Being Rooted When You Charge/Maintain A Power, Suck

melphyx2 · February 2019

I think all powers should be non-selroot. It would be a good idea. So we can move freely when we are confronted by a situation that we want to escape suddenly, or not to die among other situations. I know that if we stop charging or maintaining powers we can move. But not all players have a mouse with several buttons to handle that. Many use the method of clicking and dragging the powers to use the mouse in other things at the same time. Which is somewhat uncomfortable for many. Even this idea would be genie and more comfortable for PVP (I'm not PVP just in case). They would have better flexibility to enjoy duels.

Spanish version:

Creo que todos los poderes deben ser no selroot. Eso seria una buena idea. Así que podemos movernos libremente cuando nos enfrentamos a una situación de la que queremos escapar repentinamente, o no morir entre otras situaciones. Sé que si dejamos de cargar o mantener poderes podemos movernos. Pero no todos los jugadores tienen un ratón con varios botones para manejar eso. Muchos usan el método de hacer clic y arrastrar los poderes para usar el mouse en otras cosas al mismo tiempo. Lo cual es algo incómodo para muchos. Incluso esta idea sería genial y más cómoda para PVP ( No soy PVP por si acaso ). Tendrían mejor flexibilidad para disfrutar de los duelos.

spinnytop · February 2019

Balancing mechanic. Self-rooting is an excuse to give a power more utility or strength.

vonqball · February 2019

spinnytop wrote: »

Balancing mechanic. Self-rooting is an excuse to give a power more utility or strength.

Yeah, that is the reasoning, but the self-root seems to have been applied pretty randomly. Is Annihilate's dps higher than Haymaker's? Does dragon kick have less utility than Brimstone?

Self-rooting melee powers feel especially bad to me. Many trash minions have annoying kiting mechanics.

lezard21 · February 2019

In the past, yeah it was for balancing reasons. Skewer even had an advantage that turned it into a self-root in exchange for more damage. Nowadays? EBA, DC, Massacre, Lumi Slash, BCF all deal more damage than Annihilate by a long shot and they are incredibly mobile (well, except Lumi Slash since your DPS is better off being fed by a circle o3o )

spinnytop · February 2019

When I did my "have power reviews slowed down" thread, what I saw in the Heavy Weapons patch was extremely minimal compared to other powerset reviews, so in my book Heavy Weapons still needs a proper pass. It doesn't even have it's own form and energy unlock.

Also DC's current state isn't a "nowadays" situation, it's a "for many years now" situation.

Also Haymaker should self root. Massacre too. No buff.

And yes, self-rooting is now and will forever be a balancing mechanic that is an excuse to give a power more strength or utility. Everything is on that point chart they have, and nothing is added to a power "just because" without it adjusting something else about that power. Even if self-rooting is added for theme reasons, it still adjust the balance. Cause point chart.

gentlegiantvexx · February 2019

Do forgive me if I'm rambling as I'm explaining my thought process here.

Does Heavy Weapons dish out more damage in comparison to Might in terms of High DPS rotation while staying strict to their respective powersets?

I personally don't feel that Haymaker should get a root because the rest of it's powerset is slow, utilities available only at full charge, and only has Demolish debuff going for it. Whereas, Heavy Weapons has Clinging Flames applicators, No Quarter as a debuff to Fire and Crushing Damage on tap, and Annihilate that also has the advantage that utilizes Clinging flames for increased damage, yet is faster.

EDIT: Forgot I had this page up while I was workin', Comments appear to be answerin' most of the questions.

theravenforce · February 2019

Running around whilst charging something like Force Cascade would look silly IMO.

It sounds more like a PvP advantage...

The only way I'd personally get behind something like this is if maintained or charged powers locked you into fully charging/maintaining them...thankfully most don't, so if you do need to move you can.

Sure, its annoying but if everyone is doing their bit...it shouldn't become an incredible pain.

I do think some charge powers could be sped up a little in terms of charge times but that's subject to power reviews.

lezard21 · February 2019

spinnytop wrote: »

And yes, self-rooting is now and will forever be a balancing mechanic that is an excuse to give a power more strength or utility.

Agreed on that. Ranged, Charge, Energy Cost and Self Root are all mechanics that were intended to reward different styles of gameplay.

However as you know this is currently not the case.

Powers with longer charge should deal more damage than powers with shorter charge. As I mentioned earlier, DC, EBA, BCF, Lumi Slash all deal equal or more damage than Haymaker which has 2x/3x the charge time. And apparently Haymaker is considered to be overperforming ಠ_ಠ

Powers that self root should trade mobility for more damage, re:Skewer's old advantage. Yet again, you have powers from revised sets that can deal above 20k while staying mobile, whereas powers that root you struggle to do so.

Finally Ranged. Range was "deals less damage but you can attack from the safety of way over here" but currently every Cosmic or event boss has 120' feet AoEs meaning you are just as "not safe" as melee are but also you deal 40% less damage than they do. This is even more egregious when you take a look at the Fire revamp which puts you at 50' feet, deals equal or less damage than some 100' feet powersets and 50' feet also happens to be the most common lava pool drop place during Ape.

I know it was not revised but let's take Force Cascade into consideration now. It's a long **** charge. It self roots you. It has high energy cost. It eats energy forms. It deals less damage than any melee powerset and than most mantain ranged 100' powersets.

Originally we were gonna have all powersets revamped and then they would be fine tuned but as we know that is no longer the case from the looks of it. As things stand now you have powers with "balance" restrictions that are being outperformed by a huge margin by powers that are not restricted at all and that's a problem.

spinnytop · February 2019

lezard21 wrote: »

Powers with longer charge should deal more damage than powers with shorter charge. As I mentioned earlier, DC, EBA, BCF, Lumi Slash all deal equal or more damage than Haymaker which has 2x/3x the charge time. And apparently Haymaker is considered to be overperforming ಠ_ಠ

Well the problem here could very well be that you are now only looking at self root vs damage potential, and completely shutting out all other possible factors. It'd be like saying "well cars with bigger engines should be faster than cars with smaller engines" which sure, makes sense, but we put a tank turret on the car with a bigger engine.

lezard21 wrote: »

Powers that self root should trade mobility for more damage, re:Skewer's old advantage. Yet again, you have powers from revised sets that can deal above 20k while staying mobile, whereas powers that root you struggle to do so.

"powers from revised sets that let you stay mobile" vs "powers that root you" is a bad comparison. Again, I've said it elsewhere and I'll say it here, comparing revised and unrevised powers doesn't work. And no, the fact that power reviews have slowed down doesn't change that, unrevised powers are still unrevised.

lezard21 wrote: »

Finally Ranged. Range was "deals less damage but you can attack from the safety of way over here" but currently every Cosmic or event boss has 120' feet AoEs meaning you are just as "not safe" as melee are but also you deal 40% less damage than they do. This is even more egregious when you take a look at the Fire revamp which puts you at 50' feet, deals equal or less damage than some 100' feet powersets and 50' feet also happens to be the most common lava pool drop place during Ape.

Well that's not true. As ranged I've never been shoved into tail range, or bite range. I've never had to worry that I was standing close enough to get hit by frost breath. At Ape while everyone else has to make the panicked run towards ape and pray they don't get lava stacked to death, I just walk backwards while whistling a carefree tune. At Eido I can stay nice and spread out and never have to worry about being in a cluster of geysers. In TA grond I have much less worry about gas pools being close to me, I have less aoes to worry about in Gravitar, in Medusa I have an easier time staying away from brain bot lightning and dont have to worry about getting hit by lance rain, and at the final boss I never have to worry that I'm accidentally standing too close to the other melee and again lance rain.

The life of a ranged dps is carefree and ez breezy. Sure now and then we have to block an aoe just like the melee, but the rest of the time the paragraph above. At Dino we can even choose to only have to block half the aoes the melee does! Fantastic!

lezard21 wrote: »

I know it was not revised but let's take Force Cascade into consideration now. It's a long **** charge. It self roots you. It has high energy cost. It eats energy forms. It deals less damage than any melee powerset and than most mantain ranged 100' powersets.

It's also an AoE that knocks things into the stratosphere and can one shot entire groups of NPCs. It better not do as much dps as a single target maintain ever cause that'd be stupid OP. Force needs a single target nuke, it currently doesn't have one so there's no actual comparison to be made in that regard.

Also you can remain fully mobile with Force Cascade by tapping it. The majority of self-rooting charges are thus only half in the "self root" category since it is very common that they have no root on the tap.

lezard21 wrote: »

Originally we were gonna have all powersets revamped and then they would be fine tuned but as we know that is no longer the case from the looks of it. As things stand now you have powers with "balance" restrictions that are being outperformed by a huge margin by powers that are not restricted at all and that's a problem.

Hey lezard, you know.. I think you might be on to something. Those powers that haven't been properly updated... I think they might be unbalanced!

aiqa · February 2019

Still a bit odd that of the already reviewed sets, the lowest dps melee set has a self root (even during activation), and the highest dps ranged set does not have a self root.

spinnytop · February 2019

aiqa wrote: »

Still a bit odd that of the already reviewed sets, the lowest dps melee set has a self root (even during activation), and the highest dps ranged set does not have a self root.

Do you have a theory as to why that is?

aiqa · February 2019

spinnytop wrote: »

aiqa wrote: »

Still a bit odd that of the already reviewed sets, the lowest dps melee set has a self root (even during activation), and the highest dps ranged set does not have a self root.

Do you have a theory as to why that is?

The devs said HW would get a buff from the Fire review, since CF would then be doing damage close to bleeds. That didn't work out, and balancing HW with that in mind was not a smart thing to do in the first place.

As for PA, I assume the devs think limiting dps by increasing energy cost is a good idea. But that would be a bit naive.

spinnytop · February 2019

So it has nothing to do with self rooting at all oAo

Also this boosts my theory about the HW rework being incomplete.

aiqa · February 2019

I'd prefer mechanics to be balanced against other mechanics as much as possible. And only balance by damage when there is no other option. I don't like the idea of making powers (sets) do higher damage just because they have a self root. But while I don't think self rooting powers should have significantly higher damage, I certainly don't think they should have lower damage. And when that does happen for things like PA and HW it's a big problem.

About self roots having something to do with PA or HW balance, that depends a bit how you look at it. Obviously there is no direct connection like "higher damage for PA because of not having a selfroot" or "lower damage for HW because of having a selfroot". But while the self root is not a direct reason for HW/PA dps balance, it does make the balance concerns stronger.
Like: "On top of PA doing the highest ranged damage, it's also 1 of 2 sets that have full mobility at 100 feet range... and the other set is famously said to deserve low damage because of the very reasons of mobility and range".
So indirectly self roots does have something to do with HW and PA balance.

spinnytop · February 2019

Well we've had the PA damage balance discussion before and we both know we won't have any more agreement about it now than we did then, so I won't bother with that.

However, the balance issue with HW is clearly the fact that the increase to CF damage fell through - had they actually done that HW might in fact be one of the top three performing melee dps sets. I agree that they shouldn't have gone in that direction, or rather if that was the plan then increase CF damage as part of the HW review to make sure it gets done. Seems it was more a case of bad planning, which isn't surprising as during my research into the power reviews you could see that the early ones were a lot less organized and focused than the later ones.

spinnytop · February 2019

PS - consider the fact that Annihilate's animation might not be rigged to work with walking around and you basically just look like Heavy Weapons on ice.

shredmonkey · February 2019

I think one of the things that differentiate super hero from other MMOs is superpowered movement. The option of flight, super speed, and jumping around a zone is something standard fantasy RPGs do not intend to give the user. A successful business needs to enhance and exploit the things,that differentiate itself from it's competition.

For that reason, I think they should generally take steps toward making all powers castable while moving and adjust balance and animations as they go. This would give players a unique feeling from the more static, slow-moving MMORPGs.

Of course, also for buisness reasons, this is something to do from the start, rather than something to implement with a game that is in a "just maintain" period of development.

spinnytop · February 2019

That's no reason that every move needs to let you move around. Standing in place and charging up a big heavy move is as much a staple of the genre as zipping around and attacking quickly. Yes, superpowered movement is fun, but some characters are big heavy lugs, and the gameplay should make them feel that way to ensure that the game gives the full spectrum experience, rather than just one aspect.

In fact, as has been made aware to me in the past when I showed videos of how I play, not all players groove with the "zip around constantly" playstyle, so balancing everything completely around that would effectively be ignoring those players. Maybe this is one way that CO differentiates itself from other MMOs, but that doesn't mean that that is why every CO player enjoys CO. Some may in fact enjoy the "strike a pose" style of play that self-rooting powers work quite well with, and which very much mimics comic book style combat.

Unknown · February 2019

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nbkxs · February 2019

The root on HW makes a huge difference on DPS in a lot of places, like ape, where you have to completely stop what you're doing sometimes for up to 30 seconds at a time to dodge for block the meteor spam, and pushes, and fire, you can't charge and move out of the way, you have to wait until you get out of the way to attack again where others can charge on the way to getting out of the way. TA grav is another example, it's infuriatingly frustrating on HW to battle her, might as well just go sit that battle out, you struggle to even get one attack off between all of her spammy abilities, because you can't move while you're charging. That battle cripples HW DPS by like 90+%.

spinnytop · February 2019

You don't have to stop attacking entirely, you can just use another attack that doesn't root you. Maybe then you won't lose "90%" of your dps

Unknown · February 2019

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nbkxs · February 2019

Brimstone roots too, so the only thing would be the fire bomb, and that doesn't do any dmg. But then again, it's not just the root, but the slow spin that you have to complete before you can move, or block.

spinnytop · February 2019

nbkxs wrote: »

Brimstone roots too, so the only thing would be the fire bomb, and that doesn't do any dmg. But then again, it's not just the root, but the slow spin that you have to complete before you can move, or block.

There are more than 3 attacks in the HW powerset, I promise you.

vonqball · February 2019

Buff Skullcrusher.

spinnytop · February 2019

vonqball wrote: »

Buff Skullcrusher.

And also make it self root.

rtma · February 2019

I'm sure they'll think of something when/if they return to HW like they have Darkness.

vonqball · February 2019

I'm not saying balancing this mess is easy... but it seems obvious to me that energy cost is an overvalued factor in whatever math the devs are using to determine an attack's damage. While self-rooting, 100' range vs 50' range (and assorted other factors) seem to be undervalued.

A player can slap down an arcane circle, thereby imposing an optional self-root to mitigate high-energy costs. There are also devices and additional powers that provide energy, gear that lowers costs. There is much leeway to play with when it comes to energy costs.

Is there a device that increased 50' range to 100' range? noop. Is there a device that makes a self root power mobile... again nu!

I'm not saying balancing this mess is easy...but sersely, c'mon here people!

aesica · February 2019

While normally I'd agree that all melee powers should be freely mobile, and charged/maintained ranged powers should be less mobile since you're trading mobility for range. However, CO makes a crappy attempt to balance close and long range attacks by making melee better damage for the energy cost, so that weakens the argument for mobile melee vs rooted range quite a lot.

colonelwing · February 2019

lezard21 wrote: »

Powers with longer charge should deal more damage than powers with shorter charge. As I mentioned earlier, DC, EBA, BCF, Lumi Slash all deal equal or more damage than Haymaker which has 2x/3x the charge time. And apparently Haymaker is considered to be overperforming ಠ_ಠ

Haymaker can crit for almost 75k.. learn to build your characters, pal. Oh and:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPgUUXByE0A
(video replaced by moderation to better fit context and have less swearing/feces)

Have a great day!

lezard21 · February 2019

colonelwing wrote: »

lezard21 wrote: »

Powers with longer charge should deal more damage than powers with shorter charge. As I mentioned earlier, DC, EBA, BCF, Lumi Slash all deal equal or more damage than Haymaker which has 2x/3x the charge time. And apparently Haymaker is considered to be overperforming ಠ_ಠ

Haymaker can crit for almost 75k.. learn to build your characters, pal.

Have a great day!

Right, that's why you see so many Haymaker toons topping the Cosmic charts :^) Sounds like you need to learn how to build a proper TK, Unarmed or LS toon pal.

also plz post your parser where you deal 75k to Dino/Kiga/Ape/Eido with Haymaker. No editing. Thxs much. The pvp forum is a-that way

aiqa · February 2019

A power with a longer charge time shouldn't do higher dps, it should do higher damage per hit if you fully charge it. And Haymaker dps is not bad now that there demolish refreshes, but you'd need to go out-of-set for those. For instance HW dps is far lower. (But 75k per haymaker (or is that dps?) is not overly realistic on cosmic fights.)

vonqball · February 2019

Can't you just do more dps with burning chi fist, while staying in-set? The only people worried about single-target burst are pvp'ers who haven't come to terms with reality yet.

spinnytop · February 2019

vonqball wrote: »

Can't you just do more dps with burning chi fist, while staying in-set? The only people worried about single-target burst are pvp'ers who haven't come to terms with reality yet.

There are actually PvE scenarios where burst is useful. Dino DPS check and Eido orbs being two examples.

Unknown · February 2019

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aiqa · February 2019

Selfroot during charge/maintain isn't a problem for those geysers, you can just stop attacking and move away. The problem is charge (or click) powers with selfroot during activation, and there are very few powers that have that. Annihilate is a prominent exception.

chaosdrgnz43 · February 2019

Been suggesting this to devs since the HW revamp but nope! Fallen on deaf ears. I mean, we could always just tap spam Annihilate when you know Geyser phase is coming, but it still has the risk of getting hit because those wireframes are bs sometimes.

spinnytop · February 2019

Or just have another attack that doesn't self-root you in addition to Annihilate. HW has plenty of those. Wait... are you people doing that thing where you only take like... one attack or something? :3c

aiqa · February 2019

I think most people only have 1 high damage attack, the other attacks are for synergies, utility, AoE, debuffs, etc. Sets are very much designed for such a setup. The stage of the fight with geysers is also the stage where dps is most important, it's not a good answer using a lower dps attack at that point (on an already relatively low ish dps set).

spinnytop · February 2019

Well, Arc of Ruin is HW's debuff applier, and it doesn't root while charging. Also, is dps on Eido important during that phase? Using Arc instead of Annihilate isn't going to extend the fight enough that it would make a real difference. On the other hand players dropping dead removes potential dps from a subsequent green orb, so it seems that doing a bit less dps on Eido in exchange for surviving the geysers and being alive for the green orb is a logical and beneficial sacrifice.

Sets are sure set up for a "1 nuke, + other attacks for utility" setup, primarily because most sets only have 1 nuke to begin with. However, the 2015 "1 attack" setup is absolutely not what modern power sets are designed around.

Unknown · February 2019

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aiqa · February 2019

spinnytop wrote: »

Using Arc instead of Annihilate isn't going to extend the fight enough that it would make a real difference.

Not for the whole team, but for that individual player the difference is huge. A set/fight shouldn't be balanced around other sets picking up the slack. So again, that is not a good answer.

melphyx2 wrote: »

Well, ones say selfroot isnt a issue, other say is a issue.
But what if all (powers, healing, debuff, buff, holds...) were selfroot.?

How is it an issue when you can move instantly after you stop charging or maintaining your powers?

vonqball · February 2019

spinnytop wrote: »

vonqball wrote: »

Can't you just do more dps with burning chi fist, while staying in-set? The only people worried about single-target burst are pvp'ers who haven't come to terms with reality yet.

There are actually PvE scenarios where burst is useful. Dino DPS check and Eido orbs being two examples.

Yah, I get that. I was talking about people who care enough about single-target burst to want haymaker nerfed. Not many players are looking to increase the difficulty of dps checks in open world content.

Unknown · February 2019

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aiqa · February 2019

melphyx2 wrote: »

aiqa wrote: »

How is it an issue when you can move instantly after you stop charging or maintaining your powers?

Thus, why not be it when it's charging/maintaining too?

That is a balance mechanic. Just like some powers have higher range, others a different energy cost, etc. So again, why is it a problem?

Unknown · February 2019

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darqaura2 · February 2019

spinnytop wrote: »

Well, Arc of Ruin is HW's debuff applier, and it doesn't root while charging. Also, is dps on Eido important during that phase? Using Arc instead of Annihilate isn't going to extend the fight enough that it would make a real difference. On the other hand players dropping dead removes potential dps from a subsequent green orb, so it seems that doing a bit less dps on Eido in exchange for surviving the geysers and being alive for the green orb is a logical and beneficial sacrifice.

Sets are sure set up for a "1 nuke, + other attacks for utility" setup, primarily because most sets only have 1 nuke to begin with. However, the 2015 "1 attack" setup is absolutely not what modern power sets are designed around.

I don't agree with all of this, but the point about Geysers is important. Seeing as how if enough people fail that when it comes up, it can extend the time of the fight . . . yeah, being able to MOVE YOUR ARSE quickly is more important for that stage.

aiqa · February 2019

melphyx2 wrote: »

aiqa wrote: »

That is a balance mechanic. Just like some powers have higher range, others a different energy cost, etc. So again, why is it a problem?

OK, I do not think I explained in the past publications. The reason why it would be a good idea to put all the non-selroot powers is so that we can move freely when we are confronted by a situation that we want to escape suddenly, or not to die among other situations. I know that if we stop charging or maintaining powers we can move. But not all players have a mouse with several buttons to handle that. Many use the method of clicking and dragging the powers to use the mouse in other things at the same time. Which is somewhat uncomfortable for many. Even this idea would be genie and more comfortable for PVP (I'm not PVP just in case). They would have better flexibility to enjoy duels.

I see, that is a bit of an unusual playstyle and I can see how that would cause a problem. For using powers with a selfroot you're probably best of using hotkeys.

spinnytop · March 2019

aiqa wrote: »

spinnytop wrote: »

Using Arc instead of Annihilate isn't going to extend the fight enough that it would make a real difference.

Not for the whole team, but for that individual player the difference is huge. A set/fight shouldn't be balanced around other sets picking up the slack. So again, that is not a good answer.

Even if every player there is HW it wouldn't matter. Downing Eido quickly during third phase isn't what wins the fight, downing Green Orbs consistently is.

HW isn't balanced around other sets picking up the slack, HW is balanced around added damage that wasn't added. Let's not try to skew reality here. I doubt "other sets will do the damage this one isn't doing" is a mechanic they'll ever actually use. However "lower damage for higher mobility" certainly is. Annihilate should be one of the highest performing melee dps powers, and we can wait for the actual HW revamp to see if that becomes a reality.

aiqa · March 2019

spinnytop wrote: »

Even if every player there is HW it wouldn't matter. Downing Eido quickly during third phase isn't what wins the fight, downing Green Orbs consistently is.

Having 4 or 6 green orb spawns at stage 3 can make a big difference. I've seen many runs where things stalled at stage 3 until there were a few lucky spawns that were placed easy enough to get through them.

spinnytop · March 2019

If we have a group that needs lucky green placements to succeed, that means we don't have enough dps on green orbs, not eido.