Fade and Farsight Should Not Benefit from External Buffs

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Frosticus said:

Maybe some sort of diminished returns are warranted on buffs as they are already in place on debuffs. That way the scrapper that is already ultra hardy doesnt get further buffed into the stratosphere. But the dominator that focused on being a good mezzer rather than capping defenses would gain a lot of the buff. Then again I hate DR in pvp, so it would have to be different than that. 

This is a great idea that probably needed to have been implemented in 2006. It might be too late now.

[Bopper]

5 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

I love  the cane, PB only gives me 10 seconds of greatness, but gives time 120 seconds

PB won't synergize with everything. But, if you're ever interested in an underrated buff, PB + Grant Invisibility is a nice 2 minute weave you can grant teammates.

 

But ultimately, the nerf simply kills PB. Nobody cares about the short 15 second burst it can provide, unless you have it perma'd with an */EM Blaster, but then you're stuck having to cast it every 15 seconds. PB is a niche power that has little utility for most, but huge utility for others. Time is the biggest benefactor, but there are other long duration powers too that greatly benefit from it. 

 

But who knows, maybe all the Time/*/Soul defenders will move back to Time/*/Dark and enjoy the perma-15 ft radius- Soul Drain, until that gets eventually nerfed.

[Frosticus]

45 minutes ago, Bopper said:

PB won't synergize with everything. But, if you're ever interested in an underrated buff, PB + Grant Invisibility is a nice 2 minute weave you can grant teammates.

 

But ultimately, the nerf simply kills PB. Nobody cares about the short 15 second burst it can provide, unless you have it perma'd with an */EM Blaster, but then you're stuck having to cast it every 15 seconds. PB is a niche power that has little utility for most, but huge utility for others. 

I dont  think it kills PB but rather makes it the way it likely should be. A brief, but large boost in power. Time would still get a drastically improved tohit debuff from juncture and bigger heals. It would still be one of the best benefitting sets even if farsight were excluded. 

 

45 minutes ago, Bopper said:

But who knows, maybe all the Time/*/Soul defenders will move back to Time/*/Dark and enjoy the perma-15 ft radius- Soul Drain, until that gets eventually nerfed.

Honestly, this is the route I had carved out for my time/fire. Time is one of the safest sets to hang around in melee and even without PB just farsight with juncture and some IOs gets you floored enemy tohit chance in most scenarios. 

 

I chose posion/fire though which is a set that "needs" to be in melee to not suck, but has extremely limited tools to hang there. If I lose my 800 damage proc'd dominates I will switch to perma soul drain. 

[oedipus_tex]

I agree with Frosticus. Power Boost would still increase the -ToHit in Time's Juncture for 15 seconds. ToHit is Schedule B, so like Defense, any STR boosts to it are disproportionately effective; basically like running a second copy of the power for free. On a Defender with 2 IOs in Time's Juncture it's -37.5% ToHit. People may say, well, that's just for 15 seconds, and that's true, but 15 seconds is actually longer than many sources of -ToHit, and Time's Juncture is auto hit.

[Captain Powerhouse]

For what it’s worth we will not be touching Time until Page 6 at the earliest.

[Infinitum]

3 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

I agree with Frosticus. Power Boost would still increase the -ToHit in Time's Juncture for 15 seconds. ToHit is Schedule B, so like Defense, any STR boosts to it are disproportionately effective; basically like running a second copy of the power for free. On a Defender with 2 IOs in Time's Juncture it's -37.5% ToHit. People may say, well, that's just for 15 seconds, and that's true, but 15 seconds is actually longer than many sources of -ToHit, and Time's Juncture is auto hit.

Yeah and the saying goes you can polish a turd its still a turd.  theres no way you can upsell what you are advocating for here. so stop pretending like its going to be anything other than an unnecessary nerf and also that you are for some odd reason anything but giddy about it.

[oedipus_tex]

34 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

Yeah and the saying goes you can polish a turd its still a turd.  theres no way you can upsell what you are advocating for here. so stop pretending like its going to be anything other than an unnecessary nerf and also that you are for some odd reason anything but giddy about it.

 

 

If I've upset you somehow then I apologize. It's hard to project mood using just text and I am not a very good writer, so my intent isn't always clear. 

 

I am not giddy about Farsight. It's just a power that happens to stand out as egregious. It makes me wonder what sort of Sentinel I would build that could compete. 

[Infinitum]

8 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

If I've upset you somehow then I apologize. It's hard to project mood using just text and I am not a very good writer, so my intent isn't always clear. 

 

I am not giddy about Farsight. It's just a power that happens to stand out as egregious. It makes me wonder what sort of Sentinel I would build that could compete. 

I'm not upset, I just don't mince words.

 

Explain to me please if it's so egregious why kinetics beats out time so handily.  Why isn't everyone taking time with a runaway margin if it's so OP?

 

My Beam Ninjitsu Sent is way more durable than my grav time troller to answer your question.

 

Show me why this being so "egregious" does anything to break the game, nobody stops and waits on farsight to cast.  And game OP teams don't even need the buff.

 

Nobody cares but people on here that are royally butthurt for some reason.  I'm just really curious why.

 

I honestly just took power boost for the 15 seconds.  Once I learned about the interaction in this thread, I don't notice any difference on team whether it's power boosted or not because we are moving so fast.

 

It's definately not game breaking though.

[Wavicle]

I wonder if it’s possible to break the defense of Farsight into two different chunks, one That can be boosted by power boost, and one that cannot. That way people could at least keep some of what it currently has, but it could be brought more in line with everything else.

[oedipus_tex]

8 hours ago, Infinitum said:

Nobody cares but people on here that are royally butthurt for some reason.

 

 

I'm going to end my role in this conversation and move on. My thoughts can be found in the history of the thread. Thanks. 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

22 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

That is the reason I created a Time Defender. Now I'm not a fan of playing defenders, so this character was eventually stripped of IOs and retired so I don't really have a dog in this fight. But I do know my buddy and I created a Time Defender duo because of this interaction. I don't know how often that was the reason for other people, just that the two of us did it for that reason.

Well I made an Ill/time troller to test this interaction and found ti cool but not game breaking OP. And frankly still would rather be on a scrapper,blaster, brute,stalker,sentinel, or any real DPS dealer that still gets super defenses.

 

I would consider anyone here advocating for breaking a good inter power synergy like the one in question to be the kind of purist build types that really hate it when pools can be used alongside the main power sets to create something amazing.

 

I mean seriously, nerfing support ATs fun tricks is a good way to get those of us who only dabble in the odd support builds to just forsake them entirely for selfish mass murder solo artists builds.

[Infinitum]

5 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

 

I mean seriously, nerfing support ATs fun tricks is a good way to get those of us who only dabble in the odd support builds to just forsake them entirely for selfish mass murder solo artists builds

That's the truth.

[Burnt Toast]

I have two Time characters - A Corruptor and a Controller. Both have capped defense to every positional type - only one uses PBU. My Controller (Grav/Time) went with Psi Mastery for perma Indomitable Will - so that I didn't need to get Clarion for my Destiny. What others also fail to realize is that there is no Defense Debuff Resistance given...so while you may be softcapped - any enemy that can debuff defense will easily knock you way down in numbers. There's a huge difference between raw numbers and those numbers when taken into account for actual gameplay. 

[Frosticus]

5 hours ago, Burnt Toast said:

I have two Time characters - A Corruptor and a Controller. Both have capped defense to every positional type - only one uses PBU. My Controller (Grav/Time) went with Psi Mastery for perma Indomitable Will - so that I didn't need to get Clarion for my Destiny. What others also fail to realize is that there is no Defense Debuff Resistance given...so while you may be softcapped - any enemy that can debuff defense will easily knock you way down in numbers. There's a huge difference between raw numbers and those numbers when taken into account for actual gameplay. 

True. Good thing time has strong self healing ability, an aoe damage debuff, can floor an entire spawns recharge and movement speed and also stagger their output with an aoe pulsing hold. But yes, if you just expect to cast farsight and pew pew like a sentinel you might run into issues at times.

 

Not sure if most of you play other squishies, or have at least looked at them, but few get to softcap def to everything. Let alone with just SO's. Even less get to softcap def and also get a resistance epic. Even less get to softcap def, have strong resistance, plus layer that with an auto hit aoe damage debuff to further their resistance and get any kind of self healing ability.

11 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

I mean seriously, nerfing support ATs fun tricks is a good way to get those of us who only dabble in the odd support builds to just forsake them entirely for selfish mass murder solo artists builds.

I'd counter with saying that if you feel you "need" pb+farsight to play a support character then your expectations might be set too high for the buff/debuff AT's. Force multipliers are a tricky subject. Before time manipulation (and dark affinity) they have historically taken on some harsh restrictions because of their ability to affect so many people/enemies in such drastic ways.

 

That's what makes them a lot more unique than the "damage" AT's. I don't want my empath to be able to cast fort, cm and adrenaline boost on myself. That seems silly to me

 

I get that everyone builds for solo and then teams together with all the cohesion of  a charity all-star game, but that isn't how forcemultipliers are balanced throughout the history of this game. 

20 hours ago, Infinitum said:

My Beam Ninjitsu Sent is way more durable than my grav time troller to answer your question.

 

I'm not sure if you are being serious, but if you are...

A beam/nin sent brings literally nothing to a team compared to any buff/debuff set aside from mediocre damage. I would hope that it is more hardy than a character that can drastically improve 1-255 allies and drastically weaken 16 enemies at a go. All while being able to stack multiple mobs to improve team kill speeds.

 

They are worlds apart in their capabilities.  A sent may well solo better than x/time. It probably should because that's all that sents do well. There isn't a team configuration that wouldn't benefit more from having a /time join than a beam/nin sent.

 

So to correctly answer his question - no sentinel can compete. They aren't intended to. The fact that any buff/debuff can approach a sentinels' survivability (and time can, maybe not yours, but it can) should be concerning to anyone that understands why that creates a problem. Can you make a sentinel that could even hold a candle up to the buff/debuff capability of any set, let alone time?

 

What's next? pb+farsight doesn't hit as hard as headsplitter so that makes it ok?

Edited March 12, 2020 by Frosticus

[Burnt Toast]

I honestly don't think anything will come of this thread; like 99.9875% of these threads in this section. HC isn't in the habit of nerfing...and yes that's what you all are asking for is a nerf. Just because they said they MAY look at Time doesn't mean they WILL or that even if they do... anything will come from that. HC tends to be more about looking at older sets which are not performing as well as some of the newer sets: Trick Arrow, Force Fields, SR... for example. So while you all can continue to "debate" the issue for endless pages... I will just keep playing my Time characters with and without PBU 🙂

[Infinitum]

2 hours ago, Frosticus said:

True. Good thing time has strong self healing ability, an aoe damage debuff, can floor an entire spawns recharge and movement speed and also stagger their output with an aoe pulsing hold. But yes, if you just expect to cast farsight and pew pew like a sentinel you might run into issues at times.

 

Not sure if most of you play other squishies, or have at least looked at them, but few get to softcap def to everything. Let alone with just SO's. Even less get to softcap def and also get a resistance epic. Even less get to softcap def, have strong resistance, plus layer that with an auto hit aoe damage debuff to further their resistance and get any kind of self healing ability.

I'd counter with saying that if you feel you "need" pb+farsight to play a support character then your expectations might be set too high for the buff/debuff AT's. Force multipliers are a tricky subject. Before time manipulation (and dark affinity) they have historically taken on some harsh restrictions because of their ability to affect so many people/enemies in such drastic ways.

 

That's what makes them a lot more unique than the "damage" AT's. I don't want my empath to be able to cast fort, cm and adrenaline boost on myself. That seems silly to me

 

I get that everyone builds for solo and then teams together with all the cohesion of  a charity all-star game, but that isn't how forcemultipliers are balanced throughout the history of this game. 

I'm not sure if you are being serious, but if you are...

A beam/nin sent brings literally nothing to a team compared to any buff/debuff set aside from mediocre damage. I would hope that it is more hardy than a character that can drastically improve 1-255 allies and drastically weaken 16 enemies at a go. All while being able to stack multiple mobs to improve team kill speeds.

 

They are worlds apart in their capabilities.  A sent may well solo better than x/time. It probably should because that's all that sents do well. There isn't a team configuration that wouldn't benefit more from having a /time join than a beam/nin sent.

 

So to correctly answer his question - no sentinel can compete. They aren't intended to. The fact that any buff/debuff can approach a sentinels' survivability (and time can, maybe not yours, but it can) should be concerning to anyone that understands why that creates a problem. Can you make a sentinel that could even hold a candle up to the buff/debuff capability of any set, let alone time?

 

What's next? pb+farsight doesn't hit as hard as headsplitter so that makes it ok?

Do you even know what beam rifle is capable of?

 

Obviously not or you wouldn't have said any of the above.

 

It melts mobs with no chance of getting hit especially if you can hover blast, not only that but it does -res and accepts -res procs, -def, and -regen - while doing near blaster like damage if you slot correctly.

 

You want to see me do it? come on excelsior and look me up, I'll show you how my sent is better in teams than /Time.

 

Not saying time is bad, but it's not nearly as OP as you guys are pearl clutching about farsights interaction with PB.

 

You are literally removing one of the great set synergies in the game for a support AT.  Let that sink in for a sec.

[Auroxis]

5 hours ago, Frosticus said:

no sentinel can compete. They aren't intended to. The fact that any buff/debuff can approach a sentinels' survivability (and time can, maybe not yours, but it can) should be concerning to anyone that understands why that creates a problem. Can you make a sentinel that could even hold a candle up to the buff/debuff capability of any set, let alone time?

 

What's next? pb+farsight doesn't hit as hard as headsplitter so that makes it ok?

They aren't intended to? Sentinels are due for a buff, and proc-fu builds are due for a nerf.

 

How about we see where Sentinels and Proc builds end up before we resort to nerfing Time? Let alone removing one of its most popular features from the game.

[Frosticus]

 The logic and way you guys debate is why things like the changes to dark melee were abandoned almost immediately. I feel bad for cpt powerhouse.

 

At any rate my takeaway  is:

1. defense doesn't matter  because everyone has it

2. dont touch the defense of farsight because it matters to some people (see 1)

3. Procs tho!! (does anyone  put procs in farsight?...I thought not)

4. Buff sentinels - even though they apparently buff/debuff as well as support ATs and do nearly blaster damage according to Infinitum (this must be specific to /nin? cause my beam/bio definitely doesn't)

 

I'm not sure you will convince everyone, but I'm sold.

Have fun guys, that's the main  thing. 

 

 

 

[Infinitum]

56 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

 The logic and way you guys debate is why things like the changes to dark melee were abandoned almost immediately. I feel bad for cpt powerhouse.

 

At any rate my takeaway  is:

1. defense doesn't matter  because everyone has it

2. dont touch the defense of farsight because it matters to some people (see 1)

3. Procs tho!! (does anyone  put procs in farsight?...I thought not)

4. Buff sentinels - even though they apparently buff/debuff as well as support ATs and do nearly blaster damage according to Infinitum (this must be specific to /nin? cause my beam/bio definitely doesn't)

 

I'm not sure you will convince everyone, but I'm sold.

Have fun guys, that's the main  thing. 

 

 

 

Oh stop, nothing was posed the way you just did there.

 

And you know it.

[Mystic Fortune]

How about we leave it well enough alone? This was brought up back on live. Castle didn't see it as a problem then. It shouldn't be a problem now.

[Green Scream]

12 minutes ago, Mystic Fortune said:

How about we leave it well enough alone? This was brought up back on live. Castle didn't see it as a problem then. It shouldn't be a problem now.

I 100% agree with Mystic. These powers in question are SUPPOSED to be powerful. Power boost SHOULD buff them, hell power boost should buff whatever the hell is used after it is activated. Thats the point of taking it. Can Farsight be made perma? Yes. Can a power boosted Farsight grant a huge defense buff? Hell yes. Why would you NOT want that. Devoting the time, effort, and resources into building a crazy specced out character should be rewarded with feeling powerful. IOs aside, what if someone wanted to rock some normal SOs...say they dont have the cash or resources to build like crazy. Having a way to boost their power to be more effective is a win in their book. 

 

How about we focus on bettering the under-performing power sets. These "nerfs" are not necessary. This is a City of Heroes, we should be able to feel powerful. Powerful is fun. Being a bada$$ in combat is FUN. The pros and cons of each powerset are there for a reason.

[Trickshooter]

8 hours ago, Mystic Fortune said:

How about we leave it well enough alone? This was brought up back on live. Castle didn't see it as a problem then. It shouldn't be a problem now.

Uh... Castle had been gone for like 6 months before Time Manipulation even entered beta testing.

[Mystic Fortune]

3 hours ago, Trickshooter said:

Uh... Castle had been gone for like 6 months before Time Manipulation even entered beta testing.

I guess I was referring more to Power Boost. That said, Time Manipulation was a premium powerset. It was meant to be more powerful because it was pay for content. Just like Titan Weapons and Nature Affinity. These sets need to maintain the integrity of their original design. Not be changed after the fact just because a handful of people feel they are over performing nearly a decade after the game has risen from the ashes.

[Coyote]

5 minutes ago, Mystic Fortune said:

These sets need to maintain the integrity of their original design. Not be changed after the fact just because a handful of people feel they are over performing nearly a decade after the game has risen from the ashes.

 

When discussing buffs to powersets, maintaining the integrity of the original design is almost never mentioned.

When discussing nerfs to powersets, maintaining the integrity of the original design is a major argument.

I am sometimes amused by how differently the same arguments have relevance or have no relevance depending on the poster's personal power powerlevel preferences.

 

It is reasonable to discuss game balance, powerset balance, power balance, etc, without caring about history.

It is also reasonable to mention history when discussing whether some balance passes should be implemented or not. But that doesn't stop the actual balance discussion from being relevant.

[Mystic Fortune]

19 minutes ago, Coyote said:

 

When discussing buffs to powersets, maintaining the integrity of the original design is almost never mentioned.

When discussing nerfs to powersets, maintaining the integrity of the original design is a major argument.

I am sometimes amused by how differently the same arguments have relevance or have no relevance depending on the poster's personal power powerlevel preferences.

 

It is reasonable to discuss game balance, powerset balance, power balance, etc, without caring about history.

It is also reasonable to mention history when discussing whether some balance passes should be implemented or not. But that doesn't stop the actual balance discussion from being relevant.

That's great. You know what I'm not amused by? Unnecessary nerfs disguised as 'fixes'.