Drastically increase the radius of team shielding powers

[Aean]

Team shielding powers are a staple of 4 different support sets, but I think in their current iteration they are needlessly tedious to maintain. As of right now, shields are applied to the whole party except the user (fine - I'm not asking for direct power increase) and last for 4 minutes (I wish it were longer, but this is acceptable) which means they need to reapplied 2-3 times per mission at least.

The problem is that even though casting a shield has a good range, the range of which other allies in the area are shielded is only 30 feet. At the start of a mission this is no problem, but since it is necessary to reapply these effects mid mission you very often have people who are just out of range. This may sound like a weird nitpick, but Sonic Resonance and Force Field shield buffs are hard to distinguish on the buff bar and its hard to visually check the whole party. All of these factors combined means its very easy to let shields lapse on one or more players simply because they stood slightly too far away and you didn't see.

 

In a perfect world, I would love for shields to be a toggle aura that passively affected allies besides the other in a wide radius, but I am under the impression that the current version of shielding powers was at least to some degree deliberate. Instead, I ask that we get the following change.

All shield spells (Sonic Resonance, Thermal Radiation, Force Field, Cold Domination) changed from:

80 foot cast range, 30 foot area of effect

To:
30 foot cast range, 80 foot area of effect

 

In a perfect world, I think these shielding spells would be an always on toggle or some other way to remove the need to repeatedly refresh them, but if this is going to remain part of the design paradigm I would strongly plead that they be made easier to maintain on parties who aren't necessarily all clumped together.

[Greycat]

It's ... one fast recharging click. Or two.  It's even AOE now. Which, mind you, means as a buffer I can't skip the people who don't want it or need it. And yes, I've had people complain - only thing they can do is get out of range.

 

And I certainly wouldn't want to switch the cast and effect range. I do *not* want a squishy buffer getting closer to the enemies.

 

Honestly, if someone else is running off doing their own thing, their safety is on them.  If they run out of range and die? Then they should be staying with the team.

[Rudra]

@Greycat beat me to it.

[Trickshooter]

They're already so much more convenient to reapply than they originally were, having to activate them a second or even third time just because some people are further away is just not really an issue to most players, I think. Having lived through the dark ages of asking a team to stop so you can click one power 8 times, and then another power 8 more times... being able to buff the whole team (or whole LEAGUE) by clicking each power once still feels almost too generous 13 years later.

[Luminara]

29 minutes ago, Aean said:

In a perfect world, I think these shielding spells would be an always on toggle or some other way to remove the need to repeatedly refresh them, but if this is going to remain part of the design paradigm I would strongly plead that they be made easier to maintain on parties who aren't necessarily all clumped together.

 

Click buffs having some limitations, like duration and radius, are critical to maintaining balance with debuffs (which is already skewed in favor of buffs).

 

Example:  you have to refresh Deflection Shield once every 4 minutes, and the +Defense is viable against all enemies for that duration, even if those enemies are ambushes, or from another spawn, or summoned.  A TA/* defender has to use Flash Arrow every spawn, and every 60s if a fight lasts longer than that, and has 0% mitigation against any enemy which isn't debuffed (such as ambushes, other spawns or summoned foes).

 

Balance before QoL.

[tidge]

2 hours ago, Trickshooter said:

They're already so much more convenient to reapply than they originally were, having to activate them a second or even third time just because some people are further away is just not really an issue to most players, I think.