Reworking Mez

Sparked by Johnny Butane's thread in the AT forum discussing a way to rework how the game handles mez, I'd like to present my own idea.

First, I would like to define what I feel are the problems with the way mez currently works.

1. It is binary. Your character is either stunned or it is not.
2. It shuts down your ability to stay alive. A melee character who is mezzed loses his resistance and defense. Aside from one exception, any mezzed character cannot activate inspirations to stay alive.
3. The combined effects of 1 and 2 lead to a situation that is neither fun nor challenging. It just sucks, particularly so when chain mez occurs. A character that cannot react to what is creating the mez condition has to suffer while the mez is reapplied. This often creates an endless loop until the character dies.
4. It is not thematic. Superheroes are rarely completely incapacitated.

My solution is to rework mez so that it works in degrees similar to how a character is exemplared. Each point of mez magnitude would reduce the pool of powers available to the character. I could see two implementations of this.

This simplest method is to use the way the character was built. Each point of mez would take away one power selection, starting with the most recent. For example, a level 18 Fire/Fire blaster who is hit by a mag 3 stun would lose access to Blaze, Build Up, and Fire Sword Circle, assuming those were the three most recent power choices. The same Blaster at level 50, now with Flame Mastery, would lose Rise of the Phoenix, Fire Shield, and Bonfire.

The other method would be to disallow powers based on the level those powers become available. Let's take the same Blaster as an example here, but assume that he chose his powers in a different order. At level 18, the mag three stun would make it so he couldn't use powers that require him to be 14 or higher. He would still lose Blaze and Build Up, but Fire Sword Circle has a minimum level of 10, so it stays, despite being chosen as the level 14 power. At level 50, he only loses Rise of the Phoenix, because that power isn't available until 44. The other two can be chosen as early as 41 and 35. This is by far a more complicated way to do mez, but I believe it is far more thematic.

As far as theme, imagine this situation: Spiderman gets surprised and clubbed in the side of the head. The hit has thrown him off balance, enough that you might call him "stunned." Spiderman is a pretty resilient guy, though, so he's going to try to fight back. He won't be able to do any backflips in this condition, but he can still throw a few kicks.

This translates very well to the Blaster analogy I've been using. If your Blaster is stunned, it makes sense that he can't do some of the more complicated things like Inferno or keep focused enough to maintain a Fire Shield. But I'll be damned if he can't still throw a fireball at the guy that hit him.

So in conclusion, I believe my idea will make for a more fun experience when dealing with mezzing enemies because it addresses my defined problems. Mez would no longer be binary, which could lead to more varied enemy groups. Some enemies could be very strong at mezzing while others could be weak, outside the limits of "there's seven of them stunning me." Characters would be able to react to mez. A Defender leaves his toggle debuffs on the enemy and a Tanker keeps his armors active until they become completely overpowered. This creates an environment where there is more than one option (use a Break Free) to respond to mez. With options comes the chance to intelligently interact with your environment, creating the challenge of choosing the best option and the fun that goes with it.

Thanks for reading.

It's an interesting idea. The one thing that I think would be annoying is detoggling. A lot of my characters have toggles quite late in their build (such as resistance shields for Blasters). Currently mezzes just suppress those toggles without actually detoggling them but if the mez actually disabled the power then I'd have to re-toggle it which would be annoying. So long as the system could work by disabling click powers and suppressing toggles I think it would be ok though.

The other concern I'd have is that it seems to unduly penalize low level characters compared to high levels. A low level character could easily end up in a situation similar to today where all powers are disabled while a lot of high level characters would be barely impacted by it. Blasters would be ok assuming that Defiance continued to protect their low level powers but other ATs might not.

Sounds good to me, but I might make mez just a little bit more powerful. It shouldn't need to be mag 24 mez to take away all your powers, but rather something closer to mag 10 I think. I just can't think of any situations where you would actually end up hit by mag 20+ other than fighting GW or intentionally going solo x8 against an enemy group that only uses one type of mez.

There's only one thing I really haven't found a good solution for. How do you differentiate the different types of mez? Immobilization and fear could surely stay as they are because they still allow you to do something, but what about hold and stun?

Another thing: I'm thinking it would be better to make Mag X mezz take away X random powers, instead of the last X power picks. Otherwise, you'll just see people back-loading their builds with their IO mules, long-recharge clicks, and gimmick powers, which would make low-mag mezz a joke. It would also give it a bit more punch—losing a random power almost always has the potential to be dangerous or a major inconvenience, whereas very few of my builds have important powers near the end.

I'm no number cruncher, but I'm all for something that makes Mez less of a binary death sentence for certain ATs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

What you're describing would make mez powers into not-at-all-mez powers. And the different mez states would have to be renamed to accurately reflect what they do. Held would become somewhat-weakened. Stunned would become annoyed. Asleep would become tickled.

I'd prefer to see mez remain binary rather than become a debuff. The occasional mez isnt terrible, but chain-mezzing is the real buzz-killer.

An idea for dealing with chain-mez (and some other situations).

Everyone gets a "Recover" innate click power with say a 2 minute cool down, probably unaffected by any bonuses like Strength of Will. Clicking this wipes any existing mezzes sitting on the character, and reduces or wipes any debuffs. No pro-active protection is provided, you can get immediately held or debuffed again.

This means it can be used in the following situations that afflict both the mez-protected and unprotected:

- Just fought some Tsoo, and have 6 Siphon Speeds stacked on you.
- Fighting a magic enemy and have crazy To Hit debuffs on you.
- Your recharge is debuffed to the point you can't use any attack powers.

For "squishies", this replaces the 4 break frees you carry in case Plan A goes South. The recharge on this should be long enough that you can't lean on it as a per-spawn tactic, but its there for emergencies, kind of like Rest in early levels.