An old thought... probably been suggested many times...

[graeberguinn]

I have wondered this exact same thing myself. If you take a look on COH Thunderspy server they allow buff sets (ie FF, Thermal, Cold, Sonic) which have buff shields to apply the main % buff to other players. And it applies half the % amount upon the caster. So you can actually use them and not IMO, waste power picks. Its a great Idea to me. I dont see that it would OP these characters at all. I actually find it a great mechanic and great for RP purposes. IMO for those sets it allows for another very unique mechanic and playstyle. Why cant a FF bubbler put bubbles on themselves as OP stated other than PFF where you cant attack with it on? 

 

Personally I have not played many of these sets for this exact reason. So this is my 2 cents of input to ask the GMs to PLEASE look into this change. 

[WumpusRat]

This comes up every now and then, and every time people point out that allowing defensive sets to self-buff would make them brokenly OP.

 

A forcefield defender could literally soft-cap their positional defenses at level TWELVE. Especially now that there are low-level SOs available.

Cold would take a tiny bit more work, but they could still soft-cap at around level 15-18.

A sonic defender would be running around with nearly soft-capped resists at level 13.

 

And if you start letting them use their other buffs on themselves? Fortitude, thaw, clarity, etc? Mag 10-12 protections that don't require a toggle and have no cooldown to reapply. Kinetics who can self-speed boost. A sonic that can pop disruption field on themselves and have a permanent -30% resist to anything near them. That's not broken or anything, right? 

 

Not only that, but if you allow defenders (and corruptors) to self-buff like that, what exactly is the purpose of the sentinel AT? You may as well just trash-bin sentinels the moment you allow defenders and corruptors to self-buff, because they'll surpass them in almost every way.

 

The only way it would remotely be "balanced" is if the self-buffs were only a fraction of the power of the full buff (like maybe 25%) and the moment you self-buff, it imposes a lengthy cooldown, so if you get taken down, you might have to wait for cooldowns in order to self-buff again. 

 

But really, letting defenders self-buff would break the AT. 

 

[Ultimo]

2 hours ago, WumpusRat said:

This comes up every now and then, and every time people point out that allowing defensive sets to self-buff would make them brokenly OP.

 

A forcefield defender could literally soft-cap their positional defenses at level TWELVE. Especially now that there are low-level SOs available.

Cold would take a tiny bit more work, but they could still soft-cap at around level 15-18.

A sonic defender would be running around with nearly soft-capped resists at level 13.

 

And if you start letting them use their other buffs on themselves? Fortitude, thaw, clarity, etc? Mag 10-12 protections that don't require a toggle and have no cooldown to reapply. Kinetics who can self-speed boost. A sonic that can pop disruption field on themselves and have a permanent -30% resist to anything near them. That's not broken or anything, right? 

 

Not only that, but if you allow defenders (and corruptors) to self-buff like that, what exactly is the purpose of the sentinel AT? You may as well just trash-bin sentinels the moment you allow defenders and corruptors to self-buff, because they'll surpass them in almost every way.

 

The only way it would remotely be "balanced" is if the self-buffs were only a fraction of the power of the full buff (like maybe 25%) and the moment you self-buff, it imposes a lengthy cooldown, so if you get taken down, you might have to wait for cooldowns in order to self-buff again. 

 

But really, letting defenders self-buff would break the AT. 

 

Again, if they can do that for other players, why is it OP for them to do it for themselves? 

[Force Redux]

Straw man argument. I don't think anyone here has argued for blanket self buffing. 

 

Reasonable suggestions have revolved around only allowing some buffs at a reduced amount. 

 

Let's leave the hyperbole at the door, it brings nothing to the discussion.

[Doomguide2005]

8 hours ago, Ultimo said:

Again, if they can do that for other players, why is it OP for them to do it for themselves? 

No idea why but I can guess 🤔, especially if done on a power by power basis.  It may be as simple as a reward and encouragement for teaming.  It does involve more effort to put together a team than run solo and it is an MMO.  It also takes a tiny bit (sometimes more than a tiny bit)  more coordination and effort to make said team reap the full benefits than doing so solo would.  

 

And this was even more true in the times before IO sets than since.  And overpowered is probably somewhat hyperbolic because as I said earlier in the thread just means things get "overpowered" 1 team member earlier.

[WumpusRat]

17 hours ago, Ultimo said:

Again, if they can do that for other players, why is it OP for them to do it for themselves? 

Other people in the thread have already pointed out why it would be OP. It seems like you just don't want to listen to them, though.

 

But here's the question I always ask when this comes up, and to date have never gotten an answer (and I note you refused to answer it as well): "If defenders can self-buff, what is the purpose of the sentinel AT?"

Edited December 14, 2020 by WumpusRat

[Shocktacular]

On 12/1/2020 at 8:02 AM, Coyote said:

it's only workable if the buffs used on self would be at 20-25% strength, at best.

I would be okay with this.

[Coyote]

21 hours ago, Ultimo said:

Again, if they can do that for other players, why is it OP for them to do it for themselves? 

 

The simple answer is that it's okay in CoH to make a tankmage team. In fact, that's kind of the design of team and ally buffs, to make teams OP. I'm not highly in support of it, but given that it was designed into the game from the start, it's a very established game aspect.

 

However, allowing self-buffing would make it easy to make tankmage characters. Not that you can't right now with a lot of investment and knowledge, but it takes a lot less to just apply the team buffs to oneself and end up with Defense, Status Protection, To Hit, Damage, Recharge, and Regeneration bonuses from one powerset. Others are not as ally-centric, but many would still benefit to a degree where the users would become unbalanced compared to other ATs and non-allly-oriented powersets, and IMO imbalance is bad for the game.

 

The only real argument FOR doing it, involves around the concept of "buffing to a much lower degree"... which, IMO, can certainly work. I mean, if you lowered all of the buffs to 10% of their usual value, it's hard to say that this would be OP for any power. So any workable suggestions will revolve around the idea of "how much does each power get nerfed when used on the user", and try to find a playable medium that doesn't end up with too high buffing but also doesn't make them worthless.

 

As a suggestion, anyone who wants to suggest buffing values, should calculate what damage a particular Blast attack will do with 100% damage slotting on a Blaster, versus a Defender who:

1: is Pain Domination, with perma-Painbringer (+Dam) and the -Resist from World of Pain

2: is Thermal, with perma-Forge (+Dam) and the -Resist from Melt Armor

3: is Time, with Temporal Selection (+Dam) and the -Resist from Slowed Response

 

Those aren't the only potential issues, but they're the most directly obvious since comparing the buffed Defender's damage to a Blaster's damage is a very clear line that these suggestions need to NOT approach. You could write a formula and determine, if we want the buffed Defender to get to within 10% of a Blaster's damage, how high can we allow these powers to go in buffing value. Remember, too, that we're only looking at the damage of a single power.. Time, for example, would also buff +Recharge so that the harder attacks activate faster.

[Doomguide2005]

12 hours ago, Coyote said:

 

The simple answer is that it's okay in CoH to make a tankmage team. In fact, that's kind of the design of team and ally buffs, to make teams OP. I'm not highly in support of it, but given that it was designed into the game from the start, it's a very established game aspect.

 

However, allowing self-buffing would make it easy to make tankmage characters. Not that you can't right now with a lot of investment and knowledge, but it takes a lot less to just apply the team buffs to oneself and end up with Defense, Status Protection, To Hit, Damage, Recharge, and Regeneration bonuses from one powerset. Others are not as ally-centric, but many would still benefit to a degree where the users would become unbalanced compared to other ATs and non-allly-oriented powersets, and IMO imbalance is bad for the game.

 

The only real argument FOR doing it, involves around the concept of "buffing to a much lower degree"... which, IMO, can certainly work. I mean, if you lowered all of the buffs to 10% of their usual value, it's hard to say that this would be OP for any power. So any workable suggestions will revolve around the idea of "how much does each power get nerfed when used on the user", and try to find a playable medium that doesn't end up with too high buffing but also doesn't make them worthless.

 

As a suggestion, anyone who wants to suggest buffing values, should calculate what damage a particular Blast attack will do with 100% damage slotting on a Blaster, versus a Defender who:

1: is Pain Domination, with perma-Painbringer (+Dam) and the -Resist from World of Pain

2: is Thermal, with perma-Forge (+Dam) and the -Resist from Melt Armor

3: is Time, with Temporal Selection (+Dam) and the -Resist from Slowed Response

 

Those aren't the only potential issues, but they're the most directly obvious since comparing the buffed Defender's damage to a Blaster's damage is a very clear line that these suggestions need to NOT approach. You could write a formula and determine, if we want the buffed Defender to get to within 10% of a Blaster's damage, how high can we allow these powers to go in buffing value. Remember, too, that we're only looking at the damage of a single power.. Time, for example, would also buff +Recharge so that the harder attacks activate faster.

Or Adrenaline Boost (+100% recharge) and Fortitude (+31% damage).  Not to mention the other aspects both those powers boost.

[VV]

On 12/13/2020 at 1:10 PM, Force Redux said:

Straw man argument. I don't think anyone here has argued for blanket self buffing. 

That is literally exactly what the OP asked for. They did allow a small caveat for possibly reducing the effect on the caster, but it was more like an afterthought than a real suggestion.

 

On 12/13/2020 at 11:38 AM, Ultimo said:

Again, if they can do that for other players, why is it OP for them to do it for themselves? 

Anyone who asks a question like this clearly has not been on a team of 8 supports. Try that and suddenly you will see how OP buffs are. Even a team with just 4-5 supports gets pretty insane pretty quickly. Now, imagine if all those supports had yet another layer of buffs on them. As I mentioned before, Buffs are already overpowered. Making them more overpowered is not helpful.

 

The problem is not with the way buffs work, the problem is with the way you are trying to implement the AT. Different ATs have different strengths and weaknesses. Defenders are designed to mainly support teams, and they are really good at it. They sacrifice other areas, like personal durability, in exchange for the ability to buff the team. You would not play a Tank and complain that its attacks do not have enough range, would you?

Edited December 15, 2020 by VV

[VV]

On 11/10/2020 at 9:57 PM, Ultimo said:

Now, you might suggest that would make Defenders (etc.) OP, but I don't agree.  I find them to be... honestly rather weak. 

Ah, I see the issue. If you think Defenders are rather weak, it is because you are playing them wrong, not because they are, in fact, weak. Defenders are a quite powerful AT. While buffing the buffs might bring them up to par with your playstyle, for many others, most others likely, it would make them far overpowered compared to the other ATs.

[Force Redux]

23 hours ago, VV said:

Ah, I see the issue. If you think Defenders are rather weak, it is because you are playing them wrong, not because they are, in fact, weak. Defenders are a quite powerful AT. While buffing the buffs might bring them up to par with your playstyle, for many others, most others likely, it would make them far overpowered compared to the other ATs.

So I'll opine that some sets would only need one or two of their powers to also affect the user, and that's it.

 

It would be entirely balanced to help those sets stay abreast of changes over time with other sets that clearly are outperforming them in some capacity.

 

Clearly allowing every buff power to be self-affecting is entirely not balanced, but also not needed. As follows, here are my suggestions:

 

The sets that probably are the biggest candidates for a little self-buffing are the "shield' sets, such as:

• Force Field
• Sonic Resonation
• Thermal Radiation
• Cold Manipulation

 

All of these would benefit from a reduced-benefit 'splash' from their two shields. Perhaps anywhere from 33% to 50% value. And that's it. They don't need Forge or other buffs to be self-affecting, just give them some benefit from their shields and I think that would be balanced. 

 

Some other sets that could also provide some minor benefit to the user are:

1. Kinetics - allow them to receive a partial benefit from their Increase Density. 
2. Empathy - allow them to receive a partial benefit from Fortitude.
3. Pain Domination - allow them to receive a partial benefit from Enforced Morale and also make this power an AoE as with Kinetic's  Increase Density.
4. Poison - allow this to get the same treatment as Trick Arrow (i.e. review those debuffs, and allow Alkaloid to be an AoE heal instead of ST or be an untargeted cone ala Nature)

 

The sets from my experience that don't need any self-buffing beyond what they might already do (or not):

 

• Trick Arrow 
• Time Manipulation
• Dark Miasma
• Electrical Affinity
• Nature Affinity
• Radiation Emission
• Storm Summoning
• Traps

 

Just my 2 INF. 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Force Redux

[chi1701]

On 12/15/2020 at 7:12 AM, VV said:

That is literally exactly what the OP asked for. They did allow a small caveat for possibly reducing the effect on the caster, but it was more like an afterthought than a real suggestion.

 

Anyone who asks a question like this clearly has not been on a team of 8 supports. Try that and suddenly you will see how OP buffs are. Even a team with just 4-5 supports gets pretty insane pretty quickly. Now, imagine if all those supports had yet another layer of buffs on them. As I mentioned before, Buffs are already overpowered. Making them more overpowered is not helpful.

 

The problem is not with the way buffs work, the problem is with the way you are trying to implement the AT. Different ATs have different strengths and weaknesses. Defenders are designed to mainly support teams, and they are really good at it. They sacrifice other areas, like personal durability, in exchange for the ability to buff the team. You would not play a Tank and complain that its attacks do not have enough range, would you?

Exactly, already seeing overcapped defence and resistance tanks with maxed out recharge, cant have that going to any other class.