Suggestions:
Overall increase the damage output of Medusa, she's not killing anyone who's figured out where their block button is.
Mind Spike Debuff: Applying a new stack refreshes all stacks, even once it hits 10 stacks.
Multiple Medusa's place additional stacks of Mind Spikes on a target further ruining their charge speed on powers. If it refreshed then this would force it to be capped at 10 and would probably prevent Medusa from gaining Positive Mind Spike stacks since the debuff Mind Spikes x 10 needs to trigger the stun then expire. I suppose this could be changed but I think it would be unnecessary.
TK Breaker: Lower Cooldown to 2-3 seconds. Give increased damage versus players below 30% health. If a player blocks the hit, their block is now disabled for 5 seconds.
Change the values to this: Cooldown 5 seconds. If player is blocking and is hit, a debuff [Lingering Pain] is applied to them, this will apply a five second stun upon disengaging block. This debuff will expire after 5 minutes.
TK Shatter: Add a chain effect. If the player shattered is within 20 ft of another player, the Mind Break effect will double on that player. This will continue to chain from player to player until there is no one within 20ft.
I have to disagree here. Turn it into a projected cone which deals damage and doubles Mind Spike stacks on all players within the cone range. 120 degree Cone, 200ft range.
TK Wave: Apply -travel. Reduces the effectiveness of block by 50% for 5 seconds.
Wouldn't be strictly necessary with TK Spear having NTTG effects. It already contains several utility powers, it does not need to interact with block any more so than it already does. Remember there will not be just ONE Medusa per zone. There will be several who may or may not work together. This would mean that eventually blocking would be reduced by 100% for 5 seconds to all affected players. Unnecessary.
TK Lunge: The target you lunge at now decreases the cooldowns on all your abilities based on how many stacks of Mind Spike they have.
I'd prefer if the cooldowns on her abilities as a whole were adjusted and made shorter (a lot shorter in some instances). As a result this wouldn't be needed, it'd be a nice feature but not needed.
She should be balanced assuming there is one. While it may be true during the first couple weeks there will likely be a bunch roaming around, that will not always be the case. Multiples just mean more chaos and villains damaging each other.
No, she shouldn't. Doing this will only dissuade players from participating in Onslaught. The goal, as I understand it, is to allow ALL players to chip in and do their bit, have fun, earn tokens and enjoy both sides of the fight on a regular basis.
Like Grond and Gravitar, her damage scales up with the more active foes there are, personally with a few changes, I think that's good enough. If she and subsequently Grav and Grond are balanced for an entire zones worth of people, then players are never going to be able to defeat them in the time limit, which is 30 minutes.
Bosses have enhanced HP, unique powers and enhanced movement capabilities to help them. Hopefully their Travel Powers will be upgraded so that whilst they can do the whole "chase the bad guy" thing, ultimately players regardless of gear, level or to an extent skill level should be able to participate and benefit fully, either by killing the player controlled boss or at least whittling them down to an extent to gain tokens.
What we test on the PTS and the results we gain does not really represent what is out there on LIVE.
You know, a few weeks before this goes LIVE I'd like to see a developer go onto LIVE with the device and stage the event just to see how well they do and see if it needs adjusting vs an entire zone.
Besides, not everyone will use this Onslaught Device for that specific purpose. Some will use it for RP events where a select amount of people gather at a location to fight a "Rampaging Super Villain", should their RP intentions and gameplay be sidelined because others want the boss to be balanced vs an entire zone? No, it shouldn't.
A group of 10 heroes vs one Onslaught Boss should, with time be able to take them out. Equally Onslaught bosses should be dangerous enough to pick off targets and kill them. Just how there are some super support toons out there who make sure no one in a run of Fire and Ice or Gravitar dies or takes too much damage, those kinds of people will be in Open World too.
110 int + 0 Cooldown = 1.04 (live)
110 int + 217 Cooldown = 45 (live) // 50% Reduction
190 int + 217 Cooldown = 42 (live) // 53% Reduction
175 int + 0 = 1.20
175 int + 217 = 1.10 (pts) // 22% Reduction
Yes, seems the new curve needs some work, while the Live 50% reduction is a bit much at only 100 int and the Heroic CD hat, that's about the end of the curve. Still I'd expect a lot better reduction than 22% the proposed curve with both int and CD gear
At the low end there is nearly no effect now, (possibly harmful to AT)
PTS Live (10 to 15 Int)
0 = 1.30 1.23
93 = 1.22 1.10
139 = 1.20 0.58 // 10% vs 33% Reduction
189 = 1.19
281 = 1.15
I'd suggest maintaining the common quick rise effects we have ( say 20-25% CR in the 100's), but with much a longer diminishing tail giving benefits at the 200+ end. Honestly, most of the stats effects need better diminishing tails, so there is some reason to sacrifice one stat for another.
Now this isn't about CO vs. MSH (I think we can all agree that CO's gameplay is vastly superior.) But, some general things that stood out to me, that should maybe be contrasted and considered:
1.) Enough thought was actually put into it to have a balancing philosophy. A lot of tuning changes here have seemed to be more reactive, shoot-from-the-hip, quick & dirty changes. A change to all power cooldowns on the order of 50% feels more like the latter to me.
2.) The balancing philosophy emphasizes the importance of avoiding nerfs, even if it requires slightly more effort. Bringing the underperforming powers/builds/stats etc. up to the median should be more of a priority for CO.
3.) The respect shown for the players by making the effort to communicate the balancing philosophy in such a manner; actively seeking out players' opinions and having a dialogue about the topic. I have to admit the new (old) development team seems much more open to dialogue than Cryptic North was, and this is noticed and appreciated.
These are things that I believe are not dependent upon the size of the development teams, their budgets, etc. It reflects design philosophy and how you see your product and your customers.
Back to the CDR change--some tuning of cooldowns, specifically with respect to AO/AD, is a welcome change. But I think you should really try to avoid sweeping nerfs that will impact a lot of players' builds so dramatically. This is even more important now after the introduction of Justice Gear, and the significant grind some players have put into fully gearing up their characters.
Post edited by quasimojo1 on
LTS since 2009. Author of ACT parser module for CO. Founder of Rampagers. Resident curmudgeon.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
Applying CC to the supervillains without doing damage does not give you the "battling supervillains" status.
Was just about to post about this, lol. I think what needs to happen is that this device needs Supervillain CC Resistance. This means that only Manipulated CC will be effective and even then it won't be too show stopping. Anything more than that and you'll ruin the one chance CO had to favour a mechanic it's wronged so many times.
Alongside this bug:
Onslaught Bosses have Zero Stealth Sight. This means I can easily lose my targets to stealth mechanics. Onslaught bosses should have Stealth Sight baked into it. Similar to how some enemies on Elite can see through stealth.
Onslaught Bosses have trouble breaking out of hold effects as Breakfree mechanics have been disabled. Against one target, this produces continual irritation, however against multiple targets & CC being in the state that it is in, means that it'll be a minor issue at best.
It is silly to assume that there will be multiples of a specific boss at all points in time. During the initial launch there might be, but Millennium City is kind of huge and I imagine a lot of people are going to be romping around different areas. After the initial hype, yeah that's not going to be the norm. You're also neglecting off-hours when there aren't that many people on.
Furthermore, while this is launching with 3 Villains, it has been stated that more will be made. This will create a much larger variety in which ones will be active, making it even less likely the same villains will be fighting in the same area.
Thus, they should be balanced assuming there is one.
I'm not sure I like the INT nerfs, in general I don't mind the idea of toning back powerful things, and INT is a very good stat, but it seems there's a lot more nerfs these days and not a lot of buffs so all that happens is people find what still works and use that till either all powers and attributes are nerfed to the point of mediocrity or we're left with only a few good powers and abilities that the Devs haven't found yet and everyone is running around with a similar build.
Don't forget that there won't just be ONE Medusa/Grond/Gravitar roaming around at any one time.
That's actually something I dislike. I suggest adding a debuff on any villain that's within 200' of another copy of the same villain (stacking, based on numbers; it's basically a special 'debuff all others' aura on each villain). Otherwise there's an incentive to just get together ten people, have them all turn villain at once, and be fairly unstoppable. You could call it "There can be only one!" or something.
How about giving us reasons to do Onslaught in the Desert, Canada, and Monster Island?
You left out Lemuria and Vibora Bay. Should be able to do Onslaught in all open zones. From a lore perspective, there's particularly good reasons for Desert, at least given these villains.
I think that 'battling supervillains' should be something you have to deliberately choose an action to take, and without that they're invalid targets. It would cut down on griefing (anyone using area effects in PvE is ripe to have a villain run in) and bugs.
1) This is not "endgame" content, this is open-world content. Anyone can join in; it's not limited to 40s. That's one reason why, in testing this, I'm not using any 40s. (In fact, when I check in later, I plan on using a 6 or 7, possibly a brand-new toon.)
2) Dark Champions is not about "villains"; it's about street-level vigilantes. One of the archetypal Hudson heroes is the Revenant, who (according to the character's creator, writing about him in the 3rd Ed rulebook) is a Batman-expy who happens to also be the son of the great villain Fu Manchu. One of the stresses driving him as a character is the fact that if he wanted to, he could just give up all this hero stuff, and seize control of his father's criminal empire. His life would be far easier, his wealth even more vast - but he's driven to be a hero, even if the world continually misunderstands his actions. And you can play a toon just like this in CO as it stands; all you have to do is try to avoid the powers that are blatantly "super". (Blackwing, as an example, uses entirely tech-based abilities - his Swinging is via a small device that hangs on his belt, he uses martial arts and nonlethal ranged attacks, and when I get back to him and raise his levels some more he's going to add in a collapsible sniper rifle and a satellite that he hacks away from Spider-Bat's control to call down orbital strikes, plausible in this world.)
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
People pick Int over Rec or End because the latter two are kinda poo in comparison. Especially as primary super stats. Or because MSA is often the only choice for energy unlocks outside of not having one at all.
Isn't one of the problems with cooldown reduction that you don't need to bother with Int at all to get high reduction? So wouldn't it be better to nerf the mods / gear CDR more and not really Int? If someone is heavily investing in Int, can they still rotate ADs/AOs? Because then the nerf just means more people going all out into Int for their immortality powerhouses and nothing was changed with that. I don't think Int can hold a candle to the appeal of Con now and it probably won't after the nerf.
It'd be super if during these testing events the PTS was temporarily open to everyone. Twenty-five people doesn't seem anywhere near enough if that's how many people are showing up for an event.
Can the new gear not be a Justice Gear upgrade / equivalent? Don't make Rampages irrelevant. I know blowing millions of dollars on throw away content is the cool thing MMOs like to do, but it's still dumb.
BUG: When under the effect of the "Battling Supervillains" status, no NPC can attack you, even if you attack them first. This extends to other instances, including lairs and alerts.
I can see that you're trying to fix the perma AD/AO issue by reducing the effectiveness of cooldown reduction from INT and gear...and I can tell you right now, all this is going to do is hamper players that use a lot of CD related powers, and barely slow down the AD/AO rotators.
A better plan would be to make the shared CD that is on ADs and AOs be immune to CD reduction, making it "hard" as it were and have it so while the AD/AO is active the others are locked out, with the shared CD only starting when the power wears off, this would fix the perma AD/AO issue without screwing over every other power that has a cooldown.
This. I agree with this. Cycling ADs/AOs is a huge issue and needed addressing, but what about the players who use Int for Crowd Control PvE builds? Or the healers? I have a healer character that can only stay alive in Fire/Ice because of good CDR. Look more at Shared Cooldowns, don't place a universal nerf on any/everything with a CD please!
People pick Int over Rec or End because the latter two are kinda poo in comparison. .... So wouldn't it be better to nerf the mods / gear CDR more and not really Int?
I don't understand this at all. INT is the best energy stat, so lets make sure CDR is nerfed for everyone who doesn't use INT?
Balance Concern: Backhand Chop's interrupt always works against supervillains' charge attacks, and does not appear to have any sort of resistance stacks or internal interrupt cooldown (aside from the power's short cooldown).
Balance Concern: Backhand Chop's interrupt always works against supervillains' charge attacks, and does not appear to have any sort of resistance stacks or internal interrupt cooldown (aside from the power's short cooldown).
Add Power Gauntlet to this.
Suggested Solution: Upon interrupting Onslaught bosses, they gain a 80 second buff called Interrupt Lockout, which stops all attacks from being interrupted by Interrupt Mechanics.
BUG: When turning into a supervillain while the "battling supervillains" status is still active, makes you unable to attack players or the until defenders, but can still attack other supervillains. When the status runs out you can attack players and targets again.
Release Notes for FC.31.20150819.2:
This build is available on PTS now, 8/19/2015.
**EDIT Other Patchnotes
- Intelligence: Cooldown Reduction granted by Intelligence has been drastically reduced.
- Cooldown Reduction Rating: Cooldown Reduction granted by Cooldown Reduction rating has been drastically reduced.
And free retcon tokens to go with this nerf I hope.
I don't like Sigs, but I'll leave this here anyway. At least I'm not to trying to hypnotise you with moving things!
Kitsune, your analysis is flawed in two respects.
...
Jonsills ... while I respect the fact that this is "open-world" content, and thus open to all levels - and it is level locked to minimum 10, btw - I refer to it as "endgame" in the respect of the gear rewards from it. So calling my logic flawed on that portion is rather annulled, innit? Not using 40's to test? That's fine. Wonderful thing about games - play how you have fun, right?
Secondly, I know that Dark Champs is about the gritty street-level vigilantes - but admittedly just HOW thin is the line they walk? Seriously, they are riding the line hardcore; the point is in the description of Hudson city as I recall it, the lines of morality are seriously blurred. If I am wrong, then I accept it; but tbh would ANYONE disagree with being able to create and play villains of our own? Hell, I liked CoV better than CoH; but that's neither here nor there.
Yes, a great many people would disagree with creating and playing villains, in part because you can't be proactive and thus aren't much of a villain. However, that discussion has happened numerous times in other threads, so let's not derail this one any worse.
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
You do realize that in the long run, CoV was favored by more mostly because the "Heroes" of CoH were designed to be 'team-centric' versus villains being solo acts. Not meaning to derail, but was indicating it as an aside for the future; as some have already posited about the Supervillain Onslaught content to begin with.
More content would be nice. Might be nice (whether morality is added in or not) to see Hudson City, finally. Maybe some other locales in the Champions verse ... but yeah. Another time and another thread, right guys?
You do realize that in the long run, CoV was favored by more mostly because the "Heroes" of CoH were designed to be 'team-centric' versus villains being solo acts. Not meaning to derail, but was indicating it as an aside for the future; as some have already posited about the Supervillain Onslaught content to begin with.
More content would be nice. Might be nice (whether morality is added in or not) to see Hudson City, finally. Maybe some other locales in the Champions verse ... but yeah. Another time and another thread, right guys?
Favored by who? All statistics and numbers pointed to people played City of Heroes more than City of Villains, not to mention that City of Heroes might have started out team centric but other than a few builds was just as soloable later in its life span.
I might have loved City of Villains, and hated the fact that Cryptic/Paragon blatantly ignored it until we started kicking up dirt, but it was undeniable that Villain side was a veritable ghost town compared to hero side. And it only got worse when Going Rogue came out, because veritable became literal once the ability to swap sides came in.
I don't understand this at all. INT is the best energy stat, so lets make sure CDR is nerfed for everyone who doesn't use INT?
Not necessarily. Rec is still good as a secondary stat without need for investment. Most, if not all, energy unlocks scale with Rec partially. The Rec tree needs a miracle, however. If this nerf goes in for Int, now rec will most likely be a far better option and Int will probably be not such a great choice.
MSA uses Int and cooldowns to feed energy. Without being able to invest in Int to bring down the time, MSA becomes far less useful. My Int / dex stacking / con laser sword build will then be a waste of time to bother with when I could go ego / con stacking / rec ego weapons or str / con stacking / rec single blade bleed and have a build that's better in EVERY way. No rec investment necessary to have better offense, better defense, more HP, more crit severity, and no energy issues. Oh, wait, I'll take a minor hit to crit chance, but I'm sure Nimble Mind will make up for that. I suspect any build that invested in Int for MSA to fuel their energy hungry builds will be equally disappointing and realize the BS required has no benefit over the standard easy-cheesy con builds.
Con stacking builds didn't need a reason to be more appealing. They are already very tempting for most builds because they are so amazing at everything all at once.
I can see that you're trying to fix the perma AD/AO issue by reducing the effectiveness of cooldown reduction from INT and gear...and I can tell you right now, all this is going to do is hamper players that use a lot of CD related powers, and barely slow down the AD/AO rotators.
A better plan would be to make the shared CD that is on ADs and AOs be immune to CD reduction, making it "hard" as it were and have it so while the AD/AO is active the others are locked out, with the shared CD only starting when the power wears off, this would fix the perma AD/AO issue without screwing over every other power that has a cooldown.
I fully agree with this i use AO/AD cycling myself and found the game getting somewhat borign because of i have run the numbers between this build and live atm at least for conviction i'm goiung from 2.3 sec cd to 4.2 sec cd on pts
All that that nerfs do is limit the choice of the meta, if two stats are useless as primary super stats before the nerf they're still gonna suck after the nerf. All you've done is make another SS less appealing. Maybe if you buffed something like Endurance, which really doesn't get much use even as a secondary SS the meta might change and folks might try different builds. As is, all you're doing is making stats like Ego/Str, Con, Dex more appealing as primary SS and Int less appealing as a secondary. Less good choices, more settling on sub par choices.
I can see that you're trying to fix the perma AD/AO issue by reducing the effectiveness of cooldown reduction from INT and gear...and I can tell you right now, all this is going to do is hamper players that use a lot of CD related powers, and barely slow down the AD/AO rotators.
A better plan would be to make the shared CD that is on ADs and AOs be immune to CD reduction, making it "hard" as it were and have it so while the AD/AO is active the others are locked out, with the shared CD only starting when the power wears off, this would fix the perma AD/AO issue without screwing over every other power that has a cooldown.
I fully agree with this i use AO/AD cycling myself and found the game getting somewhat borign because of i have run the numbers between this build and live atm at least for conviction i'm goiung from 2.3 sec cd to 4.2 sec cd on pts
The funny part of this is everyone seems to be under the impression this CDR change was just because of AO/AD cycling.
Was just about to post about this, lol. I think what needs to happen is that this device needs Supervillain CC Resistance. This means that only Manipulated CC will be effective and even then it won't be too show stopping. Anything more than that and you'll ruin the one chance CO had to favour a mechanic it's wronged so many times.
This right here. It's a fantastic compromise. People running a CC build with manipulator will be able to apply CC effects to the Onslaughts. Everyone else will not. This is a perfect solution IMHO.
Aaand, even if it is Millennium City, am I the only one who finds that the city cops having the tough super suits that put the fed's metahuman response suits to shame backwards?
Why not have the Champions spawn and guard rencen if an Onslaught villain goes too close, and maybe have some other NPC heroes at other Onslaught objective points.
that's....actually a good idea, hell why not have the devs throw a "design hero X" (or whatever you wanna call it) contest to come up with designs for said heroes to supplement the....what was it, 6 champions for the purpose.
also, I have already stated what needs to be done to CDR that would result in not completely annihilating the stat for all by the few that push it to the extreme, go find it on page 4.
In all things, a calm heart must prevail.
Member of Paragon Dawn: Because some people like friendly helpful communities.
Yeah some things are broken... no I don't use/abuse them.. where would be the fun in that?
Okay, there is a general problem with open-world pvp (which this is) that players do not naturally seek out fair fights, so in practice what you are likely to get is either a whole bunch of people going villain at once (and crushing all opposition), or one person deciding to try out being a villain (and getting roflstomped). You can't really change human nature, but you can change the stats of the device to mitigate this problem.
One (rather heavy-handed) way of doing this would be to keep track of incoming and outgoing damage. For example, let's say a villain gets 1 energy per 2,000 damage taken (similar to what Grond does, but a bit faster), and then loses 1 energy per 500 (after-mitigation) damage done to hero characters, 5,000 to other targets (including other villain characters; two villains can still fight and build up energy, but slowly), with some minimum decay of, say, 1 per 2 seconds (so you can't power up, then head off to find people to fight). Then, they get a damage bonus of 5% per points of energy (and, for graphical effect, something like a 1% size increase, or a glow at certain levels, or something). I'd probably reduce the basic damage on Grond's top powers by 50%, so at full energy (+500% damage) he'd be doing 25k twice with Atom Splitting Fist, not 50k twice.
This means an underpowered group of heroes will leave the villain at baseline power level, which isn't very dangerous, and a grossly overpowered group will rapidly max villains out, and medium power groups will tend to buff villains up until they reach a damage output that's fairly appropriate to the attackers. Exact numbers could do with changes, of course, and it's honestly a bit of a cheap trick, but I think it would long-term make for something reliably fun, instead of the pathetic scene that is, for example, hunters vs werewolves.
Really, the MCPD bots patrolling Millennium City right now give it a real dystopian feel. Heavily armed police force everywhere? Yeah, kind of sending the wrong signal. Kind of makes me feel like some kind of scary totalitarian situation. Also: if MCPD has Grond-flattening Uber-Robo-Cops, then why do they need xXxDeathPool22xXx to beat up the Purple Gang? Really starting to bug me, setting and story-wise.
Favored by who? All statistics and numbers pointed to people played City of Heroes more than City of Villains, not to mention that ...
And YOU realize that after a point the two games were basically MERGED, right? I know several ppl that only played villain side, and still did up to the end. And by villain side I mean the villain classes, regardless of "morality" BS. I liked the morality system, but did not like the old girl's control system or combat ... too clunky and slow. But again ... let's not derail, please?
Anyhow, to weigh in my own concern on the CDR and Int cooldown nerf - as I've been talking with a SG-mate ... the nerfs basically destroyed many of his builds, and a few of my own now have to go "back to the drawing board" for redesign, and some of my characters haven't even hit lv20 yet. the build I tested versus SV Onslaughts is an Int prim build for one of my characters on Live right now that I Level-up Packed ... it's not TOO inconvenienced in some PvE ... but then too I have not tested to see just HOW bad it is yet. Many controller-type builds run Int, as do some Archetypes ... I know for sure the Invincible does ... How will this affect things Silver players have to spend their money on, hmm? Suddenly that roughly 20 bucks worth of Zen might not go to that new AT, but something else; making the AT a wasted bit of code.
Favored by who? All statistics and numbers pointed to people played City of Heroes more than City of Villains, not to mention that ...
And YOU realize that after a point the two games were basically MERGED, right? I know several ppl that only played villain side, and still did up to the end. And by villain side I mean the villain classes, regardless of "morality" BS. I liked the morality system, but did not like the old girl's control system or combat ... too clunky and slow. But again ... let's not derail, please?
Yes, they were merged, but in the end people still played hero side, and content, more than villain side. All statistics were right on about that. The only classes that were actually favored more from villain for heroes were Masterminds and Brutes and both got nerfed terribly bad post update. I played villains almost exclusively, but I still can't deny most people played the hero archetypes and played hero side. And saying they were merged is basically in the end just saying they pretty much abandoned villain side, because people that played Villain side exclusively, compared to content updates when villains weren't just tag a longs, it was less involved. The Rogue Isles were still not fully explored.
Anyhow, to weigh in my own concern on the CDR and Int cooldown nerf - as I've been talking with a SG-mate ... the nerfs basically destroyed many of his builds, and a few of my own now have to go "back to the drawing board" for redesign, and some of my characters haven't even hit lv20 yet. the build I tested versus SV Onslaughts is an Int prim build for one of my characters on Live right now that I Level-up Packed ... it's not TOO inconvenienced in some PvE ... but then too I have not tested to see just HOW bad it is yet. Many controller-type builds run Int, as do some Archetypes ... I know for sure the Invincible does ... How will this affect things Silver players have to spend their money on, hmm? Suddenly that roughly 20 bucks worth of Zen might not go to that new AT, but something else; making the AT a wasted bit of code.
This argument baffles me because the strength of Intelligence as a primary isn't the CDR but the fact it gets defense ignore in it. I also don't agree with the fact it destroys builds either, as CDR was ridiculous. You didn't need Intelligence, as a mod would basically equal a primarily statted character easily on CDR. Also, kind of baffled on your statements when your arguing about some of your characters not even hitting 20?
CDR as a whole was just too powerful. It wasn't just AOs/ADs that were out of whack it was everything that was intended to take a time to recover before using again.
I can see that you're trying to fix the perma AD/AO issue by reducing the effectiveness of cooldown reduction from INT and gear...and I can tell you right now, all this is going to do is hamper players that use a lot of CD related powers, and barely slow down the AD/AO rotators.
A better plan would be to make the shared CD that is on ADs and AOs be immune to CD reduction, making it "hard" as it were and have it so while the AD/AO is active the others are locked out, with the shared CD only starting when the power wears off, this would fix the perma AD/AO issue without screwing over every other power that has a cooldown.
I fully agree with this i use AO/AD cycling myself and found the game getting somewhat borign because of i have run the numbers between this build and live atm at least for conviction i'm goiung from 2.3 sec cd to 4.2 sec cd on pts
The funny part of this is everyone seems to be under the impression this CDR change was just because of AO/AD cycling.
Pretty much. After playing so long on the PTS, I can say that I've gotten used to it. Powers like Mental Storm and SR are more in line as well as some devices, and you can't (don't have to) spam conviction every 3 seconds.Intelligence still has cost discount associated with it, so I don't think it is suddenly useless.
Although, I wouldn't be surprised if the nerf is... uh... nerfed. 50% might be a bit too much, as it does seem to slow combat down quite a bit. Maybe a reduction in the CDR nerf, and an increase in the cooldown time on all other AD/AOs added when activating your AD/AO? Adding 35 or 40 seconds instead of 30?
Favored by who? All statistics and numbers pointed to people played City of Heroes more than City of Villains, not to mention that ...
And YOU realize that after a point the two games were basically MERGED, right? I know several ppl that only played villain side, and still did up to the end. And by villain side I mean the villain classes, regardless of "morality" BS. I liked the morality system, but did not like the old girl's control system or combat ... too clunky and slow. But again ... let's not derail, please?
Yes, they were merged, but in the end people still played hero side, and content, more than villain side. All statistics were right on about that. The only classes that were actually favored more from villain for heroes were Masterminds and Brutes and both got nerfed terribly bad post update. I played villains almost exclusively, but I still can't deny most people played the hero archetypes and played hero side. And saying they were merged is basically in the end just saying they pretty much abandoned villain side, because people that played Villain side exclusively, compared to content updates when villains weren't just tag a longs, it was less involved. The Rogue Isles were still not fully explored.
Anyhow, to weigh in my own concern on the CDR and Int cooldown nerf - as I've been talking with a SG-mate ... the nerfs basically destroyed many of his builds, and a few of my own now have to go "back to the drawing board" for redesign, and some of my characters haven't even hit lv20 yet. the build I tested versus SV Onslaughts is an Int prim build for one of my characters on Live right now that I Level-up Packed ... it's not TOO inconvenienced in some PvE ... but then too I have not tested to see just HOW bad it is yet. Many controller-type builds run Int, as do some Archetypes ... I know for sure the Invincible does ... How will this affect things Silver players have to spend their money on, hmm? Suddenly that roughly 20 bucks worth of Zen might not go to that new AT, but something else; making the AT a wasted bit of code.
This argument baffles me because the strength of Intelligence as a primary isn't the CDR but the fact it gets defense ignore in it. I also don't agree with the fact it destroys builds either, as CDR was ridiculous. You didn't need Intelligence, as a mod would basically equal a primarily statted character easily on CDR. Also, kind of baffled on your statements when your arguing about some of your characters not even hitting 20?
CDR as a whole was just too powerful. It wasn't just AOs/ADs that were out of whack it was everything that was intended to take a time to recover before using again.
I run an Int-based, AoPM healer for Rampages. The only way that healer stays alive to keep people fighting is low CD, and AD cycling. So it can destroy builds. ESPECIALLY support and crowd control. I couldn't care less about PvP, but if I did, my healer would also be screwed on that front.
Then, what about the Frosticus Tanks who run LR? Now, their BCR and ADs are screwed.
Okay, there is a general problem with open-world pvp (which this is) that players do not naturally seek out fair fights, so in practice what you are likely to get is either a whole bunch of people going villain at once (and crushing all opposition), or one person deciding to try out being a villain (and getting roflstomped). You can't really change human nature, but you can change the stats of the device to mitigate this problem.
It's easier for a Hero to engage a Villain than the other way around. If too many Villains get together, people will avoid them. Then they can take out their onslaught targets and earn their 15 villain tokens. Doesn't seem like it'll be a very good strategy once people realize this. A Hero won't care if the Onslaught Targets are taken out because they don't matter a single bit to the Heroes if they're there or not. There's no zone-wide buff or anything of the sort connected to them. The only reason Heroes want to interact with Villains at the moment is to get their Guardian tokens (or whatever they're called).
In PTS it was fun to have a romp with lots of Villains, but I don't think it'll really work out that well. Someone who wants some Villain tokens will try to keep to themselves and take out Heroes as they trickle in.
The only problem I see are the unkillable Hero builds.
I run an Int-based, AoPM healer for Rampages. The only way that healer stays alive to keep people fighting is low CD, and AD cycling. So it can destroy builds. ESPECIALLY support and crowd control. I couldn't care less about PvP, but if I did, my healer would also be screwed on that front.
Then, what about the Frosticus Tanks who run LR? Now, their BCR and ADs are screwed.
Well then you might have to actually step up your game or the tanks need to step up their's, but as this update will basically make rampages obsolete it's going to be hard to worry about that. I am also a regen tank who tanked Frosticus, there is this little oft forgotten about power in this day and age called block, because I see a lot of "tanks" who don't even bother with it. I didn't need to cycle MD or Resurgence to stay alive on Frosticus I just needed to block at the right time, while trusting the support in their abilities. Same with Gravitar, any world boss and the like.
I think this illustrates how systemic and a bit too reliant people got on such short CDs that they forgot the basics to builds and that there was more than just building one way to play.
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People will dislike the cooldown changes, but they had to happen. You'll get used to it.
Multiple Medusa's place additional stacks of Mind Spikes on a target further ruining their charge speed on powers. If it refreshed then this would force it to be capped at 10 and would probably prevent Medusa from gaining Positive Mind Spike stacks since the debuff Mind Spikes x 10 needs to trigger the stun then expire. I suppose this could be changed but I think it would be unnecessary.
Agreed.
Change the values to this: Cooldown 5 seconds. If player is blocking and is hit, a debuff [Lingering Pain] is applied to them, this will apply a five second stun upon disengaging block. This debuff will expire after 5 minutes.
Agreed here also, minus the sphere increase. It isn't necessary.
I have to disagree here. Turn it into a projected cone which deals damage and doubles Mind Spike stacks on all players within the cone range. 120 degree Cone, 200ft range.
Wouldn't be strictly necessary with TK Spear having NTTG effects. It already contains several utility powers, it does not need to interact with block any more so than it already does. Remember there will not be just ONE Medusa per zone. There will be several who may or may not work together. This would mean that eventually blocking would be reduced by 100% for 5 seconds to all affected players. Unnecessary.
I'd prefer if the cooldowns on her abilities as a whole were adjusted and made shorter (a lot shorter in some instances). As a result this wouldn't be needed, it'd be a nice feature but not needed.
It already doesn't apply Mind Spikes, so this wouldn't be necessary. Medusa's Mind Warp removes all instances of Mind Spikes anyway when activated.
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No, she shouldn't. Doing this will only dissuade players from participating in Onslaught. The goal, as I understand it, is to allow ALL players to chip in and do their bit, have fun, earn tokens and enjoy both sides of the fight on a regular basis.
Like Grond and Gravitar, her damage scales up with the more active foes there are, personally with a few changes, I think that's good enough. If she and subsequently Grav and Grond are balanced for an entire zones worth of people, then players are never going to be able to defeat them in the time limit, which is 30 minutes.
Bosses have enhanced HP, unique powers and enhanced movement capabilities to help them. Hopefully their Travel Powers will be upgraded so that whilst they can do the whole "chase the bad guy" thing, ultimately players regardless of gear, level or to an extent skill level should be able to participate and benefit fully, either by killing the player controlled boss or at least whittling them down to an extent to gain tokens.
What we test on the PTS and the results we gain does not really represent what is out there on LIVE.
You know, a few weeks before this goes LIVE I'd like to see a developer go onto LIVE with the device and stage the event just to see how well they do and see if it needs adjusting vs an entire zone.
Besides, not everyone will use this Onslaught Device for that specific purpose. Some will use it for RP events where a select amount of people gather at a location to fight a "Rampaging Super Villain", should their RP intentions and gameplay be sidelined because others want the boss to be balanced vs an entire zone? No, it shouldn't.
A group of 10 heroes vs one Onslaught Boss should, with time be able to take them out. Equally Onslaught bosses should be dangerous enough to pick off targets and kill them. Just how there are some super support toons out there who make sure no one in a run of Fire and Ice or Gravitar dies or takes too much damage, those kinds of people will be in Open World too.
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Yes, seems the new curve needs some work, while the Live 50% reduction is a bit much at only 100 int and the Heroic CD hat, that's about the end of the curve. Still I'd expect a lot better reduction than 22% the proposed curve with both int and CD gear
At the low end there is nearly no effect now, (possibly harmful to AT)
I'd suggest maintaining the common quick rise effects we have ( say 20-25% CR in the 100's), but with much a longer diminishing tail giving benefits at the 200+ end. Honestly, most of the stats effects need better diminishing tails, so there is some reason to sacrifice one stat for another.
Now this isn't about CO vs. MSH (I think we can all agree that CO's gameplay is vastly superior.) But, some general things that stood out to me, that should maybe be contrasted and considered:
1.) Enough thought was actually put into it to have a balancing philosophy. A lot of tuning changes here have seemed to be more reactive, shoot-from-the-hip, quick & dirty changes. A change to all power cooldowns on the order of 50% feels more like the latter to me.
2.) The balancing philosophy emphasizes the importance of avoiding nerfs, even if it requires slightly more effort. Bringing the underperforming powers/builds/stats etc. up to the median should be more of a priority for CO.
3.) The respect shown for the players by making the effort to communicate the balancing philosophy in such a manner; actively seeking out players' opinions and having a dialogue about the topic. I have to admit the new (old) development team seems much more open to dialogue than Cryptic North was, and this is noticed and appreciated.
These are things that I believe are not dependent upon the size of the development teams, their budgets, etc. It reflects design philosophy and how you see your product and your customers.
Back to the CDR change--some tuning of cooldowns, specifically with respect to AO/AD, is a welcome change. But I think you should really try to avoid sweeping nerfs that will impact a lot of players' builds so dramatically. This is even more important now after the introduction of Justice Gear, and the significant grind some players have put into fully gearing up their characters.
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Was just about to post about this, lol. I think what needs to happen is that this device needs Supervillain CC Resistance. This means that only Manipulated CC will be effective and even then it won't be too show stopping. Anything more than that and you'll ruin the one chance CO had to favour a mechanic it's wronged so many times.
Alongside this bug:
Onslaught Bosses have Zero Stealth Sight. This means I can easily lose my targets to stealth mechanics. Onslaught bosses should have Stealth Sight baked into it. Similar to how some enemies on Elite can see through stealth.
Onslaught Bosses have trouble breaking out of hold effects as Breakfree mechanics have been disabled. Against one target, this produces continual irritation, however against multiple targets & CC being in the state that it is in, means that it'll be a minor issue at best.
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It is silly to assume that there will be multiples of a specific boss at all points in time. During the initial launch there might be, but Millennium City is kind of huge and I imagine a lot of people are going to be romping around different areas. After the initial hype, yeah that's not going to be the norm. You're also neglecting off-hours when there aren't that many people on.
Furthermore, while this is launching with 3 Villains, it has been stated that more will be made. This will create a much larger variety in which ones will be active, making it even less likely the same villains will be fighting in the same area.
Thus, they should be balanced assuming there is one.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
1) This is not "endgame" content, this is open-world content. Anyone can join in; it's not limited to 40s. That's one reason why, in testing this, I'm not using any 40s. (In fact, when I check in later, I plan on using a 6 or 7, possibly a brand-new toon.)
2) Dark Champions is not about "villains"; it's about street-level vigilantes. One of the archetypal Hudson heroes is the Revenant, who (according to the character's creator, writing about him in the 3rd Ed rulebook) is a Batman-expy who happens to also be the son of the great villain Fu Manchu. One of the stresses driving him as a character is the fact that if he wanted to, he could just give up all this hero stuff, and seize control of his father's criminal empire. His life would be far easier, his wealth even more vast - but he's driven to be a hero, even if the world continually misunderstands his actions. And you can play a toon just like this in CO as it stands; all you have to do is try to avoid the powers that are blatantly "super". (Blackwing, as an example, uses entirely tech-based abilities - his Swinging is via a small device that hangs on his belt, he uses martial arts and nonlethal ranged attacks, and when I get back to him and raise his levels some more he's going to add in a collapsible sniper rifle and a satellite that he hacks away from Spider-Bat's control to call down orbital strikes, plausible in this world.)
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Isn't one of the problems with cooldown reduction that you don't need to bother with Int at all to get high reduction? So wouldn't it be better to nerf the mods / gear CDR more and not really Int? If someone is heavily investing in Int, can they still rotate ADs/AOs? Because then the nerf just means more people going all out into Int for their immortality powerhouses and nothing was changed with that. I don't think Int can hold a candle to the appeal of Con now and it probably won't after the nerf.
It'd be super if during these testing events the PTS was temporarily open to everyone. Twenty-five people doesn't seem anywhere near enough if that's how many people are showing up for an event.
Can the new gear not be a Justice Gear upgrade / equivalent? Don't make Rampages irrelevant. I know blowing millions of dollars on throw away content is the cool thing MMOs like to do, but it's still dumb.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
This. I agree with this. Cycling ADs/AOs is a huge issue and needed addressing, but what about the players who use Int for Crowd Control PvE builds? Or the healers? I have a healer character that can only stay alive in Fire/Ice because of good CDR. Look more at Shared Cooldowns, don't place a universal nerf on any/everything with a CD please!
I don't understand this at all. INT is the best energy stat, so lets make sure CDR is nerfed for everyone who doesn't use INT?
Add Power Gauntlet to this.
Suggested Solution: Upon interrupting Onslaught bosses, they gain a 80 second buff called Interrupt Lockout, which stops all attacks from being interrupted by Interrupt Mechanics.
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And free retcon tokens to go with this nerf I hope.
Secondly, I know that Dark Champs is about the gritty street-level vigilantes - but admittedly just HOW thin is the line they walk? Seriously, they are riding the line hardcore; the point is in the description of Hudson city as I recall it, the lines of morality are seriously blurred. If I am wrong, then I accept it; but tbh would ANYONE disagree with being able to create and play villains of our own? Hell, I liked CoV better than CoH; but that's neither here nor there.
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More content would be nice. Might be nice (whether morality is added in or not) to see Hudson City, finally. Maybe some other locales in the Champions verse ... but yeah. Another time and another thread, right guys?
Favored by who? All statistics and numbers pointed to people played City of Heroes more than City of Villains, not to mention that City of Heroes might have started out team centric but other than a few builds was just as soloable later in its life span.
I might have loved City of Villains, and hated the fact that Cryptic/Paragon blatantly ignored it until we started kicking up dirt, but it was undeniable that Villain side was a veritable ghost town compared to hero side. And it only got worse when Going Rogue came out, because veritable became literal once the ability to swap sides came in.
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Not necessarily. Rec is still good as a secondary stat without need for investment. Most, if not all, energy unlocks scale with Rec partially. The Rec tree needs a miracle, however. If this nerf goes in for Int, now rec will most likely be a far better option and Int will probably be not such a great choice.
MSA uses Int and cooldowns to feed energy. Without being able to invest in Int to bring down the time, MSA becomes far less useful. My Int / dex stacking / con laser sword build will then be a waste of time to bother with when I could go ego / con stacking / rec ego weapons or str / con stacking / rec single blade bleed and have a build that's better in EVERY way. No rec investment necessary to have better offense, better defense, more HP, more crit severity, and no energy issues. Oh, wait, I'll take a minor hit to crit chance, but I'm sure Nimble Mind will make up for that. I suspect any build that invested in Int for MSA to fuel their energy hungry builds will be equally disappointing and realize the BS required has no benefit over the standard easy-cheesy con builds.
Con stacking builds didn't need a reason to be more appealing. They are already very tempting for most builds because they are so amazing at everything all at once.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
I fully agree with this i use AO/AD cycling myself and found the game getting somewhat borign because of i have run the numbers between this build and live atm at least for conviction i'm goiung from 2.3 sec cd to 4.2 sec cd on pts
The funny part of this is everyone seems to be under the impression this CDR change was just because of AO/AD cycling.
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This right here. It's a fantastic compromise. People running a CC build with manipulator will be able to apply CC effects to the Onslaughts. Everyone else will not. This is a perfect solution IMHO.
that's....actually a good idea, hell why not have the devs throw a "design hero X" (or whatever you wanna call it) contest to come up with designs for said heroes to supplement the....what was it, 6 champions for the purpose.
also, I have already stated what needs to be done to CDR that would result in not completely annihilating the stat for all by the few that push it to the extreme, go find it on page 4.
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Yeah some things are broken... no I don't use/abuse them.. where would be the fun in that?
One (rather heavy-handed) way of doing this would be to keep track of incoming and outgoing damage. For example, let's say a villain gets 1 energy per 2,000 damage taken (similar to what Grond does, but a bit faster), and then loses 1 energy per 500 (after-mitigation) damage done to hero characters, 5,000 to other targets (including other villain characters; two villains can still fight and build up energy, but slowly), with some minimum decay of, say, 1 per 2 seconds (so you can't power up, then head off to find people to fight). Then, they get a damage bonus of 5% per points of energy (and, for graphical effect, something like a 1% size increase, or a glow at certain levels, or something). I'd probably reduce the basic damage on Grond's top powers by 50%, so at full energy (+500% damage) he'd be doing 25k twice with Atom Splitting Fist, not 50k twice.
This means an underpowered group of heroes will leave the villain at baseline power level, which isn't very dangerous, and a grossly overpowered group will rapidly max villains out, and medium power groups will tend to buff villains up until they reach a damage output that's fairly appropriate to the attackers. Exact numbers could do with changes, of course, and it's honestly a bit of a cheap trick, but I think it would long-term make for something reliably fun, instead of the pathetic scene that is, for example, hunters vs werewolves.
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And YOU realize that after a point the two games were basically MERGED, right? I know several ppl that only played villain side, and still did up to the end. And by villain side I mean the villain classes, regardless of "morality" BS. I liked the morality system, but did not like the old girl's control system or combat ... too clunky and slow. But again ... let's not derail, please?
Anyhow, to weigh in my own concern on the CDR and Int cooldown nerf - as I've been talking with a SG-mate ... the nerfs basically destroyed many of his builds, and a few of my own now have to go "back to the drawing board" for redesign, and some of my characters haven't even hit lv20 yet. the build I tested versus SV Onslaughts is an Int prim build for one of my characters on Live right now that I Level-up Packed ... it's not TOO inconvenienced in some PvE ... but then too I have not tested to see just HOW bad it is yet. Many controller-type builds run Int, as do some Archetypes ... I know for sure the Invincible does ... How will this affect things Silver players have to spend their money on, hmm? Suddenly that roughly 20 bucks worth of Zen might not go to that new AT, but something else; making the AT a wasted bit of code.
Yes, they were merged, but in the end people still played hero side, and content, more than villain side. All statistics were right on about that. The only classes that were actually favored more from villain for heroes were Masterminds and Brutes and both got nerfed terribly bad post update. I played villains almost exclusively, but I still can't deny most people played the hero archetypes and played hero side. And saying they were merged is basically in the end just saying they pretty much abandoned villain side, because people that played Villain side exclusively, compared to content updates when villains weren't just tag a longs, it was less involved. The Rogue Isles were still not fully explored.
This argument baffles me because the strength of Intelligence as a primary isn't the CDR but the fact it gets defense ignore in it. I also don't agree with the fact it destroys builds either, as CDR was ridiculous. You didn't need Intelligence, as a mod would basically equal a primarily statted character easily on CDR. Also, kind of baffled on your statements when your arguing about some of your characters not even hitting 20?
CDR as a whole was just too powerful. It wasn't just AOs/ADs that were out of whack it was everything that was intended to take a time to recover before using again.
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Pretty much. After playing so long on the PTS, I can say that I've gotten used to it. Powers like Mental Storm and SR are more in line as well as some devices, and you can't (don't have to) spam conviction every 3 seconds.Intelligence still has cost discount associated with it, so I don't think it is suddenly useless.
Although, I wouldn't be surprised if the nerf is... uh... nerfed. 50% might be a bit too much, as it does seem to slow combat down quite a bit. Maybe a reduction in the CDR nerf, and an increase in the cooldown time on all other AD/AOs added when activating your AD/AO? Adding 35 or 40 seconds instead of 30?
I run an Int-based, AoPM healer for Rampages. The only way that healer stays alive to keep people fighting is low CD, and AD cycling. So it can destroy builds. ESPECIALLY support and crowd control. I couldn't care less about PvP, but if I did, my healer would also be screwed on that front.
Then, what about the Frosticus Tanks who run LR? Now, their BCR and ADs are screwed.
It's easier for a Hero to engage a Villain than the other way around. If too many Villains get together, people will avoid them. Then they can take out their onslaught targets and earn their 15 villain tokens. Doesn't seem like it'll be a very good strategy once people realize this. A Hero won't care if the Onslaught Targets are taken out because they don't matter a single bit to the Heroes if they're there or not. There's no zone-wide buff or anything of the sort connected to them. The only reason Heroes want to interact with Villains at the moment is to get their Guardian tokens (or whatever they're called).
In PTS it was fun to have a romp with lots of Villains, but I don't think it'll really work out that well. Someone who wants some Villain tokens will try to keep to themselves and take out Heroes as they trickle in.
The only problem I see are the unkillable Hero builds.
Well then you might have to actually step up your game or the tanks need to step up their's, but as this update will basically make rampages obsolete it's going to be hard to worry about that. I am also a regen tank who tanked Frosticus, there is this little oft forgotten about power in this day and age called block, because I see a lot of "tanks" who don't even bother with it. I didn't need to cycle MD or Resurgence to stay alive on Frosticus I just needed to block at the right time, while trusting the support in their abilities. Same with Gravitar, any world boss and the like.
I think this illustrates how systemic and a bit too reliant people got on such short CDs that they forgot the basics to builds and that there was more than just building one way to play.
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