Tier scaling instead of CR scaling

Hey guys,

Many of us have been playing HoP2 all this week, and there's an important fact that almost everybody agrees with: CR is all what matters now. You could be the most skilled player in the server, but if you are a few CR points bellow another guy, even if you are playing the same Tier, you will get smashed.

I personally don't find fun being doubled just because how damage scales with CR, I don't feel like an assest to my team, moreover I feel like a charge when with CR117 I'm being doubled by my partner who's +CR120. This is not about scoreboard chasing, this is about how the damage varies without any sense within the same Tier.

Even more, I don't want to imagine how far behind are going to be those premium players who next week are going to be completely weak and inferior compared to those who already played the episode this week. It's like you have to push as hard as possible with replays to get the maximum CR so you can destroy everything.

Let's say a certain Tier goes from CR X1 to X2, I believe that those players which CR is between (X1,X2) shouldn't get any penalty or advantage due to their CR, their numbers differences should be based on stats and skill points alone. If I'm playing T7 and I'm CR117 my damage diffence compared to a CR120 guy (if both are within the same tier band) should be the difference of our stats, not because of our CR.

This CR scaling is basically why we had players smashing Happiness Home Elite raid just after two days of the episode release. And I found hard to believe that all the effort the dev team made trying to put innovative mechanics is meaningless just because of how out of hand the CR scaling damage is.

Kaiser.

I vote we swallow our pride and go back to straight flat stats instead of having the scaling. Sure you won't be able to smash everything below you but your progression will mean something and stats will mean something.

New system has made everything almost meaningless. Stats, sp, and mods are useless. It's like the devs crapped on every form of min/max for cr

This is not true. Skill will always trump cr. I was in HH last night with 2 quantum dps both 120. Group decided they only wanted 1 troll so I went dps (114 quantum). I was beating those dps. Then
they decided since the second tank was struggling added stuns on it would help so I switched back troll. Since I'm normally a troll anytime anyone went down I ran to try to pick up. And yet I stayed ahead of one and caught up with the other dps when I switched back to troll.
So the whole point is 114 about the same sp, same power, was beating 120 crs in damage. So proof CR doesn't trump alll

I think this is a week 1 concern. New content is always a race to a red light. Once we start converging on the same CR then we will see FOTM power set, skill, skill points, mods, and stats be the key differentiator. Until then, stronger gear = stronger toons.

LOL. I saw a CR30 stomp a CR120 the other day.

That would be true if max CR could be achievable by vendor gear, but it's not.

I find your story very hard to believe, mate.

In order to stay competitive and relative things needed to be adapt.

Time sync is no more. Casual is the way to go, via micro transactions.

I'm cr 115 sp 126. I ran 2 alerts last night. First alert I was paired with a 116 electric dps, beat him by 2 million. In his defense, he qued in as healer and switched to dps. He may have not be dpsing for long. Second alert I was paired with 2 quantum cr 116 players. Beat both of those by 200 and 400 thousand. Now I know the cr difference isn't as great as 114 to 120 but beating someone who is higher is possible.

I'm seeing lower CR players beat higher CR players at about the same pace as before the changes

I totally agree mate. I did an OP6 run a couple days after the DLC launch, I was CR117 and my buddy who had been replaying a lot on launch day was CR122. Normally we are pretty close on the score board but he more than doubled my damage. It made me feel like I was holding the team back, if I was replaced with a higher CR I've no doubt the run would have been a lot quicker.

As you say it's not about the scoreboard. For me it's about CR being the be all and end all. Stats really don't matter unless comparing people of the same CR. I think this could have a negative impact on the game in general. I don't think a lot of players realise just how much of an impact CR makes now (majority of players don't read the forums), once that becomes common knowledge the requests for high CR's will be even worse than now.

Now people are starting to see why people were "whining" and " complaining " about gu 47 and how it will negatively impact the game . Here it is. Sorry but we told you so and you guys only responded with "bye, Felicia" I hope u like the new Dcuo

Hard to show skill when the opposition isn't around too long to show it.

Skill is developed to tackle challenging goals in combat (outside of naturally improving it). "Skill" is not needed if it is not necessary to pass content. If the high CR's are ripping through content with ease mainly because of their stats, skill is taking a back seat over raw power.

Note: That seems to be it. The community confuses "skill" with raw power.

I very much agree with this point. I don't think that CR scaling is necessary while you are in the window of relevancy of an instance. Stats and skills should be unmodified in this range. I have actually already created a chart that represents this point as shown below:

So, before GU 47, 5 CR levels made no difference in damage potential? I think folks are reading too much into this. Before GU 47, gear and modding increased stats and increased CR. SP and skill differentiated toons at the same CR. After GU 47, the only real difference is that mods don't factor into the CR calculation. Increasing gear means increasing CR and stats. Modding, SP, and skill separate toons at the same CR. It's not all CR.

Question is, prior GU47, 5 CR levels made the actual difference in damage?

No, it is not all about CR now but it does have an impact. A scaling factor is applied to your stats unless your CR is equal to the NPC that you are fighting. We don't know what that scaling factor is but it does affect damage potential.

I fully support the stat flattening. I just think the CR scaling should not be a factor when playing "relevant" content.

Since the update I saw 106s beat 112s and 114s beat 117s. I've also seen 114s completely dominating 111s and good 117s keeping up with good 119s. It's not much different from before the update and a 3CR difference doesn't magically double the damage output. Just instead of a 2k Might difference over 3CR we now have near equal stats and still the same difference in damage potential. One thing to note though is that the gear jump was really high this time (and probably will be like that in the future Episodes), instead of +2 to +3 IL we got +8 and +10 for vendor and raid gear.
You didn't expect a good 109 to keep up with an equally good 112 or 115 before, why be surprised now?

Think of it like this: CR scaling was there before this update, just the scaling was in the gear stats and not in actual damage output. The result was the same. Now they took CR out of the gear stats except for a linear factor and instead scale our damage output directly.

It did and didn't. It is depending on which end of the tier you are looking at. Take T5 for instance. 81-85 vs 86-90. 81-85 in damage was huge gap between them, but 86-90 was not so much. It had to do with how you utilized your character to deal damage against high stat NPCs.

Remember, the trick to DPS is to hit first the most.

I, to be honest, am not a big fan of the CR Differential against NPCs. I could care less about another player's score, I shouldn't be essentially nerfed in the content if I'm not in that "suggested" level. But it was intended to extend the content.

Also, I don't know why they had to bring up the middle. Why couldn't they just bring down the T5+. It would have been less work. Big deal on players losing stats, in the end, it's the same difference. If you looked at T1-T4 on their bar, it was linear, it was T5+ that it got weird.

with the way that they've designed this whole bad system of "CR determines your damage in and damage out", they'll need to a lot more work to return the system to the one previously.
They'll have to redo the stats of every gear, and then remove the CR scaling mechanic.
Honestly though, I usually trust a lot of the testers on PC, but how they allowed this horrible system to go out on live simply baffles me.
Mods, SP, stats don't matter now...CR does. And in a game where we have 6 pieces of relevant content, what's the point of farming, and grinding for SP when CR determines everything that you do.