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So, since the dodge changes didn't actually affect anything, what was the point?
spinnytop
Posts: 16,450 Arc User
Kinda surprised nobody hopped on this, so I'm gonna go ahead and jump right on there.
A lot of us keep stating over and over, in response to people saying the dodge changes ruined the game, that our characters were actually unaffected by the dodge change. At face value, this would make you wonder what the point of the dodge changes then was if it didn't actually change anything.
So, before someone tries to latch onto this as reasoning for why the dodge changes shouldn't have happened...
Let's go over what the changes actually did change and how they actually did affect our characters. Feel free to restate "it ruined the game for me", but I'm kind of hoping somebody can come up with something else here... so folks on my side of the fence, please just ignore anyone who talks about the dodge change having gimped their character, and instead contribute some other way that the dodge changes have changed the game for you.
----
For me:
Before on my character that does use an offensive passive with dodge, I was literally just jumping around spamming my attack on things. I might have to actually use an active defense or a heal, or retreat, or LoS or something now and then if the tide of RNG somehow mounted up against me, but for the most part I was invincible, and any hope the mobs had of putting me in danger was cut short by the high amount of dps I was putting out.
Now, I actually have to use all my defensive abilities, and need to sometimes think about retreating or using line of sight <--- all those things make the game more fun for me. I could be super careful and let an actual tank get aggro or something... but it's just more fun for me to play like an overeager whackadoo (even more fun when the party gets all mad about it and tries to stand back and let me die... and then I don't die... and then I do this ^_^)
At the same time, I'm still able to mount an efficient and impressive offense while keeping myself alive. The entire experience feels a lot more active and satisfying.
For my characters that weren't using dodge...well, nothing actually changed for them (the only things that did change is that across the board their damage increased due to the other changes).
A lot of us keep stating over and over, in response to people saying the dodge changes ruined the game, that our characters were actually unaffected by the dodge change. At face value, this would make you wonder what the point of the dodge changes then was if it didn't actually change anything.
So, before someone tries to latch onto this as reasoning for why the dodge changes shouldn't have happened...
Let's go over what the changes actually did change and how they actually did affect our characters. Feel free to restate "it ruined the game for me", but I'm kind of hoping somebody can come up with something else here... so folks on my side of the fence, please just ignore anyone who talks about the dodge change having gimped their character, and instead contribute some other way that the dodge changes have changed the game for you.
----
For me:
Before on my character that does use an offensive passive with dodge, I was literally just jumping around spamming my attack on things. I might have to actually use an active defense or a heal, or retreat, or LoS or something now and then if the tide of RNG somehow mounted up against me, but for the most part I was invincible, and any hope the mobs had of putting me in danger was cut short by the high amount of dps I was putting out.
Now, I actually have to use all my defensive abilities, and need to sometimes think about retreating or using line of sight <--- all those things make the game more fun for me. I could be super careful and let an actual tank get aggro or something... but it's just more fun for me to play like an overeager whackadoo (even more fun when the party gets all mad about it and tries to stand back and let me die... and then I don't die... and then I do this ^_^)
At the same time, I'm still able to mount an efficient and impressive offense while keeping myself alive. The entire experience feels a lot more active and satisfying.
For my characters that weren't using dodge...well, nothing actually changed for them (the only things that did change is that across the board their damage increased due to the other changes).
Post edited by spinnytop on
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It did not change in any way the the content you are able to complete. Whatever your character was able to accomplish before, he still is. That means the potential of a character is the same.
BUT what did change is how you use said potential. Instead of watching a movie unfold on your screen you are now encouraged to play a game. And press buttons. Or in other words, characters did not lose the potential to complete content, but using the potential got a bid harder/more exciting.
So in conclusion: the title is misleading. And the post of the op answers pretty much the question in the title. Maybe that was the point? We shall never know.
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LoL You're one of the people who thinks that LR is way too underpowered and should give 10% dodge chance more. You also have stated in the past that you found it stupid you 'NEEDED' to slot dodge and avoidance gear...
This is too far from the truth. Me and seraphim just made a LR IDF super tank build using no dodge gear.
Basically you use STR or CON primary to get 100% resistance to damage with STR or 80% with CON then 14.5k health with STR or 15.5k with CON. You do this by using no dodge or avoidance cores. If you have LR dodge and avoidance is pretty pointless to stack unless it is flat so don't even bother. Offense wise you could get any or a mix of crit / offense / healing to keep balance. By having maxed out CON your ego surge will give 78% crit chance with STR primary or 100% with CON primary.
Use EM / thundering kicks / Crashing Wave Kick to stack dodge ontop of LR so you get close to 100% a lot of the time then if needed use MD to literally be unkillable even if 10 gravitar's were hitting you.
EDIT: and that is before we are talking about using a shield with that.
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-Some toons have lower dodge chance numbers. They dodge less often. This change ranges from 0%-50% decline depending on the character in question (some never used dodge to begin with). R.E.L.I.C., for example, was hit the hardest because he uses a non-dodge passive (AOPM) in conjunction with dodge gear and a massive amount of Dex to scale Parry. The change to Parry was fairly significant numerically.
-Some toons have lower crit chance. They crit less often.
Actual gameplay changes
-Some toons require that I remember I have an active defense/heal that I hadn't used in forever. Using R.E.L.I.C. as an example, Bionic Shielding was included in the build since I first made it (long before dodge gear got so much better). I now have to use that heal on occasion to complete my tests where as before that heal was fairly unnecessary for my tests which are significantly more challenging than the vast majority of the encounters in the standard game.
-Since my personal building style is more focused on "outheal incoming damage through layered heals and defenses" as opposed to the style of "lower incoming damage to the lowest possible numerical value" my survivability is unchanged because my healing combined with defenses (or controls for some builds) was already, and remains, more than adequate in most situations.
-While I crit less often, offense moving to a different damage layer increased my damage. I hit harder on every shot that lands so my DPS is up on nearly all characters at the level cap. Higher damage and unbuffed mobs means they die quicker which lowers their effective DPS. In many cases the rate they die increased to a significant enough degree that the theoretical increase in DPS I would absorb post dodge changes, if looking solely at the numbers on paper, never actually occurs because the mobs don't last as long as they did before. This is one of several facets that isolated numbers and theorycrafting outside of actual play never address which is why I take so little stock in theorycrafting or looking at parts of a system in isolation.
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Thats one of the reasons why i would never want to play ATs, since they simply lack healings. I always have 2 and often even 3 healing powers on my characters, most conviction, BCR, Bionic Shielding and / or Drones.
In the end i suspect ATs are the most affected since they simply don't have the possibilty to stack more healing.
When I go back to gold I probably have to regear my toons.Annoyance, but not too bad. I'm running unity missions everyday.
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That's been one of my gripes with the ATs for a long time now. The outright exclusion of heals on several of them to force a pseudo-trinity aspect into the game (along with providing incentive to subscribe or buy healing devices) in a game that clearly was not designed with that in mind. It creates an imbalance between Ats with heals and those without and that difference is magnified when freeforms are brought into the equation.
For one, several of the ATs are poorly made across the board even when merely looking at the 'classic role' they are supposed to play outside of other considerations. For two it's why the game has to be so easy. It has to be put down to the lowest common denominator which is currently a toon with absolutely no heals...by design. That's one reason why the game has gotten progressively easier. You can't keep it solo friendly without catering to the toons that have no heals...by design...let alone some of the lacking synergies.
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I think you simply have a different definition of good.
For me good is: 60% dodge
100% dodge outside of MD is more like: so freaking overpowered it should never ever be possible to reach in any way.
And 60% is actually enough for any content in the game anyway. LR is good without any additional powers.
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Easy solution: Greatly reduce the cooldown on heal items from the "Raise a child to adulthood" length they're at now.
Squishy ATs become more viable in lairs, Alerts, and other hard content. This may make people more interested in buying them which would be good for Cryptic North. And the player would have something to spend the piles and piles of globals they get on. Throw in some tradable lockbox/ mission reward gear that improves consumables and suddenly the Auction House has a purpose beyond dumping common costume unlocks or Halloween candies.
Wait? Whaaaa..?
Oh no, I didn't say you NEED them to be good. My point was that you could stack any defense, as with offense and you'll create so many layers of defense that almost anything will hit a max of 1k, most things will just hit 1's.
To tell you the truth beating up 10 gravitar's at once is sort of over-survive.
FYI apparently cooldowns are next on the nerf line.
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100% dodge all the time while still attacking with good damage is "good"?
wtf would "strong" be? 100% dodge chance with 100% avoidance all time with strong dps?
and then what would op look like? total invulnerability with 50% damage reflect?
How are they supposed to balance the game around ideas like that? Think about the poor theme builders who wouldn't be able to run anything because they don't have good builds.
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Aren't defense from passives and actual defense on the same layer? Just that passive defences are usually specified to one or two (or three) types of resistances?
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Not really. I took my Blade into Warlord and the biggest threat to me was ... other people aggroing everything. Which was the biggest threat to me before the changes. I can still get hit in the face with fire patches and not die (because I know how to block and all). My Blades could actually solo missions and deal with multiple mobs with ease while leveling. Of course I died at least 3 times in every alert because of my obsession with stealing all the aggro, always (just in case my damage wasn't enough, I have CS on my combo).
I can still take my Unleashed into Gravitar and not die (as long as I'm not dumb and stand in the death circle). And I pretty much needed a healer's help before the changes anyway so... *shrugs*.
The game is extremely easy, even for a squishy AT, but I do agree that the game has to be much easier for an AT than it does for a FF.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
I think IDF is absorb instead of resistance just like the force field/shield powers. There are, however, other powers that add resistance based defense. Mighty kick w/ adv. is one of them, the adv. on Tunneling is another, Cleave w/ adv. does, there's also Ice Barrier I believe.
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IDF is immunity, not absorb. Like Invulnerability and Unstoppable, not Forcefield powers.
Unbreakable is more like the Forcefield powers oddly enough.
Ice Barrier is a nice power. I wish there were more powers like it, that could fit different themes.
I'd presume...
1. Advantage to turn it into an aggro wipe
2. Cheaper energy cost
3. Non-stationary (CoPD)/Doesn't need to be charged (TK Eruption)
4. More subtle from a graphics standpoint (backflip vs glowy circle vs turning into a being of light)
5. Lower tier for power selection
It had all those things in its favor while it was also hands-down the best mitigation tool you could get in a non-passive/non-Active Defense power.
It's still quite good for mitigation now, and still keeps all of its other advantages (though #5 is more a thematic concern)
For someone who complains about the dodge changes "breaking your character's theme of being agile/dodgey" so much, you seem to have a ton of problems with taking powers that look like stuff that agile/dodgey characters are stereotypically able to do. So which is it?
And this is why forced-selection of only ATs for Silvers that don't buy a Freeform slot is a horrible thing for the state of the game's balance and development of any future content, and why "Silvers can only make ATs" needs to die in a fire, ASAP.
As long as the game has to be built to factor in the massive usability gap between ATs and Freeforms, we're never going to get meaningful content, or new full (not mini-set) powersets (that aren't pigeonholed into working as part of an AT straitjacket).
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To clarify, I tend to use absorb and immunity as interchangeable terms when discussing them versus damage resistance/%reduction irrespective of which ones come in what order in the damage calculations.
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I like the term "flat reduction", since it simply chops off the set number that it says it's going to in the tooltip. But that's me.
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Well 50% naked, with a heroic dodge breastplate it is about 59% I think. And something like 65% if you add a dodge core if I remember correctly. And thats not really hard to get, you have to wear some gear anyway. So just choose one that complements your passive. Your avoidance is high enough, you do not need gear for that.
That leaves you completely free to choose whatever powers you want. You primary def has no influence on your theme.
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Yup, that one too.
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So you're telling me that you want to be a 'tank' by ONLY taking LR and dodge gear then the rest of your powers are all offense powers. Wait I thought you were a tank? I'm a little confused I must say. You want a 5k hp tank with no heals and no damage reduction but instead just to have 80% avoidance and 100% dodge chance.
Hm, good logic.
Take CON instead of REC, or try Overdrive with REC and drop INT. For more Dodge you could take Parry w. Ellusive Monk as Block instead of Force Shield.
Any special reasons why you need Force Detonation and Ebon Rift ? If not drop one for Masterful Dogde and the other maybe for Eye of the Storm w. Adv.
There close to 100% dodge, you should never have energy troubles with MSA and rush.
Having theme builds is lots of fun, but when choosing theme over function doing stuff like tanking gravitar will be tricky. The rest of the game will be fine either way.
I'm surprised at you not getting 'deadly aim' in the dex tree, it's pretty much one of the main and best parts of the tree. You have brush it off though which is good, extra 10% chance to dodge aoe.
If you don't need CON you may aswell change recovery for strength instead, then put stats into strength and int while using deadly aim. This will get your crit severity high while allowing you to deal much more base damage as well. By hitting this extra ammount of damage you may be able to sacrifice damage in other areas to get defense, I notice you already have bountiful chi which sacrifices some damage.
Oh and I wouldn't call getting most of the most OP powers filling up over half your build hardcore theme, surely you have some room to maneuver in this sense.
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Oh look, the game isn't messed up after all, you just had to start listening
You gonna come back and make posts about how you're not dying every 10 seconds?
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The other toon is also a build i wouldn't touch with a knife .. only because Kenpo can do the Powerhouse with a build does not mean that it is really a good build for every player.
Skill and also personal preference is also a big factor.
It's a pretty odd theme I must say, but I wont judge.
FYI in PvP LR is one of the most OP passives you can use currently.
Wait, what's that? You want 10% more dodge? :O
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
I'm going to assume that you completely understand that that is the entire point of the passive and is how it is intended to work... best mitigation in game when it happens, worst when it doesn't.
Mr dodge monkey is the slickest hero on the block... until someone nails him in the jaw and he falls on his butt ^_^ (kinda why I don't depend on dodge, cause I don't want to see my heroes doing that second part :P)
I thought you hated playing squishy characters... why you use squishy build? u3u
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If Kenpo can handle it but you not, and i think i also can't do a lot of what he does, then i think its save to say that Kenpo simply has maybe outstanding skills and not just decent
So i personally just prefer to take a defense passive instead of dying all the time and being frustrated
My thoughts on that build:
Personally if I have a theme I stick to it. So I agree generally with using powers that follow the theme and not making the perfect char. But inside my theme I try to optimize.
You character has rec and int, I do not think you need two energy stats. Since you can fill your energy bar any time, with conviction and MCA, I would probably drop rec. Personally I would use con instead. Str could also be helpful, for a little dmg and knock resist. Myself I just like con. It's just some free hp at the cost of nothing. I would least give it a try on PTS if I were you, unless rec is in a way part of the theme.
You could also drop rank 3 on the block. So far I have never ranked up a block, since I did not feel the need to do so. So no idea what you are actually loosing. But it would allow you to add accelerated metabolism to your spam powers, if you are really concerned about power. A rank 2 block and con should keep you better alive than a rank 3 and no con.
Now I realize you did not exactly ask for an opinion on your build, but I am giving mine anyway. Feel free to ignore it
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Wait, what npc uses a knock combo like this? They knock you then one shot you? Sounds a lot more like PvP, hey wait a minute I thought you said your complaints about dodge weren't anything to do with PvP.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
Gravitar can do a tap knock up, charge hold, charge spike attack combo.
It doesn't happen very often, but it can happen now and then.
One that she does a bit more often is a tap knock up, pull (stopping you from getting up), charge attack (hitting just before you are able to get up and block) combo.
the Roin'esh commander does that when he absorbs the AllSpar- I mean the power cube.