How good is Weaken Resolve, actually?

[oedipus_tex]

Weaken Resolve is an interesting power, because on its own its values aren't that impressive. Look at the Defender version, we've got:

 

 

 

 

 

The power can be procc'ed out somewhat nicely. The resulting attack isn't amazing, given Weaken Resolves animation time of 2 seconds. Still, it's not terrible given the -10% Resist (Defender numbers) and chance to proc an additional -20% Resist proc.

 

 

 

 

Opinions?

[Vanden]

Isn't

[Glacier Peak]

I'll stick with my Infrigidate, which is a Tier 1 power and can accept six procs 😄 

[Frozen Burn]

It's a pool power.  It's not supposed to be better than anything in AT primary or secondary sets.  So, for what it is, it's alright / not bad but not great / "meh" / okay / "better than nothing if you don't have anything better to take."

[Clave Dark 5]

3 hours ago, Frozen Burn said:

It's a pool power.  It's not supposed to be better than anything in AT primary or secondary sets.

Never understood why that was the thought process behind pool powers in the first place.  Can anyone explain it to me, hopefully in single syllable words?

[GM Kal]

Pool powers have always been meant to be weaker powersets to round out what you can't do with primary or secondary, and add style and flavor to the character.

The as I like to call them, the "origin flavor" pools are a bit stronger than normal pool powers; and you can only have one per build: Sorcery (magic), Force of Will(mutation/psi), Experimentation(science).

Of those, Force of Will is probably my least favorite.
Sorc and Experimentation have several winners in the set. Not always useful, but when they are they can be important and defining parts of a character build.

[Mezmera]

Force of Will pool is my favorite of the Origin pools.  Mighty Leap is a great all around travel power and Unleash Potential is a fantastic defense power for tight situations and it benefits greatly from power boosting effects.  

 

I don't do much with Weaken Resolve but it is my go-to second pick in that pool.  I don't slot it for more procs than the Achilles Heel since that's the most useful one I'd want anyways, 27-30% -resistance on an AV during a fight is a great debuff for your team to take advantage of.  I'll let my accuracy bonuses and tohitt carry this power and use it in team situations on tough fights to amplify our damage potential.  

 

Sneaky good power on boss fights.

[tidge]

One of my Fortunata builds includes Weaken Resolve (only slotted with the Achilles' Heel %proc) simply to have a single-target debuff for use on "hard targets". I should disclose that for that build, the pick was taken very late (level 47) and the Fortunata in question has several %-Res pieces slotted in higher level (PB)AoE attacks as well... I don't have all these goodies available for lower level content, but the choices were my compromises to offer another sort of help to PUG rather than just the Fortunata Teamwork/Leadership team buffs.

 

I liked Weaken Resolve a lot more before it got nerfed, and I can almost understand the reasoning behind it. I keep meaning to design a character to go deep into the Force of Will pool, but I have yet to do so.

[Li_Sensei]

I always have trouble with the 'the pools have to be weaker than main powersets' approach because of one thing.  Opportunity cost.  A power takes a power pick and slots regardless of whether it's pool or primary, and there's no discount for slotting a less potent power...

 

But I also know that if the pools weren't hamstrung, then there'd be some utterly misshapen and distorted builds that would break the game even wider open than it already is.  <sigh>

 

(Stuff like 2 from the primary, 3 from the secondary and everything else pools...)

[The_Warpact]

Honestly the newer pool powers that came out besides Sorcery I don’t play. 

I think that should speak volumes.

[oedipus_tex]

4 hours ago, Mezmera said:

Force of Will pool is my favorite of the Origin pools.  Mighty Leap is a great all around travel power and Unleash Potential is a fantastic defense power for tight situations and it benefits greatly from power boosting effects.  

 

I don't do much with Weaken Resolve but it is my go-to second pick in that pool.  I don't slot it for more procs than the Achilles Heel since that's the most useful one I'd want anyways, 27-30% -resistance on an AV during a fight is a great debuff for your team to take advantage of.  I'll let my accuracy bonuses and tohitt carry this power and use it in team situations on tough fights to amplify our damage potential.  

 

Sneaky good power on boss fights.

 

 

Yeah this is what I was thinking. It's no Infrigidate, but if you don't have anywhere else to put a -Resist proc it seems not that bad. Especially if you are playing a pet or proc heavy build. So, on some Illusion Controllers or Masterminds I can see the appeal.

 

I have it currently on a mid-level Water/Storm Defender, without the proc (so far). I've been using it on Penny Yin runs in a 1-2 combo with Freezing Rain to add some extra icing against Super Stunners and AV Clamor. -10% Resist on its own isn't amazing, but I don't really have a lot of better stuff to be casting yet.

 

The 15 second debuff duration is kind of a bummer though. I wonder if there's a better tradeoff point that could be worked toward.

[ForeverLaxx]

4 hours ago, GM Kal said:

Pool powers have always been meant to be weaker powersets to round out what you can't do with primary or secondary, and add style and flavor to the character.

While I recognize this is probably never going to change, I will continue to say that this mentality was always a mistake and it's not even universal to the whole suite of pool powers. Hasten is a pool power, for instance. Rune of Protection was nerfed (pointlessly, in my opinion) despite needing multiple powers that tend to offer nothing else to a build just to get to. Since the pool powers are modified by AT modifiers, a bunch of them are less than useless for their primary effect and are taken just to hold procs or set bonuses (step right up +defense/+recharge bonuses). The ATs that could really use the extra attacks can't use them because they're weak, and the ATs that could really use the extra resistances/defense can't use them because they're weak. All the ATs that these powers work best on, thanks to AT modifiers, don't need them because they're still worse than everything else in their primary/secondary (with the exception of Tough, which is just a function of the prevalence of smash/lethal damage).

 

We're actually pretty lucky that you don't need a "fully optimized" build to run content or things would be more homogeneous at the top than they already are. I do hate picking powers for character flavor that I have to justify actually using, though, instead of it being a near-seamless addition to a playstyle.

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 hours ago, GM Kal said:

Pool powers have always been meant to be weaker powersets to round out what you can't do with primary or secondary, and add style and flavor to the character.

The as I like to call them, the "origin flavor" pools are a bit stronger than normal pool powers; and you can only have one per build: Sorcery (magic), Force of Will(mutation/psi), Experimentation(science).

Of those, Force of Will is probably my least favorite.
Sorc and Experimentation have several winners in the set. Not always useful, but when they are they can be important and defining parts of a character build.

 

So why haven't Scrapper EPP Gloom/Moonbeam/Shadow Meld and Sent EPP Mind Probe/Dominate been nerfed yet?

Edited May 2, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[tidge]

1 hour ago, The_Warpact said:

Honestly the newer pool powers that came out besides Sorcery I don’t play. 

I think that should speak volumes.

 

I have a couple of builds for which I'd like to use pools other than Sorcery, but in terms of Quality-of-Life for those characters it is hard to pass up:

• (Mystic) Flight, with a Teleport to get out of certain situations, such as being pinned in by NPCs.
• A power that can take Health globals/procs (Spirit Ward).
• A power that minimizes the need for Break Free inspirations (Rune of Protection). <- This is the deal-maker for me
• A rather decent ranged attack in Arcane Bolt (subject to AT modifiers).

I'm personally less sold on Enflame, but I see folks using it.

[Marshal_General]

They don't have to be weaker. They should be as good as at least your secondary, but offer something your AT/sets do not offer. Like the majority of AT/sets do not have travel powers, so pool powers offer you choices for one or more if you want. The movement option are not lesser than your sets powers, but offer you something beyond your AT/sets.

 

The other pool powers should reflect the travel power design and be just as good, but offer you choices your primary and secondary do not. A good portion of the pool powers do this somewhat though they could use some tweaking. I could see the different attacks in a pool power be as good at the minimum of your T1 attack and be as good as your T2 attack.

[The_Warpact]

36 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

I have a couple of builds for which I'd like to use pools other than Sorcery, but in terms of Quality-of-Life for those characters it is hard to pass up:

• (Mystic) Flight, with a Teleport to get out of certain situations, such as being pinned in by NPCs.
• A power that can take Health globals/procs (Spirit Ward).
• A power that minimizes the need for Break Free inspirations (Rune of Protection). <- This is the deal-maker for me
• A rather decent ranged attack in Arcane Bolt (subject to AT modifiers).

I'm personally less sold on Enflame, but I see folks using it.

I agree...I have used the other pools but they're just so...mehtastic. Nothing jumps out as something that I would want to fit in a build.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I have this on a handful of characters, and it's probably better than a lot of people give it credit for.  It is not, however, an integral pat of a DPS-maximizing attack chain (or maybe it is, I haven't crunched the numbers, but I don't think so) for pylons or AVs.

 

Here's how I look at it:

 

First, in terms of being a part of the Force of Will set.  Unleash Potential is a pretty sweet and useful power, but requires two prerequisites.  Project Will and Wall of Force don't float my boat in terms of useful attacks outside of theme, so that leaves Mighty Leap and Weaken Resolve.  So in many cases it might be a default choice.  Also, there aren't a lot of pools that have a useful power that you can pick as a one-off out of the pool.  Combat Jumping from Leaping, Air Superiority or Hover from Flight, Maneuvers from Leadership, Hasten from Speed, Combat Teleport from Teleport.  Ok, I guess that is more than I thought, but Weaken Resolve isn't a terrible single choice.

 

Second, if my calculations are correct, your proc activation rate should be maxed out at 90%, so let's look at some of the proc options (there are a lot of them):

 

Damage:  Touch of Lady Grey, Shield Breaker, Cloud Senses.  At least one should trigger on a hit 99.9% of the time.  All three should trigger 72.9% of the time.  (If my calculations are correct, please sing out if they are not!)  I do have one alt that uses this as a single target attack.  It's not stupendous, but since that character has no other active attacks it's his main ST damage dealer.

 

Non-damage:  This is where it gets interesting.  Achilles Heel should be a no-brainer since it takes what the basic power does and does more of it.  Deflated Ego has chance for Recovery debuff which I guess might be useful for a endurance draining build -- I haven't gone down that path yet.  Dark Watcher's Despair is a Recharge Slow.  I can definitely see a use for that against dangerous offensive opponents.  But to me the interesting part are the two +to hit buff procs in Analyze Weakness and Siphon Insight.  They stack, so you can reasonably expect to activate one or both on any successful hit.  Against debuffing enemies, this can be the equivalent of a Build Up or Aim power (if it hits, that is, so have plenty of accuracy!)

 

When are you going to use this?  In my experience, minions and LTs don't last long enough for it to be worthwhile, so we are looking at bosses, EBs, AVs, Monsters/Giant Monsters.  I'm not sure which effects get diminished and by how much for the last few categories (and I am in no way willing to parse my combat records to find out), but I'll occasionally put it in the attack rotation.  Is that optimal?  In this case I'm ignorant and apathetic; I don't know and I don't care.  Note:  I don't bother with seamless attack rotations, because I don't find them necessary.  It makes no difference to me if I take something down in two minutes that I could take down in 1:52 if I had an optimal attack chain.  that's 8 more seconds I have playing a game I enjoy, so it's all good to me.  YMMV.

[oedipus_tex]

Excellent summary, Yomo.

 

The standard amount of -Resist in Controller and Corruptor powers is -22.5%. I think there is close to universal agreement that these power are good. The standard debuff duration is around 30 seconds, with a lot of variation depending on the source of the debuff. Animation time for Weaken Resolve is 2.24 Arcana seconds, which isn't fast, but is actually faster than Sonic Siphon (2.37). Sonic Siphon also takes no set bonuses or procs at all.

 

Defender scale Weaken Resolve is -10% Resist, a bit less than half a standard Controller or Corruptor debuff. That's not great to me, but also not necessarily terrible. Other classes it dips out too much to be attractive though. Blasters only get -6.5% Resist, for example, which doesn't seem worth casting.

 

Of course as noted, WR takes the Achille's Heel proc. AH is funny because IIRC it's a temporary power that can only stack 1 time from any caster. So, you always want at least one person triggering Achille's Heel, but you don't need more than one. 


I'm not sure if this power needs a buff. If it does, probably making the -Resist stronger is out, since I think that was nerfed a while back. Making it partially autohit might actually make it attractive as a way to leverage the -Defense. I'm sure there are other ideas. 

[arcane]

7 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Never understood why that was the thought process behind pool powers in the first place.  Can anyone explain it to me, hopefully in single syllable words?

Because that’s how the game is fundamentally designed and has been since 2004. Same reason secondary powers must typically be weaker than the same powers if in a primary. You could call power pools “tertiary” sets if you like. Primary -> Secondary -> Tertiary.

Edited May 2, 2022 by arcane

[Clave Dark 5]

7 hours ago, GM Kal said:

Pool powers have always been meant to be weaker powersets to round out what you can't do with primary or secondary, and add style and flavor to the character.

The first part of your sentence comes across as just another "that's the way it is explanation;" the middle part sounds like it justifies them being better at what they do after all (why do "what you can't do with your primary or secondary" if you don't do it well?), and the last a solid reason for why I want them to be worthwhile!  😃

[arcane]

46 minutes ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

The first part of your sentence comes across as just another "that's the way it is explanation;"  

Perhaps because that IS the way it is and altering that dynamic would constitute a rather major redesign of the game and a few truckloads of completely unnecessary power creep. 
 

If this is a problem for you I would also logically assume you see no reason for secondary powers to be weaker than primary powers? How many massive buffs are you calling for here exactly?

Edited May 2, 2022 by arcane

[arcane]

3 hours ago, tidge said:

 

I have a couple of builds for which I'd like to use pools other than Sorcery, but in terms of Quality-of-Life for those characters it is hard to pass up:

• (Mystic) Flight, with a Teleport to get out of certain situations, such as being pinned in by NPCs.
• A power that can take Health globals/procs (Spirit Ward).
• A power that minimizes the need for Break Free inspirations (Rune of Protection). <- This is the deal-maker for me
• A rather decent ranged attack in Arcane Bolt (subject to AT modifiers).

I'm personally less sold on Enflame, but I see folks using it.

The Sorcery buffs were dope. The pool actually has 5 good powers now.

[Hedgefund]

The proc chances for a 3.5 ppm proc are .9 even when recharge is slotted to ED max with this power.

 

Putzing around in Mids this looks not too shabby:

 

The HO is a Lysosome, found in the bargain basement bin of the AH but it boosts everything this power can use:  acc, -tohit, -def.

 

Historically I've taken this about 3 different times, each on a buff heavy set where I was looking to throw in a -res debuff.  For example, MMs with FF and Kin, plus a Nature Def, I think that's it.

 

Despite taking it less than 3% of the time, my official take on it is - "not too bad".  If you've got better things to do (like spam procced Infigidate) then do those things.  If you're a FF MM otherwise waiting for the 3:59 mark to start reapplying shields, it's useful.

[Zhym]

22 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

Look at the Defender version, we've got:

 

 

That's not too bad.  On the general principle that all Sentinel powers must suck, Sentinels have this:

 

 

I took it for theme reasons.

 

Pro tip: never take powers for theme reasons (at least if you want useful powers).*

[Yomo Kimyata]

10 minutes ago, Zhym said:

That's not too bad.  On the general principle that all Sentinel powers must suck, Sentinels have this:

 

 

I took it for theme reasons.

 

Pro tip: never take powers for theme reasons (at least if you want useful powers).*

 

This is cold comfort, but admittedly a defender has less need of this power than a sentinel (and may have better choices in their primary).  

 

But once you put in an Achilles, it goes from comparing (-10% resist all to -4.8% resist all) to (-20% resist all to -14.8% resist all), at least for the first ten seconds.