Another patch fall down, go boom.

[boley]

A new patch has gone live today (wed June 9th) and the community appears to be up in arms yet again.  The two biggies are that Burn and Provoke were nerfed.  The burn nerf I can understand (and my character is a Fire Tanker) but changing provoke baffles me a bit.

The communities main complaint seems to be that these were both "stealth nerfs".  And apparently one of the devs claimed stealth nerfs would not happen.  You can read all the drama here:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=general

I would link to patch notes . . . but they do not exist.


Edit - Found the patch notes, they are here:
http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/updates.html

Statesman has also posted an apology for the stealth nerf here:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=636844&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1

[geldonyetich]

Missing patch messages here.   Also with "future upcoming changes" info.

So far the only change that todays patch has done that effects me is the Super Speed endurance reduction.  (Which surprised me, because it was already 0.4 end/cycle, which was only 0.2 more than Sprint.)

I see that in the near future: "Damage Resistance will be capped at 90%. You will not be able to get your resistance to any type of damage beyond 90%."

That's good, because I know one of our posters commented recently how silly it was that they could stack some tanker towers to take 0% damage.

[HaemishM]

Same as it ever was.

I have yet to see a patch that was so horrible that it diminished my enjoyment of CoH one iota. But then I play a scrapper mostly, and am no powergamer, so chances are I probably just didn't find the uberest combinations or powers.

As for board whiners, FUCK THEM IN THEIR STUPID ASSES. AGAIN.

[Daydreamer]

Reduced the END cost of Defender Blast powers. Slightly reduced the END cost of scrapper, tanker, and controller attack powers.

I like

Increased Recharge, Damage and END Cost of the following Blaster melee attacks: (This was to make them more useful and appealing as a secondary set power)
 
Fire Manipulation: Fire Sword

Might be good, might be bad for my poor tanker right now, but I imagine it will be a definite boon once I get more melee attacks at 28, 35, and 28.

Arch villains are more resistant to debuffs now.

Ah crap, there goes my "Acc Debuff villian and wail on them while they hit nothing but air" stratagey.

[WayAbvPar]

Increased damage of Energy Manipulation/Power Thrust.

Increased damage of Energy Blast/Power Push

Giddyup.

[SurfD]

Ahhh fuck.  I see they have fixed Dr. Cheng, but I wonder if the two bugged story arc mission i have are still screwed.

I have a Devouring Earth and a Fifth Column mission where the contact tells me they had an "Internal error while issuing the task" and I can not procied any farther.

[kaid]

Burn now does pretty much what it stated it would do before and provoke is still nasty as hell it just is not as always on effective.

The changes were necessary and not unexpected in the slightest some will bitch and moan but anybody who thought burn was working as intended was smoking something. Frankly though the fix I would have thought would work better for burn is just make it less spammable. Right now with haste you can plop burns down and overlap them which can blow through mobs FAST.

You really should only be able to have one up a time like other targeted aoes. As for the running portion you can still get a ton of damage from burn if you have a controller in your group just root the mobs then burn baby burn.

Provoke being a level 6 selectable power in the power pool which is better than a primary or secondary power taunt is still probably out of wack powerwise. The current change makes it still great on minions but it hits less on LT's and bosses which is fine as the tank should be concentrating on those anyway with his melee.



Kaid

[Xilren's Twin]

Reduced the END cost of Defender Blast powers. Slightly reduced the END cost of scrapper, tanker and controller attack powers.

As an endurance whore Defender, I thank you...

Xilren

[jpark]

No problems here overall with patch.

The provoke nerf has me a bit puzzled.  

But I don’t mind it.  In EQ tanker crowd control was the worst (improved recently).  In shadowbane single target taunts were beautiful – but group control remained a challenge.  With provoke in CoH– I do confess that with a good tank it made combats pretty straight forward.  The nerf may change that now:  folks so hungry to steal aggro from the tank now have renewed capacity to die in an expeditious matter.  This can only add to the entertainment of grouping imo ;)

[eldaec]

Increased Provoke Recharge Time from 3 to 10 seconds.   Also, Provoke no longer Auto Hits (It currently does not take ACC Enhancements, but this will be corrected in the next patch).

I played my tanker tonight.

Didn't even notice the nerf till someone pointed it out.

10 second recharge time seems to still be less than the taunt duration with any kind of enhancement.

And it doesn't seem to miss often.

Tbh, all this change will do is force provoke tanks to slot it up rather than it being 100% reliable in unslotted form.

In other news - I *did* notice that O2 boost cc protection lasts a lot longer now.

[Grind]

I think provoke was overpowered and it may be better to have provoke a tanker ability and taunt as the general power pool ability.

It is also possible that today's changes can be mitigated via slotting up provoke to maximum and leaving the situation the same as it was prior to the patch (only with 5 less enchancements slots to choose from in the char builds).

So I am not sure that this is the route to go in order to fix this issue.

Grind

[SurfD]

Increased Recharge, Damage and END Cost of the following Blaster melee attacks: (This was to make them more useful and appealing as a secondary set power) ....

Is it just me, or is this backwards?

Should it not read Decreased Rechage, and END Cost, and Increased Damage?   I mean, is it really going to make the powers more appealing if they cost more to use, and take longer to recycle, for just a damage upgrade?

Edit to add: I just got one of those powers (Thunder Strike) before the patch, and I must say, if they were looking to make it "More usefull and appealing" as a blaster mele power, they failed utterly.  It now takes almost TWICE as long to recycle (fuck, it takes an obscene amount of time to recycle even with hasten on), and sucks up at least half again as much end as it used to use and I think its area of effect/accuracy dropped as well. My first test with it before I logged off before the patch had me blasting people away from impact left right and center, and now it sometimes has no effect on people standing right next to my target).  Before the patch I was already considering replacing my standard mele punch with it, and now, it is almost useless.  I feel like I wasted that power choice now.

[Glazius]

Increased Recharge, Damage and END Cost of the following Blaster melee attacks: (This was to make them more useful and appealing as a secondary set power) ....

Is it just me, or is this backwards?

I think Geko's logic goes like:

Blasters in melee = rapidly dead blasters.

Ergo, making a secondary set power do more damage is the most desirable thing, not making it cost less or come back quicker. If you're a blaster you're laying the smack down at range, and if something manages to shift its aggro from the tank and get close to you, you want to put it DOWN. You do not want to whittle away at its life with melee attacks while it takes a fourth of yours in one swing.

--GF

[Sky]

As for board whiners, FUCK THEM IN THEIR STUPID ASSES. AGAIN.

This should be handed out on flyers when new developers are hired, it should be across the bottom of every piece of official internal correspondance, and taped to everyone's monitors.

[Murgos]

As for board whiners, FUCK THEM IN THEIR STUPID ASSES. AGAIN.

This should be handed out on flyers when new developers are hired, it should be across the bottom of every piece of official internal correspondance, and taped to everyone's monitors.

Theres a good example of this on the boards now.  A poster made a very long, well written report of the effectiveness of his burn tanker at 38 versus level 39 and 40 mobs (bosses, lt's, and minions).  His conclusion?  Only being able to solo two bosses, two lt's and minions simultainiously was not worth the effort and burn tankers were now horriby broken.

Geko's reply is a classic "I must be missing something" type reply though much more polite of course.

[HaemishM]

His conclusion?  Only being able to solo two bosses, two lt's and minions simultainiously was not worth the effort and burn tankers were now horriby broken.

This one wins for "First Against the Wall" honors.

[Murgos]

Heres the thread I was talking about:

A Fire Tanks Experiments after the Nerf

And part of Geko's reply:

The formation of Nemesis can vary, the one I will mention now is a level 39, 2 boss 4 minion formation. As usual, I jumped into the middle and hit provoke/burn... and I was able to walk out with half of my HP bar and about 1/3 of my endurance.

Moving onto the Freakshows. The freakshow I tested on are level 2 boss and 1 Lt... Like before, the fight dragged on, till I was down to 1/10 of endurance, but did manage to defeat the feakshow bosses.

So are you saying at level 39, you were able to solo 2 bosses and 4 minions and then later 2 bosses and a Lt, and win both time? Are you saying there is a problem? Are you saying you think a single hero should be able to easily take on 2 bosses + minions or a lt? The description of Bosses say they take may take multiple heroes to defeat, and you are taking on multipl bosses.

[schild]

Heh, this further confirms that Geko has the PR-Response-Structuring skills of a wheelbarrow full of bricks. Nice guy though.

[HaemishM]

Holy fuck, I want to cook this motherfucker and eat his liver with a nice glass of chiante.

As a scrapper, I can MAYBE solo 1 boss with a couple of minions, as long as the boss is yellow or lower. If the boss is orange and the minions are yellow, probably not. If the boss is orange and has a yellow lt, probably not.

What the fuck is this whiny pussy bitching about? That he can't solo more than 2 bosses at once? And now the combat is "more stressful" (meaning there's actually some doubt about the combat's outcome) than before? Combat is supposed to be stressful!

God, what a fucking retard.

[Secundo]

Haemish. This time you are just plain wrong or maybe not high enough lvl to fully understand the consequences. Basically you are talking out of your ass.

This doesnt nerf fire tankers much. It will just make everyone else die alot more. I will have sooo much fun when the whiny fuckers keep dieing and complaining about tank not holding aggro. They got what they asked for. Fuckers!

[HaemishM]

The simple fact is if one tank can use a particular power set to solo things no other combination or class can solo, namely bosses, that ain't right no matter how much you cut it.

I have no problems with people soloing. However, taking 2 bosses and assorted minions solo should be a real goddamn hard thing to do, or "stressful" as this assmunch says. If it isn't, something be broke.

[Xilren's Twin]

Haemish. This time you are just plain wrong or maybe not high enough lvl to fully understand the consequences. Basically you are talking out of your ass.

This doesnt nerf fire tankers much. It will just make everyone else die alot more. I will have sooo much fun when the whiny fuckers keep dieing and complaining about tank not holding aggro. They got what they asked for. Fuckers!

Then maybe you can explain it to us in terms that might actually make some sense b/c from the 5 minutes I can stomach looking at the official boards all I can see is somehow dropping damage resist from 100% to 90% now makes the class useless....but somehow 95% would be fine (see Havok's posts, high on drama, low on factsl i got to page 5 before i gave it up for useless).  

You telling me 5% make such a huge difference at level 40 that it's the difference between a class being fine and totally broken?  It smells like bullshit to me considering a freaking training enhancement for damage resistance give you that 5%....

So, anyone have some actual numbers to back this assertion up?

Xilren

[SurfD]

Speaking as a levle 28 blaster, all i can say is that I would LOVE to be able to solo a group of two bosses 2 levels higher then me without having a 1% percent survival rate if I didnt run like a scared girl after every third shot or so.

Hell, half the time, it takes real effort to take down a single boss/leutennant combination my level without popping a lot of inspirations and probably having to run like hell at least once to recover hitpoints.

[Secundo]

Burn nerf isnt a problem. I freely admit it was too powerful. But provoke kept the TEAM alive. Not the tank...

You other AT's will die alot more now. Thats a fact and as a tanker I will laugh every time you do since I can survive anyway.

The game mechanics changes dramatically at around lvl's 18-20. A provoke tank is really needed then. Controllers are dead weight with the purple invincible patch. So are defenders.

Blasters can solo just fine still using good tactics. 1 example is for elec blasters going after freak tanks that are vuln to elec and got no range whatsoever... Or any AE blaster doing hordes of evens/blue/green mobs. great xp in total if not for each kill.

[geldonyetich]

What's really needed isn't provoke tanking.  What's needed is for them to tweak the Tank's actual Primary power Taunt ability so taking the Provoke power isn't neccessary.

[Secundo]

Haemish, I smell class envy here. This is a PVE game that used to have a varied and good combat system with options for all AT's to shine.
Blasters with good AE powers could do masses of evens. Blasters with heavy nukes could do big game hunts.

Big groups could do high mobs for fun even though xp was capped. Now that is not an option. Getting the picture yet?

This game had/has 1 thing going for it, a varied and good combat system. This got nerfed BAD. now its just a grind where soloing or duoing is the only real way to make any progress.

Fuckers who cry nerf  in a PvE game should crash and burn horribly in any way posible.

[geldonyetich]

So far as I can tell, Geko has yet to have rolled back those changes he did for mobs +3 higher.  He's going to eventually partially roll it back a bit to be more reasonable, it's not in any patch message I've seen.

This would explain why yesterday when I was teamed up with CmdrSlack that my lvl 20 Scrapper could *barely scratch* a lvl 23 minion.   My 60ish base damage was being reduced to about 18ish.

[Rasix]

*purged own post*

Edit: You know what, on second thought, this isn't the Vault.  Best not to get too inciteful over this.  I think I'll leave it as "I disagree with what you said" (Secundo's post for reference)

[Lanei]

"I disagree with what you said"

I don't recall which forum it was on, nor who posted it, but I wonder if anyone here has the genesis of that quote archived.  I'd appreciate being able to read it again, and I only wish I'd saved it at the time.

*Edited: Spelling correction
*Edit 2:  Found it.

[Sable Blaze]

This whole provoke thing is getting blown way out of proportion. It was a power pool skill. It SHOULD NOT be a must have skill. Period.

Moreover, the skill does work pretty well still. Now if you're talking about +4 mobs, yeah, it's not what it was. You're not supposed to be fighting this stuff without enormous risk. People should die.

The fascination with xp gained puzzles me. I play for fun. I like leveling, but I don't obsess over it. You play, you level sometimes. End of story. Just to say you're level 40? I think EQ has misplaced a player. The whole reason I came to CoH was to get away from leveling treadmills, raiding, and game dev stupidity. Obviously, some would debate the last point, but so far I've been pleased with what the devs are doing. Sure, the narrow mob level confines are a bit annoying, but overall it's acceptable as opposed to the alternatives.

I guess if you don't like the game, you shouldn't play it. I quit EQ because it was going directions I didn't like. I quit DAOC because it got boring. I quit AO because it became EQ. If you played CoH to get to 40 in a week or two and now you can't, guess it's time to move on.

[Murgos]

This game had/has 1 thing going for it, a varied and good combat system. This got nerfed BAD. now its just a grind where soloing or duoing is the only real way to make any progress.

Tanker soloing got nerfed and now the combat system is horribly broken?  Overstate your position a little?

[geldonyetich]

(Spoken with "Soilent Green is People" emphesis:)

"Secundo is the vault!  Secundo is the vault!"

Seriously, throwing around insinuations of class envy and claiming a game is horribly broken because they extremely minorly nerfed a *generic power pool power which you do not even use yourself* is something more appropriately reserved for The Vault Network or perhaps the official CoH forums.  

Spare us the melodrama, would you? (Said Geldonyetich, mighty drama-queen in himself.)

[Morfiend]

Spare us the melodrama, would you? (Said Geldonyetich, mighty drama-queen in himself.)

When Geld is telling you to spare the drama, you know you're overdoing it.

[Secundo]

You arent seeing it yet are you?  I am fine with getting my burn taker nerfed. Me and my scrapper buddy can still duo anything that is currently killable.

If YOU arent't playing for xp, what do you care if I do? I liked the many varied ways you could solo, duo or team and adjust the mobs you fought accordingly.
Now you are very limited in what you can fight and certain classes quite frankly became useless overnight(controllers, defenders).

I liked the fast xp. It was good for the casual gamer. It was good for me, a powergamer, since I planned to play most of the AT's and power combinations.

It was good because combat is my thing. I like figuring out tactics both solo and for teams. Now its a walk in the park and boring.

And get this, the xp was capped(!). So it was counterproductive to go after really high mobs. But it was fun to have the option.

Fun... imagine that in a game.

[Rasix]

Rationalize for the win.  Do you truly believe anything you just said or do you just like the crack? So the game magically becomes unfun with this change?  All of the sudden fun combat becomes unfun when the mobs in a certain level range aren't worth the effort?  Can you draw me a flowchart, you lost me somewhere.

For the folks doing missions in large teams, the game has largely remained the same.  This game isn't built around the powergamer duo power squads. Sorry, it just isn't.

Really, if you're so upset, vote with your wallet. If not, really, shut the cock holster and move on.  We can get this from the genpop boards if we feel like making our retinas beg for mercy.