Detention Field and Sonic Cage

[Mark]

From my experience, people have a negative reaction when these are used. I think it’s because it adds a pause to the team flow, especially if it’s a steamroll group. Everyone stops and waits for it to be over while giving the Defender side-eye.

 

What if it was changed to a toggle? While under the effect, the enemy has high resistance but not invincible — so people who attack it without realizing it’s about to be shielded won’t rage at the user. Maybe 90% damage mitigation? It would then be useful for things like holding the 3rd DFB boss while the adds are handled or holding the angel adds in SBB.

 

Could the shields stay up as long as your teammates are close? That way there’s no need to refresh every so often. Maybe start the cooldown if the teammate wanders too far.

 

What if Clarity was changed into a trait that adds it’s effects to Barrier/Haven and/or Disruption Field/Dispersion Bubble?

 

What if shields gave a little +Recovery?

Edited December 30, 2021 by Mark

[Hardboiled Hero]

People definitely get annoyed by detention field.  The toggle idea isn't bad..  or just have some way to click it off.

[Alchemystic]

Making it a toggle would help mitigate the main problems, so long as the duration of the power remains the same.

[Uun]

They did this with Gravity/Dimension Shift (Location AoE intangible), but they also made it possible to enter the phased area and fight the phased foes. Not sure how to do this with a ST intangible, but making it a toggle would definitely be an improvement.

[Lazarillo]

The toggle suggestion was made back during the game's original life, too, but has a distinct issue in that Intangible targets can only hit by effects made by intangible entities.  Thus, because toggles work by rapidly re-apply an effect, the enemy ends up going Intangible for 1 second, then not for the next second, then Intangible again, etc.  Dimension Shift gets around this by summoning pseudopets that also have the Intangible status, more or less, but that sort of improvised solution is trickier (albeit probably not impossible...probably...maybe...) when you're looking at single-target use.

[Replacement]

That may have been true on retail, but at some point it appears the Powers system grew a works_on_untouchable flag.