Powersets that need review

I disagree. While the total number of debuff powers do mean that the set will always be slightly wonky I think it's entirely possible to fix the set without nuking it and starting over. Due to the fast cast time of Trick Arrow the time to apply all debuffs isn't awful, it's longer than other sets but not awful. The real issue is the lack of Alpha Strike mitigation (which most sets handle with either buffs or healing) and the fact that most of the debuffs are quite short duration (most sets use toggles to limit the number of buff applications during a fight).

That being said, I think Trick Arrow does have the potential to be given decent Alpha Strike by buffing a few key powers. In particular the fact that Flash Arrow doesn't trigger aggro means that it can be used as your first debuff without triggering the Alpha strike. Next Poison Gas Arrow will allow you to trigger the Alpha Strike from Bosses and LTs only (as well as decreasing their damage).

Now if you go back a few pages to where I did a debuff comparison you'll see that Trick Arrow is competitive in terms of -damage but is falling behind in terms of To Hit debuff. It's slightly ahead in -resistance but not a huge amount.

So given that I would do the following:
Increase the To Hit Debuff in Flash Arrow to 12%-15%
Make the sleep component of Poison Gas Arrow stackable
Increase the resistance debuff in Acid Arrow to 25% and increase the radius to at least 15 feet
Increase the resistance debuff in Disruption Arrow to 25% and increase the target cap to 16
Do a bit of general duration/recharge re-balancing so that debuffs don't have to be reapplied quite so often.

And maybe do the following:
Buff the duration/recharge of Ice Arrow, this isn't a TA specific change, I'd like to do it for all Blast sets and Buff/Debuff Sets
Increase the -recharge in Glue Arrow

The basic idea is that a TA should lead with Flash Arrow which is a "free" power in terms of enemy aggro. Then follow up with Poison Gas Arrow, the LTs and Bosses will attack for 2.5seconds but then they to will join the minions in slumber. This gives the TA time to cast Disruption Arrow and possibly Glue Arrow if desired. Total elapsed time: about 5 seconds.

At this time the TA has to make a choice. He can use Acid Arrow to further debuff the group's resistance but at the cost of waking them up. Alternative he can opt to focus either on attacking or mezzing specific targets with a lower resistance debuff while using PGA to keep the spawn asleep.

Obviously this is the solo strategy, on a team the TA will likely launch a flash arrow to effectively buff the melee's defense and then use Acid Arrow/Disruption Arrow to increase damage.

Essentially the goal of the change is that TA can't take a full Alpha Strike the way that sets like Dark or Time can but by combining Flash Arrow and PGA he can mitigate and spread out the Alpha Strike.

However to compensate for the lower than average damage mitigation TA gets a 50% resistance debuff capability and a powerful AoE attack (OSA).

Very late reply to this... Super Reflexes (along with other Defense focused sets like Force Field) lost their luster when Defense got passed around too cheaply in IO sets. My response to this issue would be to give those two sets a minor pass to give them more game, and to nerf the crap out of +Def in sets. Kinetic Combat giving 3.75% defense on 4 slots? NOPE. All IO defense would be cut by 50-75%.

That would make approximately 30% of players pissed. Also, the game is balanced around SOs, not IOs.

Super Reflexes has something IO sets can't give anyhow, defense debuff resistance.

Uuummm....you do understand that wormhole doesn't just toss stuff around but also stuns them too, right. I'd call that a control.

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe ::looks at RaikenX's signature:: Something funny.

They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!

@Starflier

As much as it would make me initially cry and moan, I think I would enjoy the game more in the long run.

I recently made a Grav/Kin troller, currently up to 32. Wormhole is a great power and it is NOT hard to keep the enemies from flying around, even in an open space. With proper angling there is no knockback at all, they just crumple on the floor. not to mention any presence of corners makes it almost too easy.

And yea, the stun is great. Its a short recharging power with a long stun if slotted right. I really fail to see a problem with it.

Also Singularity is one of the best pets ever. The thing is brutal.

NO.

I want to feel super and do super stuff, and ramping up my difficulty to be challenged, or getting to fight hordes of yellows and oranges and just smoking them is a feeling you really don't get in other games.

If you don't like it don't use it, or customise the difficulty appropriately to how you enjoy the game.

You'll still be good. You just won't be +4x8 good. Deal with it.

You are correct that the game is balanced around SOs. Please witness by the raw volume of IO'd SS / Fire brutes just how well the game is "balanced".

If the devs were good, they'd balance around all tiers of gear. They're bad and therefore don't do it.

It's Rakeeb versus bad design team, and I'm largely unconcerned with the rest of the playerbase.

I don't expect the playerbase to support me because if the dev team follows through on my design ideals, the playerbase will initially react poorly. You guys like being ridiculously overpowered and making a mockery of the game's content. If all sets could do it, then I'd be in favor of it and just making content to that level to challenge the sets - but hey guess what, turns out Fire Melee is demonstrably superior in all ways to Radiation Blast. Mental Manipulation is clearly better than Ice Manipulation. Scrappers are demonstrably, quantifiably better than Blasters.

Until they're balanced, I'm going to continue to argue for it and for nerfing things like IO sets that make things like Super Reflexes and the Cold Domination armor buffs useless. At least until my sub expires as it's not being renewed, so if you wait long enough, I'll probably go away.

About the only thing that'll bring me back is an i24 that actually balances the game, or puts demonstrable effort into trying to reach that goal. You can bet that I'll come back with every analysis piece I can conjure up to underline effects of the changes and impact to the game, and which sets then need numerous small changes to get them in line.

I didn't know that.

I do have every support set upto 4 times over. Actually I just don't have thermal rad on a defender but I have that on a corrupter, controller and MM instead.

We can either sit in our chairs like a fat school boy doing our homework and look at the figures or get out there like an athlete and give our best efforts actually playing all the sets.

The problem with TA might not actually be anything other than the problem when it comes to buffs versus debuffs.

Other than that it's right tools at the right time versus mobs employing the right tactics. TA can employ different debuffs which all pseudo stack in fairly quick succession allowing aggro or not allowing aggro. As one of the right honourable gentleman above said you FA - no aggro then PA for some aggro but you can always EMP and own. I think its nice to have a natural defender but I really don't get our characters getting an end crash after EMP. It also feels like one of them defender sets that can obliterate spawns quite quickly.

What most people consider to be true, and what is true, happen to be unrelated to each other, even assuming 15% was a correct number. But....

Carefully researched also doesn't make it right. I'll be blunt, I think this number is very worng, and I'd like to see how your arrive at this. Mid's seems to disagree. Or at least v1.96 seems to say so. According to Mids..
T1-t4 powers: same in damage, end cost, and recharge. KU/KD vs stun
t5: Mace does 28% more damage, but takes 28% more end, and 33% longer to recharge
does stun instead of KU
t6: was taunt, and the same
t7: Mace does 12% more damage, cost the same, and recharges at equal speed. Does stun instead of KD.
t8: Ax does 21% more damage, costs 21% more end, and takes 25% more recharge time. Maces does have a 45 degree arc to Ax's 20 degree arc.
t9: Ax does 18% more dame, costs 21% more end, and takes 25% longer to recharge. Both have 180 degree arcs, both do KD.

So, I doesn't see that conclusive to me. If you build for high recharge, and want to fight groups, Ax might seem to have a serious damage advantage vs groups. And Maces 2 arguable winning powers are the ones that stun, so, if don't happen to be a stun fan...

Note, the above powers and the numbers are based of the Brute list. I haven't investigated the numbers for other ATs, so I will allow that the difference between Ax and Mace might be more profound for a different AT.


I'm glad you can speak for the devs on this.. Doesn't make you any less wrong.
When all the devs and I were hanging out chatting, they told me that Ax wasn't changed because it was fine as is.
So, now that we've both made claims on behalf of the devs without support, moving on..


I think this can't be proven either way, and is a matter of preference alone.

Even if the spurious '15%' were accepted as true, as Stun vs Knock is a matter of preference, the end result of this comparison will vary based on that judgement.

Well, I don't think it is under-performing. Thus adding adding damage on willy-nilly isn't good for balance, and may necessitate a nerfing later. I don't think mucking with things that are fine in performance, but currently unpopular, is a stellar idea in general. I suspect that the devs may know it's fairly well balanced vs Mace, and thus if they modify it to give it more damage, in the process, they may change other numbers as well. Maybe making it slower to animate, or slower to recharge. If they did, the set might be a bit less fun moving more slowly. But, even if they didn't, and they just bolted on extra damage, and never nerfed it later, it hurts me very little personally, I'll admit, except that it makes the game less balanced, which isn't a good thing in the long run.


Um, your quote seems out of context next to the quote of mine you referenced. So it seems sorta non-sequitar to me, and thus I can tell what you were hoping to drive at. I'll reserve any comment at this point.

I stand corrected, I did misread you. You were referring to Disruption Arrow when you said no changes were suggested, but the previous line you were in fact talking about Acid Arrow, and I missed the transition.

That said, I still disagree that it NEEDS it, but if TA as a set was going to get tweaked, I agree, this would be the place to make some changes. I suspect I'd be much more cautious and minimal in the changes I might make, compared to you, but that's only a hunch.




Well, it's not a control set, so it's controls aren't supposed to outshine controllers. Given the advantages of it's debuffs, most especially, lack of a maintenence cost. Can't be shut off via mez etc, and the sets ability to push out damage, too, I think it's a fine set in the end. But, due to it's unusual nature, it is late to develop, and does have a steep learning curve. And does requite a different approach than other sets. I don't think that makes it bad, or is a reason to change the set. Different strokes for different folks. If it doesn't appeal to you, then there are probably sets that do.




Even if everyone agree with this, it wouldn't make it right. Unless you swap out the word 'best' for the phrase 'most popular'. But, even this bit you're wrong on. Many would argue that Cold and Traps are the best debuff sets. Many would put Dark close to the botton as a debuff set, and then put it near the top of fun and effective sets anyhow, on account of how Controllery it is. And I suspect that poison would rank dead last on many lists, when and if it isn't totally forgotten.

The longer this goes on, the more it seems to me that you just don't like the set, but can't accept that some sets aren't for you...

Hmm. If the changes were made as cautiously as you lay out here, I think it could work out well.

I still don't feel it's necessary, but that might make it an easier set to play, especially early, without making it TOO op later on.

I'd not risk it myself, however, as the potential downside isn't worth the upside, by my evaluation, but I grant that this is a personal preference.

All in all, though, very well thought out suggestion.

If you get this way: it makes no sense your shield will protect you from attacks that come from your back.

So you openly admit that you don't care about how much fun this game is for everyone else, so long as you get what you want?

Can we please lay this terrible argument to rest? Virtually all characters, in SOs, can take on above-default settings to some extent given proper play (even if it's just slightly above default) and a reasonable build. Many can be outright incredible even before adding in IOs. Once you add in IOs? Even cheap ones? It's like the past 50 levels (assuming you even wait that long; I usually start getting some cheaper sets in the 30s) were being played with unslotted powers. Then you get into incarnate powers in addition to those IOs, and it starts feeling like not only had you forgotten to slot your powers, but you were accidentally using Brawl in place of some of your powers. Yes, even the heals.

Most games I play I'm lucky to take on a few mobs at once if they're meant to be an even challenge; once I get going on a character, CoH lets me mow down hordes (or, if I want, just focus on smaller but significantly harder groups of targets). I have a Elec/Shield Scrapper whose entire thing is running headlong into a big group of mobs and using every single KD attack I have not because it's effective (it is), but because of the sheer fun I get out of seeing LR->SC->TS go off and everything around me bouncing up and down if it isn't already dead. This quite often leads to said character ending up faceplanting, but hey, I just tossed around a huge mob of guys like they were toys. Imagine what that character could do if it was actually using IOs in any meaningful fashion and actually hit 50. Let's not even get started on how much fun I have when a teammate faceplants when I'm on my Dark/Dark Corrupter, who has Vengeance, an AoE res, virtually all the IOs I want short of purples and the only thing holding me back from going ahead and trying to take down entire spawns on Incarnate trials is the fact that it's built towards thematic play instead of min-maxing and I don't even have anything but the most incidental amount of defense because Soul Storm looks so awesome on that character I can't *not* take it.

While I can't say I necessarily agree with the idea that all defense IOs bonuses need to be halved in strength, there seems to be a notable train of thought by a chunk of forum posters that if your character isn't nigh-unhittable to at least S/L you've done something horribly wrong with your build. Why? Because it's absurdly easy to do in a lot of cases. While yes, the defense sets have defense debuff resists, what this actually seems to mean is that devs begin putting in some actually kind of silly levels of defense debuffs and/or accuracy on some things just to challenge those people specifically. This is quite unhealthy for people who, for whatever reason, aren't aiming for or haven't hit the soft cap yet. I imagine it will only get worse as time goes on, as more people begin to clamor for a challenge as their characters who long ago looked at the soft cap and decided they'd been aiming too low as far as character power levels went. The upside is, at least, that it both forces and allows the devs to push more towards using things that aren't just attacks to challenge people to stay alive, but then you get people complaining that they're just using gimmicks, and just want something to try to hit them like it usually does.

I suppose all I'm saying is that, "But I won't feel super...!" is an argument based on very little aside from personal opinion, but it's frequently used in such a way that implies that you're the only one who has the proper opinion in the matter.

Despite the fact that I agree with you on a philosophical and logical level, it's really too late in the game at this point to institute another GDN style nerf.

That would seriously alienate all but the most hardcore sycophantic players. I for one would leave the game for sure.

At this point I think IOs have reached an almost cottage rule level of sanctity to the devs. They will fix issues here and there, exploits and such, but something like halving the effectiveness of def bonuses is certainly off the table.

I'd rather see more options, such as more + res bonuses, to reduce the perception that soft-cap defenses are the holy grail of the IO system.

Its ironic that the best way I can see to adjust for the proliferation of defense bonuses in a way that makes defense sets more balanced in performance across higher end builds is to slowly escalate critter defense debuffing.

Praetorian tohit, by comparison, is the worst possible way to do that in the general case.

Or, you know, you could put a stop to defense proliferation and bring defense focused sets back into the conversation as relevant.

Oh I get what you're saying.

More +res bonuses to balance it all out.