Rise of the Phoenix and Soul Transfer buffs?

[Ston]

While I know this will probably receive negative feedback, I'm interested to see what kinds of points are brought up in the conversation.

 

My suggestion is to change these two rez powers to the following only for melee ATs:

• Remove the 15 second untouchable period (if this is too big a nerf, maybe add a flat absorb amount?)
• Adjust the "Cast When" property from "DeadOnly" to "DeadOrAlive" (similar to Unrelenting)
• Have heal % scale with current HP

 

Everything else would stay the same. The idea is to give these sets an "oh shit" button that other sets have. Sure, healing flames and dark regeneration exist, but these sets already have a major weakness in no knockback resistance.. not to mention damage resistance holes. In the current meta, it's hard to justify taking these powers with all the self-rez and ally-rez power available.

 

I think it would also make sense thematically. Take the Soul Transfer power description and just remove the first clause:

Quote

Should you fall in battle, you can perform a Soul Transfer, sucking the life force of all foes around you to bring yourself back from the brink of death

Edited April 5, 2022 by Ston

[Rudra]

So... back from the brink of death... and you want it to not be a rez power, but a heal power. Are you also going to make it only usable when you have 1% or less health? After all, you aren't at the brink of death when you use it to heal when you are simply injured rather than down and dying. Or is there some meaning of "brink of death" I am missing that does not mean at Death's Door and incapacitated?

 

And just to be clear, this is my reason for saying NO to this suggestion.

[Ston]

6 minutes ago, Rudra said:

So... back from the brink of death... and you want it to not be a rez power, but a heal power. Are you also going to make it only usable when you have 1% or less health? After all, you aren't at the brink of death when you use it to heal when you are simply injured rather than down and dying. Or is there some meaning of "brink of death" I am missing that does not mean at Death's Door and incapacitated?

 

And just to be clear, this is my reason for saying NO to this suggestion.

 

Well "death" in this game is 0% HP. Now... on the "brink" of that is probably subjective, which is why I would suggest the self heal to scale. If you use it at 50% HP, you won't get much benefit from it. But if you are at 5% HP and one hit from a boss away from dying, this would be a great option to buy yourself more time without having to die, lose any buffs you have, rez, retoggle, etc. 

 

However now I realize one problem with my suggestion is that the offensive portion of the power wouldn't really be able to scale with your current HP... but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing? 

[Akisan]

2 hours ago, Ston said:

Remove the 15 second untouchable period (if this is too big a nerf, maybe add a flat absorb amount?)

 

Only if cast while alive.  If that untouchable period goes away for cast when dead, that's a massive nerf to those powers - the long-duration Stun pretty much ensures that you'll have a good chunk of aggro when mobs come off of stun, and you need that 15s to re-toggle (even moreso with /Fire, given that it also comes with KB and huge AoE damage).

 

As far as the current meta, with the huge amounts of self- and ally- rez?  A *lot* of the self-rez stuff is P2W or Temp powers - which won't be there in the upper difficulty content they're releasing. 

 

I think the main issue with these 2 powers is that you still get the debt for your defeat - which doesn't make sense thematically if you resurrected yourself.  Some sort of debt removal (on top of the 20s immunity) could make players less hesitant to fully utilize these powers.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, Ston said:

 

Well "death" in this game is 0% HP. Now... on the "brink" of that is probably subjective, which is why I would suggest the self heal to scale. If you use it at 50% HP, you won't get much benefit from it. But if you are at 5% HP and one hit from a boss away from dying, this would be a great option to buy yourself more time without having to die, lose any buffs you have, rez, retoggle, etc. 

 

However now I realize one problem with my suggestion is that the offensive portion of the power wouldn't really be able to scale with your current HP... but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing? 

Given that in every reference for "brink of death" I have ever read or heard, it is in reference to someone on their death bed, mortally wounded and unable to take action to save himself/herself, or other form of death is about to happen that the individual cannot affect and has basically already succumbed to requiring another to somehow save that person despite the odds against it, I'm going to say there is nothing subjective about "brink of death". If you are at the brink, you are at the edge, the very limit, already there and just need to finish transitioning. The reaper is not only standing there, but is dragging your soul out of your body to its final fate and someone has to stop you from transitioning beyond the realm of the living. If you are fighting and in danger of being defeated, you are not at the brink of death. The brink of defeat maybe, but not the brink of death. Using your own quote at start of thread, your suggestion does not work. You would have to not only drop the opening clause, but also change the ending for your suggestion to work with your own justification. So you would have to rewrite the power's description for your suggestion to fit.

 

Even at that, fiery aura's and dark armor's self-rez ability does not need tweaking. It may not be an "oh shit" button, but they do bring you back from defeat and let you either keep fighting or flee as needed. It works just fine as a "Ha! You can't keep me down!" or "Death is for losers, let me show you" button. Sure, the point is to avoid defeat in a fight, but when you are faced with defeat, those two armors are the only ones that let you get back up and keep fighting anyway. And with no crash to worry about if the fight drags on like with some other T9s.

[Zeraphia]

I am probably going to get flack for saying this opinion. That's okay. But I will just say this: I don't believe the issue with these powers are that they should be cast at the brink of death or any of the buffs you mentioned. I believe the problem with these powers are the fact that in comparison to other powers, they simply are just not up enough to justify taking them. They're a good novelty when you have room for maybe one or two extra power selection choices in a build, but with the recent developments to making power pools more attractive, the simple fact is... why would I want to choose a power that picks me up when I fall rather than a power that prevents me from falling in the first place (especially when there's a P2W version available to everyone that's arguably superior to them because of the inspiration effect and less intrusiveness anyways...)?

 

So I think most people's issue with the power is that the recharge is too long. The power itself isn't beneficial enough to take over other powers in selection, and prevention tends to be a lot better than reaction.

 

(I'll get flack for this too but I have to say that's one of the big reasons healing based support sets that are non-Kinetics are slowly becoming less desirable over debuff/buff or more mixed sets are being chosen atm in current play.)

 

With that in mind, perhaps the direction one could move in is (1) possibly make them more attractive than the P2W version, so for instance, possibly add in that it automatically re-toggles all of your toggles you had on pre-death... (2) reduce the cooldowns/make hasten affect them if you had it active before death... (3) Give them a "one slot wonder" treatment like add a small amount of +def after resurrection for a brief period and boom, you can slot LoTG, and the power would be A LOT more popular. 

 

I know #3 isn't what people love to hear because it hinges on an IO to make the power "worth" picking, but that's the environment we're in.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Zeraphia

[Marbing]

1 hour ago, Zeraphia said:

why would I want to choose a power that picks me up when I fall rather than a power that prevents me from falling in the first place (especially when there's a P2W version available to everyone that's arguably superior to them because of the inspiration effect and less intrusiveness anyways...)?

This to me is the core of the issue with these powers. The downside (death) to using them doesn’t outweigh the positives they provide imo. Because if you are using it then you have failed a master run (for example), and/or now you have debt to do what? A nuke in one case and a Stun AOE in the other? It would be cooler if there was a way to have these two self revives negate the death. Meaning, your health reaches 0 but instead of dying(or being defeated, whatever) these powers are auto activated to negate the death and give you another go at it. That’s just my opinion. I haven’t put much thought into it so idk about balance concerns.

[Uun]

In addition to Unrelenting, the Nature power Rebirth can also be used as either a rez or a heal over time. I like the idea of giving the rez powers some additional utility. I would give Resurgence and Revive similar treatment. I think Soul Transfer would have to lose the mag 30 stun if you're not dead when you use it.

[TheZag]

I always skip the self rez powers.  For a power to be useful only when every single one of your other powers has failed is a deal breaker for me.  I dont mind powersets that have skippable powers though since im able to have more options with pool powers.

 

Some have already suggested their changes and others have said leave the powers as is.  I would have the powers changed that clicking the power while still alive gives you an amount of time (20 seconds?) where if you fall to 0 hp then the normal revive effect will happen but you never actually fall to the ground.  And if you survive that entire time then a lesser effect of the power will happen,  perhaps a mag 3 stun and 25% of the normal damage.  The self rezzes that are only a rez and nothing else could get some absorb shield if their rez effect isnt needed for the duration.

 

Overall though im still fine with them being skippable.  When a power is only as good as a single inspiration,  i probably wont take it.

[Rudra]

17 hours ago, Zeraphia said:

With that in mind, perhaps the direction one could move in is (1) possibly make them more attractive than the P2W version, so for instance, possibly add in that it automatically re-toggles all of your toggles you had on pre-death...

 

17 hours ago, Zeraphia said:

(3) Give them a "one slot wonder" treatment like add a small amount of +def after resurrection for a brief period and boom, you can slot LoTG, and the power would be A LOT more popular. 

 

11 hours ago, TheZag said:

I would have the powers changed that clicking the power while still alive gives you an amount of time (20 seconds?) where if you fall to 0 hp then the normal revive effect will happen but you never actually fall to the ground.  And if you survive that entire time then a lesser effect of the power will happen,  perhaps a mag 3 stun and 25% of the normal damage.

I actually like these suggestions. If the self-rezzes either auto-toggled the player's self affecting powers (you would still have to de-toggle ones you did not want on), worked as a background enhancement mule, or functioned as Final Fantasy's Life 3 spell to auto-rez the player when defeated if the power is used prior (thereby negating the defeat and applying the health and END recoveries using current mechanics) within a set duration, I would be fine with any of these.

 

I'm opposed to having their heal function work prior to defeat though. Having a rez in the set makes the two sets unique compared to the others. I like these sets specifically because of their self-rezzes, even though I do my best to never need them making them poor power choices.

 

Making the rez more useful as a power choice without changing its function though? Okay. Gets my stamp of approval.

 

(Rudra's Stamp of Approval (tm) good at limited locations only. Normal product costs still apply.)

 

Edit: In all three cases however, I would say that the power's recharge should be unaffected by any recharge improvement effects. They should be locked at their base recharge in exchange for any of these bonuses.

 

Edit again: Why did no one correct me? If Fiery Aura and Dark Armor's self-rezzes get new toys, then so should Willpower's.

Edited April 6, 2022 by Rudra

[PeregrineFalcon]

I am completely against any buffs whatsoever to Fiery Armor and Flame Mastery.

 

Fiery Armor is far and away the most common armor set in the game. Fiery Armor characters outnumber everything else in game, according to the stats published by a game dev. Simply put, Fiery Armor doesn't need any buffs whatsoever.

 

And Flame Mastery for Blasters? It's already the only choice for Blaster Epic Pools, being far better than all of the other choices.

 

I don't remember enough about Dark Armor to have a viable opinion.

[Ston]

12 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I am completely against any buffs whatsoever to Fiery Armor and Flame Mastery.

 

Fiery Armor is far and away the most common armor set in the game. Fiery Armor characters outnumber everything else in game, according to the stats published by a game dev. Simply put, Fiery Armor doesn't need any buffs whatsoever.

 

And Flame Mastery for Blasters? It's already the only choice for Blaster Epic Pools, being far better than all of the other choices.

 

I don't remember enough about Dark Armor to have a viable opinion.

 

I did say only for melee ATs in the OP.

I'm also not sure the Fiery Aura population statistics are a valid argument to leave the set alone. The numbers are inflated by AE farming which is about as niche as you can get. Building Fiery Aura for fire farming is drastically different than building it for general content, which is what this post is concerned with. 

 

Outside of AE, I rarely see Fiery Aura characters in the role of the main tank. When I do, they are often faceplanting several times.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Ston

[Naraka]

11 hours ago, Akisan said:

 

Only if cast while alive.  If that untouchable period goes away for cast when dead, that's a massive nerf to those powers - the long-duration Stun pretty much ensures that you'll have a good chunk of aggro when mobs come off of stun, and you need that 15s to re-toggle (even moreso with /Fire, given that it also comes with KB and huge AoE damage).

 

As far as the current meta, with the huge amounts of self- and ally- rez?  A *lot* of the self-rez stuff is P2W or Temp powers - which won't be there in the upper difficulty content they're releasing. 

 

I think the main issue with these 2 powers is that you still get the debt for your defeat - which doesn't make sense thematically if you resurrected yourself.  Some sort of debt removal (on top of the 20s immunity) could make players less hesitant to fully utilize these powers.

 

No one cares about debt. The game could get rid of it and, outside of badges, no one would likely notice.

 

As for making self rez powers better, you could do that by nerfing other sources: P2W self rez could have it's rech substantially increases (talking about a 2hr rech), same with crafted/reward powers; inspirations increase their stun duration, mag and -recovery period while higher level awakens would only slightly decrease the -recovery period (making you still need multiple break free inspirations+blues to circumvent the death). 

[RCU7115]

  I always take the rez powers.  It frees up 2 inspiration slots, 1 for the wakie & 1 for the break free for 2 more reds instead.  I'd rather have the rez power with a 2-3 minute recharge vs 1 hour for the P2W, even though I do purchase it. 

   The way I look at it is if you're carrying a wakie you're expecting to die anyway and wakies are worthless if you die surrounded while the rez power has the 10 second immunity which let's you A) run away or B) activate your defensive powers to continue the fight.

[Rudra]

9 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

And Flame Mastery for Blasters? It's already the only choice for Blaster Epic Pools, being far better than all of the other choices.

I must have missed the memo. That or I never got added to the Blaster Notification list. I only use Flame Mastery on my Fire Blast blaster. I use the other epic sets.

 

9 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Fiery Armor characters outnumber everything else in game, according to the stats published by a game dev.

Does that statistic differentiate between characters made just to fire farm versus PvP or regular play? If you can give me a stat that says Fiery Aura characters outnumber everything else in any play outside of AE fire farms, I will accept that. Don't care what category, as long as it is not AE fire farming.

 

My question is, how many Fiery Aura characters skip the rez? How many Dark Armor characters skip the rez? Why are they skipping it if they are? Is that a flag that the power itself, not the set, needs to be looked at? I personally like the self-rezzes. I take them on every character I make that has those sets. I am also aware that my power choices seem to in the fringe.

 

So if the P2W and temp self-rezzes get nerfed to make the AT self-rezzes look more enticing to others? That's fine with me. If the AT self-rezzes get a boost that does not change what they are for? That is also fine with me. If people want the AT self-rezzes to be modified so they can be used when still fighting? I have a problem with that.

 

So let's bandy this idea about some more and hopefully we can get some more specific stats or feedback on it.

[Ston]

4 minutes ago, Rudra said:

If the AT self-rezzes get a boost that does not change what they are for? That is also fine with me.

 

This part is interesting to me. The previously mentioned idea of the self-rez going off automatically on death is something I would be onboard with. However, I think that is very similar to what I'm asking for with being able to use it while fighting. It would be like having Reconstruction on auto but it only goes off when your HP is at 1%. 

 

I'm fine with this mechanic. I'm just saying this is basically turning it into a self-heal.

[biostem]

17 minutes ago, Ston said:

I'm fine with this mechanic. I'm just saying this is basically turning it into a self-heal.

Sometimes having the rez happen immediately is a bad thing;  I'd rather allow the player to decide when to rez themselves.  That being said, I'm concerned that giving self-rez powers additional utility might take away from either other powers in the set or fill a gap in sets which was placed there very specifically.  I suppose if it was done with great care it could work out better, however...

[Rudra]

49 minutes ago, Ston said:

 

This part is interesting to me. The previously mentioned idea of the self-rez going off automatically on death is something I would be onboard with. However, I think that is very similar to what I'm asking for with being able to use it while fighting. It would be like having Reconstruction on auto but it only goes off when your HP is at 1%. 

 

I'm fine with this mechanic. I'm just saying this is basically turning it into a self-heal.

Disagree. My take is that it triggers when your health hits 0, and if auto, does not count as a death against things like Master runs.

[Rudra]

31 minutes ago, biostem said:

Sometimes having the rez happen immediately is a bad thing;  I'd rather allow the player to decide when to rez themselves.  That being said, I'm concerned that giving self-rez powers additional utility might take away from either other powers in the set or fill a gap in sets which was placed there very specifically.  I suppose if it was done with great care it could work out better, however...

I'm hard pressed to thing of a situation where rezzing immediately would be a bad thing, but that doesn't mean there is no such situation. Leaving the rez in the hands of the player to trigger is fine. Like I said previously, I like the self rezzes. As they are. I am opposed to specific changes to them. Just saying there are some modifications I will not oppose. The rezzes need to stay rezzes.

[Marbing]

7 hours ago, Rudra said:

Disagree. My take is that it triggers when your health hits 0, and if auto, does not count as a death against things like Master runs.

This is what I was saying earlier. May have gotten missed. 
 

I see no issue with an auto rez or at least a prompt that says something like “Rise of the Phoenix would like to revive you” and you can say yes or no. If you say yes, the death doesn’t count but maybe the effect is lessened (doesn’t do as much damage). If you say no, then it goes back to its original state.

 

This will make those self revives less skippable imo. Because they will quite literally save you a death. 

[Rudra]

It wasn't missed. My comments were made to emphasize yours, since it was your idea about that that got me to think "Okay, maybe the self-rezzes could stand a limited buff". Apologies for being unclear about that.

[PeregrineFalcon]

13 hours ago, Rudra said:

I must have missed the memo. That or I never got added to the Blaster Notification list. I only use Flame Mastery on my Fire Blast blaster. I use the other epic sets.

Bonfire with a KB > KD IO alone is better than all of the other powers in all of the other Blaster Epic Pools combined. In my opinion.

 

14 hours ago, Rudra said:

Does that statistic differentiate between characters made just to fire farm versus PvP or regular play?

It makes no difference. Those characters outnumber all other characters combined for a reason. And please don't try to tell me that farming is soooooo completely different than normal gameplay. Yes, it's a little different, but it's still going around killing stuff. Whatever works in farming is going to work in normal gameplay, with some exceptions.

 

And please don't give me a list of all of those times in which normal gameplay is different than farming. I already said with some exceptions. Anything you list will fall under "exceptions." Sorry, I just feel the need to explain that word to people now days.

 

Personally I just pick up a couple of the P2W self-rezzes, almost never use them, and call it good.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

16 hours ago, Rudra said:

Does that statistic differentiate between characters made just to fire farm versus PvP or regular play?

It makes no difference. Those characters outnumber all other characters combined for a reason.

I disagree. It is likely just my perception of it, but fire farming seems to be the most lucrative way to gain xp or inf'. So those looking to max gains will build for it specifically. Either way, I doubt either of us will convince the other. (The fact we are trying to change each other's minds on something we more or less agree on is rather funny to me though.)

[Zeraphia]

I don't think Fiery Aura is quite the beastly set people make it out to be. Just because it is high damage does not mean that it's "vastly superior to other sets" or "not in need of buffs." The fact is, Fiery Aura is still an armor set. Armor sets provide protection from damage, which inherently of all the sets, it is arguably the worst at doing so with the most holes in its coverage. The tradeoff is Burn. It's disingenuous at best to use "it's the most picked set in the entire game" as an argument because of the extreme number of AE farmers. (I believe statistically, AE farmers make up over 50% of characters in CoH or some obscene number last I checked.)

 

The reason it is so highly picked is because you can design fire minions on +4/x8 to do exclusively fire damage, and build your farmer to have very high fire/cold defense and you're able to take the offensive tools of Burn and Fiery Aura. That's it. There is no CC built into these minions, there is no mixed damage, it is pure fire damage exclusively. The reason to do this is to be able to solo +4/x8 with the fastest times possible with extreme efficiency and ease. This is far different to what it would be tested against in regular PvE, where Radiation Armor almost completely eclipses FA. You see Psi damage (which happens to be a not insignificant amount of end-game content) as FA? Oh you're in for a world of hurt. It also has the least knockback protection of any armor set in the game, therefore no matter how much KB protect you build, you'll still have lots of knockbacks. FA has trouble with most builds taking on harder AVs and endgame content in comparison to most armor sets in the game. When Blasters, Corruptors, etc. and judgement all exist now... Burn alone doesn't stand out. Additionally, it provides 0 defense at all, and the Toxic resist you gain is not very high usually from the heal alone which also shouldn't just be spammed recklessly. 

 

Is it bad? No. I love to solo with it because of its speed and general tankiness. But it lags very far behind what the intent of an armor set is. But FA buffs are an entirely separate equation from the topic of this thread. RoTP is in a lot of epic pools and I think more squishies take it than actual tank/brutes.  

[Rudra]

You are in error. While Fiery Aura has 0 KB protection, so does Dark Armor, Electric Armor, Invulnerability, Regeneration, and Stone Armor. And while Fiery Aura only has Stun protection as a status protection, Invulnerability and Stone Armor have no status protections. While I agree with your assessment about Fiery Aura's primary, and seemingly only as far as I have personally seen so far, use, your status protection argument fails.

 

Edit: Further, in regards to your 0 defense statement, Electric Armor, Invulnerability, Radiation Armor, and Regeneration also have 0 defenses. So Stone Armor and Invulnerability are both decidedly worse off than Fiery Aura using your justification. (That said, I still agree with your assessment.)

Edited April 7, 2022 by Rudra