Heightened Senses Worthless?

[Fista]

Running a KM/WP scrapper and just pinged 30 and my power pic is either a pool power or heightened senses.  Heightened Senses seems kind of useless.  Environmental effects seem far and few between. Unless I'm misunderstanding what they mean by environmental effects?  Thoughts or Opinions?

[Ignatz the Insane]

It has 2.48% defense to smashing/lethal, 9.75 defense to fire/cold/negative energy/energy, +perception, and defense debuff resistance.  Seems the opposite of useless to me.

[Fista]

22 minutes ago, Ignatz the Insane said:

It has 2.48% defense to smashing/lethal, 9.75 defense to fire/cold/negative energy/energy, +perception, and defense debuff resistance.  Seems the opposite of useless to me.

Yeah but environmental damage. I take that as like pools of toxic water or lava. Is that not the case? Am I missing something?

[Redlynne]

40 minutes ago, Fista said:

Am I missing something?

Yes.

You were handed the answer and you missed it.

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, Fista said:

Yeah but environmental damage. I take that as like pools of toxic water or lava. Is that not the case? Am I missing something?

Energy, Neg Energy, Fire and Cold damage types are "Environmental" 

 

It is a core power for WP.  If you dont use it, you will die a lot more than if you do.

 

 

[Caulderone]

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Damage

 

You are missing that there are multiple damage types in the game.  It does not mean acid pools or lava flows.

 

An attack can be smashing/lethal/fire/cold/energy/neg.energy/psionic and/or melee/ranged/AoE for attack type.  Those attacks can do 1 or more damage types among those + toxic..

 

So, for example, you can have Energy Punch, which rolls for hit against highest of Smashing defense or Energy Defense or Melee Defense, and then if it hits it does some Smashing damage and some Energy damage.

[Fista]

8 hours ago, Redlynne said:

Yes.

You were handed the answer and you missed it.

Ah that famed CoH community helpfulness we hear so much about.

[Fista]

8 hours ago, Caulderone said:

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Damage

 

You are missing that there are multiple damage types in the game.  It does not mean acid pools or lava flows.

 

An attack can be smashing/lethal/fire/cold/energy/neg.energy/psionic and/or melee/ranged/AoE for attack type.  Those attacks can do 1 or more damage types among those + toxic..

 

So, for example, you can have Energy Punch, which rolls for hit against highest of Smashing defense or Energy Defense or Melee Defense, and then if it hits it does some Smashing damage and some Energy damage.

No. I understand damage types, I've just never heard any of them referred to as "environmental". 

[Fista]

8 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Energy, Neg Energy, Fire and Cold damage types are "Environmental" 

 

It is a core power for WP.  If you dont use it, you will die a lot more than if you do.

 

 

Never heard of them referred to as such. Thanks.

[Caulderone]

1 hour ago, Fista said:

No. I understand damage types, I've just never heard any of them referred to as "environmental". 

Ah, yeah.  I guess that is an odd way to refer to them.  I'd guess they were just trying to add flavor text for the description.

It's just defense, though.

[Redlynne]

1 hour ago, Fista said:

Ah that famed CoH community helpfulness we hear so much about.

Hey, someone helped you with the answer ... and you refused to believe that the answer given was the correct and complete answer.

You asked what you were missing and you were given the answer to that too.

How much more help do you need?

[Aracknight]

It's funny, in the odd way, not the hilarious way, that some people in this community treat newbies as if they are I1 veterans "who should just know better" and act shocked when people don't know things, and treat savvy veterans like ignorant newbies and then hit them with a wall of text for critical damage.

 

Don't take a poor  interaction as representative of the entire community.  Our good reputation is well deserved, but there's always those who don't represent the whole as much as they might think they do.

 

I'm not sure where the OP lands in that newbie to veteran range, but everyone is new to something sometime, and my 2 inf is to offer that although the defense offered in Heightened Senses is "Typed" (also and less known as Environmental) as opposed to "Positional" (Melee, Ranged, AOE), Willpower as a whole operates as a Layered Mitigation System.  A little bit of resistance, a little bit of defense and a little bit of regeneration which *should* compete with other sets relatively equally.

 

One thing I've read is that 1% defense is considered to be mathematically worth 2% Resistance.  So that "little bit" of defense to those typed defenses is worth twice as much resistance to those same types of attacks.  Plus, you can pick up some nifty IO and Set bonuses to put in it.

 

 

Edited February 7, 2020 by Aracknight

[Sovera]

2 hours ago, Aracknight said:

It's funny, in the odd way, not the hilarious way, that some people in this community treat newbies as if they are I1 veterans "who should just know better" and act shocked when people don't know things, and treat savvy veterans like ignorant newbies and then hit them with a wall of text for critical damage.

No need to white knight, my good internet person. Nothing that was said even borders on rude, it takes being 2020 to be offended if speech is not flowery. The very first answer was thorough and complete, including even numbers instead of a vague 'and it gives defense'.

 

I'm not annoyed by the person asking a question and misunderstanding the answer (the term 'environmental' is pretty niche), but the timely jump to salvage their honor and the reputation of the CoH community, was funny. In the hilarious way.

[Aracknight]

It's all love fam, but at least one comment hit at least two pairs of eyes/ears wrong. 

 

You'll probably note I'm being completely oblique about which comment and which readers, which is telling of how easily things can go askew.

 

And I guess it's true that it's all in the eyes of the be-reader.

 

But if it's any consolation, I'm sure glad I brought a smile to your face.

 

See you in the City.

 

 

[TungstenShark]

7 hours ago, Redlynne said:

Hey, someone helped you with the answer ... and you refused to believe that the answer given was the correct and complete answer.

You asked what you were missing and you were given the answer to that too.

How much more help do you need?

Dammit @Redlynne, who do you think you are, to start using actual logic and direct answers on the internet??

[Camel]

I was once called intellectually ignorant and lazy for not being a numbers cruncher. Elitists are going to elite. Just sayin’. 🤷🏼‍♂️ I get it though, sometimes I get passionate about this game and think “you’re wrong! Why would you do that?” But I always quash it right then and there. It’s easy to think our way is the right way, especially with how much experience we all bring to the table. 
 

Anyways, to the OP, take Heightened Senses. And good hunting! Also, for the record. Over a decade ago when Willpower came out, I had the EXACT same thoughts as you. I was brand new to the game and I thought environmental damage was flames, falling from extreme heights, etc. The text confused me as well.

[Doomguide2005]

And I as well recall it confused more than a few folks at the time.  For me calling it elemental might have made more sense, but not perhaps to others.  Having an up to date and accurate power data goes a long way towards countering any confusion created by descriptive text

[Fista]

8 hours ago, Redlynne said:

Hey, someone helped you with the answer ... and you refused to believe that the answer given was the correct and complete answer.

You asked what you were missing and you were given the answer to that too.

How much more help do you need?

I didn't refuse to believe it, I didn't understand it.  MOB's using powers didn't strike me as environmental.  Damage from the environment is environmental.

[SwitchFade]

12 hours ago, Fista said:

Ah that famed CoH community helpfulness we hear so much about.

You know, you can click details, for the in game metrics of what the power does, and it'll show you what it is doing. So, regardless of what environmental means, you can see. Have you tried clicking details?

 

It's informative 

[SwitchFade]

2 hours ago, Fista said:

I didn't refuse to believe it, I didn't understand it.  MOB's using powers didn't strike me as environmental.  Damage from the environment is environmental.

See my above post. Sometimes, if I don't understand something, I keep trying to figure it out. I prefer this to giving up on the first attempt.

[Camel]

56 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

See my above post. Sometimes, if I don't understand something, I keep trying to figure it out. I prefer this to giving up on the first attempt.

The powers text is very misleading. And oftentimes, the details won’t tell you everything. I can’t think of an example off the top of my head but I know for a fact a lot of powers do more than what it says in the details. Some aren’t even accurate.

[SwitchFade]

21 minutes ago, cazden121 said:

The powers text is very misleading. And oftentimes, the details won’t tell you everything. I can’t think of an example off the top of my head but I know for a fact a lot of powers do more than what it says in the details. Some aren’t even accurate.

Detailed info shows the %'s of resist, acc, damage, etc

[Fista]

1 hour ago, SwitchFade said:

You know, you can click details, for the in game metrics of what the power does, and it'll show you what it is doing. So, regardless of what environmental means, you can see. Have you tried clicking details?

 

It's informative 

But it doesn't tell me "WHERE" it's coming from. Environment to me does not equal MOB. So since there's, by that definition, not a lot of environmental damage it seems very limited in usage.

[Haijinx]

Sounds like a simple mixup.  

 

A lot of MMOs do have abilities which are non combat / environmental based.  So yeah.

 

I just remember because i made a WP tanker on day one of WP and had to double think myself at the time.  

 

In the end though - its an awesome power - get it. 

 

====

 

The skippable power is the self rez, especially since the P2W rez is better.  

 

If you need to you can skip Strength of Will on IO builds that have tough for Tankers and Scrappers since you'll be butting the Resist Caps for S/L.  

 

Brutes could skip SOW too I guess.  But its a much better power for them.

[@Ghost]

47 minutes ago, Fista said:

But it doesn't tell me "WHERE" it's coming from. Environment to me does not equal MOB. So since there's, by that definition, not a lot of environmental damage it seems very limited in usage.

This is one of those weird quirks of the basic power descriptions where it can be downright misleading, yeah. Similar to the listings of "Damage: High" being... not particularly useful in the slightest. There was never any particular standard that the descriptions were written to, and it can be difficult to separate flavor text from real function.

 

One of the more veteran tendencies is to always look at the detailed info for a power. It can be a little overwhelming if you're not used to it, but the actual numbers will prove much more useful in the long run than trusting the far more vague basic descriptions.