Changes to Hamidon Origin Enhancments
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Agreed. I know Castle was trying something fancy. I never really "got" what he was doing, though. I immediately worked around it by slotting Def/Rech IOs when my Widow was in her 20s, and switched to Membranes near 50.
Frankly, it's really weird that Mind Link doesn't just take recharge enhancements. They clearly don't mind its recharge being buffable, or they would've given it the Strength of Will treatment.
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If I have to I can work around this using level 50+5 boosted Def/Rech IOs. It seems silly to have to, though.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Honestly my Night Widow's Mind Link isn't my concern (I still have 3 or 4 slots in it) - it's my Defender's Vengeance, since he only has the one slot to give the power.
Agreed. I know Castle was trying something fancy. I never really "got" what he was doing, though. I immediately worked around it by slotting Def/Rech IOs when my Widow was in her 20s, and switched to Membranes near 50.
If I have to I can work around this using level 50+5 boosted Def/Rech IOs. It seems silly to have to, though. |
Deamus the Fallen - 50 DM/EA Brute - Lib
Dragos Bahtiam - 50 Fire/Ice Blaster - Lib
/facepalm - Apply Directly to the Forehead!
Formally Dragos_Bahtiam - Abbreviate to DSL - Warning, may contain sarcasm
Vengeance is normally affected by both recharge and defense enhancements. Why would this change have any effect on it?
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I didn't realize that either. I only use it as a mule for LotG:+Recharge, so it won't affect me, but I can see why this too would be annoying.
Because, just like Mind Link, it is affected by recharge but cannot be slotted for it directly.
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My complaint isn't so much that this has changed with HOs, but that it doesn't match what the notes say is changing, and that it doesn't match what IOs do. That suggests to me one of the following:
- They know this affects stuff like Mind Link and Vengeance, but it's the only tech available to prevent things like Enzymes being use to enhance something they truly are not supposed to enhance, so they accept it as collateral "damage". The patch notes remain wrong.
- They saw how this would fix things like Enzymes, and didn't think about the side effects on things like ML and Veng. The patch notes remain wrong, but everyone thought they were right. This may turn into the first bullet above, or it might turn into the one below.
- This mismatch of behavior between Membrane and Def/Recharge IOs is contrary to both how the change was intended and designed. It can and will be fixed (at some point) so that Membranes would again enhance recharge in powers like ML.
- The ability to slot things that aren't listed in a power's accepted enhancements is completely unintended, even for set IOs. IOs will also change, possibly at a later time. In my opinion, if this were the case, certain powers should be modified to allow explicit recharge slotting. Mind Link, which (based on Castle's comments at the time) was designed explicitly with using the "slotting bypass" would be the prime example.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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It is rare that I might find myself disagreeing with you, but in this case you are wrong.
If the playerbase agrees with you that an LotG is just as good but cheaper in all respects, then the cost of HOs will necessarily come down. They are only expensive because they are bid up, because people think they are better in some circumstances. Scarcity is irrelevant if functionality is identical: rare or not people will flock to the cheaper alternative if it is in fact a genuine alternative with identical performance.
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Scarcity is irrelevant when one can be purchased with merits or inf, and the other can not. Their scarcity is not apples to apples.
When presented with this fact, the only rational course of action is to not use hamios, especially given an equivalent benefit from IOs, frankenslotted or for generic non-set use.
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Hew in drag baby
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Have to agree with my SG mate here, and several others. I slot textbook style frakenslot and have loved my HO build on my Main / Namesake. I don't know how effected he will be but looks like a new build sent to beta is in order to see what effects he may have suffered.
<censored>!
HOs < IOs --- even moreso now. Fair is fair, if one doesn't do it the other shouldn't either. I'm not asking that they never make changes or balance things, but I am asking for consistency. I don't want to replace the HOs in Mind Link only to find that, oops, that's going to change too. Edit: Been there and done that with Energy Melee's and Regen's rounds of changes. I prefer changes to be over with so that I can make whatever adjustments necessary to a build and be done with it. I dislike having to do successive respecs. |
As for Value; first they changed the Hami raid, a social event which became replaced with the MSR (most servers), Now they are making the reward (the first real shiny) humdrum and if it becomes ineffective I doubt the Hami Raids that are still running won't be that much farther behind, look for a zone revamp like (the RWZ, Faultline, and soon the Nes Astoria,) just to name a few.
Some things just make you wonder.
AV
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"Fixes" like this really make me start to think.
I mean, it could be a preemptive coding issue to prepare for something else down the line that they're not telling us.
I doubt it, but it's possible.
And overall, I really wonder how much of the population actually made use of this "exploit."
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Given that this was an issue they have wanted to fix since about Issue 1, and for which tech appeared that could produce a solution rather recently (they are clearly working like the Alpha Slot does), I don't think there's any special reason to think this is a harbinger of things to come. Things may be coming, but there's nothing about this which I think makes a reasonable indicator of such.
"Fixes" like this really make me start to think.
I mean, it could be a preemptive coding issue to prepare for something else down the line that they're not telling us. I doubt it, but it's possible. |
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And overall, I really wonder how much of the population actually made use of this "exploit." |
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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It's still a social event, and it has other rewards -- the merit reward, and the arguably less-than-stellar four incarnate shards. It's not the gangbang it used to be, with a hundred or more heroes wandering the goo in one clump under an umbrella of healing to take out the mitos, then standing around snarking while holds got dumped on Hamidon, then everyone rushing in to pound him into protoplasm, with the 'yellow dawn' the reward for getting overconfident, but it's still entertaining.
As for Value; first they changed the Hami raid, a social event which became replaced with the MSR (most servers), Now they are making the reward (the first real shiny) humdrum and if it becomes ineffective I doubt the Hami Raids that are still running won't be that much farther behind, look for a zone revamp like (the RWZ, Faultline, and soon the Nes Astoria,) just to name a few.
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"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
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I... guess it could be preparation for something else, but this by itself has long been a stated goal, so I don't see why they need further justification to do it.
"Fixes" like this really make me start to think.
I mean, it could be a preemptive coding issue to prepare for something else down the line that they're not telling us. I doubt it, but it's possible. And overall, I really wonder how much of the population actually made use of this "exploit." |
It doesn't even matter how many people used the exploit. If a lot of people used it, it was a widely abused exploit and needed to be fixed. If not very many people used it, fixing it doesn't affect very many people, and it still should be fixed.
This change hasn't altered HOs being used for their INTENDED purpose, which is basically frankenslotting. Nucleoluses will still give great acc/damage in attacks. It ONLY changes HOs being used in ways that are considered exploits.
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Given that this was an issue they have wanted to fix since about Issue 1, and for which tech appeared that could produce a solution rather recently (they are clearly working like the Alpha Slot does), I don't think there's any special reason to think this is a harbinger of things to come. Things may be coming, but there's nothing about this which I think makes a reasonable indicator of such.
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I wonder if it's a harbinger of what would have come had they not put the lid on this right away. I don't know how it wasn't public knowledge before, but someone recently demonstrated you could slot Power Boost or Power Build Up with a defense Hami, which in turn increased that power's defense global multiplier. Whether this change is connected to that or not, its timing couldn't be better, because had that become the new norm, there would be no way out of it (especially since Defense wasn't the only global mod you could slot for).
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That makes sense, but Membranes no longer affecting Mind Link's recharge do run somewhat counter to Dev statements regarding how slotting Mind Link was intended to work. This isn't an issue of incorrect values being applied, but a formerly intended behavior being removed. Unless the intent was that only set IOs and no other special enhancement types function in that role. Set IOs are more convenient to acquire than HOs and now offer much more benefit to Mind Link.
The intended behavior of an enhancement that claims to boost X buffs is that it does not boost X debuffs. However, the game implementation makes that tricky to actually implement. This was discussed thoroughly when the Hamidon trick was first discussed openly on the forums, and periodically since, and especially when the Alpha slot tech was revealed (particularly by me).
Furthermore, and possibly more importantly, the behavior of a *power* that claims to be only enhanceable by a certain list of strength is that it will not accept enhancement based buffs of any other type. The combination of these two intents was subverted by the multi-type HOs and the limitations of the game engine, but they always existed. As I mentioned previously, there are huge swaths of player who were never a party to those discussions, and for whom the intended behavior may be unclear. But its not unclear in an absolute sense: I can tell you what the intended behavior is, and I can state that with 100% certainty. |
If the change goes live as is i guess i'll have to tweak my Widow's build slightly and switch to boosted IOs. Mildly annoying but not a serious issue.
Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...
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I suspect that one just slipped through the cracks, since defense strength buffs are fairly rare outside of PB/PBU itself.
I don't know how it wasn't public knowledge before, but someone recently demonstrated you could slot Power Boost or Power Build Up with a defense Hami, which in turn increased that power's defense global multiplier. Whether this change is connected to that or not, its timing couldn't be better, because had that become the new norm, there would be no way out of it (especially since Defense wasn't the only global mod you could slot for).
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I think we can safely say that it wasn't the motivation for the HO change, however. That particular problem has a much simpler fix, and it wouldn't surprise me if we found in a future patch that the Defense part of PB/PBU was flagged to ignore enhancements and buffs just like Damage and Resistance buffs are.
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It was something they said would be fixed at some point and that it just wasn't a priority. Now it's been fixed.
I suspect that one just slipped through the cracks, since defense strength buffs are fairly rare outside of PB/PBU itself.
I think we can safely say that it wasn't the motivation for the HO change, however. That particular problem has a much simpler fix, and it wouldn't surprise me if we found in a future patch that the Defense part of PB/PBU was flagged to ignore enhancements and buffs just like Damage and Resistance buffs are. |
Nothing to really worry about.
![Stick Out Tongue](images/smilies/tongue.gif)
Still, I hope this means they do something to make HO's sout after again. Perhaps, move them up from 20%/33% to 33%/45% enhancement values.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
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The BrandX Collection
What the generic 'you' may want to consider is requesting new Enhancements be created that have the functionality you want.
Story Arcs I created:
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They freaking loathe them. I can't wait for I22 so I can meekly slot the scrapper AT set into arc of destruction under the blistering fury of the devs' spite.
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To the best of my knowledge Mind Link was never stated to be *intended* to benefit from multiaspect HOs for recharge, but rather the more weaker statement that it was designed with the knowledge that it could be slotted in that way. Castle was not above conducting experiments to see what the playerbase reaction would be to novel circumstances, but he tended to be very restrained on what he would allow in that area in my experience. Mind Link comes from a period of time when Castle and the powers team were at their most experimental. The VEATs themselves were probably the largest experiment done under Castle.
That makes sense, but Membranes no longer affecting Mind Link's recharge do run somewhat counter to Dev statements regarding how slotting Mind Link was intended to work. This isn't an issue of incorrect values being applied, but a formerly intended behavior being removed. Unless the intent was that only set IOs and no other special enhancement types function in that role. Set IOs are more convenient to acquire than HOs and now offer much more benefit to Mind Link.
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I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. I did say that scarcity was irrelevant (using those precise words) and if you are correct that people will stop using HOs, their price has to necessarily come down because players will stop buying them at the current high prices.
It is rare that I might find myself disagreeing with you, but in this case you are wrong.
Scarcity is irrelevant when one can be purchased with merits or inf, and the other can not. Their scarcity is not apples to apples. When presented with this fact, the only rational course of action is to not use hamios, especially given an equivalent benefit from IOs, frankenslotted or for generic non-set use. |
Its important to note that we as players only see execution prices, and every execution price is a statement by a player that the enhancement is worth that price. We never see offers to sell that don't execute. We only see offers to buy that do execute. If the rational course of action is not to use them, it will also be not to buy them, and those wanting to sell them will have to lower prices, or just not sell them at all.
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HOs < IOs --- even moreso now.
Fair is fair, if one doesn't do it the other shouldn't either. I'm not asking that they never make changes or balance things, but I am asking for consistency. I don't want to replace the HOs in Mind Link only to find that, oops, that's going to change too.
Edit: Been there and done that with Energy Melee's and Regen's rounds of changes. I prefer changes to be over with so that I can make whatever adjustments necessary to a build and be done with it. I dislike having to do successive respecs.
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