Power Pools, Again

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

16 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

Yeah, outside of novelty builds I don't bother with Hasten. My storm/water defender was built to see how much I could abuse recharge from Hasten and knockdown procs to make Storm into something even sillier than it already is (turns out, a lot, but it's very repetitive).

 

"You need Hasten" is up there alongside "anything less than 45% defence is pointless" (watch me solo AVs with 35% on a low HP AT, bucko). There's a lot of Generic Forum Wisdom in the game that I think needs to be debunked and people often read "X is helpful" as "if you don't have X, it will be literally impossible".

 

At the back of my mind, I'm brewing up a build that has fun with the presence and fighting pools but I haven't decided on the AT yet.

I was using the fighting pool for a melee themed PB build. Nice decent hitting attacks now with the whole 3 attacks buffing each other thing. Cross punch has a decent aoe effect to. Presence I have tried no few times to make work on a variety of concepts, but sadly have never found enough synergy to justify keeping it.I actually used to ignore the fighting pool mostly but now the attacks are nice enough I want it for those on a few concepts.

[Heraclea]

I have never taken Concealment on a character without also taking Teleport for Recall Friend.  Needed IMO since Assemble the Team has a totally ridiculous cooldown.  This makes for some pretty tight builds since you probably want Hasten on a squishy and a travel power you'll actually use for travelling. 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

22 hours ago, kiramon said:

Power pools are set unless you specifically build against them

 

leaping

speed

fighting

leadership

 

you can sub in concealment or flying in place of  leader or leaping, but most characters are confined to the above. Sad really. 
 

you do see some builds with sorcery so that’s okay 

 

 

Bud I dont know who you had as a mentor to teach you the ropes of this game but just wow that is some head shoved in a box poured over with concrete and then buried in the sandy floor at the bottom of the Mariana Trnech closed minded thinking there.

 

Leaping, fighting, and leadership have wide appeal due to them having various CC protections that many favor simply due to a universal dislike of being locked down.( Common theme in complaints across all MMO and games in general by certain players who need the constant action of movement and if its denied them for a 1nd they deem the game play flawed and bad)

 

Speed, well we all know how addictive it is. Ruin of the world really. Shame we cant get like a laaid back stoner chill pill pool to act as its rival and opposite. But seriously many use speed because they like super speed as the premier zoom zoom vibe( hell many QQ that fly cant go that fast, and we all know if it did everyone would always fly) And ofcourse Hasten but that isa  power many take evenw hen it really is holding their build back by denying them access to another entire pool option.

 

For example sorcery with its Rune of pro is amazing on a high recharge build blaster to add extra DR and break out of CC effects(( I know a quite a few CC and Defs also using it now days.

 

Then there is Unleashed potential in force of will. Nice def boost, mix it with soul masterys shadow meld and you can give regen and bio scrappers as an example a very nice soft def layer without all the hassle of a bar full of toggles( also due to the synergy of regena nd recharge builds, it especially leverages the above mix quite nicely.

 

Leadership is likely my most used pool because I team a lot, pug a ton, and get no end of chances to use veng which I  for the thematic of. Stealth next because most of my characters are not mass murderers lusting to slaughter legions( cept when Im killing nazi and space parasites!)

[THEDarkTyger]

18 hours ago, Heraclea said:

I will take a travel power.  Boils down to Flight or Leaping, because Super Speed won't get you there, and Teleport costs way too much endurance and needs Fly or Hover anyways.  The more time a character spends redside the likelier they are to take Flight.

Speed of Sound from the new Experimentation pool is absolutely fantastic, IMO. You can easily cap out your run speed, and the built in mini-teleport will get you over obstacles. And doesn't have that brief "hang" that regular Teleport does.

[Gulbasaur]

1 hour ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

I was using the fighting pool for a melee themed PB build. Nice decent hitting attacks now with the whole 3 attacks buffing each other thing. Cross punch has a decent aoe effect to. Presence I have tried no few times to make work on a variety of concepts, but sadly have never found enough synergy to justify keeping it.I actually used to ignore the fighting pool mostly but now the attacks are nice enough I want it for those on a few concepts.

Ah nice. Peacebringers were my first love (after getting a defender to 50 in like issue 4 or something). I think my dark/dark tanker with cloak of fear and my fortunata really fulfil my control-tank needs, but it's nice to theorycraft. Fear is my favourite control effect because I like watching my enemies cower and it's not too powerful that it trivialises combat (which, let's face it, is an issue with the game). 

 

Kick and crosspunch are satisfying crunchy and each take a decent selection of procs (including+recharge), making them quite handy on a ranged archetype. Coupled with a "take half, skip the rest" support they're reasonably good. I actually think it pairs very well with rad as you pretty much set everything up and then wade into combat. I'd really like it if they gave a similar 15% bonus to the pool powers like jump kick and air superiority, but alas. 

[MTeague]

On 6/6/2020 at 11:34 AM, kiramon said:

leaping

speed

fighting

leadership

 

you can sub in concealment or flying in place of  leader or leaping, but most characters are confined to the above. Sad really. 

I think you mean "I've made choices to mule LotG 5/5 and I've made choices to add hasten and weave and I can't even concieve of my character relying on team buffs for recharge and defense, so I only ever pick these choices".

 

Only 40% of my characters take Hasten.

No more than half of my characters touch the Fighting pool at all.

Not all of my characters take Combat Jumping. 

 

Really there is quite a bit more choice involved than you seem to think there is. 

 

It's easy to work in Medicine for /SR. 

I have a Dark/Dark corruptor with the PRESCENCE pool for the self-rez option.

I have a Mind/Kin with the Concealment pool.

My Plant / Psi dominator does not use the Fighitng Pool at all. 

My Fire/Fire/Fire sentinel does not use Leaping OR Speed pools

My Invuln/SS tanker so far has only Leadership from your list... No Speed, No Leaping, No Fighting.  He has Leadership and Experimentation.

[MTeague]

Now, I do think Teleport pool is overdue for a rework. 

• Unless they plan to totally remove the Base Teleporter slash command / macro, and NOT put anything in it's place, then Long Range Teleport is entirely obsolete.  No one is going to spend THREE power choices to get what a macro can do for free.
• Teleport, I have no issue with the End cost.  My controller can zip north/south across Independance Port without running out of end (although, admittedly, it's pretty close).  But I do have an issue with the animation time, and the enforced hover effect.  I think that's a holdover from the days of Dial-Up Internet and really bad connection speeds. I'd love to see regular teleport just BAMPH you more along the lines of Jaunt from the Experimentation pool. (only, able to just keep casting no cooldown)
• Teleport Other is very niche.  Can be useful when soloing to thin minions away from a boss before aggroing the boss.  But no team will ever wait for this. 
• Recall friend is similarly niche.  It would become more useful if the Base Teleport macro were removed, but I have given up hope that that will ever happen.  Still useful to yoink people across the Shadow Shard, or to grab the team leader if he was busy recruiting other people while the rest of the team moved to the next mission door, etc.  

I would like to see a "Teleport Attack" power, similar to "Burst of Speed" from Martial Combat, added to the set. 

Long Range Teleport seems a prime candidate to sacrifice for this, given its redundancy to the teleport macro.

[Greycat]

48 minutes ago, MTeague said:

Now, I do think Teleport pool is overdue for a rework. 

• Unless they plan to totally remove the Base Teleporter slash command / macro, and NOT put anything in it's place, then Long Range Teleport is entirely obsolete.  No one is going to spend THREE power choices to get what a macro can do for free.
• Teleport, I have no issue with the End cost.  My controller can zip north/south across Independance Port without running out of end (although, admittedly, it's pretty close).  But I do have an issue with the animation time, and the enforced hover effect.  I think that's a holdover from the days of Dial-Up Internet and really bad connection speeds. I'd love to see regular teleport just BAMPH you more along the lines of Jaunt from the Experimentation pool. (only, able to just keep casting no cooldown)
• Teleport Other is very niche.  Can be useful when soloing to thin minions away from a boss before aggroing the boss.  But no team will ever wait for this. 
• Recall friend is similarly niche.  It would become more useful if the Base Teleport macro were removed, but I have given up hope that that will ever happen.  Still useful to yoink people across the Shadow Shard, or to grab the team leader if he was busy recruiting other people while the rest of the team moved to the next mission door, etc.  

I would like to see a "Teleport Attack" power, similar to "Burst of Speed" from Martial Combat, added to the set. 

Long Range Teleport seems a prime candidate to sacrifice for this, given its redundancy to the teleport macro.

They keep talking about that command not being meant for general use and that it'll go away. But they've been talking about that for a while.

 

I'd disagree about TP Friend and TP Foe being niche - though it's dependent, in part, on playstyle and just *what* You like to play. I do keep seeing people asking for them to be combined into one, which... eh, sure. Recall Friend is *less* used now with people getting travel powers earlier, granted.

 

I'll also fully admit bias here, since I play Warshades quite a bit (*yoink* Hi Quantum! *hold, kill, create fluffy*) as well as support sets.

[Peacemoon]

On 6/6/2020 at 4:27 PM, Arnabas said:

Any chance we can rebalance Power Pools?

Once upon a time, I was of the opinion that Power Pools should be weaker than primary/ secondary powers, but these days I am not so sure anymore.

By my reasoning, if we are giving up a standard power for the sake of a pool power, we are "paying" a price for it. If the issue is play balance (which, you know, barely exists anyway) then the fact that we are surrendering either a primary or secondary power should be enough. I don't think we need to make pool powers essentially just cosmetic.

 

Now, I admit, I am not a big numbers guy, but I am going by feel. I have one character for whom I picked up the Force of Will powerset because it was thematically a great fit... on paper. In play, there is no point in using it because it is so weak. An attack (Project WIll) that I "pay" for feels weaker even than Brawl. Not only doe s it not really do anything, it is painfully slow. And yet, other pool powers (Leadership pool, Hasten, etc) are useful enough that a number of people consider them essential. 

 

Some other powers are possibly more powerful than they should be, like Mystic Flight. I thought that would be useful to me because I have a character who teleports, but has a tendency to take damage when falling out of the sky between jumps (not when travelling in a straight line, but you don't really have time to turn and look around). I figured Mystic Flight would save me from buying Hover, because it has a mix of flight/ teleport. I expected it to be similar to hover but the flight component is pretty fast, and in my mind, makes the teleport component redundant.

 

So, I don't really expect pool powers to get a huge bump, but it would be nice if we could have them all be reasonably useful instead of a mix of essential and pointless.

 

Also: I would love to be able to customize them more. I would love to be able to have Boxing and Kick animate as sword strikes, for example. I wouldn't care about the damage type or anything, but thematically, I would love my DB/ Ninja Training Blaster to have an extra "sword" attack or two.

 

I think you’re on to something. Particularly the power pool attacks. A lot of them are quite weak and only occasionally useful on an AT with no attacks... like Controllers. It would be great if they served a greater purpose. Like a good melee attack for a ranged AT, or a useful ranged attack for a melee AT. 

[kiramon]

3 hours ago, MTeague said:

I think you mean "I've made choices to mule LotG 5/5 and I've made choices to add hasten and weave and I can't even concieve of my character relying on team buffs for recharge and defense, so I only ever pick these choices".

 

Only 40% of my characters take Hasten.

No more than half of my characters touch the Fighting pool at all.

Not all of my characters take Combat Jumping. 

 

Really there is quite a bit more choice involved than you seem to think there is. 

 

It's easy to work in Medicine for /SR. 

I have a Dark/Dark corruptor with the PRESCENCE pool for the self-rez option.

I have a Mind/Kin with the Concealment pool.

My Plant / Psi dominator does not use the Fighitng Pool at all. 

My Fire/Fire/Fire sentinel does not use Leaping OR Speed pools

My Invuln/SS tanker so far has only Leadership from your list... No Speed, No Leaping, No Fighting.  He has Leadership and Experimentation.

Thanks for your contribution 

[Peacemoon]

41 minutes ago, kiramon said:

Thanks for your contribution 

Well to be fair, it’s a more thoughtful contribution than most of your posts in this thread 🤪

[EmmySky]

I find the pool powers lackluster at best.  I am very not a min/maxer and that may be why.  I always take a travel, super jump or fly.  If I get knocked about a lot (I am looking at you Ruin Mage) I will pick up combat jumping or hover.  I like to take most of my primary and secondary powers as well as a nice epic/patron pool so I don't always have a lot of room for the pool powers.  Yes, even hasten, fighting pool or leadership pool.  

 

I think there is a lot of room to make the pool powers interesting.  How that is done needs to be approached carefully because we don't need more 'everybody takes x' powers that create over-poweredness (yes its a word I just used it).  I think flair is the way to go while keeping the same or similar utility as currently exists.  

[kiramon]

10 minutes ago, Peacemoon said:

Well to be fair, it’s a more thoughtful contribution than most of your posts in this thread 🤪

disagree

[tidge]

21 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Presence I have tried no few times to make work on a variety of concepts, but sadly have never found enough synergy to justify keeping it.

I find the Presence pool to be a synergistic choice on Defense-based melee characters (Scrappers, Arachnos Widows): The Provoke AoE is generally more useful than a primary single-target Taunt, Placate or Intimidate is useful when leveling when a breather is needed. The gem is Unrelenting (on a high-recharge build) for buffs or heals (or a rez). Invoke Panic is a very nice PBAoE control. The only wish I have for this set is that I could pick Unrelenting or Invoke Panic as the second choice of the set, as once I made my decision about the first power, the second required power choice is not as appreciated.

[Zeraphia]

6 minutes ago, tidge said:

I find the Presence pool to be a synergistic choice on Defense-based melee characters (Scrappers, Arachnos Widows): The Provoke AoE is generally more useful than a primary single-target Taunt, Placate or Intimidate is useful when leveling when a breather is needed. The gem is Unrelenting (on a high-recharge build) for buffs or heals (or a rez). Invoke Panic is a very nice PBAoE control. The only wish I have for this set is that I could pick Unrelenting or Invoke Panic as the second choice of the set, as once I made my decision about the first power, the second required power choice is not as appreciated.

That is my main gripe with this set that stops me from picking it in a lot of cases, however I understand that sometimes you have to pick a "dud" power to get the gems of the powerset (much the same as boxing/kick for tough/weave/crosspunch).

[0th Power]

On 6/6/2020 at 10:08 PM, kiramon said:

You can absolutely play the game with teleport, mystic flight, mighty leap, and speed of sound for all your power pool picks. 

You can only have one origin power pool