- End Powers Could use a bump

[laudwic]

Sappers are annoying as they destroy your endurance which causes your toggles to drop, and, without endurance, you cannot use powers.  For that reason, players will prioritize taking them out.

 

On the player side, there are a variety of powers that have a - End element, but they do not produce enough drain to hamper enemies unless you hit with multiple powers AND you heavily slotted the power.  If you are successful, an enemy cannot use its powers against you until it regains end through normal regeneration.  You do knock down powers - looking at you Storm Shamans and Tsoo Sorcerers.  

 

Compare -End to a basic hold power.  With one hit not only is the enemy not moving, but it can't use powers.  Basic holds will one hit hold a minion or Let.  Use the basic hold twice and you hold a boss.  If you are playing a Dominator with Domination up (or better permadom), you did not have to hit the boss twice.  Not much slotting is needed.  Keep hitting the enemy with the hold power and have perma hold.  Some hold powers even have additional effects such as damage.

 

Confuse, an extremely underrated class of powers, also will one shot minions and Lets, not only are they no longer against you, they are helping you (with minimal xp loss as you don't get xp from the damage they do.)  This can be used on bosses allowing generally a two shot to confuse a boss (one with Domination).  If the enemy is alone, confuse is a wonderful improvised hold as you can beat the confused enemy into submission with out it attacking back.

 

When comparing end drain to hold and confuse, - End is anemic and not worth the investment to make usable.  A small bump to the base drain of - End powers is called for because, frankly, taking down the red line defeats enemies, but you should be able to sap their endurance better than what is available now.  Even with a small bump, - End is still not going to be as efficient as dedicated holds or confuse but it would then be viable and worth slotting.  

 

 

[Greycat]

There are a few other issues, though.

 

First, most -end powers tend to mention "end return" to the player as an effect. This... is rarely noticeable (Kinetics aside.)

 

Second, NPCs seem to just not *need* as much END. Sliver of blue back and you're getting walloped. More -recovery tied with it would help.

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

Second, NPCs seem to just not *need* as much END. Sliver of blue back and you're getting walloped. More -recovery tied with it would help.

this is really where I feel it should be addressed.

I don't think the end drain powers need to be buffed per se.

I do think enemies should actually need to have the correct amount of END before they can activate a power, same as the players.

 

now, sure, it may take several rounds of finessing to strike a balance the devs are happy with.  Maybe enemies should have to pay same endurance cost as players, but boosted recovery, if that's something that allows you to maybe delay them from attacking with some end draining, but not necessarily city-of-statues on 50 mobs all at once just because you used one "Short Circuit".  And maybe mobs should get a 50% endurance discount if that helps balance things.  But the whole "Oh, I have one teensy sliver of END, therefore I can fire off my nuke" is .... kinda bullcrap.

[MTeague]

I suppose there's also the issue of impact on any changes to Pets, too.

[aethereal]

I mean, I think one of the big differences between this is just that enemies don't tend to run toggles, where any armor-set character and honestly a lot of non-armor-set characters will run 7+ toggles.  And the difference between running those 7+ toggles and running 0 of them tends to be like an order-of-magnitude to 2 orders-of-magnitude difference in power and mitigation (I mean that literally: incoming damage that would, with all your toggles running, reduce your health by 1-10% will just kill you if you don't have your toggles running).

 

This is a weird asymmetry.  Having your endurance briefly touch zero for a critter is like a fairly short-term soft mez, where you can move but not attack.  Having your endurance briefly touch zero for a player is very likely death.

 

If I were trying to balance this, I might have player toggles suppress when they can't draw endurance instead of toggle off -- that way, if you eat a blue, next second all your toggles unsuppress at once.  I'd also probably convert a few toggles in each armor set to auto powers.  I'd make critters actually pay endurance for their powers, lower their base durability somewhat, and give them all a toggle that got them back to their current durabilty, so they'd have at least a somewhat symmetrical durability loss to what players have.  And I'd probably give them all a 0 end cost, 15 second recharge time 30% endurance heal with a 1.5 second animation time (that they'd only use at 5% end or less), so it isn't the case that you can statue them by draining them once and then keep them on their heels forever.  But that's a lot of changes to make to support sapping.

Edited October 2, 2020 by aethereal
Added final paragraph.

[Lex Talion]

I've been able to prevent ITF Minotaurs and Cyclopses from going Unstoppable with only Elec Melee and Elec Blast as a means of draining/debuffing. The problem is that just a single miss or use of a power that animates longer than 2secs botches it all. I don't expect to drain AVs just as a sideeffect from using elec attacks, but regular enemies should be possible, considering that it's meant to be a defensive effect that elec pays for with lower ST damage. Slotting for EndMod should increase the -Recovery duration, imo.

[krj12]

Just to play devil's advocate, the assumption here is that battles last long enough for endurance drain to have an impact.  They typically don't - at least not in the end game.

Confuse, hold, and the like have a use since they help mitigate the alpha strike from mobs.  Not sure what could be done, unless you want to make it grossly overpowered like Malta Sappers, 

which probably wouldn't be a good thing for game balance.

[Solarverse]

I feel as though we are powerful enough. I feel the enemies need to be harder, that being said, I understand this is not what the majority of the players want (I'm that special case odd ball, lol) so I support this thread.