If you could cancel the Cottage Rule. . .

Aha...
Ahahaha.
KAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!

No. Just no. Invul and Ninjitsu are fine. They are MORE than fine. If you're really finding them hard to play...well, I'll keep on laughing, frankly.

Turn into a Log. A LOG. Rather than a PBAoE secondary Placate and a -hit, confuse and -preception power? Im sorry, what was it you were smoking again?

As for Invul...still my favourite solid armour set. Theres nothing wrong with it. Unless you, like, dont take most of the powers or something equally daft.

Fix/tweak stone, dark and fire armours sure. Especially the horrible KB and immob holes in fire and dark. But leave the decent sets alone, m'kay?

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.

There are very few sets that actually suffer for having a snipe, and some people really like them. For some reason. I don't have to like them myself to see other people liking them as a good enough reason to keep them. It's a different issue if a set, thanks to power order or trying to do too many things, or whatever reason, actually suffers from having a snipe, but I can't think of any blast sets that are bad, but would be fine if you replaced the snipe with something else. If it's not broken, don't fix it. If it is broken, make sure that what you're planning to change will actually fix it, then fix it. Only on Dominators are the snipes truly anywhere near broken, because only on Dominators is their utility so tiny and their presence in sets when something of greater utility could be present instead so damaging.

IMHO.

I'm sorry, but what is it that people are smoking today?
Invulnerability is one of the best armour sets in the game. It has a solid self heal/+ HP, good res from the get go and a good +def aura. Add in Tough and Weave and you are laughing at about 90% of the mobs in the game. IOs just make it even more godly.

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.

Where in my statement that Invuln is fine and doesn't need to be buffed do you find sufficient disagreement with your own sentiment that Invuln is excellent and doesn't need to be buffed to warrant a suggestion that I'm smoking something?

Never had problems with Crey, Arachnos, Nemesis or Carnies with my Tank. Rikti hurt, but they hurt whoever you are on, espoecially Chief Soldiers by dint of doing ungodly ammounts of sword damage. Longbow res grenades I concur with, but they are at least locational.

Dark armour Brute, now...that was flawed heavily. Got to level 32, DB/DA. Get slaughtered by absolutely everything.

@Jabberwork: Sorry, I probably over-reacted a bit after the 'Power of Log' post. The assertion that Invul needs IOs to function is what got me. Invul was and still is good pre-IOs. Unless people do something daft like skipping a few powers or something.

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.

Nah, my assertion was that Invuln needs IO's to do what everybody else needs IO's to do as well, and that is both WAD and WAI. I tend to get wordy when I'm posting, I guess I just like the sound of my keyboard clicking.

Let's just say that your experience with Invuln and mine have been different. Maybe I'm still bitter because I had an Invuln scrapper in issue 1-4.

I know the feeling. Once cut, and all that.
I still cackle when I boot up my old lvl 50 invul tanker, is all. He is nigh unkillable. And Im on vanilla IOs with a few sets in attacks. Hardly purpled out.

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.

My main's a 50 Invuln Brute. Before that, was a 50 Widow, and before that a 50 WP Brute. I also have a 50 Shield Scrap, 50 Shield Brute, 50 Crab, and 50 Blaster.

In my personal experience, Crey are laughable because they're designed like level 30 enemies. Even at 40-50, they don't really DO anything other than take a while to kill. I've never had problems with Crey on any of my 50s.

Nemesis are annoying for other reasons besides flamethrowers. They eat up DEF the worst. My Brute can't farm Nemesis because unless I go really slow, they just end up getting massive stacked DEF and ToHit. Has nothing to do with flamethrowers. I can't think of any of my 50s that actually liked fighting Nemesis.

Arachnos are in the range of annoying enemies, but lower to the bottom. They have some really powerful debuffs and do some really annoying crap, like Smoke Grenade. They're tolerable, but really frustrating. I can handle them with most of my 50s. Nothing about Invuln particularly stands out.

Now, Longbow are hell on Invuln. Longbow debuff absolutely everything that a melee toon could possibly use to defend themselves. They eat resistance, they debuff defense, they can floor regen, and they reduce recharge (which affects click powers, like heals). Yeah, my Invuln has a real hard time with Longbow. But so do all of my other 50s. Longbow is a gang for huge debuffers and mezzers, who can stop that stuff from happening. I've yet to make a melee toon that feels comfortable surrounded by Longbow.

Carnies and Malta are the same way. They're a little better than Longbow though because they just have a couple units and a couple powers that will decimate you. If those powers slip through though, you're dead meat. If you get hit with a Mask or two, or a Sapper, you're hitting the floor. But again, that applies to all my 50s, not just the Invuln. In fact, my Invuln's the only one capable of taking a Sapper to the face and not detoggling immediately. She still drops by 75-90%, but I have enough time to hit a blue and respond.

Rikti I'll give you, but for all my 50s, the only ones that feel comfortable fighting huge numbers of Rikti are my Widow and WP Brute. They do lots of psi and energy, and while Invuln can handle energy to a point, I can't handle psi at all. WP however dodges energy, resists psi, and overall has high HP and regen to handle all situations. My Widow just plain dodges everything, and has high RES to psi. But at least my Invuln stands a better chance than my Shielders, Crab, or Blaster.

I don't see any real issues with Invuln. If I was to rate the support secondaries, I'd go Stone (which I refuse to touch for visual and slow-moving reasons), WP, then Invuln. Most of the things Invuln has a problem with, other sets do too.

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

Just FYI: Accuracy bonuses affect players with and without defense equally, until you run into the tohit ceiling. Meaning for all intents and purposes, accuracy bonuses up to about +90% are "fair" to defensive sets.** Past that point, they start to become marginally "unfair." Inventions do allow accuracy bonuses to reach and exceed that value, so there is a certain amount of unfairness. But its not as much as sometimes portrayed. In addition, accuracy is affected by diminishing returns in PvP, which further reduces the likelihood of seeing accuracy strengths far above +90%.


On the subject of the cottage rule. The cottage rule is a compromise based on two assumptions:

1. No matter what it is or what it does, there are a lot of players that like it that way. A power that does 2 points of damage and has a 50% chance of killing the caster is going to be loved by a double-digit percentage of the player population for some reason or other.

2. The devs have to change things.

Given that, the devs try hard to avoid making changes to purpose, mechanics, or general effects whenever possible, because they have no way to know how many players like the current version, but its presumed to be a lot of them. They cannot make that promise with numerical strength, so they don't.


Now, as a thought experiment, if the cottage rule could be avoided, what would I change? That's a good question. Honestly, given that one-time get out of jail free card, I would probably blank out the Kheldians altogether and redesign them from scratch (it does scare me that I'm repeating a thought EvilRyu had). I would make the forms have subsets of the human form powers, not different ones, and then give the forms special bonuses on certain powers (for example, I would give the human form a number of ranged attacks, but those attacks would be boosted in Nova form, while some others were suppressed that required human form). This would eliminate the slotting problem with multi-form Kheldians. I'd better distinguish and balance Peacebringers and Warshades. And I'd probably give them two completely different inherents. I'd give the Warshades buffs for being on teams, and I'd give Peacebringers buffs that were applied to team mates. And to ensure that Kheldians weren't seen as having no "solo-useful inherent" I would give each form a special bonus: Nova form would get a damage buffing "inherent," Dwarf form would get a resistance to debuffs inherent, and human form would get a small regen/recovery buff.

If the devs ever hire me to be the epic archetype designer and suspend the cottage rule, that's a preview of what EATs become. Otherwise, not likely.


** Accuracy buffs proportionately "hurt" everyone with or without defense the same way. If you have no defense and get hit 50% of the time, a 1.33 accuracy attack will hit you 33% more often, 50% * 1.33 = 66.5%. If you do have defense, say 30% defense, your base chance to be hit drops to 20%, and a 1.33 accuracy power hits you also 33% more often, 20% * 1.33 = 26.6%.

This first-order rule of thumb works until you get to +90% accuracy, where someone with zero defense gets hit 50% * 1.9 = 95% of the time. At that point, more accuracy has no effect on that target. But it can still continue to affect the target with defense. But this is usually a relatively minor difference.

There are second-order effects related to things like burst damage or the streakbreaker, but those are usually considered the price of having defense, and not a specific bias related to accuracy buffs per se.

Gravity is fairly easy to fix, IMHO, with only minor Cottage Rule interference.

Switching Wormhole with Dimension Shift would make the set a lot friendlier at lower levels, for example. Power order is covered by the Cottage Rule, but I judge it a fairly minor violation compared to a complete power revamp.

Shortening the animation on Propel would be enormously helpful without violating the Cottage Rule at all. Making it a narrow cone would be even nicer, but could/would require a Cottage Rule violation by changing the sets for which it qualified.

Making Lift into an AoE knockup power centered on the target would be nice, and as long as the target still took damage, would not violate the Cottage Rule. However, Lift being placed so early in the set would never be considered a candidate for any kind of AoE control, thus, if it got this change, it would also need an order shift, and thus require a Cottage Rule waiver.

Changing Dimension Shift to be something more generally useful, while having the most severe implications as to how the set plays for people who like it now, could ironically be done without a technical violation of the Cottage Rule at all. Dimension Shift is an AoE foe intangibility power. As long as its altered form includes some form of AoE foe intangibility effect, however minor, it could be finessed as not violating the Cottage Rule - at least, not the letter. The spirit, however, would be rather seriously mauled by transforming Dimension Shift in this manner.

Basically, the literal interpretation of the Cottage Rule stands squarely athwart the most obvious buffs Gravity Control could receive *WITHOUT* making the set unrecognizable to people who like it now. To fix the set (assuming it is broken now, an argument for another time) without technically violating the Cottage Rule would require a great deal of rules lawyering, to such an extent that it would be far less harmful to just come out and say "forget it, we're ignoring the Cottage Rule for this set of changes."

That's how I see it, anyway.

^This.

I do think Snipes are broken/useless on Stalkers too - even though they might be thematic (i.e. the whole assassin vibe) - but as they're in a PPP and thus wholly optional (and avoidable with Leviathan Mastery) I don't think they're really wasting a power slot there like they clearly are in Dominator secondaries.

I was in awe of Invul on an ITF I did where the Tanker just did not get hurt - sure, it was mostly S/L damage, but Invul is so godlike against it that I think being weaker than other sets against non-S/L damage is to be expected.

I've never felt Dark Armour was particularly weak on Brutes, though - slightly weak to energy, sure (which can hurt against Rikti), but I count my SS/DA Brute as one of my more solid L50 Brutes (see sig) even though I'm aware that SS/ is giving him a lot of mitigation. Sure, my Axe/WP and my Mace/SR are more survivable (the /SR wasn't before I got him def-softcapped, though), but they get just as much mitigation from their primaries. /DA has decent resists to all damage types except energy, Oppressive Gloom is fantastic for mitigating minion damage and there's that incredible heal. Certainly more solid than my squishy Fire/Fire Brute or my EM/Elec (who excels against Rikti and even did the RWZ Challenge, but he's average at best in most other situations). But if your other brutes were /WP, /Stone, etc. then I could understand /DA feeling weaker - it's all relative.

Can't speak for DA/ on Tankers though, but then I suspect any set without +HP (from Dull Pain or otherwise) is going to be slightly lacking on a Tanker.

Actually DA is pretty decent on a tanker. Its biggest downfall is its endurance issues. It's not a broadly powerful as willpower or stone, since it does better against large groups of enemies than single tough ones, but I never had any problems tanking for a team of 8 with mine. It especially benefits from being paired with dark melee as a secondary, since it gets you another heal, less endurance problems, and to-hit debuffs. It benefits greatly from some positional defense as well. If you can get 25-30% you can handle pretty much anything the game can throw at you.

The spirit of the "cottage rule" is that players using a power for a particular purpose should be allowed to continue using the power for that purpose. But the specific details can be modified when appropriate, and additional effects added: cf: Energize.

The answer to the question of how I would modify Gravity Control is to specifically target dimension shift. Back in I14 beta I suggested a set of changes to foe intangible powers in general, dimension shift and detention field in particular.

Dimension shift is a 30s foe intangible with 90s recharge. First, I would reduce the duration to 10s and the recharge to 30s. That retains the same amount of uptime, but speeds up cycling the effect. It prevents a single target from being shifted for an excessively long time.

Second: dimension shift unintentionally benefits the targets because it not only makes them unable to attack the player but it also makes them immune to attack. In combat terms, it allows the target to recover unmolested. I would give dimension shift a massive -regen/-recovery effect so that during the duration of the shift, the target can't recover. In other words, they would emerge from the shift no stronger than when they went in, which prevents the shift from being a net benefit to the target.

Third: since the power actually prevents the caster and the caster's allies from attacking the target, its acting as a form of damage debuff on the caster (and team). In my opinion, that doesn't quite compensate for its form of control. Conceptually the power is intended to cause the caster to shift the target out of our dimension, which creates the phase shift-effect (neither can affect the other). There's nothing in the power's description that says the target has to be shifted to a completely safe dimension. I would add a small random DoT to the power that took effect prior to the phase (so it would affect the target within the intangible). The random DoT would represent being shifted to hostile dimensions, and could be random fire DoTs, toxic DoTs, cold DoTs, etc. For flair, I might consider having the foe intangible "detonate" on expiration for (very) minor damage and/or knockdown, particularly to compensate for the fact that the power cannot induce containment.

It would still be an imperfect power to people expecting a more offensive and less control-like ability, but it does (in my opinion) satisfy the core cottage-rule limitation that the power could still be used by players to accomplish the same basic task - to phase shift a target and make it impossible to be attacked or attack back - while adding features consistent with its conceptual definition that would aid the set overall.


I'm not sure what else I'd do to Gravity Control. Mostly minor tweaks to numbers in all likelihood.

I still don't know if I'd use it. But I'd add -recharge to your list.

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

...they managed something like this for Phase Shift.

Phase Shift isn't slottable for duration. It's always 30 seconds.

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

It depends on what you consider "duration" to be. For Phase Shift, it could either be the period that you're allowed to have the toggle active or the period that each tick of the toggle actually lasts (toggles are actually a series of identical powers that activate automatically at reasonably rapid intervals with short durations). Enhancing the duration in the sense that you allow each tick to last longer (which is rather redundant considering that no toggles stack with themselves, very few powers actually benefit from this) is easily possible. Enhancing the duration in the sense that the period in which you're allowed to keep a time limited toggles active is not.

IIRC, the actually given reason why the intangible powers can't be made into toggles is because of how intangibility works: it's impossible to target an intangible target (unless you're similarly intangible, which is a comparatively recent addition). As soon as you turned the toggle on, the target would go intangible, rendering itself untargetable, which would turn the toggle off at the very next tick.

Is dimension shift slottable for duration? I may be misremembering, but I thought all attribmods (effects) of dimension shift were Magnitude effects (meaning: slotting would increase magnitude, not duration).


On the subject of whether or not even the concept of foe shifting powers are salvagable, I don't presume every power must generate optimal results compared to all other powers. My goal in changing foe intangibles would be to eliminate the unintended downsides of such powers. It would not be to decide for the entire playerbase that such an effect is fundamentally suboptimal, and therefore undeserving of being in the game.

If its determined that the foe intangibles are sufficiently deleterious for powerset performance, I'd improve the other powers to ensure that the overall set presented a materially similar set of tools to other control sets rather than remove the foe intangibles. The only reason I would change my mind on that is if the devs were to datamine dimension shift and discover that a vanishingly small percentage of players either took it or used it ("vanishingly small" in this case would have to be on the order of less than one percent of all gravity controllers or less than a few dozen actual players; once you get into the hundreds of players I'd consider that too high to eliminate). That's why I suggested that beyond addressing what I believe to be unintended consequences of dimension shift, I'd possibly make numerical changes to the rest of the set if they were warranted. But for myself personally, I don't think the essential character of the set is flawed. I just think its tools might not be strong enough overall given CoX's design rules regarding soloability and archetype functionality.

That may be the case. I know and remember a lot about the game off the top of my head, but admittedly intangibility powers are not one of the things I've spent much time with.

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