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It seems like everyone is a glass cannon
So I have played all major role sets up to level 10 and a couple sets higher with at least one to level 20, ie. I have played a Tank set, a Healer, and a Controller set (and in some cases both sets for that role).
I have no finished fiddling around entirely and most of the time I am in damage role. But from what I can tell there is very little capability to be "tough".
Now I expect the damage role to be a bit glass cannon-ish and I could see controllers needing to CC or get hurt, although with the recent change to only allow 2 things to be CCd by one powers I am not so sure about that.
But currently either you kill things fast or you seem to die pretty fast and tanks don't seem to take much less damage and both healers and tanks can't really heal enough damage to keep going against tough odds.
Basically everyone either kites, controls or kills stuff as fast as possible to survive. In a group perhaps healing becomes more of an element, but even so there seems to be very little mitigation.
I have soloed most level 20 and below boss battles and in everyone I generally wind up kiting my ass off with ranged attacks and a few powers and soder cola. Now to be sure some of those battles involve more than just the fight, the Grodd vs 2 Flashes (villain side) with the devolution machine was very cool and novel. But in the end I just ran like a little bitch from Flash or the Original Flash when they were not a monkey. The only boss I have been unable to do much against was Alpha Lantern and the Jon Stewart vs Sinestro mini war. But while i didn't seem to do any damage to Alpha Lantern (so I stealthed past it) I did manage to stay alive in the Jon stewart fight for a while I just couldn't do anything to Stewart since ring bearers were always doing alot of damage to me and i had to run, I haven't tried it again because the instance was just really laggy.
I am only recently playing the beta so I didn't play the game in the earlier patches when it sounds like the game was easier.
Even Iconic powers like Amazonian Deflection didn't seem to do much to stop any damage.
Am I missing something? Are there a few key powers to make yourself tough (like that super speed power) that actually work?
I mean there are normal non Super Hero mobs than can hit you for 50% health in one hit. That doesn't seem all that super. I understand from a gameplay point of view that have large nasty hits you have to dodge (and they give you a warning so you can do so) might be good. But it seems like some character types should have the option to seriously mitigate damage as a super trait.
Comments
So over all how did you like it? No fan no hate.. you know over all?
Thanks..
Nah, you're right on with your findings. The mob damage is tuned a bit high right now, but I'm hoping it dropped a bit with today's patch, even though it wasn't listed in the notes (several of the last few notes were incomplete). I believe it was the patch before last (12/20) that upped the mob damage. Before that, there was really very little difficulty in combat. The devs just swung the pendulum too far the other way.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
i have 3 level 20's and a bunch over level 10. If this game doesn't make you feel "Super" i don't know what to tell you really other than Make sure you always repair your armor and use skills like they are supposed to be used.
Most battle skills are meant to be used in a specific order in order to cause double damage and what not. I've been attacked by groups of people and managed to kill them all because i knew how to use the skills properly.
That's my problem with super-heroes game, we're supposed to be "SUPER-HERO" and yet we get owned by street thugs. I dunno in movies superman or batman they eat thugs for lunch.
I totally agree with this.
I get extremely annoyed when i get knocked out by pulling too much agro but i do feel like a super powered character.
Im not saying the OP is wrong or anything, i just completely agree with the above.
Jeremiah 8:21 I weep for the hurt of my people; I stand amazed, silent, dumb with grief.
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I am in both beta's and have been owned many, many times
but the way i understand it, according to the story, we as simple mortals have been given specials powers with the (ecobites?) and must learn to use them to save the world.
As a normal, it would stand to reason i get my ass kicked by the thugs/cops until i can learn to manipulate my SUPER powers and learn to kick some ass.
obviously, we cannot be invincible, otherwise where is the fun, someone has to be able to challenge us
and as an MMO, there has to be some sort of give and take, this isn't 26 pages in a comic where the hero/villain prevails and all is good/bad, growing and learning and fighting to save/destroy the world makes it all good fun
for me, my opinion nothing more
"All expectation leads to suffering" Buhhda
Oh haha well i was trying to make it clear that im only annoyed if i agro too many mobs. If its a normal "pull" its all good.
I definitely feel like my characters have super powers. Its incredible just moving around through the world.
Jeremiah 8:21 I weep for the hurt of my people; I stand amazed, silent, dumb with grief.
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A good part of your character build revolves around your Skill Innates as well, even with the reduction in skill points and percentages, increasing defense/toughness will help immensely, as will acquiring new skill points via feats, etc. At level 20 you could have between 13 and 16 skill points almost without trying. Maxing out toughness in 2 weapon skills will actually show quite a big difference in the amount of damage you can take. You may not be able to flesh out an entire weapons tree, but with certain specs you really don't need to.
On top of that, there are some skills that increase defense, like amazonian deflection, some powers in the ice tree, etc, but what is smarter is gaining health back and having your innates and gear spec for toughness and defense. Thats why it appears the fire tree seems to be the better tank spec as a lot of it is based on health regeneration and a larger health pool.
On the other hand Ice has some really great crowd control options, but it all depends on your play style and the focus of your character.
Hope that helps. At level 10 you really can't grasp much of what your characters abilities offer, you'd definitely have to feat hunt for a very long time to get enough skill points to make a viable toughness build at level 10.
Well I wasn't planning on writing a review and I ABSOLUTELY refuse to reccomend or not reccomend the game but I will give you my overall impressions which are very SUBJECTIVE (ie. what I think is cool/good in a game may be something no one cares about and vice versa):
Keep in mind I have not comprehensively tested everything and my grouping experience is currently low.
Overall its a fun and quite playable game. However, in my opinion, it should be released February 11 not Janrary 11. They are going to need I would say roughly at least 5 more weekly iterations to really hammer out the powers and roles. I think this release date is a major mistake. Because while the various things do not really require major changes or redesign they will need to do alot of little tweaks that will, in the minds of the gamers, add up to alot of things. They need to settle on power management, they need to settle on normal attacks vs powers, they need to settle on how the groups roles really play and they need to settle on how healing works in groups vs solo. They have the pieces but they need more iterations than 2 weeks will give them to get it more coherent and fluid and to avoid freaking out like the Champions folks did at relase.
Perhaps they are betting on a months grace period and to be fair WoW did have a month were certain powers were not well balanced. At release Fear was crazy overpowerd in WoW. People act like it was perfect but it wasn't, there was some emergency power rebalancing even in the gold standard. But the fact is most people do forget or act like you have to be perfectly balanced at release and this game will not be, it will be decent but still a good bit Beta-like.
As an example for power sometimes you have plenty sometimes you have none. Whether you have any can just be luck. Maybe none of the mobs dropped a power orb. Maybe all of them did. If they didn't do you just use you normal attacks or do you wait around doing nothing so you can use your powers?
Well whether you use powers or not may be more about whether you next spawn needs alot of AOE than anything else. So sometimes you are just sitting there and waiting for power and other times you just beat stuff up with your normal powers and get some power orbs if you are lucky.
In general you have enough power for like 3-4 powers to be used in a fight. Then you are out and regen is not fast at all unless you get an orb from defeating something. Yet at the same time some powers are simply not good enough to justify this at all. Some are great. Usually using two AoEs is worth the power. Or using something with nice interactions. In the controller sets using an AoE control then an AoE attack is enough to put 3-4 mobs at like 25% health then I finish them with normal attacks. But it also uses like 75% oir 50% of my power. If I get ambushed by another spawn I may not have any power left to save my ass. And I have other powers that take like 33% of my power and seem to do nothing at all.
I am not really sure if powers are supposed to be used sparingly or all the time. Some of them make normal attacks redundant others are worthless. And whether I CAN use them all the time or sparingly seems to be mostly luck. But I am assuming only powers that require supercharge rather than power to use are meant to be used sparingly
So in general its a little confused. But by adjusting just a few paramters it should probably work ok. But that process is in general hard to nail and almost certainly in my mind not be done by Jan 11.
I am not overly conerned with a high degree of interdependence in grouping nor am I much of a fan of the holy trinity type stuff. But what I do think is important is giving the players some options (either freely or in classes) for a spectrum of burn em down to marathon it out. And to make your roles and interactions make some cohesive sense. Right now they are about 50% there and don't really need anything new per se. They just need the various aspects to line up well. They have what each roles SHOULD do fairly well defined in the general sense. They have powers meant to accomplish these things. Now they need to hash together well without being overpowered.
Customization
This is very good. Much better than 90% of MMOs. I see people complaining alot but it seems like BS to me. However it is not as good as COH or CO. It is almost as good though. The main area they fall down in is the face/body-type customization. CO/COH you can adjust your body type and facial features with sliders.
It seems like DCU color tints your powers but I have no idea what controls this whereas in CO I can tint and even chose where a power projects from at any time simply by clicking my powers menu. Clearly CO and COH are superior in this regards COH even lets you choose alternate animation so that you can punch instead of kick for martial arts. But clearly DCU does more than almost every other MMOs since you can't even color tint powers in those
User Friendliness
Not that good. The UI is bad. I don't need to rehash it. Its not bad everywhere. The inventory screen is fine. But the navigation through multiple screen is annoying. The chater interface is awful barely useable and very hard to read. If you go into you inventory you can't do anything (no movement etc). If you are 3 screens deep and something attacks you, it might easily kill you in an extreme case since the UI will take the entire screen AND obscures your powers hotbar and your vitals only sound would tell you that you are being attacked then you would need to hit escape like 3 times to actually be able to fight back.
Many power descriptions are off or wrong. But its Beta and they are still changing power descriptions. But sometimes even finding a way to find a description is actually impossible. You have no cursor outside of goign to your inveotry or other screens. If you use the minor shapschange forms, which have no loadout screen, there is literally no way to get a description of what powerthe pterosaur form even has. So you have to use trial and error.
In general finding information and the usability/functionality is low when it comes to these things. I had no idea how to even customize my looks at first. Once you know how its not that bad, it could use the ability to save/load various configurations rather than adjusting them one by one everytime but its fine. I had to ask over chat, which is barely usable how to change my looks using the style menu.
Same thing with the vault, its hidden down in some menu some how and all Ambush Bug tells you is "Use your communicator"
Coolness
There are some really cool things in the game. For example with super speed you can use small ledges as ramps to jump really high. When you upgrade the speed to Speed Force at level 9 and you use a ramp correctly you can jump about 10 stories in the air. Is this useful? I dunno but its fun.
I see people complaining about the content and saying its all just a typical quest game. And while this is true to some extent, many boss battles are very interesting and have cool little nuances. The 2 Flashes one was great, seeing Flash and Original Flash as gorillas was really funny. Fighting supergirl with the scientist who encases her in a kryptonite energy cage is another interesting one. The main thing with many fights is there is some trick to about 50% of them and they will usually outright tell you the trick or seriously hint at it. But executing the trick is not necessarily easy. Supergirl will kick your ass and the scientist's ass with heat beams and freezing you solid when she is not caged and the scienteist can only cage when you blast her when she is nearby to him.
Some of the physics stuff is pretty cool and has not been seen since Auto Assault. In addition to the super speed phsyic-ish jumping. When you enacse someone in a force field they are put into a ball of force. If you hit that ball with something, it goes rolling off, possibly extremely fast. So you can conceivably encase a mob and then rather than kill it blast it a mile away from you or pick it up and throw at another mob(actually i ahve not tried that one, but I am going to. They definitely can roll off at very fast speeds).
Combat
Combat is good. The combos are decent. I dislike how you can get locked into a combo if you click too fast, but overall as long as you are measured and patient and not clicking like a maniac it works well. Clicking too much will lock you into something like 2+ moves and you may go off in some crazy direction (potentially missing and even drawing aggro if you used a move that jumps far).
Many powers are pretty nice. There is the balancing issue I mentioned above and some are worthless. Todays patch should show that is more than just hyperbolem, the devs removed one of the controller powers. But overall their usage is good and they have some cool effects/
One of the things I like about the game in general and powers in specific is the devs have made a real effect to have interactions between things. Multiple powers sets can encase things in various ways (ice, force field etc) and various tank and controller powers can detonate or do extra damage to the encased things. Or some weapon sets can KB and a power may do extra damage to KBed mobs.
So there is a good mix of rock paper scisssors and synergistic interactions to make it interesting. It just need to be made bit more smooth and sane for normal people.
Also the combat is fundamentally differnt than most MMOs other than DDO in that you can miss and you can dodge. Soem attacks like Fireball are slow moving and from what i can tell mobs WILL PURPOSELY dodge them. I was trying to hit HIVE Royal guard at range with Fireball, he consistently side stepped it and made it miss. This happened 3 times in a row, Idoubt it was chance. Now it bugs me that I cannot lead a target since I can also miss, but it is cool that things are not purely auto hit. In Champions Online that same thing would have made a 90 degree curve and hit the guy anyway.
Having played both an Ice/dual pistol and fire/handblaster toons to 20 I'd say this is good advice but would also add proper management and selection of supercharge powers in tank mode makes a hell of a difference too,also using the right combos helps a lot too.
Please understand I have killed 10 mobs at once before dying in a place where the STAR labs patrols were running around like they were on crack.
I kill 3 then 2 more came around the corner then 2 more then more and I was like wtf (and they were moving really fast too). After wards I flew up and observed there pattern. There wasn't one really they just run around like they are on crack at that corner only rest of quest area worked ok.
But see I did not kill those guys by being tough. I killed those guys by AOEing the living crap out of them. AoE fear + AoE Phantom flames. I got lucky enough to get a couple power orbs to kill a few more.
Then 4 more came around the corner corner and I was like "I can't win and I can't run, as soon as I stop attacking I am dead"
Yes this is part of the problem I have absolutely no idea what any of the stats do.
Is there any way of finding out what precision and might do? The UI is atrocious for finding information.
How much does defense contribute? I have generally tried to wear items with the most defense but I usually try to get combo before passives.
Also I was assuming that powers > than innate defense. But Amazonian Defelction completely scuked ass so I have not bothered with some of the defensive powers since I repsecced out of that. Although they nerfed Hard Light shield so that one probably worked.
Anyway what are the key elements of making saying a min/max'ed character tuned for pure survivability and how long would such a character survive? I don't plan on making this character but I would like to know it for a reference.
If the devs do not start making this stuff clear they are gonna get trashed by word of mouth btw.
I dunno I just don't see how its gonna help that much in a long fight at least solo, perhaps it can only work in a group with a controller.
Supercharage stuff only lastas about 30 sec and the tank supercharge sounds very impressive but supercharage itself takes a while to build back up and I think the one that makes you really tough is 100% of supercharage. That super charge does sound great for emergencies but not exactly sustainable.
As for gaining health back, when I try that with ignition I get like 3 ticks of 30 healing at level 10 but it takes 50% of my power to do it. A royal guard's special attack will hit you for like 400 damage. Now the fireball + beam power that gives me that healing does realy nice damage and stuns, basically killing a royal guard. But as far as being tough its nto that great. And I really don't have the power to pull it off twice which is what i would need in harder fights against say two Royal guards or a KIller bee with two stingers or what have you.
When i tried gaining health back with a lower level plant guy I got hit for two hundred, then healed 200 back. Then had a cooldown where I get hit for another 200 and can't heal it back and I am now low on power because it cost alot. Yet the control and damage on Plant seemed subpar to make that extra healing of any use at all.
I can see where you are coming from but at this point the math is not quite adding up for me. Perhaps this is because of some other interaction like better stats of some sort I don't really know and I can't see how I would fiogure it out in game in any way except months and months of trial and error.
Or if things like the plant heal just is not much use until you have enough gear and skills to make heal + toughness be favorable then move the heal farther up the tree and give them better attacks/control early on. I mean if you are a glass cannon in the damage role as plant then why are they giving you your heal at level 5 or 6 but not the healer role until level 10? Alot of this stuff seems a litlte discombobulated.
You level so fast that its really just an extra piece onto your survivability.
Again, at level 10 you aren't going to do much, you don't have many skill points, you don't have many power points, and your gear is moderate at best.
Fire tanks get stronger heals later in their levels, as do ice, plants, sorcery, and even controllers get some kinds of heals, so all that will increase longevity.
Each set is best when planned out before you start spec'ing points into it, but you only really get that through experience and knowing the classes which can be tough when they change things as frequent as they have been doing. The basics seem to stay the same though.
I could spend a lot of time going into a specific build for you, but really what works for me won't work for everyone because my play style is different. If you'd really like me to help further your favorite build I'd be happy to give you some advice in game.
I share your concerns. They have made so many major changes to the game its hard to believe they are releasing in a couple of weeks. I don't understand the rush. Another month would do wonders.