Antibuff - remove it from PPU - give it to everyone else.

[William Antrim]

I would suggest making it fire after charging up like the psi one does.

[Ghostface_Speak]

I would suggest making it fire after charging up like the psi one does.

Yes,this should be tested on the TS.If those Tools can be tweaked to be useful,there may be no need to move the Antibuff from the PPU [giving it back to the APU,in the current state of the game/balancing,is not a good idea at all]

[CMaster]

With things like this, it would be nice if we could get some "rough and ready" prototypes of several of the ideas (eg warmup, cooldown and self debuff versions) made up, then each gets a few days as active on the test server, and we could see which seemed to work best.

[Izeo]

Question: Does anyone enjoy the idea of a debuff spell anyway?

Doesn't this seem kind of silly?:
"I wanna shield this guy so we have an advantage *buffs ally*"
"No! I don't want you to have that advantage *antibuffs enemy*"
"No but I want him to have the shield.. *rebuffs ally*" etc?

(In other words, maybe a good way to balance it would be to remove it?)

[Doc Holliday]

Question: Does anyone enjoy the idea of a debuff spell anyway?

Doesn't this seem kind of silly?:
"I wanna shield this guy so we have an advantage *buffs ally*"
"No! I don't want you to have that advantage *antibuffs enemy*"
"No but I want him to have the shield.. *rebuffs ally*" etc?

(In other words, maybe a good way to balance it would be to remove it?)

Its about tactics. With no antibuff the ppu runs around all day going hahahaahahhahahahahahahhahaha i cannot be killed like some idiots do. Then you hit them with the antibuff and antiheal and your damage dealers start smacking them around and they get scared, panic sets in, they make a mistake and die. or if they are bad they die without the panic.

(or you zone down in to TG hq and you write fail back to them. like they did to you ^^ :P)

If no antibuff the ppu becomes a god and cannot be taken down easily without some casting their enhanced enhanced enhanced ultimated crahn holy fatal run time error sanctum on to the target and his shields falling off during the time hes out.

On a side note a friend of mine was on his ppu whos capped (int is short maybe 3 levels) and running rare shields etc. He crashed and people started whaling on him and he still had time to log back in and get moving again before they could drop him.

Yes. We NEED antibuff.

[Izeo]

I guess I would've prferred no such thing as antibuff, but, don't make the PPU shields as strong as they are, to compensate.

[phunqe]

Quite early still, so I might be talking out of my ass, but back in the old days before antibuff, I cannot really remember it being that unbalanced?
Sure, the PPU was unkillable, but there were not so many of them were there? I remember a lot more damage dealers and only a handful of PPUs.
I might be remembering it wrong though, although removing antibuff could potentially reduce the PPU population, hence balancing it?

Did that make any sense or...

EDIT: What I was thinking was that if antibuff got removed, it would by evolution imply that more people rolled damage dealers instead since it would be quite stale otherwise. Damage dealer class is in general more prefered amongst players. If we can boil down the PPU population and have those who really loves to play it (which includes me actually), how would that turn out?
I don't mind playing it as is at all really, just that it seems a bit bloated at the moment and they are brought/played for the wrong reasons.

EDIT 2: I do understand the make or break implications the old days PPU had, but if you bring them now for antibuffs which can make or break it as well I don't really see a large difference? I do remember opfights with unbalanced amount of PPUs that could go either way before the times of the debuffs.

Again, might be my ass talking, I started playing quite recently again so it might be all based on the wrong assumtions

[phunqe]

Early in the morning + before breakfast = incoherent.

In any case, I remember playing both a PPU and a damage dealer in the old days and all I can remember was pure fun without the antibuffs. Remind me, were the antibuffs added due to a massive outcry about PPUs or just added as a "general" balancing measure?

[William Antrim]

We have had antibuff for as long as I can remember. If you don't have it people will bring even more ppus. If you have that then kiss goodbye to real PvP. We need a reason to bring less ppus not more.

If we had more powerful group buffs that might help also. Ppu now has less of an impact than he ever did at op fights. They used to be godlike back in the day which is why when we had good ones in our clans we brought less of them. We just didn't need the extra ones basically. Because they're more tuned now people seem to need more of them to support the team.

[phunqe]

Ok, I just could not remember a saturated PPU presence when there were no antibuffs since you really didn't need as many (and people tend to gravitate towards offensive classes unless forced otherwise).

[William Antrim]

I think if everyone has the antibuff it will force people to think about bringing more damage dealers than antibuffers because once those antibuffs go off (and lets be fair you could always have 2 people a fraction of a second apart starting their antibuffs on the same target) the target is going to be vulnerable. This will invariably force some clans to bring more ppus of course but over time I think the consensus will be more damage dealers to bring the win that much quicker.

Whatever happens it removes the focus from the PPU. I am all for giving the APU his antibuff back. With all of the other nerfs currently in place for the class I think this is one step too far. I would be supportive of any plans to change this back. Even if the APU becomes a "utility" player in op fights (ie antibuffing and damage dealing on unbuffed chars) then I would be happy. However I do not want to see this become APU/PPU opfight teams and noone else. If everyone had antibuffs then we would see a variation in the tactics and group class selection. Plus it would also mean that some of the newer people to the game could experience pvp on their char without having to level up one of the "op fighting" classes.

If all four choices had a role I think we would have a much more colourful and fun Neocron.

I think at the very very minimum PE's should be given an antibuff of some sort. Even if the Spies and Tanks werent able to do it. I think this would go a very long way towards offsetting the differences in damage output (compared with spies) and defence (compared with tanks) at opfights.

[CMaster]

No, I have to agree with Phunqe here - more antibuffs (from any source) means more PPUs to counter it. Pretty much inevitably. More antibuffs = more time buffing one person than otherwise (replacing the removed buffs) = less fighters fully supportable per PPU = lower fighter:PPU ration. There's no practical way around this - unless you make antibuffing so easy and prevalent that there's no point PPUing/PPUs drop dead all the time.

Really, the only "need" I see for antibuff is as a rez prevention (and that can be gotten rid of . You can certainly argue (I would agree) that antibuff adds an extra tactical factor, and rewards well organized teams (those who can focus a target as they get antied, those who can quickly rebuff their fighters.

And yes, the better the player on the PPU, the more people they can support. It was a classic of 2.0/2.1 - lots of people could do the "buttplug" role - relatively few made good PPUs supporting their whole team. Of course, really, really practiced APU/PPU teams had their own strengths.

In the long, PPU-overview I'd like to see PPUs able to look after bigger groups. However, more antibuffing will make this harder to achieve, not easier. Still, anything is probably better than the current situation where bringing dedicated antibuff PPUs makes sense.

[Brammers]

Early in the morning + before breakfast = incoherent.

In any case, I remember playing both a PPU and a damage dealer in the old days and all I can remember was pure fun without the antibuffs. Remind me, were the antibuffs added due to a massive outcry about PPUs or just added as a "general" balancing measure?

Antibuffs have existed in NC1, and was a weapon used by the APU. In 2.2 KK changed it so it could be used only by a PPU. It's probably just as well the anti-buff role got move to the PPU as APU's are too weak atm. (However APU's balance is another topic in itself!)

However at the end of the day, I prefer the anti-buff being limited as it is now. I really don't want to get into a fight to find myself anti-buffed every 5 seconds and having to get myself buffed again (That include self-buffing)

[William Antrim]

Then what you are describing as your wish Cmaster is more powerful ppus. This was what we had in nc1. Extremely powerful individuals who basically changed the game with their skills. I am not blowing smoke up anyone's backside but everyone can remember the best ppus on their servers pulling off 7 second rezzes and rebuffing their teams before the opposition had a chance to counter.

I think if ppus are dropping dead all of the time at op fights it is going to discourage the use of more than one or two in favour of more damage dealers to outwit the enemy damage dealers. If I bring a higher amount of firepower the theory is I should attain superiority over and control of the battlespace in a shorter amount of time. I can project more power into the given area than you can, not less. Do not forget that there will be more capped "other chars" in any given clan than capped PPU's.

Plus if Clan A brings extra ppus they will reach a point where they are saturated with ppus and their damage output will either drop off significantly OR they will need to find more warm bodies to come to op fights. If their damage drops off (the most likely course of action) then they will soon need to adapt their play once more to combat the enemy as they wont be killing anyone yet at the same time Clan B who might theoretically have more damage dealers will be able to hit the fewer damage dealers that are currently there and put them down faster thus negating the use of the PPUs. Its pointless having lots of PPU's if your damage dealers have all been killed. Plus if they try to rez one of their DD's with the current rez timings and everyone has antibuff theyre gonna have to be brave or lucky or a combination of both.

I can certainly see the point you guys are trying to make and I can wholeheartedly see some people adopting that approach but due to time and resources currently available to many clans I do not honestly see it happening this way. If anything I see a shift away from PPU-buffed fights and perhaps even some real fighting from people who do not need one to fight. If they can be unbuffed so easily why not bring a char who can at least fight back and defend himself. Particularly with the new positioning fix in pvp I think a lot of these pvp dynamics are going to change. In the short term yeah I could see more ppus as the game is currently but if these changes were to come about then I think we would see a lot more thought put into some op fight team compositions.

[Doc Holliday]

keep in mind that not everyone has/plays a ppu all the time and player skill is an infinite variable. Added to which if other classes have the antibuff ability they can match this with a damage dealing capacity and therefore adjust the tactics accordingly in terms of op war composition.

i think this is currently being discussed from a purely mathematical point of view and must be regarded in more "real" terms.

Besides if the apu has the antibuff he becomes more useful in an op fight and not so much the forgotten class. At the same time he is still not on par with the tank in terms of defensive ability meaning its the attackers choice who to target first. A tank who is antibuffed can take more damage even unshielded at an op fight and therefore will always be inherently useful because of this factor. he can be used to block shots and soak damage that an apu cannot. the defensive line so to speak.

I dont truly expect it to go back to monkocron.

The spy with his stealth and high damage output also has a role on the battlefield being able to stealth around positions etc and get in to the opponents 2nd or 3rd line and hit and run so he will still also find he has a role. If the PE had damage upped and the option of an antibuff he too might find a role in this equation.

Just my thoughts. Tactically all this must be taken in to account. i dont expect the monkocron teams of nc1 even if antibuffs are given back to apus and removed from ppus.

An alternative here could be to make 2 kinds of antibuff. one each for the apu and ppu. different requirements on them eg mana cost can be assigned in order to create that extra niche role in an op team. IE the apus is cheaper on his mana. give an incentive to bring one or two to a fight. Its certainly a consideration no one else has made yet as far as im aware.