Steampunkette

The problem being that pool powers are SUPPOSED to be kinda bad. They fill out your style, rather than define your play experience. They're not supposed to be something huge that you would forgo a primary powerset or even secondary powerset pick to choose. That's why even as "Good" as tough and weave are they're not as good as any Scrapper's defense or resistance toggles. "Buffing the other pools to be good" won't help unless they also provide globally big benefits that would make someone consider not taking Hasten to take one of them, instead. And that's a -huge- leap on the power curve. Particularly since they wouldn't be mutually exclusive. People would just take Hasten -and- three other 'Character ability redefining' powers instead of just Hasten.

The fact that 83% of level 50 characters use Hasten shows that it's either overpowered or all of it's contemporaries are underpowered, Mechano. It's the single most extreme outlier among power pool choices there is. Nearly -everyone- takes Hasten because it's too good to pass up. I disagree that fixing Energy Melee or Regen is 'More Important'. Those powersets have a significantly lower impact on the game's population than Hasten does. Hasten is used by every single archetype, where EM and Regen are used by 3. It's not really comparable.

Yes. He can do X before Y is fixed. Or Z. Or A. He can do shit in any order he and the others choose. Some fixes are easier than others. The change I've offered up is low-hanging fruit. Add +25% Recharge to everyone's 100% baseline Recharge, Reduce the Cooldown of Hasten, Reduce the Recharge Value of Hasten. Compare that to digging through the Pet AI and figuring out which of the three (or if it's all of the three) versions of baseline pet AI needs to be snipped to make the system work (If any of them can even be pulled out...) Plus the -rest- of that spaghetti... Honestly, editing powers themselves is likely the -easiest- part of working on this game because each power is self-contained as a process. Except shit like Fury and Domination where it's actually, like, 6 separate powers working together hidden behind a single power in your UI...

Being rude in response to someone who is rude to you isn't "Ironic" It isn't even unusual. Honestly, it's the -expected- outcome. But go ahead and keep on with the Faux Civility where I'm a 'bad person' for responding to unkindness with anything less than perfect manners.

The Paralysis of Lists is the same in any argument. "We can't fix X until we fix Y." when Y has nothing to do with X. I.E. Y is not a component of X. Also known as the "Zero Sum" game.

Which is why you asked when I would be nerfing Empathy and Spines/Fire. It's the same principle: A Strawman Argument. You picked something that wasn't my position and held it up as my position. He did the same to you. And nah, Shard. You didn't 'simply disagree'. You were insulting and fallacious. That's not a simple disagreement, that's intentional rudeness.

I need Vampires! I'm holding out for Vampires on the edge of the night! And they've gotta be fast And they've gotta be strong And they've gotta give my neck a bite! I need Vampires! I'm holding out for Vampires 'til the morning light! They've gotta be sure And they've gotta be cool And they gotta make me their Wife! Make me their wiiiiiiiiiife!

Turnabout is fair play. But if people keep stuffing words into each others mouths it might become foreplay...

Because the intent is to make Hasten -look- less attractive. To make it less required. By putting it into the 25% increments it becomes a 'Nice Benefit' for some builds, but not -as- big of one, unless you're looking to push Recharge to the point of double stacking it. It creates a psychological separation. "If I've got 25% already, do I really -need- that other 25% when I could instead take X power from Y pool, instead?" The people who desperately cling to the 70% Recharge bonus would retain their benefit without changing anything they're doing. For the extreme buildmonkeys it would even be a 5% haste buff (That largely means nothing thanks to diminishing returns)... There's also the increased end cost if you do double stack it. It's not a big deal but it is marginally less attractive that way. Ah, yes... The "We can't fix anything until we fix everything else" argument. The Paralysis of Lists. Good stuff.

So 3 pages ago, now, I posted an alternative suggestion. Everyone was too busy engaging in Ad Hominem, Strawmen, and other fallacies to notice it, though, so I'll repost it, here: Reduce Hasten to a 25% recharge buff. Reduce the Cooldown to 200 seconds. Add a Global 25% recharge buff to everyone. With 2 recharge IOs Hasten becomes Perma at 25%, with the 25% constant, that's 50%. Like Practiced Brawler, it will be possible to double-stack Hasten, resulting in a net 5% gain at 75% total. But the incentive to do so is lessened, aside from the minmaxers and recharge monkey powersets and archetypes.

Requires 2 other power picks and a corpse. It also doesn't make all of your other powers more effective, it just grants a buff. Just leave, ShardWarrior, if you're not going to actually contribute to the conversation.

Empath Defenders are popular because people like the narrative and mechanical function of healers. Hasten is popular because it's a powerful globally affecting buff. If you cannot see the difference between these two things I'm not certain I can help you. Stop being obtuse.

Some really great points have been raised in the last half page. I still feel like it being that OVERWHELMINGLY POPULAR is a problem. It shows that all the other options are vastly inferior by comparison, mostly because it is a globally-affecting power which no other powerset can provide. And -creating- globally affecting powers in multiple power pools isn't an option, either, since it would exacerbate the issue, not fix it in any meaningful way. So how about this as a different form of compromise: 25% Global Recharge for everyone. 25% Global Recharge from Hasten. Hasten's cooldown is reduced from 450 seconds down to 200 seconds, making it easily "Permable" with 2-slotted IOs. Allow it to stack with itself. With heavy set-slotting you could "Double Stack" Hasten permanently, resulting in a net 5% increase over current Permahasten. However with the 25% baseline recharge rate increase, perhaps Hasten won't be quite so attractive.

So a Smoke Bomb Clone. I don't see a reason we'd need to remove identity from that, though. Take Psi Projection for example: Just use the Mind-Link animation, make the enemy's head glow, and say you've erased yourself from his perceptions. For Fire use Combustion's animation and when it hits give NPCs a brief cloud of smoke around their heads that keeps them from seeing the Operative. Smoke bombs for Martial. Ice can lay out a thick mist. Earth can stomp up a dust cloud... And we could add a defensive benefit to each of those powers, as well, so that the archetype, overall, retains the benefit of having a 'Click Defense' at tier 3 or 4.

What I mean is there's no option to make a power you have just stop functioning because you've taken a different power. Mutual Exclusivity in the engine only works as a "Take one power and you can't take the other" That said, you could just slap a 20% recharge rate debuff on Hasten to cancel out the 20% global increase... But that doesn't help the core problem at all. Everyone's still gonna take Hasten. It's too good on it's own.

What does the Misdirection move -do- exactly? PBAoE Placate? Create a Pseudopet to taunt/distract? There's been a lot of suggested Misdirections. We need to narrow it down to explicitly decide what it is.

Not -exactly-. I'm looking at averaging out it's effectiveness as an autopower based on the unslotted effectiveness of the power's duration vs recharge rate. Then deleting Hasten from the Superspeed Power Pool and replacing it with the lower power recharge buff "Quick" as an 'always on' power granting +15%. You wouldn't be able to slot anything, you'd just be constantly somewhat faster instead of occasionally significantly faster. Cannot do it. The function of the Mutually Exclusive code is that if you have one power you cannot select another power that it is exclusive with. If you set it up that way, Hasten would be unselectable. And leaving Hasten in the game, at all, just means it'll continue to be the default power everyone picks at high end. (Or at least around 83% of everyone) That is true. We'd need to look at a few specific powers and potentially alter their recharge time to make Perma Possible, if Perma is Desirable. Whether Perma PA is actually a desirable thing for the game to have would be a WHOLE other kettle of fish! Though for what it's worth? I think Permadom is both awful and amazing. I feel like it should be lowered in function and in recharge rate. Instead of doubling the value of controls it should be +1 Mag and the recharge reduced by 40 seconds to make it easier to perma.

The more I think about this change... the more I realize how minor a nerf it would turn out to be... So to clear things up: Turns out I forgot to turn off my 3 Force Feedack Procs in my powers on Mids. The actual recharge time, with Hasten on, for Light Form is 85 seconds with a 90 second duration. I have 173% recharge on this character, not 300% recharge. I was SO CONFUSED when I started looking over her powers! Without Hasten, the recharge is 106 seconds. Meaning it's got a 16 second downtime. That's a 21 second difference! If I had the global +20% and a further +15% from Quick that's out to an 11 second downtime. But I could take the one slot I added to Hasten and put it into Lightform to bring it down to nothing. No downtime whatsoever... pretty swanky, since I could just set that one power to autocast rather than having to also worry about Hasten. And I'd wind up losing about 1 second on the recharge of my main attacks... which ain't the worst thing. I could just slot some other power in during the chain. Unless, of course, any of my 3 Force Feedbacks proc and then my chain is back to normal. All in all, it seems like the impact it would have on high end builds isn't as bad as it might initially seem. If only because of the Diminishing Returns of recharge rates.

Hilariously, your suggestion ultimately lead to me suggesting a larger global recharge rate buff to everyone than you initially suggested, but the removal of Hasten as the counterbalance.

Look at my first post in this thread. While I was against adding a global 10% recharge rate to everyone, I was down with the idea of adding some Recharge Mechanics to other parts of the Superspeed Power Pool. Specifically because it makes thematic sense that someone who runs at superspeed -reacts- at superspeed. But over the course of the thread my position changed. And when you presented the hard numbers of how overwhelmingly big Hasten is at high end, where it's a largely mandatory power, it made me completely reconsider my position... It's not that a 10% global recharge bonus would be a bad thing. It's that Hasten is -so- close to mandatory that is the bigger problem. My positions in this thread have changed from "More recharge isn't a problem, but we should make it thematic rather than global" to "Holy shit look at how overwhelmingly popular this +recharge power is, far beyond it's peers to the point where it's perceived as mandatory... shit. This is bad." I didn't "Pick a position and then aim for confirmation bias to prop myself up". I took a very loose position and then saw more and more evidence that that position was in the wrong and chose a much different, and a bit harder line? Position.

With SOs or IOs you can get the recharge down to 240 seconds. Which is why I suggested adding 'Quick' to the Superspeed Power Pool as an additional 15% recharge increase. 2 SOs or IOs gets you to about 50% uptime 70/2 is 35, so 20% base +15% from Quick. This change would be a fairly major buff to the majority of builds and a mild to moderate nerf to some extreme outlier builds. Including my badass humanform PB Build who currently enjoys a total of 300% Recharge over the baseline 100... She'd get a 35 point recharge hit and bring her down to 265%... which... y'know. Still more than enough for permanent Light Form. Permadom, on the other hand, would largely remain unaffected. It's right here:

Oh, no. This isn't about what I want, @QuiJon. You're guessing at my motives and missing wildly. I'm not a minmaxer and, frankly, I never reach the limit of my power pools. I usually take all of my primary and secondary, minus Taunts, Confronts, and Placates, and only grab a handful of pool powers. Hasten and Fighting are usually two of them, with an EPP as the third. But I never use Combat Jumping and only take Leadership for characters who will use both maneuvers -and- assault or tactics... Point is: I've never had a character with 4 pools in my life. Usually I try to get by with 1 or 2, I've never had a permadom (though I have some doms) and I have only one character who has Permahasten and it's a badass humanform PB rawr. I was talking in the "Swift +10% global recharge" thread when I saw that 90% of level 50 players have Hasten. That's an outsized impact by any measure. That's literally the reason that I brought this up. The total and exclusive reason. Also for Permadom you need a total of 123% Recharge Rate. This would be 20% of it off the bat, leaving you with 103% recharge rate required to maintain permadom. Dunno WHERE you got the 160% stuff from... Getting 3 LotGs gets you 22.5, you can get 10% from up to 5 Purple Sets (including the Dominator-Specific sets) which puts you at 72.5% meaning you need only 3 of the 6.25% recharge bonuses and 3 5% recharge bonuses and you're set. And hey. Since you won't have Hasten, anymore, you can just leave Domination on autocast with no more juggling! I'm not looking at a nerf. I'm looking at a globalization. Everyone gets it, like everyone gained Fitness. Again, not nerfing it because it's good because I'm not suggesting a nerf. I'm suggesting it be removed from the game, -entirely- and that all characters, whether they took hasten or not, get a 20% global recharge buff. Fitness got the same treatment, in fact. It's no longer a power pool, and is instead a Global Grant at level 2, with everyone getting it. I'm suggesting the global setup because giving everyone a power as strong as hasten from level 1 onward seems a bit OP, so I averaged it's function over time. But there has been some decent points brought up about the effects of hasten. So how about the power we replace Hasten with is an Autopower called "Quick". Always on, no Endurance cost, +15% Recharge Rate. Taking that power would be roughly equivalent to having Hasten 2-slotted for Recharge Rate. And while it might still be -super- popular at high end, it wouldn't be more powerful than slotting 2 LotG powers, and most people wouldn't 'need' it for their builds because they're already getting the +20% baseline increase.

I agree, fully. And I was using your unserious proposal as a joke. Before you posted it I had Rath's "Half Joking" ED removal comment in the same spot. You just gave me a better set up for the joke! Perfect Balance is impossible. Ballpark Balance is possible and should always be the goal. Catering to the minmax minority is... yeah. A bad idea. The amount of elitism it encourages can destroy a community.

There are about 60k characters at level 50. About 50k of them use Hasten. It's one of the single most used powers in the game, far outstripping most pool powers, though less people overall use Hasten than Fly. It's a power that is, essentially, never used for Theme but exclusively used for Function. Much as how Stamina, Health, and Swift were used before the Fitness Pool was incorporated into all characters. Instead, we should increase the baseline recharge of all characters by 20% and replace the power with something else. The 20% value is based on Hasten's recharge time being 3.75 times longer than it's Duration, then dividing the 70% hasten bonus by the time difference which is 18.6%. I rounded up the other 1.4% just to make it looks more presentable. This way everyone gets the 'full benefit' of unslotted Hasten by averaging out it's effect as a permanent autopower instead of a click power. With Hasten gone we'd need a new Super Speed power. I'd like to suggest some sort of 'Combat Superspeed' ability. Perhaps a weaker version of Martial Manipulation's "Burst of Speed"? I'm open to suggestions. To be clear: This is a serious suggestion at this point. Not a ruse or a joke meant to poo poo on a different thread. Seeing the level 50 numbers on Hasten compared to the populace showed me that Hasten is the new Fitness. It may not be MANDATORY. But it is too good in relation to it's neighbors in other power pools. EDIT: After continued discussion I have revamped my suggestion to the following: 1) Lower Hasten's Cooldown to 200 Seconds 2) Lower Hasten's Recharge Rate Buff to 25% 3) Grant all players a +20% Recharge Rate Buff starting at level 1 This would allow Hasten to be 'Perma' with 2 Recharge SOs at 45% Recharge Rate increase. But would also allow people to Double-Stack Hasten if they have enough recharge rate buffs to a full 70% total Recharge Rate Increase over the current baseline. The intent is to split out portions of the buff to make it less attractive, overall, while still retaining it's ultimate function, in the hopes that more people will take the 20% recharge rate increase as 'Enough' of a benefit that they feel they don't -have- to take Hasten. Also I made the title a little less drastic to better reflect the current leaning. Annnnnd here comes Version 3! We're back to Deleting Hasten, but also incorporating Permahasten into all builds... kinda. Topic has been changed to better represent option 3.

Could be... Could be... Or it could be that as you level even if you take your entire primary and secondary powerset you absolutely HAVE TO take a Pool Power at 24 and another at 30 and most pool powers kinda suck or lend themselves to specific builds while Hasten improves literally every build. Unless you're contending that all 53,000 characters are slamming their heads against the Recharge Limit and trying to get the absolute perfect attack chain... Huh... More than anything that kind of hints at the fact that Hasten, on it's own, might be too good as a power pool choice, doesn't it? Great Figures, Adjustor!