Sell me on "Leaves you drained of endurance" powers

[Aeroprism]

14 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

Oh shit buttons should have oh shit consequences. Just my opinion but likely shared by some.

 

I agree with this, but 99% of the time, to my experience at least, CoH is an extremely streamlined and even experience, I rarely need a "oshit" button.  I either clear content consistently, or I can't.

 

My uneducated opinion is that T9's such as Elude and such should be turned into interesting, useful tools instead of being a dump-power.

[Snarky]

11 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Which is an example of how a seemingly minor change can have significant side effects. Assault Rifle is one of the most lackluster attack sets, but it had the distinction of being the only Blaster primary with a crashless nuke. All the other sets made you have to consider what you'd do to mitigate all of your toggles dropping when you used your nuke. AR, you hosed down a spawn with Full Auto, Flamethrower the survivors, then moved on to the next spawn. Now it's just another T9, and not a particularly good one, with its narrow cone and target limit.

Yeah i just revived my AR/Dev.  A truly horrid Blaster combo.  But it works for my concept.  But we are atuck with what we have.  A crappy AR nuke and many other things

[Marshal_General]

My problem with situational powers that are only used in "oh shit" moments is that I situationally forget I have them until I am situationally defeated.

[ZemX]

14 hours ago, Techwright said:

But this is 2021, and we're a much more advanced-in-skill player base. 

 

Got nothing to do with skill.   As others have already said, these powers used to mean something at least back when you couldn't obtain effectively 100% uptime versions of the same power effects with IO sets and Incarnate powers.

 

Many don't really have a place in today's game is all.

[Clave Dark 5]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

Yeah i just revived my AR/Dev.  A truly horrid Blaster combo.  But it works for my concept.  But we are atuck with what we have.  A crappy AR nuke and many other things

Yeah, I like it because it fits my character's theme, but it's never a T9 that makes me cackle with glee as mobs of foes drop, or anything.

[srmalloy]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

Yeah i just revived my AR/Dev.  A truly horrid Blaster combo.  But it works for my concept.  But we are atuck with what we have.  A crappy AR nuke and many other things

AR/EM, at least for me, works better; Boost Range gives you a chance to make Jack Emmert's laughable claim "Range is a Blaster's defense" more true (although it seems as if half the mobs have ranged attacks that outrange a Range Boosted snipe, which puts the lie to that claim), but it also gives you more standoff to make the base of your cones wider. And it's amusing to be able to snipe down two minions from "See that dot?" range before the rest of the spawn react -- the first one, they're just "Huh. Fred fell over", and they don't figure out that they're being shot at until you drop the second one.

 

I remember back on Live being involved in an almost complete team wipe because of that; it was a mission full of Vahzilok, and we had a long corridor with two spawns of Abominations at the far end. I volunteered to pull using Snipe, and shot one; It went down. No reaction from the rest. I did it again; second Abomination down. The rest continued to stand around, fat, dumb, and happy. The tank on our team decided he didn't want to wait, and charged in, pulling aggro galore and proving that he didn't have enough Toxic protection... then the rest of them rolled over the rest of the team, and only us two Blasters in the back who bailed when the tank went down got down the elevator without a trip to the hospital.

[Snarky]

19 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

AR/EM, at least for me, works better; Boost Range gives you a chance to make Jack Emmert's laughable claim "Range is a Blaster's defense" more true (although it seems as if half the mobs have ranged attacks that outrange a Range Boosted snipe, which puts the lie to that claim), but it also gives you more standoff to make the base of your cones wider. And it's amusing to be able to snipe down two minions from "See that dot?" range before the rest of the spawn react -- the first one, they're just "Huh. Fred fell over", and they don't figure out that they're being shot at until you drop the second one.

 

I remember back on Live being involved in an almost complete team wipe because of that; it was a mission full of Vahzilok, and we had a long corridor with two spawns of Abominations at the far end. I volunteered to pull using Snipe, and shot one; It went down. No reaction from the rest. I did it again; second Abomination down. The rest continued to stand around, fat, dumb, and happy. The tank on our team decided he didn't want to wait, and charged in, pulling aggro galore and proving that he didn't have enough Toxic protection... then the rest of them rolled over the rest of the team, and only us two Blasters in the back who bailed when the tank went down got down the elevator without a trip to the hospital.

My problem is the character is a homage to The Evil Midnight Bomber what Bombs at Midnight from The Tick.  So ….. I am pretty married to toebombing and devices lol

[Peacemoon]

2 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Which is an example of how a seemingly minor change can have significant side effects. Assault Rifle is one of the most lackluster attack sets, but it had the distinction of being the only Blaster primary with a crashless nuke. All the other sets made you have to consider what you'd do to mitigate all of your toggles dropping when you used your nuke. AR, you hosed down a spawn with Full Auto, Flamethrower the survivors, then moved on to the next spawn. Now it's just another T9, and not a particularly good one, with its narrow cone and target limit.

I was going to mention this. There were some sets designed around ‘crashless nukes’ and these have been left a bit behind I feel.

If Full Auto had a higher target cap then it wouldn’t be so bad.

[Gulbasaur]

3 hours ago, Troo said:

Oh shit buttons should have oh shit consequences. Just my opinion but likely shared by some.

There are a couple of old-game things I genuinely miss. Many were changed late on live, but they took flavour out of the game. 

Nukes having little to no downside is one of them - they used to be your emergency "everything is going wrong" button, now they're an opener. A lot of armoursets have crashes that have been mitigated to some extent. Peacebringers' Light Form is one that still remains and I kind of like that - suddenly losing half your hitpoints and endurance makes the game much more interesting. 

The IO power creep is another thing I'm guilty of both disliking and completely abusing. They were there on live, but the economy is completely different on HC and things are an order of magnitude cheaper. Particularly the recharge issue (sometimes powers becoming always powers) and the defence issue (blasters can now build up defence equal to early game tankers fairly easily). 

 

I also miss having to brick it across Steel Canyon to change lines on the metro. I think that sort of forced downtime was good for the game socially. I feel the same way about WoW's dungeon finder taking out the travel aspect of dungeoneering. 

 

Anyway... I always take powers with a horrible crash. They make the game more exciting. 

[reisma]

13 minutes ago, Gulbasaur said:

Nukes having little to no downside is one of them - they used to be your emergency "everything is going wrong" button, now they're an opener. A lot of armoursets have crashes that have been mitigated to some extent. Peacebringers' Light Form is one that still remains and I kind of like that - suddenly losing half your hitpoints and endurance makes the game much more interesting. 

 

On teams I played on, Nukes always seemed to be openers.  Drop nuke, eat blues, continue on as if nothing had happened.  All removing the crash did was treat nukes the way players were using them: as normal attacks.

 

Back on live, my perma-Light Form PB routinely received healing from the crash during iTrials since the crash (used to?) set your HP to 50% regardless of what it was, and I was always somewhere in the middle of a giant mob of enemies going pew pew with lasers.  I think I got healed by the crash more often than I got hurt by it under conditions where Light Form was actually saving my buttocks.

 

 

[oedipus_tex]

Here's a pretty good one: the Controller/Dominator power Surge of Power. It has recharge of 1000, 120 duration. In addition to providing excellent, enhanceable resistance to all except Psi (including Toxic)  it comes in a set that has Power Sink. So, when your bar crashes, eat a blue, Power Sink immediately back to full. Power Sink has a very generous recharge schedule and should power you through any lingering Recovery issues.

 

Doms and Controllers don't rely on armor toggles quite as much as armored ATs so retoggling anything that drops is usually quick.

 

 

 

For maximum tankiness, you can cycle this with Rune of Protection.

Edited November 22, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[Greycat]

10 hours ago, Take One said:

 

Because the game doesn't start at 50+, and you still have 18/12 more lovely levels to go when you get your T9 at 32/38.

 

Yes, I'm aware. I even make mention of that in my post... *in what you quoted.*

 

[TheZag]

Ah,  the good old 'die 3 minutes from now if you are still in combat' button.  I dont take them unless its to hold some set enhancements.  I even fiddled with a friends build recently and took elude out,  ended with slightly higher S/L resists and all positional defenses around 64%.  

[Troo]

1 hour ago, TheZag said:

Ah,  the good old 'die 3 minutes from now if you are still in combat' button.  I dont take them unless its to hold some set enhancements.  I even fiddled with a friends build recently and took elude out,  ended with slightly higher S/L resists and all positional defenses around 64%.  

 

exactly

 

once a character is of high enough level, and built out (and maybe experienced enough to be comfortable) elude can be optional.

 

at level 40 rocking SOs and some IOs.. maybe not so much.

[Yomo Kimyata]

18 hours ago, Snarky said:

As always….it depends.   Know your playstyle and what you will be using the power to do.  Remember the Space Shuttle was pretty much a glider on reentry.  Stupid stupid stupid but it (usually) worked fine

 

I have a strategy for using Unstoppable. The tier 9 from Invulnerability with a massive crash.  I can survive the crash in heavy mobs with AVs 95%+ of the time.  I do not run this build much….because the toughness is mostly unnecessary and therefore there is no reason to run it.  Except that I like it.  
 

The Crash from Willpower’s is noticeable but honestly nothing to worry over.  A little blip of bad news that quickly resolves itself with no action required.  Of course the power is not spectacular 

 

It will always depend on 1) need 2) strategy 3) build 4) competence in play.  

I have Unstoppable on my namesake, a BS/inv scrapper.  Do I need the resistance?  Of course not.  I’m already capped to several types and I have heals otherwise.  No, I use it when I’m swinging my rebar at an AV for fifteen minutes and I haven’t built enough recovery into my build and I don’t want or can’t to use blue pills for endurance recovery.  
 

I actually *like* using it because it makes me think about the trade off of when it’s going to crash.  And when it starts to flash I run.  Beats the hell out of putting Headsplitter on auto and streaming Mean Girls.

[Cancrusher]

They can be situationally useful, but I feel like they would be more useful if they were modelled more closely on the T9 Willpower version.   Instead of becoming godlike, then being drained of pretty much everything, it gives a strong (but not overwhelming) boost for a long time, then takes a decent chunk of your endurance (but generally not enough to cause immediate cascade failure in a hard fight, if you're keeping your eye on your endurance bar).

 

The hard crash T-9's, I typically avoid.  I just find it more useful to have a lower tier but more generally reliable power.  YMMV, of course.

[GhostDawg]

23 hours ago, Techwright said:

Starting all the way back in the original game, I gave up on high level powers that sound great at first but warn that they leave you totally drained of endurance.  A few went so far as to say endurance recovery would be a problem for a while.  Back then, experimenting with them, I found the penalty to be greater than the benefit.

 

But this is 2021, and we're a much more advanced-in-skill player base.  I find it bizarre that the powers still maintain such a strong penalty, so might I ask that someone show me the merits, and possibly the penalty work-arounds, for these powers?

 

If there are none, let me know that as well, and I'll raise the question of why the penalty hasn't been modified or eliminated then.

Sell you on it? Not even going to try. That being said... I use them. It depends on the powerset and any tools it might have to mitigate the crash. Also, depends on what incarnates you take. Take Electric Armor's tier 9. Jacks your END and lowers your health. But it has an EMP effect that stuns mobs when it drops. And Electric Armor can re-fill your END, and has a single power that will reduce your endurance costs while healing you. Top that off with say barrier to shield you while you recover, and the only hard part is re-toggling your powers. Hell I even use unstoppable in a pinch. Like engaging with mobs that can drop your toggles via endurance drain. Unstoppable gives you added endurance and resistance that doesn't require toggles. And once again I pair it with barrier right before it drops if I'm in a bad situation. Honestly I used those powers even back in the day before Incarnates because the blaster in me like's skirting the edge. Guess I'm a glutton for punishment. And of course, you don't actually NEED any of the tier 9's. You can skip them and be fine if you build right. Most people do. But barrier just makes them too damned attractive for me to bypass.

 

[GhostDawg]

1 hour ago, Troo said:

 

exactly

 

once a character is of high enough level, and built out (and maybe experienced enough to be comfortable) elude can be optional.

 

at level 40 rocking SOs and some IOs.. maybe not so much.

Cool thing about elude... the speed boost. You see that icon flash, you run like hell. Nothing will catch you before it drops. The End boost is nice too. And I normally pop unleash potential right before it drops anyways. I can keep fighting if I have blues, or if the destiny power that refills endurance is up.

 

 

Edited November 23, 2021 by GhostDawg

[Take One]

12 hours ago, Greycat said:

 

Yes, I'm aware. I even make mention of that in my post... *in what you quoted.*

 

 

Sorry, I didn't mean that to seem like a challenge. I basically agreed with you and just quoted you to make my own post make sense.

[Ukase]

I think there's a lot more to this thread than my mind is comprehending. On the one hand, there seems to be a discussion of t-9s, but from reading the original post, I'm not quite sure how it transitioned the way it has. 

Strong powers and their penalties:

So, the blasters have an excellent nuke. It used to drain endurance, but now it doesn't. So, that's a strong power with no penalty. No need to discuss that here. 

The t-9 for scrappers & tanks comes to mind. It's been so long since I took one...can't even remember the name of some of them. "Unstoppable"? 
It's a power where you would tend to use it when you're in over your head. Gives a great boost to all resistances and regen/recovery. But after a time, you lose those buffs and crash. 

Back on live, within my limited social circle, the prevailing wisdom suggested you not take these powers, because if you couldn't handle it before the t-9, how are you going to handle it after the t-9 expires? After all, if you had the dps to take care of the npcs prior to the t-9, you wouldn't have needed to use the t-9. So, it only serves as a set mule now. (unless you're an SO player, forgoing the IO path) 

So, even now, most avoid those picks because 1) the characters are robust enough without them 2) if you can't handle something without using the t-9, then you're destined to fail anyway. For me, I wouldn't sell you on these because I wouldn't buy them myself. (Again, if I'm using SOs only, that would change my answer)

I often think of Super Strength and Rage. But Rage isn't a t-9. And 10 seconds with floored damage is hardly what I would call a crash. You just hop to the next mob and position them, the 10 seconds has passed, and you're off and running. It's an easy sell for me. I'll buy it every time. 

Focused Accuracy is a tough sell for me, unless I'm going to focus on pvp. Because of the rng and the 95% cap on hitting your target, there's little point to using this turd due to it's extreme endurance cost. That said, if I do want to use it, I use it with the understanding I need to ensure I slot accordingly to allow for the high end use. I think this just comes with experience. You can't often get away with using Focused Accuracy unless you're able to use Consume or Heatloss or transference or ageless, (and other endurance powers) on a timely basis. 

Beyond these, I can't think of any high cost powers. I'm sure there are some I haven't thought of. But, since I often don't need them, I don't choose them. 

[golstat2003]

As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, I would make them like Willpower's. I don't think anyone would complain.

[ZemX]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

On the one hand, there seems to be a discussion of t-9s, but from reading the original post, I'm not quite sure how it transitioned the way it has. 

 

The OP is about high level powers that "warn" they leave you drained of endurance.  It's not about powers that merely have a high endurance cost to use.  It's about ones that specifically crash endurance to zero (or near zero).   Armor T9s are the obvious example.   But there are others, as you say, like Rage (though it only drains some endurance, not all of it).   I wouldn't include high-cost toggles though.  That is managed as endurance usage.  It's not a sudden crash.

 

For example, my Rad Armor tanker has loads of recovery and happily runs Focused Accuracy for its wonderful toHit and perception radius debuff resistance.

[Marshal_General]

5 hours ago, Ukase said:

I think there's a lot more to this thread than my mind is comprehending. On the one hand, there seems to be a discussion of t-9s, but from reading the original post, I'm not quite sure how it transitioned the way it has. 

Strong powers and their penalties:

So, the blasters have an excellent nuke. It used to drain endurance, but now it doesn't. So, that's a strong power with no penalty. No need to discuss that here. 

The t-9 for scrappers & tanks comes to mind. It's been so long since I took one...can't even remember the name of some of them. "Unstoppable"? 
It's a power where you would tend to use it when you're in over your head. Gives a great boost to all resistances and regen/recovery. But after a time, you lose those buffs and crash. 

Back on live, within my limited social circle, the prevailing wisdom suggested you not take these powers, because if you couldn't handle it before the t-9, how are you going to handle it after the t-9 expires? After all, if you had the dps to take care of the npcs prior to the t-9, you wouldn't have needed to use the t-9. So, it only serves as a set mule now. (unless you're an SO player, forgoing the IO path) 

So, even now, most avoid those picks because 1) the characters are robust enough without them 2) if you can't handle something without using the t-9, then you're destined to fail anyway. For me, I wouldn't sell you on these because I wouldn't buy them myself. (Again, if I'm using SOs only, that would change my answer)

I often think of Super Strength and Rage. But Rage isn't a t-9. And 10 seconds with floored damage is hardly what I would call a crash. You just hop to the next mob and position them, the 10 seconds has passed, and you're off and running. It's an easy sell for me. I'll buy it every time. 

Focused Accuracy is a tough sell for me, unless I'm going to focus on pvp. Because of the rng and the 95% cap on hitting your target, there's little point to using this turd due to it's extreme endurance cost. That said, if I do want to use it, I use it with the understanding I need to ensure I slot accordingly to allow for the high end use. I think this just comes with experience. You can't often get away with using Focused Accuracy unless you're able to use Consume or Heatloss or transference or ageless, (and other endurance powers) on a timely basis. 

Beyond these, I can't think of any high cost powers. I'm sure there are some I haven't thought of. But, since I often don't need them, I don't choose them. 

You use FA for the -tohit debuff protection.

[Ukase]

57 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

You use FA for the -tohit debuff protection.

No, I don't. I don't use it at all. Well, hardly ever. But thanks. I never knew it protected against that. 

[Black Zot]

On 11/22/2021 at 10:37 AM, Troo said:

 

Oh shit buttons should have oh shit consequences.

 

That's not an oh shit button, that's a "press this to die" button.