kenlon

No, that's because Mid's holds to the old rules around power slotting, and I couldn't remember the workaround off the top of my head so I didn't put the sixth slot there in the posted build. It's there in game and has been the whole time.😄 I refer you to Bopper's mathposting. It's close enough that I barely notice hasten downtime. I mostly ended up with it in Hasten because there wasn't anywhere else more useful to me - I could have put it as a fourth slot in Weave and picked up a 9% accuracy bonus (I notice your build is *way* short on accuracy, not being able to hit +4s at 100% without the incarnate level shift, which is no bueno, IMO) but it wasn't really compelling. I mean, there's nothing wrong with your build here, but it explicitly goes against why I said I made the build I did. The one you posted would put me back to having the psi-hole that I wanted to get away from, and would drop my damage, regen/max-hp and effective end recovery in order to get more defense that I don't actually need. Having the higher regen on top of the higher psi resist has made such a difference when fighting psi enemies that I've been very happy with my posted build. (Though, admittedly, your significantly higher Melee and AoE defense may cover for that psi weakness, so that's something to consider.) Given that tanks, even after the buffs, still need all the damage they can get, losing out on Musculature in favor of Agility and *still* not getting permahasten out of it sounds like a bad trade. I also question your attack slotting a bit, but that's easily swapped around. Also, I'm never taking Hover on a melee character because I don't like wanting to scoop someone's eyes out with a spoon which is what using flight in melee does to me. (Let's be honest here, Super Jump kicks every other travel power's butt, anyway.)

Your troll game is weak - take more superadine. Hasten is a bad piece of design, and never should have been put in the game. I'll agree with you there. But it is not on the same level as the Fitness pool pre-inherent, where if you didn't take Stamina, you might as well not be playing the game, it was so vital. Hasten is very, very good - too good, in fact. It's also so fundamental to the way the game has been built and balanced that removing it would require a massive rework of at least fifty percent of the powersets in the game (and I'm being insanely conservative here) to ensure they aren't hit too hard by the knock-on effects of the change. Now, the changes proposed to make it into a toggle power earlier in the thread do quite a bit to make Hasten work better in a QoL sense and could maybe cover somewhat for a slight reduction in it's effects, but that's still iffy.

That would require someone to actually use the t9 armors, though.

Yeah, the Hasten as 4th power idea was mostly me thinking through "what if this was being designed from scratch?" since there's not a chance in hell it gets implemented that way. Either that or it should come out of speed entirely and be part of some sort of "self-enhancement" pool. Put things like a version of Assault that doesn't suck and maybe a debuff resist power, all of them with hefty end costs. . .

With the upcoming SO drop changes, doing the low level hazard zones might become a decent way to level again, so anything that makes them more useful/relevant would be nice. Adding additional story arcs there would be great.

Like I said, I'd absolutely prefer it to a heavy-handed nerf of hasten. In fact, if Hasten had been originally designed something along these lines, with some sort of balancing drawback/investment cost - maybe with Hasten as the top power in Speed so it requires significant investment, or perhaps with a global endurance cost debuff to offset it's power, then I would say it wasn't badly designed at all. Pushing it up to the fourth power as a toggle (which, of course, requires that the other powers be made to not suck) would make it like Weave, vital to some builds, useful to others. And since you wouldn't need to build huge amounts of other global recharge to get Hasten on permanently, then you can tune how much recharge fits your particular AT/powerset. It's really starting to grow on me as an idea, though revamping the order of powers in Speed is probably going to bring out the "but but but COTTAGE RULE" hordes. 😄

And that's perfectly reasonable. But you have to acknowledge that a build with Hasten is going to be more powerful in general than one without it, because Hasten is really that good. (Which is bad design - it's not on the level of the old fitness pool, where if you didn't take Stamina you might as well just not play, but it's crazy the force multiplier you get from a single pool power.)

Sure, I can paste in plain text - but I can't view what is already in the message in plain text. So, for example, I can't copy and paste the quote box with your reply to me into another message - which is the sort of thing that can be very useful when editing a post, where you want to respond to something that was posted while you were putting together your post, or just when you don't want to have to fight with the stupid drag and drop rich-text box for quotes, or when you want to add something before a quote box, etc.

Nah, just remove the crashing T9 powers and replace them with something good instead.

If those changes went in, Hasten would become even more ubiquitous than it is now. +65% permanent +recharge and +defense and a place to slot another LotG without taking a pure mule power? I mean, I'd take it as better than nerfing hasten, since it doesn't upset the balance assumptions the game is built on much, but damn, that's powercreep in a can.

Like I said, balancing the actual enhancements would be simple. But having a damage proc in a toggle power removes the interactivity, which was the whole thing I was talking about. I like being able to get an extra effect out of my AoE, knowing that I'll get the absorb shield 90% of the time when I hit it after jumping into a pack of bad guys.

If they remove it, or nerf it, then it's going to impact every build that uses Hasten. Every single AT and powerset combo, and they would all have to be considered to ensure that the Law of Unintended Consequences doesn't hit some more than others. It's just not worth it to consider.

I wasn't disagreeing with you, merely expanding on what you posted to address the inevitable "I don't use Hasten and I'm fine, therefore Hasten doesn't do anything!" replies. I'll reiterate this until doomsday: Hasten, and things like it, are bad design. But it's not worth changing something that is as baked into the fundamental balance assumptions of CoX as Hasten is.

. . . for those who were using Hasten. The game is nowhere near hard enough to require Hasten, but it's undeniable that it makes a large difference in player power. When I respecced from my Inv/EM gimmick build that skipped the fighting pool (and thus didn't have slots for Hasten) to a more normal, permahasten build, there was an immediate jump in power, mostly driven by my much higher damage output. This was despite the fact that the attack powers were the same in both builds, and enhanced to similar percentages. Could I tank the exact same things on both builds? Yeah. Could I solo the exact same things? No. Because the non-hasten build didn't have the damage output to take down some targets that the Hasten build does with ease.

That doesn't actually address what I was asking - I wanted to know if you had any ideas for how to make a purely primary ATO into something that would feel active for a tanker. The mechanics of how to make a Primary IO set that would be relatively balanced appears straightforward. But losing the interactivity would suck. I suppose it could be possible to implement some sort of global proc that would be added to all attacks, but that would be a nightmare to code, with my understanding of the way CoX works internally.

Would you agree or disagree with me that, in a clean slate game, not CoX as it stands, a power like Hasten is badly designed?

Why does this forum not have a plain text mode for the editor? I can't, for example, copy and paste around quotes inside my replies because it's rich text only, and that's a colossal pain sometimes.

So a build that can defeat an enemy in 30 seconds isn't more powerful than one that can defeat an enemy in 90? This forum needs that psyduck emote, badly. Hasten is a massive force multiplier, surely you can see this?

You're being disingenuous here. That's like saying "increasing the recharge time on all powers by 42% would have zero impact" (if my back of the envelope math on what hasten does to recharge timers is correct). Of course it would have an impact. Would it make the game unplayable? No. Would it upset a lot of people who've been used to how things work with Hasten around? Yes. Would it mess up the balance of powersets that were created with the existence of Hasten in mind? Yes. Is it worth doing? Hell no But claiming it would do nothing is ridiculous.

You aren't reading my posts either, apparently. Seriously. If someone was designing this game right now and came up to me with the idea for Hasten, I would tell them it was terrible. Because it is. But we are not dealing with a new, blank-slate game, but with the game as it stands. Therefore, let me restate what I have put in one form or another in every post I've made in this thread, and do it loudly enough that it might get read: HASTEN SHOULD NOT BE NERFED OR REMOVED AS IT IS BAKED INTO THE BALANCE ASSUMPTIONS OF THE GAME. THIS DOES NOT PREVENT IT FROM BEING A BAD PIECE OF GAME DESIGN AND SHOULD BE CALLED OUT AS SUCH. I am, literally, on your side as to whether Hasten should be changed. *facepalm*

To be clear, I was saying that not having a proc in a Tanker ATO set when all other ATs get them would be ass, not that there was anything wrong with you for suggesting it. The proc gives you access to something you wouldn't have otherwise (either +res or +absorb) on a click power, with you having control over when it kicks in, depending on where you slot it. Having a purely passive ATO proc (or global bonus) sitting in an armor power would just remove one of the ways that the player has to actively manage their character. Putting in a Performance Shifter +end, or the Panacea/Numina's regen procs might have a big impact on a character's capabilities, but it doesn't add anything engaging to the moment by moment gameplay. If you can think of a way to get that with an ATO set sitting in a def/res power, then I'm all ears.

You will note I said "the equivalent of", yes? Hasten gets you more activations of a power in a single time period than you would get otherwise, at the cost of a single power pool pick. Recharge set bonuses making it straightforward to get permahasten only exacerbates the problem, from a design perspective. . . . you aren't even reading my posts, are you? Powers in CoH are balanced around three things: The effect/damage of the power, the end cost of the power, and the recharge time of the power. If one of these is too high or too low, you get an unbalanced power/powerset. (This is the issue with TW - it breaks the formulae that other melee powersets use, and is unsurprisingly, thus the hands-down top performer.) Hasten lets you grab the recharge time of all your powers, regardless of AT/powersets, and yank it down significantly. The fact that we can or can't steamroll content is utterly irrelevant. A build that does not include Hasten is objectively less powerful than one that does, all other things being equal. But, again, I don't think Hasten should be nerfed, because it's been a fundamental assumption of how the game was balanced and run for too long to be changed. But just because that is the case doesn't mean we should try to claim that it's not bad design.

Unless you make pool powers better than Primary/Secondary power choices, you're still going to see Hasten taken more often than the other pool powers, outside of travel. In which case you'll see Hasten taken alongside those pool picks! I firmly agree that other pool powers should be improved, but Hasten is really just that good. And there's nothing we can do about it at this point, without messing up game balance to a degree that isn't worth it. Hasten is taken because it provides the equivalent of breaking the action economy in other games. Changing other pool powers won't affect that.

I would have to disagree, and pretty vehemently. Having the ATOs in your attacks means you have control over when the procs go off - Tanker primaries do not all include powers that you hit on a regular basis. Unless you'd want Tankers to not have a proc in one of the ATO sets, which would be kinda asstastic. (Not to mention that Tankers don't need more defensive oomph - once you can live through everything, it doesn't matter how much more gets stacked on top, while damage output is always additive, so having more useful attack sets is good.)

Hasten is that great, though. It's a bad power from a design perspective, because it gives you something you can't get elsewhere (making everything you have recharge faster) and it's not something that is built into (and thus balanced against) individual sets, but it a universal thing. Of course it's going to be taken very heavily. Even with the dilution of it's uniqueness via IO set bonuses also providing recharge, it's still going to always be a better single power pick than anything else from pools can possibly be. I don't think it should be nerfed, since it's been part of the game so long that removing it would require monumental rebalancing to make players not hate it, but there's no way to defend Hasten as being good design.