As I stated in my previous comment I really feel that both sides of this are going to stay stubborn to their beliefs.
The comment about the video I would say that I don't think anyone will get this low. On live this should get you to 15 seconds or less but I think it hits some pretty serious DR before that point. I had someone buffing me with 700 pre with AOAC and I too had AOAC both full legions r7 mods I had pure int slotted in gear with rec primary. This is like the highest you can really push it and by doing so you only just have the ability to rotate them at which point you have 5k hp and no defense. MD giving 50% avoidance is pretty much the same as defense giving 100% on the build but it's only up half the time. In other words most likely you'll die.
Problems with things occur when things are layered on top of each other. To get perma AD's now you will have 2 5k hp squishy people with no damage and not much of anything else.
CON is to provide HP sure but by having no diminishing returns / values you can fully con stack gear and keep gaining the same amount of hp. 15-17k hp is viable for still very burst AoPM PvP builds and 12k hp is still very viable for extremely high DPS PvE builds because of DR. Just take a look at snakes super tank build with 21k hp, being totally impossible to be killed by anything. CON is made even worse by ego surge's advantage and juggernaut in the strength tree which are utterly stupid with full stacked CON where you can get the highest defense, using warden / guardian and vindi you then get the highest offense. You get high crit severity from the STR tree secondary super stats as well as ego surge giving 80%+ crit chance without having any crit slotted.
I think we're just repeating ourselves over and over now. I would like the change to stay how it is.
I invite you who are so against it to come on the pts and spend hours as I have done so far testing various builds that are now a lot more viable in comparison to the options you had before. (and yes builds do become more viable in online games when things are nerfed as it means if you want to be the strongest you don't have to go that same linear direction every time)
P.S. When it comes to tanking, the new ultimate they have made may interest you as it has a force attack mechanic on it while the enemy is feared.
Oh and also on the case of "PvP'ers" somehow being a totally different type of person and somehow being totally separate from "PvE'ers" I really find this odd as I think that most of the people who PvP would have PvE'd at some point and the people who PvE would have also have PvP'd at some point. It just ends up being that you group up the game into these 2 (or 3 if you count rp'ers as their own, 4 if you count traders as their own) strange labels which you can stereotype people within. Just a thought.
I would like AD/AO to be looked at seperately. As long as the shared cooldown is lower than half the individual cooldown rotating AD/AO will always be the best option even if you can not have them active permanently.
Having two AD's so you can use them in different situations is fine, but having multiple on one build without any diminishing return per AD/AO is not.
Nimble mind should have been brought in line with other AO's long ago, that alone would make CON so much more in line with other stats, and for pvp all those stun>spike attack combos that are almost impossible to survive depend heavily on it.
I am ok with the STR specs myself, I see those as an compensation for the troubles melee builds have in many fights compared to ranged builds.
The defense/offense loop is a bit silly when used with juggernaut but would be easily fixed, just change the vindicator spec to only apply to your base offense and maybe buff it to 30% or 40%.
About unkillable tanks.
Keep in mind those >20k health builds that seem almost unkillable are so mostly because of a spec that heals more than twice what the description says it does.
Brutum was using that almost since day one when specs were added, but I'm seeing it used a lot more lately and I expect to see even more after the CDR nerfs.
But if that is a bug in the spec, or in the description is uncertain at this time.
How much is the change in AO/ADs going to have on the ability of an average PC to take out a mob in PVE? Very little, I suspect. I don't see the change as having much effect on genre feel, and the ability to take out mooks in the source material varies wildly depending on writer fiat anyway. (I can cite BTAS episodes where the same mooks that Batman struggles with for more than a trivial amount of time fold like origami in other episodes as the plot calls for it.)
The game can't always be a slave to genre conventions, because a lot of those conventions are basically writers playing with smoke and mirrors. But the player should "feel" as a hero in the genre, while also enjoying CO as a game experience. Most mooks should drop like flies. However, there should be a few agents that makes PCs go "whoa", because there are agents that do that in genre as well as in games. And it makes for a good game experience for players to hate Malta sappers (in City of Heroes) or Brickbusters and Immortals here. As far as bosses go, every boss easily folding is counter-genre unless you're doing One-Punch Man. Superman needs his Doomsday; Spider-Man his Doc Ock (It's a major problem that our nemesis system can't facilitate that and it frustrates the hell out of me that the devs have never seen that). Bosses should vary in toughness, with the nastiest ones living up to their billing and overshadowing the rest. From a story point, It's kinda sad that a comedy duo are two of the toughest bosses in the game, but you live with it and worry about the ice cage.
Attention should be paid to the overlap between story and game structure. They aren't always opposed,. For example: my main problem with Duratok/Ironclad isn't that it's an unwinnable fight (yes, I know you say that good AoE builds can ace it - It'd be nice if 98% of the time I saw evidence of that, instead of Talkeklys's "there, there" speech), but it makes no sense at the point in the story for that fight to be so tough. It's not even the gatekeeper for the final battle, yet it's way easier to take down Firewing than D/I. Game design doesn't have to be a slave to every genre convention, but the importance of building to a climax is universal to both game and story design cannot be understated.
Kagami, learn to read. Or just stop trolling, your choice. We're all tired of the act. And here's your straw back, by the by. Until then, adults are talking. And I'll go ahead and say don't bother with your usual "you just aren't a real enough gamer!" angle -no one cares what you think of them or their "gamer cred"- myself especially.
Lol, you talking about strawman falacy in this statement is hilarious.
Your own statements prove that you do not really realize that things have changed which is a problem. DPS before On Alert was nowhere near as high as it is now. Before that point it was not that hard to keep aggro as a Tank, for instance, but now it is so very easy to pull it away with the levels of DPS you can pump out that a real dedicated Tank is a thing of the past because what you need is a hybrid.
I'm gonna go ahead and blow your mind:
If energy generation somehow gets nerfed to the point that tanks have to use their energy builder.... then the same thing will happen to dps, and their dps will go down as well.
PS - energy generation isn't actually getting nerfed you dope.
It's still completely possible to make a very potent build while taking just one AD and one AO. No CD-reduction cycling between multiples required. If this has been entirely possible since the very start then AD-cycling was never the build "meta" or standard.
The intended use of ADs has always been that of a panic button to get the player out of a desperate situation, also considering how you get such signficant buffs from ADs for zero energy cost. A permanent consistent state of such buffs through multiple AD cooldown reduction cycling especially without paying them off with energy obviously comes off as broken and was needed to be brought in line for the longest time now.
It's still completely possible to make a very potent build while taking just one AD and one AO. No CD-reduction cycling between multiples required. If this has been entirely possible since the very start then AD-cycling was never the build "meta" or standard.
The intended use of ADs has always been that of a panic button to get the player out of a desperate situation, also considering how you get such signficant buffs from ADs for zero energy cost. A permanent consistent state of such buffs through multiple AD cooldown reduction cycling especially without paying them off with energy obviously comes off as broken and was needed to be brought in line for the longest time now.
People may not agree with the level of nerf. But I don't think it's credible to say the bolded wasn't true. Stated that way that could NOT have been intended.
It seems like some people just don't get it: Champions Online is about customization, "Be the hero you want to be", and anything that threatens that is bad.
So on the one hand you have people saying "If you want challenge, just gimp yourself", in which case you're telling players that if they want to have fun, they can't be the hero they want to be, they can't build the way they want to build. They can either give up that customization, or be bored in a given portion of the content.
Then you have people who say "Oh, you want to be able to run everything, just build like the pro-builders do". Again, you have people being told that they can't be the here they want to be, they can't build the way they want to build. They can either give up that customization, or be fodder in a given portion of the content.
Fact is, neither group is correct, because both groups are committing the sin of trying to tell the other that they should give up part of the "be the hero you want to be" customization experience. ( One humorous thing is that some people apparently are trying to be in both groups now. )
You know what caused this state of affairs? Power levels going out of control, and yes cooldown reduction is one aspect of this. You know what happened? At some point the Devs began to make content that was balanced around the out of control power levels. That's how we have Forum Malvanum, and all the other content where you can't just build however you feel like and expect to succeed ( of course, FM is one of the better examples since you technically have on after the first 5 rounds ). On the other end we have content that players can steamroll to a degree that doesn't even make sense: Boss NPCs that get one-shotted, group content that can be solo'd. This happened because On Alert raised the top end of the power spectrum by a huge amount, and created a game environment where it became impossible to make content for everyone, while at the same time leaving in place a large amount of content that was still balanced according to previous power levels which lead to a confusing landscape of "You can do this here, but you can't do it there".
Now here's the issue with just buffing everything up to the level of live cooldown reduction. Listen closely: You can never buff the other stats that could go into your utility gear to a level where people would no longer keep using cooldown reduction. CC strength, cost reduction, max energy? Buff these to 300,000% of their current level and people will still continue to use cooldown reduction mods and gear pieces. End result? Which mods to put into these pieces is a fake choice. There is one objective best choice, and the rest are just things you do until you find out the objective best choice. A clear example of customization being threatened. This is simply a case where "buff everything else up" will not work.
So why not just leave Intelligence alone? Because they don't want everyone taking Int to become the new meta... oh wait, did I say new meta? I meant they don't want it to continue being the meta. By making Int's cooldown reduction something you have to invest into, they ensure that people will now consider it, but not feel like they are missing out on the obvious best choice if they don't take it. As IMP has demonstrated, low cooldown characters will still be very much possible, so if having short cooldowns is important to you, if you feel like your ability to play your characters will be broken by not having short cooldowns, then you you will still be able to get them... you will also have the opportunity to consider if those short cooldowns were actually what was important to you - just how much of your gameplay experience do you think is actually controlled by those cooldowns? You might be surprised ( Hint: You're going to realize they were just as important as having 50%+ dodge chance on all characters ).
Whether you're a top-end builder, or a "I do what I want" theme-builder, neither of you is getting what you need out of the game, and that's being able to build the way you want and still have a satisfying game experience no matter which part of the game you're participating in.
inb4 "oh so you should be able to make a build of 13 blasts and still do everythign!??!?!" response.
I don't think it will affect any of mine since I don't stack for Cooldown or have any characters with more than 1 or 2 powers with coldown. I have this basic objection to waiting for them to Cooldown. Heals I'll put up with it from, nothing else, I tend to forget to use them after waiting a few times, then I swap them.
I for one welcome this nerf with open arms. It only affects few of my characters (PVP centered characters most likely). I'm pretty sure I can still continue kicking **** in PVE as it doesn't require me to cycle both of the AD's (or AO's). While the nerf is pretty excessive, it's not enough for me to throw a hissy fit about it. I still continue being addicted to this game.
And hey, INT's Revitalize spec still works (Even after it was FIXED), how about throwing EB every now and then if you want some more cooldown reduction. XD
And hey, INT's Revitalize spec still works (Even after it was FIXED), how about throwing EB every now and then if you want some more cooldown reduction. XD
But that requires doing something other than what some people say is "the best way to do it", and might require a moderately active play style... and that... I dunno... apparently it causes people physical pain and death?
Nope,just lowers DPS and murders fun of using real powers instead of plinking.
Oh no, lower numbers! But the only fun of the game is looking at numbers and thinking about how big they are!
Wait... lowers dps? But cooldowns aren't dps, they're burst damage. You know, a burst of damage every X seconds. DPS isn't actually being affected at all... you can still spam no-cooldown powers just as much as you did before.
Also, I like how your vocabulary is becoming more intense. "murders" lol. There's a certain word I'm waiting for you to use... we'll see if it gets that far.
Burst damage still adds to DPS. You simply take the cooldown into consideration when calculating the DPS.
For instance: Someone using 2gun does moderate dps. If they add Strafing Run, they do high dps. Having a longer cooldown on Strafing Run will lower their burst damage which lowers their DPS.
Burst damage still adds to DPS. You simply take the cooldown into consideration when calculating the DPS.
For instance: Someone using 2gun does moderate dps. If they add Strafing Run, they do high dps. Having a longer cooldown on Strafing Run will lower their burst damage which lowers their DPS.
So the question is, do we think the proper dps for a dps build is 8k or 6k?
Oh Noes, people can actually contribute more so then Bursty CD powers killing them all at once, oh noes, the horror, the idea of being harmed, perish the thought... Go Teamwork. \o/ o.3.o
I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
Burst damage still adds to DPS. You simply take the cooldown into consideration when calculating the DPS.
For instance: Someone using 2gun does moderate dps. If they add Strafing Run, they do high dps. Having a longer cooldown on Strafing Run will lower their burst damage which lowers their DPS.
So the question is, do we think the proper dps for a dps build is 8k or 6k?
Also we have to ask if fights being slightly longer is a fair trade for some amount of equality between cooldown builds and all the other kinds of builds.
I mean seriously.. the people acting so melodramatic are doing so over fights being slightly longer... if those people want fights to be as short as possible, they could just close the game and not play at all.
Then again I wonder how much ego plays into this. Maybe some people don't like the idea of builds being evened out... maybe they don't like the idea of a game where building a certain way no longer makes you part of the "people doing it right". A game where everyone contributes much more evenly, and the people building "that way" are no longer doing 90% of the work of the run by virtue of their build being more meta than anyone else's. If a significant portion of my enjoyment of the game came from that easy feeling of superiority, I'd be pretty worried about anything that looks like an effective balancing change and would likely fight it tooth and nail.
Not pointing any fingers are mentioning any names.
Name one time a nerf in this game ever had objectively positive results. One.
The dodge nerf. People achieving 100% dodge chance with nothing more than an offensive passive and one other power was not okay, especially when Lightning Reflexes - the dodge passive - could not compete with it. Not only that, but every single passive could achieve ~80% of LR's effectiveness if not more just by using a single piece of gear with 2 Gambler's Gems slotted in it. Even if this caused people to quit over it, it was still good for the game in my opinion since it was just dumb what people could achieve before dodge was nerfed.
Also - the addition of shared cooldowns on devices. That was a nerf that was also positive in my opinion since it was just silly that people could make builds that revolved around rotating 5 of the same device.
Yeah, objectively. That's why I posted what I posted. Also, keep in mind that people quit over many things in games like this. People quit over buffs as well, as crazy as it sounds. And even after the dodge nerf, there was no noticeable drop in population. Just many hollow threats of quitting the game and people saying it was a bad decision for various reasons, kinda like right now. I still haven't seen a sizable number of people quitting this game over just nerfing - mainly for its lack of updates and the like.
I'll say it again: The addition of shared cooldowns on devices. Or are you saying that someone remaining immune to damage 100% of the time through the use of 5 Eruptions is better for the game?
Name one time a nerf in this game ever had objectively positive results. One.
I'm having trouble thinking of a nerf that wasn't beneficial. What makes a benefit 'objective'? And, while you're at it, name one nerf that had objectively negative results.
Nerfs have a significant cost in terms of player goodwill. Generally players don't like to "lose progress" and have to rebuild/regear characters because of game designers' mistakes. I'm not referring to just the forumites that steadfastly defend everything Cryptic does because "CO is life" or something, but the general population of game players.
An objective metric you can use to measure whether CO's history of widespread nerfs has been good for the game is the number of active players. Pull up Steam Charts or use your own objective knowledge of the game's population. Compare it over the same time period to a game that has a better balance strategy of avoiding nerfs, like MSH. I'm not saying the nerfs are the only factor, but I believe they are a significant one among several.
The issue is that game balance in CO is always done in a half-assed way. Instead of a more targeted, incremental game balance change that primarily affects those 8K DPS builds that Pantagruel is basing his case on, we get a nerf that affects every build and every cooldown power/device, whether there was a balance issue with them or not. This is because just setting (CDR = CDR/2) takes a developer 5 minutes, and a more thoughtful approach, well, takes more effort.
Yes, many of the nerfs in the past were necessary. But the extreme game balance issues (e.g. overpowered devices without shared cooldowns) should have never occurred, or at least gone on for so long, to have made those nerfs necessary. They should be using data analytics on both PTS and Live to automatically mine the data and make sure all values are within an expected distribution, thereby catching issues quickly. And using more targeted, incremental changes, emphasizing buffs over nerfs, to push continuous improvement of power balance. But instead, everything is done less thoughtfully, without a longer term perspective/strategy, and the remaining players are the ones that suffer for it.
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
Note the "objectively" there above. And also, note the bolded bit - I'd call that an automatic disqualifier for "good for the game".
You're not being objective, yet you demand others to be?
The player base drops have been over lack of content updates. Or, oh, are we conveniently going to repurpose the player base drops in order to support whatever thing we happen to be arguing against at the time?
Fine. The player base drops happened because after the Dodge nerfs they didn't follow them up with further nerfs that were supposed to happen and people lost more faith that the game would ever be truly balanced.
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
(This is also a silly trope to use in an instance when we know that there is a general cause-and-effect relationship between, e.g. developer actions and players reactions.)
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
So the question is, do we think the proper dps for a dps build is 8k or 6k?
I was answering Foxi's statement of how cdr affects dps. It wasn't an opinion for or against any level of damage dealing ability.
The only two legit build I've seen doing that much damage are a rimefire / SR / hardfrost / a bunch of other stuff build and maybe the one using gas pellets. Even after the nerf, they will still be super-high dps. The next highest dps builds tend to be PA exploit builds, which isn't being addressed in this patch. I'm guessing the Rimefire build will do around the same or more dps as a PA exploit build, post nerf.
There will still be a bunch of build doing oodles of DPS, even after this nerf. Even tanks that do high-end dps will still be around. Basically, your question doesn't necessarily have anything to do with this nerf nor with anything I said, so I don't know why you're asking me.
I think that well built dps should be roughly competitive with each other. I don't think a tank with a tank passive in not offense role should be able to do as much or more damage as a dps toon with an offense passive in offense role. (if everyone has a well build toon.)
If they keep buffing players, anyone with an EB will be able to solo tank Vik in a few minutes. If they keep buffing players and keep buffing enemies, the devs enter a cycle of never ending buffs that will eat up every bit of content making time. That's why you see established games with completely dead starter zones even if they have decent player bases. That's why games that release expansions have every zone before that expansion end up devoid of player life. It's a terrible way to make games.
I still don't see how people make the argument that players will "feel weaker" after this. I mean, I've made builds that don't use cooldowns at all... sometimes I've taken characters that were using cooldowns ( some of the "good" ones ) and rebuilt them to not have those cooldowns... I didn't feel weaker. I was still much stronger than the NPCs I was fighting. I base this on the fact that I was still able to take on an entire group of NPCs solo, and defeat them.
So... you defeat a group of NPCs in 10 seconds and you feel strong... you defeat a group of NPCs in 15 seconds and suddenly you feel weak and pathetic? I'm not convinced.
I am afraid my main will not be able to spam conviction every 2 seconds and not have constant heals...oh yeah and my AO and AD not being on a super short timer... I never really took advantage of the double AD thing... so...
I guess it kinda sucks for those that did...
but honestly you all know something had to be done.
Dodge nerf cost us playerbase. Taco's mentioned a big playerbase drop over the "Kitchen sink" nerfs. Plasma beam nerf making content nigh-unplayable and taking out the impetus for vehicles all in one swoop.
The playerbase is just the same now as I remember it was back then. Thing is that since then and until now we lost the last devs we really had, we got moved to C-north where the game was just kept up with lockbox stuff and the odd bit of content such as the rampage system which just ended up increasing the stupidity of power creep, oh and unbreakable being buffed to a MD level with a CD nerf in mind (which never happened until now because crush was moved to NW) caused the game to be left in a stupid state of having the two AD's on rotation being the absolute best thing.
Vehicles were stupidly and lazily implemented and now is a market that is totally flooded. I don't see how it made content unplayable with the nerf though.
I did say that I didn't want to post on this thread anymore as what both sides had to say has already been said but it seems that people like repeating themselves over and over in some traumatized fit in the hope they may be able to rally others together to put a stop to the meddling devs. <_<
Edit: To be honest people look to much into the numbers of things sometimes instead of playing the game and seeing if it is more fun / less fun / the same amount of fun. For me it is twice as fun on PTS right now.
Edit: To be honest people look to much into the numbers of things sometimes instead of playing the game and seeing if it is more fun / less fun / the same amount of fun. For me it is twice as fun on PTS right now.
This. I don't play video games to measure numbers to determine if I'm having fun or not.
I can have more fun playing with weaker powers just because the powers feel more fun. In fact, my previous long long break from CO happened right after I got really into making "min/max" builds that used all the best powers... doing that made the game so unbearably boring that I stopped playing for about half a year.
Some people are so scared that their e-peen will shrink that they forgot about all the fun that's waiting for them in the other 90% of power selections in the game.
It's still completely possible to make a very potent build while taking just one AD and one AO. No CD-reduction cycling between multiples required. If this has been entirely possible since the very start then AD-cycling was never the build "meta" or standard.
As players we've all gotten a little too comfortable with the status quo. We all know that CO has the reputation for terrible balance issues. You can visit any other gaming forum and see what happens when CO is mentioned. People say they love the customization but the power creep and balance issues here are terrible.
And they are right.
We've somehow become a small group of players that believes playing a superhero mmo = having stupidly overpowered builds. And its not even that hard to build yourself into OP'ness. Also, this is just the first step. We're getting new powers and I'm certain old powers are going to get a look at.
but all of this is going to take time and it's going to be painful for some. Yet, it has to happen. It's obvious there are still plans for this game and balancing things out is part of the agenda. Some people won't be able to handle the changes.
I'm all for balance changes, as long as it's done carefully and doesn't make it abslutely useless.
Good news, they're doing it carefully and it isn't making anything absolutely useless.
That's the thing some people seem to be missing - this nerf isn't going to make cooldown reduction useless, and it isn't going to make powers with cooldowns useless. Just like the dodge nerf didn't make dodge useless. Just like the dex nerf didnt make dex useless.
It's just making it not the obvious best choice. In a game about customization, you cannot have obvious best choices. What you need is ways that people can build that make them feel unique, i.e. "I'm a dodge build", "I'm a cooldown build", "I'm a crit build". At one point saying these things didn't mean anything because everyone was already all of those. Hopefully soon we'll be at a point where these things really make you unique from the guy standing next to you, instead of just some guy who "didn't build correctly and gave up the things you're supposed to take for the sake of theme".
I know that the dodge nerf DID cause players to leave, as I had several friends who quit the game because of it. I myself had always played unarmed melee chars w/ offensive passives before the dodge nerf. After the nerf, I moved on to other builds because IMO the dodge nerf killed all survivability for unarmed chars w/ offensive passives. The devs used a nuke when a grenade would have been sufficient.
I also know that the bio-steel/plasma beam nerf caused players to leave because again I had friends who quit because of it. I myself cancelled my sub and stayed away for 9 months because of it. There were multiple reasons for why it made me so angry, but I'm not going to go into that as it is in the past and nothing can be done about it now.
I tested the cdr nerf on PTS and I personally don't have a problem with it, but because of my own past experiences, I can by sympathetic towards those who DO feel that, once again, they are being hammered with a wide-reaching nerf bat.
Just my two cents. You all have a wonderful day. Spikey
Only thing I'm worried about is that when I level new characters, I always use the Nemesis gear and Questionite set secondaries, so I won't have ANY cooldown reduction until I hit lvl 40 and regear my character. DUnno how painful the leveling will be after the nerf.
Only thing I'm worried about is that when I level new characters, I always use the Nemesis gear and Questionite set secondaries, so I won't have ANY cooldown reduction until I hit lvl 40 and regear my character. DUnno how painful the leveling will be after the nerf.
I know that the dodge nerf DID cause players to leave
Any nerf or any change will cause people to leave. People leave and people come back all the time, in the PvP community it's really easy to see the flow of players where people leave and people come back. I know a few people who have already left due to the nerf incoming because they can't live without AD cycling apparently (literally) however I also know people who are coming back with the nerf who will replace them.
Only thing I'm worried about is that when I level new characters, I always use the Nemesis gear and Questionite set secondaries, so I won't have ANY cooldown reduction until I hit lvl 40 and regear my character. DUnno how painful the leveling will be after the nerf.
Not appreciably harder? I mean, you didn't have much cdr to start with, increasing an AD from 72s to 85s isn't going to cripple anyone.
Comments
The comment about the video I would say that I don't think anyone will get this low. On live this should get you to 15 seconds or less but I think it hits some pretty serious DR before that point. I had someone buffing me with 700 pre with AOAC and I too had AOAC both full legions r7 mods I had pure int slotted in gear with rec primary. This is like the highest you can really push it and by doing so you only just have the ability to rotate them at which point you have 5k hp and no defense. MD giving 50% avoidance is pretty much the same as defense giving 100% on the build but it's only up half the time. In other words most likely you'll die.
Problems with things occur when things are layered on top of each other. To get perma AD's now you will have 2 5k hp squishy people with no damage and not much of anything else.
CON is to provide HP sure but by having no diminishing returns / values you can fully con stack gear and keep gaining the same amount of hp. 15-17k hp is viable for still very burst AoPM PvP builds and 12k hp is still very viable for extremely high DPS PvE builds because of DR. Just take a look at snakes super tank build with 21k hp, being totally impossible to be killed by anything. CON is made even worse by ego surge's advantage and juggernaut in the strength tree which are utterly stupid with full stacked CON where you can get the highest defense, using warden / guardian and vindi you then get the highest offense. You get high crit severity from the STR tree secondary super stats as well as ego surge giving 80%+ crit chance without having any crit slotted.
I think we're just repeating ourselves over and over now. I would like the change to stay how it is.
I invite you who are so against it to come on the pts and spend hours as I have done so far testing various builds that are now a lot more viable in comparison to the options you had before. (and yes builds do become more viable in online games when things are nerfed as it means if you want to be the strongest you don't have to go that same linear direction every time)
P.S. When it comes to tanking, the new ultimate they have made may interest you as it has a force attack mechanic on it while the enemy is feared.
Oh and also on the case of "PvP'ers" somehow being a totally different type of person and somehow being totally separate from "PvE'ers" I really find this odd as I think that most of the people who PvP would have PvE'd at some point and the people who PvE would have also have PvP'd at some point. It just ends up being that you group up the game into these 2 (or 3 if you count rp'ers as their own, 4 if you count traders as their own) strange labels which you can stereotype people within. Just a thought.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
Having two AD's so you can use them in different situations is fine, but having multiple on one build without any diminishing return per AD/AO is not.
Nimble mind should have been brought in line with other AO's long ago, that alone would make CON so much more in line with other stats, and for pvp all those stun>spike attack combos that are almost impossible to survive depend heavily on it.
I am ok with the STR specs myself, I see those as an compensation for the troubles melee builds have in many fights compared to ranged builds.
The defense/offense loop is a bit silly when used with juggernaut but would be easily fixed, just change the vindicator spec to only apply to your base offense and maybe buff it to 30% or 40%.
About unkillable tanks.
Keep in mind those >20k health builds that seem almost unkillable are so mostly because of a spec that heals more than twice what the description says it does.
Brutum was using that almost since day one when specs were added, but I'm seeing it used a lot more lately and I expect to see even more after the CDR nerfs.
But if that is a bug in the spec, or in the description is uncertain at this time.
The game can't always be a slave to genre conventions, because a lot of those conventions are basically writers playing with smoke and mirrors. But the player should "feel" as a hero in the genre, while also enjoying CO as a game experience. Most mooks should drop like flies. However, there should be a few agents that makes PCs go "whoa", because there are agents that do that in genre as well as in games. And it makes for a good game experience for players to hate Malta sappers (in City of Heroes) or Brickbusters and Immortals here. As far as bosses go, every boss easily folding is counter-genre unless you're doing One-Punch Man. Superman needs his Doomsday; Spider-Man his Doc Ock (It's a major problem that our nemesis system can't facilitate that and it frustrates the hell out of me that the devs have never seen that). Bosses should vary in toughness, with the nastiest ones living up to their billing and overshadowing the rest. From a story point, It's kinda sad that a comedy duo are two of the toughest bosses in the game, but you live with it and worry about the ice cage.
Attention should be paid to the overlap between story and game structure. They aren't always opposed,. For example: my main problem with Duratok/Ironclad isn't that it's an unwinnable fight (yes, I know you say that good AoE builds can ace it - It'd be nice if 98% of the time I saw evidence of that, instead of Talkeklys's "there, there" speech), but it makes no sense at the point in the story for that fight to be so tough. It's not even the gatekeeper for the final battle, yet it's way easier to take down Firewing than D/I. Game design doesn't have to be a slave to every genre convention, but the importance of building to a climax is universal to both game and story design cannot be understated.
Lol, you talking about strawman falacy in this statement is hilarious.
I'm gonna go ahead and blow your mind:
If energy generation somehow gets nerfed to the point that tanks have to use their energy builder.... then the same thing will happen to dps, and their dps will go down as well.
PS - energy generation isn't actually getting nerfed you dope.
It's still completely possible to make a very potent build while taking just one AD and one AO. No CD-reduction cycling between multiples required. If this has been entirely possible since the very start then AD-cycling was never the build "meta" or standard.
The intended use of ADs has always been that of a panic button to get the player out of a desperate situation, also considering how you get such signficant buffs from ADs for zero energy cost. A permanent consistent state of such buffs through multiple AD cooldown reduction cycling especially without paying them off with energy obviously comes off as broken and was needed to be brought in line for the longest time now.
People may not agree with the level of nerf. But I don't think it's credible to say the bolded wasn't true. Stated that way that could NOT have been intended.
STO, slow? Whaaaaaat?
You're talking endgame pew-pew blowing stuff up right?
So on the one hand you have people saying "If you want challenge, just gimp yourself", in which case you're telling players that if they want to have fun, they can't be the hero they want to be, they can't build the way they want to build. They can either give up that customization, or be bored in a given portion of the content.
Then you have people who say "Oh, you want to be able to run everything, just build like the pro-builders do". Again, you have people being told that they can't be the here they want to be, they can't build the way they want to build. They can either give up that customization, or be fodder in a given portion of the content.
Fact is, neither group is correct, because both groups are committing the sin of trying to tell the other that they should give up part of the "be the hero you want to be" customization experience. ( One humorous thing is that some people apparently are trying to be in both groups now. )
You know what caused this state of affairs? Power levels going out of control, and yes cooldown reduction is one aspect of this. You know what happened? At some point the Devs began to make content that was balanced around the out of control power levels. That's how we have Forum Malvanum, and all the other content where you can't just build however you feel like and expect to succeed ( of course, FM is one of the better examples since you technically have on after the first 5 rounds ). On the other end we have content that players can steamroll to a degree that doesn't even make sense: Boss NPCs that get one-shotted, group content that can be solo'd. This happened because On Alert raised the top end of the power spectrum by a huge amount, and created a game environment where it became impossible to make content for everyone, while at the same time leaving in place a large amount of content that was still balanced according to previous power levels which lead to a confusing landscape of "You can do this here, but you can't do it there".
Now here's the issue with just buffing everything up to the level of live cooldown reduction. Listen closely: You can never buff the other stats that could go into your utility gear to a level where people would no longer keep using cooldown reduction. CC strength, cost reduction, max energy? Buff these to 300,000% of their current level and people will still continue to use cooldown reduction mods and gear pieces. End result? Which mods to put into these pieces is a fake choice. There is one objective best choice, and the rest are just things you do until you find out the objective best choice. A clear example of customization being threatened. This is simply a case where "buff everything else up" will not work.
So why not just leave Intelligence alone? Because they don't want everyone taking Int to become the new meta... oh wait, did I say new meta? I meant they don't want it to continue being the meta. By making Int's cooldown reduction something you have to invest into, they ensure that people will now consider it, but not feel like they are missing out on the obvious best choice if they don't take it. As IMP has demonstrated, low cooldown characters will still be very much possible, so if having short cooldowns is important to you, if you feel like your ability to play your characters will be broken by not having short cooldowns, then you you will still be able to get them... you will also have the opportunity to consider if those short cooldowns were actually what was important to you - just how much of your gameplay experience do you think is actually controlled by those cooldowns? You might be surprised ( Hint: You're going to realize they were just as important as having 50%+ dodge chance on all characters ).
Whether you're a top-end builder, or a "I do what I want" theme-builder, neither of you is getting what you need out of the game, and that's being able to build the way you want and still have a satisfying game experience no matter which part of the game you're participating in.
inb4 "oh so you should be able to make a build of 13 blasts and still do everythign!??!?!" response.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I have this basic objection to waiting for them to Cooldown. Heals I'll put up with it from, nothing else, I tend to forget to use them after waiting a few times, then I swap them.
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A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
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And hey, INT's Revitalize spec still works (Even after it was FIXED), how about throwing EB every now and then if you want some more cooldown reduction. XD
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My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I'd consider using powers with no cooldowns at all "real powers" and those with cooldowns "plinking," but that's just me.
Wait... lowers dps? But cooldowns aren't dps, they're burst damage. You know, a burst of damage every X seconds. DPS isn't actually being affected at all... you can still spam no-cooldown powers just as much as you did before.
Also, I like how your vocabulary is becoming more intense. "murders" lol. There's a certain word I'm waiting for you to use... we'll see if it gets that far.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
For instance: Someone using 2gun does moderate dps. If they add Strafing Run, they do high dps. Having a longer cooldown on Strafing Run will lower their burst damage which lowers their DPS.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
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I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
I mean seriously.. the people acting so melodramatic are doing so over fights being slightly longer... if those people want fights to be as short as possible, they could just close the game and not play at all.
Then again I wonder how much ego plays into this. Maybe some people don't like the idea of builds being evened out... maybe they don't like the idea of a game where building a certain way no longer makes you part of the "people doing it right". A game where everyone contributes much more evenly, and the people building "that way" are no longer doing 90% of the work of the run by virtue of their build being more meta than anyone else's. If a significant portion of my enjoyment of the game came from that easy feeling of superiority, I'd be pretty worried about anything that looks like an effective balancing change and would likely fight it tooth and nail.
Not pointing any fingers are mentioning any names.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
The dodge nerf. People achieving 100% dodge chance with nothing more than an offensive passive and one other power was not okay, especially when Lightning Reflexes - the dodge passive - could not compete with it. Not only that, but every single passive could achieve ~80% of LR's effectiveness if not more just by using a single piece of gear with 2 Gambler's Gems slotted in it. Even if this caused people to quit over it, it was still good for the game in my opinion since it was just dumb what people could achieve before dodge was nerfed.
Also - the addition of shared cooldowns on devices. That was a nerf that was also positive in my opinion since it was just silly that people could make builds that revolved around rotating 5 of the same device.
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An objective metric you can use to measure whether CO's history of widespread nerfs has been good for the game is the number of active players. Pull up Steam Charts or use your own objective knowledge of the game's population. Compare it over the same time period to a game that has a better balance strategy of avoiding nerfs, like MSH. I'm not saying the nerfs are the only factor, but I believe they are a significant one among several.
The issue is that game balance in CO is always done in a half-assed way. Instead of a more targeted, incremental game balance change that primarily affects those 8K DPS builds that Pantagruel is basing his case on, we get a nerf that affects every build and every cooldown power/device, whether there was a balance issue with them or not. This is because just setting (CDR = CDR/2) takes a developer 5 minutes, and a more thoughtful approach, well, takes more effort.
Yes, many of the nerfs in the past were necessary. But the extreme game balance issues (e.g. overpowered devices without shared cooldowns) should have never occurred, or at least gone on for so long, to have made those nerfs necessary. They should be using data analytics on both PTS and Live to automatically mine the data and make sure all values are within an expected distribution, thereby catching issues quickly. And using more targeted, incremental changes, emphasizing buffs over nerfs, to push continuous improvement of power balance. But instead, everything is done less thoughtfully, without a longer term perspective/strategy, and the remaining players are the ones that suffer for it.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
The player base drops have been over lack of content updates. Or, oh, are we conveniently going to repurpose the player base drops in order to support whatever thing we happen to be arguing against at the time?
Fine. The player base drops happened because after the Dodge nerfs they didn't follow them up with further nerfs that were supposed to happen and people lost more faith that the game would ever be truly balanced.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Correlation Is Not Causation
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(This is also a silly trope to use in an instance when we know that there is a general cause-and-effect relationship between, e.g. developer actions and players reactions.)
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
The only two legit build I've seen doing that much damage are a rimefire / SR / hardfrost / a bunch of other stuff build and maybe the one using gas pellets. Even after the nerf, they will still be super-high dps. The next highest dps builds tend to be PA exploit builds, which isn't being addressed in this patch. I'm guessing the Rimefire build will do around the same or more dps as a PA exploit build, post nerf.
There will still be a bunch of build doing oodles of DPS, even after this nerf. Even tanks that do high-end dps will still be around. Basically, your question doesn't necessarily have anything to do with this nerf nor with anything I said, so I don't know why you're asking me.
I think that well built dps should be roughly competitive with each other. I don't think a tank with a tank passive in not offense role should be able to do as much or more damage as a dps toon with an offense passive in offense role. (if everyone has a well build toon.)
If they keep buffing players, anyone with an EB will be able to solo tank Vik in a few minutes. If they keep buffing players and keep buffing enemies, the devs enter a cycle of never ending buffs that will eat up every bit of content making time. That's why you see established games with completely dead starter zones even if they have decent player bases. That's why games that release expansions have every zone before that expansion end up devoid of player life. It's a terrible way to make games.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
So... you defeat a group of NPCs in 10 seconds and you feel strong... you defeat a group of NPCs in 15 seconds and suddenly you feel weak and pathetic? I'm not convinced.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I guess it kinda sucks for those that did...
but honestly you all know something had to be done.
Vehicles were stupidly and lazily implemented and now is a market that is totally flooded. I don't see how it made content unplayable with the nerf though.
I did say that I didn't want to post on this thread anymore as what both sides had to say has already been said but it seems that people like repeating themselves over and over in some traumatized fit in the hope they may be able to rally others together to put a stop to the meddling devs. <_<
Edit: To be honest people look to much into the numbers of things sometimes instead of playing the game and seeing if it is more fun / less fun / the same amount of fun. For me it is twice as fun on PTS right now.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
I can have more fun playing with weaker powers just because the powers feel more fun. In fact, my previous long long break from CO happened right after I got really into making "min/max" builds that used all the best powers... doing that made the game so unbearably boring that I stopped playing for about half a year.
Some people are so scared that their e-peen will shrink that they forgot about all the fun that's waiting for them in the other 90% of power selections in the game.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
And they are right.
We've somehow become a small group of players that believes playing a superhero mmo = having stupidly overpowered builds. And its not even that hard to build yourself into OP'ness. Also, this is just the first step. We're getting new powers and I'm certain old powers are going to get a look at.
but all of this is going to take time and it's going to be painful for some. Yet, it has to happen. It's obvious there are still plans for this game and balancing things out is part of the agenda. Some people won't be able to handle the changes.
That's the thing some people seem to be missing - this nerf isn't going to make cooldown reduction useless, and it isn't going to make powers with cooldowns useless. Just like the dodge nerf didn't make dodge useless. Just like the dex nerf didnt make dex useless.
It's just making it not the obvious best choice. In a game about customization, you cannot have obvious best choices. What you need is ways that people can build that make them feel unique, i.e. "I'm a dodge build", "I'm a cooldown build", "I'm a crit build". At one point saying these things didn't mean anything because everyone was already all of those. Hopefully soon we'll be at a point where these things really make you unique from the guy standing next to you, instead of just some guy who "didn't build correctly and gave up the things you're supposed to take for the sake of theme".
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I know that the dodge nerf DID cause players to leave, as I had several friends who quit the game because of it. I myself had always played unarmed melee chars w/ offensive passives before the dodge nerf. After the nerf, I moved on to other builds because IMO the dodge nerf killed all survivability for unarmed chars w/ offensive passives. The devs used a nuke when a grenade would have been sufficient.
I also know that the bio-steel/plasma beam nerf caused players to leave because again I had friends who quit because of it. I myself cancelled my sub and stayed away for 9 months because of it. There were multiple reasons for why it made me so angry, but I'm not going to go into that as it is in the past and nothing can be done about it now.
I tested the cdr nerf on PTS and I personally don't have a problem with it, but because of my own past experiences, I can by sympathetic towards those who DO feel that, once again, they are being hammered with a wide-reaching nerf bat.
Just my two cents.
Spikey
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A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
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