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Should hybrids/tuff dps have more of a role at cosmics?
spinnytop
Posts: 16,467 Arc User
Currently if all the tank roles are filled and you show up as a tank, or a tanky hybrid, or a tuff dps you're basically just "making the whole thing take longer" or "making us fail checks". That's kinda lame and kind of a bummer to people who never seem to be able to fill those tank roles but don't want to see their tuffness going to waste. So, should there be something for them to do?
On the other hand, sometimes we're struggling to find a tank, any tank at all, just to get the cosmic started so making a fight require even more tanks could slow things down. However, if it was known that there was more tanky stuff to do then people might be more willing to show up as their tanky characters. Lots of maybes.
My obvious idea is: adds.
- Teliosaurus roars and calls in a swarm of tough very dangerous raptors that will shred the dps. The tanks on mom and dino can't get them cause they have to stay put so we need some tuff heroes to round them up. The raptors have a stacking buff that makes them more and more deadly, so we have to nuke them down before they carve even the tuff heroes to pieces. They don't actually have that many hit points so it doesn't take too long.
- Ape roars and calls down several glowing hot molten rocks. These rocks have a damage reflect aura which means squishy dps will have a hard time dealing with them, but tuff heroes will be able to lay into them and smash them before they, you guessed it, blow up and kill everybody! ( or just give everyone a nasty debuff that will make ape's next big aoe kill them )
- Eido's portals stay open permanently at some point in the fight.
- Kiga says "I" and summons a number of kamikaze ice demons. They hit pretty hard, and after a bit they explode dealing massive damage around themselves. We need tuff heroes to aggro them and then lead them away from the group so they can explode safely.
Obviously all these ideas have their own issues that the fight would need to be adjusted around ( for example the ape one would make it so we would only want tuff dps at ape, so the fight would need to be adjusted to make squishy dps still desired ) but that's more of a "deal with it later" thing. Also as I mentioned before this would add more required roles to fights and potentially more time spent searching for those roles, as well as more time spent explaining things to people.
The main question here is should cosmics be changed so that tuff heroes other than the 1-3 main tanks can feel useful? also, some ideas on additions that could achieve this.
On the other hand, sometimes we're struggling to find a tank, any tank at all, just to get the cosmic started so making a fight require even more tanks could slow things down. However, if it was known that there was more tanky stuff to do then people might be more willing to show up as their tanky characters. Lots of maybes.
My obvious idea is: adds.
- Teliosaurus roars and calls in a swarm of tough very dangerous raptors that will shred the dps. The tanks on mom and dino can't get them cause they have to stay put so we need some tuff heroes to round them up. The raptors have a stacking buff that makes them more and more deadly, so we have to nuke them down before they carve even the tuff heroes to pieces. They don't actually have that many hit points so it doesn't take too long.
- Ape roars and calls down several glowing hot molten rocks. These rocks have a damage reflect aura which means squishy dps will have a hard time dealing with them, but tuff heroes will be able to lay into them and smash them before they, you guessed it, blow up and kill everybody! ( or just give everyone a nasty debuff that will make ape's next big aoe kill them )
- Eido's portals stay open permanently at some point in the fight.
- Kiga says "I" and summons a number of kamikaze ice demons. They hit pretty hard, and after a bit they explode dealing massive damage around themselves. We need tuff heroes to aggro them and then lead them away from the group so they can explode safely.
Obviously all these ideas have their own issues that the fight would need to be adjusted around ( for example the ape one would make it so we would only want tuff dps at ape, so the fight would need to be adjusted to make squishy dps still desired ) but that's more of a "deal with it later" thing. Also as I mentioned before this would add more required roles to fights and potentially more time spent searching for those roles, as well as more time spent explaining things to people.
The main question here is should cosmics be changed so that tuff heroes other than the 1-3 main tanks can feel useful? also, some ideas on additions that could achieve this.
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It also doesn't help that many of them always refuse to take help or advice to improve themselves. Again a double edged sword.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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On that note, I agree with championshewolf, it's more a concern with many hybrid players not being able to adapt (which is odd, given the nature). My main is a hybrid, but it tanks and DPS's well enough by switching roles and passives on the fly, whichever is needed. That said, it took a while to get everything right, and it can't be the best (dedicated Tanks and DPS will outperform me pound for pound). But that's the tradeoff. Great at both, but not the best.
This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
Anyways, back to the topic
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
*Queue the freakout*
Okay, now with that out of the way, consider these damage numbers on a junk character of mine in the powerhouse using an offensive passive and a ranged damage power:
No Role Bonus: 2,917 :: 100% (using melee role)
Hybrid Bonus: 3,062 :: 105%
Ranged Bonus: 3,646 :: 125%
Now I know the hybrid bonus is a little weird because it's based on superstats rather than set values, like ranged and melee's 125%. This character is a test character using full armadillo gear, so testing it on a better-geared character yielded about 109%. Still pretty lousy. The question that's open for debate is where should this bonus sit? 115%? 120%? Obviously no higher than that. Either way, lifting up hybrid damage would be one way to make tougher characters less of a hindrance to group content. Dedicated damage would still have the upper hand at 125%
(Of course, all this is operating on the assumption that these tougher characters in question are hybrids, as they're traditionally tougher at the cost of damage output.)
However, I'm not sure how you design your fights around that. You can put minimum tank thresholds on a fight (e.g. Rampage Gravitar, where if you can't take 8-10k to the face you'll be decorating the ground) but that just excludes a different set of characters. You can design a fight to require more tanks, but then it's impossible if you don't have those tanks.
The other half of this, though, is that the people who are showing up as hybrids, or as tanks who don't tank, are people who are unwilling to adapt their play to the needs of the fight. It is not likely that changing the fights will make them suddenly willing.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Many folks love this passive, since it is super useful for going solo. It was also useful in TA, with a very tough DPS being useful (taking pressure off the healer). Most of my toons used to use it, and I had to retcon out of it for all my main characters to show up at Cosmics. Why? As SheWolf pointed out, the way auras work just makes a non-Presence, hybrid-use AoPM a liability to most groups.
Until a hybrid passive that is a personal-only AoPM is made, I don't think this is gonna work.
P.S. I would love to see a personal-only AoPM like passive in game.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Giving these assholes their own mobs is a horrible idea.
Besides Kiga and Ape the other two fights are enough of a pile of ****. I'd go into reasons why, but I've been there before and don't need to do it again. My Hybrid can tank it's way through most alerts if a dedicated tank isn't there, is able to ignore Kiga's storms (which I know is largely thanks to being buffed by support and healer toons), and often places high enough on the scoreboard with the need to scroll down. Whatever the value at the end, that's good enough for me.
The Cosmics DO NOT NEED ANYTHING ADDED TO THEM. Barring something like an environmental device that provides a temporary massive HoT to those present in the Team-Up, you know, so healers can have maybe five seconds without trying to provide a constant stream heals to 20 people or more.
I mean, I've already completely stopped going to the dino fights because the bubble spam is utterly ridiculous. It would be different if it was -possible- to lure the baby away so melee toons only had to worry about the bubbles from mama-dino. Often though even my ranged toons fall within both sets of bubbles.
Really the intricacies of these raids should involve changing tactics, not retconning characters.
In short, just because you're bored with them doesn't mean it's time to make these things EVEN MORE difficult. It would be the Eido revamp all over again. Which I've just started to try and go when I see the callout because I find the current strategy effective especially with participating in it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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We've had plenty of times where we needed tanks at Dino and were standing around with people who were in tank role with def passives but were unwilling to tank. The issue is more to do with people showing up and expecting others to carry them. It's the "I need GCR and even though you need it too, I won't be helpful while hoping that you and others will be" mentality. I don't think it's possible to firmly fix this issue in open world content as there will always be unhelpful people that drag others down.
Willfully unhelpful people are not going to be liked...anywhere. Unfortunately, the Hybrid role icon has become an easy lazy way to quickly identify them. I'd urge some restraint here. It'd be best to judge people's performance by looking at parses of fights to determine their degree of helpfulness.
Luckily, many people actually want to be helpful as long as they have information, a low-pressure environment in which to make mistakes to learn via experience, and some incentive to take the first step.
The entitled group that expects others to procure their gcr for them and then whines about the game when it doesn't happen is relatively small. I like this idea a lot. I think the fights have been an easy farm for a very long time and could use an update with a fresh challenge. Giving offtanks a more active role and introducing more movement to the fights via more mobs seems like a good idea. Once they are actually challenging again then it will be vital to bring, not just who can pass the lowest bar of helpfulness, but your actual best to the fight. The idea will also, hopefully, reduce the easy 100% win ratios of these fights and the entitled attitudes that accompany such win ratios.
PARSER USAGE GUIDE: click here for an easy how-to ٩(๑･ิᴗ･ิ)۶٩(･ิᴗ･ิ๑)۶
Spectre beats Eido in an SG run: VIDEO HERE
Instead of recycling cosmics over and over and over again to the death, how about NEW CONTENT?
You cannot keep the game alive with the same 4 cosmics forever (Grond and Megalodon say hi along with new epic lairs)
People ask for more than just open world bosses
Also epic lairs are super popular right? Let's have some more of those for people to not run u3u
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
add new cosmics if you want to with new challenges
Their loss for being Snobs against TA, refusing to learn the basic strategies and thinking it's only a "Buddy fight" lair for only Cool kids
also their lose for not having enviromental awareness
have a happy Onion
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
At the very least, I'd say this problem is twofold:
1) Why should anyone bother with repeated wipes and failures against the harder content when they can just hop on the gravy train and get the same rewards from the easier content?
2) While people love to say they want harder and harder stuff, the fact that they're shunning TA and Eido seems to indicate otherwise. The sooner the bulk of the playerbase can come to terms with the fact that "increasingly difficult content" isn't as good for the game nor as interesting to the majority of the playerbase as "new, interesting content with regulard, high-quality events," the better off this game will be.
Also saying TA is harder than cosmics... lol. TA bridges the gap between pre-endgame content and cosmics. It even has a mini version of Dino in there for people to train with. With literally a nerfed version of a cosmic in TA, I'm not sure how anyone could say TA is "the harder stuff".
Also, the people who say they want harder and harder stuff are the ones running Eido and TA... and some other people who didn't even say that. I know you got your hopes up just now when I said "those contents are so unpoplar!" but fact is people do them more and more over time. They're gaining momentum, not losing it - which means they're good for the game. We just don't need any new ones cause people are still growing into what we have.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
As for Eido, the only difficult part left to overcome is organizing. Just to make sure, I tracked us having 23 wins over 14 days. All the runs were announced. We even had 2 weekends with 7 wins. This was about a month ago. Needing to organize and having people who want to do it is ultimately the biggest barrier.
It's likely the same reason why TA, and any other instanced lair, is less popular than the 3 Cosmics.
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Spectre beats Eido in an SG run: VIDEO HERE
How about creating NEW content instead of recycling existing one over and over again?
PARSER USAGE GUIDE: click here for an easy how-to ٩(๑･ิᴗ･ิ)۶٩(･ิᴗ･ิ๑)۶
Spectre beats Eido in an SG run: VIDEO HERE
Oh and like Vixy pointed out they have been adding new content o3o
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
It doesn't matter how hard or easy you, being someone familiar with it, thinks or claims it is. What matters is the general perception of it seems to be "out of reach, not gonna bother." Now imagine TA with an easier version in the custom alert rotation, with its difficulty being tuned to be roughly in line with other custom alerts. People would be nudged into giving it a try when it's up as the weekly, and since custom alerts are pretty easy, they'd get familiar with it there. Then, they'd be far more inclined to try the version we have now, would they not? The perceived barrier to entry would seem a lot less intimidating, which is something I suspect is holding a lot of people back.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
"People who have a lot of experience with something don't know a lot about it and can't make accurate observations." Solid logic.
The perceived barrier to entry is just that, perceived and not real. But don't worry me and many others are actually in game breaking down those false perceptions. It's amazing how many people are unimpressed with TA's huge difficulty once they've actually run it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Completely missed the point. Oh well, I tried.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
@Foxiandfriends's OP
While I'm all in favor of more mechanics for Cosmics to make them less monotonous and more challenging, no matter what mechanic is proposed it will not appease Hybrid players' complains, while in turn end up pissing off the rest of the community who thinks the game has become too tryhard.
The reason why I say this is because I haven't seen a single Hybrid player complaining that Hybrids don't have anything to do in Cosmic fights, but rather, the complain is that they cannot do the current things specialized roles like Tanks or DPS can do as well as they can. The multiple complains in the Players Wanting New Content thread have players complaining that people would rather have a Tank Role character doing the tanking instead of a Hybrid in defensive Passive, or a DPS role with a DPS passive for checks in Dino than a Hybrid with a DPS passive. It is not a problem with how the fights unveil, but rather a problem with what the players themselves want out of their Hybrid character.
Adding adds to the fight will not resolve this. Eventually the preffered method will boil down to an actual dedicated offtank pulling said add away while a group of DPS/Hybrids take it down.
And because of that, no matter what new mechanic or aspect you introduce to a fight, the complain will remain because what this people want is to be able to tank as well as a dedicated Tank while dealing more damage than a dedicated DPS while in Hybrid role, and that is not going to happen because it's a logical failure.
while a tank could fill the role, I'd like there to be situations where we would rather have a hybrid fill it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
CO would be great with just 2 different difficulties for content like TA. Really not sure why you're so set against something like that. Maybe you just don't understand something about it, or how it would work?
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Assuming the rewards for the easy setting aren't completely garbage, that is. Nobody wants to run content that isn't at least somewhat worth their time.
Sooooo--the next lair (assuming we get another lair pass) could be a challenge where hybrids can shine.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
The real problem stems that the game, as a whole, needs a head to toe make over. A new tutorial, a new starter experience, one that is more engaging, more emphasis on team play through the leveling process, more dungeons to encourage said teaming, better loot protocols, a more involved gearing system besides mod swapping, and a stat system that is easy to understand. The game itself doesn't prepare people for the end game, even the alerts are too damn easy to get through for a soloist, and only the greenest of the green (aka to MMOs in general) would think alerts are hard or even offer decent challenge.
To anyone who has had raid experience before this game, from WOW or other games, the cosmic battles are fairly standard, and follow the most simple form. It's a good introduction in a game that has practically no dungeon and group experience, with Shadow Destroyer offering a nice upgrade in said challenge and difficulty with the standard raid tropes of DPS and heal checks. But that's the problem, it's an experience that comes at the end of the game that up until that point the rest of the game has not taught anyone.
If the alert system was dumped or modified that it wasn't the bulk of XP but gave an XP boost only for normal leveling and the leveling experience was improved with adequate challenges leading up to the end game, things would be improved. A dungeon per neighborhood would go a long way with a loot system that gave proper gear instead of GCR/SCR. That is the draw of dungeons is the quest for loot in other games and since costumes are account wide, the costume hunt on repeat has to be painfully thin otherwise costumes, to be of value and rewarding have to be made per character, and let's face it, most people in this game are too self entitled to let that happened. I mean even back when they might have been considered challenging, CO had a painful thin number of actual dungeons for grouping purposes (Doctor Destroyer's Robot Factory, Necrull's Lair, Doctor Mureau's Lab, VIPER Nest, Mandragalore and Andrithal with NemCon and Therakiel's Temple having been added later but in dire need of renovation at this point). The ironic part is there is a lot more places that could have been dungeons and offered more challenges for groups as well as loot (Purple Gang Hideout, ARGENT HQ or PSI HQ, Stronghold Prison, Eclipse's Lair, and many others). Just a lot of missed opportunities there.
And again, the stat system is a convoluted mess. Even to a veteran player it still possesses a lot of obtuseness it doesn't need. A lot of stats are superfluous or outright useless, having no reason to have been made core stats to begin with (endurance and recovery) with others barely serving a function. Honestly,t his whole system needs a do over in this case, but I would outline that in another post than here.
Of course, at this point if a ground up rebuild is required you might as well just put resources towards creating Champions Online 2 or at least a brand new Champions game.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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The cosmic fights didn't become easier but the players became more experienced and strategic
but i STILL find it lazy design constantly recycling 3-4 cosmics over and over and over again
You know what's better than Hybrids?
Dual Passives character who can switch from DPS to TANK when needed
Those are the True MVPs
oh and you have too much hope that hybrids want to help, i see most people joining cosmics just to get carried by others without trying to improve and contribute
also summoning more entities in Dino fight will cause the old invisible dino bug to happen again
Dear Lord, Alert update and the constant easy difficulty made everyone so soft
but again this is design flaw, the game isn't preparing you for the difficulty swift of endgame
and the thing I keep hearing people say since i joined is that "The game is too easy"
Endless lockboxes and Event spam with no substance to the game's plot & lore
It doesn't go over well in when
Champions is 8 years old, and well .. IMO has to live it the mess it made and design accordingly. Not just most of the time, but all content, even Eldy.
Plus champions is a free form game, trinity play is going to be an issue, it's not like people didn't point that out.
That said like @championshewolf said it's not as bad as players think. Extra tanks have found a side place at Kiga, and Q, Dps is usually not an issue until no one can reach the tomb. But ...
Eldy seems to be under tanked (1 mega-uber tank) with the current dps requirement, there seems to be a large problem here with any extra non-dps player. Challenge seems to have over taken design.
Dino also seems to be a big issue, tanks get cheated out of rewards, people complain about average dps (parser output) and ignore blast power (spike dps). Something if hybrids (and even extra tanks) aren't capable of it should be made available. Side note: Honestly I find the lack of good powers in Vixy's thread is just depressing.
(Side Rant) Added to that, Dino fails to obey the set in game rules. Bubbles/Boom/Foom/WireFrames should mean Block or Flee. Period. End of story. (Also warnings need to be over indicated in size not undersized). Not Block .. except this one time just at Dino when it Booms but *doesn't* do that thing .. and oh baby's bubbles should be ignored just in that specific time .. except when they don't cause they were technically earlier then that other thing. I'll say it, I'd make a tank (or tuff hybrid-with-tank-passive), and have tanked here and in other games. Big problem is, cosmic tanking sucks for me here. I"m getting on in years and reflex/rhythm games are a no go, and with all the blocking the system is just not engaging for me. The option of creating an in-game bind that hits then blocks for me just feels like cheating, as does just blocking.
So until we get passed the one-shot every hit style boss you have one less tank.
FWIF Tanking the current Destroids where I could take a hit was much more engaging. I'll admit it too easy when everything things is perfect, but the balance between 'real tough tank' vs 'ok tank with ok healer' vs "?tank? with godly healer" was much better, and also a lot more balanced between being dps vs tank skillwize I like adds too we even do have adds, I even liked your 'swarm of argent' cosmic in the other thread.
Balance (we just kill the adds) and not lagging everyone could be an issue, also not swarms of adds at every cosmic. Be nice to somehow deal with add goes straight to the squishiest healer issue.
.. Kiga has nice alternative adds in the form of Tombs! Also the Dogs, which have/had 2 ways to deal with
.. Q had nice adds in the form of hearts. But CC was forced here. There were spawn points for adds though for a long time, and nearly in a good position. So potential, except everyone hated on the worm adds.
.. Teli if the baby spawned better the burst check could be changed to baby spawns (or big lizard). Need to decide weather the adds get killed so they don't over whelm you, or if you can tank them all. Big lizard would be tuff dps / hybrid style accessible (i.e. very very very easy by tank standards)
1 ramble down
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Silverspar on PRIMUS
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