How good is Weaken Resolve, actually?

[Mezmera]

11 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

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).

 

Weelllll....

 

A lot of defender's could make use of a 30% -resistance debuff.  Less so Cold's yeah but my TA uses Weaken Resolve frequently granted I had to compare and contrast this and Entangling Arrow which I dropped since I was only getting to use one or the other and find the other arrows to give me other tactics.  

 

Power Build Up boosted Unleash Potential and Vengeance is just too good of defense numbers to pass up.  

[DougGraves]

Weaken Resolve seems basically worthless to me.  It is built like a power I will use all of the time but isn't a power I need very often.

 

If it had a really long cool down but had a really big effect it would be worth taking for a final boss, AV, etc.

 

But I don't need to spend 2 seconds weakening someone every fight.

[Marshal_General]

On 5/2/2022 at 2:29 AM, 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.

From your list, it seems we are still missing a tech "origin flavor" pool.

[Energy Aura]

Does anybody remember at the beginning of City of Heroes when people used to create pool power only characters or at least try to.

I don't think any of these actually were viable even in the early days but I had the thought of revisiting this idea now that we have a few extra pools to play with. Perhaps there's a viable option out there. Granted he/she won't satisfy the min maxer in me, but maybe I can put something together with Mids Reborn that is semi-viable.

[tidge]

7 minutes ago, Energy Aura said:

Does anybody remember at the beginning of City of Heroes when people used to create pool power only characters or at least try to.

I don't think any of these actually were viable even in the early days but I had the thought of revisiting this idea now that we have a few extra pools to play with. Perhaps there's a viable option out there. Granted he/she won't satisfy the min maxer in me, but maybe I can put something together with Mids Reborn that is semi-viable.

 

We call 'em "Pool Boys".

[arcane]

19 minutes ago, Energy Aura said:

Does anybody remember at the beginning of City of Heroes when people used to create pool power only characters or at least try to.

I don't think any of these actually were viable even in the early days but I had the thought of revisiting this idea now that we have a few extra pools to play with. Perhaps there's a viable option out there. Granted he/she won't satisfy the min maxer in me, but maybe I can put something together with Mids Reborn that is semi-viable.

Lately I’ve been trying to imagine what could be made to be to most hated character ever. I’m thinking Grav/Dark/Mako for double AoE intangibility powers plus knockback, with Group Fly, Team Teleport, and Incandescence. 6-slot every Presence pool power just to be sure. I’m sure the name “Kick Me” is taken though.

[Bojutsu]

I plan to take this power for many of my characters.  It is a damaage buff, accuracy buff, and defense buff.

[America's Angel]

It's a good place to put the Achilles proc if you don't already have somewhere. I use it on my EM Scrapper.

[biostem]

On 5/2/2022 at 7:04 AM, Li_Sensei said:

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...)

Power pools allow you to go outside of your ATs normal limitations or scope;  You "pay" for that by them being weaker than similar in-powerset powers.  There isn't much opportunity cost in taking the power - anyone can do that.  It's whether doing so is a better choice than any of the powers in your primary or secondary.  Do you feel the same way about your secondary set being weaker than when another AT has it as their primary?  It's kind of a fundamental aspect of the game...

[Gulbasaur]

On 5/2/2022 at 2:23 PM, tidge said:

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

(I know this is a response to an older comment but) I use Enflame as an AI-breaker.

Get overwhelmed? Pull one too many bosses? Enflame! Your enflamed enemy will run around randomly trying to get out of a patch that follows them. 

[Gulbasaur]

(double posted)

Edited June 1, 2022 by Gulbasaur

[Sovera]

People praising the -res need to actually use it in a test and see the results with and without. The prime place where it might shine is the pylon test where stuffing the maximum number of -res sources allows for amazing times (/cold as a prime example) all thanks to pylons being +0.

 

My own tests against +4 AVs (+3 with T3 Alpha) showed something like a 4-7% damage increase because of the purple patch effect. But this is two 20% -res with better uptime since slotted into attacks being spammed.

 

The upside of the '4-7%' boost is that it's 4-7% for each player which makes it a reasonable choice. Outside of AVs/GMs the -res procs have shown to not affect the killing speed as tested on farm maps and the Trapdoor test over the Scrapper forum, and this is with the -res slotted in AoEs unlike WR who is a ST power.

 

 

Looking at Weaken Resolve on Mids shows it has a 90% chance to make an Achilles' -res go off with a duration of 15 seconds and around 13-14 CD without any recharge slotted. The casting is 2.24 though.

 

My experience on this (take it with a grain of salt, and of course anyone willing to run said testing mentioned above would fix all 'gut feels') is that the power is fine on a support character in a full team against an AV/GM. Any time it is up and the character can choose between tossing a T1 or T2 or using Weaken Resolve it will (probably) help the team more to choose WR thanks to everyone adding their % which is bound to be more than a support character's T1 or T2 damage.

 

That said it would still only shave a few seconds (not a minute) and even less than one might think on quick fights that are short.

 

A damage based character would probably suffer too much from sinking 2.24 seconds into a non damaging character (yes, I know, procs. Procs can be slotted into damaging attacks as well though), and of course that nothing under an AV/GM will be worth using it on even for a support character. Think of it like a /Rad's anchors and if they are worth using on normal mobs.

 

 

Bopper can probably math this out.

[tidge]

9 hours ago, Sovera said:

My experience on this (take it with a grain of salt, and of course anyone willing to run said testing mentioned above would fix all 'gut feels') is that the power is fine on a support character in a full team against an AV/GM. Any time it is up and the character can choose between tossing a T1 or T2 or using Weaken Resolve it will (probably) help the team more to choose WR thanks to everyone adding their % which is bound to be more than a support character's T1 or T2 damage.

 

I don't disagree... but I have a (slightly) different perspective. For so much of the game's content (which are not GMs or AVs or Pylons) my math is "do I need to fire off at least one more attack or not?" and not "how much more damage can I hypothetically get out of an attack?" (*1) I suppose that the damage scale 1.0/1.0 characters may be considered "support", but I've found that PUGs in certain content tend to have better clear times when I have a Fortunata using Weaken Resolve (against the hard targets) as part of the attack chain.

 

As @Sovera indicates, where there is a hard target that will take many attacks to defeat, -Res (as well as -Regeneration and -MaxHP) will typically be more of a benefit to a team than any single attacker doing (maybe) up to 70 more points of damage per attack.

 

(*1) This "one more attack or not?" consideration is one of the aspects of combo-attack systems that irks me in a peculiar way. I can understand the appeal(s), but at some level the combos for high-DPS ATs always felt like giving more (damage, control, and complication) to ATs that already have decent mission clear times while ignoring already complicated ATs (Masterminds, Controllers, etc.) that have poor mission clear times.

[roleki]

I really don't like the Force of Will pool but I needed it on Full Recharge (Fire/Storm/Primal controller) which is stuffed full of Force Feedback +Recharge procs... speaking of, it would be great if Mighty Leap took KB enhancements.  But I digress... 

 

Weaken Resolve is nice for finishing off a boss that's still lingering around well after all their subordinates have been gassed; it kind of plays into the recovery scheme I need on a character that's frequently waay above 300% recharge - just throw Weaken Resolve at them, and let the pseudopets finish the job while I take a breather.