Work In Progress An Update on Melee Combat and Counters

Greetings Heroes and Villains!

As you know, we are now into the late stages of our midrange balance pass, implementing midrange damage capabilities to all powers and balancing all powers' damage potential at range, midrange, and melee. Next up is weapons, followed by the final four powers (Nature, Electricity, Earth, Sorcery) in a yet to be determined order.

Today we're here to talk with you about some frustrations surrounding certain powers not performing as well as others in content. We have uncovered a few things and want to share them with you.


Rage, Celestial, and Hard Light

In Game Update 58, we updated Rage to a...let's say...mixed player response. And the response from Rage players was similar to the response from Hard Light and Celestial (except maybe angrier, which fits). They noted that their parses were dead on at a sparring target with all variables removed, but that they fall behind others in terms of damage throughout the course of an instance or a boss fight.

We had been investigating why, and continued to after Rage's update. Here's what we found.


Melee Combat and Counters

Many moons ago, we changed the way NPC attacks work in an effort to make melee play more viable, in response to feedback. NPC attacks were originally cones, meaning essentially anybody up close and in front of an NPC would get damaged by attacks. We changed these cones to rays, meaning only the player targeted (usually the Tank) would be damaged. This change leads us to the first inconsistency.

Rage and Hard Light are countered by block, and over the course of a boss fight or instance spend a decent amount of time recovering from being countered, and not doing any damage while they do. Other powers are instead countered by interrupt. This was a solid system when NPC attacks were cones. Powers played differently and had to work around different counters, but overall spent about the same amount of time being countered. With this change from cone to ray attacks, NPCs stopped actually interrupting anyone but their target.

Put another way, NPCs are block-countering powers like Rage and Hard Light as intended, but are not interrupt-countering anybody but their target, the tank. Other powers are able to step up into melee range virtually risk-free and blast away, because nothing can counter them. For those powers, that translates to more time on their feet, more time fighting, and overall more damage over the course of an instance or boss fight.


Crowd Control

Celestial's inconsistency is different, as the combos are not countered by block. If you have any sort of chat channel enabled in the game, you have probably seen Celestial players comment about having their combos disrupted, not just by counters and crowd control and knockbacks, but by seemingly anything that touches them. That's a slight exaggeration, but we dug into why. We found it's not actually a new issue, but one that has been exacerbated by the kinds of attacks used in modern content.

The problem boils down to how crowd control elements of certain NPC attacks work, or rather don't work. The short version is, a bug is causing some attacks to hit you with a near-instant, tiny crowd control effect (instead of a normal, noticeable crowd control effect). This effect is so short that it doesn't do much of anything in the game except disrupt Celestial combos.


What's Next

We are working on a few things now:

• First, we will fix the attacks that are currently causing the near-instant crowd control effects, so that they apply proper, noticeable crowd control effects.
  • This will make a lot more sense for everyone, and match the intent of these attacks.
• Second, we will add the 3-second grace period to Celestial and explore the option on other powers that lack it.
  • When you do stumble in your AM, you have a chance to get right back into it like everyone else.
• Third, we will make weapon attacks immediately drop you from your AM so that the 3-second grace period cannot be abused, where applicable.
  • We do not want to open the potential for players to slip in an extra weapon or WM attack to boost damage where that wasn't previously expected, because then THAT will be the only way to play, and that's not intended.
• Fourth, we will add resistance to crowd control effects for Celestial players while they are executing the multi-input portion of combos.
  • For Celestial players, this means less things will knock you out of your combo, and that when you are disrupted, you will clearly see what got you and why.

Finally, in regard to melee and counters, we have not yet settled on a plan to change or correct the inconsistency between block-countered and interrupt-countered powers, and we are still discussing options internally. Even without news to share on that front, we wanted to take the time to update you on our progress and our findings.

Please use this thread for questions, comments, and discussion.

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