Smooth out the early level experience on Kinetics.

[Neogumbercules]

We all know that kinetics experiences a bit of a fulcrum shift in power once they hit level 32/38, but as someone who has played a lot of kinetics over the years one thing that is also true is the low level experience of a Kin is very frustrating. 

 

The problems as I see them:

The mainstay powers are siphon speed and power. Single target debuffs that have minor impact on the enemy. Power gives a your team a decent damage buff and is stackable but it's dependent on that recharge and to hit check. Things early level characters might struggle with. 

 

Endurance hog. Both my Corruptor and Defender are constantly gassed due to the combination of attacking, throwing out buffs, and giving SB and ID. This is with standard level 25 end reduction IOs in attacks and 3 slotted stamina. Remember we're talking early levels here so yes I could slot a miracle, a panacea, or a numinas but that's not representative of most players abilities at level 20-something. The +recharge from siphon speed is actually a bit of a double edged sword here. Until transference, a Kin has a hard time dealing with endurance. 

 

Solos bad: the combination of paltry st debuffs, existing on ATs with no/low/moderate damage from the primary, and lacking in ways to manage large groups makes Kin one of the worst sets for a solo'er between 0-32/38. Every ability requiring a to-hit check is a big downside. It's a powerset that is very susceptible to failing at a critical moment and the buffs/debuffs for the effort are pretty bad, honestly. Siphon Speed and Siphon Power are not that useful.

 

Inertial reduction is kind of a waste of a power pick. It used to be a good way to get a travel power without taking a prerequisite, but now that travel powers are available at level 4 and don't require another power pick, it's hard to see an advantage to IR. 

 

Repel sucks. Even with the -kb proc, and the frequency of KB nerc SCORE did, this ability is still awful. The unresistable, unenhanceable endurance drain per enemy hit makes this power a non-starter. 

 

Of course there are pros. Kin requires minimal slot investment, teams love you for SB, because of that it's easy to get on a team that's punching way above your weight class. Kin has some skippable powers like repel and IR that allow you to invest in more attacks or pool powers, and of course transference and fulcrum shift are incredible abilities. Transfusion is a pretty strong heal and decent -regen too... When it hits. 

 

My proposal is to strengthen Kins core low level abilities without overpowering the set at level 50 and beyond. 

 

Transfusion: nothing. 

 

Siphon Power: Make the -damage portion a 16 target AOE and double the -damage against the targeted enemy. The +damage to you and your team does not change. This makes the power very useful at low levels and keeps its usefulness after the player obtains fulcrum shift. This power is honestly totally obsolete once Fulcrum becomes available. By making it an AOE damage debuff and beefing up its strength against the targetted enemy, players will be incentivised to continue using the power after they get fulcrum, while not also being a duplicate of Fulcrum Shift because your team only gets +damage from a single target. 

 

Siphon Speed: Make it a 16 target AOE. Add 25% enhanceable recovery on self while siphon speed is active and allow it to take end mod sets. Kin players have a hard time keeping up with their own team when everyone else is Speed Boosted and has unlimited endurance. This will help the Kin player stay in the fight and offset the double edged sword of more recharge causing more endurance drain against your natural recovery. 

 

Repel: Remove the per-target end drain. Increase the endurance cost of the toggle.

 

Increase Density: Nothing. 

 

Speed Boost: Nothing. 

 

Inertial Reduction: Add KB stun and immob protection while active. 

 

Transference: Nothing. 

 

Fulcrum Shift: Nothing. 

 

My aim is to even out the playing experience for Kin and I hope this makes sense. Any thoughts? 

[DougGraves]

The problem is that kinetics is probably the best set.  Set buffing it would be crazy.  I agree it is painful at low levels, so you either swap powers around or buff lower powers and nerf higher level powers.

 

And basically what makes kinetics is fulcrum shift.  While repel and inertial reduction are basically useless.   But having useless powers on a balanced set is actually better for the set.  You can skip those powers and still get all of the real use out of the set.

 

 

 

[MetaVileTerror]

I dunno about you folks, but I play Kinetics for Transfusion and Transference personally.  Sure, I'll take Fulcrum Shift, but if that's all Kinetics had on offer, I'd not give it the time of day.

But seeing as it was my original main's Secondary, I would not be against buffing it a little.  I hardly see it as necessary, though.  Kinetics was always a strong Set, even at lower levels thanks primarily to Transfusion and even before they bug-fixed the positional issues.

[MunkiLord]

1 hour ago, Neogumbercules said:

Inertial Reduction: Add KB stun and immob protection while active. 

What I would like is to turn it into a toggle that basically behaves as Combat Jumping while in combat, and behaves as is when out of combat. At the very least I'd like the duration to be extended by 50-100%

[Neogumbercules]

3 hours ago, DougGraves said:

The problem is that kinetics is probably the best set.  Set buffing it would be crazy.  I agree it is painful at low levels, so you either swap powers around or buff lower powers and nerf higher level powers.

 

And basically what makes kinetics is fulcrum shift.  While repel and inertial reduction are basically useless.   But having useless powers on a balanced set is actually better for the set.  You can skip those powers and still get all of the real use out of the set.

 

 

 

I disagree on Kinetics being in contention for the best set. It's really hard to compare apples to apples because every support powerset in this game is doing something different, but overall, Kin is pretty bad at lower to mid levels, outside of speed boost its got nothing going for it.

 

At level 32/38 you get the incredible Fulcrum Shift which is an awesome damage buff, but it can actually be finicky. It works best when you have a neatly grouped pack of enemies that you can target for a massive damage buff but you dont always have that situation. Consider an AV fight for example,where you have a single target for your capstone power.

 

Also, players that prefer to fight from range aren't really getting that benefit, and kins stack badly. More than 1 or maybe 2 on a team is overkill, compared to a debuffing set like Rad that just gets exponentially better for each one that you bring in. 

 

Sets like Rad, Storm, and Dark Miasma are more useful across the entire leveling journey, compared to /Kin which only gets great at the end and still requires to-hit checks on all of the good abilities. 

 

Now I'm not arguing that Kin is a bad set. Far from it. It's just got a very tough early experience and a handful of powers that are drop dead pointless, especially once the player gets Fulcrum.

[DougGraves]

28 minutes ago, Neogumbercules said:

I disagree on Kinetics being in contention for the best set. It's really hard to compare apples to apples because every support powerset in this game is doing something different, but overall, Kin is pretty bad at lower to mid levels, outside of speed boost its got nothing going for it.

 

Kinetics is the most popular Controller support set with double the usage of the next set.

 

Kinetics is the most popular corruptor support set with 50% more than the next sest.

 

Kinetics is the second most popular defender support set - a distant second to empathy.

 

So at least controller and corruptor players seem to think it is the best set.

 

 

[Neogumbercules]

1 hour ago, DougGraves said:

 

Kinetics is the most popular Controller support set with double the usage of the next set.

 

Kinetics is the most popular corruptor support set with 50% more than the next sest.

 

Kinetics is the second most popular defender support set - a distant second to empathy.

 

So at least controller and corruptor players seem to think it is the best set.

 

 

Popular because it's great at fulcrum shift level and beyond which no one is arguing, and because they are the best end-game farmers on controllers and because they are desirable and easy picks for any team because of SB and FS. This thread is about the uneven play experience pre fulcrum shift, especially in regards to solo play. 

[Outrider_01]

17 hours ago, Neogumbercules said:

Transfusion: nothing. 

 

Siphon Power: Make the -damage portion a 16 target AOE and double the -damage against the targeted enemy. The +damage to you and your team does not change. This makes the power very useful at low levels and keeps its usefulness after the player obtains fulcrum shift. This power is honestly totally obsolete once Fulcrum becomes available. By making it an AOE damage debuff and beefing up its strength against the targetted enemy, players will be incentivised to continue using the power after they get fulcrum, while not also being a duplicate of Fulcrum Shift because your team only gets +damage from a single target. 

 

Siphon Speed: Make it a 16 target AOE. Add 25% enhanceable recovery on self while siphon speed is active and allow it to take end mod sets. Kin players have a hard time keeping up with their own team when everyone else is Speed Boosted and has unlimited endurance. This will help the Kin player stay in the fight and offset the double edged sword of more recharge causing more endurance drain against your natural recovery. 

 

Repel: Remove the per-target end drain. Increase the endurance cost of the toggle.

 

Increase Density: Nothing. 

 

Speed Boost: Nothing. 

 

Inertial Reduction: Add KB stun and immob protection while active. 

 

Transference: Nothing. 

 

Fulcrum Shift: Nothing. 

 

My aim is to even out the playing experience for Kin and I hope this makes sense. Any thoughts? 

First off, you fill your suggestion on how the same powers "suck" several times wasting line space.

 

Second, kinetics are powerful for one reason at low levels

 

You powers are single target hits, less endurance used per power for the one action excluding spamming everything in your hotbar

 

Siphon speed- 16 target would kill radiation and dark miasma toggles not looking at accuracy -tohit .  By itself, +damage pretty much equals -damage by themselves until both are applied together which makes sonic less appealing except until you add +dam with -dam.

 

Siphon Speed- destroys slow power sets when -speed at 16 hits, why bother when you now get +damage and group slow.

 

Kinetics abilities are fine, its primary ability is not debuff.  Its mostly buffing the team at the cost of some debuff to the enemy (2/3 buff 1/3 debuff), rad / dark are mostly debuff with some buff the opposite of kinetic (yeah, dark has like 1 buff in the rez but the set is powerful debuff like rad which has the click)

 

I am a bit behind in most powersets since live, but buffing kinetic would throw the other sets out of whack.

[golstat2003]

5 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

First off, you fill your suggestion on how the same powers "suck" several times wasting line space.

 

Second, kinetics are powerful for one reason at low levels

 

You powers are single target hits, less endurance used per power for the one action excluding spamming everything in your hotbar

 

Siphon speed- 16 target would kill radiation and dark miasma toggles not looking at accuracy -tohit .  By itself, +damage pretty much equals -damage by themselves until both are applied together which makes sonic less appealing except until you add +dam with -dam.

 

Siphon Speed- destroys slow power sets when -speed at 16 hits, why bother when you now get +damage and group slow.

 

Kinetics abilities are fine, its primary ability is not debuff.  Its mostly buffing the team at the cost of some debuff to the enemy (2/3 buff 1/3 debuff), rad / dark are mostly debuff with some buff the opposite of kinetic (yeah, dark has like 1 buff in the rez but the set is powerful debuff like rad which has the click)

 

I am a bit behind in most powersets since live, but buffing kinetic would throw the other sets out of whack.

Agreed. I could get behind increasing the duration of the siphons and ID slightly though.

[Lost Ninja]

Personally as a primarily Controller/Corrupter player on HC (played a Kin/Dark on live into incarnates), my "issues".

 

Increase the up time, cooldowns, costs, etc of the player buffs so that they last for 4 minutes each. (same could be said for player buffs in other sets too) This would in no way assuming the balance is added to cost/etc change how the set performs but would make having to rebuff somewhat easier than it is now. I would suggest this change for all player buffs in all sets, short player buffs are a hindrance to everyone. If the c/d of the buff is under the up time (un-enhanced) the up time should be 4 minutes. Things like Forge (Thermal) which has a long c/d and is clearly not intended to buff the whole team should remain as it is. Same for AM (though I'd expect that changing it to have a longer up-time and cooldown wouldn't be so bad either).

 

Change IR to buff like Speed Boost (from PBAoE to TargetedAoE). To match the other player buffs in the set, especially now Speed Boost/ID are TAoE (they used to be single target buffs). Additionally add a +fly speed to it (similar to afterburner), it already cancels out momentum in Fly (Fly performs like Hover).

 

I don't have any issue with either siphon speed or siphon power. While I wouldn't be against them being better I'd prefer the addition of some mitigating effect like -tohit than -damage (never enough to stop the mob killing you anyway). But I think given their benefit they are fine as is.

 

Personally my least favourite power in the set is FS. I mean I love what it does but to get the bet benefit you must be in melee range, with no other mitigating effects (within the set) I often find that it's a case of being able to cap my damage in the few moments before 16 angry mobs kill me... 😕 A short duration (0.5 sec) duration high mag stun; or a longer duration -tohit/blind (either or but non-stacking with other similar powers), would mean you can use it a bit more safely.

 

Lastly I love repel, I find that it's much more situational than perhaps it could be, but like others have said remove the per target end cost, increase the overall cost.

 

Edited October 31, 2019 by Lost Ninja

[Alty]

5 hours ago, Lost Ninja said:

To match the other player buffs in the set, especially now Speed Boost/ID are TAoE

Just wanted to clarify cause, folks forget... Increase Density's resistance portion is a targeted AoE, the status protection portion is still Single Target as it always has been to match the other single target status protection buffs. 

 

Edited October 31, 2019 by Alty

[Lost Ninja]

1 minute ago, Alty said:

Just a wanted to clarify cause folks forget... Increase Density's resistance portion is a targeted AoE, the status protection portion is still Single Target as it always has been to match the other single target status protection buffs. 

 

I didn't know that. And I use it all the time. 😕 

 

In that case I'd increase the whole power to be TAoE (and all the others like it, Clarity etc).

[Yomo Kimyata]

Nope.  Don't make the best support set better.  Sorry if playing it as is is too burdensome for you.

[Neogumbercules]

5 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Nope.  Don't make the best support set better.  Sorry if playing it as is is too burdensome for you.

Your saying this to someone who probably has 3-400 hours worth of Kin playing and dozens of Kin alts. 

 

Dont be a dick. Read the topic and reply constructively or shut up. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

8 minutes ago, Neogumbercules said:

Your saying this to someone who probably has 3-400 hours worth of Kin playing and dozens of Kin alts. 

 

Dont be a dick. Read the topic and reply constructively or shut up. 

I read the topic.  I've played a few hundred hours of kinetics as well, as have tens of thousands of people.  You are being a whiny child who wants his own personal gold star.  I am genuinely sorry if your hundreds of hours of kinetics were so difficult that you feel a need to make it easier now.

 

I am constructively saying, nope.  Don't make the best support better. 

 

Let's see who the devs cater to first, shall we?

[Neogumbercules]

43 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I read the topic.  I've played a few hundred hours of kinetics as well, as have tens of thousands of people.  You are being a whiny child who wants his own personal gold star.  I am genuinely sorry if your hundreds of hours of kinetics were so difficult that you feel a need to make it easier now.

 

I am constructively saying, nope.  Don't make the best support better. 

 

Let's see who the devs cater to first, shall we?

OK. This section of the forum has something like 24k comments and I'm sure 99.999% of them won't make it into the game so trust me I won't be broken hearted if this or any of my suggestions aren't addressed. 

 

At no point before your comment was anything I said approaching whiny. I have no desire for a gold star or to get my way. I simply wanted to talk about "smoothing out the low level experience of kinetics" and proposed some fairly minor buffs to some of the low tier powers in Kin and a suggestion to make Siphon Power useful post Fulcrum Shift. You're taking the notion of someone simply making an argument about a powerset and supporting it as whining and complaining. That's your problem. I don't think anyone else who read this thread would say I was being a whiny child. You're just being a dick, like I said. 

 

The only comment you made approaching a point was that kinetics is the best set and doesn't need improvement. That topic has already been discussed up-thread and I'm not going to rehash it again. If you want to address those points feel free but that's not what you did. You completely ignored that and just blurted out your innane drive-by comment. You're coming in here with a dismissive, shitty attitude, and if you did read the thread you either missed that post or you failed to comprehend it. That's why I told you to read the thread. 

 

Your post is not constructive and here's why. "Nope" or "/jranger" by themselves are shitposts at best, but we've come to get used to that with the insanely defensive gatekeeping that has been a part of this community since long before shutdown. "Nope and let me ignore the discussion and insult you for no reason" is being a dick, and that's why I told you to shut up. "Nope and here are some reasons why I disagree" is a discussion.

 

You didn't engage in a discussion you simply drove by with a backhanded insult and added nothing to the discussion. If you don't want to discuss the topic then keep your shit to yourself. If you want to just say you disagree with the suggestion, sure, but if you act like a dick be prepared to be called out on it. 

 

 

Edited October 31, 2019 by Neogumbercules

[Yomo Kimyata]

Since you are so taken aback that someone doesn't agree with you that your favorite set should be made easier, maybe you should realize that your favorite set doesn't need to be made easier?  Or, more constructively, someone disagrees with your contention that it should be made easier. 

 

There are plenty of sets that are late blooming.  And my response to any single post that calls for them to be made easier will result in "Nope".  That's my way of saying I disagree with you.  The set is overpowered.  No one disputes that.  I really don't need to prove why I think that the set is overpowered as it is.  And I'm ok with that.  I refuse to sit by and complacently nod when someone begs for something to be made even easier.  I added plenty; I added a dissenting opinion.  The key words here are "think" and "disagree".  I'm sorry that you didn't get a avalanche of responses telling you how wise you are for suggesting this, but that's more your issue than mine.

 

If you want to take it personal, call me a dick,  and dress up your dog in a Yomo Kimyata suit and kick him around tonight, well, that's between you and the authorities. 

[Outrider_01]

16 minutes ago, Neogumbercules said:

"/jranger" 

 

LOL I remember that term, it got banned from the live forums.  Never figured it out unless it was a player

[EmmySky]

As someone who soloed a lot on live and again now on HC I can agree that kin (and empathy and a couple other sets) are slow to solo on defenders, not as bad on controllers.  Now with villain ATs being available on blue and powerset proliferation I give my defenders and controllers sets they can solo with and save kin and empathy for my MMs.  Beast/kin is a dream because those little furballs understand melee to heal like few PC toons LOL!  I can understand what the OP means but overall I think its fine as is (or that itd be too much effort for unpaid devs to fix something not terribly broken).

 

1 hour ago, Outrider_01 said:

 

LOL I remember that term, it got banned from the live forums.  Never figured it out unless it was a player

Yes it was a player, or at least a forum poster, on live boards that would simply post No. to threads so it came to mean dissent and/or strong disagreement. 

[Lost Ninja]

17 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Nope.  Don't make the best support set better.  Sorry if playing it as is is too burdensome for you.

I love kin as it is, just as I love several other sets. Are any of them perfect? No.

Would I like to see changes? Of course.

Do I believe they need changes to be good? No.

 

While you're entitled to your opinion it's no better or worse than my own and I don't need to be unpleasant to make mine.

[Erydanus]

I think kinetics is a really interesting set. The double-edged sword of siphon speed helping you run out of endurance fast is well known; considering we now get stamina for free at a low level instead of at level 20 (at earliest) makes me feel it shouldn't be that big of a problem. It's like, say your household budget is tight and you get a raise but then you start spending more and you're still as tight as ever … where's the problem? You're overspending. 

 

That's really the issue with the game from 1-21, isn't it? You don't have very good enhancements until then because at 22 you can slot SOs or equivalent IOs and suddenly it's like your power level triples. If you slot level 15 and 20 IOs it's a smoother experience but based on leveling speed many people don't bother. Suddenly not only do you have properly enhanced stamina you're hitting so much more reliably and your power damage has doubled which means you attack fewer times to defeat a foe which in turn means less endurance spent. Thus at level 22 your end problems are solved from both ends.

 

Smoothing out the experience is also made a little trickier when you consider that ATs which get the set as a secondary are getting the powers at later levels and more spread out and may be using them quite differently than a defender would. If you asked me about a change to improve the flavor of the set I'd suggest swapping repel and inertial reduction's levels because I actually think it would be super helpful to grant your team super jump at a very low level. Sure we can take travel powers at level 4 but I have yet to do that - I usually need a 2nd or 3rd attack right then and then usually some good buff or set mechanic power crops up. Frankly I'm usually pretty hard pressed to take a travel power before 22 these days except in a respect at a higher level.  But on the flipside I could see a mastermind loving repel at a low level because maybe they just stand around behind their pets feeling safe in it... 

[Indystruck]

The complaints here are the small trade off kin suffers for being one of the best, if not -the- best support set. If Kin warrants a look, it should be the last in line for it.

[GM Sijin]

On 10/30/2019 at 9:04 AM, Neogumbercules said:

Siphon Power: Make the -damage portion a 16 target AOE and double the -damage against the targeted enemy.

These changes way overbudget the power. I could see the second part happening to make it a strong single-target ability once you have FS. At best I'd say a poison weaken style treatment where it's a reduced power small AOE around the target. Otherwise the recharge/duration/endurance cost is going to have to change to compensate.

 

Counter-Suggestion: Give Siphon Power a synergy with Fulcrum Shift in that if FS is already on the target Siphon Power does something more. What that is? I don't really care personally, just throwing out the idea to make both powers more usable in situations where they normally are mediocre.

 

An example though? On top of the normal effects of Siphon Power, it will also do an additional X -damage%, split evenly among all the valid targets with Fulcrum Shift applied to them, eating the FS debuff to make it require a new cast of FS to get another benefit from the synergy. For example, if that 'pool' of extra debuff potency was 80% the end effect is that it's slightly stronger against the target cap (80/16=5%), individually speaking, but is significantly stronger against a single target.

 

Granted that sounds like a nightmare to make work. And would probably have to be reconsidered for PvP.

 

On 10/30/2019 at 9:04 AM, Neogumbercules said:

Siphon Speed: Make it a 16 target AOE. Add 25% enhanceable recovery on self while siphon speed is active and allow it to take end mod sets.

See above about the AOE effect, it's going to cost you endurance and/or duration/recharge. Stackable, enhanceable self +recovery on top of +rech/spd and a -rech/spd debuff? Yeah you're probably going to take a hit on duration or recharge for that, too, more than likely.

 

On 10/30/2019 at 9:04 AM, Neogumbercules said:

Inertial Reduction: Add KB stun and immob protection while active

At the cost of at least halving the duration or doubling the recharge and upping the endurance cost, maybe. Status protection buffs are not usually AOEs for a reason. Plus these protections already exist in ID, so seem a bit superfluous to just slap onto IR as well. 

 

 

In general your complaint about accuracy, while certainly a valid point, is drastically offset by the potency of the powers. Transferrence is a fairly unique ability that renders endurance woes mostly obsolete. Yeah, one every 20 will miss, but a full-endurance heal for potentially your entire team is incredibly powerful (reduced only by the state of the game post-incarnate/IOs). And Transfusion is the strongest aura heal in the game. Dark's is the same healing (or slightly more depending on AT, unintentionally I believe) but is slower firing and has lower base accuracy. Siphon Power is better than a lot of people give it credit for in the early game, since +damage is fairly rare until the mid-late 20s (at which point you're looking at having transferrence) so it's more of a buff to total damage out, relatively speaking.

 

I agree that Inertial Reduction and Repel could be made more attractive. I also don't think it's terribly necessary though, as the set functions very well with them as they are. Anything that makes Kinetics more potent is going to be a hard sell for the sake of balance. They'll almost definitely have to have a drawback.

 

 

As for this:

On 10/31/2019 at 1:23 PM, Outrider_01 said:

 

LOL I remember that term, it got banned from the live forums.  Never figured it out unless it was a player

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki//jranger

 

[Mina Valerious]

Honestly as a Kin player I don't care about the buffs or debuffs endgame Kin is awesome.... I'd just like some better endurance management 0-35. Running Maneuvers and Tactics from 16-26 even with endurance reduction, I still run out of energy. Most of the time I'm playing solo in the lower levels cause there just doesn't seem to be a ton of groups/teams (Excelsior) running around and the ones that are focus on TF's - I'd like to play some storyline.  Having to break after each group I kill to rest up my energy is time consuming....

 

I'm an adult and a super hero; I don't have tons of spare time to sit and wait for my energy to fill up!

[Lost Ninja]

9 hours ago, GM Sijin said:

Counter-Suggestion: Give Siphon Power a synergy with Fulcrum Shift in that if FS is already on the target Siphon Power does something more. What that is? I don't really care personally, just throwing out the idea to make both powers more usable in situations where they normally are mediocre.

Maybe a sort of reverse power-boost making secondary effects on the enemy target less effective. -Res if they have high Res, -def if the have high defence.... etc