Fade and Farsight Should Not Benefit from External Buffs

[Infinitum]

6 minutes ago, sacredlunatic said:

Ok, you do get it, fine.

But you are wrong that it's not hurting anything, and it has been explained several times why.  So yes, let's let it go.

Everytime I log in the code isnt melting because pb and farsight exists.

 

Nobody cares, we just play, gimp all the cool stuff people will leave.

 

So no, its not hurting anything.

[Infinitum]

11 minutes ago, sacredlunatic said:

It is making other people with Defense powers irrelevant, for one thing.  That's just a small example.

No its really not.

[Wavicle]

There is no point in continuing this conversation, you don't believe in the concept of game balance.

[Infinitum]

Just now, sacredlunatic said:

There is no point in continuing this conversation, you don't believe in the concept of game balance.

Again believing and not caring because its a fabricated crisis are 2 different things.

[Wavicle]

Just now, Infinitum said:

Again believing and not caring because its a fabricated crisis are 2 different things.

I see, you believe that a thing called game balance exists, you just don't see the importance.  That's a pretty minor distinction you're making, but you do you.

[Leogunner]

47 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

Everytime I log in the code isnt melting because pb and farsight exists.

 

Nobody cares, we just play, gimp all the cool stuff people will leave.

 

So no, its not hurting anything.

But Farsight without PB isn't gimped. It's still an effective defense buff when slotted. 

[Auroxis]

The PB+Farsight issue is a Defender thing. Corruptors are just as inclined to go Dark Mastery instead of Soul for the better Soul Drain, and softcapping with IO's and Clarion/Barrier instead.

 

So you have extremely durable Defenders? Sure, but they can't fully utilize their durability since their damage is low. Granted there are some proc monster outliers, but then you're not going sonic for the debuffs which makes your offensive contribution in AV fights pretty mediocre (when compared to some other support sets).

 

I do think Time is the strongest overall on Defender, but I've yet to be convinced it needs a nerf since it has its weakness as I've stated above. Keep in mind my two favorite characters are a Fire/Time/Dark corr and an Emp/Sonic/Soul def which both use Clarion/PB for defense buffs, so while I may be biased this comes from experience of using the interaction a lot.

 

If I were to change anything, it'd be the Fade bug and buffing underperforming sets like FF/TA/Traps/Sonic/Poison. And if you really wanna nerf Time, consider making its weakness (offense in av fights) more apparent instead of nerfing the highlight of the set many people enjoy.

[Darkir]

2 hours ago, sacredlunatic said:

However this is handled, under No circumstances should this bonus to Resistance be ENHANCEABLE.  Time should definitely NOT be able to slot the +Def special IOs without taking an epic Res armor or Tough.

Yeah I should have mentioned that it would be unenhanceable. 

 

  

38 minutes ago, Auroxis said:

The PB+Farsight issue is a Defender thing. Corruptors are just as inclined to go Dark Mastery instead of Soul for the better Soul Drain, and softcapping with IO's and Clarion/Barrier instead.

I assume that a fix for PB+Farsight would also make clarion radial+farsight not work.

 

 

Edited January 21, 2020 by Darkir

[Auroxis]

Well yes @Darkir, but Clarion for corrs is +7.5% so builds can adjust with Barrier.

 

For Defenders it would hurt more, and like I said I don't think it's the way to go.

[Trickshooter]

Farsight with Power Boost is definitely very powerful, and if we were all to agree that something should be done about it, I agree that flagging it to ignore outside buffs like Power Boost is the simplest way to fix that. Second best option would be to make Power Boost's buff values follow enhancement scheduling, so Schedule B effects (like Defense) would be 60% of Schedule A effects, though you might upset way more people that way.

 

But... I'm not sure I agree that something needs to be done about it.

 

Easily 80-90% of powersets in any given category (melee, ranged, support, control, etc.) perform well enough on their own, and even better with IOs, to get through the most difficult content we can face. And at this point, even more difficult content is unlikely. There's also the fact that, more than most other MMOs, a lot of CoX alt creation is concept driven.

 

Those two things together make it really unlikely that Time being a powerful set will ever upset The Balance™ enough to drive sets like Force Field extinct. There will always be people who love those sets and play them.

 

That's not to say a set like Force Field couldn't use some love, because it can. And that's probably where, besides adding new content, we should focus our efforts: bringing the underperformers up.

 

Now, you could say, "well, if all sets can work and people will play what they love, why worry about the underperformers either?"

 

And that's a good point. The difference is just that, if you're going to do anything, there would potentially be a lot less anger from buffing the underperformers than nerfing the overperformers, honestly.

 

I'm not saying Force Field or Trick Arrow or Poison need to be as powerful as Time or Rad or Dark can be, but we can at least work to shrink the performance delta between the "lower tier" sets and the "middle-to-top tier" sets.

[oedipus_tex]

I appreciate the desire to avoid excessive nerfs, but Time would be a top set without the ability to Power Boost Farsight. Time without Farsight provides more personal Defense to the caster than all sets except Traps. It is also the only set besides Controller Dark Affinity (see: Fade) that provides both strong Defense and a self heal. The only other set that provides both is Dark Miasma on Defenders, which gets a measely (in comparison)+5 Defense from Shadowfall and a heal that can miss.   

 

Also remember that Power Boost boosts both Farsight's Defense and ToHit. The power's base ToHit is identical to Tactics. When you Power Boost it, you get double Tactics. Then you can just ignore Accuracy except for a few global bonuses fro sets and a Kismet, and slot only procs. 

Edited January 22, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Dr Causality]

On 1/21/2020 at 5:44 PM, oedipus_tex said:

I appreciate the desire to avoid excessive nerfs, but Time would be a top set without the ability to Power Boost Farsight. Time without Farsight provides more personal Defense to the caster than all sets except Traps. It is also the only set besides Controller Dark Affinity (see: Fade) that provides both strong Defense and a self heal. The only other set that provides both is Dark Miasma on Defenders, which gets a measely (in comparison)+5 Defense from Shadowfall and a heal that can miss.   

 

Also remember that Power Boost boosts both Farsight's Defense and ToHit. The power's base ToHit is identical to Tactics. When you Power Boost it, you get double Tactics. Then you can just ignore Accuracy except for a few global bonuses fro sets and a Kismet, and slot only procs. 

I'm late to this party.  Just off the top of my head the Bio, TW, Darkness Affinity, and Time sets, Sustain buffs for Blasters, Nukes not having End Crashes, plus most of the Incarnate powers, and a bunch of the later issue IO set bonuses, procs and even some temp powers all never should have been made if the designers were true to or cared about game balance.   I'd probably be happier they'd kept the game balance.   If these were recently released sets or changes, I'd be open to discussing nerfs to balance them.  But that all goes back to Live.   Taking that away now just adds a 2nd wrong, that will ruin the game for people who built characters around those many clearly out of balance elements.  Power creep at this point is a lost cause, like trying to get your virginity back.   If we want to balance the game I think the only fair way at his point is to buff underperforming sets and then let the difficulty dial go to 11 instead of just +4/+8 for those who want more of a challenge.  

[aethereal]

Time will be fine without Power Boost, sure.

 

Will Power Boost be fine without Time?  What is the role we see for PB?

[oedipus_tex]

3 hours ago, aethereal said:

Time will be fine without Power Boost, sure.

 

Will Power Boost be fine without Time?  What is the role we see for PB?

 

Power Boost was in the game for about 8 years before Time showed up. It's a good power and will always be fine. I'd even keep it on my Dark/Time and Ice/Time Controllers because of all the other stuff it boosts. The fact that it boosts Farsight to the point it doubles the value of most Defense armor sets is where it just goes off the rails.

Edited February 15, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[WindDemon21]

On 1/21/2020 at 9:49 AM, Darkir said:

Yep. PB+Farsight is such an incredible amount of defense to everyone in your team or just yourself when solo that it trivializes builds and content. Not to mention that a time defender can softcap their ENTIRE TEAM by themselves at 50 with radial Clarion+power boost+Farsight providing 45% defense to all. That is absolute madness to have in a single power that affects yourself too. On top of that, it also has +tohit giving everyone full base damage Snipes and likely softcapping their tohit against mobs. 

 

I would be against lowering the base defense of farsight. Mainly for corruptors sake, they only have like 4 secondary sets that are preferable to take on them over a defender and if you care more about buffs a time defender is still preferable. Then you have the proc changes adding to the strength of PB+FS, you no longer have to build for defense with your slots if you are a time/x defender and so you can spend all those slots on procs. I know procs are a seperate issue, but they show how much more you can benefit from PB+FS if you know what you are doing. The interaction between farsight and powerboost (or/and Clarion) is so strong that it trivializes content. The game is easy enough, I'd vote to add some resistance to all to farsight to make it unboostable (this way its also a small, but not inconsequential, buff. Maybe 5% res to all or something).

So you have to pick the specific power set, specific AT, specific epic set, and specific incarnate. Powerboost does NOT need a nerf. It has very minimal uses, mainly boosting defense buff powers is the main/only use for it outside of controller holds. Everything else it ends up being too trivial to bother with. not to forget that most sets it's in the epic isn't that great to begin with. And while time is common, i almost never see anyone with the combo with powerboost anyway. I'll admit it's nice, but it's also for me the whole reason to go powerboost ever is for fort on emp, farsight, fade, and force fields (hopefully cold shields get fixed to allow it too). Otherwise I wouldn't bother with powerboost at at all, so they better not nerf it.

[nzer]

The arguments here about Farsight's defense when paired with Power Boost ring really hollow given Force Field gets just as much defense from Deflection Shield, Insulation Shield, and Power Boost, then gets 15% more and mez protection on top of it from Dispersion Bubble. No one seems to have a problem with Force Field being able to nearly incarnate soft cap and mez protect an entire team without incarnates, but Time reaching the non-incarnate soft cap with Clarion Radial is apparently too much. And yeah, Time has benefits outside of that, but people have been complaining for years that Force Field needs offensive bonuses in order to be competitive with the rest of the support power sets. If it gets them, are people gonna suddenly start having problems with the defense it provides? I sure hope so, based on this thread.

 

To say nothing of the fact that almost every properly built end-game team has enough def buffs to softcap everyone anyway. My thugs/storm MM only sits around 28% defense to positionals with all her toggles going, but I can't remember the last team I was on where I didn't have 50+% after buffs. Time is, frankly, not much of a standout once the team no longer wants for survivability, and that's a fairly low bar.

 

I'd like to see the interaction between Clarion Radial and Power Boost fixed, and I could see toning down Farsight a bit for defenders specifically, but I don't personally have a problem with Time defenders being able to provide 35-40% defense with Power Boost and Clarion Radial, and I definitely don't have a problem with /Time Corruptors and MMs being able to provide ~25%.

[macskull]

2 minutes ago, nzer said:

I'd like to see the interaction between Clarion Radial and Power Boost fixed, and I could see toning down Farsight a bit for defenders specifically, but I don't personally have a problem with Time defenders being able to provide 35-40% defense with Power Boost and Clarion Radial, and I definitely don't have a problem with /Time Corruptors and MMs being able to provide ~25%.

Does the +special from one boost the +special of the other? Given the recent nerf to +special boosting -special, I'd say that interaction is definitely a bug. On the topic at hand, I don't care at all about Farsight benefiting from PB but Fade benefiting from it is obviously a bug and I'm surprised it's gone this long without getting fixed.

[nzer]

1 minute ago, macskull said:

Does the +special from one boost the +special of the other? Given the recent nerf to +special boosting -special, I'd say that interaction is definitely a bug. On the topic at hand, I don't care at all about Farsight benefiting from PB but Fade benefiting from it is obviously a bug and I'm surprised it's gone this long without getting fixed.

I'm not 100% sure of the mechanism, and I haven't verified it myself, but my understanding is that using Clarion Radial before using Power Boost results in a much larger +special than the other way around, so I'm assuming there's some unintended interaction there.

[Trickshooter]

8 hours ago, nzer said:

I'm not 100% sure of the mechanism, and I haven't verified it myself, but my understanding is that using Clarion Radial before using Power Boost results in a much larger +special than the other way around, so I'm assuming there's some unintended interaction there.

Yes, Strength effects (which is what +/-"Special" is) do affect other Strength effects. However, flags can be set to prevent it and I could've sworn this was already fixed, with Power Build Up from Power Mastery being the last one that was originally missed?

[ScarySai]

On one hand, it is pretty powerful and is a bit of an outlier. If it got nerfed I wouldn't be surprised or really care, as I don't really like /time that much.

 

On the other, I don't want them to change too much of what Paragon left behind, unless it's to bring bad/old sets up to speed.

 

Sure, it can be seen as OP, but it's nothing new for this game. The idea this game will ever be dragged back to the i5 idea of balance would never pan out, so I don't want us to start nerfing every power that crosses the community's perceived line.

Edited February 28, 2020 by ScarySai

[SaddestGhost]

Fade certainly needs to be fixed.  Pop a bunch of reds or team with a kin and Fade can easily offer 30%+ resists.  Couple that with a resist based epic armor and a controller can nearly hit their AT cap for smashing, lethal, and probably negative. 

[Bartacus]

On 2/27/2020 at 11:38 PM, nzer said:

The arguments here about Farsight's defense when paired with Power Boost ring really hollow given Force Field gets just as much defense from Deflection Shield, Insulation Shield, and Power Boost, then gets 15% more and mez protection on top of it from Dispersion Bubble. No one seems to have a problem with Force Field being able to nearly incarnate soft cap and mez protect an entire team without incarnates, but Time reaching the non-incarnate soft cap with Clarion Radial is apparently too much. And yeah, Time has benefits outside of that, but people have been complaining for years that Force Field needs offensive bonuses in order to be competitive with the rest of the support power sets. If it gets them, are people gonna suddenly start having problems with the defense it provides? I sure hope so, based on this thread.

 

To say nothing of the fact that almost every properly built end-game team has enough def buffs to softcap everyone anyway. My thugs/storm MM only sits around 28% defense to positionals with all her toggles going, but I can't remember the last team I was on where I didn't have 50+% after buffs. Time is, frankly, not much of a standout once the team no longer wants for survivability, and that's a fairly low bar.

 

I'd like to see the interaction between Clarion Radial and Power Boost fixed, and I could see toning down Farsight a bit for defenders specifically, but I don't personally have a problem with Time defenders being able to provide 35-40% defense with Power Boost and Clarion Radial, and I definitely don't have a problem with /Time Corruptors and MMs being able to provide ~25%.

Force Field would have the same issue IF you could cast Deflection Shield and Insulation shield on yourself AND your whole team AND they were a single power slot. Time is much better. Being able to Soft Capt Defenses with PB + Farsight for your whole team including you is far better than just being able to do it for your teammates and still having a hole when solo. That's the issue. Time does what FF does except better, and has offensive abilities to be able to use. 

[Infinitum]

Seems to me its a non issue since time is only close second in MM secondaries, otherwise its not even a close second or in most cases second place at all - 4th in defender 2nd in corruptor and 5th in controller.

 

It hasnt been a runaway selection because of the function of PB + farsight.

 

It obviously isnt damaging the ability to choose other powersets.

[Draeth Darkstar]

Gotta say I disagree.

 

If you want to nerf everything that eclipses Force Fields, you're going to have to nerf damn near every set in the game, certainly every Support set. Force Fields has been garbage tier forever - and I say that as a former 6-year Bots/FF main. Traps's Foce Field Generator has been outshining the entire Force Fields set since 2007.

[aethereal]

Everyone can skip this reply unless they are interested in some musing about how balance works in CoH.

 

* * *

 

So something that this thread has been really helpful for is making me think very long and hard about how relevant it is to get a certain capability "for one power pick."  I find it a surprisingly nuanced question.

 

Like, let's take SR.  What if we took one of the toggles of Super Reflexes and folded all of its abilities into another toggle, and then replaced the first toggle with some kind of utter garbage power.

 

Is SR better as a set?

 

I mean...  yes?  Kind of?  But not a lot better?  You get 24 powers by level 50.  That's enough for all of your primaries and secondaries, hasten, combat jumping (or hover), a travel power, and boxing/tough/weave.  If you want powers from your epic pool, or stealth or maneuvers, you've got to find primary/secondary powers to drop (or get by with ninja run/P2W powers).  But there are few (no?) primary/secondaries that currently really demand 18 power picks, so...  If you have 3 skippable powers in your primary/secondary, you can get to the final tier epic power.  If you have 5 skippable powers in your primary/secondary, the marginal value of an additional power pick is very low indeed.

 

Much more important than power pick efficiency is overall set efficiency.  SR currently has 8 pretty takeable powers, you definitely skip Elude and might skip the power that gives +20% recharge.  If it replaced Elude with a good solid self-heal, it would be a better set, despite having fewer skippable powers.  If it combined two of the toggles and replaced one of them with Elude 2.0, people would still kind of say, "Well... it's FINE, I guess."

 

It's obviously the case that Farsight is a good power.  Would Time as a set be much worse if it had Farsight I (with 6% defense) and Farsight II (an auto-power that buffed Farsight I to 12% defense, or a toggle that gave 6% defense, or something like that), and gave up Temporal Selection or Time Stop?  I mean...  it would be worse.  I'm not sure it'd be much worse.  People get caught up in "This power is worth THREE OTHER POWERS," and that sounds like a bigger deal than it is.