Weekly Discussion 64: T9's Part I

[zenijos10]

Of all the Armor T9s I've tried, the only one I would ever take is Moment of Glory.

• It adds something the other powers in regen don't to keep you alive.
• It can be available pretty regularly
• It can mule a lot of IOs
• And most importantly to me It feels GLORIOUS!  Raising your hand in the face of your adversary and become the unmovable object frels epic.

That said, the power is still totally skippable.  I think it needs another 15 seconds of uptime, even if its at half potency for the second 15 seconds.

[archgemini24]

5 hours ago, Yoru-hime said:

What more do we really need from a defensive powerset?

I agree with everything else you said, but to answer this question, specifically: Offensive/Support parity? Some sets pay a lot more for their extra tricks than others, if they even have them, at all. I know not every set is going to get Against All Odds, Grant Cover, and Shield Charge and/or have the bulk of its mitigation wrapped up in 4 powers (Regen's not the strongest or most IO-friendly, but Fast Healing, Reconstruction, Dull Pain, and Integration at least means you can get other powers quickly), but seeing sets like SR that require 7 powers, waiting until 35 to get a core power, and only getting Quickness (which is another power pick) and near-capped DDR out of the deal just does not seem right.

 

Complementary T9s rather than stacking T9s might also be helpful, but I think the devs are at least still trying to respect the Cottage Rule for folks who did take them for a specific use. Clicking Overload and having it act like Unstoppable might be useful for Energy Aura players, but they may have wanted the extra Defense for Incarnate content, or picked EA because its T9 did not have an HP crash.

[Chance Jackson]

Armor T9s generally super skippable 

[Sakura Tenshi]

Well, the thing I see with the Cottage Rul,e @archgemini24, is that, in theory at least, it's the only rule in the game where powers are 'balanced' around IO sets. Specifically as I can tell, the core of the cottage rule is "don't mess with the sets/enhancements that can be slotted into it, otherwise it's fine". So turning a single target melee power into a ranged AoE  hold is just right out. But we can be additive to abilities and only slightly subtractive to others.

 

For example, I've long kicked around the idea of how to improve Elude from Super Reflexes would look a bit like this:

1. Lower defense buffs to maybe +22.5% instead of the full +45% (should be enough to push an SO'd SR character into softcap in any event)
2. upon activation, Elude grants a +30% ToHit Buff as well as a +30-50% Recharge buff as well (because you're moving so fast, you're able to @#$% attacks faster and enemies are easier to hit) This consequently would call for a recharge time increase too.
3. possibly bonus would be that, upon activation, the user releases a 35ft radius PBAoE debuff aura with no line of sight requirements. The debuff severely lowers defense, tohit, and damage (even when they start to hit you, you can pull away from attacks) but most of all, movement and recharge (say, like 35%).
4. About everything else would stay the same, +recovery (need it for the +recharge), crash, and 2 minute duration.

It doesn't provide direct damage resistance, but debuffing enemies could help mitigate things, and the core idea is to let an SR character basically have a Quicksilver moment. And it still lets you slot everything you presently can slot into Elude, but has a lot of additional benefits to it, and possibly can now slot more things.

[MTeague]

I took Elude on my Claws/SR scrapper.  Crash and all. 

I will go hours without needing it. 

 

But if a Sapper rolls two natural 20's in a row and gets through her 52% defense, Elude gives me a nice "Too Bad, I still have Sky-High Defenses EVEN IF you detoggled me, and I'll still murdalize *cough* arrest *cough* every last one of you!".  The fact that it comes with it's own built in high boosts to Recovery, in addition to instantly putting me at softcap even if I detoggled, makes it worth it to me for emergencies. 

 

Now, yes, once I pop it, I'll be dealing with a crash 3 minutes later.  It hasn't been a problem.  I have a decent judge of time for how long it took me to win whatever fight I was in, and if I don't think I have enough time left over for the next spawn, I just go grab a drink, then come back and turn my toggles back on after the crash has happened.

 

Would I like it even better without the crash?  Ab-so-lutely.

Do I think the crash is really that traumatic a thing to deal with?   No, not at all. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

8 minutes ago, MTeague said:

But if a Sapper rolls two natural 20's in a row and gets through her 52% defense, Elude gives me a nice "Too Bad, I still have Sky-High Defenses EVEN IF you detoggled me, and I'll still murdalize *cough* arrest *cough* every last one of you!".  The fact that it comes with it's own built in high boosts to Recovery, in addition to instantly putting me at softcap even if I detoggled, makes it worth it to me for emergencies. 

This was the case for me back on live before IOs. Now? I just kill the sapper first before he gets off a single shot.

[MTeague]

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

This was the case for me back on live before IOs. Now? I just kill the sapper first before he gets off a single shot.

x4 or x8 you can end up with multple sappers.  Or you can just not realize there was one hiding in the back until after he got lucky and tagged you. It happens. I'm not always super careful about pre-scanning for sappers when I play my /SR specficallky because I expect them to miss the VAST majority of the time. 

[Lines]

An old CoH truism: the more you think there is no sapper in the group, the more there is definitely a sapper in the group.

[Myrmidon]

I am going to make this easy. Any Amor T9 Prior to Willpower is 💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩 💩

 

 

If Blasters have a T9 (which can be used constantly) that doesn’t crash them into nothing, then there is absolutely NO excuse for the sorry state of T9s now that we have a Dev team that isn’t required to follow the money.

 

 

When you get a chance, Captain, either bring these 💩💩💩 T9s up to par or just leave us a blank power slot.

Edited August 20, 2020 by Myrmidon

[MTeague]

10 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

If Blasters have a T9 (which can be used constantly) that doesn’t crash them into nothing, then there is absolutely NO excuse for the sorry state of T9s now that we have a Dev team that isn’t required to follow the money.

See, I never understood why the crash was removed from Blast T9's in the first place.  

Money or no money.  I didn't consider the crash a bad thing.

 

** is dragged kicking and screaming off to the side by swarms of angry Blasters, Defenders, and Corruptors and clubbed like a baby seal **

 

No, really, 

 

** is clubbed some more **

 

I kinda liked Full Auto being weaker-but-crashless as a tradeoff, and I remember the game being a lot more tactical when you couldn't melt everything in one button every other spawn.  Now, I have ZERO expectations that that will EVER be reverted. But regardless of whether that happened on HC or in the last year or so of LIVE when I was off playing other games, I just feel like it should be pointed out that "If blasters have crashless T9's, than so should everyone else" can be balanced out in more than one direction. 

[zenblack]

My feedback/opinion on T9 Armors may be simply +1's to what other's have stated but I wanted to provide a little reasoning behind the way I think/feel about them.

 

1. I look at every T9 from a Tanker point of view. Since it's the primary I look at this as the "wait until 32 to get this power that I anticipate, appreciate, and adds to my primary role". While they affect other AT's to a lesser degree to a Tank it should have more importance the same as Defenders have Support, Blasters have Ranged Attacks, etc.

 

2. Any T9 that has a hard crash should immediately be put to a "half crash" which is much more manageable and appealing as a player. There is an argument to be made that some should have no crash, that shouldn't be off the table.

 

3. Any T9 that is a Rez needs to look at the current playing environment that HC has established on their servers and take that into account. This means the availiablity of Rez and what it implies. I'll tick them off just as a reminder to some who may have forgot a few: Inspirations (high level ones are readily available, anything below a large is garbage to me unless I get it and don't happen to have a way to Rez (very unlikely). Rechargeable Badge Power (that can be purchased or earned), Temp power from Day Job, Temp power from Super Packs, Rez Other available to any player at P2W, Rez built into certain Support AT's as a part of their kit and as a secret runner in the race, Emailed Inspirations. You always have one if you want even if you didn't plan on having to rez! (I forgot Vengeance!)

 

This is a huge number of options. Rez is not unique nor does it really appeal to a Tank (in particular) because when you die you are, through the mechanics of the game, left considerably weaker until you can get toggles up (and god forbid if you have some that have animations), lost buffs, and lost aggro.

 

I propose any T9 Armor (specific to Armor, not other AT secondaries or Epic pools) instead prevent death and fire it's effects. At whatever point the power fires (1% of Health) you gain 1 second of Invulnerability and the effects trigger and the ability goes on cooldown and isn't triggered until off cooldown. This would be valuable as an Armor set because it would still allow a Tank to do his job even if he gets himself in trouble and picked the power to get back in the action.

 

4. I don't mind the unadjustable recharge on Armor T9's because it saves slots and allows a finer control of the effect without getting into the whirlpool of global recharge/IO's. However, I think this unadjustable recharge should feel fair considering the power of the T9 and it's intent on playstyle.

 

Now I'll go into specific sets. (Note: I have no experience of any of these on Sentinels but I believe if they have the same current effects it shouldn't matter until Sentinels are adjusted as an AT whole)

 

Meltdown - Great! It does exactly what you want from a T9 power. You want to take this, it's not a decision. It's effects are good enough that is usable on a number of different build styles.

 

Parasitic Leech - Fine. You get to play with Recharge on this one. Some people skip it and I can see why they might, Bio is a very good and well rounded set it doesn't need it's T9 to have a large focus, it does things well on it's own. Tankers can choose to have someplace to slot set bonuses. Nothing to complain about here in the scheme of T9's.

 

Soul Transfer - Rez, so see above. I think it's funny that lots of people (myself included) don't take this because Dark is a pretty good set and covers a lot of the bases even though there are some very lackluster powers. Perhaps this could be reworked to instead of having it be a rez it's a passive power that affects a proc chance of hits. It feels very thematic for Dark Armor to have an aggressive tilt to it's armor (as far as having dark magic in armor is portrayed in general).

 

Rise of the Phoenix - Rez, so see above. It includes aoe damage so it's got merit because it's actually useful in general but as a Tank your goal should be not to die. I'd rename this one and separate it from it's clones in other Pools so it's the only one that gets a tanker friendly version.

 

One with the Shield - OK, funny thing is the T8 of Shield actually feels like the T9 so it's an odd duck. Medium crash that isn't obnoxious, gives you a heal which the set is weak on and doesn't take forever to recharge but is still significant. Wishlist: adjust this power to provide a "Absorb" limit (example 400 Absorb) that is given regenerative ticks to it as the power is active. Feels like it would be more appropriate to have being One with the Shield but definitely not a priority.

 

Strength of Will - Has a hard crash so I skip it, but Willpower by nature of it being a well rounded set doesn't lean on it very much.

 

Unstoppable - The great ugly T9 that really shows. Doesn't help Invuln much at all since it's a heavy Res set. Doesn't bring much to the table and seems to want to be that "Moment of Glory" power that actually makes you wait on it to use it until usually the very end. Feels like this power should have a passive attached so you feel like you are getting something out of it even if you don't eventually use it because it's not needed or you've built around it. Funny anecdote, I love Invuln on Stalkers, it's absolutely ACES, but I still don't ever pick this power. Not a good feeling to have your T9 ignored so flagrantly.

 

Power Surge - Little brother of Unstoppable. Everything applies to a one degree or another.

 

Moment of Glory - Not on Tankers and I never played when "MoG was good" but it's fairly short lived and feels like it cuts off noticeably early. I think this set and it's history with changes muck about with determining what people feel this really should do.

 

Ninjitsu - Really nice effect with a hard crash. No thanks. Feels like this could easily be fixed with crash and cooldown adjusted.

 

Granite Armor - I am not a devoted Stone Armor player and because of the design of the entire set I don't feel qualified to go deep into it, but I think it fight's itself and the set creates a set of bad choices for the player by nullifying slot choices or curtailing the ability to Exemplar too low. I feel the restrictions are a little too harsh. Even being able to jump a normal jump max would be great. I wish this set could be brought to feel like it synergizes with it's different armor types and gave more options. I will state that I am a SS + SJ (and throw Jaunt in there) junkie. The movement of the game is one of it's huge enjoyment factors for me and so I feel things that inherently take that away are more punitive than someone who isn't in love with the travel option/powers, so grain of salt.

 

Overload, Hibernate, Elude - No personal experience with these so I can't provide any help here, though I will say this stems from the sets not feeling good enough (by how they are balanced as a whole) to be considered or build a character around, so that isn't a good look on them either.

 

I know it was a long read, but I think this topic has a lot of room to allow the game to grow if it's a focus of better/updated design and feedback and since I've started playing CoH with Homecoming I've spent a LOT of time in this game with different builds and such and think there are some things here that could benefit the game as a whole.

Edited August 21, 2020 by zenblack
Clarity Venge BAIT!

[skoryy]

On 8/18/2020 at 7:40 PM, Greycat said:

I'm just the opposite. I think T9s *should* crash (barring something like rise of the phoenix.) They should be useful to the point people want to take them, and have a cost that makes people think "Do I want to use this now?" so there's some tactical thought in it. (This includes nukes, btw, which I know aren't being talked about.)

 

Having them ignorable - or crashless - just makes them another button to push that disappears into the mass of other buttons.  (And yes, this is the same sort of reason that keeps me from wanting to hit perma-dom. That's boring. I like having to decide when to use it.)

There's no tactical thought if they've already made the strategic thought of "I can find a better power / powerset / archetype that doesn't have a crash" when they're building their character.   Crashless nukes became a thing in live because the going meta was that nukes were skippable because of the crash.  If the meta is bypassing the T9s because of the crash, then the crash has to also be considered part of the problem.

[Lines]

34 minutes ago, MTeague said:

See, I never understood why the crash was removed from Blast T9's in the first place.  

Money or no money.  I didn't consider the crash a bad thing.

 

** is dragged kicking and screaming off to the side by swarms of angry Blasters, Defenders, and Corruptors and clubbed like a baby seal **

 

No, really, 

 

** is clubbed some more **

 

I kinda liked Full Auto being weaker-but-crashless as a tradeoff, and I remember the game being a lot more tactical when you couldn't melt everything in one button every other spawn.  Now, I have ZERO expectations that that will EVER be reverted. But regardless of whether that happened on HC or in the last year or so of LIVE when I was off playing other games, I just feel like it should be pointed out that "If blasters have crashless T9's, than so should everyone else" can be balanced out in more than one direction. 

I do agree.

 

I like the thought of having powers with a significant cost/benefit balance. I think armour t9s are usually a bit heavy on the cost while nukes have become heavy on the benefit.

 

There's a balance in there somewhere, but I reckon there'll be a lot of pushing and pulling to get there.

[Jacke]

7 hours ago, Yoru-hime said:

There are lots of problems with the traditional protective T9s. Most of them come down to the problem that the game is simply built wrong for them.

 

Up-and-down defensive powers aren't as beneficial as they look on paper because the game rarely varies the level of damage incoming in such a way as to make them work. If you NEED them, you're likely to still going to need them XX seconds from now, so you're dead anyway. If you don't need them, using them just adds to your risk of death with the crash. With a few exceptions, enemies don't really have enrage cycles or tankbusters and those can generally be managed without something that actively tries to kill you.

This is spot on.  Similar considerations lead me to skip other powers with similar gap issues.  Like Siphon Speed for a Kinetics toon: miss (minimum 5% chance) and you'll be slow for a significant amount of time.  So build to be fast without Siphon Speed and pick another power.

 

Crashing T9's just leave the toon useless in a game that's often goes in long bursts of gotta arrest them all!  Unstoppable's crash isn't just a problem for Invulnerability toons; it also contributes to cutting short a large number of Cimeroran EBs.

 

And like the rez powers, the self-rez powers (both of which I like and almost always take) need to have a use when the toons are still upright.

[MTeague]

I would be fine with the all Self-Rez's have an alternate "If you activate while still alive....." effect. 

I do think they should still retain their "If you activate while dead...." as at LEAST a fallback option.

 

I know there is a desire out there for an auto-firing Cheat Death.

I do think that would be an interesting mechanic, but I'm reluctant to embrace the idea outright as an across the board change for all existing sets. 

[Machariel]

8 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

Snipped for brevity. 
 

I think the same way about rune of protection for defense sets. It offers a decent boost to survivability with 50% uptime. It is better than most t9 armors without the drawbacks. 

Well... none of the other T9s have power prerequisites.  But the point is well taken.

 

12 hours ago, Yoru-hime said:

 If you NEED them, you're likely to still going to need them XX seconds from now, so you're dead anyway. If you don't need them, using them just adds to your risk of death with the crash.

I would dispute this - indeed if after you use the power you're still fighting the same enemies as you were when you started, then yeah.  But presumably you were defeating enemies or beat the AV or whatever during that time, so once the power wears off you should be in a safer situation than you were when you started?

[Machariel]

oops double post

Edited August 21, 2020 by Machariel
double post mb

[Heraclea]

I find it hard to generalize about t9s.  They are all over the place for me.  There are some, like Bio's Parasitic Aura and Regen's Moment of Glory, that I consider bread and butter powers that I use frequently.  The fact that they're t9 powers doesn't really figure into that.  Regen's t9 is a go to if you have to take a tough alpha.  Bio's is mostly a buff and debuff you can use. 

 

The ones that have mild crashes, like in Willpower and Shields, also have rather long or unbuffable recharges and get reserved for that special hell for powers that have extremely long recharges.  That is, they're 'saved for emergencies' or 'saved for the right occasion' that, when that time comes come, you are so used to ignoring them that you have forgotten what the icon looks like or where you put it.  So they don't get used then, either.  

 

Then there are the suicide buttons.  These get skipped.  Invulnerability's Unstoppable is the prototype.  Apparently the one in Energy Aura is similar.  I just got my Energy brute to 38 and happily passed it by.  Then I started second guessing myself, since Energy Aura seems quite bad out of the box, a weaker version of Invulnerability without the scaling mechanism where more mobs make the armor stronger.   I also skipped Energy Cloak, and maybe I need it, but a stealth power on a set with a taunt aura in its mez protection seems full of fail as well.  The self-rez buttons ae also usually ignored; why spend a power pick on something you could have in an inspiration?  Or a P2W boughten power? 

[Blackfeather]

7 hours ago, MTeague said:

See, I never understood why the crash was removed from Blast T9's in the first place.  

Money or no money.  I didn't consider the crash a bad thing.

 

** is dragged kicking and screaming off to the side by swarms of angry Blasters, Defenders, and Corruptors and clubbed like a baby seal **

 

No, really, 

 

** is clubbed some more **

 

I kinda liked Full Auto being weaker-but-crashless as a tradeoff, and I remember the game being a lot more tactical when you couldn't melt everything in one button every other spawn.  Now, I have ZERO expectations that that will EVER be reverted. But regardless of whether that happened on HC or in the last year or so of LIVE when I was off playing other games, I just feel like it should be pointed out that "If blasters have crashless T9's, than so should everyone else" can be balanced out in more than one direction. 

How bad was the crash like on ranged T9 powers anyhow, out of curiosity? I wouldn't mind it being a thing myself, especially with the sustains that Blasters get, say.

[Gulbasaur]

1 hour ago, Blackfeather said:

How bad was the crash like on ranged T9 powers anyhow, out of curiosity? I wouldn't mind it being a thing myself, especially with the sustains that Blasters get, say.

It would wipe all your endurance. Nothing a few inspirations couldn't fix.

[Parabola]

2 hours ago, Heraclea said:

I just got my Energy brute to 38 and happily passed it by.  Then I started second guessing myself, since Energy Aura seems quite bad out of the box, a weaker version of Invulnerability without the scaling mechanism where more mobs make the armor stronger.   I also skipped Energy Cloak, and maybe I need it, but a stealth power on a set with a taunt aura in its mez protection seems full of fail as well.  The self-rez buttons ae also usually ignored; why spend a power pick on something you could have in an inspiration?  Or a P2W boughten power? 

I much prefer EA to Inv. EA is easy to softcap to the common types and a little work can get you in icap territory with the use of the absorb power. It also has a decent heal, endurance management, some resists and the utility of stealth. The stealth suppresses when you engage so it makes no practical difference to aggro management that I have seen. DA tanks seem to do perfectly well with a similar power. I have never taken the t9 though!

 

As far as I'm aware none of the bought self revive powers have the combat utility of the t9 revives. The stun on the dark one for example is not messing around, mag 30 iirc. With those powers available I react to imminent death by running towards the enemy rather than away. They aren't the best powers in the world but they have great flavour and provide something extra to the set. If death could just suppress toggles rather than shut them off they would really benefit though.

[Zepp]

Again, I understand the love for Moment of Glory, but I think even it needs a little love. Most armor T9s have an duration that is 18% of their recharge. Moment of Glory has an duration that is 6.25% its recharge. Yes, it does what other T9s should do, covers the holes. Yes, its recharge time makes it available far more often. But it is still up 1/3rd of the norm.

That is why I think the norm should be 240s recharge with 45s duration.

[archgemini24]

3 hours ago, Zepp said:

Again, I understand the love for Moment of Glory, but I think even it needs a little love. Most armor T9s have an duration that is 18% of their recharge. Moment of Glory has an duration that is 6.25% its recharge. Yes, it does what other T9s should do, covers the holes. Yes, its recharge time makes it available far more often. But it is still up 1/3rd of the norm.

That is why I think the norm should be 240s recharge with 45s duration.

45 seconds would be amazing, even at only half its current strength. That said, I would probably use it the way I do now, just with a little more buffer: juggling it with Shadow Meld and Barrier.

 

I am probably too attached to my PB right now, but I feel like the reworking of the high-mitigation T9s could take inspiration from the Khelds: Light Form's magnitude of primary effects, uptime-ratio, and crash make it a better version of Unstoppable, imo. Eclipse does not have a crash, but has to be leveraged for maximum effect and does come with some initial risk (you have to jump into the fight without the extra resistance, first).

 

The T9s with fixed recharge seem a bit weak for their effects and uptime, but the sets those are in don't need a whole lot on the mitigation front. Unless I have nothing to take at 49, these are usually skips.

 

The self-rezzes are a fun concept, but just not one that appeals to me unless they can be modified to do something if used before the player is defeated. Born in Battle is enough.

[chi1701]

2 hours ago, archgemini24 said:

45 seconds would be amazing, even at only half its current strength. That said, I would probably use it the way I do now, just with a little more buffer: juggling it with Shadow Meld and Barrier.

 

I am probably too attached to my PB right now, but I feel like the reworking of the high-mitigation T9s could take inspiration from the Khelds: Light Form's magnitude of primary effects, uptime-ratio, and crash make it a better version of Unstoppable, imo. Eclipse does not have a crash, but has to be leveraged for maximum effect and does come with some initial risk (you have to jump into the fight without the extra resistance, first).

 

The T9s with fixed recharge seem a bit weak for their effects and uptime, but the sets those are in don't need a whole lot on the mitigation front. Unless I have nothing to take at 49, these are usually skips.

 

The self-rezzes are a fun concept, but just not one that appeals to me unless they can be modified to do something if used before the player is defeated. Born in Battle is enough.

Peacebringers arent the same, lightform can make dwarf form redundant since it is very easy to keep it permanently turned on with benefits of being able to take defence abilties. Plus, any kind of permanent high defence/resistant buff would make other power sets with self rez less desirable.

[DoctorDitko]

On 8/20/2020 at 7:11 AM, Murcielago said:

should literally kill the character AND the player. 

I was always entertained by the combat results tables in (old) games where the result could be "Player Dies."

 

And kids these days think they play hard-core!