Focused Feedback: Teleportation Pool Revamp

[ScarySai]

I don't see how you're going to fold space "an entire team into a dumpster" when the power respects LoS, does not let you pick where things get ported, is not as clean as wormhole and people are doing anything but standing still with their eyes pressed against your chest.

[GlobalGirl]

Not long ago, I actually analyzed teleport powers as an alternative to hover characters, and as a way to quickly close to melee range for melee characters with pbaoe auras, or as a way to chase runners as a scrapper.

 

I found the original Teleport power had too long of activation times, and the floating state afterwards was actually a big problem. For blasters and ranged characters, I couldn't move quick enough to reposition when enemies got close, and for melee characters, they couldn't move well to chase runners or had a DPS loss. And the float state messed with melee too, as I couldn't reposition well if I didn't target things perfectly.

 

Jaunt was a great solution, but having to keep the speed travel power running meant endurance was a huge issue, and with the forced cooldown that couldn't be changed, it didn't activate frequently enough for my more bizarre concepts, like an energy blaster who teleported often to direct knockbacks, or a /storm controller using hurricane with a similar goal. 

 

I shelved the idea until now, which has prompted a lot of analysis and play of these new powers.

---

 

Combat Teleport and Fold Space are very interesting, and I think they should be recognized simply for the new playstyles they open up. 

 

I tested these powers in AE, running what started as farming maps, but changing the difficulty and also the actual map that was used, so I could gauge the performance in different builds and amounts of vertical and horizontal space. For example, using these powers in Caves or even Office environments is very different from the asteroid map or an outside atlas park style map. 

 

Combat Teleport 

 

This power is exactly what I wanted in terms of function. It has a totally usable range, fast animation, and doesn't lock you into place or have any negatives effects. This means I was able to use it regardless of whether it was to enter the fray or run from it, and when I needed to chain it multiple times in a row, there was no problem. This was very helpful as a scrapper trying to chase mobs which ran, or when I tried to use more knockback powers with KB enhancers. 

 

The /powexec_location changes helped too, and it seems quite consistent at helping me move around.

 

Please, don't change the cooldown of the ability, as that is one of the primary reasons Jaunt felt so restrictive to me using this kind of playstyle. 

 

I'm really excited to use this on live as a totally viable alternative to combat jumping, hover, etc. as in-combat movement options, especially with the location binds, which let you do things like suddenly teleport upwards to escape or position your knockbacks to effectively be knockdowns for a moment. 

 

Fold Space

 

This power is in a great place I think.

 

I found many builds benefited from it as an occasional grouping tool. For example, it's pretty common as a /WP Brute to be down to a boss and desperately trying to keep a minion or LT alive to boost your recovery aura, but it has always been a challenge to keep them in the radius at the same time. Or another case is the various PBAOE toggle auras like the one found in Nature, which while great, have always been difficult to get enemies pressed up close enough in the desired radius. 

 

So I found Fold Space was a really nice QoL boost for these situations, where I didn't mind it's recharge time, but it's quick-enough animation and effects meant that it was easy to use without feeling like I was wasting time. 

 

BUT, the other use was really embracing the power as a melee character, to use instead of normally running head first into mobs.

 

With enough recharge, this power is up frequently enough to be used on every group of mobs to initiate combat. 

 

I found with a Dark Armor brute, that this was an excellent strategy. It made my various control toggles immediately effect the majority of mobs,

and tended to aggro the entire group at once, boosting my fury generation. 

 

This is different from normal, where you aggro the front of the pack first, and during the run you have to eat damage before you are in range of auras, which still have trouble reaching the back of the pack unless you take the time to position yourself to the exact middle.

 

In general, this also made melee feel less range-bound. 

 

This was a big improvement for the scrapper I played, where enemies like to run away, and you often spend considerable time watching yourself run using follow. 

 

Instead, I could Fold Space to initiate, so immediately my range was unimportant, and then as enemies started to run, I could usually use Fold Space again to bring them back. Since it's an AOE focused on the caster, it didn't matter that they ran in different directions. 

 

It felt way nicer than running one direction to kill a mob, only to have to run twice as far the other way to kill another.

 

I do think if anything was changed, the recharge being reduced a bit would allow this to work without needing so much global recharge, but it's not entirely necessary.

On the other hand, I know it doesn't work on +4 bosses and higher, but I think that's an okay compromise, and not something that was really all that annoying. 

 

I have seen some people concerned about farmers and this power, but I think it has too many benefits to the average player to worry about, and making farming more

fun isn't really a problem, in my opinion. It may also reduce dual boxing, which could ease impact on servers as well.

 

Overall, TLDR

 

Fold Space and Combat Teleport offer two very fun and unique ways to play the game. They both can act as supplemental tools to a more common playstyle, or they can be pushed to open up very new playstyles. 

 

I want to stress that what makes both of these powers good is the actual effect they have, and not any stats associated with them. 

 

I would hate to see Combat Teleport changed because of it's ToHit buff for example. The ToHit buff isn't what makes the power unique and fun, it's the movement. So restricting the movement because of the stats is the wrong way to go for "fun" and "merit". 

 

Focus on keeping the fun found in using the moves, and change the stats as necessary to allow the fun to continue to exist.

 

For instance, Combat Teleport with no buffs whatsoever would still be an instant pick for me, because it is so much fun. And if fold space made the enemies invulnerable for a moment, or had a smaller radius or target cap, it would still be worth using and fun to use.

 

But, making either recharge even longer, or adding longer animation cast times, those would directly how fun the moves are to use, and I'd be very much against it. 

 

Remember, a lot of players seen Combat Jumping as simply an IO slot. That's it's value. 

 

I don't want either of these powers to be chose just for their slots or buffs. That's just boring.

Edited October 25, 2020 by GlobalGirl
spacing

[ScarySai]

Having an actually useful buff tied to CT would be nice, though. The actual usage of the power is great, but the tohit being replaced with something like defense would be very easy and likely have zero impact on how the power is balanced, preserving the fun playstyle.

 

And once again, starless step while shifted please, papa powerhouse.

Edited October 25, 2020 by ScarySai

[Keen]

8 hours ago, Xanatos said:

fold space>trip mine

😮 😮 😮 

[ScarySai]

I will say, while the untouchable status in teleport is nice for my shade (if it worked.), I can't say I like how seemingly overlooked the travel power itself was.

 

I'd rather it be quicker animating, or have some sort of way to make indoor navigation less of a pain.

Edited October 25, 2020 by ScarySai

[dtj714]

Ok, third (and final) take -

 

The New Teleportation Pool:

 

Teleport Target - As on beta. Functionally replaces Shadow Recall.

 

Combat Teleport - As on beta.  Functionally replaces Dwarf Step (both versions) and Starless Step.

 

Teleport - As on beta. Functionally replaces Shadow Step.

 

Group Teleport (renamed to distinguish from the P2W power) - An in-zone, group-wide door port on a moderate (5 minute?) cooldown.

 

Long Range Teleport - Give it all new destinations on the current accolade power to start. Plus, make it so that ANY zone (not otherwise prohibited) can be added by simply visiting the zone, or getting an unlock badge within the zone (as opposed to getting all exploration badges).  Voila, LRTP is suddenly good again!

 

Other considerations/changes:

 

Accolade LRTP - Change this to a P2W power (same as Mission Teleport, Base Teleport, Team Teleport ) called Zone Teleport.  Give it all the zones of the current accolade power without requiring any unlocks, and a long recharge (same as Mission Teleport).  Now people can have a slimmed-down, less frequently usable version of LRTP without having to do a crap-ton of unlocks on every toon.  Everybody wins.

 

Fold Space - Look, I get how a lot of people like this power.  But it has potential problems, and is NOT an appropriate substitution for the T5 power in the Teleportation pool.  If I take Teleportation, then I expect to have an uber-teleport as the capstone, not some mob herding tool.  Frankly, from a functional standpoint, it's a better fit for the Presence pool, where it should replace Unrelenting (a self buff/rez that is not in line with the general nature and rest of the powers of that pool).

[Glacier Peak]

9 hours ago, Vanden said:

Isn’t everyone gonna have the TP resist IO though?

Great question, and I'll do my best to answer this, but I believe both of the -TP resistance procs are not sure thing always prevents TP. They act like procs, some times firing and preventing tp, sometimes not. So it's not a guarantee protection, even though it's described as resistance. @macskullmight know this whether this is accurate though. 

[macskull]

11 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Great question, and I'll do my best to answer this, but I believe both of the -TP resistance procs are not sure thing always prevents TP. They act like procs, some times firing and preventing tp, sometimes not. So it's not a guarantee protection, even though it's described as resistance. @macskullmight know this whether this is accurate though. 

Yeah the TP resist IOs are a 20% chance every 10s for teleport resistance. If you have both (most PvP builds do not) that is 40% every 10s which isn't bad but it's not reliable. There are melee sets that get in-set teleport protection (Elec and Energy Aura are the two main ones I think), Increase Density provides teleport protection, and resistance inspirations also provide teleport protection. In the case of some teleport powers like Wormhole, the actual teleport effect is delayed to the point where a player paying attention their buff bar will see the icon show up with enough time to pop an orange inspiration before the teleport effect actually occurs. I don't think Fold Space and TP Foe have the same delay but if you know someone is using a teleport power you can be proactive. Sure, they might get you the first time, but it's usually a one-trick pony.

[Replacement]

I would like the record to show that Teleport IO sets are awful, and these changes highlight that.  

 

Obviously, this is not relevant to i27 -- but please consider improving this for a future page!  Since they're all 3-piece sets, simply adding more pieces to existing sets would also work (example: adding some +acc to the sets and new set bonuses).

[ScarySai]

I'd be for a new round of travel sets, either some universal travel sets, or even more focused sets.

 

But yes, that isn't happening in this patch, so something to think about another time.

[Xanatos]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

Replied to this in another location cough, but I'd rather see the existing enemy TP powers lose the intangible/untouchable/OAS. It was a stupid change when it was added in I13 and it's still stupid now. Probably added by a dev who was butthurt they kept getting TPd into things despite the options available to keep yourself or teammates from getting TPd.

 

While this would also make the TP powers balanced in and of themselves, I'm not so sure from a wider game perspective. This was like the one PVP change I actually agreed with.

 

Teleport Target into: mastermind pets, trip mines, -jump powers in dumpsters, into guard towers with placate and assassin strikes, hurricane in dumpsters...all hilarious for the attacker, but not fun to play against. On the one hand the change your suggesting would give a lot of utility to powers which are currently useless in PVP. (A good thing!) But on the other hand...it's instantly gibbing/trapping people. Which is not fun.

 

But, as you said, experienced players will know how to counter it, so most players won't bother with it as a strategy, which in turn means most players won't bother with the counters to it, so a few people WILL bother with it, and those people in turn will just get farmed, so...maybe the whole thing does balance itself out? TP Foe would become another Power Bolt - everyone knows how to counter it, most don't with their builds, people who try it get farmed so much it becomes a poor strategy.

 

Plus the sheer lulz of the zone pvpers who have been relying on /enterbasefrompassword for evasion, now finding themselves trapped in a dumpster they don't know how to get out of though...so good...imagine the broadcast rage...*chefkiss*

 

I'm split. Overall I'm probably against your suggestion, as it would push people even further into needing Speed of Sound in smaller matches in the same way they do in zones/8v8s. But I definitely see an argument for what you're saying.

 

 

@everyone not mac - please stop arguing with me about PVP lol.

[VerseGuy]

I hope this is on-topic enough for this thread, but will Jaunt have its power icon updated to be like Combat Teleport's (the rising circle thing)? It's even stated in the original post that Combat Teleport is meant to be similar to Jaunt, so having the two powers have completely different icons would be strange. Heck, maybe the same icon could be used for Martial Combat's Burst of Speed, since it also falls under the category of "fast teleports with 3 uses before recharging."

 

I know most people probably don't care about these sorts of details, but I've always appreciated the consistency in CoH's power icons.

[macskull]

3 minutes ago, Xanatos said:

your post

Counterpoint: TP Foe is currently a next-to-useless power that really only gets used to drone people in RV. Wormhole has its uses, mostly because you can pick exactly where you want the target to end up and it causes a 4-second stun immediately afterward. Fold Space has limitations that will make it not particularly useful in a PvP environment. At the very least, removing the OAS/intang period would make Masterminds something you would need to be actually concerned about again.

 

Even with the OAS/intang period gone, there are very few use cases for enemy TP powers in arena matches and if I know I'm going to be fighting someone who is going to use a TP power I'll just bring along some oranges and everything will be fine. Yeah, you can do some cheese with TP powers in zone, but even pre-I13 when the OAS/intang period didn't exist it was the kind of thing that would happen to you once and then you'd figure it out and the other person's strategy would be done and gone.

[Rodion]

I would like to echo the suggestion that Teleport's hover behavior be changed: the few seconds of hovering you get is annoying because it is so slow, but it's not long enough to scope out the area if you need to decide where to Teleport next.

My preferred implementation would be as follows: After you teleport you hover for at least 10 seconds, if not longer. If you do anything except Teleport again (move, attack, etc), the hover ends immediately. 

 

I always take Mystic Flight these days because you get the free teleport and you don't fall out of the sky when you use it. If the hover is persistent I would be more likely to take Teleport. Yeah, I can always buy a jetpack so I don't fall down, but that doesn't always work thematically.

 

I really like Combat Teleport, especially for characters (including squishies) that have PBAoEs. You could rationalize that it could grant the same level of Defense that Combat Jumping does on the basis that it's harder to hit someone who can pop in and out in an instant. The increased to-hit is also reasonable, akin to the D&D "surprise" bonus. 

 

But I'd still take Combat Teleport on my melee characters without the defense bonus (I usually take Combat Jumping to softcap defense). I find the Savage Melee and Martial Combat sets fun because of the teleport, and Combat Teleport would be nice on characters with other powersets. Since not all mobs run at the same rate, Taunting them spreads them out in a long line, and it takes a while to get them to reform around you in a nice bunch for PBAoEs.

 

The very short recharge after three Combat Teleports isn't a problem for me. Martial Combat's recharge is much longer, and I rarely run into it. When I do, I just hoof it. No big deal.

 

Finally, the accolade for long range teleport is great. It's fine that it takes some effort to open each zone. It takes 5 or 10 minutes, and you get 5 reward merits.  The only downside is that people with 30 or 40 characters have to repeat the process on every character. Maybe after we've opened a zone on 10 characters we could get it opened for free on the rest of our alts?

 

All in all, with the myriad teleport options available, I won't miss /enterbasefrompasscode.

[DoctorDitko]

A little bit more testing. I am officially in love with Combat Teleport, and am planning to propose as soon as this goes Live.

You're all invited to the wedding.

 

/bind lshift+button1 "powexecname Combat Teleport"

/bind lctrl+button1 "powexecname Teleport"

/bind lshift+lctrl+button1 "powexecname Team Teleport"

 

Makes for a teleporting fool!

 

Oh, (Peter Falk voice) one more thing: Any chance Team Teleport might get a bit of a range increase? I appreciate the slightly lowered END cost, but that wasn't the biggest problem with the power. It could also use a longer, easily-exitable Hover state just like Teleport could.

Edited October 25, 2020 by DoctorDitko

[Luminara]

Does CT move your character fully into melee range, or is it like /follow, where it offers you a cup of coffee at the diner first date and suggests that maybe you should wait until you see where things are going before entering melee range?  If you queue an attack, does it trigger as soon as CT moves you to the target?

 

I'd test it myself, but, Verizon.

[DoctorDitko]

F'ing Nemesis has nothing on Verizon!

 

I tried queuing up a power then Combat Teleporting next to them, and I got stuck in a Teleport animation when I arrived.

May be my fault, a bug, or WAD as a kind of Travel Suppression.

 

Out of testing time tonight, but I'll keep checking.

 

[Zepp]

On 10/25/2020 at 4:22 AM, InvaderStych said:

 

Combat Teleport is my new favorite toy.  So good.

 

I spent some time spamming it both using a $target macro and clicking locations and noticed a couple of things:

 

1. +To-hit will stack (3x) during the "3-clicks before cooldown" window.  All of them wear off before the unenhanced CD expires.  There is potential for carrying a decent +to-hit bonus, and I like it.

 

2. It seems to carry a sort of "rolling counter" for the cooldown.  So 1, 2, 3, <CD>, 1, <CD>, 1, 2, 3, <CD>, 1, 2, <CD> patterns seemed to be happening.  This may have been a side-effect of a poor connection, but I would have to try it longer to really tell.

 

3. Gaussian's Proc didn't fire once during either round of testing.  This might be expected behavior given the low recharge time and 1 ppm.  Not enough time spent to say meaningfully.

 

I had a similar experience with Gaussian, but did not spam, so it was just combat testing. Basically, Gaussian is not useful in this power - or it is not working at all in this power (0 cooldown other than the third hop may be causing issues with the formula).

[GruntledDave]

I have spent the afternoon testing the Warshade versions of the TP changes, and I agree with ScariestSai that having these available in shifted form would be amazing, and would make Warshades even ... uh... Warshadier? Warshadish? Anyhow, squidport and combat teledwarf would rule. The changes on my humanform build didn't revolutionize gameplay, but they upped the fun quotient significantly.

 

I also agree with Rodion that the hover needs a rethink. Their proposal of a 10s hover that ends if you do anything other than look around and re-teleport seems legit. It kind of feels like that was the intent all along? IDK, but I hate either falling out of the sky because I was too slow on the next tp or (more usually) teleporting myself somewhere dumb just because I was in a rush. 4s may seem long to some of you but I'm old and I like to think a bit 🙂

 

A def buff would be kind of neat on combat teleport/starless step because that'd make it easier for me to take the power (and use it) and instead of giving up something cool and useful, I could give up an LotG mule. For warshades, the ToHit buff is beside the point, and I imagine it may be for others too. I'll try all this stuff out on my tankers tonight.

 

As a side thought, folding space to get my pulls off the ramp in MSRs will be amazing whenever some dom or troller's immob has frozen them there.

[Replacement]

52 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Does CT move your character fully into melee range, or is it like /follow, where it offers you a cup of coffee at the diner first date and suggests that maybe you should wait until you see where things are going before entering melee range?  If you queue an attack, does it trigger as soon as CT moves you to the target?

 

I'd test it myself, but, Verizon.

It's location targeted, so it's usually going to be subject to powexeclocation rules. Using the "target" parameter should end with you bumping your model up against theirs.

 

As a power, it activating would drop a different power from the queue (such as a readied melee attack). Because of the low activation time (.67s iirc), it's a bit harder than most to queue your next attack goes off, but that's not a point against the power.

[InvaderStych]

49 minutes ago, Zepp said:

I had a similar experience with Gaussian, but did not spam, so it was just combat testing. Basically, Gaussian is not useful in this power - or it is not working at all in this power (0 cooldown other than the third hop may be causing issues with the formula).

 

Honestly, I didn't have high expectations.  ~11% chance to fire at base recharge, assuming that it isn't bugged (and isn't locked out intentionally) isn't really all that great anyway.  I was curious, and it is worth knowing if it is a glitch even though in terms of builds it's not really worth doing.

 

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

Does CT move your character fully into melee range, or is it like /follow, where it offers you a cup of coffee at the diner first date and suggests that maybe you should wait until you see where things are going before entering melee range?  If you queue an attack, does it trigger as soon as CT moves you to the target?

 

I can confirm that if you macro it to $target it works quite nicely for melee.  I have two mouse buttons at my thumb.  One I used for targeted CT and the other for location CT for positioning and testing a themematic-bound movement idea.  I haven't used camera:max with it yet, but now that I type that I might just to see what it does.

 

48 minutes ago, Replacement said:

As a power, it activating would drop a different power from the queue (such as a readied melee attack). Because of the low activation time (.67s iirc), it's a bit harder than most to queue your next attack goes off, but that's not a point against the power.

 

It took me a bit to get used to it, and I had to remember to go to a tailor and switch Mace to No Redraw on the WM/Rad scrapper I was using to test.  After a bit of practice, and with it bound to a mouse button, going CT to either Whirling or Clobber felt pretty good.  Not 100% seamless, but not so much delay as to be flustering.

[ironjoe]

 I played with all of these today and liked all but "Team Teleport". It doesn't feel useful in any context in it's current form. My recommendation is that if making changes, expand it's radius so that it becomes a team level Incandescence. If you want to add more flavor, add in an AOE stun to it and lengthen it's recharge to account for the added utility. Then you have a power worth trying to squeeze in for people looking at this pool.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Replacement said:

Using the "target" parameter should end with you bumping your model up against theirs.

28 minutes ago, InvaderStych said:

I can confirm that if you macro it to $target it works quite nicely for melee.

 

I'm going to turn myself into a guided missile with this thing.  A screaming, flailing guided missile of slashing, punching, stabbing, thwapping happiness.

[ironjoe]

I also agree with others that Combat Teleport was really fun to turn into a poor man's Shield Charge with some combinations. I think thematically having it give defense as opposed to "to hit" works better as often in comics combat teleportation is used to avoid getting hit by things. So I think it should have a defense buff similar to Combat Jumping instead but keep the activation/recharge times the same because that keeps the fun in the power.

[Stan The Man]

When I read the new Combat Teleport power, I thought it would function much like Shield Charge.  And I'm not wrong, but I must have been playing too much Champions or SWTOR as I thought it was more a leap-to-foe attack, done by selecting the target and clicking the power.  I forgot that teleports are targetable powers, not clicks.   Perhaps maybe this is why teleport powers are not popular?

And now I'm wondering, could combat teleport be a click power?  Or would that be impossible to code?

Edited October 25, 2020 by Stan The Man