BUG: LOL who went over board on powerline placement? Looks like the asset runs on a path and is set to repeat every so much distance, but the repeat number was turned up to max.
So...would anyone be interested in seeing if we can hit above 100% CC res with presence? At 422 it's stating that I have .71 res to cc, I know the numbers aren't final but I'm rather curious if with a bunch of aura of primal majesty users one can achieve freedom from CC.
I just found someone at 600ish presence, and they said they were at 1.2 res. However, when I tested holds against them (I dropped my presence so my holds weren't being buffed) the duration seemed no different then normal. Is the cc res hooked up? Because if it is, not much is happening.
(by the way aura of primal majesty needs some um...'tweaking').
Hm. Looks interesting so far. The supertank that slays all looks to be going the way of the dinosaur, as well.
That said, with the changes to the roles formerly known as Avenger/Brawler, I'm...not really sure why they need to be segregated anymore. The big difference appears to be the snare attached to the Brawler, but with lunges autosnaring and being on 3s cooldowns, that's long since seemed like an excessive feature of Brawler. An artifact of the melee pass going a little over the top. At this point, why not just re-merge them?
Haven't tested this patch yet but can we pleeeeeeeeeeeeease get past the idea of splitting ranged and melee damage roles? I'd rather see a glass cannon ALL damage role and leave hybrid for the tough damage types. Hell if you want another role just make a second support role for pet players that drastically improves pets with a little bit of heal/mez boost and threat, no damage boost, hp boost or anything for the player.
Ok, so it seems with the super stat and role changes my main is mostly slightly nerfed. The Epidemic numbers are taken from the highest damage tick at rank 3 and with rank 3 Infernal Aspect w/ zero stacks. Perhaps the most surprising thing to me was that Sentinel allowed for better healing and damage over the re-tooled Support role. PTS character is PRE w/ INT/EGO super stats. Live is PRE/INT super stats.
PTS Hybrid
Epidemic - 497
Conviction - 1413
Live Guardian
Epidemic - 466
Conviction - 1816
PTS Support
Epidemic - 341
Conviction - 2013
Live Sentinel
Epidemic - 389
Conviction - 2179
Support vs Sentinel: Lower damage and healing than Sentinel for a modest amount of max hp gain. Bleh. I don't use Sentinel on live because I think it's terrible for support characters. There's no way I'll be using Support as it is now since it's even worse than Sentinel. Maybe if there were times I needed to heal for 2k every half second and crowd controls in PvE were actually useful I'd use the Support role.
Guardian vs Hybrid: Lower healing but higher damage most likely due to the EGO ranged damage bonus. I use Guardian on live and I'll probably end up using Hybrid once these changes go live despite the massive loss of threat redux.
Presence: I don't like the changes, but I'm willing to see what happens next before crying about it. Going from a 142% healing bonus to 50% plus SS bonuses *and* losing 71% threat redux is a bitter pill to swallow. Knocks are crowd control as well. While Presence would possibly be overpowered if it gave resistance to *all* crowd controls, the tooltip should be more specific so players are not confused. The hold strength bonus Presence now gives is useless in my eyes. Everything I'd want to use a hold on in PvE is immune.
Not sure if bugs:
Everything that scales with super stats appears to have been buffed. Possibly the secondary super stats are weighted the same as primary super stats?
Bubbles are scaling with Support role
Bugs:
The munitions power Rocket when used by female characters still locks the client.
Seraphim's healing bonus appears to be stacking with itself.
Instances continually attempt to boot the players inside as if they were not in their own instance
Iniquity's hp cost is higher in Support role. Also, due to the overall healing nerf it might be a good idea to re-balance how much hp is lost per Iniquity tap.
Flight powers and Swinging feel slower than live.
Closing thoughts:
Overall my support character saw a redux in effectiveness, though that seems mainly tied to super statting PRE. However, we players don't know what the new gear and redone crafting system will provide so the total changes may be an overall buff yet.
At least the hold resist from PRE and EGO is working properly. 740 PRE and 236 EGO yield 130% and 57% hold resist respectively. Using a hold that lasts a base of 22 seconds lasted 7.9 seconds. Given hold resist has the same diminishing returns as damage resist nearly 200% hold resist should give about 7.4 seconds in the held state... assuming the player does not attempt to tap out or use a hold breaker.
Bug:
Unretconned Characters have 2 Super Stats with the new version of the Stats and as long as you don't want any changes on your character can be left that way with no reprocussions.
Especially dangerous on characters with Passives that up stats, or skills like Ego Surge.
Bug:
Unretconned Characters have 2 Super Stats with the new version of the Stats and as long as you don't want any changes on your character can be left that way with no reprocussions.
Especially dangerous on characters with Passives that up stats, or skills like Ego Surge.
They can force a retcon if need be but they only did it once in first beta.
As for feedback there isn't too much I can say but...
-Initial loading of game takes me a good 5 minutes on test and the cursor is tiny in this time
-Either I never noticed it or I only picked orange like colors before but Fury of the Dragon is untintable and if using wings turns them transparent orange too
-Seraphim heal aura is nice but Balance advantage still does nothing for boosting the aura
-Medical Nanites heal aura needs to double even with the pres changes its still totally underpowered for a passive especially when Seraphim is flat out tied with it in heal aura aspect but comes with a truck load of other buffs while medical just gives you half regen to self which is actually nice but the whole point of the power is the passive heal aura, ya know heal teammates automatically so you can focus on the tank or whoever is hurt bad or just plain do some damage with some nice team heals
-Primal Aura..... Well as the guy who officially championed for the power for a good year and a half to get it buffed from +20 all stats, let me be the first to say +140 tp all stats is insanely overpowered, I mean I broke the 2k stat total barrier, even if the aura is only +45 the fact you turn into a legendary ranked player sorta breaks everything. So... yeah, I asked for it to be buffed in the past, now I ask for a nerf.
-Ultamites ... yeah I can't spell that word and spell check is being dumb... but love the changes however I wonder if its intentional that a full retcon post 35 allows you to pick them before your end builder or t0/1 power. I HOPE it stays since it opens up soooooooo many build options if you don't like the T0 and want to mix and match energy builders a bit.
-Superstats feel... off... like something is making them a tad too influential, I have nigh similar stat totals as on live and yet my powers are working almost 20-30% better on passives and about half that on normal powers themselves. But maybe this is just because I normally tri or quad stat in builds not dual or single stat which seems to be the norm so the change of focus to more split stats helps me out alot? No idea but it certainly feels weird to me to have passives so strong (although I can think of four that still arent) . That said I love the changes in general but then again it's hard not to love basically a shift to your preference so
-Stat changes:
Well first off the patch notes are terrible I couldn't make heads or tails of it until I got in the game and just moused over each.
Strength: Love that the damage bonus now scales forever and at a decent amount too, really think the knock resists could get tweaked into a more useful form but thats more a mez issue then a str issue.
Dexterity: Fine with the changes although I'd REALLY like to see perception stealth boosted too not just aggression stealth.
Ego: Needs a minor tweak I think, namely make it all crowd control resist not just holds and increase the amount to be comparable to how much a similar amount of pres boosts crowd control effects, aka if 200 pres is 44% mez boost then 200 ego should be 44% mez resist
Int: My only complaint about int always has been it's on too brutal of a curve, pretty much any amount below 200 makes them all useless, if the slope was adjusted to be more linear it'd be great.
Con: Personally I wouldn't mind seeing Con get a minor resist all boost attached to it even if its just say 5-10% per 100. Would help those who take passives with no built in protection to have a bit more survival as even 20% resist beats 0% by quite a bit especially with the hp boost.
Presence: I like the direction of these changes but I think the mez resist is a bit over kill, just remove it and buff Ego with it and in turn make Presence boost all mez effects not just holds.
Recovery: I like seeing more energy buffing things using Recovery instead of other stuff, but I still think to really make this stat on par all it needs is one thing, have this stat also increase energy recovery to the equilibrium. With that the stat would become cemented as the go to stat for energy gaining
Endurance: To be honest, I think this stat needs something, but not too much of a something, just a little side effect of 'oh that is kinda nice' but no idea what that could be. Maybe just resist energy drain effects?
Roles:
Once again confused the hell out of me when reading the notes but atleast I eventually got it.
Tank: Holy cow i'm swimming in threat bonuses, I might be able to tank without ever needing to touch a taunt adv ever again which means all those horrible 'tanks' who never ever were built to tank in PUGs are now actually going to be tanks on a team, especially with the other -threat in roles. That said the increase in mez resist is sorta pointless, I'd rather just see a flat boost to mez protection with full mez duriation, let me laugh off a mez or two but get punished hard for thinking I could jump into a mob of mezzers. *Naturally also add more mobs with mez to do just that and give more of a point to player mez*
Support: Love the changes with one exception, can we just have the control effect boost built into the super stats like the heal is? It'd be easier for people to understand when they mouse over their stat and see +x% mez strength. I'd also love to see buff and debuff effects boosted too to allow all three support styles, heals, controls, and (de)buff, course there isn't many buff powers in game despite the game practically built to prevent CoX level of buff abuse... Sigh... one day maybe I'll be able to play buff support in CO... I miss it...
Range / Melee : No, just no. There is absolutely no point to this, they are practically identical and the only thing these roles serve to do is punish people for hybridizing melee and range together which incidentally you have a whole AT dedicated to just that idea. Just fold these into one role the Damage role, aka a glass cannon. Just give a flat high level damage boost, minus threat, snare on melee attacks, weaker heals, controls (buff/debuff too?), and give it higher severity and base crit chance too. Done.
Hybrid: And now we have the guy to go to when you want damage without being a glass cannon. And more reason why we don't need a range / melee split. That said I'd probably tweak this oh so slightly in that I'd nip 5% off the healing from super stats and give it to base health since this role has no -threat at all which is fine since it sorta back up everything but also means its more likely to get punched in the face so that 5% health helps alot. I'd also add possibly a minor mez resist boost for the same reasons. Maybe take 5% off damage to boost mez/buffs at the same rate as heals (10% now)
Pets: Yes I know it doesn't exist but it should. And what should it be? Support passives. Have the super stats give -player threat, +pet threat, +pet hp, +pet damage. Have the role give a small boost to mez, heals, and buffs, lower player hp and damage and lower their mez resist and let pets energy penalty be removed or greatly weakened.
Stealth: Yup also doesn't exist but lets face it, this is the only good way of adding stealth to the game. I'd probably base this off the Hybrid class actually instead of damage atleast when it comes to passives. For superstas it'd be +damage -threat +stealth.Tthe role would give a small damage boost and a noticeable health decrease. But more importantly a reworked Sneak is added for use. I sorta envision something like this:
-2 second interuptable activation in combat, instant if out of combat (you personally not your team or any pets you have)
-Next attack: Always crits, crit severity bonus of 250% (300 total) on single target, 100% (150 total) on aoes, bonus of +100 severity if melee
-While active: -1000% healing, +x% aggressive / perceptive stealth, -x% power cost discount if using travel power (a huge amount at that basically using travel with sneak would mean a far more limited amount of attack options unless you had really high int, end and rec)
And yes that means you would still be in Sneak even if spotted or getting hit, and you'd still get a damage boost on next attack but the huge -heal penalty combined with lower health in general probably means its a dumb idea to stay in Sneak for long, and also means you can't simply sneak away to go heal up then fight again granted that'd be fairly hard to do in combat with an interuptable activation although using smoke bomb and such powers would allow you to turn it on easier and get multiple uses mid combat, especially boss fights. But I'll admit I'm not that big on sneaky types so this was more or less my 'non stealth guy attempts to please the stealth people' suggestion.
Finally: Changing roles still crashes the map
Some toggle devices turn off if mezed, aka Dark Aura
And
-Stars are still useless, and without a decent death penalty everyone with a rez will be angry any time they attempt to revive someone only for them to hit respawn.
*Note: I mention several times all instances of boost hold / resist hold should be all mez, I did not actually test if this was tool tip error and did actually work with all mez as I had no one to test other then dummies and they are far far to prone to laughing off mez and they do not mez you at all*
P.S.
Steal the away team ai from STO for pets, and steal their location based powers tech while there too. I want some good pet ai and commands here and the ability to place certain powers where you want would be godsend.
My issue is the identicalness of melee/avenger, especially in pvp. before there were reprecussions to getting the extra 90' to your attacks, these changes sound like ranged will have an easier time kiting melee, and all they need is int + MSA to stay out of melee range and run around spamming (insert spike power here). I'm just glad melee still have that weak snare.
Bug: Entering instanced missions like 'Thick as Thieves', 'Why'd it Have To Be Purple?', 'Into The Storm' and 'Tourists... of DOOM!' all say 'leaving map in 60 seconds.' Please can you fix this.
Bug: The text bubbles do not appear when characters are talking and the audio is out of sync with the animations. The audio plays and then about 2 or 3 seconds later the characters start their animations.
BUG: Having the Mission listing for Kodiak open, click the button to bring up the training icon (must be eligible for new talent). Click a talent and select OK. Prompt confirms selection, as expected, but the selection is never made - still says 1 available. Closing all windows and going back in you are able to make the selection without issue.
BUGS: When doing missions that are not "find a contact" missions:
The maps (mini and full) no longer have numbers over the mission areas to let you know which area is for which mission in your tracker.
No tool-tip style popup with the mission name if you hover the icon over it.
After setting a mission as primary, there is no floating arrow pointing to which direction you need to go and there is no red exclamation point on the compass.
"Find a contact" missions (the ones where you have to find a person who will in turn give you missions), seem to be working fine (numbers, tool-tip, arrow, icon on the compass all there).
Bug - Orbs
Millenium City
Destroids Rise Again
Whilst trying (and ultimately failing) to solo this with a level 40 invuln SB/DB
I could not seem to pick up orbs - I would move on to them but they didn't register me as the owner
Also damage taken by me seemed kinda odd, I would lose a whack from my health bar but then immediately gain most of it back. I was using Bionic Shielding but not always and it shouldn't be capable of healing 30 - 40% of my health anyhow!
Also check out the innate talent for The Blade it displays 3 x 10s and 1 x 8
Suggestion: Have supportive type powers like auras and ebon/radiant sigils scale with healing bonus instead of Presence. This has already been done to Protection Field and Mindful Reinforcement and would allow for better stat diversification, which I believe is the intended goal.
Swapping from Support to Hybrid unslots Aura of Radiant Protection as the active passive.
Suggestion: Have supportive type powers like auras and ebon/radiant sigils scale with healing bonus instead of Presence. This has already been done to Protection Field and Mindful Reinforcement and would allow for better stat diversification, which I believe is the intended goal.
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I approve of the above message, and would like it applied to Medical Nanites, too.
Will you please repost the patch notes showing the FULL Effect of each stat after the changes?
WIll you do the same for the effect of the roles?
Why do tanks need any damage boost at all? They have the strongest slotted passives in the game.. this should come with a penalty.
Support toons should have base damage without an increase as well.. Either that or AoPM needs some major looking at (maybe not allowing it in Hybrid?).
Is the intention to have "Hybrid" role not accept all passives? If it takes ANY passive, I think it seems too strong math wise.. it should be the least effective role not the most effective role. The power choice and play-style advantage is more than enough to compensate for it's lack of innate advantages. Specializing in a role should have advantages over being Jack of all Trades.
The roles should more drastically effect gameplay not less.. this is an action, not turn based RPG. It is also coupled with a "pick any power" character builder. This means that overcoming your innate weaknesses is easy (if you know what you're doing). So making those innate strengths and weaknesses larger more vast is my suggestion.
Why do tanks need any damage boost at all? They have the strongest slotted passives in the game.. this should come with a penalty.
Well... hybrids can use those slotted passives you know?? no need to nerf tank role any further. Though I can see this nerf hurting tanks on AT pvp (glaciar, behemot, master, mountain).
Not sure if it's a bug or not but everything that scales with super stats is more effective when in the Support role. AoRP at rank 3 goes from 104% to 161%. The team buff which scales solely by PRE is unaffected.
Where's the Kaboom advantage on explosive arrow is stacking again.
Its pretty nice, I can haz keepz dis?
I cant' get it to happen every time but its definately happening... Maybe something to do with straight shot?
Stuck at work, so I can't get in to test this for another couple hours.
Are you using advantaged straight shot? It might be that the advantage's buff is applying to one charge of WTK, and then the unbuffed WTK is counting as a separate power/debuff/whatever?
More paralyze/stun testing:
It appears that while paralyze duration scales with Presence, the health of paralyzes is the same. This value is somewhere between 1460 and 1700. So, regardless of how much Presence a character has once a paralyzed character (player or NPC) has taken 1600ish damage they will break free. Charged paralyze hold are still useless despite the Presence stat changes. Maintained paralyze holds are mostly not affected.
Stuns function as before, which makes them even more scary. Stacking Presence allows for over 5 second stuns, in some cases in an AoE depending on the power used. Unlike paralyzes, stuns do *not* break on damage though they can still be broken early by players using a hold breaker power. The possibility of 5+ seconds of being unable to act regardless of the incoming damage is not something I look forward to facing.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about paralyze vs stun is that while stuns are more dangerous than ever, paralyzes are roughly the same. Add on to the fact that stuns appear as afterthoughts to many powers that also deal damage instantly, most paralyze type powers must be charged/maintained and deal very little damage.
I'm looking forward to see what Cryptic has in store for crowd controls in general.
Muntions is one of the worst peforming sets in the game as it is on live, and these changes make it really tough for a Munitions player to support the paltry damage in the set via bullet beatdown.
A pistol munitions player has to already stat EGO to buff his sorry ranged damage, at the same time they must now also stat Strength to buff bullet beatdown?
Can I ask a favor here?
Can you please appy the same hybridizaton you did to Shuriken where it uses both Melee and range modifers to Bullet beat down to allow a Muni player to have that little bonus damage when he/she needs it?
Pretty please?
Munitions needs all the help it can get till it gets a full review.
Stuck at work, so I can't get in to test this for another couple hours.
Are you using advantaged straight shot? It might be that the advantage's buff is applying to one charge of WTK, and then the unbuffed WTK is counting as a separate power/debuff/whatever?
Thats my thought but I can't lock it down to a set repoduction steps.
Can you please appy the same hybridizaton you did to Shuriken where it uses both Melee and range modifers to Bullet beat down to allow a Muni player to have that little bonus damage when he/she needs it?
I was actually considering suggesting they did this to all the Tech tree melee powers. Chainsaw, Laser Sword and Bullet Beatdown are all more or less the inverse of the shuriken powers, instead of being an oddball ranged power in a melee set they're an oddball melee power in a ranged set, effectively making them hard to get good use out of for a character who specs heavily into the trees they're in.
Muntions is one of the worst peforming sets in the game as it is on live, and these changes make it really tough for a Munitions player to support the paltry damage in the set via bullet beatdown.
A pistol munitions player has to already stat EGO to buff his sorry ranged damage, at the same time they must now also stat Strength to buff bullet beatdown?
Can I ask a favor here?
Can you please appy the same hybridizaton you did to Shuriken where it uses both Melee and range modifers to Bullet beat down to allow a Muni player to have that little bonus damage when he/she needs it?
Pretty please?
Munitions needs all the help it can get till it gets a full review.
This change would make sense.
Why is it that Shuriken Throw, which is a ranged power in a melee set, gets hybridization while Bullet Ballet, a melee power in a ranged set, does not? And while we're at it, why are Two Gun Mojo and other equally weak ranged powers so much less damaging than the aforementioned melee set Shuriken Throw?
1/ I don't have any particular complaints about the new damage penalty for Tanks, the problem is threat. The new bonus imho is still too low, especially if you keep that -15% damage penalty, because in the game damage = threat. Ranged and melee DPS now have a natural threat debuff via stats I don't know if it will be enough but what's more certain is that hybrids with offensive passives will be a real pain for tanks and threat management because their damage will be high without any threat bebuff.
2/ some sloted passives should be more efficient with a specialized role. All passives are the same for hybrids as they are for specialized (support, dps, tanks) but in fact there are some differences:
- Melee DPS and Ranged DPS will still have an edge on damage over hybrids thanks to the natural role bonus.
- Support will still have a better healing power thanks to the natural role bonus and the strong energy recovery bonus (Though now Hybrids are closer to Supports in terms of healing power than Guardians were to Sentinels...).
- Tanks... will still have the same defense because the role doesn't provide any defense bonus. No I don't see the HP bonus as a significant edge over hybrids in terms of survivability, we all know that damage mitigation >> HPs. In addition, Hybrids can heal themselves better than tanks (+15%), narrowing even more the slight edge provided by HPs.
Hybrids don't deal as much damage as DPS roles, they don't heal as well as supports (but they are closer now), why would they have to be as resilient as tanks (Or: why tanks shouldn't be more resilient than hybrids?)
Items dropped on the map are not being updated very aggresively client side for the client that's picking them up. Snag a healing dot, or a defense dot or any other dot and it won't vanish, but it will grant the buff and fade away over the next second. While this does not impact gameplay too severely, it doesn't give good feedback that you indeed collected the item. Exclamation marks when looted show the same issue.
The chat log is no longer listing what channel someone is talking on.
The chat log no longer listing the name and global name of a player if you hover over their name with display @name disabled.
Serpent Lantern solo triggers the 60 second timer to kick you out of the map. I have not tested this in a team. I had the mission partially complete past alpha when I entered and triggered this from before this patch.
Mission numbers missing from minimap.
Misison waypoint pointer indicator mission objectives that don't involve talking to someone. They show if the mission requires you to talk to a person.
Head to the location of the mission "Fight Club" and behold telephone pole nirvana, not quite sure what anubus was thinking there but is it art. Perhaps its a commentary on the growing power needs of society as a whole
Additional comment on the telephone pole brigade: I don't think it's that they are multiplying, but rather they are congregating. Places where there should be poles, they are missing. The powerlines are still there, floating in the air. Look near the jail for an example.
Seraphim's heal buff stacks on itself, increasing with every heal tick. If left alone for long periods of time, it can get to ludicrous levels of healing buff.
Your Dark Transfusion deals 82 Health Points to you.
You lose 3217 Health Points from falling.
The Clockwork Contessa 1 gives 929568064 Health Points to you with Seraphim.
(Though now Hybrids are closer to Supports in terms of healing power than Guardians were to Sentinels...).
Hybrids don't heal as well as supports (but they are closer now), why would they have to be as resilient as tanks (Or: why tanks shouldn't be more resilient than hybrids?)
And this is a point i don't like in theses changes.
- Avenger and brawler had up in the damage value and with some bonus. The end of the -20% life or the malus to ranged attacks. And i'm ok with that.
- Tanks had a damage malus, it was necessary. But i think the bonuses to control resistance and threat are too low.
- But with healer/support, i can see a problem.
I can't really test because seraphim is buggued but in theory:
1) Before, presence give +98% healing and sentinel role + 20%
2) Now, presence don't give anything, superstats : 72% and sentinel role +25%
3) net heal loss : ~20% with the same role and the same passive.
Damage nerf, it's ok, but if this must nerf the healing capacities when the seraphim bug will be resolved, i'm not fan of this. (actually the bug create a big up, 10k par pulse, tests are not possible).
And when the presence stat reduced the threat a lot, now there is only a -15% threat, this is lesser than before.
I'm afraid for the passives which heal as seraphim or gadget's support passive.
Elite mode in a 5 team, i'm afraid to see the tank takes the 5 first mobs and everyone else runs to the healer
This is my first point. i think there is a problem with support role.
The second point. this is with hybrid/guardian:
I don't see why they have +30% damage as avengers or brawlers.
I don't see why they have more bonus with the secondaries stats. With a high level stuff, they can be very close of dps role.
I don't see why they have this big heal bonus at the same time. Half bonus of the support role. When support is the ONLY role who have now a malus at %hp, and have too a big damage malus, they must be a lot more efficient at healing than any classes, a lot more.
I see the hybrid as a 1/2 healer with a LOT more of dps and HP at the same time.
Hybrids seems to be the most OP role for pvp actually and i don't like that.
My opinion :
- An hybrid is a character who can do everything but not close to a specialist role.
I will down the hybrid damage slightly, 110% in melee,110% in range,1/2 with secondaries stats (where dps are 125%/100% and 100%/125%), I will down the heal bonus to +5% or 10% and will add a bonus to threat (5 or 10%).
- The healer is very fragile and have a malus to damage, ok, but must have real BIG heals. A lot more than anyone else. Not just a +15% bonus than hybrid.
- The tanks must have a real good resistance to control, (perhaps some more HP? because they don't have a lot more than hybrids in the resistance aspect), but the nerf damage seems correct.
- Avenger and brawler roles seems good.
The changes are globally good for me. Too more bugs to have a definitive decision, however.
Can i get a dev to chime in on how difficult it would be to change the "/camoffset" console command to accept X/Y intergers instead of numerical?
That way it could be used to go vertical as well as horizontal.
Currently it's limited to: 1 or 2 (right), and -1 or -2 (left).
It would be kind of useful for Grown/Shrunken characters
Additional comment on the telephone pole brigade: I don't think it's that they are multiplying, but rather they are congregating. Places where there should be poles, they are missing. The powerlines are still there, floating in the air. Look near the jail for an example.
The telephone poles are gathering, plotting, organizing. Can't sleep, telephone poles will get me.
I would like to chime in that I like the overshoulder cam, as do some other people I know. Though I can see it being a severe problem for our winged friends, so maybe a menu option that toggles the behavoir would be the most ideal thing! (unless you already snuck that in)
Well... hybrids can use those slotted passives you know?? no need to nerf tank role any further. Though I can see this nerf hurting tanks on AT pvp (glaciar, behemot, master, mountain).
I also noted that the WEAKEST role should be Hybrid role. It should come with the most disadvantages because it has access to more skills and min/maxing
More paralyze/stun testing:
It appears that while paralyze duration scales with Presence, the health of paralyzes is the same. This value is somewhere between 1460 and 1700. So, regardless of how much Presence a character has once a paralyzed character (player or NPC) has taken 1600ish damage they will break free. Charged paralyze hold are still useless despite the Presence stat changes. Maintained paralyze holds are mostly not affected.
Stuns function as before, which makes them even more scary. Stacking Presence allows for over 5 second stuns, in some cases in an AoE depending on the power used. Unlike paralyzes, stuns do *not* break on damage though they can still be broken early by players using a hold breaker power. The possibility of 5+ seconds of being unable to act regardless of the incoming damage is not something I look forward to facing.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about paralyze vs stun is that while stuns are more dangerous than ever, paralyzes are roughly the same. Add on to the fact that stuns appear as afterthoughts to many powers that also deal damage instantly, most paralyze type powers must be charged/maintained and deal very little damage.
I'm looking forward to see what Cryptic has in store for crowd controls in general.
It's already a problem. Hopefully one that will be removed, but as it is, it's entirely possible to have knocks remove any control for about 5-10 secs based on knock strength, which is the same as stuns, except you can't use holdbreakers, smoke grenade, active defenses, or in fact anything to mitigate them except pre-existing resists from stats, and generally take extra damage at the end of the knock to boot. Chained knocks, or knocks into stuns into knocks, make it worse. The other thing is, that stuns are generally short, and have normally not been added to by +hold strength abilties too much, where as knocks are everywhere, added freely to very high damage powers like stuns, and also scale linearly, unlike hold strength, which is normally subject to diminishing returns. Can we get knocks put onto diminishing returns? And maybe remove the entire "you lose control of your character for the entire length of the knock with no way of mitigating it" aspect of knockbacks?
Of course, because it doesn't affect PvE in a way that makes it easier, (because all bosses are immune) it hasn't gotten nerfed properly. On the other hand, in PvP, knock chains are a common way to see chars (even fairly survivable ones) dropped from 100% to 0 without a chance to recover. As a result, I see complaints about holds as not seeing the forest for the trees: crowd control in CO is badly, badly designed and needs major reworking, and with the stat changes, they can alter gear to make a reworked crowd control resistance system viable without too much extra uproar.
I also noted that the WEAKEST role should be Hybrid role. It should come with the most disadvantages because it has access to more skills and min/maxing
Except for the fact that the Hybrid role is now the go-to role for anyone that isn't a group pretty much.
To gimp the Hybrid role would be akin to telling everyone running a Defensive passive to suck it up, find a team, or switch passives. Tank is 'quickly' becoming a heavily group oriented role. Support, from the sound of things here, may be on a similar path.
But that's all even a side point.
Hybrid is the 'Balanced' role, meaning it has less defense then a Tank, but more then a DPS; less damage then a DPS, but more then a Tank; less healing then a Support, but potentially more then a Tank or DPS.
It is the middle of the road Role. Jack of all trades, master of none. No glaring specialization, no glaring weakness.
The only thing that Hybrid has access to that other roles don't is the choice of any Passive, but the inability to push the specialization of said Passive. To make Hybrid intentionally weaker then the other roles... well, you might as well just pull it out of the game entirely.
Now... allow any passive to be run in any role, and 'then' we'll talk.
...crowd control in CO is badly, badly designed and needs major reworking, and with the stat changes, they can alter gear to make a reworked crowd control resistance system viable without too much extra uproar. ...
Ha, you'll get no argument from me about that. I decided to focus mainly on paralyze/stun mechanics since there's more variables to play with due to the stat changes. As I said before, I'm looking forward to what Cryptic has in store for crowd controls in general... which in my eyes includes knocks.
Personally I'd like to see knocks and paralyze/stun resistances get grouped together. If your character is disabled in any way such that they are unable to attack (knock, stun, paralyze, or disable) then your character should get a stack of mez resist. That one stack of mez resist makes your character immune to further powers that disable your character. I'm not sure about how long it should last, but somewhere between 10-15 seconds seems ok to me. Maybe even differentiate between the base duration a character should be disabled such that a knock down won't give as long a mez resist buff as say a large knock or fully maintained paralyze. I say base duration because it wouldn't do to penalize players who have decided to spec into holds/knocks more than those who haven't.
I log in to play my character, not watch them flail as they ping pong across a map due to chain knocks or watch The Purple Bar of DOOM slowly count down while they're paralyzed/stunned... and no, mashing z to break out of paralyze style holds faster does not count as playing in my book.
There is a major issue with the strength of ranged in all this. In PvP ranged has always been better because of ridiculous ways to kite melee and how much crowd control breakage they have. Now with these changes, especially to roles, Ranged is becoming very well buffed, so now they will kite AND do more DPS than before. This is VERY BAD for PvP. There are almost no benefits to being Melee, since there are some ranged powers that do even more than Melee powers. And we can bet all the top players who haven't gone to Ranged yet, will be soon...
Comments
QFT.... also if this a feature, can you make it so we can change between classic zoom in and this over shoulder thing?
See above. That was me confirming the crash bug.
It looks like this bug also happens on other instanced missions, I've tried a few.
I can dream, right?
I bet we could do that kais.
I mean this was just me solo.........
(by the way aura of primal majesty needs some um...'tweaking').
That said, with the changes to the roles formerly known as Avenger/Brawler, I'm...not really sure why they need to be segregated anymore. The big difference appears to be the snare attached to the Brawler, but with lunges autosnaring and being on 3s cooldowns, that's long since seemed like an excessive feature of Brawler. An artifact of the melee pass going a little over the top. At this point, why not just re-merge them?
PTS Hybrid
Epidemic - 497
Conviction - 1413
Live Guardian
Epidemic - 466
Conviction - 1816
PTS Support
Epidemic - 341
Conviction - 2013
Live Sentinel
Epidemic - 389
Conviction - 2179
Support vs Sentinel: Lower damage and healing than Sentinel for a modest amount of max hp gain. Bleh. I don't use Sentinel on live because I think it's terrible for support characters. There's no way I'll be using Support as it is now since it's even worse than Sentinel. Maybe if there were times I needed to heal for 2k every half second and crowd controls in PvE were actually useful I'd use the Support role.
Guardian vs Hybrid: Lower healing but higher damage most likely due to the EGO ranged damage bonus. I use Guardian on live and I'll probably end up using Hybrid once these changes go live despite the massive loss of threat redux.
Presence: I don't like the changes, but I'm willing to see what happens next before crying about it. Going from a 142% healing bonus to 50% plus SS bonuses *and* losing 71% threat redux is a bitter pill to swallow. Knocks are crowd control as well. While Presence would possibly be overpowered if it gave resistance to *all* crowd controls, the tooltip should be more specific so players are not confused. The hold strength bonus Presence now gives is useless in my eyes. Everything I'd want to use a hold on in PvE is immune.
Not sure if bugs:
Bugs:
Closing thoughts:
Overall my support character saw a redux in effectiveness, though that seems mainly tied to super statting PRE. However, we players don't know what the new gear and redone crafting system will provide so the total changes may be an overall buff yet.
At least the hold resist from PRE and EGO is working properly. 740 PRE and 236 EGO yield 130% and 57% hold resist respectively. Using a hold that lasts a base of 22 seconds lasted 7.9 seconds. Given hold resist has the same diminishing returns as damage resist nearly 200% hold resist should give about 7.4 seconds in the held state... assuming the player does not attempt to tap out or use a hold breaker.
Unretconned Characters have 2 Super Stats with the new version of the Stats and as long as you don't want any changes on your character can be left that way with no reprocussions.
Especially dangerous on characters with Passives that up stats, or skills like Ego Surge.
They can force a retcon if need be but they only did it once in first beta.
As for feedback there isn't too much I can say but...
-Initial loading of game takes me a good 5 minutes on test and the cursor is tiny in this time
-Either I never noticed it or I only picked orange like colors before but Fury of the Dragon is untintable and if using wings turns them transparent orange too
-Seraphim heal aura is nice but Balance advantage still does nothing for boosting the aura
-Medical Nanites heal aura needs to double even with the pres changes its still totally underpowered for a passive especially when Seraphim is flat out tied with it in heal aura aspect but comes with a truck load of other buffs while medical just gives you half regen to self which is actually nice but the whole point of the power is the passive heal aura, ya know heal teammates automatically so you can focus on the tank or whoever is hurt bad or just plain do some damage with some nice team heals
-Primal Aura..... Well as the guy who officially championed for the power for a good year and a half to get it buffed from +20 all stats, let me be the first to say +140 tp all stats is insanely overpowered, I mean I broke the 2k stat total barrier, even if the aura is only +45 the fact you turn into a legendary ranked player sorta breaks everything. So... yeah, I asked for it to be buffed in the past, now I ask for a nerf.
-Ultamites ... yeah I can't spell that word and spell check is being dumb... but love the changes however I wonder if its intentional that a full retcon post 35 allows you to pick them before your end builder or t0/1 power. I HOPE it stays since it opens up soooooooo many build options if you don't like the T0 and want to mix and match energy builders a bit.
-Superstats feel... off... like something is making them a tad too influential, I have nigh similar stat totals as on live and yet my powers are working almost 20-30% better on passives and about half that on normal powers themselves. But maybe this is just because I normally tri or quad stat in builds not dual or single stat which seems to be the norm so the change of focus to more split stats helps me out alot? No idea but it certainly feels weird to me to have passives so strong (although I can think of four that still arent) . That said I love the changes in general but then again it's hard not to love basically a shift to your preference so
-Stat changes:
Well first off the patch notes are terrible I couldn't make heads or tails of it until I got in the game and just moused over each.
Strength: Love that the damage bonus now scales forever and at a decent amount too, really think the knock resists could get tweaked into a more useful form but thats more a mez issue then a str issue.
Dexterity: Fine with the changes although I'd REALLY like to see perception stealth boosted too not just aggression stealth.
Ego: Needs a minor tweak I think, namely make it all crowd control resist not just holds and increase the amount to be comparable to how much a similar amount of pres boosts crowd control effects, aka if 200 pres is 44% mez boost then 200 ego should be 44% mez resist
Int: My only complaint about int always has been it's on too brutal of a curve, pretty much any amount below 200 makes them all useless, if the slope was adjusted to be more linear it'd be great.
Con: Personally I wouldn't mind seeing Con get a minor resist all boost attached to it even if its just say 5-10% per 100. Would help those who take passives with no built in protection to have a bit more survival as even 20% resist beats 0% by quite a bit especially with the hp boost.
Presence: I like the direction of these changes but I think the mez resist is a bit over kill, just remove it and buff Ego with it and in turn make Presence boost all mez effects not just holds.
Recovery: I like seeing more energy buffing things using Recovery instead of other stuff, but I still think to really make this stat on par all it needs is one thing, have this stat also increase energy recovery to the equilibrium. With that the stat would become cemented as the go to stat for energy gaining
Endurance: To be honest, I think this stat needs something, but not too much of a something, just a little side effect of 'oh that is kinda nice' but no idea what that could be. Maybe just resist energy drain effects?
Roles:
Once again confused the hell out of me when reading the notes but atleast I eventually got it.
Tank: Holy cow i'm swimming in threat bonuses, I might be able to tank without ever needing to touch a taunt adv ever again which means all those horrible 'tanks' who never ever were built to tank in PUGs are now actually going to be tanks on a team, especially with the other -threat in roles. That said the increase in mez resist is sorta pointless, I'd rather just see a flat boost to mez protection with full mez duriation, let me laugh off a mez or two but get punished hard for thinking I could jump into a mob of mezzers. *Naturally also add more mobs with mez to do just that and give more of a point to player mez*
Support: Love the changes with one exception, can we just have the control effect boost built into the super stats like the heal is? It'd be easier for people to understand when they mouse over their stat and see +x% mez strength. I'd also love to see buff and debuff effects boosted too to allow all three support styles, heals, controls, and (de)buff, course there isn't many buff powers in game despite the game practically built to prevent CoX level of buff abuse... Sigh... one day maybe I'll be able to play buff support in CO... I miss it...
Range / Melee : No, just no. There is absolutely no point to this, they are practically identical and the only thing these roles serve to do is punish people for hybridizing melee and range together which incidentally you have a whole AT dedicated to just that idea. Just fold these into one role the Damage role, aka a glass cannon. Just give a flat high level damage boost, minus threat, snare on melee attacks, weaker heals, controls (buff/debuff too?), and give it higher severity and base crit chance too. Done.
Hybrid: And now we have the guy to go to when you want damage without being a glass cannon. And more reason why we don't need a range / melee split. That said I'd probably tweak this oh so slightly in that I'd nip 5% off the healing from super stats and give it to base health since this role has no -threat at all which is fine since it sorta back up everything but also means its more likely to get punched in the face so that 5% health helps alot. I'd also add possibly a minor mez resist boost for the same reasons. Maybe take 5% off damage to boost mez/buffs at the same rate as heals (10% now)
Pets: Yes I know it doesn't exist but it should. And what should it be? Support passives. Have the super stats give -player threat, +pet threat, +pet hp, +pet damage. Have the role give a small boost to mez, heals, and buffs, lower player hp and damage and lower their mez resist and let pets energy penalty be removed or greatly weakened.
Stealth: Yup also doesn't exist but lets face it, this is the only good way of adding stealth to the game. I'd probably base this off the Hybrid class actually instead of damage atleast when it comes to passives. For superstas it'd be +damage -threat +stealth.Tthe role would give a small damage boost and a noticeable health decrease. But more importantly a reworked Sneak is added for use. I sorta envision something like this:
-2 second interuptable activation in combat, instant if out of combat (you personally not your team or any pets you have)
-Next attack: Always crits, crit severity bonus of 250% (300 total) on single target, 100% (150 total) on aoes, bonus of +100 severity if melee
-While active: -1000% healing, +x% aggressive / perceptive stealth, -x% power cost discount if using travel power (a huge amount at that basically using travel with sneak would mean a far more limited amount of attack options unless you had really high int, end and rec)
And yes that means you would still be in Sneak even if spotted or getting hit, and you'd still get a damage boost on next attack but the huge -heal penalty combined with lower health in general probably means its a dumb idea to stay in Sneak for long, and also means you can't simply sneak away to go heal up then fight again granted that'd be fairly hard to do in combat with an interuptable activation although using smoke bomb and such powers would allow you to turn it on easier and get multiple uses mid combat, especially boss fights. But I'll admit I'm not that big on sneaky types so this was more or less my 'non stealth guy attempts to please the stealth people' suggestion.
Finally:
Changing roles still crashes the map
Some toggle devices turn off if mezed, aka Dark Aura
And
-Stars are still useless, and without a decent death penalty everyone with a rez will be angry any time they attempt to revive someone only for them to hit respawn.
*Note: I mention several times all instances of boost hold / resist hold should be all mez, I did not actually test if this was tool tip error and did actually work with all mez as I had no one to test other then dummies and they are far far to prone to laughing off mez and they do not mez you at all*
P.S.
Steal the away team ai from STO for pets, and steal their location based powers tech while there too. I want some good pet ai and commands here and the ability to place certain powers where you want would be godsend.
FIX THIS FIX THIS FIX THIS FIX THIS FIX THIS.
Bug: The text bubbles do not appear when characters are talking and the audio is out of sync with the animations. The audio plays and then about 2 or 3 seconds later the characters start their animations.
"Find a contact" missions (the ones where you have to find a person who will in turn give you missions), seem to be working fine (numbers, tool-tip, arrow, icon on the compass all there).
Millenium City
Destroids Rise Again
Whilst trying (and ultimately failing) to solo this with a level 40 invuln SB/DB
I could not seem to pick up orbs - I would move on to them but they didn't register me as the owner
Also damage taken by me seemed kinda odd, I would lose a whack from my health bar but then immediately gain most of it back. I was using Bionic Shielding but not always and it shouldn't be capable of healing 30 - 40% of my health anyhow!
Also check out the innate talent for The Blade it displays 3 x 10s and 1 x 8
Swapping from Support to Hybrid unslots Aura of Radiant Protection as the active passive.
WIll you do the same for the effect of the roles?
Why do tanks need any damage boost at all? They have the strongest slotted passives in the game.. this should come with a penalty.
Support toons should have base damage without an increase as well.. Either that or AoPM needs some major looking at (maybe not allowing it in Hybrid?).
Is the intention to have "Hybrid" role not accept all passives? If it takes ANY passive, I think it seems too strong math wise.. it should be the least effective role not the most effective role. The power choice and play-style advantage is more than enough to compensate for it's lack of innate advantages. Specializing in a role should have advantages over being Jack of all Trades.
The roles should more drastically effect gameplay not less.. this is an action, not turn based RPG. It is also coupled with a "pick any power" character builder. This means that overcoming your innate weaknesses is easy (if you know what you're doing). So making those innate strengths and weaknesses larger more vast is my suggestion.
Well... hybrids can use those slotted passives you know?? no need to nerf tank role any further. Though I can see this nerf hurting tanks on AT pvp (glaciar, behemot, master, mountain).
Its pretty nice, I can haz keepz dis?
I cant' get it to happen every time but its definately happening... Maybe something to do with straight shot?
Stuck at work, so I can't get in to test this for another couple hours.
Are you using advantaged straight shot? It might be that the advantage's buff is applying to one charge of WTK, and then the unbuffed WTK is counting as a separate power/debuff/whatever?
It appears that while paralyze duration scales with Presence, the health of paralyzes is the same. This value is somewhere between 1460 and 1700. So, regardless of how much Presence a character has once a paralyzed character (player or NPC) has taken 1600ish damage they will break free. Charged paralyze hold are still useless despite the Presence stat changes. Maintained paralyze holds are mostly not affected.
Stuns function as before, which makes them even more scary. Stacking Presence allows for over 5 second stuns, in some cases in an AoE depending on the power used. Unlike paralyzes, stuns do *not* break on damage though they can still be broken early by players using a hold breaker power. The possibility of 5+ seconds of being unable to act regardless of the incoming damage is not something I look forward to facing.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about paralyze vs stun is that while stuns are more dangerous than ever, paralyzes are roughly the same. Add on to the fact that stuns appear as afterthoughts to many powers that also deal damage instantly, most paralyze type powers must be charged/maintained and deal very little damage.
I'm looking forward to see what Cryptic has in store for crowd controls in general.
Muntions is one of the worst peforming sets in the game as it is on live, and these changes make it really tough for a Munitions player to support the paltry damage in the set via bullet beatdown.
A pistol munitions player has to already stat EGO to buff his sorry ranged damage, at the same time they must now also stat Strength to buff bullet beatdown?
Can I ask a favor here?
Can you please appy the same hybridizaton you did to Shuriken where it uses both Melee and range modifers to Bullet beat down to allow a Muni player to have that little bonus damage when he/she needs it?
Pretty please?
Munitions needs all the help it can get till it gets a full review.
Thats my thought but I can't lock it down to a set repoduction steps.
I was actually considering suggesting they did this to all the Tech tree melee powers. Chainsaw, Laser Sword and Bullet Beatdown are all more or less the inverse of the shuriken powers, instead of being an oddball ranged power in a melee set they're an oddball melee power in a ranged set, effectively making them hard to get good use out of for a character who specs heavily into the trees they're in.
This change would make sense.
Why is it that Shuriken Throw, which is a ranged power in a melee set, gets hybridization while Bullet Ballet, a melee power in a ranged set, does not? And while we're at it, why are Two Gun Mojo and other equally weak ranged powers so much less damaging than the aforementioned melee set Shuriken Throw?
Please.... a review of munitions.... please?
1/ I don't have any particular complaints about the new damage penalty for Tanks, the problem is threat. The new bonus imho is still too low, especially if you keep that -15% damage penalty, because in the game damage = threat. Ranged and melee DPS now have a natural threat debuff via stats I don't know if it will be enough but what's more certain is that hybrids with offensive passives will be a real pain for tanks and threat management because their damage will be high without any threat bebuff.
2/ some sloted passives should be more efficient with a specialized role. All passives are the same for hybrids as they are for specialized (support, dps, tanks) but in fact there are some differences:
- Melee DPS and Ranged DPS will still have an edge on damage over hybrids thanks to the natural role bonus.
- Support will still have a better healing power thanks to the natural role bonus and the strong energy recovery bonus (Though now Hybrids are closer to Supports in terms of healing power than Guardians were to Sentinels...).
- Tanks... will still have the same defense because the role doesn't provide any defense bonus. No I don't see the HP bonus as a significant edge over hybrids in terms of survivability, we all know that damage mitigation >> HPs. In addition, Hybrids can heal themselves better than tanks (+15%), narrowing even more the slight edge provided by HPs.
Hybrids don't deal as much damage as DPS roles, they don't heal as well as supports (but they are closer now), why would they have to be as resilient as tanks (Or: why tanks shouldn't be more resilient than hybrids?)
If anything since tanks have now less ability to dish out damage they could USE in increase to the scaling of their defensive passives.
The chat log is no longer listing what channel someone is talking on.
The chat log no longer listing the name and global name of a player if you hover over their name with display @name disabled.
Serpent Lantern solo triggers the 60 second timer to kick you out of the map. I have not tested this in a team. I had the mission partially complete past alpha when I entered and triggered this from before this patch.
Mission numbers missing from minimap.
Misison waypoint pointer indicator mission objectives that don't involve talking to someone. They show if the mission requires you to talk to a person.
Head to the location of the mission "Fight Club" and behold telephone pole nirvana, not quite sure what anubus was thinking there but is it art. Perhaps its a commentary on the growing power needs of society as a whole
Your Dark Transfusion deals 82 Health Points to you.
You lose 3217 Health Points from falling.
The Clockwork Contessa 1 gives 929568064 Health Points to you with Seraphim.
And this is a point i don't like in theses changes.
- Avenger and brawler had up in the damage value and with some bonus. The end of the -20% life or the malus to ranged attacks. And i'm ok with that.
- Tanks had a damage malus, it was necessary. But i think the bonuses to control resistance and threat are too low.
- But with healer/support, i can see a problem.
I can't really test because seraphim is buggued but in theory:
1) Before, presence give +98% healing and sentinel role + 20%
2) Now, presence don't give anything, superstats : 72% and sentinel role +25%
3) net heal loss : ~20% with the same role and the same passive.
Damage nerf, it's ok, but if this must nerf the healing capacities when the seraphim bug will be resolved, i'm not fan of this. (actually the bug create a big up, 10k par pulse, tests are not possible).
And when the presence stat reduced the threat a lot, now there is only a -15% threat, this is lesser than before.
I'm afraid for the passives which heal as seraphim or gadget's support passive.
Elite mode in a 5 team, i'm afraid to see the tank takes the 5 first mobs and everyone else runs to the healer
This is my first point. i think there is a problem with support role.
The second point. this is with hybrid/guardian:
I don't see why they have +30% damage as avengers or brawlers.
I don't see why they have more bonus with the secondaries stats. With a high level stuff, they can be very close of dps role.
I don't see why they have this big heal bonus at the same time. Half bonus of the support role. When support is the ONLY role who have now a malus at %hp, and have too a big damage malus, they must be a lot more efficient at healing than any classes, a lot more.
I see the hybrid as a 1/2 healer with a LOT more of dps and HP at the same time.
Hybrids seems to be the most OP role for pvp actually and i don't like that.
My opinion :
- An hybrid is a character who can do everything but not close to a specialist role.
I will down the hybrid damage slightly, 110% in melee,110% in range,1/2 with secondaries stats (where dps are 125%/100% and 100%/125%), I will down the heal bonus to +5% or 10% and will add a bonus to threat (5 or 10%).
- The healer is very fragile and have a malus to damage, ok, but must have real BIG heals. A lot more than anyone else. Not just a +15% bonus than hybrid.
- The tanks must have a real good resistance to control, (perhaps some more HP? because they don't have a lot more than hybrids in the resistance aspect), but the nerf damage seems correct.
- Avenger and brawler roles seems good.
The changes are globally good for me. Too more bugs to have a definitive decision, however.
That way it could be used to go vertical as well as horizontal.
Currently it's limited to: 1 or 2 (right), and -1 or -2 (left).
It would be kind of useful for Grown/Shrunken characters
The telephone poles are gathering, plotting, organizing. Can't sleep, telephone poles will get me.
I would like to chime in that I like the overshoulder cam, as do some other people I know. Though I can see it being a severe problem for our winged friends, so maybe a menu option that toggles the behavoir would be the most ideal thing! (unless you already snuck that in)
I also noted that the WEAKEST role should be Hybrid role. It should come with the most disadvantages because it has access to more skills and min/maxing
It's already a problem. Hopefully one that will be removed, but as it is, it's entirely possible to have knocks remove any control for about 5-10 secs based on knock strength, which is the same as stuns, except you can't use holdbreakers, smoke grenade, active defenses, or in fact anything to mitigate them except pre-existing resists from stats, and generally take extra damage at the end of the knock to boot. Chained knocks, or knocks into stuns into knocks, make it worse. The other thing is, that stuns are generally short, and have normally not been added to by +hold strength abilties too much, where as knocks are everywhere, added freely to very high damage powers like stuns, and also scale linearly, unlike hold strength, which is normally subject to diminishing returns. Can we get knocks put onto diminishing returns? And maybe remove the entire "you lose control of your character for the entire length of the knock with no way of mitigating it" aspect of knockbacks?
Of course, because it doesn't affect PvE in a way that makes it easier, (because all bosses are immune) it hasn't gotten nerfed properly. On the other hand, in PvP, knock chains are a common way to see chars (even fairly survivable ones) dropped from 100% to 0 without a chance to recover. As a result, I see complaints about holds as not seeing the forest for the trees: crowd control in CO is badly, badly designed and needs major reworking, and with the stat changes, they can alter gear to make a reworked crowd control resistance system viable without too much extra uproar.
At least knock damage is getting looked at.
Except for the fact that the Hybrid role is now the go-to role for anyone that isn't a group pretty much.
To gimp the Hybrid role would be akin to telling everyone running a Defensive passive to suck it up, find a team, or switch passives. Tank is 'quickly' becoming a heavily group oriented role. Support, from the sound of things here, may be on a similar path.
But that's all even a side point.
Hybrid is the 'Balanced' role, meaning it has less defense then a Tank, but more then a DPS; less damage then a DPS, but more then a Tank; less healing then a Support, but potentially more then a Tank or DPS.
It is the middle of the road Role. Jack of all trades, master of none. No glaring specialization, no glaring weakness.
The only thing that Hybrid has access to that other roles don't is the choice of any Passive, but the inability to push the specialization of said Passive. To make Hybrid intentionally weaker then the other roles... well, you might as well just pull it out of the game entirely.
Now... allow any passive to be run in any role, and 'then' we'll talk.
Ha, you'll get no argument from me about that. I decided to focus mainly on paralyze/stun mechanics since there's more variables to play with due to the stat changes. As I said before, I'm looking forward to what Cryptic has in store for crowd controls in general... which in my eyes includes knocks.
Personally I'd like to see knocks and paralyze/stun resistances get grouped together. If your character is disabled in any way such that they are unable to attack (knock, stun, paralyze, or disable) then your character should get a stack of mez resist. That one stack of mez resist makes your character immune to further powers that disable your character. I'm not sure about how long it should last, but somewhere between 10-15 seconds seems ok to me. Maybe even differentiate between the base duration a character should be disabled such that a knock down won't give as long a mez resist buff as say a large knock or fully maintained paralyze. I say base duration because it wouldn't do to penalize players who have decided to spec into holds/knocks more than those who haven't.
I log in to play my character, not watch them flail as they ping pong across a map due to chain knocks or watch The Purple Bar of DOOM slowly count down while they're paralyzed/stunned... and no, mashing z to break out of paralyze style holds faster does not count as playing in my book.