I missed my scheduled sacrifices to RNGesus and recently had a string of Super Snipes (slow snipe plus aim) whiff, which brought to mind a thought that has been bouncing around in my head since Live: letting to-hit buff powers raise the accuracy cap for affected powers.
I figured that such a foundational limit would be difficult to conditionally change, but the recent expansion to the tanker aoe limits makes me think that it would be viable. Wise or not is something that I hope to flesh out here, but it should be just as feasible as the tanker aoe width buffs.
Why such a buff would have value? Right now, powers like aim, tactics, or build-up have little value since you can chew some inspirations instead for a shorter animation time and longer duration. Every build that I make has 95% accuracy for the main attacks in a normal 50+1 vs 54s situation anyway, which means the yellow inspirations have very little value at all and aim or buildup only provide value in raising damage output momentarily. Running tactics on a support toon, as things are now, is basically of no value at all to a team outside of a Posi task force.
So, what I propose would be something along the lines of yellow inspirations allowing a chance to hit cap (cthcap) of 96%, toggle powers like tactics or targeting drone or focused accuracy, or slow-snipe, allow a cthcap of 97%, damage focused long recharge click powers that also boost tohit like build up raise the cthcap to 98%, and tohit focused long recharge powers like Aim raise the cthcap to 99%. Combining any number of these effects would simply add 1 point to cthcap for the current highest effective power, so a yellow plus buildup would have a cthcap of 99%, or targeting drone plus Aim would mean a 100% cthcap for the duration of Aim.
Note that this would only affect that maximum chance to hit, so trying to nail a mogged Paragon Protector or a saturation phalanx of Cimerorans would still be a fool’s errand.
I don’t think that there would be any significant balance issues from this, as we’re only increasing effective damage output by 5% at a maximum and more like 2% most of the time. However, this change would let slow-snipes regain some of their “special”ness in being able to more reliably hit special targets, as well as giving some benefit to powers like tactics and focused accuracy in the 99% of situations where running those is currently just an effort in losing net recovery.
Any other thoughts or considerations that I’ve missed?