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Close the Offense/Defense specialization loop
championshewolf
Posts: 4,375 Arc User
Next suggestion in my train of things and low hanging fruit that needs to be majorly addressed if we really, truly as players want to bring sanity to our beloved game. The offense/defense looping that a lot of builds do to get exceptionally high resistance and damage at the same time. This loop is bad, as all it does is just keep building numbers until the decimals are too small to impact the actual numbers anymore, and to fix it, this should have scaled off gear only, not off the actual offense and defense stats.
This loop is allowing for people to easily make tank builds that can also do extremely good damage with little effort. This was introduced with On Alert, and many considered it a problem then and it's only gotten worse now. Many exploit this (yes, this is a proper use of the word) and because of this it is just going to exacerbate problems for future content designs. It needs to be nipped in the bud, now.
There are other issues as well, such as forms being out of control, but that's a debate for another time.
This loop is allowing for people to easily make tank builds that can also do extremely good damage with little effort. This was introduced with On Alert, and many considered it a problem then and it's only gotten worse now. Many exploit this (yes, this is a proper use of the word) and because of this it is just going to exacerbate problems for future content designs. It needs to be nipped in the bud, now.
There are other issues as well, such as forms being out of control, but that's a debate for another time.
Champions Online player since September of 2008, forumite since February of 2008.
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This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
There's a loop if you take The Best Defense and Aggressive Stance, The Best Defense increases your offense by 100% of your defense. Aggressive Stance will increase your Defense by 20% of your offense. The trick,since it's adding by these two stats alone all you have to do is increase one and the other will increase and they will keep increasing until the decimal additions are too small to make a difference. This is how people are getting ridiculously high offensive numbers, even as tanks, and how offensive builds are getting ridiculously high tanky resistance.
Example, let's say you have around 300 defense. The Best Defense will give you 300 offense now. So say you had 400 offense, your 400 offense is now 700 offense. But Aggressive Stance says 20% of that becomes Defense which means now gain 140 more defense, but The Best Defense says that becomes Offense now, so your Offense gains another 140 points as well, but Aggressive Stance says 20% of that becomes Defense so you gain 28 more Defense... and so on. It keeps looping until the numbers are too small to add more and it's a major issue in the current system and why people can claim they have such high offensive AND defensive numbers.
Now some people will say it's not that big of a deal but it actually is. It's a ridiculous loop hole in the mechanics that needs to be fixed and is one of the many root problems in the system that needs to be fixed. There are many more, make no mistakes, but to fix the problems we have to start at the roots.
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Simple, only give the bonuses off of gear stats only as I suggested in the OP. In other words, the gear you are wearing, any mods in it and nothing else. Not from enhancements like offense increasing specialties, or anything else. So if you get 100 offense from gear you get 20 defense. If you get 200 defense from gear you get 200 offense. So at the end of the day you would have 300 offense and 220 defense.
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This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
I am suggesting it this way because these should not be overbearing. Furthermore, if we can close these egregious holes, the devs can do things to change other content, like the Onslaught Villains, to where they aren't constantly one shotting people ridiculously easy unless they are a super tank, or reducing Gravitar's damage to being more sane, or even the damage from Frosticus to be less insanity driven.
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What's wrong with being Well-Rounded?
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."
Other players use Wardicator and the Str PSS/Con mod combo to get 20,000 health and 400 Defense or more.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Are you trying to Force Trinity? Because CO was never a Trinity Game (except of Archetypes)
and Frankly, playing Healer in CO is the most boring and unsatisfying thing ever for me.
Same with Tanking
100% Times being Well Rounded Jack of All Stats and not a Boring DPS or TANK or SUPPORT
Did you know that many Specs and Spec Masteries also underperform or are complety useless? But nobody suggest BUFFs for them, because apparently the word BUFF is a curse word for some people here and it's worse than insulting your mother
Uh, yea it is. Just because the game is stupidly easy doesn't mean the trinity never existed. The whole concept of roles has been around a very long time, a lot longer than modern MMOs, and the concept of needing a team in an MMO goes back to the earliest MUDs in 1978. Hell the whole foundation of DnD was founded on the belief of needing a group of players to do things, and this foundation applies to Champions as well.
Sorry you feel differently, but a generalist should never be better than a specialist.
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Because you don't fix the overpowered stuff by making everything else overpowered. You need to bring things in line. Avianos has a point, but he is going in the wrong direction. Some things need to be buffed up, but a lot of things need to be nerfed. Like it or not. And this isn't me just saying, I play these specs so anyone saying it's just me whining about someone else's build, really, just;
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It's fixing what's broken. These abilities and powers are over-tuned. People will of course hate it and kick and scream, but it takes a big person to say this is not right in the game, especially when you look at how broken it is. And applying band-aids in the wrong places does not fix the root of the problems. The root is still there meaning it will eventually break again (see WoW stat squish and how they are right back where they started from before stat squish).
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..Guess I just agreed with you >.<
But, I'm not sure I Iike basing more specs on gear alone. I mean gear is already a huge deal.
I am suggesting it this way because these should not be overbearing. Furthermore, if we can close these egregious holes, the devs can do things to change other content, like the Onslaught Villains, to where they aren't constantly one shotting people ridiculously easy unless they are a super tank, or reducing Gravitar's damage to being more sane, or even the damage from Frosticus to be less insanity driven.
If it's just gear, the 20% Off -> Def spec will be incredibly underwhelming. Most Off anyone is going to realistically have from gear is ~150, which means the spec will provide a whole 30 defense. I'm not sure I can bring myself to care.
(Defense comes on all gear, offense only comes on offensive gear, and the damage returns on offense aren't particularly good, so its not really worth slotting mods for. For comparison, even without modding for more, most toons will have ~90 defense on gear, which translates into 90 offense with The Best Defense, and modding for defense is frequently the best use of defense core slots).
If you are going to just gear, the Off-Def spec should become 25/50% Offense -> Defense at a minimum.
That might be, but there are other problems. After all I don't think tanks should be uber damage and defense and I don't think hybrids should be master of everything, making specialists look terrible by comparison. The other problem of the equation is just the simple fact that forms are doing too much damage now. After this onslaught gear goes live I will be easily able to get 20% damage if not 21% with the rank 9s I plan on slotting eventually to enrage bonus. That means I will get 160% bonus damage from enrage, and that is insane. And because tank role doesn't hit the DR wall as hard that diminishes the DPS role even further.
Forms need to be changed to provide something that offers choice to the system, not just simply damage. The damage aspect of forms was a mistake. Forms were a band aid fix to try and fix a problem of melee having a hard time competing with ranged. It worked then people started overpowering forms and then ranged was the endangered species. Now that ranged has forms, and everyone really, it's back to the original issue that started the mess. And to capstone how much worse it's gotten, the content is being made trivial because of the ridiculous damage bloat.
I think the problem right now is everyone just looks at the current state and for whatever reasons the devs chose damage damage damage instead of utility, fun and functionality. We didn't need extreme damage the standard generic mobs could possibly have used some down tuning a little bit but they over nerfed them and then super buffed specific things as a hand sweeping band aid fix and it just exacerbated the problem, and it's only going to get worse as this current trend continues.
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Hybrids are suppose to be jack of all trades master of none. They can do good damage, but not great, they can have good defense but not great, they can have good healing but not great. However, in the current meta, a hybrid is great at everything at the same time. This is not good. A DPS roled character should be great at damage, but not good at healing or defense. A tank should be great at defense, but not good at damage or healing. Etc etc etc.
You want to be defensive you should be giving up offense and healing for that defense. That is, at it's basic, a checks and balance system, and fundamentally what any game falls under. If you focus on one thing you typically end up sacrificing something else in the process. In other MMOs, even those with freeform systems, if you want to be highly defensible, you are usually giving up your offensive capability and healing to survive more. And this is using systems from like TSW (which is a hell of a lot more freeform than Champions so people saying freeform is impossible to balance, stop, just please stop) Guild Wars 2 (yes there are roles, even if people make believe they don't exist) and even Wildstar which gives quite a bit of freedom to tool your abilities and tailor your characters between two roles.
Champions lacks these fundamental basics, in essence.
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If you don't understand what I mean:
Best offence > offensive stance > Best offence > offensive stance > Best offence > offensive stance > Best offence > offensive stance
is what it currently does
Best offence > offensive stance
is what it should be doing.
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?
This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
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Block timing explained
----
Unfortunately, we can't entirely rebuild the game, and that's what you'd need to do to get what you seem to want.
The better alternative may just be to create a harder 40+ tier of lairs or something and move the wall on damage back farther so DPS characters actually feel like they do more damage than other roles.
The other thing that could be done is to give *all* slotted passives separate scaling when in hybrid role like the Auras have now. Defiance should be better for tanking if you're a tank than a hybrid, etc... That would encourage more specialization and fewer hybrids. (To do this right would involve giving the passives some benefit for being in hybrid form - but it could be with less numbers and some minor side benefit instead).
Those are things that could be done without massively reworking the entire game engine.
And that's ultimately the problem I have with your premise. You're not trying to reduce the specs to options that would be appealing to the game we have now without being gratuitously overpowered. You're trying to balance to some alternate universe CO which works totally differently, and which we know will never happen because the resources just aren't there. If your nerf makes the Off->Def spec unplayable, it'll pretty much kill that entire spec tree to no real benefit. The specific spec needs to still be an appealing option after the nerf *in the game we have now*, because we aren't getting a new, totally rejiggered one.
Similarly, *what* utility? They just nerfed the only real utility stat we had (cdr). They've nerfed control into the ground repeatedly. Everything else is either damage or energy management (which translates into damage). I'm not sure what it is you're imagining, but the system doesn't support it.
I will just say I don't think we need a rebuild of the game, though I would be keen if they did a FF14 style rebuild and reboot that would go a long way to inspire people I believe. But I will address this. CDR was not utility. It was a straight damage buff. Plain and simple. You increase the speed you use things at you increase the damage it does. There's no ands ifs or buts around it and people were able to have high damage on top of this extra speed buff. So I strongly disagree that CDR nerf was a loss of utility. CDR nerf was needed and a step in the right direction. More is needed if they really want to fix this game.
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I also have a couple toons with two AOs and two ADs, looping both.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
(My only 'cdr abuse' toon was using it for almost pure utility reasons, as a support/controller, to make CDs manageable so i could keep buffs and debuffs up 100% of the time. I know it could be used for other things, but it also had utility uses, and was the only real utility stat we had).
(And considering some of the top DPS powers have *no* CD, i disagree that reducing cds actually increased DPS. It just let you use CD powers more often - generally you could get better DPS just holding down 2gm).
but then, reduce cdr IMPROVES DPS, since they are buffs/debuffs that make you deal more damage over time -_-
This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
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Yeah some things are broken... no I don't use/abuse them.. where would be the fun in that?
I don't know what she specifically means when she says utility, since its obviously none of those things. (Refer to the post which started that exchange, it's pretty clear she's talking about some poorly conceived notion of utility which doesn't actually exist in the game at present).
Oh you are a feisty one. So tell me, what about UR, that's not damage? What about other long cool down powers that are high damage? Is that not damage? What about all those devices that were used to cause damage? While healing and defense were in there, damage was the major concern.
And utility is more than damage, healing or defense. Not to mention you don't seem to get the idea that overwhelming, out of balanced powers is what I don't like. I want this game balanced, and don't try to say freeform system can't be balanced. Because, yes, it can. Balance will help this games health, no it won't open the flood gates, but people aren't going to be interested if people view things as "sick" and "unfair" and that they are forced to play with certain things.
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Oh you are a feisty one. So tell me, what about UR, that's not damage? What about other long cool down powers that are high damage? Is that not damage? What about all those devices that were used to cause damage? While healing and defense were in there, damage was the major concern.
And utility is more than damage, healing or defense. Not to mention you don't seem to get the idea that overwhelming, out of balanced powers is what I don't like. I want this game balanced, and don't try to say freeform system can't be balanced. Because, yes, it can. Balance will help this games health, no it won't open the flood gates, but people aren't going to be interested if people view things as "sick" and "unfair" and that they are forced to play with certain things.
And still no example of utility, although I think you've succeeded in explicitly excluding every ability in the game except control.
Sure, those high CD powers are damage. 2gm still outputs more dps. As long as that is true, who cares?
And as you're not a developer, how do you know that damage was the major concern? My impression was 'everyone is taking Int PSS' was the major concern, based on what they actually said. That doesn't actually have anything to do with damage.
As to a 'balanced game', it's actually mathematically impossible. Balance in this kind of game can only happen within very specific constraints which are demonstrably not met. (8 stats is a good start, but the division of labor between the stats is fundamentally wrong).
Frank Trollman (multiple authorship credits for Shadowrun, and co-author of Frank+K's reworking of DnD 3.5) laid out the mathematical requirements for balance in a character creation system with K base attributes. It's pretty limiting. It's somewhere on the forum The Gaming Den, iirc.
Which isn't to say things couldn't be reined in, but you'll never achieve 'balance'.
Anyway, if you were actually interested in 'better balanced' options, you'd be advocating for a version where both specs were still appealing, not a 'fix' which reduced the Off->Def spec to something that no one would ever take. And you'd be doing this in the context of the game as we have it (where there are no utility abilities of consequence by your own words), assuming only the individual fix goes through.
Once you've tried it, other combinations feel like they are less than you could be... if you took those two specs.
Except CO is NOT like other MMOs
You are free to make Boring Damage-Sponge Tanks with Zero damage, Overspecialized Healers who know nothing but Healing and Melting Squishy DPS, but don't except that others to want to do the same
and from what I read so far, you are TRYING to force Trinity
Trinity is Optional here, not Forced (except of Fire and Ice, but again it's a Cheap one-shot alert with the most awful Villain Contest winners)
I would still prefer if they BUFF and Fixed the other Specs and Spec Masteries to being useful.
Some specs have a bunch of uselesss abilities
You are so Obsessed to Nerf the overperforming stuff that's you blindy ignore Buffing the underperforming aspects of the game because you are so afraid that it will "break" the game ever more!
yes how dare we having Diversity
This forum community, I swear.
You guys may as well add the word BUFF in the profanity filter of the forums, because it's insulting for the so called "Vetarans"
Unless they buff the other specs to stupidly broken levels that makes Offense/Defense looping look worthless then buffs alone won't fix anything... This is one of the few instances where the correct solution actually is a nerf... Buffs are needed to go with the nerf though... if they just nerf the Offense/Defense loop and don't buff the massivly underperforming (or just plain not performing) specs as well then they will accomplish nothing more than breaking the most effective specs in the game... I hate nerfs as much as the next person, but when a nerf is actually needed (like for this) it's needed... the biggest problem with nerfs though is that most devs forget that when you nerf something you have to buff something else... if all the players see is "nerf nerf nerf" they tend to leave.. especially when there are things that are in desparate need of a buff that are related to what was just nerfed.. more so if the nerf was effectively a nerf to those things as well...
So before Cryptic goes and swings the nerf bat at this problem, they need to be ready to buff the underperforming and useless specs at the same time... actually create balance... don't try to force balance through nerfs alone...
Again, yea Champions is like other MMOs. Trying to believe otherwise is faulty. This firm belief that the power system in CO makes it not like other MMOs is quite funny since a lot of MMOs actually do more freeform power structures and systems. Lack of classes does not mean lack of responsibility to keep balance. And as I said, TSW does freeform better and are quite capable of keeping balance, so really, that not like other MMOs logic has no footing and is basically a bogus statement people try to tell themselves.
In fact, the harsh truth, Champions was designed more like modern MMOs than its predecessor City of Heroes was.
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Aggressive Stance
Offense rating grants you extra damage resistance (1/2% extra per ~20 points).
The Best Defense
Defense rating boosts all damage (1/2/3% extra every 25 points).
The wording and mechanics on this are kind of subtle, since it's only supplying extra damage resistance or damage boost instead of actual 'defense'/'offense' stat. Thus the spec retains its same functionality for ATs and such, while not creating an unintended feedback loop.
The long solution would be making the effect of a lot of specs more readily apparent, and ensuring they work. Probably the one most direly needing some help is the Brawler spec tree, followed maybe by Arbiter/Overseer/Commander.
I rather we ask for numbers of other things to be brought up instead.
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This answer is why Champions is in such a poor state. People are going to have to put on their big boy pants for once and realize, that buffing everything is actually the wrong answer.
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I believe @championshewolf is right, just because it has better arguments and a basis for them, and very objective, taking the numbers of all this messed up thing, "dont nerf our op stuff" and "ooh this game is too easy *leaves*" mmmmm something is wrong here
This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
So, the whole basis of your argument is I am calling for a nerf, despite I use all these things, is because I can't kill a thing? Yep, that's perfectly sound logic, despite it being absolutely wrong.
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