Weekly Discussion 61: Inherent Powers

[Ralathar44]

1 hour ago, kiramon said:

 

Yeah, not a fan of inherents that don't affect how you play -- the VEATs/hero ones are a bit different since they dont compete with anything, but theyre very lazy. 

IMO VEAT have two inherent.  1 is conditioning/the kheld inherents and the other is the ability to spec into literally anything on alternate builds thanks to the different job "classes" they can mix and match.  If you ahve the enhancements you can be melee dps, ranged dps, support, tank, and hybrid all on the same character.  Team needs a tank, I can just pop by the trainer and change builds and bamf let's gooooo :P.

Edited July 29, 2020 by Ralathar44

[Patti]

There is a command for that now.   No need for trainer visits anymore.

[cranebump]

On 7/27/2020 at 7:44 PM, Myrmidon said:

Sprint is where the Stealth IO goes. No thank you.

i was going to mention this as well.

[Saikochoro]

Disclaimer: my thoughts will be colored by my personal paradigm of being generally anti nerf. I would rather buff “weak” things than nerf “powerful” things in general. Yes, outliers exist that don’t necessarily fit that mindset, but I generally go with that. I know that leads to power creep, but honestly that has never bothered me. With IOs and incarnates that ship has sailed so anything extra doesn’t really fundamentally change the game to make it much easier than it already can be for some.  So, with that said, here are my thoughts. 
 

Fury - Very strong and perfect inherent power.  Rewards a brute for doing what brutes do best.
 

Assassins focus/assasination - Very strong and synergistic with ATOs. Some may consider it overpowered, but I think it’s great.  I think calculated criticals are more fitting of stalkers than scrappers so the predictable crits are good. 
 

Critical hit - I feel like this is lacking, especially compared to stalkers inherent. It doesn’t provide a consistent or predictable benefit like the other melee archetypes.  I would change critical hits for scrappers to function similar to brutes fury but still be critical damage as opposed to straight damage boost. Have base critical hit chance be low (lower than it already is). Then fighting will fill the “critical bar” similar to fury. The more full the bar, the higher the crit chance. The cap would be higher than what they currently have.  The actual percentages would have to be tested. This would make their criticals more reliable especially in longer fights (AVs, GMs). 
 

Defiance - I think this is powerful and perfect.  Fits in well with their lack of mez protections and makes them more powerful as they continue attacking. 
 

Opportunity - needs reworked in my opinion. Feels too complicated compared to other inherents and not as rewarding. Forces you to take both t1 and t2 powers to take full advantage of the inherent. I think it should be simpler and more rewarding. I think the inherent stacking - res is good.  Since sentinels are a damage archetype I think their inherent should be damage focused. Options are: -res/Regen, straight damage boost, criticals, or something new like + rech. To put in a new flavor I’d say rework it to have opportunity grant + rech.  This could either be ever increasing similar to fury to a cap, or a large temporary boost when the bar is full. The stacking -res would help the damage, but having a decent +rech would help them attack faster and thus achieve greater dps. Would open up more build opportunities as well with less focus on global recharge.  Biggest issue I can see with this is on teams that have a lot of recharge buffs going around that could lessen the usefulness of +rech. However, I think it would be useful in most situations. 
 

These are the only inherents I feel strongly enough to comment on. 
 

 

Edited July 30, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Ukase]

On 7/28/2020 at 7:00 AM, Yomo Kimyata said:

Prestige Power Slide:  Burn it with fire.

I vastly prefer PPS over Sprint. Watching a character sprint is the most ridiculous animation in the game. They plod; they don't run. I realize that slide looks a bit silly to some - but you touch my PPS, I'm gonna be pissed. 

 

[Galaxy Brain]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

but you touch my PPS, I'm gonna be pissed. 

In my experience, it very much depends on who is touching my PPs

 

I would like that power to be customizable though! Or at least a min-fx option for us Ice Types.

 

 

Edited July 30, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[DoctorDitko]

10 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Or at least a min-fx option for us Ice Types.

Preach it! Just colorizing would do for now!

[Gulbasaur]

On 7/29/2020 at 12:22 AM, ForeverLaxx said:

Containment: Some control effects still need to be added to Containment so that all Controllers can benefit more frequently. Sets that have strong, reliable Fear effects as primary sources of group control suffer because of this.

I'd love it if Fear and Confuse were added. Their omission is strange, especially as the Control incarnate includes them.

 

On 7/29/2020 at 2:33 PM, tidge said:

Fury (Brutes): I have nothing to say about the performance, except that I 100% oppose porting a Fury-like mechanic to anything else (especially Domination).

Brutes are a clusterfunk of poor design choices, in my opinion... Fury, however, is actually okay, although I wish it wasn't given to a taunting archetype as it rewards running from group to group, dumping aggro onto whichever teammates are left dealing with the bosses. I don't have an issue with Fury, but with the brute auto-taunt.

 

Blaster have Fury Lite, which works for them pretty well.

 

On 7/29/2020 at 2:33 PM, tidge said:

Conditioning (Soldiers of Arachnos): Seems underwhelming. I never really noticed it helping at low levels. At high levels I run a lot of toggles, which I suppose isn't different than many other characters... except that I feel like my VEATs have slightly more Endurance issues than other ATs, so I suppose those issues might be even worse without Conditioning? See my above comments on the Regeneration bonus from Health.

Totally with you on this one. It's not nearly as helpful as it should be, especially as VEATs get a lot of decent, unskippable toggles from very early on.

Edited July 30, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[Safehouse]

I think this has been discussed already in regards to Scrapper, but Critical Hit feels like it needs tweaking, if not a complete rework. I'm of the opinion that scrappers are in a weird spot right now, particularly in light of the fact that stalkers seem to be better at the thing that scrappers are supposed to be known for, namely critting, and critting reliably. Again, I'm not sure what can be done with it, but I feel like scrappers need an identity, and a start would be giving critical hit a closer look.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Safehouse
Clarifying words

[Lost Deep]

My thoughts on inherents is that an archetype inherent is supposed to help define an archetype's role in the game. Here's which ones I think are the most trouble right now:

Conditioning: Yeah, it adds up if you build for it, but it does nothing to define the VEATs' role in the game. Honestly, the more I've looked into them, the more I feel like VEATs need a major overhaul. I have a soldier and he simply is not as good as other characters I run: I can run -1/x2 with my blaster, but not with the VEAT.

 

Cosmic Balance/Dark Sustenance: As HEATs are meant to be flexible in their roles, this has less of an issue with definition than Conditioning but it's still a very passive effect and useless for solo players.

 

Critical Hit: Neat idea, but I feel like it needs something. What I don't know, but it's sure less impactful than Brute Fury or Stalker stuff. I want to say it needs powers that interact with it, but that's stalker's thing.

 

Opportunity: Opportunity is a MESS, and I think fixing it will go a long way toward fixing sentinels. It's a situational buff you can't control (as taking the basic powers out of your rotation is asking for problems), that does team support AND extra damage AND survivability (but not all at once!), that calls for the user to alter the rotation and limit their builds to make the most of. I've wound up completely ignoring it and whatever opportunity I get is the opportunity I get, it's better than trying to game the system for me. I think that it should be changed to something else, preferably something nice and passive. Defense boost from using primary set powers? Something.

 

Vigilance: I think the fact that Vigilance is so complex and messy is telling of how hard it is to find a good passive that doesn't kibosh soloing for defenders. What's worse is that I have no ideas on how to fix it.

 

Brawl and the Origin Attacks: Brawl and the basic ranged origin attacks are really bad. Like, even for being tiny baby attacks for baby characters they're REALLY bad. I guess now with free stuff from the P2W vendor and more options from power pools it's less impactful, but... still. I wouldn't be against them being marginally less useless. Brawl is so useless that it gets buffs from the fighting set and is STILL useless afterward. And the ranged power has a low enough range you can't really work it into game-start ranged attack rotations.

 

These are the ones that strike me as needing the most help. I'm not saying others couldn't use tweaks, I do feel scourge could use a slight buff, but I think these should be top priority.

 

EDIT: I forgot domination! Darn domination. It feels bad running a Dominator without domination up. I've had to say, 'no, I can't do anything to control that boss right now' because domination went down. I get that there's a dedicated Permadom community, I respect that. But! I feel that it should not be the baseline for making Dominators work well. As someone who doesn't yet do IO builds, I just want to play as a dominator and be baseline useful on a team.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Lost Deep

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 7/30/2020 at 10:42 AM, Ukase said:

 you touch my PPS, I'm gonna be pissed. 

 

Never without your permission!

 

I hardly mind removing it from bar 2 on EVERY SINGLE new alt, since there are other adjustments I need to make as well.  But what really grinds my gears is that it takes up valuable real estate in the third column of the Manage screen.  Oh how I wish it'd go away...

 

[Greycat]

Personally, I'd love for Domination to ignore recharge buffs that don't come from outside. I'd be happy if I never heard "perma-dom" again. You want to speed up Domination, make friends with Kins. The AT is perfectly playable without it. Never going to *happen,* but still.

[Eldyem]

4 hours ago, Safehouse said:

I think this has been discussed already in regards to Scrapper, but Critical Hit feels like it needs tweaking, if not a complete rework. I'm of the opinion that scrappers are in a weird spot right now, particularly in light of the fact that stalkers seem to be better at the thing that scrappers are supposed to be known for, namely critting, and critting reliably. Again, I'm not sure what can be done with it, but I feel like scrappers need an identity, and a start would be giving critical hit a closer look.

I feel the opposite. I see no issue with one class - notably a very solo friendly, noob friendly class - having a "do nothing" inherent. The Scrapper ATOs are the real problem compared to Stalkers.

 

3% crit chance is 3% extra damage (equivalent to probably close to what 6% or so global damage, which for a single slot is great) but it's also absurdly boring and will never be directly noticed. 50% chance to crit over 2.5 seconds is roughly 2 attacks, which is similar to Stalker's 1 crit on paper, but Stalkers can prioritize a high damage attack and be sure the crit is coming, so Scrappers mostly end up worse off here, though I wouldn't be surprised if an edge case like Claws or Katanta or something could fit 3 attacks in and have it be "better".

Scrappers were never crit machines by design.

[Ukase]

7 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Never without your permission!

 

I hardly mind removing it from bar 2 on EVERY SINGLE new alt, since there are other adjustments I need to make as well.  But what really grinds my gears is that it takes up valuable real estate in the third column of the Manage screen.  Oh how I wish it'd go away...

 

Like all those silly halloween costumes and other temps? Like my fire blaster is going to use Flame Thrower? (a temp I got from somewhere...) 

[Yomo Kimyata]

10 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Like all those silly halloween costumes and other temps? Like my fire blaster is going to use Flame Thrower? (a temp I got from somewhere...) 

There's the power tray too, but I was referring to the screen where you slot your enhancements.  I really wish they would give an option to hide the inherents like brawl and PPS.

[Gulbasaur]

 

16 hours ago, Greycat said:

Personally, I'd love for Domination to ignore recharge buffs that don't come from outside. I'd be happy if I never heard "perma-dom" again. You want to speed up Domination, make friends with Kins. The AT is perfectly playable without it. Never going to *happen,* but still.

The "Recharge Problem" has been an issue since Alpha when they had to nerf it and players complained. Sadly, "recharge breaks everything" is such a core part of the game now that it's just something we're stuck with.

[GlaziusF]

22 hours ago, Greycat said:

Personally, I'd love for Domination to ignore recharge buffs that don't come from outside. I'd be happy if I never heard "perma-dom" again. You want to speed up Domination, make friends with Kins. The AT is perfectly playable without it. Never going to *happen,* but still.

I think that now that you can be CCd without dropping toggles, Domination and Hasten should both be time-limited toggles with long cooldown times (just not as long as the current click downtime). Going through essentially a phase change with enough +recharge was OP back when you could six-slot Hasten with recharge and it's OP now.

[Chance Jackson]

On 7/29/2020 at 1:55 AM, Myrmidon said:

Blasters are fine.

 

You may go about your business.

 

Move along.

I wish defiance &/or Aim/Buildup provided mez protection 

[DoctorDitko]

59 minutes ago, Chance Jackson said:

I wish defiance &/or Aim/Buildup provided mez protection

Defiance does, if you consider that blasting the crap out of mezzers is a form of mitigation. Six-slot your first two attacks and have at them!

[gamingglen]

10 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

Defiance does, if you consider that blasting the crap out of mezzers is a form of mitigation. Six-slot your first two attacks and have at them!

Especially when you slot your own mez (Devastation proc) in both.