expected average time to defeat per enemy, what do the devs expect?

I'm wondering what "time to defeat" number the developers try to balance each enemy rank around, per enemy?

Is it something like 10 seconds per minion, 15 seconds per lieutenant and 20 seconds per boss and additive for groups of them or what?


I'm curious as to the standards because I have a clever power set idea, but it hinges on the expected average enemy defeat time.

That's a figure that varies so wildly between powersets, and even more wildly across ATs, that it would be near-meaningless to assign an expected value to it. I've never heard of any standard value for such a thing. We do know that the devs use the rate of reward gain as a balance metric, but that measures more things than just enemy lifespan.

What's your idea? Perhaps addressing it directly could illuminate things.

Well they obviously have to have a metric they use to buff or nerf powers, even in alpha/beta, if they defeat enemies "too fast" or "too slow", as in they are "too strong" or "too weak".
(Edit: Of course, that varies based on secondary effects, so I'll just go with the pure damage sets/archetypes, how fast are they expected to beat enemies?)

It would be nice to get a ballpark estimate from a community person or developer.

I don't want to reveal my idea yet because it is really unique, and I would say it is very cool.
It would probably work with CoH as well, but if it wouldn't I also don't want to look too foolish yet.
It's also more of an idea for a couple sets or even a new archetype.(yes, it is that different from every other set)

I have never heard or seen any sort of discussion of such a metric. It sounds... peculiar... in concept to me for CoH as not only would it vary by player powersets, it would also vary wildly by enemy and their powers.

DPS is the only discussion I've seen relative to a balancing metric...

Now I have an idea for fixing Teleport so that we don't feel the need to take Hover to avoid dropping out of the sky.(I love Teleport, but it gets no love from the developers or most players.)

Here it is:
They could use the code that makes auto-run work. Have Teleport apply "auto-hover"(sort of a toggle like you can toggle on auto-run) until you hit a movement command(not turning, just forward/back and strafing) which cancels it(just like auto-run is canceled by hitting backward/forward) so that you stay up until you are ready to activate Teleport again or want to move.
That would also eliminate the need for a short timed hover that stops you from moving for a few seconds after teleporting.



Anyway, my power set idea hinges on how fast an enemy is expected to be defeated for balancing and figuring out what the powers will actually do. I want to make the idea the best I can before posting it.

There's still too large a range. Are we talking Lethal damage sets against Robots, or Carnies? Because the same set would kill a minion of each group at a much different speed. And are we talking about AoE-heavy sets, or single-target specialists? Because the AoE-heavy toon might take out a lot of minions quickly, but the ST-specialist will take down the boss faster.

The Devs usually use reward-over-time to determine if sets need a boost (among other metrics, I would imagine). As such, it's not kill speed against certain targets that matter, but kill speed over time against a wide variety of enemies.

We can establish a range of plausible values by looking at what current powersets can do, but really, there is no such thing as an expected average time to defeat any given enemy nor group of enemies. You could calculate one in the statistical sense of average, where your expected value was in the middle of the actual values, but few if any of the actual values match the average, but that doesn't sound like what you're looking for. If you're trying to figure out if your idea falls into the range of acceptable values, that's simple: see if it falls into the area of what existing sets can do. Without some kind of detail of what your idea is, or at least what category of set it is, it's difficult to be any more specific than that.

Auto-run isn't particularly special; it just makes you move continually forward until you toggle it off or move manually forward/backward. If the autorun function didn't exist, you could do much the same thing with /++forward (which is basically identical except that it doesn't play nice with backward movement). But there is no /hover nor /++hover command; you need an actual flight effect to hover or fly. Unfortunately your idea for Teleport has been suggested many times before. I'm not sure of the exact technical reason it doesn't work, but since we still have the current version of Teleport it's apparently not as easy as it sounds.

Ok, here is a new idea.


What is the maximum expected DPS for Blasters?
What is the minimum expected DPS for Tankers?

....without outside buffs and only with their primary and secondary powers on SOs only....(since this is how sets are likely balanced to avoid any power pools or IOs becoming "required" for normal play)

Edit:
Also....

What is the maximum single target DPS for Blasters, as well as the AoE maximum?
....the same minimum for tankers?

What is the average defensive value(mitigation per second) for Tankers?




I'm trying to make a set that, or sets, that could possibly work as an attack or defense set for multiple archetypes, or a new archetype.



Ok, here is the main idea:
I want to see if it would be possible to make damage mostly passive like "environmental damage" such as the damage aura toggles(and other cool ideas) likely for combining with a survivability set that is based on active survivability(like a Tanker that had Kinetics as a primary, but much more self focused and not kinetics). Part of the idea's "schtick" would be positioning as well, more than just "taunt everything into a circle around me".

Secondary effects are usually free, actually (compare Siphon Life to Disembowel). And again, there's such a wide range of values for this that you really cannot say in any meaningful way that there is an expected time required to defeat a given enemy. We can provide a range of expected times, but it's a pretty wide range, and often gets turned on its head (but no less wide) when you consider spawns rather than individual foes.

Moreover though, when you're trying to suggest a powerset, it's basically pointless to come up with numbers other than as ballpark estimates. Even if you're a professional game designer with a perfect understanding of everything about CoH, coming up with the numbers is not much better than guesswork until you can actually playtest it. In fact, trying to supply numbers detracts and distracts from the meat of a suggestion, which is the concept and the mechanics.

So what does everybody think of a passive offense/active defense combination?

What combinations already in game are closest to this?(because I really like the idea and would like to play such a character)

Certain controller combos might be loosely comparable - damage coming from pets, confuses, etc that are not directly under player control, while survival comes from choosing which enemies don't get to attack.

It is an interesting idea. I've seen similar ideas batted around before in other games, but never implemented that I can recall, so I'm not quite sure how it would work out.

Sounds a lot like my Fire/FF controller.

When I was talking about it here once someone said, "So you just 'stand stuff to death'?"