Respec time BotZ rumors are true

makes me glad my planned build for S/L defense on my DP/NRG is still a go even before I heard about the nerf to BotZ.

already respec'd my other characters that will be effected by the change, my fire/storm corr now has 47% s/l defense and while my cold/ice fender isn't soft capped ranged anymore...I'll take my 36% ranged def and 64% s/l res and run with it.

Castle says he'll live with the def cap as it is, so he's going to be fine with people getting to it. The BotZ change just shows that they don't want to make it too easy. The change came from how much defense the set could give for little investment: it was out of whack compared to other sets. The other sets that give ranged defense have been around for longer, and they require more investment than BotZ did.

Given all that, I wouldn't worry about it so much. I've heard some people cite Kinetic Combat as a worry now, but it's not really comparable. It's confined to melee powers, requires four slots, and the enhancement from those four slots isn't all that great (it it's an actual power you'd want to use, and a Blaster not using their melee attacks would be gimping themselves). I would say it's balanced for what it does, and it's certainly not as good as BotZ was for Ranged and AOE.

This is the important thing to look at, it gives the 3.75 S/L in four slots vs 3.13% Ranged and AoE Defense in 3 slots. Its also a set that is much rarer then the BoTZ since it only drops in lvl ranges 20-35, as opposed to 10-53, and doesn't give any kind of global bonus (BoTZ -KB). The set was just TOO good as a whole, and with those bonuses probably should really have just been a "Unique" set, where you could only slot one whole set per character.

Now what would have been a bigger nerf, lowering the total defense for the set, or switching it to unique status where you'd be forced to respec and possibly lose out on your IOs completely? Remember the Gaussian Fix?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Sure, the devs are supposed to listen to their customers, mister business 101 out there. And if I decide to start suggesting that the devs change the game from being about superheroes and supervillains to being about clowns that is my right as well, and technically Paragon Studios is supposed to pay attention to me. But I hope strongly that they assume a meth-head somehow managed to hack into my forum account and make paper airplanes out of my posts, because I hope they recognize stupid when they see it. I assume they will recognize futile just as accurately.

And don't forget Drain Psyche and PSW

Thank you for the effort its a very good build, and seeing the effort you put in makes me sorry I didn't spell out that this built specifically for exemplaring down. It is softcapped at level 50 but where it really shines is when it exemplars down to level 15 where it still has 27% ranged defense.

Thank you that was so truthful it had me laughing.

Good catch. The sets are all level 17 and 18s. All the sets that came in levels less than 20 where put in at level 18 or less.


I believe you are not making a very fair comparison. This toon has a softcap at one position and has to jump and hover to get it, It has no defense debuff resistance and only moderate resistance to smash lethal. It has nowhere near the hitpoints of a scrapper or a tank and its performance is about average for an IOed out blaster the one place where it shines is avoiding mez attacks. When we have IOs that individually add the equivalent of what takes two or power picks to get this does not look at all exploitive or overpowered to me.

I'd like to say more about the ranged defense from BotZ being overpowered,in builds that already have powers but these gentlemen already have done a very good job.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=959

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=955

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=954

It wasn't really too much of an effort, I have more Mids builds then live builds so this was a slightly modified ranged capped build (With Full BoTZ sets it would be capped). You could always go for a S/L build (thats what I primarily build for since IME S/L covers a wider range of attacks then a Ranged build, plus I like getting up in the faces of what I'm fighting).

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Sure, the devs are supposed to listen to their customers, mister business 101 out there. And if I decide to start suggesting that the devs change the game from being about superheroes and supervillains to being about clowns that is my right as well, and technically Paragon Studios is supposed to pay attention to me. But I hope strongly that they assume a meth-head somehow managed to hack into my forum account and make paper airplanes out of my posts, because I hope they recognize stupid when they see it. I assume they will recognize futile just as accurately.

Hmmmm, didn't see this earlier. I don't know that this is a fair characterization.

PvP before the I13 changes was pretty niche for CoX, and there was an overall decision to revamp it (so not just Castle's). Nor did all of his ideas for it get put into play: the post I saw on the subject showed he had more changes proposed, and rather wished those had been put in place as well.

At any rate, that setup is quite different from changing how defense caps work in PvE. Castle would not be able to make that decision on his own, and his language on it suggests that changing it is somewhat akin to the cottage rule: the devs don't like changing long-standing systems and how they work dramatically. Unless there is something so broken with the system that it needs a major revamp (like PvP).

That suggests to me that while he is not perfectly happy with the results of the same def cap for all, he is going to work under those limitations. BotZ as it existed did not work well under those limitations.

That should work quite well on teams, but after having played a defense build, you may feel even more squish. My Fire/MM//Force is a strait up +dmg/+rech (34% dam, 80% rech (150 w/hasten,2 secs off perma). He is quite formidable, but walks the line of success and fail quite finely.

I've recently been building my DP/MM//Cold to cap S/L and he's much more of a threat to all things around him. I'm at 28% @ lvl 43 and will be capped at lvl 45 once I slot Frozen Armor. Playstyles vary greatly, but the DP is already taken down things my fire/mm hadn't dreamed of (+3/4 Malta for one thing).

I had a Fire/EM with 30% ranged defense but I never really liked the way it felt, I'm not a "ranged" blaster by any means, I'm a Blaster, from near or afar and the S/L Defense works better for me.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Sure, the devs are supposed to listen to their customers, mister business 101 out there. And if I decide to start suggesting that the devs change the game from being about superheroes and supervillains to being about clowns that is my right as well, and technically Paragon Studios is supposed to pay attention to me. But I hope strongly that they assume a meth-head somehow managed to hack into my forum account and make paper airplanes out of my posts, because I hope they recognize stupid when they see it. I assume they will recognize futile just as accurately.

You have to wonder if and when the S/L nerf is coming. BotZ was never out of line in terms of enhancement values, but it was out of line, in terms of letting squishies build survivability.

Just from Castle's post

Read as too many people were doing it.

You also have to wonder how many of the apologists for the current nerf will be coming up with new and even more extreme excuses for why X IO is out of line and had to be nerfed. And how it won't be punishing the players for playing the game.

BotZ was providing 3.13% Ranged defense for two slots and 3.13% AoE defense for three slots. That's 1.57% Ranged per slot, and 1.04% AoE per slot.

Compare that to any other set and you'll see those values are too high. Other sets that provide Ranged and AoE defense generally do so in the fifth and sixth slots, so even though they provide as much or more defense per set, they provide significantly less per slot and that's what's important. 2- and 3-slot bonuses are not supposed to be as good as 5- and 6-slot bonuses.

Replying to all at once and I should do this as a guide it seems to come up.

1st What is the cost of gaining a bonus ? How should you assess it ?

Lets take Botz, New Botz , Thunderstrike and kinetic combat, Steadfast Unique, Gladiators Unique, Gausians Synchronized Fire Control.


The common way of looking at this is to say Set X gives me bonus Y for Z slots and then say the cost is Y/Z

This is very very simplistic. It completely ignores the fact that sets give you bonuses for every IO after the first and those bonuses may or may not be needed for your build. But lets look at the numbers


Lets rank these

Total Positional Defense/ Slot

9 pts/slot
Steadfast
Gladiators

2.08/slot
Botz Old

1.25/slot
Gaussian

.625
Thunderstrike

.48
Kcombat


You look at the above list and you can only say wow BotZ had to be nerfed. Its much higher in its bonus than gaussian which is a six slot and a unique.

One of my favorite movies is my cousin vinnie, for one scene. Joe Pesci is talking to Marisa Tomei about how Legal arguments are like magic tricks.

That is exactly what the slot efficiency argument is. It is an illusion a magic trick. I love this quote because it explains in a few lines that have taken me days or weeks to try and show people. If you understand what it is saying , it lets you understand how headlines in news papers are distorted, and it fosters a healthy skepticism that seems to have disappeared from the world.


Now that I have performed the magic trick that other people are saying is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, let me perform my own magic tricks.

Instead of efficiency/ slot for defense Lets look at in terms of positional defense/ Slot you wouldn't normally take in a power.

Steadfast goes in a resistance power and in addition to providing defence it actually acts as an enhancement

So lets call steadfast 1/2 additional slot (it provides resistance but not as much)

Gladiators. The IO provides TP and and positional defense. I have never needed TP protection call it 1 slot.

Gausians.

There are a few ways I look at this. For powers Like aim and build up normally my only concern is that they are available. 3 slotting for recharge would be the approach. The other choice would be be slotting for recharge and bonuses. Adjusted targeting works well for this and you can get the desirable bonuses for 5 slots and still have maxed recharge.

So gaussians comes in (for the cases of aim and buildup) at either 3 additional slots or 1.

Blessing of the zypher old and new

It goes in powers that I would not normally put more than the initial slot. So for the 2 piece bonus it is 1 slot, and for the full bonus it is 2 slots.

Kinetic Combat goes in an attack power 4 or 5 slots so it needs no additional slots.

Tstrike, goes in a ranged attack power The first defense bonus at 3 is for all intents purposes free. The second at 6 is a 1 additional slot cost.

So lets rank the sets on the basis of how many additional slots they require.

Free positional Bonuses
Tstrike 1.25
Kcombat 1.88

1/2 additional slot bonuses
Steadfast unique 9 points

1 slot additional bonuses
Gladiators 9 points
Gaussians 7.5 points
Tstrike 2.5 points or 3.75 points depending on how you count
Bots 3.13 points
Bots new 1.56

2 slot additional bonuses
Botz 6.26
Botz new 3.13


Abracadabra
That line the botz sets were breaking seems to have vanished.


Well you can say, I really wanted to build for defense That defense/slot number is really really important to me and the value of the set should be decided on that.

Thats true but you still have to slot other things because if you don't having all the defense in the game isn't going to make you more effective.

If you are going to build a character you are going to want a mix of bonuses, recovery, recharge, accuracy, health, regeneration all come to mind and you want it to enhance powers that are meaningful to your effectiveness. Botz provides no set bonuses except for defense and just defense.

So when you say something is X/slot efficient and that is your criterion for saying it is overpowered you have effectively said, Accuracy, regeneration , recovery, recharge, hitpoints, damage etc are worthless and contribute nothing to power

Yes that is one heck of a magic trick and quite the misdirection. This is often happens when you try and reduce multidimensional data down to a single number. It also happens when you try to compare apples and oranges.

I'm not sure how/if that would work. MOST bonuses are multiples of a base bonus- so recharge comes in 2.5%, 3.75%, 5%, 6.25% and 7.5%. (And 10%.) All multiples of 1.25%. I'd say "All" except I think that there are some exceptions in things like psi resist- some 3% and some 3.13% maybe?

This is the way the wiki explains it and it always made sense to me; that said, I've never personally seen a redname explanation supporting it.

Maybe they could set up special custom Defense bonuses... but it probably wouldn't be as trivial as "open up the spreadsheet and change a number."

Actually it was completely out of line in terms of IO set bonuses, not just squishies being survivable. Nothing gave that much of a bonus for that little of an investment, despite your "magic trick" post, it was still too much of a bonus for 2-3 slots, end of story.

This is where I disagree that it is simply becuase too many people were doing it, but that too many people were able to do it SO easily.

Well, it was something that players told them about, and recognized the ease of using. So when the set was first introduced players said it would be a bad idea, but they went through with it, people also agreeing that it was too good now isn't really a surprise.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Sure, the devs are supposed to listen to their customers, mister business 101 out there. And if I decide to start suggesting that the devs change the game from being about superheroes and supervillains to being about clowns that is my right as well, and technically Paragon Studios is supposed to pay attention to me. But I hope strongly that they assume a meth-head somehow managed to hack into my forum account and make paper airplanes out of my posts, because I hope they recognize stupid when they see it. I assume they will recognize futile just as accurately.

Ummm, no. Not at all. Nice little bait and switch with the arguments as well.

When people say that BotZ was slot efficient, they mean it took very few slots to get those bonuses. Overall, we only get so many slots, so if you can accomplish a goal for a power in fewer slots, you have more to place later and in other powers. That's what was great about BotZ (and still will be, after the change, just to a lesser extent). You can get a decent bonus for a defense build, with very little use of slots.

That is what people mean when they say it was slot efficient. It saves more slots to put in other powers and to make sure they are slotted well for damage, accuracy, etc., not to mention their set bonus goals for those powers.

And for all those sets you looked at, there are pros and cons to using them: you are giving up using other sets for those defense bonuses. Thunderstrike doesn't offer any recharge, regen, +hp, or health bonuses. If you slot Kinetic Combat, you had better slot it some more if you're going to use that power. KC hardly increases your accuracy, is short of the ED cap for damage by a fair amount, and could use more endurance reduc and recharge. The major drawback to Gaussian's is that you don't get that much recharge from the set, which you usually want in things like Build Up, etc.

In short, those sets do have balancing points, and their bonuses require more investment than BotZ does. That's the biggest reason for the change.

Its less than those that take 1 slot.

No bait and switch there. If anything is bait and switch, its the nerf for everyone that used Botz and enjoyed playing with them.

The point was using slot efficiency for one criteria only ignores everything else you have to do with your character to make it work.