Focused Feedback: New Powerset - Psionic Armor (Brutes, Scrappers, Sentinels, Stalkers, Tankers)

[The Curator]

New Powerset: Psionic Armor (Brutes, Scrappers, Sentinels, Stalkers, Tankers)
 

 

You use your psionic powers to shield yourself reducing incoming damage, as well as steal your foes own psyche and use it against them, be it by empowering your own regenerative powers, weakening their defenses or completely subduing their will!

 

 Psychic Wall

• Toggle: Self +Res(Smash, Lethal, Psionic)
• You focus to create a psychic wall that dampens the smashing, lethal and psionic damage.

 

 Psionic Shield

• Toggle: Self +Res(Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative, Toxic, End Drain)
• This power generates a psionic shield that dampens most energy and elemental damage types while also reducing the effect of endurance drain effects.
  • Now grants Toxic resistance.

 

 Impenetrable Mind

• Toggle: Self Res (Psionics, Disorient, Hold, Immobilize, Sleep, Fear, Confuse, Knockback).
• When you toggle on this power, it grants protection from Sleep, Disorient, Fear, Immobilize, Confusions, Knockback and Hold effects. Indomitable Will also grants moderate resistance to Psionic based attacks.

 

 Consume Psyche

• PBAoE Foe -Regen, -Recovery; Self +Regen, +Recovery
• Only available to Tankers and Brutes
• You Consume the Psyche of nearby foes, thus weakening their Hit Point Regeneration and Endurance Recovery and boosting your own. Although this power has a low recharge, each affected foe will increase its recharge by 5.5 seconds for a maximum total of 60 seconds.

 

 Devour Psyche

• Cone Foe -Regen, -Heal, -Recovery; Self +Regen, +Recovery
• Only available to Scrappers, Sentinels and Stalkers
• You Devour the Psyche of foes in front of you, weakening their Hit Point Regeneration and Endurance Recovery and boosting your own. Although this power has a low recharge, each affected foe will increase its recharge by 5.5 seconds for a maximum total of 60 seconds.

 

 Precognition

• Auto: Self Def(Melee, Ranged, AoE, Psionic)
• Precognition allows you to read your enemies' minds, letting you see their attacks before they happen. This power is always on and costs no Endurance.
  • Doubled Psionic defense

 

 Psychokinetic Barrier

• Self, +Absorb, +Res(-Regeneration, +MaxHP, -Recovery, -Recharge, -Endurance)
• You can erect a temporary wall of crystalized psionic energy that will absorb a large amount of damage before breaking off. Psychokinetic Barrier will grant a moderate amount of absorption and reduce the effect debuffs have on you.
  • Power now applies a 10% max HP buff in addition to it's other effects.

 

 Impose Presence

• Toggle: Self +DEF(Melee, Ranged), +To Hit, Foe -Recharge
• Only available to Tankers and Brutes
• Impose Presence your presence on nearby enemies, slowing their attack rate down and increasing your defense and chance to hit.

 

 Mask Presence 

• Toggle: Self Stealth, +DEF(Melee, Ranged)
• Only Available to Scrappers and Sentinels
• Mask Presence makes you almost impossible to detect. When you attack or are damaged while using this power, you will be discovered. Even if discovered, you are hard to see and retain some bonus to Defense. While stealthed, the strength of your next attack will be more powerful; however, you can only attempt this after spending 8 seconds without attacking.

 

 Aura of Insanity

• Toggle: PBAoE, Foe Confuse, Disorient, Sleep, Hold, Fear, DoT(Psionic), +Special
• You emit a powerful psychic aura that causes the minds of those around you to become weak and distracted. Foes may be stunned, held, terrified or even confused in your presence, in addition to suffering a debuff derived from the applied control effect. Those that resist these effects will suffer damage over time. This power allows you to use your own Hit Points to keep enemies near you disabled. The power costs no endurance but can be dangerous to use.
  • Fixed a bug making the power's fear magnitude too low.

 

 Memento Mori

• Self Rez, +Max HP, Special
• Terrify your foes projecting images of their own impending demise into their minds. Memento Memori inflicts fear on targets while healing you even if you have been defeated. Each affected foe will increase your maximum hit points and heal you. Although this power has a low recharge, each affected foe will increase its recharge by 29 seconds for a maximum total of 300 seconds. Using this power while defeated will always result in a 300 seconds recharge.
  • This power no longer has adaptive recharge.
  • This power now recharges in 10 seconds if no targets are hit, otherwise it recharges in 300s
  • No longer inflicts damage.
  • Power is now Auto Hit

 

Tanker/Brute: Psychic Wall Psionic Shield Impenetrable Mind Consume Psyche Impose Presence Psychokinetic Barrier Precognition Aura of Insanity Memento Mori

Scrapper/Sentinels: Psychic Wall Psionic Shield Mask Presence Impenetrable Mind Devour Psyche Precognition Psychokinetic Barrier Aura of Insanity Memento Mori

Stalkers: Hide Psychic Wall Psionic Shield Impenetrable Mind Devour Psyche Precognition Psychokinetic Barrier Aura of Insanity Memento Mori

[BrandX]

Oh, Toxic resist added.  That'll be nice.

 

Hmmm...I wasn't having issues with Memento Mori as it was, but will have to go around dying now to see how it is.  🙂

 

Or was it maybe powerful the other way?

[Lazarillo]

In light of changes to Memento Mori, I'm gonna repeat a bit on what I posted last night: I'm not trying to knock that it can be used even when not defeated, but...why use it when not defeated?  The heal is piddly and the control barely lasts.  And then you need a 5-minute Recharge to use it again?  I almost feel like maybe it shouldn't be usable when standing, because it feels kinda like a trap that you could waste by hitting the wrong button.  That, or it needs hella more healing.

 

I'm also gonna once again note that Devour Psyche is pretty underwhelming, and on Scraps/Stalks should probably trade an unnecessarily large AoE for some moderate (similar to a other melee cones) damage.

 

 

[Super Atom]

10 hours ago, The Curator said:

• This power no longer has adaptive recharge.
• This power now recharges in 10 seconds if no targets are hit, otherwise it recharges in 300s

 

undo this part

 

ty

 

quick edit for expanding; It's just less fun when you don't want to waste it vs using it for a small boost on lower enemies. 

Edited Wednesday at 01:06 AM by Super Atom

[Sigma7]

Is Memento Mori Supposed to give you invulnerability like the other tier 9 resurrection powers?

 

It's still not giving invulnerability in the new build but when I look at the description it's the only tier 9 resurrection power that does not specifically Mention invulnerability in the description.

 

If this is intentional this would pretty much make it the worst tier 9 resurrection power. My guess is that it initially lacked the invulnerability in exchange for the adaptive recharge but now that adaptive recharge is gone it feels like the power is left with the worst of both worlds. 

 

[BrandX]

I miss the adaptive recharge.  No real point of casting it with no enemies around, so the adaptive recharge was nice.  Bigger heal, bigger recharge.

 

Don't notice the removal of damage.  Never used it for damage anyways.

 

Didn't mind the accuracy check before, but auto hit with no damage seems fine.

[BrandX]

2 minutes ago, BrandX said:

Couldn't delete this accidental quote

 

Edited Tuesday at 11:12 PM by BrandX

[Xandyr]

 Memento Mori

• Self Rez, +Max HP, Special
• Terrify your foes projecting images of their own impending demise into their minds. Memento Memori inflicts fear on targets while healing you even if you have been defeated. Each affected foe will increase your maximum hit points and heal you. Although this power has a low recharge, each affected foe will increase its recharge by 29 seconds for a maximum total of 300 seconds. Using this power while defeated will always result in a 300 seconds recharge.
  • This power no longer has adaptive recharge.
  • This power now recharges in 10 seconds if no targets are hit, otherwise it recharges in 300s
  • No longer inflicts damage.
  • Power is now Auto Hit

 

 

When you clock on the "More Info" tab in game, it still shows that it accepts Melee AoE Damage sets and Universal Damage sets. It also still says it accepts Damage and Accuracy Enhancements. This needs to be removed. It should only accept Healing/Heal Sets, Endurance/End Sets, and Recharge,right?

[Koopak]

So first blush testing against some awakened PPD. Overall changes are, expectedly, minor. The set was in a good spot to begin so glad to not see drastic changes.

main notes:

Psychokinetic Barrier: The new Maxhp buff doesn't stack so its minor, about the same as a single target Memento Mori or two large +maxhp set bonuses, little less than an unbreakable guard. Defonitly helps, doesn't hurt, no huge changes in performance on a kitted build.

Momento Mori: Sad to see the dynamic recharge go, its pushing me to be much more reserved with when to use it, often preferring to just save it for death since i cant rely on it being up when i need it as much. This may change some if the first target gives more value or something but the risk of using it on anything other than an opener or a still big batch of mobs is to high and makes it arguably terrible in a main boss fight scenario.

an aside:

Here and a few other places iv seen questions about why some powers get small smatterings of damage that aren't enough to care about much. I feel there's some insight to be gleaned form another common complaint about this and sets like Regeneration, 'clicky' sets. Powers that do SOME damage, ANY damage, inherently mitigate the DPS loss from using them. Even tiny amounts of damage are significantly preferential to 1-1.6 seconds of down time on a rotation. Additionally having damage in the power justifies it accepting damage IO sets, allowing more build options as we seek set bonuses and procs. I'd be amazed if both of these aren't considerations somewhere in the development pipeline.

[Psyonico]

Ok...  Initial comments from build 1 are in spoilers for comparison.

 

Spoiler

First round of testing for me, I'll be comparing a Psionic/Psionic tank to a Willpower/Psionic Tank.  Both using nothing but SOs, except for 3 HOs each, Aura Of Insanity got 3 Acc/Mez HOs for the Psi armor and Dominate got 3 Dam/Mez IOs for the Willpower.

 

I took everything but Concentration and Boggle on the attack side, took every power from both sets on the armor side.  for APP went Psi mastery with Dominate, Harmonic Mind, and Psi tornado.  Also took fly, Tough, Weave, and Combat Jumping on both.  after faceplanting the first time on Psi armor, I opted to slot Agility Core Paragon for both toons.

 

the mission: Radio mission, +1x4 against Arachnos.

 

Psi really struggled to keep up with this.  I was popping Consume Psyche and Psychokinetic Barrier on cooldown.  I used Memento Mori several times throughout the mission as well to stay on my feet.  I face planted against the first group almost immediately, subsequently slotted an alpha and things got a little better, but for a tank I felt pretty weak.  I had to use some strategies that I don''t usually find myself using on tanks.  I had to use Dominate on Mu targets and focus down the one or two that were not held before moving on to anything else or I would bottom out on endurance (yes, even with PKB's -end resistance)

 

Willpower was chosen because it is a pretty good "middle of the road" set.  in the mission I did, my health never dropped below 70%, endurance only almost bottomed out once (fighting 4 mu and I didn't prioritize them at first) but most of the time it was a comfortable, easy ride.  I did not use Strength of Will at all.

 

So... to me Psi armor feels pretty weak, and here's my thinking.  You're layering too many different mediocre mechanics together in hopes that they will stack well.  At a bare minimum, I'd like to see the Smashing/Fire/Cold resists brought up to the level of the other resists in the set.  Probably want to add AoE defense to Impose Presense, maybe even do some front-loaded defense on it like Invincibility gets.  I'd also like to see some of the debuff resistances increased in Psychokinetic Barrier.

 

Build Screenshot:

Spoiler

 

Its... better.  Right now it finally feels like its a middle-of-the-road set.  I performed the same test with the exact same build, except I swapped the accuracy I had in Memento Mori for a 3rd heal.  The test was Arachnos radio mission set at +1x4, I used only SOs and Agility Core Paragon.  I survived.  Not only did I survive, I didn't feel like I was sweating bullets while playing it, which is a far improvement from the first go round.  I still cast Consume Psyche basically on recharge, but that was just to keep up stacks, which for some reason felt like i had an easier time keeping them up this time around.  At first I was only hitting Psychokinetic Barrier about once every other group because my health started to drop, but then I realized the debuff resistance stacks with itself!  So, now I've got 2 defensive powers that I'm casting on recharge, which is less than ideal, but hey, different sets play different ways.

 

I used Memento Mori once or twice because i was starting to take some heavy damage (still no DDR even though at rest, the above build has over 20% defense to M/R/A) but I stayed on my feet and I actually enjoyed the game play.  I'll even go as far as to say I felt like an average tank.

 

so, good job devs, you salvaged the set.

 

I would still like to see some modicum of DDR in Precognition though.

 

 

[Kai Moon]

A few copy-paste bugs on Hide.

 

Stalker secondary -> Psionic Armor -> Hide display_short_help says "+DEF(Melee, Ranged, AoE)". It should say defense to all.

 

 

The long description should be the same as other Hide powers.

 

 

It shouldn't accept end redux enhancements.

Edited Wednesday at 04:00 AM by Kai Moon
additional copypaste bugs

[Kai Moon]

Couple more typos.

 

Impose Presence:

"Impose Presence your presence" -> "Impose your presence"

 

Aura of Insanity:

"enhance it's magnitude" -> "enhance its magnitude"

[MindOverMatter]

14 hours ago, The Curator said:

New Powerset: Psionic Armor (Brutes, Scrappers, Sentinels, Stalkers, Tankers

 

 Some quick notes from a brief testing session on a stalker and tanker.

 

 Psionic Shield

• The Toxic resists are greatly appreciated.

 

 Psychokinetic Barrier

• Although the updated notes say that the additional +HP is 10% Max HP, the amount granted (tested on both a Tanker and a Stalker) is 10% of the Absorb amount granted by this power. 
• Can we bump this power up in the order for Stalkers/Sentinels/Scrappers? It's loaded with survival tools that are deeply more helpful than the passive from Precognition. 

[BrandX]

Loving the set.  The Toxic Resist is nice, it's not to high, but gives it a little leeway.

 

Aura of Insanity still doesn't accept ATO sets.

 

Memento Mori I'm not worried if it does damage or not, but the old heal felt a little more useful than it is now.  As someone else stated, it becomes either used for just big groups or to raise from death.

[Thraxen]

I'd love for the scrap drain to be pbaoe instead of a cone.

[Shin Magmus]

1 hour ago, Thraxen said:

I'd love for the scrap drain to be pbaoe instead of a cone.

Scrap Brain Zone can't be a Cone!

 

[Sigma7]

It would be nice if the devs would chime in on their opinions and goals with this set especially Memento Mori. I'm not asking you to defend anything here and I understand that devs can be hesitant to comment on these things because some players may use those comments against you, however this is a brand new power set and it would be useful to have some input from its creators to give context to our commenting and testing.

 

If I better understood the perspective that went into this set and certain recent decisions it would be easier for me to understand what I should focus on and what I should let go of.

 

Going by the comments, Memento Mori Seems to be the most controversial power in the set. If we're always going to get the same cooldown then we should always get the same amount of heel as well.

[Xandyr]

Still think AoI should do more damage,  and have a chance of a little extra damage against foes not under a mez.

[Super Atom]

1 hour ago, Sigma7 said:

especially Memento Mori

 

I would also like this. It's not that im unwilling to accept it not having adaptive recharge, just if its not going to I'd really like to know what im missing as to why it can't be adaptive.

 

[Wavicle]

This last round of improvements to Psi Armor have helped significantly.

 

My main critique now is that Impose Presence does not "feel" good, compared to other sets taunt aura powers.

 

In other sets the taunt aura has, in addition to taunt, some key element of the sets toolkit, whether its something like Invincibility, a damage aura, or in the case of SR and Regen, just an important part of their basic coverage.

 

Impose Presence doesn't feel that way. Instead it feels like the taunt itself is the most important part of the power, and the other elements are just a bonus. This is because the Defense numbers are low, don't cover AoEs, and the set has no DDR.

 

To put it another way, in other sets you REALLY WANT the power that has the taunt for the other things it offers, and the taunt is either a nice addition, or helps the power to function. Of course you want it for taunt ALSO, but all the other taunt aura powers feel very significant in the kit. In this set you don't really especially need Impose Presence for its buff/debuff qualities. Instead you just feel like you HAVE to take it, because you're a tank.

 

Not sure what the solution is really, but it would be nice to feel like Impose Presence was something really exciting, the same way Invincibility or Against All Odds feel.

[boss]

I have a question and maybe someone here has discussed this with someone, but why does the sentinel and the scrapper get an exclusive damage buff in mask presence and the stalker gets nothing? I didn't mention the Brute, because it gets an exclusive  defensive power the them and the tank. The stalker gets hide, which as far as I could tell is the same hide that every other stalker set has. So, where's the stalkers damage increase? As I see it right now, a stalker with this set is inferior to a scrapper with this same set? If the two sets are supposed to be equal in dps, but you give one a damage increase and not the other, that's a little off. Or give them something else that makes up for it. I don't know a movement speed buff, a to hit buff... something! Am I off on my assumptions?

[Lazarillo]

15 minutes ago, boss said:

So, where's the stalkers damage increase?

In the AT's inherent.  A guaranteed crit (or an Assassin Strike) is still hella more damage than what Scrappers get.  

And if you want additional effects in general, Stalkers' version, like other sets versions of Hide, gets the "AoEs whiff past you on anything other than a Nat.20" Defense buff.

[Dragotect]

Tested it finally...

It was a different playstyle, but I think with the changes to Memento Mori's adaptive recharge it'll lose some of that novel experience as not really worrying about WHEN I used that and knowing if I hit a few it'd be back fairly quickly really helped make the unique style of the set shine, and if I hit a lot I know it did a lot so didn't mind the long recharge. The set is really click heavy. Regen seems passive compared to this one.

Also, it certainly isn't Willpower tier. I was running with a fairly kitted out build and started having concerns at +2 content (+3 with incarnate level shift), while my live brute breezes through +4 with a similarly kitted build and the level shift. I'm not saying you need to make it WP good, but the novel playstyle really off set the whole running at a bit lower level disappointment.

It did work equally well against Carnival of Shadows as other groups though. I don't know if it'd be possible, but with the adaptive recharge thing going on, maybe somehow disconnect the rez aspect of the skill from cooldown or give it instant recharge upon player defeat so you can use it instantly even if it was still on 299 second cooldown so people are less likely to use it ONLY if they go down like most other self rez skills that can also be used outside of rez.

[Sigma7]

I'm running a DM/Psi stalker for testing. 

All of dark melee's AOE attacks are cones And of course Devour Psyche Is a cone as well. So when I'm fighting groups I end up dancing around the edge of the group so that I can always keep everyone in my cone. The problem with that is if I get into trouble and try to pop Memento Mori I end up not getting the full heel because of my positioning. I suspect this isn't a problem for tanks and brutes Because Those ATs are more likely to be surrounded. 

 

If you don't want to do adaptive recharge then that's fine but I hope that you will do something to address this problem. This armor should perform equally across all ATs and not punished The smaller more agile play styles.

[OverkillEngine]

DM/Psi scrapper is what I made for testing for a similar reason - cones mesh with cones better than they do with PBAOES for reasons that should be obvious.

Really wish we were given a choice between a cone version and PBAOE version on a LOT of powers.