i24 fix all, mass hold ideas?

Since i24 is apparently the fix all issue..

Suggestions at the end..I was just getting my ideas down.

I am thinking Mass Holds. Well..aoe holds I guess I should say. I know doms and trollers are not seen as having many/any issues, and doms did get the changes awhile back...but bear with me.

Of the 9 troller and 8 doms primaries we have, all but Illusion has an aoe hold. Fire and Ice are rather unfairly given pbaoe mass holds, while the others are ranged, aside from Dark and Earth, which have place patch holds.

Leaving aside that the powers ARE different, which I dont think is a bad thing (it seems more fitting that glacier forms around you while a charge of electricity would be fired at targets) but going by themeatic reasons, you could most likely make a case for any hold being used either range or pbaoe.

The trouble as I see it, it that all these powers have crappy acc, low recharges and durations that are SHORTER than the single target versions. If we were just looking at Doms, well the rech and duration are 'somewhat' mitigated at high levels through build to perma dom. Likewise, we could say that the low acc and high rech can be countered by some troller secondaries.

The trouble is obviously that not all doms build for perma, not all trollers have -def and +rech powers, and those things will apply more so, when you are leveling up the character. Since the snipe change, as an example, seems designed that blast ATs can make use of it NOT just at 50 with tricked out builds, I think the aoe holds should be tweaked a bit.

Going back to the holds, the earth and dark ones are MILES ahead of the others. Because you can place them at range, you can use them while round corners. They also dont just have 'one' chance to work, if they miss. Meaning they are basically the only 'useful' mass holds when it comes to an AV. They are actually even better fighting hard targets, at you can just drop them (in a league) and get on with doing some damage/support/afking.

Backing up again, as I said, the fact the holds ARE different..is a good thing to me. In teh same way its good not every blast set has a snipe (and hopefully they get something decent to address any new balance issues). I dont really see the Fire or Ice aoe holds becoming a duration patch..because both sets already have bonfire and earthquake..duration patch controls. BUT I hear you cry..earth already has a great patch, earthquake, and the 60 second aoe hold also! Shenanigans? Or do we just put it down differences?

I am not going to try compare the aoe holds from different sets..but I will suggest they get improvements. If 'short' range blasts are going up to 80 ft (a change I personally think is just idiotic) how about giving aoe holds back normal accuracy? Especially for the pbaoe holds, that if you miss too many targets, can end in a face plant. At the very least, high base acc would allow for more recharge slotting, especially early on.
(I find I pick up the aoe hold early on my doms, then it sits there with just the base slot, due to lack of slots till I put IOs in)

Earth and Dark holds around do more..60 second duration, a huge -to hit in darks case and damage in earths case. Compared to..one shot wonders? That aint even that wonderful?

More suggestions.

Give Aoe holds for Trollers a higher chance to cause overpower, so you can actually lock more than one boss down without needing aoe hold + st hold. This would help the troller deal with bosses in that spawn, something that does not worry a dom as much.

Give aoe holds for doms a -regen effect, either for the hold duration or some external duration, making the hold actually useful vs hard targets. This would help since doms have no source of -regen, where a lot of trollers do.

Extra suggestion. Make all of the non patch aoe holds have 2 'tics' of Hold applied. One say..5 seconds after the other. This would help both ATs deal with missing, hold resistance baddies, as well as general low slotting in the power itself while leveling up.

yes. give doms -regen.

In before someone cries foul.


If anything the recharge just needs to be brought down a bit so the power is more in line with the mass stuns. Which can be made perma on Doms. Those have a 90 second recharge i believe. So 120 or a bit more wouldnt be bad for the aoe holds. But the current 300 is redic. At least with my mind dom I can hold one group, confuse the next, sleep the next (before someone on the league uses an aoe cause no one pays attention). But other sets dont have that luxury.

Illusion does have an AoE hold - Flash

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Illusion_Control#Flash

I'm not sure about the suggestions but its hard to compare AoE holds to each other without then comparing the whole set to each other. Earth may have a better AoE hold compared to Fire and Plant but both of these sets considerably out damage Earth

I'm not saying no to any changes but I don't think a universal change to all AoE holds would work and each needs to looked in terms of balancing the set

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger Quote: 16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard? If your mouse has greater processing power than your gfx card, the answer is yes.

Exactly..the recharge is crazy long. Until your perma and have tons. And by then..aoe stuns etc are up enough. The time you would get best use from the mass hold..lvling up..is not really practical with slotting constraints.

Yeah I just noticed I forgot the Illusion one..shows how needed it is in th set.

Not sure I really support improving AoE holds, since AoE holds are already some of the best abilities in the game, even with low recharge and low accuracy and issues like being PBAoE in some sets. A hold is effectively a temporary death to enemies, since it gives them no way to do damage and no way for enemies to mitigate incoming damage. An AoE hold multiplies this by 16, essentially killing the group that it gets used.

Nukes were looked at mostly because they couldn't be used, and short range blaster abilities were improved since their short range was causing danger to blasters. AoE Holds are extremely useful powers that can equate to an "I win!" button when used against most enemy groups in the game, and to my knowledge no one skips these powers.

The mass holds all stack with the single target holds, so you can use them to quickly disable a boss as well as takle out a crowd in one go.

I've always assumed that this is the reason that you get a quicker area stun/knockdown/ etc that can be up per spawn, and then the hold as the special long recharge ace-in-the-hole.

I'd suggest keeping the 4 minute base timer. Even on a SO build, this drops to 2 minutes, less with hasten, and in the case of Mind Control means a hard control is up every minute (since you can alternate with Mass Confusion). Many controllers and dominators do build for recharge on top of this, and at those levels these holds come up pretty quickly.

I would however advocate restoring base accuracy instead of the 0.8.
At high level play, this doesnt matter - you'll have global accuracy bonuses from positron's, Crushing Impacts and maybe Thunderstrikes coming out of your ears, and enough innate accuracy from the Basilisk's Gaze you've stuck in there. But this low acc really makes these powers stink at lower levels or SO play by demanding the 2 Acc, 2 Rech, 2 Hold slotting to make them even do anything relaibly.

With nukes recharging in around a minute with the correct slotting, AoE holds have lost even more use when teaming. I propose simply reversing one of the changes made - either increase the duration of the hold or reduce the recharge. I think that anything with 3+ minute recharge is a waste now that nukes will be up a lot more often. Not to mention that each Control set was affected differently by the nerfs - some, like Earth Control and Mind Control, could already rely on other control. Others, such as Ice Control and Gravity Control, relied on their AoE holds being up often to make up for their lack of other control.

Like Snow said..they are really not that great. The aoe stuns like flashfire, stalagmites..THOSE are great.

The idea was also partly to give the aoe holds SOME value vs hard targets. As it is, the single shot ones are a waste of endurance. I am not sure there is any such other class of powers that almost require major slotting..and will basically do nothing to an AV. Then we have the dark hold..a minute long, with a huge to hit debuff..vs single shot and pointless.

Also in my view, mezzers are pretty useless against major baddies anyway. GMs, no dice at all. Normal AVs, might get them held for a bit of a fight. Trial AVs? No chance. Sure, blast and melee aoes might be less efficient vs an av, but not almost worthless..just due to the ptod. Likewise with aoe debuffs and buffs..then wont be useless either.

I just think it would be nice in a power you invest slots in, did something a bit more.

Perhaps they could set the AoE Mezzes to have greater power based on how many enemies got caught in it?