Galaxy Brain

Nobody is "only casting Judgement powers", but with 8 people it is cast often enough alongside normal powers to shift the way the content was going, on top of Lore Pets, on top of Destiny, on top of the other slots. I do agree that more incarnate content should be added, but that requires leagues more work than altering existing incarnate content (Abilities, or hell even the current Incarnate Trials) to be better balanced. I am also not asking that Incarnate powers be nerfed to nothingness, nobody is actually asking for this including the OP of this thread. Rather the issue we see now is that: Incarnate Abilities are trivial to acquire in HC. This is overall a GOOD THING! However, the reality is that more people than ever have incarnate abilities due to this This in turn leads to more and more teams having Incarnate, or fully incarnate characters running about outside of "Incarnate" content, which in turn makes anything from 45-50 "Incarnate Content" We can add more stuff to the end game as it were to try and corral incarnates away from "normal" gameplay, but we'd need some serious incentives to do so and it doesn't prevent Incarnates from popping into random teams. TBH nothing will, and we should not prevent Incarnates from being in normal gameplay, but having it be essentially be common to have them in normal content has in fact changed the end game experience more than in live. So, what are our options if we see Incarnate Endgame in need of a change, realistically? Create more Incarnate-Only areas / missions / arcs. This is the option that requires the most work, objectively. It will take much longer to implement than other options. This also has the overall best outcome as more content tends to make the most people happy! The new areas / etc would need to be attractive to incarnated out folks to keep them busy and exercise their powers in a setting meant for them. Adjust existing lvl 45-50+ content to account for Incarnates. The next best thing is to find a way to adjust existing content in this range to be applicable to Incarnates. There a ton of options, but one I liked was the existence of Incarnate-lvl threats popping up in missions if there is an incarnate on the team, much like what we see with Void Hunters. If we adapt this tech and multiply it say, by Incarnate on the team and even by Incarnate tier this could spice things up a bit. It'd even be optional as you could unequip your incarnate powers to negate this! Simply doing a pass at some of these arcs could also be done, or a new difficulty setting for Incarnate Specific Arcs that are unlocked with higher incarnate tiers? (Tin Mage + if you have above Alpha, etc) Adjust Incarnate Powers in some way. The alternate route is to adjust the actual abilities that make somebody an incarnate to in turn adjust incarnate content. Making certain picks mutually exclusive, adjusting the power values, and so on have been put on the table. I want to make it clear though that I would not like to see these "straight up nerfed" but rather the values "shifted". For Example, lets say Lore/Destiny/Judgement are now mutually exclusive but each choice is more potent (Lore pets last longer, judgement secondary effects are stronger, w/e) This is probably the most controversial option, as it affects player characters, but in theory it is the simplest to implement. This all hinges on if these are warranted to be looked at in the first place as well. Hell, I think there are some incarnate options that could probably use a BUFF since they are unpopular from what I can tell! In my personal opinion, I think that with how common incarnates are now and how they permeate into the "normal" content as a result with the combination of ease / lack of other things for incarnates to do, there needs to be some shift.

+1 for Hidden Bonk

That's fair, though the idea should still be the Absorb layer + Res/Def layer should help mitigate a good chunk of damage when at or near full to help with Alphas.

Not if they're only partially enhanceable.

No no, there 100% is. Not every AT can send out nukes naturally, as in actually "wipe the spawn" tier nukes. Judgement lets all members of a team have this capacity + their other benefits. Blasters getb2 nukes to toss out, tanks can round up enemies and nuke with judgement, etc. Judgements also hit more targets than standard nukes which is a key factor to compare them to other AoEs.

The idea to restrict players to the choice of which (Destiny / Lore / Judgement) to take is an interesting one. Honestly that wouldn't be so bad as its more the snowball of *everyone* having all those options at once that trivializes a lot. For example, why take the Tank Hybrid option if you can cover your defenses with Destiny? That said, if you'd rather do for damage and get a Judgement Nuke then you may not want to go all damage and pick up more defensive or even support based Alpha/Interface/Hybrid slots. Blaster Nukes I feel are still balanced by being on Blasters. Only 1 AT can really do what they do with them, and as such it comes with the drawback of being on a squishy / etc. The incarnate powers are different as everyone on the team can have them + defenses + pets + etc. This said, if the "Temp Power" incarnate options end up becoming locked from each other, they should probably have a bit of a boost in effect to make up for the shift. In what way? Not sure but I would not be in favor of such a harsh nerf to effectiveness even if it'd be good for the whole. Edit: As for more incarnate content, I agree that is definitely needed! But, this still does not stop players from trivializing normal end game content which is a very awkward spot for many playing from lvl 45-50.

Scaling up the more HP you have? I would rather any HP scaling on regen for things that aren't healing stats to be with higher HP, to encourage good play.

Luckily, you too can be a good DPS and Support build with Judgement, Lore and Destiny!

The biggest takeaway IMO is that feeling when you are close to 50 on 50 teams, and experience the significant gap. Unfortunately as other have said, the genie is out of the bottle more or less in terms of altering Judgement / Lore / Destiny without probable huge backlash. Heck, I was on an ITF yesterday with my lvl 48 blaster, with minimal IO slotting (90% generics, 1 perf shifter, a few force feedbacks and that's about it) and managed to keep up but had several others talk about how they would have rather played their decked out incarnate characters to make the mission easier / keep up with the incarnate team members. The sentiment is definitely there in the Incarnate's favor in that people do enjoy being more powerful, but then again it is so easy to achieve that it creates a false sense of what the game actually is about. 🤷‍♂️

Hm, if we are tossing all sorts of ideas at the wall, how about a bonus if you are at 100% hp? The problem with Regen is that it cannot take an alpha well, and conversely it lacks any sort of mitigation unless you are actually being damaged. Maybe if certain powers in the set (the passives) also had a built in bonus effect if you are at full health: Fast Healing: when at full HP, gain an absorb layer equal to 10% of your hp (enhanceable) Resilience: when at full HP, the resistance values are doubled (enhanceable) and you also gain a small amount of defense vs all (3%, unenhanceable). The idea would be these two could combine to give you a sturdier layer of mitigation. Jumping into a fight at full health, and rewarding you for constantly healing back to full and giving you some breathing room once you do so vs a number of hits or one big hit.

I agree, Alpha and Hybrid are actually well designed in that they have a more subtle effect and are actually strategic. The others? They're all just flavors of I win buttons and it sort of sucks the fun out of many encounters unless I'm using my max recharge blaster to out-nuke judgements.

@Monos King, Slows do not stop recharge, nor stop movement, but they buy you immediate safe time. As you fight your target, you are both shooting powers at each other over time. Slowing down enemy recharge gives them less chances to throw powers at you, even if it's for a second, where you in turn could damage them without retaliation fast enough to make the difference between taking another hit or not. Slowed Movement also helps depending on the enemy type for the same reason as it takes them longer to get in range to harm you and gives you more opportunity to attack them. It's not much, but it often lets you avoid a good amount of attacks you otherwise could have taken when dealing with the couple of seconds per fight timescale of a blaster. Stacking with a secondary that slows even more enhances this effect to give you bigger windows of time, which proportional to the time combat lasts is significant. This does not translate the same to end drain which does not offer any mitigation until it is 100%, which makes it much more binary than slowing opponents. On page 3 of this thread I go over how elec blast stacks up for draining enemies, and for most encounters you out damage your drains unless it is a particularly hard fight which in turn has a gamble of being able to survive long enough to apply drain anyways. Slows in the meantime stack up as you fight to continually put the fight in your favor to give much more wiggle room without needing specific combos to slow to max immediately and keep them there. Ice Blast attacking targets will still benefit from slowing them regardless of the amount and the enemy, while elec blast doesnt. Anyways, that is sort of a tangent as we all seem to agree that critical drains are a good idea to explore. I dint think that slows would need a buff honestly if such a change were to occur as they would still remain more consistent than drains.

I like this train of thought to make each sleep power a bit more potent as a general tool if the sleep portion is tricky to balance. Look at Static Field for example with how it also causes severe end drain.

Wanna pull this point out to mention that unlike other secondary effects, unfortunately end drain does nothing until it hits 100% drainage. On elec blast in particular, most character with these attacks will kill most enemies before they are drained by the normal attacks. Normal, as in not TB or SC, which of the two only EB can properly drain.

The bigger issue is that there are other effects that can have similar safety in a much faster application (IE, hard controls or just killing the enemies). Sure, if you can drain an enemy and keep them drained they are essentially as good as dead, but if you can hold/stun them all in 2 seconds or kill them before you can drain them then the end drain was meaningless. This doesnt make drain bad, it just makes it very niche in that very specific combos are needed in order for it to "Work" while other effects just get to "work"

@Joshex, I like that breakdown but I think attributing reason to how or why certain powers were implemented will forever be a guessing game as the game was axed very soon after the first bit of absorb went live. We simply do not know if there were intentions to explore the mechanic even further either by tweaking it or adding it to more sets. That said, I wanna touch on the benefits of absorb compared to HP. Firstly, Absorb gets much more useful the closer you are to max HP anyways, since it let's you actually go beyond the max even if temporarily. An invuln tank with Dull Pain running + hp bonuses will get a huge amount of mileage out of an absorb layer cast on them that stacks with all their defenses. Secondly, the handful of powers which do have a regenerating absorb shield act as a very unique "Negation" layer. For example, a character with an absorb layer of 120 every 3 seconds effectively has a barrier of 40dps in order to actually hurt them at all. What is lacking in this game though are interactions with this shield that we see in many other games (Such as Borderlands Shields) that play off having the secondary HP as a true resource. The easiest example is having the shield be heal-able in some fashion, or have conditions such as "Bonus resist if you have absorb" and so on. As is, given it is just another layer of temp HP in the most basic sense it's best use is to layer on top of already high HP to bypass traditional HP caps. Beyond that, the most interesting use is to grant characters a refreshing layer of "raw anti damage". Hell, it doesn't even have to be refreshing, it'd be interesting to have a small layer of absorb that refreshes and goes away as fast as possible to truly have a -Damage barrier.

On the flip side, if we look at this problem from the other way we ask why do teams only need offense at end game, and is that itself an issue?

So, I was curious how Absorb and Max Hp compare, so let's look at Dull Pain as an example. Dull Pain grants +40% Max HP for 120s. This allows you to directly take 40% more damage, as well as boosts your regen ticks (not speed) by 40% for 120s. It recharges in 360s. A character with 1000 hp will gain 400 hp from this, and go from regenerating 50 hp every 12 sec to regenerating 70hp/12s (assuming no other regen boosts). So not only are you gaining 400 extra hp for 120s, but at base you are getting 10 ticks of 20 extra regenerated health (200) for a total of 600 added HP for the duration. If this were a flat regen buff, youd have to tick 14 times in 120 sec, which may still equate to a 40% faster rate but iirc the math for regen boosts is weird and it's late lol. So the regen value is easy enough to emulate with a straight boost to regen rate. An absorb shield for 40% of your hp is then still not equal as it will simply not last the full 120s that the bonus 400 hp would. The HP boost is there to stay even if you take 400 damage, while the absorb is gone once it's gone and cannot be healed in any way. Since it is so temporary, it may be best to compare it to the uptime of Dull Pain. 120s duration/360s recharge gives an uptime of 33%. Apply that to the 400 bonus HP and we are left with 132 average health boost. So, in theory you would need an Absorb layer worth about 13% of base hp to be constantly applied to be roughly equal to dull pain's lingering HP boost at base, ignoring Regen. Let's say we use the enhanced Dull Pain with 80% health and a 180s recharge. That is an extra 800 base hp, an extra 400 healed over time for a total of 1200. The 800 has an uptime of 67%, so that averages to 536, or a constant 54% absorb shield. Ignoring the interplay between hp and absorb as mentioned prior, you'd need values similar to what I've described to be constantly active to compete with Dull Pain and its clones in terms of raw mitigation over time. Though the 50% may seem rather extreme, unless it was a 25% base power that could be refreshed at a 100% rate with 3 SO's worth of slotting.

That would be nice if there were say, a toggle that were like the Blaster /Fire that actually healed you X/Sec instead of being faster regeneration in the traditional sense.

Not sure if this is how it works? If so, that seems... off. 100% absorb should always be the cap which is max base hp

Oh, it might be.... 🤔 I thought there were more, if no then yeah all the self +HP tools should stay +HP. But that should def be +Absorb.

I can run stuff in a bit... but the short answer is it depends on the combo of players, and mainly due to the +HP buffs from allies. If say, a scrapper uses Dull Pain, has a +HP accolade and some +HP set bonuses, they are awfully close to the cap as is and would definitely not benefit from an ally's Hoarfrost.

If we wanna talk about absorb more broadly I'm all ears. I think the issue we have now is that we're trying to treat absorb as temp HP without the means to really leverage it. The attached screenshot is the Shields (blue) and Health (Red) UI from Borderlands 3. That game has essentially CoH absorb as a core mechanic via the shield items you can equip, on top of our resistance, regen, additional HP (and shields), and even forms of our defense that arent just getting out of the way via actual RNG like we have. The difference here is that shields (absorb) is treated as an actual semi-permanent layer of HP that is there until damaged, and the there is a delay for when it can come back. In CoH, absorb has a time limit even if you are undamaged making it behave much differently and more like a pseudo-heal, outside the powers that grant refreshing absorb. Those powers grant small, stacking bonuses that only last a short while and act more like a damage barrier where you have to deal more than X flat amount to actually harm the character, which is a different mechanism all together.

That's interesting.... I know he has (untyped) damage as well, so most defenses dont work but that seems like a weird oversight.

That reason is literally timing. Absorb is new and most of the max hp powers are old. They did not have time to go back and tweak nor when they were made absorb was not an option. As for the vote, I'll argue that any ally-facing +MaxHP would be better as a large absorb with +regen. Many characters with self +HP, accolades, bonuses, will benefit less and less from ally +HP buffs so an absorb would be better.