Buff Amp Up from Electrical Affinity

[Bartacus]

OK. I know this set JUST came out... but it's also been on the beta environment for a while so its not like nobody has had ANY time to test it and play around with it. Please stick with me here. I know it just got released, and I know that Amp Up in particular isn't 'useless' or anything like that. 

 

Electrical Affinity as a whole is an OK powerset. It's fun in teams. It allows you to buff teams Endurance, Spike their Recharge, Buff their damage a bit, and heal/absorb shield people. It's pretty good as a whole. I don't think it outshines other sets that do similar things (such as Nature, for example), but it's still a solid set. Faraday Cage alone makes the set pretty unique.

 

All this said, I think that Amp Up is very underwhelming for a T9 buff. Everyone says that the +Special on it is underrated. I would disagree. I've found that playing around the +Special during the Amp Up duration is kind of tricky and generally not worth it. I have typically been casting this ability on Blasters instead of support types because of the DISCHARGE procs. 

 

I believe that the Discharge Procs from Amp Up are perhaps the most unique aspect of the set. But it feels really sad to only be able to give this to one person. I propose that Amp Up be able to chain to others JUST like the other chaining abilities in the set (with diminishing returns on each chain). Specifically, I do not propose that the +Special carries to others, but only the Discharge procs. In addition to this, I think that the ability should have a longer recharge. 

 

I think Amp Up should feel like an ability that, when it's up, really AMPS UP the team with Discharge procs. But, that it should have a longer cooldown so that it's either very difficult or impossible to permanently have up. I think that would make this ability shine, and be much more unique than it currently is, and would FEEL like an awesome, unique, team-oriented buff when it is off CD. 

 

What do you guys think? 

[Pzn]

I agree with buffing amp up.  Maybe reduce the +special buff in exchange for allowing it to chain to multiple targets, but still keep the discharge mechanic the same.  Limiting the +special to the first target sounds good, too.

 

Edited April 3, 2020 by josh1622

[Burnt Toast]

Gonna have to say No to this one. Reducing it so that it can chain... no thanks. I liken it to Adrenaline Boost from Empathy... a single target buff that greatly helps one person. With everything Electrical Affinity already does with chains... I like that Amp Up is a single target boost to one person. Not changing it and making it a chain would be OP... changing it to accomadate a chain would require a lot of nerfing to make it not OP and then it would seem lackluster. 

[Bartacus]

11 hours ago, Burnt Toast said:

Gonna have to say No to this one. Reducing it so that it can chain... no thanks. I liken it to Adrenaline Boost from Empathy... a single target buff that greatly helps one person. With everything Electrical Affinity already does with chains... I like that Amp Up is a single target boost to one person. Not changing it and making it a chain would be OP... changing it to accomadate a chain would require a lot of nerfing to make it not OP and then it would seem lackluster. 

I disagree strongly. Have you used it? it's not nearly as strong as Adrenaline boost from Empathy. You don't seriously think that 800% Recovery, 500% Regen AND 100% recharge is on the same level as 75% to special do you? That means 75% to defense buffs, heals, holds, etc? If so I'd have to disagree with you strongly. The former is much more useful to an individual than the latter. Amp Up I've strongly considered dropping for something else. I only keep it because it's cool to cast, not because it's a very good power. 

Especially at higher levels of play, +Special is not an inherently great buff. It's useful but it's also difficult to play around. Again, the teammates that I think it would be useful on would be like a Bubbler or something with Defense buffs. But, Then they have to (in the short window of the buff) make sure everyone is re-bubbled. It's just not that useful. 

To me, take the part about the power that is truly unique and make it the main focus. Giving Discharge procs to the entire team or even half of the team would be way more cool and feel like a much stronger T9 than giving it to one person and giving them special. 

[Replacement]

1 hour ago, Bartacus said:

That means 75% to defense buffs,

Does it even boost defense? Pretty sure it doesn't, because the duration is over 15 seconds.

 

I think this stuff is good to keep in mind, but ultimately it's still the best plan to wait for everyone to get over this new set. Once we all have a few and the Christmas Joy has worn off and we can see how it settles into the meta, then it will be safe to start adjusting it.

 

It's the nice thing about a community server -- they don't have Paragon Studio's moneyed incentives to make sure a new set is shiny AND powerful (which leads to massive game health issues if you refuse to nerf your game). HC gets to do things right: make sure it's just about middle-of-the-road performance, focus instead on the "fun" factor, and then tune the set later when we understand its impact.

[Burnt Toast]

4 hours ago, Bartacus said:

I disagree strongly. Have you used it? it's not nearly as strong as Adrenaline boost from Empathy. You don't seriously think that 800% Recovery, 500% Regen AND 100% recharge is on the same level as 75% to special do you? That means 75% to defense buffs, heals, holds, etc? If so I'd have to disagree with you strongly. The former is much more useful to an individual than the latter. Amp Up I've strongly considered dropping for something else. I only keep it because it's cool to cast, not because it's a very good power. 

Especially at higher levels of play, +Special is not an inherently great buff. It's useful but it's also difficult to play around. Again, the teammates that I think it would be useful on would be like a Bubbler or something with Defense buffs. But, Then they have to (in the short window of the buff) make sure everyone is re-bubbled. It's just not that useful. 

To me, take the part about the power that is truly unique and make it the main focus. Giving Discharge procs to the entire team or even half of the team would be way more cool and feel like a much stronger T9 than giving it to one person and giving them special. 

And? The SET as a whole is strong. This was already discussed at length for the past 6 weeks in beta. It as tested and tested and tested and discussed at length. Many changes were made to the set to make it an overall good set. 

[Naraka]

5 hours ago, Bartacus said:

I disagree strongly. Have you used it? it's not nearly as strong as Adrenaline boost from Empathy. You don't seriously think that 800% Recovery, 500% Regen AND 100% recharge is on the same level as 75% to special do you? That means 75% to defense buffs, heals, holds, etc? If so I'd have to disagree with you strongly. The former is much more useful to an individual than the latter. Amp Up I've strongly considered dropping for something else. I only keep it because it's cool to cast, not because it's a very good power. 

Especially at higher levels of play, +Special is not an inherently great buff. It's useful but it's also difficult to play around. Again, the teammates that I think it would be useful on would be like a Bubbler or something with Defense buffs. But, Then they have to (in the short window of the buff) make sure everyone is re-bubbled. It's just not that useful. 

To me, take the part about the power that is truly unique and make it the main focus. Giving Discharge procs to the entire team or even half of the team would be way more cool and feel like a much stronger T9 than giving it to one person and giving them special. 

I'd agree and say yeah, make the tier 9 the crown jewel of the set but you really do need to look at the set as a whole and not powers in a vacuum.

 

I mean if you're comparing power-by-power, you see differences like Heal Other vs Rejuvenating Circuit healing for nearly as much but also in an AoE and can heal the user.  Or Resurrect vs Defibrillate which rezzes in an AoE (not all that useful utility but it's there) and has an AoE debuff on it...not super amazing but it also recharges in 2min vs Resurrect's 3min.  Faraday Cage is leaps and bounds above Clear Mind even with its utility to grant mez protection at long ranges instead of needing them to stay in a specific area primarily because it also covers KB...and all for the user as well.

 

Just gotta face facts: Electric Affinity is already stacked.  Adding anything else, while it might be unique, is unnecessary and should likely need to lower its effectiveness in other ways to compensate.  And if someone says "Well Empathy needs buffs too" that is neither here nor there and outside of the purview of the discussion.  

 

 

[lemming]

I haven't played as much with Amp, so haven't been able to figure out well it works.

I was with a tank on my elec/elec corrupter and we did note that once I buffed him up, we tore thru opposition.  The final Praetor Marchland mission where you fight Calvin Scott was fairly easy.   Usually in the first fight, several of NPCs get taken out during the fight.  This time, they barely got scratched.  (Though, the buffs that get tossed if you do it before the fight starts, will chain to the villains...)

I feel it's a great set to support a melee team with that stays fairly tight.

[Bartacus]

6 hours ago, Replacement said:

Does it even boost defense? Pretty sure it doesn't, because the duration is over 15 seconds.

 

I think this stuff is good to keep in mind, but ultimately it's still the best plan to wait for everyone to get over this new set. Once we all have a few and the Christmas Joy has worn off and we can see how it settles into the meta, then it will be safe to start adjusting it.

 

It's the nice thing about a community server -- they don't have Paragon Studio's moneyed incentives to make sure a new set is shiny AND powerful (which leads to massive game health issues if you refuse to nerf your game). HC gets to do things right: make sure it's just about middle-of-the-road performance, focus instead on the "fun" factor, and then tune the set later when we understand its impact.

I actually agree with this. I know that NOW is not the time to implement this change. But, I do still think this is the change to make. It would not tip the balance of the set significantly, but would make its T9 feel useful.

 

 

4 hours ago, Burnt Toast said:

And? The SET as a whole is strong. This was already discussed at length for the past 6 weeks in beta. It as tested and tested and tested and discussed at length. Many changes were made to the set to make it an overall good set. 

Yeah, and weren't people complaining the entire time about how not useful Amp Up feels? I mean, that seemed pretty consistent. I agree, the set as a whole IS pretty good. But not stronger than other comparable sets. It does not seem outside the realm of reason to see a buff to Amp Up given this reality. Specifically, it just feels bad to have such a unique power be so... underwhelming. Discharge procs are so cool! But the cooldown makes it so you can only have it on one person. This may not be the popular opinion, but I would easily just as soon remove +Special entirely from the ability if we could give Discharge procs to more people. That, to me, is more unique and interesting.... which is very important when adding a new set to such an old game.

[Ironscarlet]

I run a lvl 50 Thug/EA and have a EA 40 Defender, both almost never use amp up. It's not like I tried but I cant find good use of it even trying to spam it on controllers and defenders. Someone said it buff healing received on target but it did not. I think though that would be the key to the power.

 

Buff by adding healing received bonus to it.

 

Now when you heal it acts like a healing anchor in your chain. When you chain a heal through the team on that one person that is amp up will get more of a heal.

 

 

[macskull]

I wouldn't mind if it acted like it did in the very early versions of the set where Amp Up added extra energy damage to the buffed ally's attacks, but I don't know if that's the way to go. Adding a regeneration or recovery bonus might be a good place to start if it needs anything (but I'm not convinced it does).

[Cybot X-22]

It does need something. If I compare this to Overgrowth from Nature Affinity, it falls kind of flat. Everyone in 25ft gets + 60-80% damage (corrupter vs defender based) and other benefits. Amp is, one person with decent buffs for a minute. With a great deal of recharge I could on paper have perma overgrowth. think about that for a sec. I like the set, but if the capstone is going to be this 'meh', why bother?

[Sura]

On 4/3/2020 at 10:52 AM, Bartacus said:

All this said, I think that Amp Up is very underwhelming for a T9 buff. 

If you compare it to the T9's from almost every Tanker primary it looks fantastic.  Getting to level 32 on a Tanker is monumentally anti-climactic. 

[Razor Cure]

I like it. Have been using in in a duo..my elec/elec fender and a friends ill/elec troller. With AMpUp being swapped, her PA is about perma (with NO IOs) and all our drains and heals are stupid awesome.

That said..the +special is of very limited use to some ATs, whereas the +regen/rech AND rech of Adrenaline boost (and AB is on a shorter rech I think?) are good for everyone.

[Psyonico]

The only thing I want to see buffed (or perhaps its a bug, never got word on this) is that I want it to work on pets.  I've tried casting it on Animated Stone several times and never seen the Discharge text.

[Razor Cure]

Something else to think about..the above duo I mention (elec/elec fender and ill/elec troller)..when we both have AMp Up active..we still cant drain a Elite Boss before they die (well quite rarely). Given how much larger their HP pool is, compared to End, that is a bit sad.