Seriously, if the only possible purpose of henchmen is too be paper, then what's the point of having henchmen in the first place. Killing huge mobs of henchmen that don't stand a chance against you yet don't have the common sense to run away?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying make henchment super tough, and or that they should be the focus of the game either. I'm saying, what's the point of even having them if they're supposed to do nothing?
I would rather have a few fights with small mobs of henchment (mixed with Villains and Master Villains, of course) that present an interesting (if brief) challange, than fight huge mobs after mobs of henchment that die so fast they might as well not be there to begin with.
(PS: And sorry if that came out harsher than I intended )
I general, I think the purpose of mobs by class should be something like:
Henchment - Medium DPS
Villains - Heavy DPS or Support*
Master Villains or Greater - Tanks + Heavy DPS or Support*
*with decent support abilities including auras and heals, and perhaps summons or crowd controls--stuff that might actually extend the life and effectiveness of henchmen, and the bad guys in general
I would rather have a few fights with small mobs of henchment (mixed with Villains and Master Villains, of course) that present an interesting (if brief) challange, than fight huge mobs after mobs of henchment that die so fast they might as well not be there to begin with.
I dunno, there was an occasion when my Electric form ultra DPS build was overwhelmed by errm not sure how many waves of telio raptors.
It was a Monster Island Crisis and there were 5 people in the instance but none of us teamed (that I'm aware of) this meant awesome numbers of critters but no real coordination on our part. The result was what felt like an epic last stand or two on my part. Kill the first 5 with lightning storm and then the next 5 and another 5 die on the sigils of primal storm and 3 more waves after that and then my support drones are dead, I've got no energy left, my sigils have run out and the last of my health is disappearing fast. I died BUT..... It was soooo glorious!
A fundamental issue with this question is that it's an issue of 'difficult for who'? No instance that can be beaten (at all) by one of the less effective archetypes (say, an Inferno) can possibly challenge a high end freeform. To make it so the same basic content is usable for everyone, difficulty scaling needs to be really severe (way more than the 30% damage bonus for current elite). I'd like something along the lines of:
Very Hard: +50% non-shtick damage, +100% shtick damage, 20% crit, 50% intensity, +25% shtick recharge rate, +50% hit points, +20% damage resistance, 20% dodge, 50% avoidance. +200% all drops.
Elite: +100% non-shtick damage, +200% shtick damage, 30% crit, 50% intensity, +50% shtick recharge rate, +100% hit points, +30% damage resistance, 30% dodge, 50% avoidance, self-heal (triggered on drop below 50%) of 50% of health (60s CD) for MV and below, SV gets heal as an MV every 30s, LV every 15s, +400% all drops.
The heals and increased damage and frequency of shticks make tactics somewhat more important, the drop modifier makes higher difficulty worthwhile without actually locking people out of content if they can't complete it on higher difficulty.
I disagree strongly on universal buff values, some enemy types shouldn't be able to dodge. Period.
What would be better would be to improve the AI so that it runs active offenses, active defenses, blocks, works in formations (instead of just charging at the player(s)), etc.
Also, most player do something to increase their survivability called HEALING!!! How many mob groups have a healer in this game? Not many... (note: also adds a layer of thinking to the combat, because your team needs to kill the enemy healers quickly first) I bolded what I feel is the good point of your post, the rest of that I disagree with on principle.
I still find it odd that Critters in City of Heroes have better AI than Champions.
Put down a damage patch--NPC tries to get out.
Some mobs perfer ranged--NPC tries to get out of melee.
You have placed a Debuff on the mob and it can't effectively attack you---NPC flees (HAPPENS TOO MUCH) and tries to get rid of the debuff.
Stuff like this could be a great start.
Agreed.
I don't know how much of the good ideas in this thread are doable but the NPC AI should be AT LEAST as good as it was in COX.
To add to that, i think the mobs in COH where better designed in general than the ones here (they had buffs heals debuffs team work e.c.t).
There are situations where the CO AI is intentionally bad, such as ranged NPC not trying to kite melee characters (I remember them putting in some tweaks to that, because of people finding it frustrating on melee builds)..
If im not mistaken, this was before Melee got all of those buffs. With melee as it is now, i don't think we need to intentionally handicap NPCs against melee any more.
I dont know how much of the stuff in this thread will make it into the "On Alert" patch but i hope the devs will give serious consideration to a revision of mob powers and behavior in the future. I would be overjoyed to see some of the things in this thread pop up in the Until Field Reports.;)
I would rather have a few fights with small mobs of henchment (mixed with Villains and Master Villains, of course) that present an interesting (if brief) challange, than fight huge mobs after mobs of henchment that die so fast they might as well not be there to begin with.
On this point we disagree. In some games I prefer to feel powerful, and in high enough numbers they can still be a threat. An example: Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2. I have spent more hours in that game than I care to admit, but they had several enemy types who were of little to no challenge and went down fast - And they were also one of the most fun enemy types to face. In addition, I played that game long after I reached level 60, I played the story over and over several times, because I loved to feel powerful in a superhero game.
I don't know, I suppose I just come from more immersive roots from time playing PnPs, where even small fights could mean something, because facing off against huge hoards of easy to kill enemies still meant that they could flank and sneak attack you, making it not such a good idea even if you were really strong. And tend to expect a bit of that in all RPGs. Here, we don't even have that, so its just an excersice in rounding them, then using your high damage, wide area AoE's (which there are plenty of in this game) till they all drop. And the number of henchmen don't really mean much unless they're massive.
And like I said, I'm not saying make them super strong or the focus of the game. I just don't see much of the point in them if they're not supposed to do anything either.
I don't know, I suppose I just come from more immersive roots from time playing PnPs, where even small fights could mean something, because facing off against huge hoards of easy to kill enemies still meant that they could flank and sneak attack you, making it not such a good idea even if you were really strong. And tend to expect a bit of that in all RPGs. Here, we don't even have that, so its just an excersice in rounding them, then using your high damage, wide area AoE's (which there are plenty of in this game) till they all drop. And the number of henchmen don't really mean much unless they're massive.
And like I said, I'm not saying make them super strong or the focus of the game. I just don't see much of the point in them if they're not supposed to do anything either.
In my PnP gaming days a fight where the bad guys are completely incapable of being a challenge for the heroes would be run using cooperative narration (or basic GM narration) and not actually played out. If the player's input is irrelevant then there is no point in playing the encounter.
In my PnP gaming days a fight where the bad guys are completely incapable of being a challenge for the heroes would be run using cooperative narration (or basic GM narration) and not actually played out. If the player's input is irrelevant then there is no point in playing the encounter.
In my PnP days mobs that presented no challenge wouldn't even give rewards (which I believe was actually the rules in some of the games I played, and how it generally worked in my campaign even if they didn't spell it out in the game manuals), and would only have the most basic gear when applicable (so that characters would have little to sell or claim as treasure). Though, now that you mention it, it would have been a good idea to skip some of the no-challenge fights and simply use narration for them instead (though, I did use sort of a narrative approach to combat, were actions on both side were described as they unfolded then were supplemented by dice).
In my PnP days mobs that presented no challenge wouldn't even give rewards (which I believe was actually the rules in some of the games I played, and how it generally worked in my campaign even if they didn't spell it out in the game manuals), and would only have the most basic gear when applicable (so that characters would have little to sell or claim as treasure). Though, now that you mention it, it would have been a good idea to skip some of the no-challenge fights and simply use narration for them instead
Yeah, rewards are often tied to opposition power level in games such as DnD. My group generally took a story based approach to such things though because we emphasized roleplay, problem solving, and the like over combat (though there would still be plenty of that).
I disagree strongly on universal buff values, some enemy types shouldn't be able to dodge. Period.
The mechanical effect of dodge, with the new version of dodge, is that one-shot kills become unreliable unless you have massive overkill. That makes life harder.
Setting difficulty on solo content in a fashion that most people like is pretty much an unachievable goal. Some players has quicker reactions, faster internet, minmaxed builds, etc. I have always ask what percentage of the comunity should be able to do elite solo content and no matter the answer there will be always people upset.
The real difficulty should come from boss encounters that requieres team coordination over individual role performance. However, the soloers will get mad because best gear would come from team activities and so on.
Therefore, no optimal solution. Do whatever you think most players(no matter their forum participation) would like
I agree with giving enemies varying forms of defenses.
When i FIRST played champions online one of the first things that impressed me was fighting Tigress (whatever the CO equivalent's name is) with Regen then fighting Shadow Ninja (name again) with masterful dodge (the mission where you get A Cat's Tale). The two fights were very different (and at the time rather challenging because I was playing a telepath).
I definitely agree with the ideas being given about giving our mob enemies varying passives and defense types. Give them more crowd control. And most importantly give them more tank penetrating hits and MAYBE even Crippling Challenge... make block more useful and desired mechanic. I love brickbusters specifically for this.
Setting difficulty on solo content in a fashion that most people like is pretty much an unachievable goal. Some players has quicker reactions, faster internet, minmaxed builds, etc. I have always ask what percentage of the comunity should be able to do elite solo content and no matter the answer there will be always people upset.
The key issue is rewards, not maximum difficulty. Elite difficulty that can only be done by 1% of the population is only a problem if that means there are rewards only available to 1% of the population.
Hunter Killer spawns.
This would be for elite 1-5 man lairs not open world.
In a normal lair the party almost always has Secure Flanks and Rear, the threat axis only ever really in front of them. So maybe that should be changed.
What if there were a Hunter Killer spawn let's say hypothetically 10 x Heathens for a 5 strong team and these guys are spawned at completely random locations within a set radius of the team. Their AI would be to get to the team ASAP and attack nearest on sight. Because of the random spawn point this stuff could come at the party from any direction, maybe even whilst the team is engaged with the more stationary enemies. There would be say a 2 minute break after the team has killed em if they kill them. Perhaps there would be a sort of Egg chamber affair by which this spawn could be turned off in that section of the lair but I would suggest this be in a random location also.
AI programming is not my strongest suit but from what I understand one of the difficulties is to have it so that the computer doesn't send everything right at the player coz it knows where the player is. With my brilliant scheme some of the installed daft behaviour would just be peeled back and the HK spawn makes a total beeline for the player(s).
Swarms
Also an adjustment for lairs.
These would be weak little enemies with a very nasty hold + venom attack, they would be melee and not able to leap more than 10 feet. When they jump the player they hold him/her whilst doing venom damage, by itself it would not pose too great a threat but if you had say 3-5 on you at once it could kill you fairly quickly and each little beasty would have it's own hold to apply. Both the attacks and the holds are interruptable meaning that if the player has activated sword cyclone say then they have nothing to worry about while it lasts. These meanies would be small models using the HK dynamic from above and perhaps need to be in groups of 15 - 25 (for a 5 player team). The party could not ignore the threat they present and if using HK dynamics would need to keep checking their sixes y'know like they have to in real life and the movies. They should die very easily but if you don't see em coming then you could be toast just as easily. If possible and I'm not sure it is they should be able to traverse walls and ceilings.
The objective I suppose is to have the party constantly be on their toes looking out for threats that may come from behind or to the sides as well as in front of em. Not a massive threat if you see em but you do gotta see em!
I was trying ot quite previous posters, but the list got too long. So to break it down, difficulty should be making the player fighter smarter, by using a better AI on the enemies, with buffs and debuffs applied appropriately. Here's a previous post of mine to show where I stand.
I don't believe there's any single change that will fix everything in terms of balance.
<SNIP>
My suggestion for making critters more difficult is to code them to play smarter and harder. Only Lieutenants and higher should have the ability to cancel travel powers. LTs should have have the presence of mind to block when the player is charging an attack longer than 1.5 seconds. 50% status effect resistance for Bosses. 75% and 100% for higher levels. Give minions a defensive buff if there are 3 (or 2) of them in a group. Give them a ToHit buff if there is an LT in the group. Give them a damage buff if there is a Boss in the group. So the more you attempt to tank, the more they'll buff each other to take you out. I don't even want to know what this would do for Zombie Apocalypse.
So if Normal difficulty is normal, then playing on Hard should buff the enemy (as it does), and using Elite could debuff the player.
I feel the AI could be tweaked. And although they will never be as 'smart' as another player, they could certainly develop a strategy that works well for their group. Examples are that Viper could use a crossfire strategy, while the Trapper snares the opponent. Martial Artist LT/Bosses should be using knock downs to allow their minions to capitalize (which is what you would expect when fighting a ton of martial artists at once). I like hot some Werewolf bosses are able to call in additional support. That's what you would expect from a 'pack'.
'Some' critters should specialize in strategies that are the rock/paper/scissors to certain defenses. Invul toons should have a hard time against critters that deal penetrating (or is it paranormal) damage. Certain groups should be more effective against players using Lightning Reflexes, and others against Regeneration. Still more with resistances against certain types of damage to force the player to recognize a different strategy may be needed when fighting the groups your build is weak against.
I haven't been able to do any of the alerts yet but from what I am hearing they sound a lot like the boss fights that we currently have in the game and are sub par in terms of variety and challenge. Upping the HP and damage of the enemies doesn't fix the problem it just makes fights longer, like many others have said, and the developers should be looking at boss fights as a chance to surprise us rather than giving us the same experience as fighting a very tough training dummy.
Others have mentioned this and I agree: Bosses should be done in phases and have a quirk to them that makes their fight unique. Some bosses do have that but they all should have something that makes fighting them interesting and unique to only them. Here's my example of how the boss fights could be handled.
Phase 1: Minion Phase
This is the phase where you wither go through the level to the boss chamber or there are a number of baddies to take down before the boss shows his face. This is just a warm-up and makes the player's hero feel powerful and a threat to the bad guy him/herself. The game already has this but I feel it is an important phase for them all to have.
Phase 2: The Boss Revealed Phase
The main baddie has appeared and is ready to attack the heroes directly. The game already has this as well and it would function virtually the same. Bosses would do their best to take down the heroes by using all their best attacks and moves. But when that proves to not be enough the boss moves onto the next phase.
Phase 3: The Quirk Phase
Either once half of the life bar is gone or maybe the boss rises up after being defeated, this happens when the boss has had enough abuse and decides on a last resort. This can happen in many ways so I'll give just a few examples.
Example 1: Boss summons an endless supply of henchmen to assist them and the spawning stops when the players defeat the boss or destroy whatever is spawning the minions. The minions the boss summons are of three kinds, attackers, healers, and buffers, all of which make the boss harder to defeat because they are assisting him/her. There should be a set limit on the number of henchmen on screen at a time, but it should feel necessary to stop the minions from spawning so the boss can be defeated properly.
Example 2: Boss transforms into a stronger form that gains some stronger defenses and stronger attacks that differ slightly from their normal attacks. These special defenses and attacks should be unique to the boss and change the battle tactics among the players so they have to rethink how they will defeat the boss.
Example 3: The boss tries to flee from the heroes and tries to lead them to another room or area where they have several traps and minions waiting to hamper the players from completing their task. This is not a "catch the baddies before he escapes and lose the mission" suggestion. The Baddie runs away to a location that is full of traps and enemies as to distract the players from him/her while they heal or buff up for the final confrontation.
I feel that the potential is there in the game to make every boss fight interesting and special, but who knows if it will ever actually happen. I bet if the Cryptic Devs asked we could come up with interesting boss fights and they could see if they work. Just some thoughts.
Oh and if we could see the major raid monsters into future alerts as Cosmic Alerts or something that would be cool too. Grond Raid would be awesome.
This post from another thread seemed to be in the spirit of what is being said here.
I wrote two sort-of-followups to that looong post, but while doing the second one I realized it really didn't belong to it's original thread, so I moved the thing to Suggestions Box into this new thread. It never got any interest there, though. Probably it was just too long post anyway. I have a habit of doing those.
It's kind of appropriate to this thread too, but I won't copy paste the whole thing, it's too massive to it - but go have a look if you're interested. Especially the 'conditions' part on the third post is how I'd envision revamping the crowd control, although what I posted there is just kind of rough draft / brainstorming.
What comes to challenge and difficulty.. if I'd have to put it in nutshell, I'd say: ''Make NPC groups as if they were 5-man groups''. Design them to be individual, but working together. Take archetypes as base templates since they have already been designed that way. For example, imagine an NPC group consisting of Glacier, Mind, Soldier, Inferno and Radiant.
Imagine a decent AI on top of that group: they'll dodge away from AoE, the two supports will resurrect fallen enemies and heal those that are hurt.. they are using AD and AO in reasonable way, they block.. they use CC on you. Tank uses cripple on you, which means you naturally feel inclined to take the tank out.. and challenging strikes could get a fair amount of buff, perhaps make it a 20% flat damage penalty. What you get is a much more dynamic combat experience than the current 'charge to the middle, blast with you AoE, move to next group'.
Of course there's a lot of other tweaks you could do to the combat, and the specific mechanics could be somewhat different - but the basic idea is same I've seen on several posts on this thread already: make mobs behave more intelligently, make them more distinct, make them use tactics that require players to take notice of them, and to adapt to situation.. to respond with tactics of their own.
Ditch the current hold/knock implementation of 'difficulty'. Putting players out of action for more than 50% of the time of fight isn't entertaining. It isn't fun. I don't enjoy playing the 'spam z key to continue playing', like I keep saying. There's nothing challenging in it, unless you count the challenge to my patience.
And knock is a complitely, utterly overpowered mechanic.
Want to reduce damage someone is dealing to you? *knock* Need to interrupt some charge attack? *knock* Need to disable someone for a while? *knock* Need to hit someone through their mitigation? *knock* Need to increase damage you do to the boss? *knock* Need to disable someone's circle? *knock* Need to get someone off from damaging teammate? *knock* Need to increase your overall damage? (enrage/aggressor) *knock*
Is there generally anything in this game that you can't resolve by using knock? It's far too powerful, far too frequent and far too annoying (for receiving end) mechanism. It needs to be toned down, severely.
It may be fun to feel the 'power' of blowing away half dozen henchies like they were ragdolls.. but that's about the extent of it. Give anything above henchie a high resistance against knock effects, and include players to that - players shouldn't be treated like henchies. Make knock attacks far less frequent and more limited - and I do also mean on bosses. The mutant general at the end of Whtieout is probably one of the most sickening examples of knock mechanics. Tentapull-uberknock-tentapull-uberknock-dead. It cuts through block like it wasn't there.. it knocks you away WHILE you are blocking AND standing in Circle of Primal Dominion. It's plain out ridiculous. Sure it makes the encounter more 'difficult', but that's not engaging or fun difficulty. It's frustrating difficulty, that doesn't give you choices, other than block, and hope for a lucky break that you might perhaps retaliate for a few seconds before being blown away again.
Edit: let me add a couple more thoughts regarding balance...
PFF, IDF, bubbles and flat mitigation as a whole.
...that probably got some attention. :cool:
I've seen many posts about how PFF is pathetic, and how flat mitigation is OP. There's generally almost full agreement on first, and a bit more mixed thoughts about the second. I'd also add that I feel bubbles in PvE are basically useless, especially when you go to elite. They get blown away by one or two attacks, and generally just aren't worth having the power. It's much, much more efficient to just straight out heal someone, because the health you heal for them cumulates with any and all mitigation they have - including block.
Flat mitigation.
Flat mitigation isn't inherently overpowered. What makes it overpowered is it's ability to pretty much complitely negate low damage attacks, right? If you attack with something where one tic is less than the flat mitigation, you deal zero damage (or one, as if that matters). That, of course is the whole point of flat mitigation, but the effect can quickly cumulate to ridiculous proportions.
So what can you do to help this?
One option is to make flat mitigation less absolute. Make it always let a portion of damage pass through. I was thinking 50% at first, but that would kind of negate the main point of flat mitigation, so I'm thinking 75% is more appropriate. Second, make it always the outer layer of defense, right after bubbles. This means you first reduce from damage the effect of bubbles.. then flat mitigation.. and only after that you start counting for block, dodge and damage resistance. I know this isn't 'logical' regarding dodge in particular, but letting it inside any other form of mitigation that isn't flat mitigation (like bubbles are), will increase it's effect exponentially, and that is detrimental for balance.
So for example, having 125 points of flat mitigation, and being hammered with constant tics of 100 point damage, would let 25 points straight through flat mitigation.. and into being delt by other forms of defense. It still isn't that much, but it can cumulate if there's 20 henchies blasting at you. It still makes flat mitigation good defense against small damage, but not absolute.
Bubbles then.
The problem with bubbles is that they get blown away far too easily. 2000 points of unmitigated defense is almost nothing on higher difficulties. I think the whole system of how bubbles work could use being reworked.
I'd suggest a few mechanics added to bubbles. First, give them some bleedthrough (similar to ship shields in STO). Second, give them a maximum amount of mitigation they can offer against single attack - allowing very powerful attacks to partially break through the shield. Third - and possibly, make them regenerate their strength over time.
The exact numbers that would work, are a question of balancing, so consider any actual number I put here as just something thrown in for the sake of explaining the mechanics. BUT. At the least double the current strength of bubbles.
Concider a forcefield with 5000 points of capacity, 10% of bleedthrough and 10% threshold. What this would mean is, out of any damage the forcefield blocks, 10% will get through.. and the maximum amount the field can block from any single attack is 10% of it's capacity.
So for example, an attack that deals 400 points of damage, 360 is absorbed by the shield, and 40 points cut through it (to be handled by any flat mitigation, then block and damage resistance).
The shield now has 4640 points left.
The next attack is 2000 point nuke. The shield cannot handle that kind of damage. It can at most mitigate 464 points of damage - which it does. 1536 points break through the shield, and are again handled by rest of the defense. The shield doesn't collapse though, it mitigates what it can - 464 points, and now has 4176 points left.
A burst of 20 low 100 point attacks hits the shield next - it mitigates 90 points from each of them, for total of 1800 points mitigated, and 10 points of each attack pass through the shield for total of 200 damage. The shield now has 2376 points left - it can mitigate at most 237 points from a single attack at this point, and still always passes at least 10% through.
There's several ways to handle the regeneration for the bubbles. One is to let them regenerate a portion of their power when they haven't suffered damage for certain amount of time. Another is to let them just gain back strength at steady rate regardless of is they take damage or not. Third is to just not let them regenerate at all. It all depends on how much weight you want to put to their initial strength, and how much to their durability. If it's easy to recast them (like it is now), then there probably isn't need for them to regenerate strength.
PFF, then, is a special case. Unlike other throwaway bubbles, it's (supposed) to be consistent passive defense. Since bubbles offer flat mitigation (mostly), the closest other passive I can compare them is invulnerability. I'd like to see PFF as comparable to invulnerability, but to retain some distinction of it's own.
My suggestion would be to make it a combination of flat and percentage mitigation - like invulnerability - but with more focus on flat mitigation, as per how bubbles function.
Give PFF a base strength that is fairly high, perhaps along the lines of 20,000 points (with reasonable level 40 character). Give it bleedthrough of 20%, threshold of 5% AND a constant percentage damage resistance that's more or less in line with invulnerability - possibly a bit lower, but not by much.
The numbers may see high at first glance - capacity to negate 20,000 damage, only 20% passing through and THEN further mitigated by other defenses.. but you have to keep in mind that those 20,000 points are not mitigated in any way. It's all raw damage. If you stop to think about it for a while - how much unmitigated damage is thrown at you in a regular fight that actually counts for something? A lot.
Threshold of 5% would mean that PFF at full capacity can negate at most 1000 points from any single attack - which at level 40 is not that much against nukes. That's where the percentage reduction becomes necessary. A constant barrage of 200 base damage will let 40 points through at every shot.. and after just 50 shots like that, half the PFF is already gone. So while the numbers might at first look huge, I think this would be far from overpowered - and like I said in the beginning, the numbers are really just there to give some feel of the idea.
PFF certainly should regenerate it's strength over time during battle, and while it might be ok to let the healing diminish as the shield takes damage, the diminishing effect shouldn't be overt. Possibly along the lines of reducing it to 75% of the original when the shield has lost more than half it's strength.
What I'd like to see on top of this, is one unique mechanic for PFF. The ability to absorb other (friendly) forcefields. What I mean by this is, if someone has PFF as passive, and they get protection field or mindful reinforcement cast on them, the amount of that friendly field is not treated separately, but rather refreshes the 20,000 (or so) capacity of the PFF. This would be similar to current Field Surge synergy. This would give a sort of unique 'dual healing' synergy for PFF... on one hand you can heal the health of the character, on the other hand you can refuel the PFF to offer some more pre-emptive mitigation.
The mechanical effect of dodge, with the new version of dodge, is that one-shot kills become unreliable unless you have massive overkill. That makes life harder.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. They made dodge a flat chance instead of scaled to length of attack. Aren't one-shot attacks usually those long charge attacks.. which previously were kind of autododged? Now you should at least have a chance to get one through (unless of course someone stacks 100% dodge).
The key issue is rewards, not maximum difficulty. Elite difficulty that can only be done by 1% of the population is only a problem if that means there are rewards only available to 1% of the population.
I agree rewards are a big issue about higher difficulties, but people generally expect them to have BETTER rewards, not more plentiful trash. If the rewards are exact same - just more numerous - it becomes a question of how much time you take running through each difficulty, and how numerous your rewards are per minute. Unless running through elite offers more rewards per minute, it's more profitable to farm normal difficulty.
To have a point of running something on elite, more than once just to see if you can, you need to have rewards that you cannot obtain otherwise. That's just kinda how it works. Otherwise using higher difficulties becomes unrewarding experience. If difficulty was it's own reward, people could just create builds that only have 5 powers in them.
Unobtainable rewards become only a problem if they are mandatory. PvP is another issue, but I'm not going to touch that because the whole PvP in my opinion is done wrong to have even a chance of being balanced. Besides successfull PvP:ers generally know the game and powers well enough that they shouldn't have trouble tackling elite difficulty, if anyone can. Casual PvPers probably don't care that much about the absolute high end gear, or will buy it from AH if they do, and can't get it otherwise. Isn't that how many rare/powerful items are handled - if you can't/don't want to obtain it yourself, you buy it from someone else?
My thought on this is it can absorb greater, but the amount should be limited and refresh per unit time. In other words, if you are attacker, what you need is maximizing your DPS to overrun the absorption. More people will make the breaking easier.
Anyway, the basic concept is -- Players' power should not be mitigated multi times in a period. Current mechanism makes some maintain powers such as Gatling Gun completely useless.
My thought on this is it can absorb greater, but the amount should be limited and refresh per unit time. In other words, if you are attacker, what you need is maximizing your DPS to overrun the absorption. More people will make the breaking easier.
Anyway, the basic concept is -- Players' power should not be mitigated multi times in a period. Current mechanism makes some maintain powers such as Gatling Gun completely useless.
That would limit the effects of flat mitigation, yes, but it would make it basically straight mitigation-per-second, which in effect is exactly same as healing X points per second (except it only heals the damage you take during that time). In principle it would be very similar to regeneration which also 'mitigates' a certain amount of damage per second (by healing it away), the difference being that regen also 'mitigates' for you during the time you are not actually taking damage.
It would remove the most distinguishing factor of flat mitigation - that being it's ability to be efficient against fast, small hits - while being less effective against slow, hard hits.
I do agree the current system is too absolute against certain powers - gatling gun is good example, being one of the most extreme fast-hit-low-damage powres. It's why I'm suggesting the flat mitigation being limited to only absorbing certain percentage of incoming damage (up to it's maximum capacity per hit of course). So in example if gatling gun was hitting 100 points per shot, at least 25 points per shot would always pass through flat mitigation, no matter what.
That would limit the effects of flat mitigation, yes, but it would make it basically straight mitigation-per-second, which in effect is exactly same as healing X points per second (except it only heals the damage you take during that time). In principle it would be very similar to regeneration which also 'mitigates' a certain amount of damage per second (by healing it away), the difference being that regen also 'mitigates' for you during the time you are not actually taking damage.
It would remove the most distinguishing factor of flat mitigation - that being it's ability to be efficient against fast, small hits - while being less effective against slow, hard hits.
It can be extended. For example, max absorption per incoming power per second is 100. This way will fit the orignial concept of flat mitigation but unplug the inreasonable multi mitigation.
Anyway, it needs to be changed. Problem is that we don't know how and when Cryptic will do ....
It can be extended. For example, max absorption per incoming power per second is 100. This way will fit the orignial concept of flat mitigation but unplug the inreasonable multi mitigation.
Anyway, it needs to be changed. Problem is that we don't know how and when Cryptic will do ....
'One second' is arbitrary unit of time though. It doesn't make sense that flat mitigation would have a curve that is less effective per second for any power that's slower than one second per attack, but effffually effective per second for any power that's faster than one second per attack.
If you say 'flat mitigation should only mitigate X points per second, and thus should mitigate less per hit against any power that hits faster than once per second' then by same count you should also accept that 'flat mitigation should mitigate more per hit against any power that hits slower than once per second'. In other words, if an attack is charged for 3 seconds and then activates for 0.5 seconds, that same flat mitigation (100 per second) should reduce it by 350 points.
It's one way to balance the mechanism, and I understand that power replacer trigger percentages work in this manner (they are more likely to trigger from slow attacks and less likely to trigger from fast attacks - the percentage is chance per second). It still goes against the way I underestand flat mitigation. Damage resistance (percentage mitigation) is mitigation per damage, what you propose for flat mitigation is mitigation per second, while I see flat mitigation as mitigation per attack. Doesn't mean it's any less (or more) correct way to do it, simply a different perspective - and I agree at least that it would work better for CO than the current system.
[snip]
If you say 'flat mitigation should only mitigate X points per second, and thus should mitigate less per hit against any power that hits faster than once per second' then by same count you should also accept that 'flat mitigation should mitigate more per hit against any power that hits slower than once per second'. In other words, if an attack is charged for 3 seconds and then activates for 0.5 seconds, that same flat mitigation (100 per second) should reduce it by 350 points.
[snip]
Unless you can also "charge" your flat mitigation, or I don't think this part would make sense. The mitigation needs to sacrifice at least 2.5 second to generate enough energy for the 350 shield. During that 2.5 second, no mitigation should be triggered. This also means that previous influence should be stackable. From my view, flat mitigation is a kind of continuous shield output. At any time point, the energy and amount should be fixed. And charging attacks .... they sacrifice some damage (do no damage during their charging) to generate these destructiveness energy, then release these energy at once. They should be powerful and shouldn't be mitigated by something you mentioned.
Anyway, I simply don't think this way will be considered.
Unless you can also "charge" your flat mitigation, or I don't think this part would make sense. The mitigation needs to sacrifice at least 2.5 second to generate enough energy for the 350 shield. During that 2.5 second, no mitigation should be triggered. This also means that previous influence should be stackable. From my view, flat mitigation is a kind of continuous shield output. At any time point, the energy and amount should be fixed. And charging attacks .... they sacrifice some damage (do no damage during their charging) to generate these destructiveness energy, then release these energy at once. They should be powerful and shouldn't be mitigated by something you mentioned.
Anyway, I simply don't think this way will be considered.
If flat mitigation can mitigate 100 points from attack that takes 3 seconds to hit, and also mitigate 100 points from attack that takes 1 second to hit, then why would it suddenly only be able to mitigate 50 points from attack that takes 0.5 second to hit, and 25 points from attack that takes 0.25 seconds to hit?
If you mean that flat mitigation has 100 points of 'capacity' that gets 'expended' when you get hit, and regenerates at speed of 100 points per second.. then you need to expand it to include any and all attacks directed against target, and say flat mitigation can only mitigate 100 points per second from combined onslaught. That's fine, but you're no longer talking about hardened body armor then.. you're talking about forcefield, and that's a separate mechanic.
Personally, I think IDF should proc or refresh a modest size force field every 2-3s, rather than giving flat mitigation at all. For invuln, I don't mind the existence of a defense that's better vs maintains, though that should be balanced by the existence of a defense that's better vs charges, and with the dodge changes there isn't one any more.
Personally, I think IDF should proc or refresh a modest size force field every 2-3s, rather than giving flat mitigation at all. For invuln, I don't mind the existence of a defense that's better vs maintains, though that should be balanced by the existence of a defense that's better vs charges, and with the dodge changes there isn't one any more.
That would work fine for IDF. It would make it more in line with other powers in force framework, and it could be made to synergize with PFF the similar way field surge does now - so if you had both PFF and IDF, the IDF would actually give tics to help regenerate your PFF.
I did the Hi Pan alert, was sidekicked to level 30, and my combat results were like this:
"Your Annihilate deals 25748 (26071) Crushing Damage to Hi Pan."
All of my annihilate attacks did damge in the mid-20k range to Hi Pan. I think everyone's damage was considerable scalled up as packs of mobs typically got one-shotted.
I did the Grab the Money and Run alert next and my damage was considerably scaled down:
"Your Annihilate deals 1066 (2077) Crushing Damage to Black Diamond.
It seems everyone's damage was scaled down in this encounter and the fights were considerable longer.
Personally, I think IDF should proc or refresh a modest size force field every 2-3s, rather than giving flat mitigation at all. For invuln, I don't mind the existence of a defense that's better vs maintains, though that should be balanced by the existence of a defense that's better vs charges, and with the dodge changes there isn't one any more.
I like this idea.
Technically, isn't Defiance "better" vs charges, though? Assuming "charge" corresponds to "higher damage in a single hit".
The bigger the hit, the more Defiance takes off of it. That's one of the reasons why Invuln's easier to use than Defiance in most of PvE, as most things don't hit hard enough to make Defiance's increased resistance outdo Invuln's absorption.
Technically, isn't Defiance "better" vs charges, though? Assuming "charge" corresponds to "higher damage in a single hit".
The bigger the hit, the more Defiance takes off of it. That's one of the reasons why Invuln's easier to use than Defiance in most of PvE, as most things don't hit hard enough to make Defiance's increased resistance outdo Invuln's absorption.
Or I may be thinking about this incorrectly.
I think you'll find that since Defiance provides percentage reduction it will take the same percentage off of everything (for discussion say 50%). Thus, it makes no difference if it is applied to one slow attack doing 4000 damage or 4 fast attacks doing 1000 each. The result, 2000 inside, is the same.
I think you'll find that since Defiance provides percentage reduction it will take the same percentage off of everything (for discussion say 50%). Thus, it makes no difference if it is applied to one slow attack doing 4000 damage or 4 fast attacks doing 1000 each. The result, 2000 inside, is the same.
I was thinking more along the lines of: (following numbers are entirely made up)
You have 8k HP.
Enemy does an attack for 25000 damage. (Let's say it's a super jacked-up Sniping build)
Defiance drops it down to 6250. You live!
Invuln drops it to 8150. You die.
You have 8k HP.
Five groups of five minions attack you, each doing 100 damage.
Invuln cuts that to 1 HP per attack. Total damage taken: 25
Defiance cuts that to 25 HP per attack. Total damage taken: 625
Invuln's worse in the first scenario and better in the second scenario. Defiance is better in the first and worse in the second scenario.
And there are far more instances of the "death by papercuts" happening in the game than there are "one massive spike" instances.
Normal -> fine as is, let's leave it so for casuals.
Hard, Very Hard -> There's a difference?
Where?
Needs to be brought to the current Elite level
Elite -> in its current form, calling it Elite is a joke.
Buff it, and buff it hard.
(Please consider my very first point to do so... ^_^)
The difficulty system is more geared at teams.
Its very easy to make this game harder:
Team up with 2 or more people
Raise difficulty
Set loot mode to free for all
Enter instances alone
Get destroyed mercilessly over and over
Wanna make it more fun? Sidekick down before going in.
Having said that, Cryptic folks, there needs to be a way to get this same result without a team.
So if you could give us a the difficulty system something like:
1 vs <n> @ <difficulty>
Where n is a virtual team count like the danger...powerhouse testing place works.
One reason I can imagine they haven't done such a thing yet is to encourage people to team up.
If one is in Club Caprice dERPin' and one is Ren Cen Pvping, one could still be getting
mega multi mobbed on level 7 to 40 missions.
Ok Feedback on what I saw on PTS.
Mobs seemed docile? Less likely to attack, and less likely to follow as far as they do now on live.
They eventually attacked, once their prozac levels wore off in my presence.
Thats all I noticed so far. Wasn't a bad thing, just kind of weird different.
I have to agree that there needs to be parity in the AT and Freeform power levels. This game is as Pay-to-Win as it gets right now. Pay for Freeform and you can be ten times more powerful than any AT. Besides that moral issue, it makes balancing the content for everyone impossible. The incentive for Freeform should be more customization, not more power. The ability for Freeform to stack multiple offensive/defensive/healing abilities to the extremes they can currently needs to be reined in, and ATs need something of a boost in those areas where they are lacking so that they aren't completely one-dimensional. All ATs should have at least some ability to self-heal and an at least a little bit of general defense.
After that, I would say that balancing stats so that they are all of equal contribution would be good. My idea would be to have a pool of offensive stats, a pool of defensive stats, and a pool of utility stats and balance them so that they are all equally as good at their role. Then one of each is chosen as super stats. That way a character could, for instance, focus his damage on melee (STR), ranged (EGO), or both (DEX). Obviously, that would mean STR and EGO would need boosts in the amount of damage they contribute, because DEX handily beats them right now. Also, some of defensive and utility features of stats would need to shuffle around, like moving knock resistance off STR and probably adding it to CON. Knock resistance is desirable for tanks, and there's no reason a ranged tank should have crap knock resistance.
Beyond that, I would say that Enrage and Focus need to be re-evaluated. I would say change focus to work like other forms (flat moderate melee damage increase and stacking small melee damage increase proc) and change Enrage to a form as well, but keep it as a buff to all damage. That basically means anyone using a framework that doesn't have its own form will want Enrage, but it removes the problem of certain frameworks having a form AND Enrage and other frameworks not having a form at all.
Kinda depends how good you are at building...
My first builds (and some current) just sucked because they lacked synergy.
AT have that one big advantage: their pros and cons are clearly visible.
And they were clearly made for teamwork.
You don't often see a FF that's not self reliant to some extent.
Personally I don't think it's that bad for ATs, and yeah, played them (see sig) to 40, had no more issues than with my FF.
Just different playstyles, and I also finally got to use a couple items...
*Points to Arsenal Gear build using Defiance without a CON superstat for a while now*
Ok .. you can play with that .. but the defense still scales on CON .. so its simply lower than with CON.
Its the same as you can of course use enrage without STR
And i mean of course not having 100+ in CON .. but just 10-15 or whatever ... to make it clear.
Ok .. you can play with that .. but the defense still scales on CON .. so its simply lower than with CON.
Its the same as you can of course use enrage without STR
Yeah, but there's a point where you don't need Superstat Con to get most of the way into Defiance's diminishing returns.
From 185 Con to 478, you're only gaining 4% resistance per stack.
So, did some quick testing over the past few days..
Vibora Bay Graveyard (Chthonic - 40 freeform, old Live gear) seemed to actually be a bit easier. On Live, I can't really clear the mobs fast enough before things respawn (Bloodgorgers take me a while). On Test, even with my old gear, I was clearing things faster and easier then I was on Live by a significant amount. I didn't change anything at all when possible. Certainly made testing drops a little easier. :U
Doing the 1-10 arc on two different characters (Dual Blades/Way of the Warrior; Blade AT) seemed to be a bit rougher. Neither had a self-heal outside of my Vet heal, both had roughly the same damage output, and both got into trouble at about the same spots. Poe's room in Purple Reign was particularly rough (3 Henchmen, 1 Villain, and Poe all at once got pretty close to flooring me if it hadn't been for my vet-heal). Really, any pull with 3 Henchmen + 1 Villain seemed to be a fair amount rougher, and even 4 Henchmen were troublesome. Master Villains didn't seem to bad, but named Master Villains in particular (Talos, Poe) seemed to be significantly tougher. Talos almost dropped me both times because I couldn't whittle him down fast enough.
I'll have to do some mid-range testing later, and maybe some early-range testing on non-melee...
Yeah .. but then you have maybe superstats that are lower like that stat. And since we talk about Defiance here
AoPM is not the way to go.
With SL gear...
20/8/8 x 6
59/20/8/8 x 3
80 x 2 for Superstats
6 x 5 for talents or 5/5 x 6 for talents
Roughly 703 stat points, split across say three to five stats, maybe more.
With two superstats at 225 each, that leaves you 253 stats to play with. You won't be able to throw all of them into one stat, but you can put most of them there.
So could easily hit the 185 mark, if not the 220 mark, on a third stat.
Roughly 703 stat points, split across say three to five stats, maybe more.
With two superstats at 225 each, that leaves you 253 stats to play with. You won't be able to throw all of them into one stat, but you can put most of them there.
So could easily hit the 185 mark, if not the 220 mark, on a third stat.
Ok ok .. maybe its just me having played too much Dex/Int chars with dodge gear that also need some
EGO and STR .. and also a little END and REC .. so that my stats mostly look more like this : Attachment not found.
So .. sorry Kenpo that i said you need CON as SS .. i again used a wrong wording .. i just meant you should
have better CON in the 200 area (and that of course also only if you care about the defense).
Exactly. Also, due to DR sometimes it's simply not advantageous to keep pushing SS beyond their softcaps, might as well spend those points elsewhere depending on the build.
So, did some quick testing over the past few days..
Vibora Bay Graveyard (Chthonic - 40 freeform, old Live gear) seemed to actually be a bit easier. On Live, I can't really clear the mobs fast enough before things respawn (Bloodgorgers take me a while). On Test, even with my old gear, I was clearing things faster and easier then I was on Live by a significant amount. I didn't change anything at all when possible. Certainly made testing drops a little easier. :U
Doing the 1-10 arc on two different characters (Dual Blades/Way of the Warrior; Blade AT) seemed to be a bit rougher. Neither had a self-heal outside of my Vet heal, both had roughly the same damage output, and both got into trouble at about the same spots. Poe's room in Purple Reign was particularly rough (3 Henchmen, 1 Villain, and Poe all at once got pretty close to flooring me if it hadn't been for my vet-heal). Really, any pull with 3 Henchmen + 1 Villain seemed to be a fair amount rougher, and even 4 Henchmen were troublesome. Master Villains didn't seem to bad, but named Master Villains in particular (Talos, Poe) seemed to be significantly tougher. Talos almost dropped me both times because I couldn't whittle him down fast enough.
I'll have to do some mid-range testing later, and maybe some early-range testing on non-melee...
Was your 1-10 testing with current live gear or the new gear?
Someone suggested that the Sentinel Aura should be less effective in tank role. After testing it out for a while, I wholeheartedly agree. Make it 2%/4%/6% in all roles, but 1%/2%/3% in tank role.
Constitution 270, three ranks in Sentinel Aura and a few Max HP mods -> 771 hp healed every three seconds.
This is 2 old blue SL secondaries, one new green secondary, two blue new primaries and one new green primary (all three modded with rank 4 mods).
I can imagine that with better gear, it would be 1000 hp every 3 seconds for tanks. Slap Protector on that for the Mastery, and PvE becomes a joke for most part (even more than it is now).
Halving the bonuses in Tank role would make it a useful investment without going overboard, I think.
Was your 1-10 testing with current live gear or the new gear?
Mostly the new gear, since I was trying to get an idea of what it'd be like for newer characters coming into this patch. I don't really have that many characters low enough to have old gear that'd be worth testing in that specific range. Though I suppose I could work on something... Hmm.
EDIT: Actually looks like Heatsink is in the appropriate level-range, so woosh! Off to testing.
EDIT data: Did a the intro Westside arc (barring the mission with Defender - I couldn't stand to sit through the cutscene again - I had to suffer through Poe's speech four times in relatively short order as it is) with Heatsink (level 8 Inferno on Live, with fully up-to-date gear) both using her old Live gear (which should have been high enough level stat-wise to not matter too much over a 2 level spread) and with random stuff I found while going through the first time (hooray, shared banks! I tried to keep the stat spread roughly the same).
Live gear, I had a fair amount of trouble and at least twice as much downtime. Poe managed to drop me once during the initial rush on his room (does that ENTIRE room really need to aggro all at once?), and almost again the second time around (if not for green orbs, he may just have) even with the Vet heal.
Test gear, everything went a lot smoother/faster overall. I think a good majority of this was due to the +Offense I was getting at the time (+20% more damage) and some Crit Chance/Severity as well (lead to some 800-crit fireballs here and there). Dropped Poe without having to reset the encounter at all (mostly because I two-shot his entire band of lackeys this time, something I had been struggling to do before) thanks to a few green orbs.
Ranged definately has a significant advantage in the 1-10 spread, especially if you get a decent AoE attack early (Dual Blades had one, but still fell behind in effectiveness because I had to GET to melee-range first).
Talos may need some adjustment, too... he tends to just sit there spamming Sparkstorm, and that made his fight more boring then difficult on Heatsink (I could just stand at range and Fireball to my heart's content, but it took forever; My 800-crit came up on his fight, and even that only did maybe 3/4ths of a bar). He didn't use anything but that and his basic attack until the end of the Test-gear fight (Thunderstrike JUST as he hit his HP-breakpoint).
Poe seriously needs some adjustment somewhere in that encounter - even blocking his Life Drain pulled off a good chunk of my health, and his tendency to use Two Gun Mojo and Shadow Embrace when he wasn't using that meant I was eating damage constantly no matter what I did.
General mob difficulty seems fine, though, for the most part, if a bit more on the dicey end of things in some fights.
Comments
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying make henchment super tough, and or that they should be the focus of the game either. I'm saying, what's the point of even having them if they're supposed to do nothing?
I would rather have a few fights with small mobs of henchment (mixed with Villains and Master Villains, of course) that present an interesting (if brief) challange, than fight huge mobs after mobs of henchment that die so fast they might as well not be there to begin with.
(PS: And sorry if that came out harsher than I intended
I general, I think the purpose of mobs by class should be something like:
Henchment - Medium DPS
Villains - Heavy DPS or Support*
Master Villains or Greater - Tanks + Heavy DPS or Support*
*with decent support abilities including auras and heals, and perhaps summons or crowd controls--stuff that might actually extend the life and effectiveness of henchmen, and the bad guys in general
It was a Monster Island Crisis and there were 5 people in the instance but none of us teamed (that I'm aware of) this meant awesome numbers of critters but no real coordination on our part. The result was what felt like an epic last stand or two on my part. Kill the first 5 with lightning storm and then the next 5 and another 5 die on the sigils of primal storm and 3 more waves after that and then my support drones are dead, I've got no energy left, my sigils have run out and the last of my health is disappearing fast. I died BUT..... It was soooo glorious!
I disagree strongly on universal buff values, some enemy types shouldn't be able to dodge. Period.
What would be better would be to improve the AI so that it runs active offenses, active defenses, blocks, works in formations (instead of just charging at the player(s)), etc.
Also, most player do something to increase their survivability called HEALING!!! How many mob groups have a healer in this game? Not many... (note: also adds a layer of thinking to the combat, because your team needs to kill the enemy healers quickly first) I bolded what I feel is the good point of your post, the rest of that I disagree with on principle.
I don't know how much of the good ideas in this thread are doable but the NPC AI should be AT LEAST as good as it was in COX.
To add to that, i think the mobs in COH where better designed in general than the ones here (they had buffs heals debuffs team work e.c.t). If im not mistaken, this was before Melee got all of those buffs. With melee as it is now, i don't think we need to intentionally handicap NPCs against melee any more.
I dont know how much of the stuff in this thread will make it into the "On Alert" patch but i hope the devs will give serious consideration to a revision of mob powers and behavior in the future. I would be overjoyed to see some of the things in this thread pop up in the Until Field Reports.;)
In essence, this: is exactly what henchmen are, IMO. (Exchanging "common sense" for "guts to stand up against their boss" in some cases.)
And like I said, I'm not saying make them super strong or the focus of the game. I just don't see much of the point in them if they're not supposed to do anything either.
In my PnP gaming days a fight where the bad guys are completely incapable of being a challenge for the heroes would be run using cooperative narration (or basic GM narration) and not actually played out. If the player's input is irrelevant then there is no point in playing the encounter.
In my PnP days mobs that presented no challenge wouldn't even give rewards (which I believe was actually the rules in some of the games I played, and how it generally worked in my campaign even if they didn't spell it out in the game manuals), and would only have the most basic gear when applicable (so that characters would have little to sell or claim as treasure). Though, now that you mention it, it would have been a good idea to skip some of the no-challenge fights and simply use narration for them instead (though, I did use sort of a narrative approach to combat, were actions on both side were described as they unfolded then were supplemented by dice).
Yeah, rewards are often tied to opposition power level in games such as DnD. My group generally took a story based approach to such things though because we emphasized roleplay, problem solving, and the like over combat (though there would still be plenty of that).
That is how it should be done !
The real difficulty should come from boss encounters that requieres team coordination over individual role performance. However, the soloers will get mad because best gear would come from team activities and so on.
Therefore, no optimal solution. Do whatever you think most players(no matter their forum participation) would like
When i FIRST played champions online one of the first things that impressed me was fighting Tigress (whatever the CO equivalent's name is) with Regen then fighting Shadow Ninja (name again) with masterful dodge (the mission where you get A Cat's Tale). The two fights were very different (and at the time rather challenging because I was playing a telepath).
I definitely agree with the ideas being given about giving our mob enemies varying passives and defense types. Give them more crowd control. And most importantly give them more tank penetrating hits and MAYBE even Crippling Challenge... make block more useful and desired mechanic. I love brickbusters specifically for this.
This would be for elite 1-5 man lairs not open world.
In a normal lair the party almost always has Secure Flanks and Rear, the threat axis only ever really in front of them. So maybe that should be changed.
What if there were a Hunter Killer spawn let's say hypothetically 10 x Heathens for a 5 strong team and these guys are spawned at completely random locations within a set radius of the team. Their AI would be to get to the team ASAP and attack nearest on sight. Because of the random spawn point this stuff could come at the party from any direction, maybe even whilst the team is engaged with the more stationary enemies. There would be say a 2 minute break after the team has killed em if they kill them. Perhaps there would be a sort of Egg chamber affair by which this spawn could be turned off in that section of the lair but I would suggest this be in a random location also.
AI programming is not my strongest suit but from what I understand one of the difficulties is to have it so that the computer doesn't send everything right at the player coz it knows where the player is. With my brilliant scheme some of the installed daft behaviour would just be peeled back and the HK spawn makes a total beeline for the player(s).
Swarms
Also an adjustment for lairs.
These would be weak little enemies with a very nasty hold + venom attack, they would be melee and not able to leap more than 10 feet. When they jump the player they hold him/her whilst doing venom damage, by itself it would not pose too great a threat but if you had say 3-5 on you at once it could kill you fairly quickly and each little beasty would have it's own hold to apply. Both the attacks and the holds are interruptable meaning that if the player has activated sword cyclone say then they have nothing to worry about while it lasts. These meanies would be small models using the HK dynamic from above and perhaps need to be in groups of 15 - 25 (for a 5 player team). The party could not ignore the threat they present and if using HK dynamics would need to keep checking their sixes y'know like they have to in real life and the movies. They should die very easily but if you don't see em coming then you could be toast just as easily. If possible and I'm not sure it is they should be able to traverse walls and ceilings.
The objective I suppose is to have the party constantly be on their toes looking out for threats that may come from behind or to the sides as well as in front of em. Not a massive threat if you see em but you do gotta see em!
So if Normal difficulty is normal, then playing on Hard should buff the enemy (as it does), and using Elite could debuff the player.
I feel the AI could be tweaked. And although they will never be as 'smart' as another player, they could certainly develop a strategy that works well for their group. Examples are that Viper could use a crossfire strategy, while the Trapper snares the opponent. Martial Artist LT/Bosses should be using knock downs to allow their minions to capitalize (which is what you would expect when fighting a ton of martial artists at once). I like hot some Werewolf bosses are able to call in additional support. That's what you would expect from a 'pack'.
'Some' critters should specialize in strategies that are the rock/paper/scissors to certain defenses. Invul toons should have a hard time against critters that deal penetrating (or is it paranormal) damage. Certain groups should be more effective against players using Lightning Reflexes, and others against Regeneration. Still more with resistances against certain types of damage to force the player to recognize a different strategy may be needed when fighting the groups your build is weak against.
Others have mentioned this and I agree: Bosses should be done in phases and have a quirk to them that makes their fight unique. Some bosses do have that but they all should have something that makes fighting them interesting and unique to only them. Here's my example of how the boss fights could be handled.
Phase 1: Minion Phase
This is the phase where you wither go through the level to the boss chamber or there are a number of baddies to take down before the boss shows his face. This is just a warm-up and makes the player's hero feel powerful and a threat to the bad guy him/herself. The game already has this but I feel it is an important phase for them all to have.
Phase 2: The Boss Revealed Phase
The main baddie has appeared and is ready to attack the heroes directly. The game already has this as well and it would function virtually the same. Bosses would do their best to take down the heroes by using all their best attacks and moves. But when that proves to not be enough the boss moves onto the next phase.
Phase 3: The Quirk Phase
Either once half of the life bar is gone or maybe the boss rises up after being defeated, this happens when the boss has had enough abuse and decides on a last resort. This can happen in many ways so I'll give just a few examples.
Example 1: Boss summons an endless supply of henchmen to assist them and the spawning stops when the players defeat the boss or destroy whatever is spawning the minions. The minions the boss summons are of three kinds, attackers, healers, and buffers, all of which make the boss harder to defeat because they are assisting him/her. There should be a set limit on the number of henchmen on screen at a time, but it should feel necessary to stop the minions from spawning so the boss can be defeated properly.
Example 2: Boss transforms into a stronger form that gains some stronger defenses and stronger attacks that differ slightly from their normal attacks. These special defenses and attacks should be unique to the boss and change the battle tactics among the players so they have to rethink how they will defeat the boss.
Example 3: The boss tries to flee from the heroes and tries to lead them to another room or area where they have several traps and minions waiting to hamper the players from completing their task. This is not a "catch the baddies before he escapes and lose the mission" suggestion. The Baddie runs away to a location that is full of traps and enemies as to distract the players from him/her while they heal or buff up for the final confrontation.
I feel that the potential is there in the game to make every boss fight interesting and special, but who knows if it will ever actually happen. I bet if the Cryptic Devs asked we could come up with interesting boss fights and they could see if they work. Just some thoughts.
Oh and if we could see the major raid monsters into future alerts as Cosmic Alerts or something that would be cool too. Grond Raid would be awesome.
I wrote two sort-of-followups to that looong post, but while doing the second one I realized it really didn't belong to it's original thread, so I moved the thing to Suggestions Box into this new thread. It never got any interest there, though. Probably it was just too long post anyway. I have a habit of doing those.
It's kind of appropriate to this thread too, but I won't copy paste the whole thing, it's too massive to it - but go have a look if you're interested. Especially the 'conditions' part on the third post is how I'd envision revamping the crowd control, although what I posted there is just kind of rough draft / brainstorming.
What comes to challenge and difficulty.. if I'd have to put it in nutshell, I'd say: ''Make NPC groups as if they were 5-man groups''. Design them to be individual, but working together. Take archetypes as base templates since they have already been designed that way. For example, imagine an NPC group consisting of Glacier, Mind, Soldier, Inferno and Radiant.
Imagine a decent AI on top of that group: they'll dodge away from AoE, the two supports will resurrect fallen enemies and heal those that are hurt.. they are using AD and AO in reasonable way, they block.. they use CC on you. Tank uses cripple on you, which means you naturally feel inclined to take the tank out.. and challenging strikes could get a fair amount of buff, perhaps make it a 20% flat damage penalty. What you get is a much more dynamic combat experience than the current 'charge to the middle, blast with you AoE, move to next group'.
Of course there's a lot of other tweaks you could do to the combat, and the specific mechanics could be somewhat different - but the basic idea is same I've seen on several posts on this thread already: make mobs behave more intelligently, make them more distinct, make them use tactics that require players to take notice of them, and to adapt to situation.. to respond with tactics of their own.
Ditch the current hold/knock implementation of 'difficulty'. Putting players out of action for more than 50% of the time of fight isn't entertaining. It isn't fun. I don't enjoy playing the 'spam z key to continue playing', like I keep saying. There's nothing challenging in it, unless you count the challenge to my patience.
And knock is a complitely, utterly overpowered mechanic.
Want to reduce damage someone is dealing to you? *knock* Need to interrupt some charge attack? *knock* Need to disable someone for a while? *knock* Need to hit someone through their mitigation? *knock* Need to increase damage you do to the boss? *knock* Need to disable someone's circle? *knock* Need to get someone off from damaging teammate? *knock* Need to increase your overall damage? (enrage/aggressor) *knock*
Is there generally anything in this game that you can't resolve by using knock? It's far too powerful, far too frequent and far too annoying (for receiving end) mechanism. It needs to be toned down, severely.
It may be fun to feel the 'power' of blowing away half dozen henchies like they were ragdolls.. but that's about the extent of it. Give anything above henchie a high resistance against knock effects, and include players to that - players shouldn't be treated like henchies. Make knock attacks far less frequent and more limited - and I do also mean on bosses. The mutant general at the end of Whtieout is probably one of the most sickening examples of knock mechanics. Tentapull-uberknock-tentapull-uberknock-dead. It cuts through block like it wasn't there.. it knocks you away WHILE you are blocking AND standing in Circle of Primal Dominion. It's plain out ridiculous. Sure it makes the encounter more 'difficult', but that's not engaging or fun difficulty. It's frustrating difficulty, that doesn't give you choices, other than block, and hope for a lucky break that you might perhaps retaliate for a few seconds before being blown away again.
Edit: let me add a couple more thoughts regarding balance...
PFF, IDF, bubbles and flat mitigation as a whole.
...that probably got some attention. :cool:
I've seen many posts about how PFF is pathetic, and how flat mitigation is OP. There's generally almost full agreement on first, and a bit more mixed thoughts about the second. I'd also add that I feel bubbles in PvE are basically useless, especially when you go to elite. They get blown away by one or two attacks, and generally just aren't worth having the power. It's much, much more efficient to just straight out heal someone, because the health you heal for them cumulates with any and all mitigation they have - including block.
Flat mitigation.
Flat mitigation isn't inherently overpowered. What makes it overpowered is it's ability to pretty much complitely negate low damage attacks, right? If you attack with something where one tic is less than the flat mitigation, you deal zero damage (or one, as if that matters). That, of course is the whole point of flat mitigation, but the effect can quickly cumulate to ridiculous proportions.
So what can you do to help this?
One option is to make flat mitigation less absolute. Make it always let a portion of damage pass through. I was thinking 50% at first, but that would kind of negate the main point of flat mitigation, so I'm thinking 75% is more appropriate. Second, make it always the outer layer of defense, right after bubbles. This means you first reduce from damage the effect of bubbles.. then flat mitigation.. and only after that you start counting for block, dodge and damage resistance. I know this isn't 'logical' regarding dodge in particular, but letting it inside any other form of mitigation that isn't flat mitigation (like bubbles are), will increase it's effect exponentially, and that is detrimental for balance.
So for example, having 125 points of flat mitigation, and being hammered with constant tics of 100 point damage, would let 25 points straight through flat mitigation.. and into being delt by other forms of defense. It still isn't that much, but it can cumulate if there's 20 henchies blasting at you. It still makes flat mitigation good defense against small damage, but not absolute.
Bubbles then.
The problem with bubbles is that they get blown away far too easily. 2000 points of unmitigated defense is almost nothing on higher difficulties. I think the whole system of how bubbles work could use being reworked.
I'd suggest a few mechanics added to bubbles. First, give them some bleedthrough (similar to ship shields in STO). Second, give them a maximum amount of mitigation they can offer against single attack - allowing very powerful attacks to partially break through the shield. Third - and possibly, make them regenerate their strength over time.
The exact numbers that would work, are a question of balancing, so consider any actual number I put here as just something thrown in for the sake of explaining the mechanics. BUT. At the least double the current strength of bubbles.
Concider a forcefield with 5000 points of capacity, 10% of bleedthrough and 10% threshold. What this would mean is, out of any damage the forcefield blocks, 10% will get through.. and the maximum amount the field can block from any single attack is 10% of it's capacity.
So for example, an attack that deals 400 points of damage, 360 is absorbed by the shield, and 40 points cut through it (to be handled by any flat mitigation, then block and damage resistance).
The shield now has 4640 points left.
The next attack is 2000 point nuke. The shield cannot handle that kind of damage. It can at most mitigate 464 points of damage - which it does. 1536 points break through the shield, and are again handled by rest of the defense. The shield doesn't collapse though, it mitigates what it can - 464 points, and now has 4176 points left.
A burst of 20 low 100 point attacks hits the shield next - it mitigates 90 points from each of them, for total of 1800 points mitigated, and 10 points of each attack pass through the shield for total of 200 damage. The shield now has 2376 points left - it can mitigate at most 237 points from a single attack at this point, and still always passes at least 10% through.
There's several ways to handle the regeneration for the bubbles. One is to let them regenerate a portion of their power when they haven't suffered damage for certain amount of time. Another is to let them just gain back strength at steady rate regardless of is they take damage or not. Third is to just not let them regenerate at all. It all depends on how much weight you want to put to their initial strength, and how much to their durability. If it's easy to recast them (like it is now), then there probably isn't need for them to regenerate strength.
PFF, then, is a special case. Unlike other throwaway bubbles, it's (supposed) to be consistent passive defense. Since bubbles offer flat mitigation (mostly), the closest other passive I can compare them is invulnerability. I'd like to see PFF as comparable to invulnerability, but to retain some distinction of it's own.
My suggestion would be to make it a combination of flat and percentage mitigation - like invulnerability - but with more focus on flat mitigation, as per how bubbles function.
Give PFF a base strength that is fairly high, perhaps along the lines of 20,000 points (with reasonable level 40 character). Give it bleedthrough of 20%, threshold of 5% AND a constant percentage damage resistance that's more or less in line with invulnerability - possibly a bit lower, but not by much.
The numbers may see high at first glance - capacity to negate 20,000 damage, only 20% passing through and THEN further mitigated by other defenses.. but you have to keep in mind that those 20,000 points are not mitigated in any way. It's all raw damage. If you stop to think about it for a while - how much unmitigated damage is thrown at you in a regular fight that actually counts for something? A lot.
Threshold of 5% would mean that PFF at full capacity can negate at most 1000 points from any single attack - which at level 40 is not that much against nukes. That's where the percentage reduction becomes necessary. A constant barrage of 200 base damage will let 40 points through at every shot.. and after just 50 shots like that, half the PFF is already gone. So while the numbers might at first look huge, I think this would be far from overpowered - and like I said in the beginning, the numbers are really just there to give some feel of the idea.
PFF certainly should regenerate it's strength over time during battle, and while it might be ok to let the healing diminish as the shield takes damage, the diminishing effect shouldn't be overt. Possibly along the lines of reducing it to 75% of the original when the shield has lost more than half it's strength.
What I'd like to see on top of this, is one unique mechanic for PFF. The ability to absorb other (friendly) forcefields. What I mean by this is, if someone has PFF as passive, and they get protection field or mindful reinforcement cast on them, the amount of that friendly field is not treated separately, but rather refreshes the 20,000 (or so) capacity of the PFF. This would be similar to current Field Surge synergy. This would give a sort of unique 'dual healing' synergy for PFF... on one hand you can heal the health of the character, on the other hand you can refuel the PFF to offer some more pre-emptive mitigation.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. They made dodge a flat chance instead of scaled to length of attack. Aren't one-shot attacks usually those long charge attacks.. which previously were kind of autododged? Now you should at least have a chance to get one through (unless of course someone stacks 100% dodge).
I agree rewards are a big issue about higher difficulties, but people generally expect them to have BETTER rewards, not more plentiful trash. If the rewards are exact same - just more numerous - it becomes a question of how much time you take running through each difficulty, and how numerous your rewards are per minute. Unless running through elite offers more rewards per minute, it's more profitable to farm normal difficulty.
To have a point of running something on elite, more than once just to see if you can, you need to have rewards that you cannot obtain otherwise. That's just kinda how it works. Otherwise using higher difficulties becomes unrewarding experience. If difficulty was it's own reward, people could just create builds that only have 5 powers in them.
Unobtainable rewards become only a problem if they are mandatory. PvP is another issue, but I'm not going to touch that because the whole PvP in my opinion is done wrong to have even a chance of being balanced. Besides successfull PvP:ers generally know the game and powers well enough that they shouldn't have trouble tackling elite difficulty, if anyone can. Casual PvPers probably don't care that much about the absolute high end gear, or will buy it from AH if they do, and can't get it otherwise. Isn't that how many rare/powerful items are handled - if you can't/don't want to obtain it yourself, you buy it from someone else?
This ....
This should be put into Nemesis.
My thought on this is it can absorb greater, but the amount should be limited and refresh per unit time. In other words, if you are attacker, what you need is maximizing your DPS to overrun the absorption. More people will make the breaking easier.
Anyway, the basic concept is -- Players' power should not be mitigated multi times in a period. Current mechanism makes some maintain powers such as Gatling Gun completely useless.
That would limit the effects of flat mitigation, yes, but it would make it basically straight mitigation-per-second, which in effect is exactly same as healing X points per second (except it only heals the damage you take during that time). In principle it would be very similar to regeneration which also 'mitigates' a certain amount of damage per second (by healing it away), the difference being that regen also 'mitigates' for you during the time you are not actually taking damage.
It would remove the most distinguishing factor of flat mitigation - that being it's ability to be efficient against fast, small hits - while being less effective against slow, hard hits.
I do agree the current system is too absolute against certain powers - gatling gun is good example, being one of the most extreme fast-hit-low-damage powres. It's why I'm suggesting the flat mitigation being limited to only absorbing certain percentage of incoming damage (up to it's maximum capacity per hit of course). So in example if gatling gun was hitting 100 points per shot, at least 25 points per shot would always pass through flat mitigation, no matter what.
It can be extended. For example, max absorption per incoming power per second is 100. This way will fit the orignial concept of flat mitigation but unplug the inreasonable multi mitigation.
Anyway, it needs to be changed. Problem is that we don't know how and when Cryptic will do ....
'One second' is arbitrary unit of time though. It doesn't make sense that flat mitigation would have a curve that is less effective per second for any power that's slower than one second per attack, but effffually effective per second for any power that's faster than one second per attack.
If you say 'flat mitigation should only mitigate X points per second, and thus should mitigate less per hit against any power that hits faster than once per second' then by same count you should also accept that 'flat mitigation should mitigate more per hit against any power that hits slower than once per second'. In other words, if an attack is charged for 3 seconds and then activates for 0.5 seconds, that same flat mitigation (100 per second) should reduce it by 350 points.
It's one way to balance the mechanism, and I understand that power replacer trigger percentages work in this manner (they are more likely to trigger from slow attacks and less likely to trigger from fast attacks - the percentage is chance per second). It still goes against the way I underestand flat mitigation. Damage resistance (percentage mitigation) is mitigation per damage, what you propose for flat mitigation is mitigation per second, while I see flat mitigation as mitigation per attack. Doesn't mean it's any less (or more) correct way to do it, simply a different perspective - and I agree at least that it would work better for CO than the current system.
Unless you can also "charge" your flat mitigation, or I don't think this part would make sense. The mitigation needs to sacrifice at least 2.5 second to generate enough energy for the 350 shield. During that 2.5 second, no mitigation should be triggered. This also means that previous influence should be stackable. From my view, flat mitigation is a kind of continuous shield output. At any time point, the energy and amount should be fixed. And charging attacks .... they sacrifice some damage (do no damage during their charging) to generate these destructiveness energy, then release these energy at once. They should be powerful and shouldn't be mitigated by something you mentioned.
Anyway, I simply don't think this way will be considered.
If flat mitigation can mitigate 100 points from attack that takes 3 seconds to hit, and also mitigate 100 points from attack that takes 1 second to hit, then why would it suddenly only be able to mitigate 50 points from attack that takes 0.5 second to hit, and 25 points from attack that takes 0.25 seconds to hit?
If you mean that flat mitigation has 100 points of 'capacity' that gets 'expended' when you get hit, and regenerates at speed of 100 points per second.. then you need to expand it to include any and all attacks directed against target, and say flat mitigation can only mitigate 100 points per second from combined onslaught. That's fine, but you're no longer talking about hardened body armor then.. you're talking about forcefield, and that's a separate mechanic.
That would work fine for IDF. It would make it more in line with other powers in force framework, and it could be made to synergize with PFF the similar way field surge does now - so if you had both PFF and IDF, the IDF would actually give tics to help regenerate your PFF.
"Your Annihilate deals 25748 (26071) Crushing Damage to Hi Pan."
All of my annihilate attacks did damge in the mid-20k range to Hi Pan. I think everyone's damage was considerable scalled up as packs of mobs typically got one-shotted.
I did the Grab the Money and Run alert next and my damage was considerably scaled down:
"Your Annihilate deals 1066 (2077) Crushing Damage to Black Diamond.
It seems everyone's damage was scaled down in this encounter and the fights were considerable longer.
I like this idea.
Technically, isn't Defiance "better" vs charges, though? Assuming "charge" corresponds to "higher damage in a single hit".
The bigger the hit, the more Defiance takes off of it. That's one of the reasons why Invuln's easier to use than Defiance in most of PvE, as most things don't hit hard enough to make Defiance's increased resistance outdo Invuln's absorption.
Or I may be thinking about this incorrectly.
I think you'll find that since Defiance provides percentage reduction it will take the same percentage off of everything (for discussion say 50%). Thus, it makes no difference if it is applied to one slow attack doing 4000 damage or 4 fast attacks doing 1000 each. The result, 2000 inside, is the same.
I was thinking more along the lines of: (following numbers are entirely made up)
You have 8k HP.
Defiance drops it down to 6250. You live!
Invuln drops it to 8150. You die.
You have 8k HP.
Invuln cuts that to 1 HP per attack. Total damage taken: 25
Defiance cuts that to 25 HP per attack. Total damage taken: 625
And there are far more instances of the "death by papercuts" happening in the game than there are "one massive spike" instances.
Unless you PvP.
The difficulty system is more geared at teams.
Its very easy to make this game harder:
Team up with 2 or more people
Raise difficulty
Set loot mode to free for all
Enter instances alone
Get destroyed mercilessly over and over
Wanna make it more fun? Sidekick down before going in.
Having said that, Cryptic folks, there needs to be a way to get this same result without a team.
So if you could give us a the difficulty system something like:
1 vs <n> @ <difficulty>
Where n is a virtual team count like the danger...powerhouse testing place works.
One reason I can imagine they haven't done such a thing yet is to encourage people to team up.
If one is in Club Caprice dERPin' and one is Ren Cen Pvping, one could still be getting
mega multi mobbed on level 7 to 40 missions.
Ok Feedback on what I saw on PTS.
Mobs seemed docile? Less likely to attack, and less likely to follow as far as they do now on live.
They eventually attacked, once their prozac levels wore off in my presence.
Thats all I noticed so far. Wasn't a bad thing, just kind of weird different.
After that, I would say that balancing stats so that they are all of equal contribution would be good. My idea would be to have a pool of offensive stats, a pool of defensive stats, and a pool of utility stats and balance them so that they are all equally as good at their role. Then one of each is chosen as super stats. That way a character could, for instance, focus his damage on melee (STR), ranged (EGO), or both (DEX). Obviously, that would mean STR and EGO would need boosts in the amount of damage they contribute, because DEX handily beats them right now. Also, some of defensive and utility features of stats would need to shuffle around, like moving knock resistance off STR and probably adding it to CON. Knock resistance is desirable for tanks, and there's no reason a ranged tank should have crap knock resistance.
Beyond that, I would say that Enrage and Focus need to be re-evaluated. I would say change focus to work like other forms (flat moderate melee damage increase and stacking small melee damage increase proc) and change Enrage to a form as well, but keep it as a buff to all damage. That basically means anyone using a framework that doesn't have its own form will want Enrage, but it removes the problem of certain frameworks having a form AND Enrage and other frameworks not having a form at all.
My first builds (and some current) just sucked because they lacked synergy.
AT have that one big advantage: their pros and cons are clearly visible.
And they were clearly made for teamwork.
You don't often see a FF that's not self reliant to some extent.
Personally I don't think it's that bad for ATs, and yeah, played them (see sig) to 40, had no more issues than with my FF.
Just different playstyles, and I also finally got to use a couple items...
Ah, now I see where you were going. I should have known.
Not really.
*Points to Arsenal Gear build using Defiance without a CON superstat for a while now*
Ok .. you can play with that .. but the defense still scales on CON .. so its simply lower than with CON.
Its the same as you can of course use enrage without STR
And i mean of course not having 100+ in CON .. but just 10-15 or whatever ... to make it clear.
Yeah, but there's a point where you don't need Superstat Con to get most of the way into Defiance's diminishing returns.
From 185 Con to 478, you're only gaining 4% resistance per stack.
Reference: Diagram created by Radia, located here http://imgur.com/a/8pDVX
185 is of course somrthing you normally don't have in a non-SS
edit:
and if i say Superstat i mean something in the 250 area .. and not 478
Vibora Bay Graveyard (Chthonic - 40 freeform, old Live gear) seemed to actually be a bit easier. On Live, I can't really clear the mobs fast enough before things respawn (Bloodgorgers take me a while). On Test, even with my old gear, I was clearing things faster and easier then I was on Live by a significant amount. I didn't change anything at all when possible. Certainly made testing drops a little easier. :U
Doing the 1-10 arc on two different characters (Dual Blades/Way of the Warrior; Blade AT) seemed to be a bit rougher. Neither had a self-heal outside of my Vet heal, both had roughly the same damage output, and both got into trouble at about the same spots. Poe's room in Purple Reign was particularly rough (3 Henchmen, 1 Villain, and Poe all at once got pretty close to flooring me if it hadn't been for my vet-heal). Really, any pull with 3 Henchmen + 1 Villain seemed to be a fair amount rougher, and even 4 Henchmen were troublesome. Master Villains didn't seem to bad, but named Master Villains in particular (Talos, Poe) seemed to be significantly tougher. Talos almost dropped me both times because I couldn't whittle him down fast enough.
I'll have to do some mid-range testing later, and maybe some early-range testing on non-melee...
Yeah .. but then you have maybe superstats that are lower like that stat. And since we talk about Defiance here
AoPM is not the way to go.
With SL gear...
20/8/8 x 6
59/20/8/8 x 3
80 x 2 for Superstats
6 x 5 for talents or 5/5 x 6 for talents
Roughly 703 stat points, split across say three to five stats, maybe more.
With two superstats at 225 each, that leaves you 253 stats to play with. You won't be able to throw all of them into one stat, but you can put most of them there.
So could easily hit the 185 mark, if not the 220 mark, on a third stat.
Ok ok .. maybe its just me having played too much Dex/Int chars with dodge gear that also need some
EGO and STR .. and also a little END and REC .. so that my stats mostly look more like this :
Attachment not found.
So .. sorry Kenpo that i said you need CON as SS .. i again used a wrong wording .. i just meant you should
have better CON in the 200 area (and that of course also only if you care about the defense).
Exactly. Also, due to DR sometimes it's simply not advantageous to keep pushing SS beyond their softcaps, might as well spend those points elsewhere depending on the build.
Was your 1-10 testing with current live gear or the new gear?
Constitution 270, three ranks in Sentinel Aura and a few Max HP mods -> 771 hp healed every three seconds.
This is 2 old blue SL secondaries, one new green secondary, two blue new primaries and one new green primary (all three modded with rank 4 mods).
I can imagine that with better gear, it would be 1000 hp every 3 seconds for tanks. Slap Protector on that for the Mastery, and PvE becomes a joke for most part (even more than it is now).
Halving the bonuses in Tank role would make it a useful investment without going overboard, I think.
Mostly the new gear, since I was trying to get an idea of what it'd be like for newer characters coming into this patch. I don't really have that many characters low enough to have old gear that'd be worth testing in that specific range. Though I suppose I could work on something... Hmm.
EDIT: Actually looks like Heatsink is in the appropriate level-range, so woosh! Off to testing.
EDIT data: Did a the intro Westside arc (barring the mission with Defender - I couldn't stand to sit through the cutscene again - I had to suffer through Poe's speech four times in relatively short order as it is) with Heatsink (level 8 Inferno on Live, with fully up-to-date gear) both using her old Live gear (which should have been high enough level stat-wise to not matter too much over a 2 level spread) and with random stuff I found while going through the first time (hooray, shared banks! I tried to keep the stat spread roughly the same).
Live gear, I had a fair amount of trouble and at least twice as much downtime. Poe managed to drop me once during the initial rush on his room (does that ENTIRE room really need to aggro all at once?), and almost again the second time around (if not for green orbs, he may just have) even with the Vet heal.
Test gear, everything went a lot smoother/faster overall. I think a good majority of this was due to the +Offense I was getting at the time (+20% more damage) and some Crit Chance/Severity as well (lead to some 800-crit fireballs here and there). Dropped Poe without having to reset the encounter at all (mostly because I two-shot his entire band of lackeys this time, something I had been struggling to do before) thanks to a few green orbs.
Ranged definately has a significant advantage in the 1-10 spread, especially if you get a decent AoE attack early (Dual Blades had one, but still fell behind in effectiveness because I had to GET to melee-range first).
Talos may need some adjustment, too... he tends to just sit there spamming Sparkstorm, and that made his fight more boring then difficult on Heatsink (I could just stand at range and Fireball to my heart's content, but it took forever; My 800-crit came up on his fight, and even that only did maybe 3/4ths of a bar). He didn't use anything but that and his basic attack until the end of the Test-gear fight (Thunderstrike JUST as he hit his HP-breakpoint).
Poe seriously needs some adjustment somewhere in that encounter - even blocking his Life Drain pulled off a good chunk of my health, and his tendency to use Two Gun Mojo and Shadow Embrace when he wasn't using that meant I was eating damage constantly no matter what I did.
General mob difficulty seems fine, though, for the most part, if a bit more on the dicey end of things in some fights.