Fade and Farsight Should Not Benefit from External Buffs

[Force Redux]

For the record, I'm sure not every build uses PB, nor should they incur a nerf because Mace is popular.  There are other factors to examine outside PB.

 

I for one do not use Mace for two out of my three Time characters.

 

I.e.:

Beast/Time/Leviathan

Zombies/Time/Soul

Thugs/Time/Mace.

Edited January 4, 2020 by Force Redux

[nihilii]

I'm with Force and aethereal.

Had my own "wow, PBed Farsight is broken" phase through May - June. Until I realised I was spending so much time casting PB and Farsight.

Granted, PB isn't the longest cast in this equation. But you really feel the drag when you slap an exta ~1.5s on a ~2.5s cast. Which you have to do every 90 seconds.

As info on procs streamed on the boards, I actually stopped running PB on my Time characters. They're using Dominate now, to eke out more damage.

Farsight and Fade feel broken until we play the sets long enough and notice the numbers we weren't paying attention to: animation times. Fade is an even worse offender, as it's a 60s refresh rather than 90s.

[Razia]

Can you really get PB to 60s so it can match up with Fade? I don't use PB on any of my Darkness Affinity toons, so no idea. Have an Ill/Dark and Plant/Dark. On the Illusionist I went only for recharge for perma PA so did not care about defenses. The Plant/Dark has soft capped range defense just with Fade only.

 

And, I don't use PB on my Fire/Time Corrupter either. Because Clarion. So we need to take that into the discussion too.

[oedipus_tex]

1 hour ago, Razia said:

Can you really get PB to 60s so it can match up with Fade? I don't use PB on any of my Darkness Affinity toons, so no idea. Have an Ill/Dark and Plant/Dark. On the Illusionist I went only for recharge for perma PA so did not care about defenses. The Plant/Dark has soft capped range defense just with Fade only.

 

And, I don't use PB on my Fire/Time Corrupter either. Because Clarion. So we need to take that into the discussion too.

 

EDIT: Sorry, just saw you were asking about Fade. The response below is about Farsight. I'll comment on Fade in a bit.

 

 

Yes, this is very easy to do. 

 

Time characters naturally have much higher Recharge than most other characters. A typical character with 3 Luck of the Gamblers will have 22.5 Recharge. A Time character will have 72.5 when Chrono Shift is up. I don't remember at what point Chrono Shift becomes perma, but it's achievable. Even non-perma, Chrono Shift is effectively a second Hasten.

 

For finished builds you're normally looking at something like this:

• Power Boost up every 35-40 seconds
• Farsight up every ~60 seconds

 

Farsight lasts 120 seconds. Power Boost will Recharge about 2 to 3 times during that duration. Farsight itself likely Recharges twice.

 

You shouldn't have any trouble keeping it up. You can even use Power Boost for other stuff during that time. You likely have 60 second overlap on recasting Farsight, so its not like you are under any particular pressure on when you recast it.

 

 

RE: Clarion. Clarion uses the same mechanic as Power Boost. Flagging the power would end the Clarion + Farsight combo that also results in crazy Farsight values.

Edited January 3, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[RabbitUp]

2 hours ago, aethereal said:

I mean, sure.  But it's still using two powers at times when they sync up when there's a lot else going on.  Clicky mez protection is easily made perma, is just one power, can be done auto, and the consequences of having a gap in your mez protection are usually much less than the consequences of suddenly losing essentially all your defense.  But people are still constantly complaining about clicky mez protection.

There's nothing to sync up, Power Boost has half the base cooldown of Farsight, or more importantly the same cooldown as Farsight's recharge. Just with the one recharge IO in the free slot, you make sure that Power Boost will be up every time Farsight is off cooldown. Then the only thing you have to do is to remember to hit Power Boost right before Farsight, and there are macros you can use to accomplish that, that Dom's use to juggle both Hasten and Domination.

[RabbitUp]

1 hour ago, Razia said:

Can you really get PB to 60s so it can match up with Fade? I don't use PB on any of my Darkness Affinity toons, so no idea. Have an Ill/Dark and Plant/Dark. On the Illusionist I went only for recharge for perma PA so did not care about defenses. The Plant/Dark has soft capped range defense just with Fade only.

 

And, I don't use PB on my Fire/Time Corrupter either. Because Clarion. So we need to take that into the discussion too.

Of course, base cooldown is 120 seconds, so you are looking at halving that, which is as easy as putting 3 recharge IOs in it. Of course you don't want to actually do that, but just the one recharge IO in the base slot and 60% global recharge do the trick.

[Riverdusk]

Have to say I do mostly agree with the original idea.  The current situation also has the consequence of it being hard to justify taking an epic pool that doesn't have power boost in it when you go with time. 

 

I'd say give Farsight a little bit of token damage resistance as well and use that as the "excuse" to not have it affected by Power Boost (and fix fade's issues).  I'd be for that and it'd be a little bit of a gimmie offset for the "nerf"

[Razia]

1 hour ago, Riverdusk said:

Have to say I do mostly agree with the original idea.  The current situation also has the consequence of it being hard to justify taking an epic pool that doesn't have power boost in it when you go with time. 

 

I'd say give Farsight a little bit of token damage resistance as well and use that as the "excuse" to not have it affected by Power Boost (and fix fade's issues).  I'd be for that and it'd be a little bit of a gimmie offset for the "nerf"

You can also go Clarion, same mechanics, open up more pool Options. 

 

But putting that aside, in a world where TW/Bio Scrapper exist, I am not even sure Clarion or Power Boosted Farsight is our main concern, is it? Plus in endgame def buffs are meh, because most people took already care of their defences, and then there is Barrier….

Edited January 3, 2020 by Razia

[Doomrider]

While I agree with the OP generally speaking when it comes to Fade (currently using Fade w/ PB to great effect) I really think there are other support sets more in need of review, far more than Time. Even if Farsight and Fade are changed to no longer interact with PB as they currently do, those 2 sets are far more well rounded and powerful than other support offerings. 

Sonic Resonance for instance; yes -res debuffs are incredibly powerful but the set has not aged well. Many of the powers don't even accept invention sets at all and the set in general is rather end hungry. Much of what the set provides is outclassed by others, and work more intuitively.

I know this thread is about Time and powerboost but rather than focus on one of the most popular and powerful support powersets, shouldn't we be addressing sets that are being largely passed over and in need of updates?

Edited January 3, 2020 by Doomrider

[Wavicle]

7 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 Fade replaced a Mag 3 single target Hold power from the Defender version of Dark Miasma so its interesting to see its Controller version be Tanker-level armor. 😉

I believe Fade replaced Fearsome Stare, a large cone Fear with significant -Tohit, not a single target hold.

Soul Absorption replaced Petrifying Gaze, the hold.  Since Poison, Trick Arrow, Time, etc, get holds I'm not sure why this was deemed necessary.

Questionable choices, balance wise, both of them.

Edited January 4, 2020 by sacredlunatic

[oedipus_tex]

1 hour ago, Doomrider said:

I know this thread is about Time and powerboost but rather than focus on one of the most popular and powerful support powersets, shouldn't we be addressing sets that are being largely passed over and in need of updates?

 

If you could figure out how to do that with the flip of a single parameter, sure. I don't think any of the sets needing love are as clear cut as this. There is a setting that specifically exists to stop powers from behaving the way Fade and Farsight currently work. That setting is already in place for the nearly identical power Link Minds. If I felt this fix was complex I wouldn't push it hard. But it's very obvious and already used consistently throughout the game for this style of power.

 

Plus, Fade is technically a bug fix and not just an improvement. Resistance powers should not inherit buffs from +Damage. So either it needs to be marked the way Link Minds is, or the Resistance needs to be unenhanceable.

 

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, Doomrider said:

I know this thread is about Time and powerboost but rather than focus on one of the most popular and powerful support powersets, shouldn't we be addressing sets that are being largely passed over and in need of updates?

Ideally, but if you just boost everything up then it makes everything OP / Easy... and then you get Brad Bir... er... Syndrome'd

[Force Redux]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Ideally, but if you just boost everything up then it makes everything OP / Easy... and then you get Brad Bir... er... Syndrome'd

Everything's already easy.  How many OP combos do we have? IOs? Incarnates? 

 

Don't punish fun. Promote it. This is a super hero game. One resurrected from death. Let's enjoy it.

 

PS - I'm all for fixing Fade's flag. That's a clear bug.

Edited January 4, 2020 by Force Redux

[Seroster01]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Ideally, but if you just boost everything up then it makes everything OP / Easy... and then you get Brad Bir... er... Syndrome'd

Isn't it already like that? I feel like any expectation of "difficulty" in CoH was largely destroyed with the introduction of IOs, & kept taking blows ever since. The content that's done most frequently wasn't balanced for carefully planned IO builds, and certainly wasn't designed for the addition of Incarnates & such. Any player who wants to devote the resources & brainpower can create a sizable number of characters with the ability to solo 99% of the content in the game.

 

And besides that, why does anyone even care about nerfing defensive boosts in modern CoH?. As has been pointed out, +defense is one of the most prevalent effects from "external" sources; whether that's IOs, Incarnates, or one of the gazillion other support powers in the game that boosts defense, +def is everywhere. Hell, almost every character I team with seem to to have Maneuvers in their build somewhere. I personally don't think it compares well to Dispersion Bubble in a balancing discussion, due to that issue: even a moderate difference in the value of the Defense buff is nearly irrelevant to me compared to the mez protection from FF. That mez protection is relatively limited, all things considered, but you're likely STILL going to be at the soft cap with either set, and any amount of mez protection is rarer for classes without an armor primary/secondary.

 

I think theres a few underperforming sets spread across all the ATs that need a buff (poor Energy Melee got gutted for everyone), but I also want to try to limit buffs for sets that don't need them or those that would affect a large amount of characters. What I CERTAINLY don't think we need to do is nerf any support sets when Homecoming has things like TW/Bio Scrappers & many other characters with both more personal survivability & FAR more damage output than any character that has access to PB+FS.

 

Besides that, this isn't a game where OP characters have a major impact on... well, anything really. Theres not really any large scale "competitive" PVE. Nobody's racing for Wolrd First, and even if they were I don't think TM is going to be a major factor in such a race compared to Kin, Rad, Traps, etc. The ultimate effect of PB+FS is that YOUR character is really hard to kill, and it takes a decent amount of levels & enhancement slot investments to get there. Big whoop, almost every other character at level 40+ is built such that they're exceptionally difficult to kill, and unlike a lot of those characters a Time Manipulation character won't have any real mez resistance unless they have access to Incarnates & they eat the opportunity costs involved in taking Clarion instead of a different destiny. 

 

I suppose if this argument is about it being too effective in PVP, that's something I wouldn't have an informed opinion on... but I don't think PVP has been mentioned in the thread to this point, and just like every other time PVP-related balance issues come up in MMOs, I'm of the opinion PVE shouldn't be changed for PVP reasons (especially in CoH/Homecoming, where PVP is on the fringe in terms of engagement, in a game likely qualifies as fringe by itself).

 

I suppose I'll frame my ultimate disagreement with this: what positive effect would this have on the game as a whole? How would it increase anyone's enjoyment of the game? Is there an overwhelming volume of TM characters kicking about that I haven't seen? Cause honestly I don't see many TM characters in groups (other than my own MM...). If we're going to start nerfing things I'd say the first thing to start with is TW's astoundingly OP damage output (in both AoE & ST situations) , & after that we can get to other sets & powers that "need" it. But I don't even want that done, because one or 2 outlying sets/powers don't affect my enjoyment of the game in any way. 🤷‍♂️

[oedipus_tex]

59 minutes ago, Force Redux said:

Everything's already easy.  How many OP combos do we have? IOs? Incarnates? 

 

 

 

Yes, but those are IOs and incarnates.

 

This is a powerset perma capping to all positions and elements before even getting to IOs or incarnates. See the template posted earlier in the thread.

 

Then you get to pile incarnates and IOs on top of that. Having spent only four powers to get there. There really isn't much of a strategy here. It's just the game handing you everything.

 

I'll allow that some powersets push extreme. Fulcrum Shift in Kinetics for example. This particular one though really stands out because this discussion was had so many times over the years about self-cast powers and Power Boost. I was there when Time Manipulation and Dark Affinity came out, and this has always felt like an oversight rather than a deliberate decision. Especially the bug in Fade.

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Galaxy Brain]

When one TM power more or less makes another set (FF) become obsolete, then it ruins enjoyment

[GM Mathison]

The added animation time of Power Boost on top of then using Fade or Foresight really does impact more than one things when just looking at the end result numbers. Also the way I see players in teams play these days they don't want to stick around to have the support buff them anyway. These perform well and if you are willing to spend the investment to Power Boost before each then that is the tax you pay on that. There are other support sets that don't get that level of self buffing that could use a nudge here or there and really help those sets be picked more often. But these are just my own experiences playing the game.

[Force Redux]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

When one TM power more or less makes another set (FF) become obsolete, then it ruins enjoyment

Sounds like FF needs the attention, not TM.

[Galaxy Brain]

Just now, Force Redux said:

Sounds like FF needs the attention, not TM.

Why not both? FF would have to be radically changed to compete with 1 OP power. Change the OP power down a notch because it is kinda goofy when combined with everything else, and then bring up FF as well.

[oedipus_tex]

It does make me wonder what values people think Sentinel armors should have if Defender Time Manipulation with Power Boost is okay. 😄

 

Time Manipulation is like if you had a Super Reflexes Sentinel but with elemental and Psi Defense too, with Fire Armor's heal, and +50% global recharge instead of +20%, and all of that affected everyone within 25ft and also the armor owner was soft capped to everything. With a -ToHit aura as a cherry on the cake.

 

At least nerf the power boost portion. It's way too far over the top. Saying this as someone who loves the set and would still use it. Just make it reasonable.

 

I haven't even mentioned yet how Power Boosted Farsight provides so much +ToHit that with a Kismet IO you don't need accuracy in any of your blast powers against most +4 enemies.

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Seroster01]

11 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Why not both? FF would have to be radically changed to compete with 1 OP power. Change the OP power down a notch because it is kinda goofy when combined with everything else, and then bring up FF as well.

I mean, FF already needs to be radically changed SOMEHOW. I said it earlier, +defense is probably the least useful support effect to bring to a team in the modern game, and that's where 90% of FF's effectiveness comes from. It's certainly not useless, but TBH I'd say the defense from FF powers is often less useful than the mez protection from Dispersion & odd secondary protections of the shields. '

 

If you're saying that the +defense from a single TM power completely ruins another set:

 

A.) Then it was "ruined" a long time ago by all the other defense boosting support powers added to the game. A well-built SoA will give the whole team 20% or more +def from double Maneuvers, and Fortunatas do similar things between their weaker maneuvers & Mind Link. Does that make FF useless? What about Traps, which has a power with effects identical to Dispersion Bubble (albeit with the caveat of it being a destroyable pet). Cold has shields very similar to FF's & a PBAOE defense bonus from Arctic Fog. Those were in the game before TM & nobody was complaining about them "ruining FF".

 

B.) FF's non-defense effects (Mez protection, Toxic Resist, and end drain resistance) are more useful in the modern game than the defensive portion of their effects, & that's the only comparable aspect of the 2 sets.

 

C.) If you're saying that a single power power from set makes the entirety of a different set redundant, that certainly sounds like an issue with the other set & not the power. As I mentioned above, I don't think +defense is FF's main draw anymore, but that's what the whole set was built around in a time where having a bunch of defense buffs was rare to come by. The other effects that FF brings are basically all knockback/knockdown/general mob positioning tools. These days everyone and their dog can soft cap some defense with a Luck, and it's usually FROWNED UPON to do anything other than congregate mobs in a pile. (Honestly I'm not sure if mob re-positioning effects were ever very popular, but they're certainly disliked now.) It has no direct offensive boosts, and the only way I can think of that FF could directly contribute to a group's damage output would be a weird strategy in which the group had some good patch effects & could push all the mobs into a corner & light it on fire or whatever. Thus, 1 of the set's primary effects is largely redundant, and the other is typically considered a detriment, and it doesn't add anything to the team's kill speed.  Meanwhile, many other sets can/will give solid amounts of +defense and EVERY other support set I can think of has some type of direct offensive bonus, whether that be -res, +damage, or +recharge. If you aren't bringing FF for the "niche" areas that it buffs, then I'm not real sure why you're bringing one. IDK what to do about FF w/ the resources available to Homecoming, but to me it absolutely needs SOMETHING done to it.

 

D.) I think that for the most part you can throw out all of the above, because I think much more of the player base cares about creating a character that fits their theme for the character than how strong/weak it is in comparison to other characters. Those that don't probably wouldn't have picked FF to begin with, because of everything I listed in C.

 

I feel like this has derailed the thread at this point, and to throw in a bit of the post to actually discuss the topic: Do any of the other powers in the discussion only do things that PB normally effects? Having read the thread I understand that any power that buffs a resistance definitely shouldn't function this way, so Fade should definitely get that hole patched. But Farsight is only +Defense & +To-Hit, which both seem to be in the list of things it SHOULD effect. Is there a comparable power that doesn't buff Resistance & isn't affected by PB?

[oedipus_tex]

On the left below is a Super Reflexes Sentinel who has taken all of his or her armor powers. You must take many powers to get here.

 

On the right is a Time Manipulation Defender with just Farsight and Power Boost. 

 

 

 

Powers that boost the caster's personal defense for a long period like Farsight should not benefit from Power Boost. 

 

Check out that +ToHit for the LOLs while you're at it. Yep, that's what would happen for 120 seconds to Tactics if Tactics were a cast power and not a toggle. Put a Kismet in there and you have +30% ToHit. Then just slot pure procs/damage in every power because you don't need Accuracy.* 😉

 

(*EDIT: To clarify, you don't need Accuracy for up to +1s or +2s or so. For+4s you need some, but hopefully you grab it from global Accuracy so you can still bypass slotting any actual Accuracy in the powers and can favor procs.)

Edited January 4, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Seroster01]

7 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

It does make me wonder what values people think Sentinel armors should have if Defender Time Manipulation with Power Boost is okay. 😄

 

Time Manipulation is like if you had a Super Reflexes Sentinel but with elemental and Psi Defense too, with Fire Armor's heal, and +50% global recharge instead of +20%, and all of that affected everyone within 25ft and also the armor owner was soft capped to everything. With a -ToHit aura as a cherry on the cake.

 

At least nerf the power boost portion. It's way too far over the top. Saying this as someone who loves the set and would still use it. Just make it reasonable.

 

I haven't even mentioned yet how Power Boosted Farsight provides so much +ToHit that with a Kismet IO you don't need accuracy in any of your blast powers against most +4 enemies.

I'll say the same thing about this as I've said about FF: +defense isn't the most useful part of any Sentinel armor set. Once again, mez resistance is the most useful part of their kit, and even for the sets that are pure defense, their DDR is more useful than the defense itself. A frequent point of discussion on the Sentinel forums (at least last time I was browsing it a lot) was that the only real advantage to a Sent over an IOd out blaster was the mez protection. Of course that's not totally true, as the armor sets also tend to also have a mix of various heals/absorbs, self buffs, CCs, & enemy debuffs... but so do Blaster secondaries. Perhaps if Sentinel's armor sets came with higher values they'd be considered more useful, but in the current state of the class it's more about the armor's "perks" than their raw mitigation #s.

 

Disclaimer: I'm actually rater fond of Sentinels, & one of my most-played Homecoming characters to this point is a Water/Bio sentinel. Sents are just barely on the fringe for me thinking they could use a slight buff, but not one to their defensive abilities. Anyway, I'm fine with them the way they are, so don't take this as shilling for Sentinel buffs.

[Seroster01]

I'll say this last bit, before I go actually play the game for the rest of the evening: I personally care far less about the +Def of FS benefiting from PB than I do the +To-Hit. My MM gets far more bang out of that than the +Defense (She'd be soft-capped either way. Notice a theme?)

[oedipus_tex]

5 minutes ago, Seroster01 said:

I'll say the same thing about this as I've said about FF: +defense isn't the most useful part of any Sentinel armor set. Once again, mez resistance is the most useful part of their kit, and even for the sets that are pure defense, their DDR is more useful than the defense itself. A frequent point of discussion on the Sentinel forums (at least last time I was browsing it a lot) was that the only real advantage to a Sent over an IOd out blaster was the mez protection. Of course that's not totally true, as the armor sets also tend to also have a mix of various heals/absorbs, self buffs, CCs, & enemy debuffs... but so do Blaster secondaries. Perhaps if Sentinel's armor sets came with higher values they'd be considered more useful, but in the current state of the class it's more about the armor's "perks" than their raw mitigation #s.

 

Disclaimer: I'm actually rater fond of Sentinels, & one of my most-played Homecoming characters to this point is a Water/Bio sentinel. Sents are just barely on the fringe for me thinking they could use a slight buff, but not one to their defensive abilities. Anyway, I'm fine with them the way they are, so don't take this as shilling for Sentinel buffs.

 

 

Sentinels were supposed to be given better totals than Defenders, which you can see with a spreadsheet of the powers. Here are the personal defense capabilities of the Defender powers when Power Boost is removed from the equation, in order from best to worst:

• Traps: +13.3% to all 
• Time: +12.5% to all
• Force Field: +10% to all
• Dark Miasma (Defender version): +5% to all
• Cold: +5% to all
• Storm: +5% to all

 

There's an obvious pattern in the values.  Time only significantly stands out from the curve when Power Boost comes into the equation. It becomes +24.8%. The others also double in effectiveness, but only for the duration of Power Boost, which was considered a fair trade off. 

 

I personally think Time should fall between Force Field and Dark/Cold/Storm, at around +8%. That probably won't happen. But it shouldn't provide +24.8%. 😮 No power should be doing that.