Proposal: Promote Pro-Social Interactions by Increasing the Duration of Single Target Anti-Mezz Powers

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

13 hours ago, Razor Cure said:

Does that mean every similar buff becomes a PBaoe with a big end cost, like dispersion bubble or the sonic one? Because it should. And if so, no thanks.

Should of quoted and asked me, as the OP of the comment your asking about. Nothing about my post suggest changing the nature of the powers themselves. Its simply suggesting that once a buff is applied. by simply staying in regular close contact, the buffs being talked about here, the annoying short term, single target ones would re apply.

 

I suggested this inspired by the title of this very thread. The core goal seemed to be to reduce the hassle of playing certain support sets, while also promoting team interaction. My idea was with the goal of keeping the buffs themselves short, so buff botting, or buffing and then letting team mates go running off on their own wouldnt be able to benefit. But a team sticking together and working together, will find the buffs basically endless in duration once cast, freeing up defenders to use their blast set, and trollers to focus on controlling, rather then being forced into nannybot duty due to the nature of short duration single target buffs.

[Frosticus]

I think mez is a pretty bad mechanic personally. Over half the ATs completely ignore the mechanic in 99.9% of game play. 

 

For the ATs that actually have to deal with mez for many builds it is just an annoyance and a time out. For some that need to be in the fray to function it is a death sentence that must be countered. 

 

At least with something like slows, blindness, or grounding (-jump/fly) powers they affect every AT to a similar degree. 

 

Finally it seems like the original devs gave up on the mez system too and just gave everyone mez protection via clarion league wide buff. 

 

I guess I'd be fine with 15 min CM. Melee ATs are already dealing way more damage than squishies in most situations and teams are moving so fast now that mez has no real purpose beyond leaving a teammate stuck behind while everyone moves on. 

 

Unless they moved to a more pvp like system where everyone can get mezzed (for much shorter durations) but rather than mez resistance in pvp if buffs still allowed anti mez  to provide hard counters. 

[Razor Cure]

8 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

freeing up defenders to use their blast set,

So..their Secondary? You know, the non primary? Let's just go ahead and make vbery buff/debuff an always on pbaoe, so ALL we have to do is attack! Wont that be fun. Oh and in those secondary armour sets, all those click powers (poor Regens, huh?) are such a drag. They stop me from attacking. Let's make them all endless too!

Again, no. Things like this were something that could have been changed during Beta, way back when.

Changing it NOW, just cause some people find buffing a chore (why are you playing support sets then?)?

 

[Sif]

Just now, Razor Cure said:

Changing it NOW, just cause some people find buffing a chore (why are you playing support sets then?)

It's not a chore, it's shit UX.

[Razor Cure]

1 minute ago, Sif said:

It's not a chore, it's shit UX.

Is UX suppose to mean something? An emote I guess?

Regardless, it you find a huge portion of an AT to be 'shit'..WHY are you planning it? When you think its shit? Makes a lot of sense. And if you aren't playing it..why does it matter to you?

I don't find playing my emp to be either a chore or shit. Or my kin corr (and that was fine back before aoe sb).

[Sif]

5 minutes ago, Razor Cure said:

Is UX suppose to mean something? An emote I guess?

Regardless, it you find a huge portion of an AT to be 'shit'..WHY are you planning it? When you think its shit? Makes a lot of sense. And if you aren't playing it..why does it matter to you?

I don't find playing my emp to be either a chore or shit. Or my kin corr (and that was fine back before aoe sb).

User Experience

 

Clear Mind isn't a huge portion of Emp (or support sets), it's one power out of 9. The issue with Clear Mind, that a power like Fortitude doesn't have, is that there's bad feedback on when to recast, to be able to maintain it. It's fairly easy to maintain Fortitude on 4 (+- based upon recharge) people, since you just recast whenever it's recharged, and you can glance at the icon to know how long until you can recast it (previously but guestimating based upon the size, now with an actual countdown). On the other hand, a power like Mystic Fortune has a very long duration (20 minutes) which means even with a few minute gap, you're still maintaining very high up times. Clear Mind suffers due to having a short recharge, but moderate duration, without good way to keep track of your buffs on others.

 

I think something like HeroStats buff tracker should be integrated into CoH proper, like has already been done for recharge timers. That would go a long way to resolving the UX issue.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

2 hours ago, Razor Cure said:

So..their Secondary? You know, the non primary? Let's just go ahead and make vbery buff/debuff an always on pbaoe, so ALL we have to do is attack! Wont that be fun. Oh and in those secondary armour sets, all those click powers (poor Regens, huh?) are such a drag. They stop me from attacking. Let's make them all endless too!

Again, no. Things like this were something that could have been changed during Beta, way back when.

Changing it NOW, just cause some people find buffing a chore (why are you playing support sets then?)?

 

Im not sure why you seem to be so combative and hyperbolic in your response. Im not suggesting some massive over haul, and trying to offer an idea that both encourages team centric play, while avoiding an out right buff to the discussed powers in terms of duration that could be exploited by dual boxxing.

 

And yes blasting may be a defenders 2ndary but that doesnt mean they shouldnt be able to enjoy doing such actively on a team and not merely play cheer leader to the big bad warrior ATs. And what about controllers? Their buffing aspect very much is their 2ndary, yet they can also be expected to go full nannybot by certain player types who demand support be the focus of such ATs.

 

Its pretty common knowledge among MMO gamers that support characters are always in short supply, in large part because many dont enjoy the style of play. CoH has always been atypical in that its support classes can often be very strong in offense or control, and that buffing allies has typically seen it made more user friendly to encourage more trying the ATs.

 

I have troller and defender toons and honestly do rarely play them as support as a primary aspect of my play time isnt that fun at all. I do such as a way to help the community, so yeah I myself am an advocate of making support play something more will try by making it as stream lined and hassle free as possible.