The “dev comment” forum posts are up — each commenter getting to post once, leave space for the devs to react. As such, the discussion is a bit more studied as to the various I5 issues (and informed by an intensive weekend of testing on Test).
My reactions:
- Mission Customization: Good ideas (escorts, rescues) that may suffer from clumsy AI and poor documentation. We’ll see.
- Blaster Defiance: As blasters drop below 40% HP, their blasts do more damage. Fun idea, but the cries have gone from “Yikes! Horribly imbalanced! Overpowers the blasters!” to “Yikes! Horribly useless!” Shrug.
- XP Changes: Something you’d think nobody’s complain about, except that people manage to somehow — either dismissing it as unecessary or as evil because it’s a reaction to all the other nerfs. My thoughts: unmitigated goodness, and just what the game needs to ease things through the lower levels and create more reward for more even-conning (and now more dangerous) mobs.
- Tanker Changes: A bit miffed over the Taunt limits. More critical are the nerfs to the defenses/resists. Um, like, guys, tankers are supposed to be, well, difficult to damage. And you’d think a power set called “Invulnerable” would be, well, even moreso. From what I read, though, the proposed INV changes — Unyielding in particular, but all of them in toto — go way beyond some level of balance and into the nigh-unplayable. Which is bad news for Velvet, I fear.
- Controller Changes: I think the reductions on AoE holds are extreme, too. Fortunately, that doesn’t affect Psi-clone all that much, largely because (a) he hasn’t taken any AoEs and (b) he’s been orienting towards being a confender (or a detroller, or something like that). The only bright spot is that, strictly read, it doesn’t look like Group Invis took as big a hit from the nerf bat as Invis or Superior Invis or Stealth (knocks on wood).
- Scrapper Changes: More damage is all good, right? Except, of course, the nerfs to defenses (in particular Lynn‘s Invuln or Mr. Azure or Amorpha‘s Regen) make the class much squishier — closer to a melee version of Blasters with more HP.
- Defender Changes: And there goes P-siren under the nerf bat with changes to all the FF powers. 12.5% vs 20%? Swell. Every little bit will help now, I guess, but I worry that she’ll be too vulnerable as a team member. Rrg.
- Power Pool changes: Thank goodness they’ve nerfed the defense from Hover. I mean, that 5% was such an imbalance to the game …
I remain guarded optimistic that not everything foretold will come to pass on Live, and that the actual changes will involve an evolution of tactics, not a revolution of some ATs simply not being worthy playing. But …
For Puck I have mixed feelings about the changes.
Less hold, but more damage. Happy about the more damage part just because she hes really long animations, and slow recharge.
I love that they are ending tank herding.
With Zazi I am going to have to see what the damage to SR and Stealth bring. with her current build she almost never dies unless someone holds her and drops her toggles (six death shaman in mob…the last one got her before she could finish him off).
The way I figure it bubbles are always going to be helpful no matter what.
Bubbles are going to be helpful (esp. with all other defenses being further dropped), but when they are your main power, it kinda sucks to have them blanket reduced.
I don’t mind seeing herding reduced. Handy sometimes, but annoying over time. My concern not tank herding, but tank holding — the ability of Velvet to (a) grab the attention of the charging hordes that want to hurt the squishies, and then (b) not die a horrible death as they carve her to chutney. In some ways, that really parallels the case with P-siren — the primary power (Inv) has been seriously reduced in quality.
A bit off topic, but I guess Avo ran into a person that reads your two blogs and is in CoH. Small world, eh?
I wondered where I would post about that! Yes, I was in Steel Canyon, I think, when somebody named “Lyss” said, “I sort of know you, from Dave’s Blog.” (Say “Hi,” to everybody, Jan!)
We chatted a bit, then she took off. After a while, it occurred to me to ask if she had posted any replies on ***Dave’s blog. She had, but couldn’t remember details. She did tell me that she was a blogger.
http://www.shades-of-gray.net/
She offered to dig her 34 Dark/Dark Defender to team with me, but I had just joined a Tanker on a team. (He and I, incidentally, used the same SOP Phed-X and I use–he teleports foes, I freeze ’em, and we pound them into submission.)
I would have joined her after that, but Super Villain had just been to Icon, and wanted to show me her new outfit. SV said that Zazi was her friend and would never tell anybody about us, but she had already blabbed to the CoJ! That’s okay, though. Now that I’ve had a talk with Abby, the cat can be released from the bag. Although SV does love dropping her little hints in public; maybe I’ll keep things under wraps a bit longer so she can continue to have her fun. (And what did I tell Zazi about this “Randy-san” business? I know a double entendre when I hear one, you little…)
The only people in the CoJ that would care is very limited, and you kinda already know all the players, so no big. Plus, it’s not like any of them are going to repeat it on the Coalition Chat.
Yes, the “Randy-san” is very Double Entendre , but only used for very small audience’s.
Margie’s comment was, “His name is Randy?”
And re Jan — hi, and “it’s a small world after all.”
“Randall! Not “Randy”! Randall!