What can the other secondaries do better than /Shield?

I totally needed to hear that, since I have had an otherwise unenjoyable day. Just hearing that Fire Aura might get some love makes me feel warmer and fuzzier.

Just remove the burn panic, and I swear, YOU WILL GET COOKIES!!! I'm talking crazy chocolate chunk, gonna need a glass of milk quality cookies.

*looks at Arcana suspiciously* Are you SURE you don't work for NCSoft? Because statements like these are at the level of what a developer should do when they are looking at their game, not a player. Heh.

A mistake is a mistake whether its your job or not. In this case, though, the reason I'm kicking myself is because I actually caught a related problem, this one in the AE.

Anyone ever make a custom critter in the AE that used Lightning Rod before I17 went live?

Were you just joking about needing run with a Shields character before the "nerf?" Sorry if you were, but many people have said the same thing in this thread and I've always tried to counter that thinking.

And I'd like TA to get a look at as well (I noted that in the quote). I merely said that just because one thing is getting a look doesn't mean something else like Oil Slick should or will. Castle can only do so much.

None of that is rude, just discussing what you said. So, clarify? Please?

Yeah, I really have to agree after seeing how out of whack those numbers are.

I think I found the problem.

You should be banned IMO.

do you want to? from the sound of it no.... do you need to well some people may argue with me but I say no....

The game WAS NOT MADE HARDER because of IOs therefore you cannot judge a power set based on IOs get any scrapper combination with just SOs and i garuntee you'll find that Invulnerability is WAY more powerful than Shield in nearly every way... take away the IOs you take away the shield.... It just seems overpowered like fire/kin controllers did way back when, all because there are so many with IOs you don't see many without them.... so everybody gets this idea in their head that shields are instantly epic... and they're REALLY not.... I have one at lv 47 right now that yes I do plan to IO out but with basic SOs I wasn't able to take out a group of enemies my level....without IOs we dont have nearly as much defense, nearly as much recharge( oh wait no recharge ) and not to mention lower HP, lower resistance, and lower recovery... without IOs all powersets would be fine... with IOs people are able to make false assumptions based on what they think is normal... when sombody puts 2-5 billion influence into ONE ENHANCEMENT you tend to imagine their character will be pretty powerful...for the reason that you cannot judge the set based on SOs alone this set is fine so all of you that complain come hit me up on the champion server and we can talk about why you think shield is OP because i'll show you otherwise

Totally. And nerf the word "the!" it is far too rude and powerful!

Most Amazing, look a page or so back, we discussed Shields with just SOs. You can get your defenses plenty high with SOs and good power picks. You won't be able to solo at +4/8, but not everyone can (or wants) to do that using IOs, either.

We can't judge a powerset based solely on its IOed performance. For the purposes of performance-based balancing of powersets, two data points have the highest weight:

1. What the designed performance of the set is when slotted with SOs.

2. What the actual performance of the set is when datamined and averaged across the entire playerbase, from the absolute min/maxers to the completely incompetent (including important subslices, like the performance of all level 10-15 players or all 45-50 players, or all teamed players).

However, when those two metrics are balanced within a reasonable margin for error other factors are entirely appropriate to account for, including how well the set responds to being buffed by inventions. You can't break the above two requirements to go after high end performance, but you can and should go after high end performance in general to ensure its reasonable when compared to peer powersets.

I was speaking to the level of artistry and craftsmanship, but of course different people will have different opinions on that as well. Two different people could look at the same painting, and one could consider it beautiful and well crafted while the other considered it complete garbage, while a third might hold an opinion somewhere inbetween.

And I don't agree that this game has the same level of artistry and craftsmanship as other games, I think it's superior in that regard, which is why I play it so much.

And finally, in terms of 'improvements', again, that is a matter of personal opinion. Even in terms of craftmanship, different builders have different opinons on what is the best crafting method, and the more complex the final product, the more variance in opinions you are likely to find.

We'll just have to disagree then. Math is a wonderful tool, but it doesn't provide design infallibility. Just about any human endeavor involves trial and error to some degree.




I'm not claiming that EM was balanced before the nerf, I'm saying it was less imbalanced vs competiting sets, because at least back then, it was on top alone in terms of single target damage and had one glorious, set defining power, which at least partially made up for the sets pitiful aoe abilities. And since aoe ability is so valuable in this game, even pre nerf em was underpowered and therefore imbalanced vs other competing sets that blew away it's aoe performance. Now, after the nerf, you have a set with a bunch of slow, mediocre powers, doing very good single target damage, but damage that is on par with competitors, while still being a bottom feeder in terms of aoe ability.

I don't know exactly what they are doing to achieve balance, but whatever they are doing isn't very effective when you have sets like EM, or even FA for example, sets that clearly underperform vs most of their competitors. Regardless, whatever method they used to 'balance' EM clearly failed, and I'd hate to see the same thing happend to SD.

So how do you 'balance' a power like shield charge? It's a very unique situation. No other secondary has a power like it. What do you balance it against? Realize that any answer you give will be your opinion, including any mathematic equation you might devise to deal with the question.

Some people might hold the opinion that a power like SC shouldn't even be available in scrapper secondaries. And they'd be neither right nor wrong, because that would be their opinion. Others feel it's overpowered because it's like a blaster nuke, so it needs to be nerfed down. Again, niether right nor wrong, it's their opinion.

In terms of what sc is doing now compared to its original design, I believe many of the changes were made intentionally because I recall many sd testers complaining about how weak sc was using the original design.

Ultimately, whatever the devs decide to do, will be their opinion on what is best for the game. This is not a 2 + 2 = 4 question.

Yeah, well, that's just like, your opinion, man.

That is actually pretty easy to answer. Shield Charge is a power in a set designed to mitigate damage. The large AoE KD radius does that well. Add some modest damage (1 scale or less) to the people getting knocked down for flavor. Give it around a 40 second recharge.

If you wanted, you could give it a longer recharge and make it do more damage to the main target, which is the route Castle went with.

It is pretty easy to see that a set that grants respectable mitigation as well as aggro utility and some additional +damage, like Shield, was not intended to and should not have a non-crashing, near nuke every 45 seconds. It was meant as a mitigation KD with some minor damage for flavor.

So you're saying you disagree, and then stating your position to be nearly the same as Arcanaville's. Obviously you read the post if you're quoting and saying you disagree, but the position you state after saying you disagree seems to be effectively the same as the post you disagreed with. Or are you saying math should be ignored until, somehow, it is determined (apparently without using math) that things are unbalanced, and then you might use a little math? Or is it that you feel math should be a minor consideration in the design process and should be considered inferior to hunches and guesses?

It seems to me that Arcana's position is that consistent math and processes should be used for initial balancing and design, but that adjustments should be made for how things work in actual play. Maybe i was misinterpreting, because that seems far more sensible to me than pulling numbers out of the air based on hunches and guesswork and then making sweeping changes when it fails to automagically balance everything. (Although i do seem to recall seeing the latter somewhere before...)

Dude, this thread is filled with them, lol.

The argument goes back before the post I quoted, and I her argument seem to be that trial and error is unnecessary and can be avoided. I disagree. Even in a game this far along, there will still be trial and error going forward in terms of development.

Now taking your argument in the 2nd paragraph in your post, what math and process was used to create shield charge? What equation/process could be used in creating a unique power in a defensive secondary?

And when people complained the power was weak in beta, they changed it...

What you're saying is that Shield Charge is so unique of a power that any target the devs aim for would be totally subjective. I disagree that its that bad, but for the purposes of this discussion I'll accept that as at least a reasonable perspective.

What, then does trial and error do? If the devs have no idea what the power "should" really do, then what should they be looking for in each "trial?" If you have no idea what the power should be doing, you have no way of evaluating if the power is doing the right thing at all. And really, you shouldn't be adding things to the game that you have no idea at all what its purpose should be in the first place.

Its entirely possible the devs could *aim* incorrectly, in which case the mathematics of implementing that aim would lead to bad places. But when that happens, you're not supposed to throw your hands up in the air and say "oh well, lets try another completely random set of numbers" nor are you supposed to say "well, lets just keep fiddling with these knobs until we tune into a station we like." You're supposed to figure out *why* your aim was bad, and correct that bad judgment. And that too is mostly a numerical analysis (at least for the parts of the power that have numerical performance).

When Shield Charge left the bow, it could have hit something the devs didn't aim at, or it could have hit what they aimed at, but the devs aimed at the wrong thing. In both cases, that represents an error either in implementation fidelity or design judgment. In both cases that's an opportunity for learning: either for improving their design judgment or their implementation craft. Trial and error says just randomly guessing is better than trying to become a better game developer, and its always always the wrong choice.

The only time trial and error makes sense is during brainstorming. When you are trying to extend your craft significantly beyond where it has gone before, so you don't have an intuitive feel of either what your own design rules will do out in far or what your own numerical models will do in those regimes, some initial random trial to probe the new game space makes sense. But that should very quickly transition to more systematic testing, and it should never extend all the way to actual game implementation.


Just because there is subjectivity in game design, doesn't mean its without purpose. If it was completely purposeless, then when designing Elude's defenses if the devs accidentally set it to have 4.5% defense instead of 45% defense you're suggesting that they should try it out at that level first before deciding that 4.5% defense is "wrong." Because the choice to set it to 45% defense or 4.5% defense is completely arbitrary, and if its arbitrary who knows which decision will ultimately be "better."

That's not how it works. If Shield Charge had a design purpose, it should be possible to hit it, or get within the game's margin of error of it. If Shield Charge didn't have a design purpose that could realistically be aimed at, it was broken at birth. Once you say "I don't know what I want it to do, I'll just keep changing it randomly until I see something I like" you're not a game developer anymore: you're a random number generator that draws a salary.

The bottom line is that if Shield Charge was intended to be the best nuke in the game, the numbers say they hit that target in spades. If Shield Charge was not intended to be that kind of attack the numbers say they missed badly. That is not a matter of opinion. That's objective fact. Which one they were aiming for tells you if SC is bugged or not. Based on what Castle said, its objectively bugged. There's no subjectively whatsoever in that analysis.


On the subject of how to "balance" shield charge: its not actually a totally unique situation. There are other powers related to it that, if I was implementing the power, would act as guidelines for the limits of what the power should be capable of doing.

First of all, the two powers related to it are thunderstrike and lightning rod. Thunderstrike has a design similar to SC's original implementation, in that it delivers significant damage to its target and splash damage (and KB) to surrounding targets. Its design intent appears to be very similar to that of SC in that regard. Lightning rod, on the other hand, seems to be practically a clone of the original implementation of SC. It deals scale 2.4 at its target and 0.7 to surrounding targets, plus has a knockdown. My guess is that when the original concept of SC couldn't be implemented, LR was used as its alternate model.

Both of these powers deal high damage to a single target and a much lower level of splash damage to surrounding targets. And the reason for that is that high radius spherical AoEs tend to have less than scale 2.0 damage.

Then we have burn. The devs at one time thought Burn was overpowered if critters didn't make an attempt to run out of its radius. Burn deals a total of scale 3.0 in damage ticks if all of them land, and it does so in a much smaller radius than SC does: 8 feet vs 20 feet. If Burn is problematic dealing scale 3.0 over time within 8 feet, its not a matter of opinion on whether SC is problematic dealing scale 3.6 instantly within 20 feet.

Without being told, I would assume that spherical AoEs dealing 3.0 or better without extra restrictions are verboten for anything outside of blaster nukes, and anything that does more than 2.0 damage across the entire radius is questionable. Anything that does Lightning Rod damage is at least reasonable. My target for SC would be something between those two limits. And that's before even knowing what SC's actual design intent is. Is it intended to be stronger than LR, or similar. Is it intended to be focused, or distributed in its damage (more at the core, less all around, or more evenly distributed damage)? Is it intended to be used rarely, frequently, or something in between. Those things would inform my target for SC, before writing down a single number.

So no, I don't think SC is so unique of a situation that its completely beyond numerical analysis to implement. Ultimately, saying SC is beyond the ability for mathematics to handle is like saying its so unique its completely beyond the English language to handle.