Overhaul Kinetics for Masterminds

[TygerDarkstorm]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

Also there IS now at least one power in which Kb2Kd does turn off repel, Force Field>Repulsion Field. Maybe also Storm Blast>Jet Stream, I don’t remember.

Ah yes, if you use Jet Stream within Storm Cell it will KD instead of repel I believe.

 

Thank you all for clarifying.

[kelika2]

8 hours ago, macskull said:

If you think FS “nullifies the rest of the set” I have a bridge to sell you.

lemme guess you think people still care about speed boost once their IOs kick in?  the +recharge isnt needed if you already have permahasten

but you been around for awhile so lets assume you mean 1v8 fights and siphon power can-  nope lore pets

people forget transfusion does not stack for -regen with the same caster

increase density has some use early levels but

 

we can stop pretending that there are other powers besides fulcrum in kinetics?

like

we are having more and more sets where you can select one power and another power is locked out but still technically a set has 10 powers in it

if they can add powers beyond 9, that means they can probably maybe kinda sorta have less than 9 powers

and if players could have the option, they would only select fulcrum shift from kinetics and have it be the only power set in the game thats a one power wonder

 

fulcrum shift is just too strong

just like perma unstoppable

just like.. im too tired to make a list and most people will ignore this and brush this post off as they go back giggling fulcrumming themselves and dropping rains and or nukes because its OP

[Captain Fabulous]

2 hours ago, Rudra said:

Doesn't it pre-date the repel mechanic?

Yep!

[Psyonico]

25 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

lets assume you mean 1v8 fights and siphon power can-  nope lore pets

Wtf does lore pets have to do with siphon power supposedly being worthless?

 

also, there’s a lot of content post-fulcrum shift but pre-lore, so whatever you might have meant from that comment still doesn’t hold water.

 

26 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

people forget transfusion does not stack for -regen with the same caster

If only transfusion did something other than -regen… maybe if it did an AoE heal it’d be more useful?

 

28 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

increase density has some use early levels but

It’s useful for anyone pre-clarion, which I would remind you is a fair bit of the game.  Also, since the meta is cycling Barrier, clarion isn’t always a guarantee.

 

29 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

lemme guess you think people still care about speed boost once their IOs kick in?  the +recharge isnt needed if you already have permahasten

Again… lots of game before people are fully IO’d out, and even still, some builds have endurance issues even with IOs, having a kin can mean slotting an alpha other than Cardiac.

 

I’m not going to get into an argument whether FS is too strong or not, but the set *does* provide more than just FS.

[kelika2]

2 hours ago, Psyonico said:

Wtf does lore pets have to do with siphon power supposedly being worthless?

because for content below level 49 you really need to go out of your way and try to fail an AV

and at 50 everything gets lore pets dropped on it

[Psyonico]

Ok, I don’t know what you’re smoking, but can I have some?

[lemming]

12 hours ago, kelika2 said:

lemme guess you think people still care about speed boost once their IOs kick in? 

Yea, this is BS.   I mean, I tend to build my chars to not worry about endurance, but even then, speed boost allows me to totally ignore it.  And I know plenty of people that still need it.   (And since it's available at the stage a lot of people have end issues anyway)

[kelika2]

16 hours ago, Psyonico said:

Ok, I don’t know what you’re smoking, but can I have some?

all im asking is that you stop lying to yourself

[Maelwys]

On 6/9/2025 at 4:46 AM, kelika2 said:

we can stop pretending that there are other powers besides fulcrum in kinetics?

 

Not for MMs, no.

 

Increase Density, for example, is actually one of the best powers in the set for them (because its' Mez protection and Resistance buff benefits all your henchmen; and there is such a negligible performance hit for the MM themselves to spam it given their low damage scalars). Likewise Speed Boost is useful not for the recharge buff but for the recovery increase - plenty of henchmen ordinarily run themselves dry once upgraded, and Transference is much less useful for Ranged sets.

 

Siphon Power and Siphon Speed are useful also. SP helps keep your flock at the Damage cap whenever mob density is lower; and both provide useful damage mitigation vs tougher targets like AVs.

 

And as for Transfusion... srsly? It's a powerful AoE heal with a -Regen debuff on a set with Henchmen.

 

Repel is dogturd, granted. Even whenever I extensively prodded at it after the Bonfire nerfs I was unable to get it to a point where it was providing useful damage mitigation via Knockdown, and it practically requires constant Transference spam.

 

Personally I still think that Kinetics on a MM (and specifically a Robotics MM) is the best and most effective flavour of Kinetics. Everything (including you) sits at the Defense softcap constantly, with extremely high damage resistances, Mez protection, self-healing capability, etc. never mind being able to cap your own damage and floor an AV's Regeneration. The only downside is that it's extremely busy.

 

 

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Maelwys said:

Increase Density, for example, is actually one of the best powers in the set for them (because its' Mez protection and Resistance buff benefits all your henchmen

iirc the Mez protection is single target only, though the Resistance buff is AoE, at least on Defenders

[Rudra]

10 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

iirc the Mez protection is single target only, though the Resistance buff is AoE, at least on Defenders

CoD backs you up.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=mastermind_buff.kinetics.increase_density&at=mastermind

 

[Maelwys]

23 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

iirc the Mez protection is single target only, though the Resistance buff is AoE, at least on Defenders

True.

But in the (rare) event that all your henchmen need preemptive mez protection then it's quite possible to keep ID up on all of them (and/or on all of your squishier teammates) individually... although it's annoying to have to mentally keep track of who has it because there is no difference in the buff icons. On a different AT where your character's offensive performance is gated by their own attack animations; spamming short-duration buffs results in a pretty major offensive performance hit - but that's not true on a /Kinetics MM as you can still issue orders to your henchmen in the middle of animation cycles. Which is why I noted that "there is such a negligible performance hit for the MM themselves to spam it given their low damage scalars".

 

Although to be fair IMO the Resistance Buff is ordinarily sufficient; especially if you're running Clarion.


_{(and if you're Bots/ then you really should be running Radial Clarion...)}

[kelika2]

damn, its worse than i thought

[Psyonico]

3 hours ago, kelika2 said:

damn, its worse than i thought

Again just because 1 power is really good (or possibly even OP) does not mean the rest of the set is bad.

 

That’s kind of like saying a 7 course gourmet meal was terrible because your favorite part was the Crème Brûlée 

[Sharh]

I agree with kelika2. Fulcrum been broken OP for 21 years.

[Wavicle]

Fulcrum is OP, Kinetics overall is good. But if FS were nerfed it wouldn’t be.

 

 Nerf FS, buff Inertial Reduction and Repel.

[macskull]

On 6/8/2025 at 8:46 PM, kelika2 said:

lemme guess you think people still care about speed boost once their IOs kick in?  the +recharge isnt needed if you already have permahasten

but you been around for awhile so lets assume you mean 1v8 fights and siphon power can-  nope lore pets

people forget transfusion does not stack for -regen with the same caster

increase density has some use early levels but

 

we can stop pretending that there are other powers besides fulcrum in kinetics?

like

I'm like 99% sure you're trolling at this point but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

1. Siphon Power: eh, sure, this one's kinda meh aside from stacking -dmg against a single target. I see a lot of people skip it and I don't blame them.
2. Transfusion: it's not much -regen but it's something. It's also a pretty solid heal and a decent endurance drain.
3. Repel: yeah, you got that one. Easy skip.
4. Siphon Speed: an unresisted -spd/-rech power that gives the caster completely unsuppressed run speed. What's not to like?
5. Increase Density: the only ally knockback, repel, and teleport protection power in the game aside from Clarion. A great mule for the resistance IO set uniques.
6. Speed Boost: even if I don't need the +recharge I get recovery, slow resist, end drain resist, and unsuppressed run speed. Discounting SB because "I already have enough recharge" is crazy talk.
7. Inertial Reduction: unsuppressed jump speed and height and the best jump control power in the game. A great mule for some KB protection.
8. Transference: the other half of your end drain kit, and since you can't SB yourself it's what you use to keep your own endurance topped off.
9. Fulcrum Shift: no explanation needed.

So, yeah, only 2 of the 9 powers in the set are skips and you can probably even argue that one of those two has a place.

[Wavicle]

6 minutes ago, macskull said:

Increase Density: the only ally knockback, repel, and teleport protection power in the game aside from Clarion.

Side note, I don't disagree with your other points, Electrical Affinity>Faraday Cage is also an ally buff with kb, repel, and tp protection, and protects the caster as well.

Edited Wednesday at 04:18 AM by Wavicle

[macskull]

1 minute ago, Wavicle said:

Side note, I don't disagree with your other points, Electrical Affinity>Faraday Cage is also an ally buff with kb, repel, and tp protection, and protects the caster as well.

While true, Faraday Cage is location-based and will require continuous re-casting every 15ish seconds if the team is moving.

[Psyonico]

Also, fun fact:

 

I’m more likely to judge a kin on their ability to keep SB up than I am on their FS skills.

 

simply put, I don’t spend 100% or my time on fully IO’d out end game builds, and since I don’t, I see value in all team buffs.

[Wavicle]

15 minutes ago, macskull said:

While true, Faraday Cage is location-based and will require continuous re-casting every 15ish seconds if the team is moving.

Yea, it’s not superior, just differently valuable. I only mentioned it because it exists, not to make some greater point.

[kelika2]

7 hours ago, macskull said:

I'm like 99% sure you're trolling at this point but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

1. Siphon Power: eh, sure, this one's kinda meh aside from stacking -dmg against a single target. I see a lot of people skip it and I don't blame them.
2. Transfusion: it's not much -regen but it's something. It's also a pretty solid heal and a decent endurance drain.
3. Repel: yeah, you got that one. Easy skip.
4. Siphon Speed: an unresisted -spd/-rech power that gives the caster completely unsuppressed run speed. What's not to like?
5. Increase Density: the only ally knockback, repel, and teleport protection power in the game aside from Clarion. A great mule for the resistance IO set uniques.
6. Speed Boost: even if I don't need the +recharge I get recovery, slow resist, end drain resist, and unsuppressed run speed. Discounting SB because "I already have enough recharge" is crazy talk.
7. Inertial Reduction: unsuppressed jump speed and height and the best jump control power in the game. A great mule for some KB protection.
8. Transference: the other half of your end drain kit, and since you can't SB yourself it's what you use to keep your own endurance topped off.
9. Fulcrum Shift: no explanation needed.

So, yeah, only 2 of the 9 powers in the set are skips and you can probably even argue that one of those two has a place.

there is no trolling, there is just experience from playing the game

1 alot of people dont like talking about it but enemies resist debuffs, -dmg sounds cool but carry around a power analyzer

4 because the extra runspeed is annoying and there really is such a thing as too much recharge

5 some of us are just finding out many of those effects are single target only

6 having enough end is also an argument.  and there is a reason the old devs gave us the ability to turn off outside runspeed buffs

7 we both know that this is skippable, if kinetics were to ever get revamped it would get axed for something totally new, or at the very least 99.9% new so i can avoid forum based lawsuits like chemical cleaner commercials

8 outside of stuff like freakshow maps or other end drainers i barely touch it and on some of my kin characters i dont even take it

 

i mean, if you want kinetics to be left alone because of how easy it is to cap damage with a single caster 99.9% of the time just say so, but stop trying to convince me that the other powers are anywhere near the usefulness of fulcrum.  especially with newer support sets shining harder

[golstat2003]

19 hours ago, Wavicle said:

Fulcrum is OP, Kinetics overall is good. But if FS were nerfed it wouldn’t be.

 

 Nerf FS, buff Inertial Reduction and Repel.

 

The second you nerf FS, overall, kinetics is waaaaaaay less useful in my opinion, even if you buffed IR an Repel.

 

Repel is actually pretty good on kinetics farming builds. (Gives some bit of safety from my experience).

 

EDIT: Honestly I don't think Kinetics needs any changes in general, but I can see making it slightly different for MMs.

Edited Wednesday at 02:34 PM by golstat2003

[golstat2003]

9 hours ago, Psyonico said:

Also, fun fact:

 

I’m more likely to judge a kin on their ability to keep SB up than I am on their FS skills.

 

simply put, I don’t spend 100% or my time on fully IO’d out end game builds, and since I don’t, I see value in all team buffs.

 

Eh, I don't play low end enough these days to care about SB. With that said when I do, I think ID, transfusion, and transference (at the level ranges where available to the Kin, depending if primary or secondary) are more useful IMO.

[macskull]

2 hours ago, kelika2 said:

i mean, if you want kinetics to be left alone because of how easy it is to cap damage with a single caster 99.9% of the time just say so, but stop trying to convince me that the other powers are anywhere near the usefulness of fulcrum.  especially with newer support sets shining harder

You could completely remove Fulcrum Shift and Kinetics would still be one of the better support sets for the reasons I outlined above.

Edited Wednesday at 02:52 PM by macskull