The Enzyme Nerf Cometh

My melee Widow has a mere 26.1% DDR, and I play her on +4/x8 against arbitrary stuff, including stuff that debuffs the bejesus out of her defense with auto-hit effects. (Hello, Arachnos Tarantula Mistresses!)

I never knew that character was unplayable all this time.

Does it make those foes a hell of a lot harder to deal with? Yeah. I don't have the expectation that I will be able to faceroll everything.

If a crab is going to be your new main, you're sure to gain a new appreciation for just how handy 70% ddr can be

And my point isn't that Shields needs a buff, or is second-rate (except maybe to fire). I even claimed it was one of the better designed sets in the game.

My point was that the change was dramatic enough to change the feel of the character, and to take change it from a relatively slow grinder -that was generally effective against mobs without high levels +tohit or nonpositional psy- to a set that requires a much more mental approach and that has reduced versatility. Despite this, the set is still balanced, but the change in playstyle was enough, for me, to be dissuaded from further play, as I could only compare it with the past negatively. New people going into the set will probably not experience the same sentiment.

I do have rebirth on the shielder. It is very, very nice. Regeneration is hard for me to quantify, but it feels like half my survivability.

But if a couple tarantula mistresses hit me with scramble thoughts, it alone will not protect me.

Oh, and to Arcanaville:

Thanks for the discussion. I wasn't clear. I understood that DDR and "RDR" cannot work the same way, and instead I wanted the defensive sets to have equivalent amounts of DDR to defense in the way that RDR scales with resistance. So a set with 45% defense would have x amount of DDR (say 90%, but it could be lower in practice).

Basically, I think defense powers (set and pool) should give DDR because resistance powers by nature give RDR. So shield's DDR would be in deflection, BA, PF, and GC, and a person could take weave, maneuvers, and CJ to further improve DDR. This would also have the advantage of making those powers better for already softcapped characters.

If we used a 2 to 1 ration for DDR to defense, that would mean shield would have a base of 46% to DDR, and could take the pool powers for an additional 7%ish. I could see the ratio being less than 2 to 1 though (and the value could be different for different sets and ATs), as it would give sets like energy and ice an advantage to going for the softcap.

I'm not sure how relevant to the conversation that is, but if done that way AD wouldn't have given DDR in the first place. Anyways, just a thought.

Just to throw another opinion in the mix. I believe /shield toons are being more vulnerable to defense debuffs, is good thing ...working as intended. Having boosted damage, boosted hitpoints, boosted resists, AND unbeatable defenses is too much good with no risk to counterbalance it.

I agree with ShredM. I knew it wouldnt last. /Shields gets a lot for a little with HO's bug. I could kind of overlook it due to the difficulty getting them, plus I like the idea of a mutation (the DNA of your character actually changed with HO's!!) when exposed to Hami, but oh, well...

There is a very simple reason behind why I have been on the just remove all non IOs for a while.

Whether we like it or not COX is a PVP MMO. One of the biggest sources of imbalanced since the launch of COV was players using the hami o exploits.

Take another beloved MMO of mine Guild Wars. The reason it works both as a casual PVE and PVP RPG for so many is that there is no super gear to imbalance the odds. Sure there are rare items in that game, but they are only highly prized for thier COSMETIC aspects. And believe me when I say pretty moves that games economy as surely as it does in the real world.

When you have items, especially rare ones, that can significantly effect the balance of power between 2 players, it will always lead to balance issues in PVP especially if PVPers want it to not require any real time spent on PVE to feel competitive.

PVP IOs where an attempt, poorly thought out though it was, to balance it back. However the right answer was to always REMOVE anything not earnable through our reward merit system that has proven itself a great success in attracting players to run TFs, hunt GMs as groups, and in general enjoy alot of content that had spent its fair share of time being hated upon.

If it can be only aquired through PVE play then frankly it cant be that good in the game we now play in. Look at the mothership raid for example. Id say its more fun then Hami anyday of the week, at least equally challenging to get organized and run. but none of its rewards are really significant combat upgrades. in fact much like In GW for a long time it was its costume unlocks alone that would bring fresh 50s out in droves to earn the V Merits.

Its not that I dont understand the frustration of losing the feeling of being a viable build. My oldest Kat/SR went through it multiple times. ED, the changes to how powers like ELude worked making perma a distant memory and his only if insane goal left he has to reaquire the power he once had.

Sometimes though the game will change, and a characters sets just wont ever feel the way they used to. Sometimes a new character using the new sets will be the only thing that keeps you interested. Sometimes a long break so u can come back and start fresh and not burdened with the fresh memory of how it was just working last week.

However it is also a FACT that it was long ago made clear by the DEVs that the HOs where not WAI and that it was a top issue they where working on though they adimitted freely it might take them, and did take them years to fix it.

My problem with and aggressive tone isnt directed at any who used them, but those who used them to have an unfair edge, and now complain that its a NERF when in fact its evening the playing field.

Let me compare it to another MMO I play off and on DDO( Dungeons&Dragons Online) the MMO that really first prooved the FTP gamble could save a game on the brink if done well.

Sadly over the last few updates they have also has exploits of game breaking nature evolve on par with the HOs and thier long time impact on things like PVP balance.

In DDO the first exploit that was akin to the HOs actually happened long ago, during a period when a raid was bugged, and through a clever trick using an in game spell, allowed players to avoid actual completion of the raid, still get most of the loot, and therefore rapidly grind out something you where not meant to be able to run more then once every 2 and a half days. To this day there are players wandering around with a personal armory of such diverse power, that even with new items added, these old ones due to the nature of thier power still remain among top items new players will spend years to aquire, what some exploiters aquired in a few weeks.

The most recent ones are equally bad. One allowed players to in a matter of hours max thier currency caps on multiple characters, and stock pile away high end items that are incredibly rare in such quantity as to make any one else's efforts to be a respectably equipped player become meaningless. This was in ways on par to the great AE launch debacle with PLving. Fortunatly Our Devs here at Paragon used the lesson to improve our sidekick/exemplar system and our game in general.

Lastly in DDO is the current and now unfixed for months one, allowing players to trade items meant to be bound to character or account. THis would be comparitive if in COX we suddenly could througha known bug, sale things like incarnate materials and hero/villain merits to each other or even post them on the AH. Its so bad over in DDO players do it with an intentional tone of mockery towards the admin and devs of thier own game they claim to love so dearly.

That is where my real tone of contempt is directed here in COX, those who used this exploit and now dare to call it a nerf. Effectively admitting to being an exploiter which in any game, for any reason, is just simply an intolerable behavior to see in anyone I am expected to share the game with.

I am a VERY big fan of perma bans on those known to repeat exploit FYI and see exploiters of any nature as no different then gold farmers as far as being a cancer upon any MMOs community.

I sort of agree on COX being a PVP MMO - but only where the in-game economy is concerned. And even then, that PVP is a lot more relaxed than, say, sitting in Jita 4-4 playing Excel Online. Other than that it's strictly PVP optional with sadly not very engaging PVP.

To counter Demitrios claims of evils of using an exploit to gain untended power, I will return to an old point, and maybe use some info.

I can guarantee that I could take any AT and powerset combination and solo at at +0/x8 with inspirations with a build as expensive as the one I had on my scrapper. We don't have "overpowered" in this game, as every character should be superpowerful by definition. We do have class imbalances, however, and some of that is intensified by IOs and HOs.

However, understand that one my biggest points against this changes is this is cuts the usefulness of HOs in about half for me. They were only overpoweringly imbalanced before the multitude of nerfs towards them, and now are mostly overpriced curiosities.

HOs allowed me to create a melee character with enough survivability to face most content and the ability to solo a wide amount of AVs. But I can do that without HOs on numerous characters, and better. I didn't use the bug because it made me more powerful than all characters, but because it created a gameplay style I enjoyed (and I've advocated giving other defensive sets similar abilities). If I had wanted a more powerful character, I could easily have made one.

You are exactly what I was warning about when I posted earlier about how exploiting can be much more broadly defined. Specifically, you are asking to have me banned for a nondisruptive game behavior that I enjoyed without affecting others (indeed, I imagine that a few players benefited quite a bit from the influence I used to buy the HOs!). However, if we went around banning people because they used powers and enhancements available in game that were stronger than the developer's vision, you would have quite a few targets. For instance, virtually every player that uses IOs "exploits" them to gain an edge. The developers could easily state that they never intended for any player to softcap as easily as we do today, and your argument would advocate the banning of every player that used IOs in that manner (see also: Perma phantom army, perma crab pets, perma-hasten, etc.).

Obviously you have more experience with other MMOs (read the forum rules about discussing them, just a friendly warning). However, understand that PvP in CoH has a very small following, and that CoH is not like anything you have played before. Anyone has the capability of building a powerful build and getting large amounts of influence, but we have no exclusivity. Your power is personal, and will not keep you from joining any group's or doing any content, and only becomes a factor when we talk about soloing at high levels of difficulty. Yes, we have imbalance, but that imbalance does not give an edge because their isn't an edge to be gained.

Instead, the balance of sets is based around the player, rather than the people they would play with. Because we don't have any content that requires a group full of IOed out builds, the player does not "need" such a build. Instead, power affects people's personal set choices, and nothing more. The only exception to this is PvP, which is only an activity you will find if you actively seek it out.