Proposed Unstoppable Changes

[Call Me Awesome]

I'm starting a new thread for potential changes to the Invulnerability powerset's Tier 9 power Unstoppable.  There was a discussion on moving it to the T2 power here, something I strongly disagree with and I thought I'd pull out the ideas I had for changing it.

 

I'm firmly of the opinion that all powers in a set should have a valid reason to be chosen and there should be tradeoffs for skipping one for another... that would seem to be even more true for the T9.  As it stands now most Invuln characters skip Unstoppable since the crash is not worth the benefit.  At best it forces you to wait out of combat for it to drop and you to recover from the crash, retoggle all your armors, recover HP and Endurance and then continue on.  At worst, and most commonly, it causes you to hit the floor 3 minutes later and leaves your teammates to kill the mobs without you, then you'll need to rez, recover and retoggle.

 

The concept of a severe crash is a relic of the early days of the game, newer powersets don't tend to have these drawbacks and even the thematic Blaster Nuke crash has gone the way of the dinosaur.  We have the example of Shield for how a similar armor power can be beneficial without being a suicide switch.  On it's own Shield is pretty comparable to Invuln in raw durability both at base levels and with an optimal IO build.  One with the Shield however is a genuinely useful power for tight situations with a much lesser crash that with minimal attention doesn't detract greatly from the character's survivability.  

 

If I were redesigning Unstoppable to be a useful power in today's game I'd go about it something like this:

 

1. Drop the +Res from 70% down to around 15-20%.  As it stands now the 70% +res is drastically overkill; it's utterly trivial to hard cap S/L by simply taking Tough and it's pretty easy to get E/N/F/C to 50% or above without extreme IO building.

 

2. Either leave the +Recovery as is or perhaps slightly reduce it.  With all the +recovery IO's currently in the game this aspect isn't a huge deal.

 

3. Cut the HP and End crash down to 25%-50% range.

 

4. Leave the uptime and recharge as is, OR give it the One with the Shield treatment and make the recharge unenhanceable and set to double the power's duration.

 

That way you get a truly useful emergency button that doesn't drastically over cap you and doesn't automatically kill you when it drops.  This seems to me to be the easiest way to make it a usable power instead of one the vast majority of Invuln players skip.  There have been suggestions for more exotic changes to the power but I'm reluctant to recommend them as that seems to open up room for unintended bugs, not to mention increased Dev time.  My thoughts should just involve a minor tweak to the percentage values of the power in simply adjusting the buff numbers and the crash numbers.

 

On my current build with CMA not having Unstoppable isn't a disaster by any means; he's certainly up for most any challenge with perhaps a dip into the inspiration tray in a pinch.  It still bothers me that the ultimate power in the Invulnerability set is functionally near useless however.  A player unable or unwilling to spend the amounts I did for an optimal IO build won't be able to approach that level however.  I likely would modify my build to include it for a very select few encounters where I currently use inspirations to manage.

 

[Razor Cure]

I cant remember where I read it, maybe on the Live forums, but someone suggested giving Unstoppable a sorta repel/kb effect, to show that you are in fact..Unstoppable, and pushing mobs out of the way (picture the Juggernaught stomping through a crowd). I think something like that would be a fitting and unique mechanic.

[Call Me Awesome]

2 hours ago, Razor Cure said:

I cant remember where I read it, maybe on the Live forums, but someone suggested giving Unstoppable a sorta repel/kb effect, to show that you are in fact..Unstoppable, and pushing mobs out of the way (picture the Juggernaught stomping through a crowd). I think something like that would be a fitting and unique mechanic.

I'd give a hard no on that, what use does any melee character have for a power that tosses mobs out of melee?

[Vanden]

32 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

I'd give a hard no on that, what use does any melee character have for a power that tosses mobs out of melee?

If the radius was something like 1 foot, it wouldn't really interrupt melee at all. Of course it would need slow resist to go along with it.

[Lazarillo]

The problem with Unstoppable (and t9s in general) is typically in the balancing.  One With the Shield and Strength of Will, for example, mitigate the crash, but I always end up dropping them because I barely even notice them during their (relatively short) uptimes anyway.  So putting Unstoppable on par with those still makes it an easy skip, I feel like (and I agree, that nothing in a primary or secondary should feel like that...although from what I understand, that is not the HC powers philosophy in general at the moment, so folks like us may be outta luck anyway).

 

I think something more along the lines to Moment of Glory is closer to the theme of an "emergency button".  Maybe changing Unstoppable to be something like an entire health bar's worth of +Absorb?  Sort of like a "pre-loaded" self-rez.  It'd probably need a pretty extreme recharge, or fixed recharge, though (I'm not especially fond of the latter, either, but most seem to tolerate it).

[Razor Cure]

1 hour ago, Call Me Awesome said:

I'd give a hard no on that, what use does any melee character have for a power that tosses mobs out of melee?

I shoulda said knockdown, not back. Also..Handclap says hi.

[Call Me Awesome]

1 hour ago, Razor Cure said:

I shoulda said knockdown, not back. Also..Handclap says hi.

Agreed completely, and Captain Knockback (Imperious) is a jackass.