Fade and Farsight Should Not Benefit from External Buffs

[Wavicle]

This is one of those really obvious changes that people argue against for no clear reason.

Yes, obviously these powers should not be Power Boost-able.

[Force Redux]

The base values of FS are fine.

 

I can agree that PB overtunes what are otherwise reasonable numbers. The problem is Power Boost, not the base powers (if there is indeed a problem, which I will leave for debate).

 

Do realize that FS and PB come at a cost:

 

Click powers. There's a time and effort tax to maintaining them that toggle armors do not have.

 

They come much later in a build than armors. These do not exempt very well. If the focus is end game only, then the sheer amount of Def available with Destiny, Hybrid and  Agility Alpha also needs to be nerfed. They require very little effort to obtain and trivialize many of the base defenses listed above. 

 

At end game, everyone's Def capped, can hit +4s reliably, has high recharge, can nuke stuff, have pets, and access to various powers that rounds out their builds. No one is needed, and many ATs are irrelevant. No one needs my Tanker. No one needs my Controller. They certainly don't need my MM. The end game is specifically designed to be trivialized. You can go out of your way to make content more difficult, but overall the result is a lot of super powered characters that are homogenized.

 

However, when I exempt down on my Thugs/Time I often have no access to PB, and sometimes no access to FS. 

 

My Tanker and Sent, however, tend to keep their armor toggles when exempt for most content.

 

Access to these Defense numbers is not equal.  And at end game, it doesn't just matter.

[Force Redux]

15 minutes ago, sacredlunatic said:

This is one of those really obvious changes that people argue against for no clear reason.

Yes, obviously these powers should not be Power Boost-able.

The proposition is to not only keep PB from boosting the powers, but to nerf the base powers themselves. 

 

Reasons have been given. If you don't wish to acknowledge it, that's entire different.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Force Redux said:

The proposition is to not only keep PB from boosting the powers, but to nerf the base powers themselves. 

 

That might be overkill.

[Force Redux]

13 minutes ago, sacredlunatic said:

 

That might be overkill.

Probably. It was part of the OTs ruminations.

 

I'm with you in that PB should maybe be looked at. Particularly for Fade. Maybe for Farsight. 

 

Fade is clearly a bug, based on it's having resistance. If Farsight loses boosting, it should have a resistance added. Possibly speed and recharge reduction resistance and some DDR? I dunno.

 

But the base powers by themselves are fine. 

Edited January 4, 2020 by Force Redux

[RabbitUp]

25 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.

All that defense the sets provide means less slots and set bonuses spent on getting that def from IOs. And it's not like Time only provides defense, it's a single power we are talking about here, and even that power also has a Tactics built in that's buffable by PB.

[RabbitUp]

11 minutes ago, Force Redux said:

The base values of FS are fine.

 

I can agree that PB overtunes what are otherwise reasonable numbers. The problem is Power Boost, not the base powers (if there is indeed a problem, which I will leave for debate).

 

Do realize that FS and PB come at a cost:

 

Click powers. There's a time and effort tax to maintaining them that toggle armors do not have.

 

They come much later in a build than armors. These do not exempt very well. If the focus is end game only, then the sheer amount of Def available with Destiny, Hybrid and  Agility Alpha also needs to be nerfed. They require very little effort to obtain and trivialize many of the base defenses listed above. 

 

At end game, everyone's Def capped, can hit +4s reliably, has high recharge, can nuke stuff, have pets, and access to various powers that rounds out their builds. No one is needed, and many ATs are irrelevant. No one needs my Tanker. No one needs my Controller. They certainly don't need my MM. The end game is specifically designed to be trivialized. You can go out of your way to make content more difficult, but overall the result is a lot of super powered characters that are homogenized.

 

However, when I exempt down on my Thugs/Time I often have no access to PB, and sometimes no access to FS. 

 

My Tanker and Sent, however, tend to keep their armor toggles when exempt for most content.

 

Access to these Defense numbers is not equal.  And at end game, it doesn't just matter.

 

FS is not the only click power in the game. Let's unflag everything else then, so it benefits from Power Boost. And let's give everyone else 15% def for free since it doesn't matter in the end game.

[Force Redux]

5 minutes ago, RabbitUp said:

 

FS is not the only click power in the game. Let's unflag everything else then, so it benefits from Power Boost. And let's give everyone else 15% def for free since it doesn't matter in the end game.

It's not free. It's a power pick. It costs time and End. It comes at a certain level, and may not always available. There are opportunity costs, such as animation lock.

 

But by all means, use hyperbole and snark.

 

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by Force Redux

[RabbitUp]

1 minute ago, Force Redux said:

It's not free. It's a power pick. It costs time and End. It comes at a certain level, and may not always available. There are opportunity costs, such as animation lock.

 

But by all means, use hyperbole and snark.

 

 

Almost everything has animation lock and costs endurance. We still have stuff not interacting with Power Boost. Even in the context of Time specifically, it's not like you are giving up something significant by going Primal Forces/Soul. No other epic pool gives you 15% def to everything on top of the regular shield toggle.

[Force Redux]

I actually agree. I have four time characters (3 MMs, 1 Controller) and only one has Mace/Primal. It's not a must have, though it's nice.

 

My statement has been is that the powers themselves are fine. If there's any review it should focus on Power Boost, and how it buffs some powers. 

[oedipus_tex]

Maybe the reason some of us feel more strongly about Power Boost and shield powers is this topic came up about once a week on the old forums when discussing Controller and Defender builds.

 

Defenders did not originally have Power Boost, they had Power Build Up. Controllers got Power Boost first. Controllers could cast Power Boosted Force Fields, and this was the source of minor controversy, because a Controller could technically out-defense a Defender and soft-cap a team, "bypassing" the Defender's supposed better values. This was back when you had to cast shields player-by-player, so it was an art to give a whole team Power Boosted shields. People used to discuss strategies to do it efficiently and plan macros around it (I do not miss these days).

 

When Cold Domination came around to Defenders and later Controllers, many people called it the "better than Force-Field-Force-Field set." It had a big bubble even if the graphic didn't look one (Arctic Fog, +5% Defense), and it had shields with identical values to Force Fields's, so on its own it was mostly better sans the mezz protection.

 

The one thing Cold Domination couldn't do? Power Boost those shields. And that led to what felt like a nearly daily discussion about how the Resistance component in Cold Dom's shields meant Power Boost couldn't work, and how this was the one thing that "saved" the Force Field set. You couldn't self cast your Force Fields, because that would be overpowered. But at least Power Boosted Force Fields gave the set a sort of purpose. That's more or less its only purpose to this day, its association with the Power Boost power.

 

 

The other, inevitable discussion was how Power Boost works on toggles.

 

Toggles constantly recast themselves. So, if you Power Boost with an eligible toggle active, Defense will increase, but only for the duration of Power Boost. This could allow a Force Field Defender to achieve spurts of greatness. Ok, not really. But it was considered okay, because it was short lived. About once a week someone would post a build with Power Boost accidentally turned on, thinking they had soft capped to all positions with ease, and we'd have to explain that they needed to turn Power Boost off to see the real effect it would have.

 

 

It's worth mentioning Traps. Power Boosting a Force Field Generator before casting it does not create a generator with +26.38% defense. It will cause the Generator to have that defense value for the duration of Power Boost. From what I understand this was done intentionally, and thank heavens.

 

 

With Time Manipulation though, you finally see that effect for real. 

 

 

What's so funny, thinking about the history of the game, is how we used to talk about IOing Storm and Cold and say that starting with a base Defense of 5% was "huge for reaching the soft cap." That was years before a number like +24 was thought possible.

Edited January 4, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[oedipus_tex]

I feel like I've posted a lot on this topic already, but there's something else I should mention.

 

If Time Manipulation gets to keep Power Boosted Farsight, Cold Domination Defenders should be allowed to self-cast their shields. They would actually have less total Defense than a Power Boosted Time character.

 

15% from Shields + 5% from Arctic Fog = 20% Total defense

 

So they are 4 points shy of the Time character, except when it comes to Psi defense. They only have 5% Psi defense compared to the Time character's 24.

 

So, how about Force Field? If Force Field couldn't use Power Boost, but could self cast it's shields, that character would 25% Defense, almost identical to what Farsight + Power Boost is providing.

 

I don't know how many other ways to show how overpowered Power Boostable Farsight is.

[Seroster01]

Well I really don't want to start a full post right now cause I'll end up awake till 5 AM, but 2 things I wanted to throw out tonight:

 

I asked this a bit up the thread & havent seen an answer: People have brought up examples of other clicky self-buff powers that PB does not affect, but all the ones I saw listed had a resistance effect built in to them, & per another post on this subject, that should make all of them ineligible for PB due to that by itself. Is there a list somewhere of clickies not affected by PB where we can check this out? 

 

Part B of the post is me simply bringing up that I feel my frame of reference is different from what seems  to be the main topic of discussion; when boosted by PB, a Defender's Farsight gives 12% more defense. I'm not saying this amount is insignificant, but rather that at the level in which it's possible for this specific combo to exist,  some or all of that 12% will be redundant in most groups, and if the character isn't in a group who the heck cares how powerful they are? With that part out of the way, the core reason I personally don't feel like this is a big deal is that I've spent a lot of time on my Thugs/Time, and from a numerical standpoint this feels like a big hullabaloo about nothing, since her total endgame build's PB+FS effect is right around 20%, Yet my Bane Spider's double maneuvers with 0 enhancements gives out 15% defense for merely being alive & within 60 ft any character, from as early as lvl 10.

 

Can't stay awake, will check back tomorrow. 

[oedipus_tex]

4 minutes ago, Seroster01 said:

I asked this a bit up the thread & havent seen an answer: People have brought up examples of other clicky self-buff powers that PB does not affect, but all the ones I saw listed had a resistance effect built in to them, & per another post on this subject, that should make all of them ineligible for PB due to that by itself. Is there a list somewhere of clickies not affected by PB where we can check this out? 

 

 

The rule typically is that if a power has enhanceable Resistance, it is not eligible for Power Boost. That should have ruled Fade out to avoid the +Damage bug.

 

I think you used to be able to see the flag on the old City of Date site. I don't know where you can see it now. It doesn't show in Mids, and powers like the Cold shields will appear to benefit from Power Boost when you use the tool, they just wont work in game.

 

One of the greatest troll moves by the devs of all time was Dominator Link Minds:

 

 

 

Yep, they stuck 1.7% Psi Resist in there just so they could justify not letting you Power Boost it (Four Dominator sets have access to a Power Boost-like power so this was at the forefront of their mind). Link Minds is a clickable AoE +Defense +ToHit power that is basically the forefather of Farsight. 

[Force Redux]

I don't agree 100% with everything Oedipus, but I do appreciate your thoughts behind your suggestions. Thank you.

[Razia]

6 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

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

The Problem with FF is, that everyone can take care of their defense with IOs early on, plus Weave and later Barrier. It's not TM that takes away the enjoyment of FF. FF needs a serious buff.

[Force Redux]

7 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

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

On a side note, I have 3 incarnated Time characters and 2 incarnated Force Fielders. They are all fun, for varying reasons. Defense values don't seem to mitigate the fun factor for me. 

 

Where FF shines now is lowbie TFs, where FF can still impact team toughness. But on an MSR or TinPex we're all equally meaningless. 

 

Oddly enough it's the same feels for my Time MM, except Farsight is less available then bubbles.

 

The problem isn't Dark Affinity or Time Manipulation. It's that Force Field had been neglected and was designed in a time when development and vision for the game has not been fully tested against players and actual non beta gameplay. What Jack and Co. Thought was important about group dynamics before launch was misaligned with the actuality. 

 

Non stacking armors.

Toggle debuffs.

Knock back.

Solo ability of ATs.

 

Force Field suffers from it's heritage. It needs improvement. Buff. Don't nerf.

 

(Again, caveat that Fade shouldn't be buffed by Boost and that I'm open to the idea of FS getting some resistance in trade for same).

Edited January 4, 2020 by Force Redux

[Force Redux]

BTW, I love this game. That we can even have discussions about playing it in 2020 tickles me to no end. I still pinch myself now and again. 😃

[Infinitum]

5 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

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.)

You can't compare the two, SR will far outperform the two clickies, mainly because the buff on the clickies won't last where as the SR is always on 100% of the time.

 

This is another nerf thread that really doesn't make sense in the grand scheme of the game because you can soft cap everything - every powerset every support AT without Power boost anyway, and it's only a 15 second duration.

 

It may be OP when you figure in set recharge, incarnate, etc but what isn't? - everything is under those standards.

 

There's nothing OP about it without that investment.

 

It's a super hero game enjoy the OP, buff the sets that need help and maybe release other difficulty options.

Edited January 4, 2020 by Infinitum

[Parabola]

3 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

and it's only a 15 second duration.

This may just be a wording issue but this looks like you are saying farsight is only boosted by power boost for 15 seconds? That isn't how power boost interacts with click buffs. Any click buff cast while under the effects of power boost will carry the boost for the entire duration of the buff. So in the case of farsight and fade their effects are boosted for their entire duration rather than just 15 seconds. It makes the downtime on power boost irrelevant as long as it can be brought up ready for the next cast of the buff.

[nihilii]

6 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

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.

Sentinel SR has Master Brawler, capped DDR, scaling res, higher base HP. All of it as a passive save for Master Brawler. To reduce SR to just defense feels like cherrypicking if you're going to list all other boons for Time.

You're kinda dodging the point several of us made about animation times and teammate willingness to stick around, too. Assuming no opportunity cost to PBed Farsight is a little like taking Storm pylon times as indication of general game performance. There are constraints to PBed Farsight.

I think you may have a valid case regardless of my personal opinion, but being selective with facts hurts your point.

Re: FF, FF doesn't care about a Time nerf. FF needs +absorb on bubbles. 🙂

Edited January 4, 2020 by nihilii

[Leogunner]

My 2 cents on the matter:

 

Bugs aside, I don't really see a problem with Farsight being power boostable.  I'm more surprised at the duration.  Why is it 2 minutes? There are buffs like Fortitude, Frostwork, and Forge that last 2 minutes but they're single target!  You might say "but their recharge is much lower", but that kind of doesn't matter when you're trying to buff a team and you have to ramp up to fully buffing the team (if not ever completely).  Even similar AoE buffs like World of Pain, Overgrowth or Recovery Aura have shorter durations and/or longer recharges.  What makes Farsight/Time Manipulation so special?  Is the rest of the set garbage and Farsight/Fade the diamonds among the rest of their mediocre set?

 

GM Mathison stated that the click and animation was a cost these powers have to pay for their use and I say, if that were the tax why not just aim there?  If you had to click those buffs every 30sec to maintain them, suddenly it is taxing and you might even miss some allies that are out of range more often.  Heck, go ahead and lower the recharge too and now you're spending a good amount of time maintaining teammates buffs (or just yourself).  

[Infinitum]

1 hour ago, parabola said:

This may just be a wording issue but this looks like you are saying farsight is only boosted by power boost for 15 seconds? That isn't how power boost interacts with click buffs. Any click buff cast while under the effects of power boost will carry the boost for the entire duration of the buff. So in the case of farsight and fade their effects are boosted for their entire duration rather than just 15 seconds. It makes the downtime on power boost irrelevant as long as it can be brought up ready for the next cast of the buff.

That's not my point, I'm saying none of these need power boost anyway.

 

I build to soft cap without it, and never rely on it except for the hero moment to move on a hard target like an AV.

 

I don't see any of this as a problem. 

 

Never once has it come up where omg that darn power boost is ruining the fun.

 

And from a team standpoint it's not an op click godmode buff its being made out to be in here because even with them running content will drop you if you aren't careful - just like anything else really.

[Redlynne]

7 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

Super Reflexes Sentinel

Time Manipulation Defender

You do know that Defenders get better buff/debuff multipliers than any other Archetype ... right?

Also ... Super Reflexes powers incorporate Defense Debuff Resistance into them, while Farsight does not.  This means that Super Reflexes is less/not prone to Defense Debuff cascade failures, while Farsight IS susceptible to such cascading failures.

 

Or to put it another way ... not all hammers are made to hit nails ...

[Leogunner]

14 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

That's not my point, I'm saying none of these need power boost anyway.

 

I build to soft cap without it, and never rely on it except for the hero moment to move on a hard target like an AV.

 

I don't see any of this as a problem. 

 

Never once has it come up where omg that darn power boost is ruining the fun.

 

And from a team standpoint it's not an op click godmode buff its being made out to be in here because even with them running content will drop you if you aren't careful - just like anything else really.

There are more perspectives than that.

 

Just because you build for soft cap one way doesn't mean everyone builds for soft cap the same way.  For instance, if I'm even bothering getting a non-defense armor character to softcap, I build for 35% and make sure to have a handful of purple inspirations.  1 small purple = softcap and some change.

 

As for ruining the fun, you people have already done that.  I mean, okay, we have the capacity to softcap practically every character and give them ridiculous recharge and good to broken damage but should we do it?  And if we don't do it every time, do we just point to those exploiting the system and say "everybody's doing it!"?  You can't go north and south at the same time.