Nerf Allergy

The spreadsheet finally came in from Pilcrow with the I7 adjustments to hit equation. The numbers weren't pretty, for sure. Like it or hate it, believe it or not, numbers do not lie. In I6, ED occurred and we knew what would happen. It happened nontheless, and we continued. In I7, we know what would happen. It will happen, and we will continue.

The question is, how far exactly are you willing to continue, before you just find it not worthwhile? Ironically, it was the nerfing of Dark Miasma's control powers that pushed most dark users into debuffing builds. And when the debuffs don't work anymore, I suppose we'll just suck it up and spam heals.

But it was kind of expected to happen. In a way acc debuffing is like defense, but wasn't nerfed in I5. With squishies, with low hitpoints and no mez protection, the only way to be successful is to never be hit at all. Once you get hit, no matter how good your resists are, a huge chunk of your hitpoints will go away. Under the vision, everyone has to become squishier. Since the melee have become squishy, the erstwhile squishies got become squishier than squishy.

The rise in popularity of healers post I5 isn't just by chance. When you have a big value of debuff, after level scaling you end up with still a large enough number to make mobs do appreciably less damage. But as your debuff percentage drops you can't meet the breaking point of the equation at which point you just have to heal up the damage somehow. On the other hand, healing is just healing. You can be -8 levels to the mob and that will in no way affect the rate you are healing at.

Yep, debuffers couldn't really cut it anymore. We all knew that, but what to do? Just throw slots into the heal and start healing more.

To add insult to injury, Statesman's ill thought out PM was splashed across the defender boards. "Defenders = buffers" -- spontaneous explosion of extremely pissed debuffers.

I got to admit I lost interest in defenders a long time ago when I finally realised that the dev vision of defenders isn't really what I like to play. I really have no interest in buffing or healing people. I get my kicks from wussifying mobs, be that from debuffs or just holding them. If I have a mini-army of kinetics defenders, that's no because I like to spam SB at people either. It's because I like to blow things up and SBspam is like the tradeoff for being able to do that.

I'm sure there are going to be people who like playing buffy healy helper. I can recruit them for my teams, but I have zero interest in playing that role. The more often I have to spam heals, the less interest I have in playing that powerset.

In a way the injury isn't the worse part of it, but the insult. Hami-O was just an excuse. Who really believes that excuse...

I had a conversation with my SG-leader who put it quite aptly "There is a trend in the lowering powercurve of the game. When I stop having fun, I will quit". Right now there are still things I have fun in. Maybe I7 will bring in more fun things to offset the unfun things. But if nothing comes as I lose more and more parts of the game that I like, then there's nothing to justify my monthly fee.



On the subject of fun things, I notice a rise in the number of storm users running around recently. Must be PvP, I guess. I wish they would learn how to use their powers properly though. I was grouped with a guy who threw tornado non-stop, every time it was up, continuously. If the empath hadn't kept pumping him with heals he would have faceplanted ten times over. The ironic part was one of blasters who quit the team huffed and puffed on the Guardian global channel yelling he was grouped with a person who knew nothing about the game. I'm not sure who he was blaming, the spam-tornadoer for tornadoing non-stop or me because I couldn't keep aggro as mobs fly miles away in ten directions... but he was also the blaster who would open with explosive blast before I could even jump in, even when I asked him to let me open first. I got sick and let him die a few times for fun (to see if he would learn). If he wanted to prove something, he failed.

I would never unleash tornado unless I know it can be contained or if things are going south and complete chaos and scattering everything to the four winds is your best bet of survival. Use it solo all you want (I use it solo all the time), but it's really not a regular grouping power.

That's why I dislike changes that make empathy any more popular than it already is. You don't need to learn how to play, you just need a healer.