Unanswered Pummit Questions

Dark Control T9 is apparently so awesome that it requires an unveiling all of it's own.

I'm still rooting for Black Hole.

I don't know if they went into details on Dark Assault. I got tired of the choppy ustream and decided to watch it later - and of course, that part didn't get recorded.

Actually, you have me right there with you. Pretty much since the beginning of time, I've seen Placate as a very good power in potential, but at the same time a power which is entirely too hamstrung by the... "Cautious" balancing of Stalkers circa I6. I realise how strong the actual placate effect is (that is to say, the one which makes enemies unable to target you), and I'm more than convinced that's why the power's use is so limited by time and animation. However, Placate has the strong potential to be a GREAT help with scoring Hidden criticals, but that's prevented by two factors:

1. Placate's recharge is very long. 60 seconds for all of ONE critical hit is beyond not worth it. Even if it offered a great DPA increase, it's still not worth much in terms of DPS because it's available so infrequently.

2. Its animation time is ***, especially in comparison to WHEN it applies its Hidden status. Let's be realistic - all Placate has you do is wave your hand. How does that merit a 2s+ animation time? Since it only gives you Hidden status for ONE hit, making it this long is just a detriment in terms of DPA. Not only that, but the power applies your Hidden status to you at or near the start of its animation, meaning you could have that Hidden status broken by enemies attacking you before you're even done animating. That's just bad.

Personally, I wonder if Placate shouldn't become two separate powers, with one being inherent. One would be JUST the "Don't attack me!" portion of Placate on a long recharge and one would be a means to regain your hide quickly. I've actually suggested changing Hide from a toggle to a click with a long duration (say 10 minutes) but a short recharge (say 20-30 seconds) that put you back into your Hidden status when you used it. That way, with slotting, you could drop a Hidden Critical on your enemies once every 10-15 seconds in combat without needing new powers for it.

I fully realise that Placate + Attack is rarely that much better than just attacking, which is why I primarily use Placate as a survivability supplement tool, but that's what I want to improve by finding a better way to regain your Hidden status than even Placate. It's slow and infrequent.

As for the Demoralisation aspect of Assassin's Strike... I'm thinking it could do more. At the very least, either have a longer Fear duration or a higher (absolute?) chance to inflict its fear component. The to-hit debuff is pretty handy for defence-based sets and it being unresistable is decent against AVs, but I've found the effect is too rare and lasts too short a time when I've used it.

And, no, I would not in the slightest be opposed to the Assassination Critical hit for scale 9.0 damage

I don't know what to say. I've seen Placate affect elite bosses, it just doesn't affect them for very long. And I'm really not trying to use it defensively so much as set up a Hidden Assassin's Strike, which tends to fail as often as it succeeds.

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Also: I know people have been talking about the changes being "too good" and talking about dialling them back, and while I disagree (at this point, I don't think anything can make Stalkers "too good"), I have to say that as long as I can use Assassin's Strike in combat without it being interrupted... I'm OK with anything else that happens to the power. NNNOOOOTHIIING in this game is so good as to be worth its interrupt time, with the possible exception of summons that I can do outside of combat, but even then that's just more trouble than it's worth. Out-of-combat powers like Mission Teleport, Rest and so forth I can see being interruptible, as that's actually a not all that a bad means of ensuring you're out of combat when you use them, but for actual combat powers? HELL NO!

My primary concern is that I be able to use Assassin's Strike in combat. Everything else is secondary to that. I'd love to have the Assassin's Focus criticals, too, and I'd love to have Assassin's Strike from Hide be uninterruptible and hit harder, but what I really, really want the most is uninterruptible Assassin's Strike out of Hide. First and foremost.

Second after that, I want a better way to regain my Hidden status. Exactly how this is achieved isn't important: Better Placate, different Hide, re-hiding on critical hit or enemy defeat, self-hiding every 8 seconds like I have POTD, whatever. The means, to me, isn't as important as the acknowledgement that we need better tools to help us hide.

Probably third after that, I want to mess with Build Up and criticals in general.

For Build Up, I honestly do want to see it ensure guaranteed criticals for 10 seconds, though I hear not all sets can benefit from that. At the very least, I want to see it provide a 100% damage buff, if not more. Or we can do it like Swap Ammo and have Build Up enable additional damage components in each power.

For criticals, there is so much we could do... We could make critical hits from Hide do more damage, such as 150-200% base damage in addition to being guaranteed. We could have Hidden criticals apply status effects or debuffs. Or - and this is my favourite - we could have Hidden criticals still allow non-Hidden criticals to occur still, meaning if you're lucky, you can score a double critical from Hide. What this means is that, if you're lucky with Assassin's Strike, you could score your Assassination Critical AND score an extra 2.76 scale damage on top of that from Assassin's Strikes regular critical hit for some impressive, if fairly rare damage.

Personally, I'd up Hidden criticals and increase the damage on the Assassination Critical to scale 9.0 as a first step to make Hide more relevant, then increase the damage of hidden criticals to 150% base, but leave the out-of-hide Criticals as they were officially suggested. Optionally, I'd allow Hidden attacks to score their Hidden critical AND score their unhidden critical on top of this if the random roll is favourable. But that's just me

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I never thought the changes where "to good" and they needed dialed back.

The idea of gimmick on gimmick when it comes to their inherents just seems terrible, but maybe that's what makes them different?

I did mention the two ways of buffing archetypes a few pages ago. Stats and adding gimmicks.

I do think that there's such a thing as too many gimmicks. If an AT becomes too gimmicky they can be too unwieldy and eventually be too conceptual and hard to balance. Adding extra gimmicks means extra variables and you can't always assign a value to them. So you can't balance them in a spreadsheet and trying to ascertain value from data mining people playing can be just as problematic.

Stalkers are one of the most gimmicky ATs already. I do think they should be careful about adding more.

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

While you're right that Stalkers are one of the most gimmicky ATs out there, I have to say that most of their gimmicks are actually pretty convenient and straightforward, some even being entirely "behind the scenes," as it were. Mechanically, this may make them complex and hard to balance, but in terms of actual gameplay, they're one of the simplest ATs to play, short of Scrappers, of course. Even Brutes, who have all of ONE gimmick, are more demanding, as Fury is a very fickle mechanic that requires constant maintenance if you want to exploit it to its fullest.

Stalkers, by contrast, essentially start out Hidden, do something to break that hide and then just scrap. Oh, sure, they get better criticals on a team, but that's behind the scenes. Oh, sure, they have Placate, but as we've established, that's rarely very useful in an offensive capacity and pretty easy to use in a defensive capacity most of the time. And now they'll have Street Justice combos, which is probably their most complex mechanic, and even then it isn't all that hard because Assassin's Strike recharges too slowly to be used more often than once every three other attacks anyway.

The AT is complex to build and balance, but it's relatively simple to play, which is one thing I really like about Stalkers.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I don't think I'll ever support any method of making Hide into a click power, especially not one that you want at as close to 100% uptime as possible - some secondaries (*cough*Regen*cough*) are clicky enough already with Reconstruction, Dull Pain, Moment of Glory, and Instant Healing, with Hasten, Shadow Meld, and the Demonic accolade thrown in for good measure. I certainly don't want to have to keep track of when Hide recharged along with that.

Besides, you're in the exact same boat you're in with Placate now in that something can hit you while Hide animates (which it will do each time you have to click it) and you'd lose the status. At least Placate (usually) makes one thing stop attacking you.




Neither would I, but the devs may disagree.



I think it forces an animation on them - the one where they look around as if they lost where you are - whether it has an effect or not. Power Sink has a similar effect in forcing animations on mobs, including ones that are phased out and not affected. That doesn't mean that it actually removed you from their aggro list, though. I'll have to double check on the animation forcing, but the good news is that 3 of the characters I'm leveling up are Stalkers so I'll have plenty of chances.

But... ...here's the line item. It's mag 4. Mag 4 won't affect an Elite Boss. I suggested bumping it to mag 6 a while ago.

They can already do this after Placate. That's actually how I came up with scale 9 - it's below the double critical that you can currently do (which is scale 9.5), but it makes it far more reliable. I'm also assuming that the only unhidden criticals for the new Assassin's Strike will be Focus-related, so you wouldn't get a scale 11.76 double-critical with the changes.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

Mix of Melee and Blast (SURPRISE!) with Death Shroud for the DoT aura.

Their buildup will be a power-build-up IIRC

As I said, I foresee giving hide, say, a 10-minute duration with a 10 second recharge, so worrying about it being active shouldn't be a problem. Once every 10 minutes ought to be enough to keep you invisible. The reason I want it as a click is so I can use it to attain hidden status more frequently. And I don't foresee giving it any animation, or if it has to have one, I don't foresee it being very long, so the 2s+ animation of Placate shouldn't be a problem with this.

I don't foresee losing Placate at all. I just want to leave that power with JUST the placate effect, which needs to recharge more slowly, so that we can move the Hidden effect to another power which will recharge much more quickly.

I mean for that to happen to ALL powers, not just Assassin's Strike. For instance, if you hit something with Energy Punch and you're hidden, you deal base damage, you deal another 100% base critical, and you have a chance to deal ANOTHER 100% damage critical, for a total of triple damage. So, out of hide, you always deal base damage but have a chance to do double that, while from Hide, you always deal double damage, but you have a chance to deal triple damage. It makes Hide a better guaranteed hit, but it still leaves room for EVAN MOAR damage.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I invented the term "DPA" to be "damage per activation-second" because the term "DPS" was consistently overloaded to mean both "damage divided by the cycle time of the power" and "damage divided by the activation time of the power." I decided to call the former "DPC" and the latter "DPA." DPA caught on; DPC did not: instead the term DPS became synonymous with "damage over time" which served both to describe a single power's damage divided by its cycle time, and an entire chain's damage divided by its cycle time, the former being a limiting case of the later.

My thought is that Assassin's Focus is a great idea.

The problem is they have Criticals, they'll have Assassin's Focus and they'll have the Increased Chance to Critical with teammates around.

One of the reasons I just like the idea of upping their crit chance to a flat amount, and giving them Assassin's Focus, and doing away with the Team adds to crits.

That all said, I'd still want Stalkers to match if not beat out Scrappers/Brutes just a bit on the ST DPS.

Being Kings of ST Burst isn't bad, but it doesn't help where needed saddly. :/ and it never has.

Actually, I wouldn't be so sure. I think alone among the powersets, the blaster secondaries were cobbled together at the last minute without a clear vision for what they were supposed to be. Clearly, at one time they were basically supposed to be "melee" sets: that's obvious going all the way back to pre-beta, when Blasters were conceptualized as "ranged damage/melee damage" or "damage/damage." At some critical point, someone realized that would be problematic, and started trying to diverge the blaster secondaries from the tanker secondaries; note the differences in energy melee vs energy manipulation in powers like energy punch. But eventually, they clearly decided to punt that problem, call the sets "manipulation" and do the best they could to fill them with reasonable powers.

I don't think there's any other explanation for Fire manipulation's *six* PBAoEs. And on the subject of stalkers, if stalkers were at least originally supposed to be somewhat squishy, why do they have mez protection? There's a reason that was articulated in beta: they were going to be in melee range, where - so the thought process went - they would be more exposed to and more vulnerable to mez. In other words, being in melee range all the time was a strong indicator that you likely need mez protection. Stalkers have it, Scrappers, Brutes and Tankers have it, and even Dominators and Widows have it. While all archetypes have some melee ranged or PBAoE attacks, only one is intended to operate in melee range for a substantial percentage of time by design and doesn't have mez protection.

I thought that was the poibnt fo Defiance 2.0? Give Blasters limited mez protection without giving them the full protection afforded to melee ATs.

And the reason why blasters should have less than full protection is? Because, and I'm totally serious here, Blasters are the only archetype which is defined to have to occasionally die to be seen as working as intended.

Dominators get an entire control primary for damage mitigation but its not seen as extravagant for them to get mez protection - the real kind - in domination. It didn't seem extravagant for Widows to get it, and few thinks melee characters aren't entitled to full mez protection by divine right.

Not that I'm specifically asking for mez protection per se, but rather mentioning that giving blasters melee attacks without careful consideration of how they are supposed to use them, said consideration being consistent with the consideration given to all other archetypes, is part of the general problem of blaster secondaries not having a specific purpose. You look at Ice Manipulation and you think, ok, well that might make sense. Ice Patch and melee attacks; seems logical. Then you look at Fire Manipulation and you think, ok, six PBAoEs and no damage mitigation: that's suicide for most players. And it probably is.

Only, at least imo, while an improvement is still kinda, meh. I can use Tier 1/2 from the Primary and Tier 1 from the Secondary.

Might not be so bad on the Primary, but then, again imo, a lot of those tier 1's in the secondary are kinda set aside as only useful when mezzed and only because I have nothing else to use. The rest of the time, that tier 1 is left unused.

Blaster Melee damage is another one I don't understand why they don't just up it to the same damage mod as the range. Doesn't really help Devices out much, but it's a different beast from most other Manipulation sets.

Well, was Domination intended to be perma from the get go? I don't think it was. And without Perma Dom, they won't have full time mez protection.

But something they could do for Blasters is give them inherent mez protection, test it of course to see if it makes a big difference, but enough mez protection that allows the first hit to not effect them and thusly requiring stacking by the enemies might change it up just enough.

No idea really, just a thought.

Beats me, but then I'm not a big fan of the way mezzes and mez protection work anyway. ATs either have essentially zero mez protection of complete mez protection. If I could go back in time and give the original CoH team some suggestions I'd advocate a more tactical approach to mezzes where no ATs have full mez protection but NPCs with mezzes are less common. Give characters either limited up-time mez protection (so powers that work like a breakfree) or other methods of handling enemies with mezzes (such as holds and stuns).

a) It's still an extra click. A toggle just stays there.

b) Placate's animation time is 1.5 seconds, or 1.43 seconds for Dual Blades. Even accounting for Arcanatime that's under 2 seconds.

c) I didn't think you were talking about getting rid of Placate. I said that while the click Hide power is animating, you could be knocked out of hidden status. Currently Hide's animation time is 0.73 seconds, or roughly half that of Placate. That gives it an Arcanatime window of 0.924 seconds where it can be messed up before you can activate another power, relative to Placate's 1.716 (or 1.584) - you're not getting rid of the problem, you're simply reducing it.

A better way of reducing the chance of losing the critical due to getting hit would be have Placate set the kMeter (ie, Hidden status) "after 1.43 second delay" or "after 1.5 second delay", and have the Placate effect go off immediately. This would reduce the gap where it could be broken to 0.216 seconds for most Placates, or 0.154 for Dual Blades; note that doing the same with a click version of Hide gives you a gap of 0.194 seconds (89.8% of the gap if Placate is used).

d) All powers that can critical have the chance to double critical after a Placate now - you (general case) just notice it more with Assassin's Strike because that's usually what's used right after Placate.



I think this is thematically what the 30' radius for team criticals is supposed to mimic, without actually checking the mob's target to see who they're aiming at (which may be an engine limitation preventing them from checking a target's target and/or reading the aggro list for the target). Conceptually I like the idea, it's just that the mechanics they used get in the way of it dramatically improving performance like it could be doing since most teams are a bit more spread out than the radius provides for.

That's why I'd like to see the radius expanded to 80' (max range for most normal blast sets) or done away with and just use team size instead to base it on, with the (I have been told incorrect) idea that team size would be faster to calculate than how far each team member is from the Stalker.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

You know there's pretty much zero chance of that, since Black Hole was left in Dark Miasma for the port as Dark Affinity, and they aren't going to have the exact same power available in both primary and secondary.

Originally Posted by Back Alley Brawler Did you just use "casual gamer" and "purpled-out warshade" in the same sentence?

But then you could Black Hole two spawns in order to really annoy your team!

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

A while back I was playing with a metric I was calling "leverage." Leverage was basically a theoretical measure of the ratio between player damage divided by critter health, and critter damage divided by player health.

So for example if the players had 1000 health and a minion had 100, and the player did 50 dps and the minion did 40 dps, then the player ratio was 100/50 = 2, and the critter ratio was 1000/40 = 25. Leverage would then be 25/2, or 12.5. It would suggest that, at least within this rough arena, the player could kill the minions 12.5 times faster than the minion could kill the player. That was the "leverage" the player had to defeat the critters before they could defeat the player.

True leverage is difficult to actually measure, but we can approximate it in different ways. For example we can use damage modifiers and some reasonable guestimates for how full player and critter attack chains are on average at different levels as proxies for the offensive output.

I have a feeling if I normalize these numbers correctly, they will show a really important aspect of archetype balance because it directly looks at offense vs defense in the right way, instead of comparing something's offense to its own defense, it compares offense to opponents' defense and vice versa, and then compares those two results. But its something I haven't really had the time to dig into very deeply since my original foray into the subject, and that was years ago.

There's no question, though, that as we level the amount of attacks we need to use to defeat a critter rises, and the amount of attacks the critters need to defeat us drops. That basically says that in a normalized sense, as we level our offense gets weaker, while critter defense gets stronger. Any archetype that relies on killing them before they kill you is bound to run into a break even point somewhere along the line, and then its all downhill from there.

Please please please work on this: I'd love to see it actually quantified.

It's a metric I use in a very loose way. No spreadsheets here. But I call it 'htd' in my mind; hits until dead. Even that is a misnomer, it's actually attacks until dead.

But yes, you should be able to look at a critter and say, "I have to hit him 3 times before he can hit me 10 times." Or "I need to attack him 4 times before he can attack me 12 times."

Looking at it that way, you can more easily judge buffs, nerfs, and many other effects against a hypothetical 'average' critter of a given level and rank. "As a result of this change, I now have to attack a level 50 CoT Guardian 3 more times before it attacks me 8 times", or "In order to defeat the average solo +0 x1 spawn at this level, the blaster needs to attack x times before they collectively attack y times, which is patently impossible" and the like.