I like a lot of what he says but I don't agree on the armour.
If the solution is to change the way that toughness works (so that it's armour + health and not health multiplied mitigation achieved by armour) then anything else is just skirting round the problem. Simply removing armour as a reroll stat doesn't make it any less valuable. All it would do is turn even more pieces of gear into vendor trash simply because they had a crap armour stat. At least as it is now, you can still turn a gear piece which doesn't have the highest native armour into a reasonable piece by throwing some credits at it on the recal station to get the top additional armour available.
If anything, Marco's suggested seems to increase the effect of the RNG. He does say that it's a short term fix but I think it raises more questions, like how they migrate existing gear when 1.6 drops. Do they just merge the existing armour into a single stat and unlock the remaining stats on that item? If they do that then existing gear pieces benefit from effectively having had two stat rerolls. Everyone prior to 1.6 will be spending money rolling max additional armour stats. Alternatively we get yet another GS increase to render those troublesome armour pieces ineffective and everyone is off farming again. It doesn't take a genius to see that a lot of people won't be happy to do that with no new content to farm in.
In patch 1.4, Massive wanted to make Enemy Armour Damage a major attribute, as opposed to a minor attribute. It got pulled at the last minute. Maybe that is the solution and we are playing with a "halfway house" at the moment. Is making EAD a major attribute something that levels the playing field between damage mitigation given by armour and the ability to strip that armour (and thus the damage mitigation) without being forced into a particular gear set (e.g Strikers) or weapon (e.g. assault rifle)? Promote EAD to a major attribute and increase it's upper limit on gear pieces.
Only time will tell whether Massive are serious about balancing this game. If it takes major changes (such as the armour bar and changing the fundamentals of how armour works) then are they willing to make them and is the community willing to wait? If the answer to either of those is "No" then we'll end up in an endless balancing circle.
I do believe that trying to address PvE and PvP separately is fraught with risk. I appreciate that it's a massive task (pun intended) but they need to do a joint PvE/PvP task force/balancing exercise. Alternatively they could go down the line of separating those two by introducing attributes that only affect PvE or PvP, and by that I mean player stats, gear sets, gear attributes, skills, the whole nine yards. But they have dug themselves a hole by having the DZ as a combined PvE/PvP environment. See, that DZ is a pain for both developers and players alike.
Anyhow, enough waffle. Merry Christmas people.
I totally agree with you!!Originally Posted by NetStag72 Go to original post
He had a real fix for armor, and a quick fix for armor. This guy knows his stuff better than anyone at Massive. The only thing I don't agree with him on is with skill power affecting cooldown. His proposal makes sense in PvP, where you have a quick engagement then a break till the next one, but in PvE world it's a non-stop battle and skill builds need those skills up 100% to compensate for the lack of stamina and firepower. Even now, sticky bombs and seeker mines aren't worth it in PvE, they can't be nerfed from their current state. The only solution is a different set of rules for PvP.
I think it makes perfect sense. There are plenty of ways to reduce cooldowns. If armour wasn't a necessary roll on gear you would want skill haste for a skill build. A weapon with coolheaded or decisive help a great deal in reducing cooldowns too. And there is a talent that reduces cooldowns by 20% when on low health. Plenty of options thereOriginally Posted by adam92107 Go to original post![]()