What can the other secondaries do better than /Shield?

No, they've been siphoning the good will quite well on their own lol.

Maybe Castle is a Kinetics blaster?!

Even if it was 300, that would be slightly skewed by the fact that Shadowhunter has -20% negative energy resistance, so while it may achieve 300+ on him, it would be lower against things without that weakness.

Of course if the weakness was already taken into account for that calculation, then please ignore this :-P

@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."

Yes, buffs and nerfs both need to be applied to maintain homeostasis. Other than that:

Unsustainable? Horse puckey.

Game-playing populations are transient, it is the nature of the beast. To allow the CoH franchise to survive and prosper, new players must come online to replace the old. Ideally, over time old players return as well, to re-experience the gameplay.

Thus, that psychological shift you casually dismiss using five-dollah werds is repeated with each new generation and iteration of players. Call it the 'HOLY COW THIS IS AWESOME' factor. As long as you are impressing new players, and returning repeat players, you win.

I feel this to be absolutely true, because I recently teamed up with two fresh faces in Atlas. One guy was on a trial account, the other had been playing for two weeks.

So what'd I do? I said, "Hey, wanna get a jet pack? My treat!"

Then I took them out to the Shadow Shard to buy one.

Since we were out there, I also took them to see the Storm Palace. I mean, we were in the neighborhood....

I'm pretty sure there's two more long-term players now. One guy kept saying 'Man, this game is SO EPIC!"


So, while I luvs me some numbers, I think you might be a leeetle too invested in this argument with the numbers. Do not discount that psychological perspective shift so cavalierly.

So. How's about some buffs? The Devs could think of it as a down-payment on the next round of nerfs

Way to ignore the huge buffs DM recently got. In other words, the DM that exists today is not what it was at launch. Just like everything else in this game. **** gets changed.

Castle won't be nerfing DM because of this thread. On its own without saturated Soul Drain it's still nothing special.

Get a ******* grip, people.

Point of order:

I have two level 50 shield toons (sd/wm tank and bs/sd scrapper) that are both fully equipped with shiny free SO's I got with AE tickets. Both toons cost essentially zero influence.

Both do just fine on any content I want to do with them. For example, both have done ITF's with no issues whatsoever. I find that shield does very very well on teams.

Now, my fm/sd scrapper? That one dies, even on teams. To much aggro due to the damage output. But I'm cool with that!

Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn Hazy is right

This, seriously. I wish we could hide Castle's posts so the doomcriers would piss off. No one is getting nerfed. DM especially. SC will likely go back to the way it was meant to be (with the previously listed numbers). That, however, would've happened regardless. Stop ********. **** happens.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze I hate to be the bringer of bad news... but Willpower sucks!!! you're better off rolling a regen

Well, I know how to plan builds, so my slotting and power choices aren't terrible.

Then I use parry when I need it, and I do some knockdowns, and I tend to cram in close to the tank for the phalanx fighting, and I know how to joust when all that fails.

Plus, since I tend to wedge in close, the already excellent BS damage is even moar awesome. Plus BS is a strong debuffing set (for a scrapper) so I bring a lot of subtle utility to teams that makes things just 'go smoothly.'

bs/sd just go together like peanut butter and jelly

they're not . That's why nothing is going to happen.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze I hate to be the bringer of bad news... but Willpower sucks!!! you're better off rolling a regen

PvP. 4 issues and counting.

I also remember Castle saying spines being too good. in i12

Just because he hasn't personally experienced something doesn't mean he's ignorant of it. He, and the other Devs, know quite a bit more about how this game works and have access to tools to find out even more than even the best number crunching, demorecording players because they're developers. You could PM him all the data you've come up with for a month straight, and he'd still rely on the tools he has to make final decisions. What you and other players say only give them a starting point.

The Devs have a purpose in mind for everything they do, and they've stated that purpose in many forms. They might fall short of your purpose, but that doesn't make them short-sighted. It just means your vision and their vision don't match. It happens. In the end, they've chosen a path, and it's up to the players to follow it or find another game to play that suits their goals better.

If I were Castle, I wouldn't have said anything more than he did. He acknowledged player concerns, and said he'd look into it when he had time. He didn't make any promises, and said nothing concrete about what changes, if any, would be made. What more do you want right now?

I hope you are right, but I publicly stated the same thing with even more gusto than you with regard to the upcoming pvp changes back in i12. I'm sort of in a position now of "fool me once..." His post in this thread show he is/was using the wrong numbers and may or may not have reacted poorly to a very small and insignificant sample that may or may not be representative of what actually occurs in game.

He's as fallible as anyone has a right to be, but he has certain expectations placed on him due to his position and responsibilities. One of those is probably checking the final version of a power before it goes live after you give the OK to let it be changed (ie gave the nod to change SC to abide by AT modifiers), which from his postings didn't happen. If that is the responsibility of someone else then it should also be the responsibility of someone else to give the initial green light to change.

The other is probably checking to ensure you are posting accurate information with regard to what is being discussed. If something is performing well and he says he'll "look into it" that is generally not a good thing if you like that aspect of performance (ie DM now enters the discussion because of what appears to be misinformation being used regarding Shields).

I don't really care what happens tbh, it is just a game and I'm not hooked on any melee AT, but the guy has very limited time by his own admission. From an efficiency standpoint of not wasting time it is probably useful to be using accurate information and to not publicly state concern over a very small sample of results. Doing that is what half-cocked players get to do, not the lead powers dev.

Just imo of course and I'm sure you guys are absolutely right that he has much more accurate and complete information than we do and it will be properly used in the event of changes occurring. It only makes sense based on what we've seen.

edit: This is a retarded tangent to what was once a very productive discussion. He is welcome to chase ghosts all day if he wants. And if he decides to roll his face around on the keyboard and then hit submit we should all be gracious of it.

He was a tad snarky in his response to you, but it was warranted. You were getting annoyed about him making sweeping generalizations when he wasn't. He said he would have to look into it a lot further... here's his first post on that bit. "I'd have to look at specific builds and slotting to see what's going on there, but that's a project I don't have time for now." He wasn't saying that he would make a change to powers, just that he would have to look and see if there were outliers if he had time.

Then you posted what you did, and he replied snarkily because he already covered your concern. People do not like being misconstrued, even if it's almost to be expected on an internet forum.

For those all worried about a change to Shield Charge, here's a reminder of what he said:

"FWIW, nothing is going to be done about this for now. It's too big and widespread of an issue for me to unilaterally decide on how to approach it. I'll give folks a heads up on what is decided as soon as I know."

Castle isn't making wild presumptions, and he's going to look into things thoroughly. So no more overreacting.

I believe that the reason for the "overreacting" is that /Shields is being considered for moderation at all. SC numbers obviously warrant an eventual alteration as they do not correspond with intended scaling, which Castle's posts do indeed indicate.

Castle's posts also mentioned concern with FM/ and DM/ damage in connection with top end DPS when compared to other primaries, specifically referencing the pylon run results as mentioned by BillZ.

I don't believe that any changes are needed on these powersets, nor do I believe that Castle will think so once he takes into consideration their performance in all other areas. I would hope that the Devs wouldn't base a decision about powerset balance upon a single aspect of the game, especially one that the vast majority of the playerbase is incapable of even attempting.

I'm aware that DM was buffed (and then had activation times on the tier 1 and 2 increased slightly, remember that?) in I13 - not exactly "recent" even on the scale of this game's six-year timeline. I didn't "ignore" anything, because the buffs the set received are completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The discussion is relevant to DM as it exists today, not as it existed before I13.

I do find it amusing that given justification for not making changes that would be good for game and powerset balance (correcting gamebreaking overbuffing, fixing Stone Armor, etc.) is "it's too widespread to change," and that there isn't a good solution for "fixing" Shield Charge just yet, when the possible best solution is to simply give it the numbers it should have (i.e. copy Lightning Rod's attributes).

Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, saying what amounts to "Dark Melee shouldn't be putting out as much DPS as Fire Melee, so I'm going to have to look into that" sounds sort of ominous.

Sounds like someone's getting their feathers a bit ruffled, and it sure isn't me. To quote that little red dot next to my previous post in this thread, "now you're just embarrassing yourself."

@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."

Yes, I've obviously had issues with these sorts of things.

*rolls eyes*

@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."

Heh - I played MA/SR in the beta. At launch, I decided to go with DM/SR for my main, instead (although, to be fair, that was mainly because I wanted a punching set, instead of kicks. But, perhaps that's just a rationalization, because, yea, it sucked ).

Boo! BOO!!!! BOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

you dont know how fotm works do you?

wasnt my post he was responding to, I merely pointed out what he did