Stop the arms race.

[VixenRawR]

With the design goal of not being snared constantly balanced with having effective CC and huttball games where HB-specialized sorcs/sages can't make it halfway across the arena without being stopped unless you kill them...

 

Here's an idea:

 

* Everybody's purge grants complete CC immunity, even knockbacks, for a few seconds. It's easy to spot someone who has purged but it can be activated without interrupting any other ability in mid-animation.

 

* All current utilies that proc CC immunities affect the following only (slows, roots, hard stuns).

 

* Abilities that are uninterruptible block all stuns (hard and soft), interrupts, and knockback) but never extend duration of the immunity afterwards. Knockback and soft stuns almost always work.

 

* There are no other types of immunity. Each type here is accompanied by some kind of affect or icon or something that makes it easy to spot what kind they currently have without having to fish through a pile of like 20 buffs/debuffs in a fraction of a second to avoid wasting a CC.

 

* Hard and soft stuns negate all other immunities if they land. Basically soft stuns give you a way through the current massive wave of CC armor that requires knowing everything all other ACs and specs can do.

 

* Cooldowns for stuns and purges are tweaked until it feels like there's a healthy balance of CC being reliable/useful and not being stunned for half the damned game even if you didn't choose every last utility available to maintain mobility/inflict bonus CC as IMO, you would be wise to do in the current game typically.

 

 

 

So, you're almost never immune to knockback or a soft stun. If you want to be, burn a purge and do your force leap with a guaranteed followup move and then maybe that uninterruptable one. Or if you want to stop that bomb from getting set you could burn a purge to stop that guy from setting it. In both cases, you could be leaving yourself potentially vulnerable to soft-stun/hard stun combo. But at least you have an option when you really, really need it if you didn't burn it already. IMO this is better than being immune half to seemingly all the time for force knows what proc of what spec/AC. You still have that ambiguity with roots, hard stuns, and slowdown but it takes more than one sprinting Sage/Sorc to win an entire game of huttball against a team that's not equipped to kill her fast enough.

 

Likewise, a gunslinger can either choose to use their soft stun to stop a stealther before they escape, follow up with a hard stun and finish the guy off or save both CCs to potentially escape/defend against those two guys who just rounded the corner. It's always a tradeoff to use your one most-effective stun or your one most potent anti-CC ability. And when you have nothing else, at least you have knockback to buy a little time.

 

Also, with the purge having a duration on it you at least get to make a move when outnumbered by enemies with CC. Coming fresh out of a gate only to get bombarded with CC and nuked is kind of a bummer and forces one to pick certain utilties over others merely to survive the first 5 seconds of a match which isn't really a real choice IMO. You might as well drop those options onto the path where the rest of the character building choices got buried.

 

Generally speaking, as immunity breakers, soft stuns should probably be limited by range/AoE or not based on how critical they are to a character's defense. Not sure everybody should even get one. Nobody should get more than one.

 

My auto attack cant be interrupted, so if I spam that I am immune forever?

[fujeotwo]

There's a very good reason ranged auto faces once a channel starts. It would be far too easy for opponents to break LoS simply by running through the player. This would drastically increase the skill floor for ranged players while making it extremely simple for melee to avoid damage. Melee has plenty of ways to stop casts between interrupts, stuns, KB's, pulls and mezzes.

 

Auto-tracking was the first mistake they made, and is the reason melee have a bazillion ways to shut down casters. It meant melee were unable to pressure or stop a caster DPS from just spamming damage into them, so melee had to be buffed to be able to handle auto-tracking. With so many ways to interrupt casting in the game, range then had to be buffed with more instant DPS abilities. Which then meant that melee needed their mobility and damage buffed to deal with the drop in uptime. You see where this is going?

 

Btw Bioware if you're reading this, your game owns, I love it, so let's work together to keep it fun.

[Capt_Beers]

Auto-tracking was the first mistake they made, and is the reason melee have a bazillion ways to shut down casters. It meant melee were unable to pressure or stop a caster DPS from just spamming damage into them, so melee had to be buffed to be able to handle auto-tracking. With so many ways to interrupt casting in the game, range then had to be buffed with more instant DPS abilities. Which then meant that melee needed their mobility and damage buffed to deal with the drop in uptime. You see where this is going?

 

Btw Bioware if you're reading this, your game owns, I love it, so let's work together to keep it fun.

 

No the reason there is auto tracking is that there is no collision between players.

 

What you are suggesting is a redesign of the entire combat system

[fujeotwo]

No the reason there is auto tracking is that there is no collision between players.

 

What you are suggesting is a redesign of the entire combat system

 

Because the entire combat system needs redesigning to stop a reactionary arms race.

 

Preventing a melee from running through you during casting can be prevented with player skill. Everything else I mentioned in my post was a reactionary change to straight up mechanics.