also makes some statements that I would consider questionably factual. Heat will be produced, but no light. Nothing of consequence will be determined, and all parties will walk away sore in the hindquarters.

Or we could stop pretending that Khelds are either fatally flawed or absolutely perfect, and recognize that their current design, both good and bad aspects, emerge from a simpler time when the devs had not the faintest clue what they were doing. VEATs are what they are by design; Khelds are what they are largely by accident.

You can even see the tool marks of design processes from a simpler time if you look closely.
Soft AoE mez with recharge in accordance with a pre-nerf Troller? Check!
Stackable pets with fixed lifetimes on enhanceable summon timers? Check!
Attacks with DPAs all over the map, as if the people who made them had no idea that DPA was important? Check!
Chance of knockback being treated as if it were a useful effect? Check!
Several powers that seem designed around the particular pairings of enhancement that HOs provide? Check!
An inherent that rewards joining teams, but provides no incentive (and several disincentives, however mild one might claim them to be) for anyone to invite you? Check!

HEATs are the product of Emmert's throw-in-whatever's-cool design philosophy just as surely as VEATs are the product of Posi/Castle/BAB's more deliberate, knowledgeable, and analytical approach. Which one you prefer will probably depend most on how much you like puzzles - but HEATs can't be considered a well designed puzzle because they were barely designed at all, and to the extent that they were, their current usage bears only the barest resemblance to the intended one.