Defender buffs and why can’t we use them

[Spectre7878]

I never understood why player that use powers like force fields, cold domination, thermal radiation etc etc. can not use their own buffs. Would it really make defender, corruptors, masterminds, and controllers, that much more powerful? 
 

i have always wanted to be able to use my own deflection and insulation fields on my self. 
 

 

[nihilii]

25 minutes ago, Spectre7878 said:

Would it really make defender, corruptors, masterminds, and controllers, that much more powerful? 

 

That is the reasoning. Ally buffs have higher values than personal buffs, be it in pure strength or in access (fast recharge, etc.).

 

 

[Without_Pause]

Get on an all support team and then think about those characters also being able to self buff. A Cold defender could cake walk to the soft cap.

[arcane]

2 hours ago, Spectre7878 said:

Would it really make defender, corruptors, masterminds, and controllers, that much more powerful? 
 

 

Yes.

[electric_emu]

Yeah, it would.  Just look at the numbers.

 

Example: A Defender's (unslotted) Deflection Shield gives 15% defense to smashing, lethal, AND melee.  Plus huge Toxic resistance. The buff lasts for 4 minutes for a cost of about 8 endurance (rounding up).  This is just as good if not better than any single basic Tanker toggle for a fraction of a fraction of the endurance cost with the only downside being you need to refresh it every 4 minutes.  

 

And that's an example with an ally buff that's not even particularly amazing.  Imagine Speed Boost, Painbringer, Adrenaline Boost, or Temporal Selection.

 

 

[SeraphimKensai]

I'm not opposed to the idea but any self buffs would have to be balanced.

 

Here's a question I asked myself that I found interesting: How would Absorb Pain work if you were able to target yourself?

[UltraAlt]

5 hours ago, Spectre7878 said:

Would it really make defender, corruptors, masterminds, and controllers, that much more powerful? 

 

Yes.

You do have a very strong Personal Force Field to shield yourself with forcefield.  https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Force_Field#Personal_Force_Field

I know you can't fight with it on, but "The Personal Force Field is almost impenetrable to all attacks, even Psionics and Enemy Teleportation..."

 

I agree that the other shield sets don't grant a shield to shield the caster. The other sets probably didn't get one because people complained about "how useless" personal force field is. 

Myself, I take it and I slot it on my forcefield defenders and controllers. I find it to be useful when I need it.

[Panache]

1 hour ago, SeraphimKensai said:

I'm not opposed to the idea but any self buffs would have to be balanced.

 

Here's a question I asked myself that I found interesting: How would Absorb Pain work if you were able to target yourself?

 

The heal has a .5 second delay but the self-damage and Heal Resistance don't, so Absorb Pain would basically do nothing but hurt and cost you End. 🙂

 

[SeraphimKensai]

4 minutes ago, Panache said:

 

The heal has a .5 second delay but the self-damage and Heal Resistance don't, so Absorb Pain would basically do nothing but hurt and cost you End. 🙂

 

Seems balanced to me.

[Panache]

8 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Seems balanced to me.

 

I'd be super down to use Share Pain on myself for a persistent +61.25% to Damage when soloing my Pain Def. 🙂

EDIT: I have a tricked out Pain/Sonic that gave me new respect for that Primary set as a duo/small team beast. Alone, I can’t take down a Pylon. With the T4 Carnie pets (I forget which branch; it’s a Dark Ring Mistress and an invulnerable support with Thermal buffs), I get sub-60 second times. Nothing to write home about for Big League DPS, but damn, that’s some decent force multiplication for “sexier Empathy”

Edited August 3, 2023 by Panache

[SwitchFade]

Way too overpowered. Defenders can hit caps without buffing themselves, can cap out teams in various ways.... Self buff on top? Then it's just silly.

[Hedgefund2]

I don't know if talking about other servers abstractly is frowned upon, but one of them allows buff sets to apply ally buffs to the caster.  I don't even remember which server it is so I couldn't name names if I wanted to.

[Without_Pause]

1 hour ago, Hedgefund2 said:

I don't know if talking about other servers abstractly is frowned upon, but one of them allows buff sets to apply ally buffs to the caster.  I don't even remember which server it is so I couldn't name names if I wanted to.

Considering the Wind control thread got rezzed, I'm not so sure talking about other servers is that big of a no no. Numbers would need to be looked at because if it is just a straight self buff, then yeah, that's an incredibly unbalanced way to do it. It also doesn't mean Homecoming is or should do it as well. The game is so incredibly weighted towards characters these days I can't imagine adding in more ways to buff characters. Do we really want 4-star content to be equivalent to +4/x8 PI radios?

[Captain Fabulous]

/powercreep

[00Troy00]

On 8/2/2023 at 4:58 AM, Spectre7878 said:

I never understood why player that use powers like force fields, cold domination, thermal radiation etc etc. can not use their own buffs. Would it really make defender, corruptors, masterminds, and controllers, that much more powerful? 
 

i have always wanted to be able to use my own deflection and insulation fields on my self. 
 

 

I agree.

 

I've always found it asinine that that buffs applied to others can't be used on myself

[biostem]

On 8/2/2023 at 7:58 AM, Spectre7878 said:

i have always wanted to be able to use my own deflection and insulation fields on my self. 

Play anything with Energy Aura - it's basically the same thing.

[Panache]

…ok, but if you *could* target yourself with teammate buffs, what would be the dumbest combo? And are we extending this to pool powers?

[Without_Pause]

Dumbest in what regard? I was thinking for overpowered and while Sonic is in the running as capping Resist is harder, Thermal is right there, but with heals as well. Cold and FF are basically soft capping Def which can be done easily enough in the needed areas so in the realm of self buffing,  

[Panache]

Dumbest as in most broken, yeah. I think this would actually serve Masterminds the best. Just being able to put your set’s version of Clear Mind on yourself is huge.

[Captain Fabulous]

I can see not allowing us to target ourselves with single target buffs. But I think all team buffs should be flagged to apply to caster as well, things like bubbles, resistance shields, Speed Boost, etc. And from a technical aspect it's super easy to do, it's a literally just a flag in the database. I don't see it being as game breaking as the powercreep people think it will be (I mean, is anything really as game breaking as they think it would be?), and of course can be balanced appropriately if needed. It's not a very long list of powers either.

[Psyonico]

Most over powered would probably be empathy if you could cast it on yourself.  Adrenaline Boost + Clear Mind + Fortitude = SR defender with permanent Instant Healing.

[Without_Pause]

30 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Speed Boost

Kins don't really need to be Speed Boosted. They are that by default.

[arcane]

Imagine thinking Kins and Colds should be buffed.

[Solarverse]

I used to feel the same way. Thematically it made no sense...powerful enough to cast it on others, but somehow just never could grasp how to cast it on yourself. Then somebody reminded me that we can cast Personal Force Field on ourselves.

The only way I would agree to a bubbler casting these bubbles on themselves, is if Personal Force Field was reduced to a toggle and had the values adjusted accordingly.

 

However, if we did this, other people would complain that the same can't be done for Thermal, Ice or Sonic and that would open up a whole new can of worms.

[Without_Pause]

1 minute ago, arcane said:

Imagine thinking Kins and Colds should be buffed.

Kins essentially already are buffed. You are really only looking at ID as something they don't currently benefit from.

 

People are also missing the fact that TA would completely miss out on self-buffing the caster.