Focused Feedback: Electrical Affinity - Powers (Build 2)

[JayboH]

...or, how crazy would it be if chained powers lose no potency?  Keep the stacking mechanic but chained powers are always full strength

[KelvinKole]

19 minutes ago, Draeth Darkstar said:

Even if pets didn't count for jumps, the chains would burn out way before getting to them in any multi-group content, which is a serious weakness no other support has to deal with, aside from just not being able to support a whole league, full stop, like every other support set can - with better powers.

I'm not sure I'm all in on the "well every other support set can do it" argument. Other sets have limitations of their own; PBAoE heals are around the caster, Transfusion is around the the target, some have accuracy checks, etc. The chain mechanic requires no enemy target/accuracy check, can be cast from anywhere, and can bounce into and out of melee. The values, at least earlier on in the chain, seem to be higher that other Aoe heals too. I'm not saying it's perfect, I'm just saying it's different and we may need to be open to different things. 

 

Maybe the heal value shouldn't diminish after each jump? But that may require a rebalance of the numbers. 

[Draeth Darkstar]

9 minutes ago, KelvinKole said:

I'm not sure I'm all in on the "well every other support set can do it" argument. Other sets have limitations of their own; PBAoE heals are around the caster, Transfusion is around the the target, some have accuracy checks, etc. The chain mechanic requires no enemy target/accuracy check, can be cast from anywhere, and can bounce into and out of melee. The values, at least earlier on in the chain, seem to be higher that other Aoe heals too. I'm not saying it's perfect, I'm just saying it's different and we may need to be open to different things. 

 

Maybe the heal value shouldn't diminish after each jump? But that may require a rebalance of the numbers. 

The ability for chains to hit oddly-shaped groups of targets is already inherently balanced by the fact that, as the player, you have absolutely no control over where it goes after you fire it. A chain that jumps in the wrong direction from what you wanted can very easily die off after a single bounce by out-ranging every other viable target. This might be a new concept for City of Heroes, but chaining support powers exist in plenty of other games, and it's as much of a drawback as it is an advantage. They really only work well on tightly clustered allies, which is the same scenario that benefits circular AoE heals with no target caps (read: every other multi-target heal in this game) far more.

 

As I've pointed out already, 12 targets does not cover a team of 7 melee and a Mastermind, forget multiple Masterminds, Controllers, Dominators, anyone with Lore or Patron pets, or any of the myriad dozens of other pet powers in this game. It just was not fundamentally designed for supports with such limited scope of effect.

 

There is no good reason to hamstring this set out of the gate like this.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Draeth Darkstar

[JayboH]

Yet it isn't a new concept - why is chain powers being uncontrollable an issue now all of a sudden when they have existed way before this set

[Auroxis]

One other issue I'd like to raise is the time it takes to build up five stacks. That's a LOT of time investment for a finisher, and right now only the mass rez utilizes stacks for a powerful effect.

 

To go together with our "Nuke Rez", Amp Up would make for a nice "Nuke Buff". Give it a shorter duration, but make it chain and add another buff component to it. And for our third finisher, instead of the pet(which can stay, but not as a finisher) I'd like to see a new power to be our "Nuke Debuff".  Bring back Discharge with a longer cooldown, give it -recovery/-res/-regen, and scale its radius(we can do that now) and debuff values on the amount of stacks spent.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Auroxis

[Draeth Darkstar]

10 minutes ago, JayboH said:

Yet it isn't a new concept - why is chain powers being uncontrollable an issue now all of a sudden when they have existed way before this set

What other chain powers in this game are expected to fill the same role as circular AoEs with 255 target caps?

 

Oh, that's right, none.

 

The only other chain powers we have are expected to compete with offensive AoEs, the best of which in the game outside of Incarnates have 16 target caps, and those powers all have dramatically better effects per target than the average AoE because they are unpredictable.

 

Hell, the Incarnate powers make it even more transparent. Ion Judgment, the only one that chains, is the one that has an extra high target cap as its gimmick, because you can't predict what it's going to do after you fire it.

 

It makes zero sense to make the supporting chain powers have a maximum target cap of 1/20th what the circular ones can do.

[JayboH]

3 minutes ago, Draeth Darkstar said:

What other chain powers in this game are expected to fill the same role as circular AoEs with 255 target caps?

 

Oh, that's right, none.

 

 

...including this set.

[KelvinKole]

17 minutes ago, Draeth Darkstar said:

The ability for chains to hit oddly-shaped groups of targets is already inherently balanced by the fact that, as the player, you have absolutely no control over where it goes after you fire it. A chain that jumps in the wrong direction from what you wanted can very easily die off after a single bounce by out-ranging every other viable target. This might be a new concept for City of Heroes, but chaining support powers exist in plenty of other games, and it's as much of a drawback as it is an advantage. They really only work well on tightly clustered allies, which is the same scenario that benefits circular AoE heals with no target caps (read: every other multi-target heal in this game) far more.

I agree with your analysis of the machanoc, but think you might be placing too much value in the heal. I think of this set more like Nature Affinity, which also has an awkward heal (cone heal over time), but offers other forms of support. Here too you get a very strong resistance buff and status effect protection in Faraday Cage (im not ware of this has a target cap) and an absorb chain with Insulating Circuit that can be uses proactively or reactively. Meanwhile you're bebuffing enemy damage. I think the whole is meant to be greater than the sum of its parts. 

 

By the way, they do have logic to prioritize where the chain goes. So that's something other chains don't have. 

[Draeth Darkstar]

34 minutes ago, JayboH said:

...including this set.

...Are we playing the same game, here? What powers, exactly, do you think Electrical Affinity is competing with?

 

It has:

• a chain heal worse than every other AoE heal
• a chain +Endurance power that's worse than Accelerated Metabolism an absolute joke compared to Recovery Aura, Speed Boost, and Transference
• a chain Damage buff that's worse than Siphon Power and Accelerated Metabolism and an absolute joke compared to Fulcrum Shift and Overgrowth
• a chain Absorb buff that's a joke compared to Wild Bastion, the only other power with that effect.

If these mechanics don't change, this set is going to launch as the worse Support set in the game, maybe second to Force Fields.

 

  

31 minutes ago, KelvinKole said:

I agree with your analysis of the machanoc, but think you might be placing too much value in the heal. I think of this set more like Nature Affinity, which also has an awkward heal (cone heal over time), but offers other forms of support. Here too you get a very strong resistance buff and status effect protection in Faraday Cage (im not ware of this has a target cap) and an absorb chain with Insulating Circuit that can be uses proactively or reactively. Meanwhile you're bebuffing enemy damage. I think the whole is meant to be greater than the sum of its parts.

Yeah, as is, Electrical Affinity is setting itself up to be a pale ghost of Nature Affinity, covering a lot of the same ground mechanically but doing all of it worse. Faraday Cage is really its only pretty good power right now, but it's also stationary, which essentially makes it Sonic Dispersion, But Worse.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Draeth Darkstar

[JayboH]

3 minutes ago, Draeth Darkstar said:

...Are we playing the same game, here? What powers, exactly, do you think Electrical Affinity is competing with?

 

It has:

• a chain heal worse than every other AoE heal
• a chain +Endurance power that's worse than Accelerated Metabolism an absolute joke compared to Recovery Aura, Speed Boost, and Transference
• a chain Damage buff that's worse than Siphon Power and Accelerated Metabolism and an absolute joke compared to Fulcrum Shift and Overgrowth
• a chain Absorb buff that's a joke compared to Wild Bastion, the only other power with that effect.

If these mechanics don't change, this set is going to launch as the worse Support set in the game, maybe second to Force Fields.

Is it just strength or does recharge come into play with some of these comparisons?

[Draeth Darkstar]

5 minutes ago, JayboH said:

Is it just strength or does recharge come into play with some of these comparisons?

The only powers I'm comparing here with notably longer recharges also have either similarly longer durations to match or are literally an order of magnitude stronger in effect without considering the 255 target cap vs. 12.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Draeth Darkstar

[KelvinKole]

@Draeth Darkstar

We 100% agree the set is too weak and needs to be buffed. I'll have take a break on whether the target cap is an issue. Unfortunately it's hard for me to test without a team on Brainstorm. Maybe a team test event can be organized. 

[JayboH]

I mentioned this on the alpha forum:  Galvanic follows very slowly and doesn't seem to follow other pet rules about teleporting to the caster if too far behind.  Right clicking it and going to info shows no icon and also just explains what a defender is.  You also cannot see its abilities in the management screen and thus cannot see how enhancements change it at all.

[Coyote]

2 hours ago, Draeth Darkstar said:

...Are we playing the same game, here? What powers, exactly, do you think Electrical Affinity is competing with?

 

It has:

• a chain heal worse than every other AoE heal
• a chain +Endurance power that's worse than Accelerated Metabolism an absolute joke compared to Recovery Aura, Speed Boost, and Transference
• a chain Damage buff that's worse than Siphon Power and Accelerated Metabolism and an absolute joke compared to Fulcrum Shift and Overgrowth
• a chain Absorb buff that's a joke compared to Wild Bastion, the only other power with that effect.

If these mechanics don't change, this set is going to launch as the worse Support set in the game, maybe second to Force Fields.

 

I'm not sure if this kind of hyperbole is useful.

 

The heal is a mix between single-target and AoE. It has more target limitations than AoEs, and heals less than single-target heals... but heals more targets than the single-target heals, and heals for more than the AoE. This is clearly a better power for smaller teams or soloing, than the AoE heals, and worse for teaming. And it's better for soloing, obviously, than the single-target heals, though not necessarily better on teams.

 

All of the powers mentioned except Transference seem to have other weaknesses or changes compared to the +End power... not 100% uptime, or +Recovery rather than +Endurance. It looks like it will play out very similar to a weaker Transference,  but note that Transfusion is also a FAR stronger heal than other AoE Heals, because you need an enemy mob and need to hit with it. Probably for the same reason, Transference is probably a FAR stronger +Endurance power than other +End powers that don't need an enemy and can't miss. So, really... it looks like it was designed to be balanced with Transfusion. It's possible that Transference/Transfusion get too much of a bonus for their chance to miss, but that's a question about Kinetics design, not about this powerset.

 

The damage buff is comparable to Siphon Power and better than AM except for the target limits. And that brings me back to the point about the Heal... it's stronger on smaller teams than the competing powers, but doesn't scale up to larger teams as well. This is a deliberate balancing point, and while it's possible for a player to state that they care more about how a set performs on large teams, that doesn't mean that they should ignore the idea of how a set functions when soloing or on small teams. The interesting question is the chaining logic: if it doesn't stack, will the chaining prioritize targets who don't yet have the buff on them? If so, then it's a very good power since you can easily get the Recharge down and throw it in different directions to cover a team with +40% damage... if not, then it's more awkward on anything larger than a small-medium team.

[DMW45]

53 minutes ago, Coyote said:

 

I'm not sure if this kind of hyperbole is useful.

 

The heal is a mix between single-target and AoE. It has more target limitations than AoEs, and heals less than single-target heals... but heals more targets than the single-target heals, and heals for more than the AoE. This is clearly a better power for smaller teams or soloing, than the AoE heals, and worse for teaming. And it's better for soloing, obviously, than the single-target heals, though not necessarily better on teams.

 

All of the powers mentioned except Transference seem to have other weaknesses or changes compared to the +End power... not 100% uptime, or +Recovery rather than +Endurance. It looks like it will play out very similar to a weaker Transference,  but note that Transfusion is also a FAR stronger heal than other AoE Heals, because you need an enemy mob and need to hit with it. Probably for the same reason, Transference is probably a FAR stronger +Endurance power than other +End powers that don't need an enemy and can't miss. So, really... it looks like it was designed to be balanced with Transfusion. It's possible that Transference/Transfusion get too much of a bonus for their chance to miss, but that's a question about Kinetics design, not about this powerset.

 

The damage buff is comparable to Siphon Power and better than AM except for the target limits. And that brings me back to the point about the Heal... it's stronger on smaller teams than the competing powers, but doesn't scale up to larger teams as well. This is a deliberate balancing point, and while it's possible for a player to state that they care more about how a set performs on large teams, that doesn't mean that they should ignore the idea of how a set functions when soloing or on small teams. The interesting question is the chaining logic: if it doesn't stack, will the chaining prioritize targets who don't yet have the buff on them? If so, then it's a very good power since you can easily get the Recharge down and throw it in different directions to cover a team with +40% damage... if not, then it's more awkward on anything larger than a small-medium team.

It doesn't really last long enough to cover multiple groups like that consistently, I don't think?

 

What is it, 20-25 seconds?

[Coyote]

17 minutes ago, DMW45 said:

It doesn't really last long enough to cover multiple groups like that consistently, I don't think?

 

What is it, 20-25 seconds?

 

Yeah... it can cover them, it's just a large drain on both Endurance and animation time, because it has a fast recharge. So... you cover the team, but you're firing it off every 12 seconds, which will get old really fast.

 

Frankly, I think that a lot of the arguments saying how "weak" powers are have really missed the point. It isn't that the powers are weak statistically, it's that:

1: With relatively short durations and short recharges, you can re-buff fast... but have to throw out a lot of powers in a minute to keep the team fully buffed.

2: For that reason, the Absorb shield is great... you get a strong shield that you can refresh FAST (15 second base recharge, 5 seconds with slotting... that's NUTS). This shield is ridiculously strong if the target is getting beat down. I mean, with a 500 pt Absorb going up every 6 seconds or so, and added to the Heal, you can tank over 150 DPS with just Absorb and Heal, or help someone tank. Fast recharge on Absorb powers is great. But imagine how animation locked you will be, doing this.

3: So now, with all of the buffing and healing, you're blowing out a lot of Endurance, so now you need to use the +Endurance power. OFTEN.

4: Okay, now you're buffing, healing, and regaining Endurance. When do you have time to do anything else, like blast? This may work for a Mastermind set, not so well but not terribly for a Controller... and terribly for a Defender. You don't have pets who DPS for you, and the animation time of the buff set is eating up over 50% of your attack time.

 

This is the real problem with the power stats, IMO. They are fine by themselves, but soak up all of the animation time, similar to Kinetics. But on a large team, Kinetics is better... and on a small team, where this set looks to be strongest, you're expected to provide more of the DPS rather than just being a support character. It's not a good design for a Defender, and I can only see it working with a few Blast sets that have really fast animations: Dark, Psy, Fire, and Ice.

[JayboH]

That's kind of the issue with Poison too, which years ago was going to get a revamp.  You have to spam it so much compared to others.

[Wavicle]

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

 

Yeah... it can cover them, it's just a large drain on both Endurance and animation time, because it has a fast recharge. So... you cover the team, but you're firing it off every 12 seconds, which will get old really fast.

 

Frankly, I think that a lot of the arguments saying how "weak" powers are have really missed the point. It isn't that the powers are weak statistically, it's that:

1: With relatively short durations and short recharges, you can re-buff fast... but have to throw out a lot of powers in a minute to keep the team fully buffed.

2: For that reason, the Absorb shield is great... you get a strong shield that you can refresh FAST (15 second base recharge, 5 seconds with slotting... that's NUTS). This shield is ridiculously strong if the target is getting beat down. I mean, with a 500 pt Absorb going up every 6 seconds or so, and added to the Heal, you can tank over 150 DPS with just Absorb and Heal, or help someone tank. Fast recharge on Absorb powers is great. But imagine how animation locked you will be, doing this.

3: So now, with all of the buffing and healing, you're blowing out a lot of Endurance, so now you need to use the +Endurance power. OFTEN.

4: Okay, now you're buffing, healing, and regaining Endurance. When do you have time to do anything else, like blast? This may work for a Mastermind set, not so well but not terribly for a Controller... and terribly for a Defender. You don't have pets who DPS for you, and the animation time of the buff set is eating up over 50% of your attack time.

 

This is the real problem with the power stats, IMO. They are fine by themselves, but soak up all of the animation time, similar to Kinetics. But on a large team, Kinetics is better... and on a small team, where this set looks to be strongest, you're expected to provide more of the DPS rather than just being a support character. It's not a good design for a Defender, and I can only see it working with a few Blast sets that have really fast animations: Dark, Psy, Fire, and Ice.

I agree with all of this.

If the correct balance point can be found then it can hopefully help to rebalance a couple of sets with similar problems (Trick Arrow, Poison).

[JayboH]

Fun fact:  the original devs mentioned they wanted to take a look at Trick Arrow when they had time later, and directly acknowledged it "needed some love." 

 

Poison certainly could use attention as well.

[BRADICAL]

Compared side-by-side to other support sets, the powers are statistically weak. If the design intent is that elec affinity is supposed to keep people alive, it's doing that job fundamentally worse than many other sets out there. The action economy is a problem, of course, and static is a little contrived, but the raw numbers just don't line up with even the underperforming support sets—least of all for playing its intended role. Anyone can power boost spirit ward, for example, but that amount of absorb won't do much in the absence of meaningful +def, +res, -tohit, -dmg, or even -rech.

 

And if a support set isn't capable of meaningfully (and single-handedly) ensuring a team's survival through several layered mechanics or providing substantial force multiplication, then it's going to be a low tier set regardless of its capabilities at a glance. Healing and absorption don't lend much to that survival, when the magnitude of incoming damage can be so heavily modified by buffs and debuffs, and once you've reached the threshold where your incoming damage is marginal, they lend nothing at all.

 

That's why so much of the set feels skippable. Even disregarding the numbers themselves, there's no variety in the effects they provide, when support sets are judged purely by the value of their buffs and debuffs. That's why a set like nature is considered average: it's heavily weighted towards healing output as a form of support. It still has decent -tohit, -dmg, and overgrowth, but rad has all of these effects as well—except it also has an AoE -res debuff.

 

On lower level, smaller team sizes, maybe without IOs, elec affinity in its current state is fine: healing works there, you're a power battery, and you can cycle most of your powers easily on just SOs. The problem is that the higher you go, the less important any of that stuff actually is, at which point people will start looking at what else they can do with the set. And that's when you realize that a small damage buff, a small damage debuff, and amp up in its current state are all pretty underwhelming. Faraday cage is a good power, at least, but when you compare it to sets like dark, kin, storm, time, etc. the whole package just pales in comparison, and without any +def or -tohit in there, you still aren't going to single-handedly keep a team standing on the low end.

 

If I were to make any suggestions, the few I can think of are that the set should come equipped with +rec and better +rech at the very least, and find some way to incorporate a -res debuff in there, or else this set is going to struggle on the high end unless the +dmg numbers go way up. I'd also like the galvanic sentinel a lot more if it were a stationary, ground-targeted totem kind of thing with resistance numbers on par with singularity, and overhauled debuff mechanics (periodically casting a modified 25ft discharge around itself would be cool, though). Relying on squishy pet AI to do support stuff for you is otherwise pretty bad, no matter how good its actual effects are.

[biostem]

Y'know what would be a really great "schtick" for this set - every buffing ability grants some end to the recipients of said buffs, (either that or a short-lived recovery buff).

[Leogunner]

3 hours ago, Coyote said:

 

Yeah... it can cover them, it's just a large drain on both Endurance and animation time, because it has a fast recharge. So... you cover the team, but you're firing it off every 12 seconds, which will get old really fast.

 

Frankly, I think that a lot of the arguments saying how "weak" powers are have really missed the point. It isn't that the powers are weak statistically, it's that:

1: With relatively short durations and short recharges, you can re-buff fast... but have to throw out a lot of powers in a minute to keep the team fully buffed.

2: For that reason, the Absorb shield is great... you get a strong shield that you can refresh FAST (15 second base recharge, 5 seconds with slotting... that's NUTS). This shield is ridiculously strong if the target is getting beat down. I mean, with a 500 pt Absorb going up every 6 seconds or so, and added to the Heal, you can tank over 150 DPS with just Absorb and Heal, or help someone tank. Fast recharge on Absorb powers is great. But imagine how animation locked you will be, doing this.

3: So now, with all of the buffing and healing, you're blowing out a lot of Endurance, so now you need to use the +Endurance power. OFTEN.

4: Okay, now you're buffing, healing, and regaining Endurance. When do you have time to do anything else, like blast? This may work for a Mastermind set, not so well but not terribly for a Controller... and terribly for a Defender. You don't have pets who DPS for you, and the animation time of the buff set is eating up over 50% of your attack time.

 

This is the real problem with the power stats, IMO. They are fine by themselves, but soak up all of the animation time, similar to Kinetics. But on a large team, Kinetics is better... and on a small team, where this set looks to be strongest, you're expected to provide more of the DPS rather than just being a support character. It's not a good design for a Defender, and I can only see it working with a few Blast sets that have really fast animations: Dark, Psy, Fire, and Ice.

Wow, this sounds fantastic!

 

One aspect of buff sets that kind of have put a large strain on more static bubbler sets is long duration powerful buffs.  Bubbler sets are ok for this usually if they are limited in the variety of buffs they offer (such as Cold Dom not having heals and +resist).  Even if a buff set has a powerful long duration buff, it's balanced if it's Single Target.  When you get sets like Time Manipulation that basically just does all the standard buffs in AoEs it really just goes to show how out of place such sets are.

 

This set sounds like it was made correctly taking into account limitations on target caps while having limitations on durations and thus having opportunity costs in their upkeep.

 

Upkeep.

 

I feel this is a statistic for buff/debuff sets not taken into account until this set.  The application (range/AoE) and frequency (cast time, recharge and duration) of your support powers.  If ever support sets get a rework (along with other portions of the game), this would be an important aspect to balance support sets with.  If the application is trivial, the frequency should take a hit.  It the frequency and application result in low upkeep, the set as a whole should have limitations on what it can apply.

 

EDIT: I was also kind of blase about playing this set but by how you described it (having more of an upkeep requirement), I really want to play this set either as a team-oriented Defender, a more toggle/defensive oriented Controller, or any kind of MM (but you need to remove the Galvanic Sentinel pet for MMs).

Edited March 4, 2020 by Leogunner

[oedipus_tex]

I feel like the developers who made this were thinking "Kinetics, but hitting your teammates instead of enemies." I have no proof this is accurate, but a key aesthetic of the set seems to be the lightning constantly chaining between teammates. It's a cool effect I think and a great place to work from.

 

Kinetics shows us that a very clicky set can work. However Kinetics has some pretty astronomical numbers to back up its clickiness.

 

Total mezz protection more or less on demand isn't a bad start. I think maybe people are taking that too much for granted.

 

What would be nice would be if you could build Static with any attack, not just the powers in Electric Affinity. That could be accomplished with a proc that applies to all damage powers. If you could also make some of the other powers in this set autocast or renew while you're blasting, that would keep the clickiness but still let you do other things. Maybe your teammate's clicks also keep the chains running. So the set becomes a click farm, where everyone is trying to blast as fast as possible to send the chaining effect around the team.

Edited March 4, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Vanden]

Expanding on my idea to have Shock do something with the Galvanic Sentinel, what if using Shock on the Sentinel immediately gave you max stacks of Static and a large heal and +end, but killed the Sentinel? I think we'd have to rename Shock and change it to use the Dehydrate animation, to sell the idea that you're sapping energy from the target, but it might make Shock more desirable.

 

Also, another crazy spitball idea, what if Defibrillate gave teammates rezzed with it an EM Pulse-like power? It would basically be the AoE from when Power Surge in Electric Armor expires. It could appear in the temporary pop-up tray, and be usable on-demand after being rezzed. Only once and only with a certain time frame, of course.

[Coyote]

2 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

Kinetics shows us that a very clicky set can work. However Kinetics has some pretty astronomical numbers to back up its clickiness.

 

That's exactly it. I LIKE that the set is clicky, making you decide how much you're going to spend on using it to its max versus saving time for other actions. But the problem is that you have to click a lot just to get a level of effectiveness that seems like it should be normal. I would like to see the durations and recharges increased so that you don't have to click as much, OR the buff/debuff stats increased so that you're getting more out of spending so much of your animation time for them, like Kinetics is currently. Compare that to Poison and Trick Arrow, two other clicky sets backed up with average debuff numbers, and we see that generally they're not considered very good.