Fold Space is too good

[tidge]

11 hours ago, Maelwys said:

On a toon with a Taunt Aura and/or punchvoke; IME Fold Space has only a few very niche situations where it's more efficient than you just instantly moving yourself into the middle of one fresh spawn; firing off a regular AOE; and then instantly moving into the middle of another fresh spawn. Because it has a target cap of 16; and power target selection in CoX always prefers the closest targets so Fold Space will always grab the closest 16 hostile targets (and annoyingly, line them up rather than pack them tightly in around you).

 

Quoting the above, as it neatly summarizes the explanation of my own feels about Fold Space. Without summarizing: I see Fold Space as a niche use power that (for 100% of my characters that dip into the Teleportation pool) isn't required if I take Combat Teleport.

 

I'm glad that the Teleportation pool got a rework. I'm happy that some players like Fold Space. I don't feel like arguing strategies for using it (or not). IMO the opportunity cost (in terms of power picks, slot investment, and likely having to use Teleport as my travel power) makes it too costly for my taste. I don't think Fold Space needs to be scaled back.

[dukedukes]

7 hours ago, Psyonico said:

One of the things I love about this game is that nothing is required.  No content requires specific team compositions, for example.  After sunset I found my way to Elder Scrolls Online, which is a fine game but content requires specific team makeups.  If you queue for a dungeon, the game requires you to be flagged as a tank, healer, or DPS, and random queues always put together 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 DPS.  Even if you try to queue as a pre-made 4 man team, the game requires  1 player is a tank, 1 player is a healer and 2 players are DPS. Now, you can avoid the queue system and travel to the dungeons manually, and then it doesn’t matter how your team is flagged (or if you even have a team) but most of the DLC dungeons (the harder content in the game) are designed that if you don’t have this makeup, you will fail.  DPS checks exist, heal checks exist, 1-shot mechanics exist for non-tanks.

 

 Quite frankly, it’s not as fun as being able to just go “well, let’s see who’s online and wants to do X”.

 

Especially considering the population of HC, I would hate to have requirements of any kind put into the game.  Want to do X content but you can’t find someone in Y class? Too bad!

We're derailing a bit but I agree accessibility is likely more important for COH. My personal taste is different, I would prefer to discover what team compositions work for some difficult content, we have enough alts where we likely have a character that is good for the job, the gripe would instead be playing a character you may not want to play, though there are 8 positions I think you could find one role you like. If a specific 8 man team is required I would see this as a problem, COH should be capable of having a ton of successful team comps. I see this as a more interesting setup for gameplay to happen in.

The bloat of buffs from incarnates and other power creep mechanics dirty up the original formula and take away impact from your power sets. Why debuff to hit if you're def capped from barrier? Why use res powers or def powers. Trivializing defenses, end recovery, recharge, mez protection, these buffs are like god mode. It was power creep to give players something new for the sake of being new to keep the lights on and the ball rolling, I don't think the side-effects of trivializing the game was thought through enough, or the devs had no better option. Like the level shift from alpha, you could read this as +4 being removed from the game granted +4 would have issues, seems like many powers are balanced for +3 in terms of magnitudes but you get the idea I assume. Making all this stuff cheap and accessible leads us to this damage meta. Healers have nothing to heal, mez is mostly useless, shields don't matter much, debuffs other than -res generally don't have much impact. Blasters can jump into a pack, eat the alpha, live, and 1 shot nearly everything. It frustrates me people would look over this and embrace their accessibility but that's where we're at and I accept it.
 

 

1 hour ago, tidge said:

 

Quoting the above, as it neatly summarizes the explanation of my own feels about Fold Space. Without summarizing: I see Fold Space as a niche use power that (for 100% of my characters that dip into the Teleportation pool) isn't required if I take Combat Teleport.

 

I'm glad that the Teleportation pool got a rework. I'm happy that some players like Fold Space. I don't feel like arguing strategies for using it (or not). IMO the opportunity cost (in terms of power picks, slot investment, and likely having to use Teleport as my travel power) makes it too costly for my taste. I don't think Fold Space needs to be scaled back.

It's utility so I don't expect it to be required for your character to function. I guess people don't like TP as a travel power, it's my favourite personally. Not sure if I've ever taken a fly power, not in a decade at least. The problem is less about it being mandatory and more about it being the go to power for any situation where there's spread out mobs, I'd rather see AT's who specialize in controlling mobs to do their job, like a tank taunting, etc. Power pools shouldn't be able to dominate how an entire team engages in a fight, that's too much power.

[tidge]

1 hour ago, dukedukes said:

It's utility so I don't expect it to be required for your character to function. I guess people don't like TP as a travel power, it's my favourite personally. Not sure if I've ever taken a fly power, not in a decade at least. The problem is less about it being mandatory and more about it being the go to power for any situation where there's spread out mobs, I'd rather see AT's who specialize in controlling mobs to do their job, like a tank taunting, etc. Power pools shouldn't be able to dominate how an entire team engages in a fight, that's too much power.

 

From the multiple threads started in the suggestion forum, and the level of your engagement within those threads... I get the sense that you are passionate about the Teleportation pool. My blunt opinion about Fold Space is that it doesn't dominate entire team engagements, because it has a base 120 second recharge. If a character has invested three power picks to get Fold Space, and invests another power pick to get Hasten and/or invests slots into Fold Space for Accuracy and Recharge... those sorts of characters are IMO "throwing good after bad" just to get Fold Space to reach levels of (what I consider to be) "base utility". Good for them! This is a perfectly fine choice; I don't see that choice as unbalanced, it just isn't a choice I ever make.(*1)

 

I don't even consider Fold Space to be "the go-to power for spread out mobs"(*2)... for a 3rd pick pool power I'd go Wall of Force from the Force of Will pool every time. The pros of Teleportation are Combat Teleport (which as I noted, makes Fold Space practically irrelevant for a melee character) and the greater range of Fold Space. The pros of Force of Will are a great travel power in Mighty Leap, and the other pre-req pick is either a useful debuff or a ST ranged attack (I usually skip Project Will, but not always) and a Cone attack that allows for lots of different flavor (and includes a Knockdown!)... plus Force of Will's capstone power Unleash Potential is preeety goood.

 

(*1) At some point, the player using Fold Space as often as possible simply ends up leaving spawns "spread out" either because of failed ToHit checks, +4 Bosses, whatever. For solo, they may not care, but on teams the eyes will roll, depending on what sort of powers the rest of the team has.

 

(*2) As noted... I just use Combat Teleport to BAMF to those "spread out enemies".

[arcane]

The OP may or may not be right. I’d just be pissed if one of the seven powers I take on every single character now (Hasten/SS/CJ/SJ/TP/CT/FS) got nuked from orbit to such an extent that a respec felt necessary. Because that alone would burden me an order of magnitude more than even the current huge page in beta would. But I acknowledge that’s not an actual argument to the developers.

[lemming]

8 minutes ago, arcane said:

The OP may or may not be right. I’d just be pissed if one of the seven powers I take on every single character now (Hasten/SS/CJ/SJ/TP/CT/FS) got nuked from orbit to such an extent that a respec felt necessary. Because that alone would burden me an order of magnitude more than even the current huge page in beta would. But I acknowledge that’s not an actual argument to the developers.

Yea, I get respec fatigue.  I still have chars with the need to respec because of the stealth changes.

 

I put Fold Space in if I have the space.  It's handy, but not required.   I find TP Target much more useful, mainly for grabbing teammates, but I like TP as a travel power ever since the rework.   The longer pause before dropping is fantastic.

[Display Name]

On 6/13/2025 at 4:21 PM, Lunar Ronin said:

 

That's why I go a room ahead of the rest of the team while playing melee ATs.  It's the only way I can be assured to actually hit a mob without having it yoinked away.

 

[dukedukes]

4 hours ago, tidge said:

 

From the multiple threads started in the suggestion forum, and the level of your engagement within those threads... I get the sense that you are passionate about the Teleportation pool. My blunt opinion about Fold Space is that it doesn't dominate entire team engagements, because it has a base 120 second recharge. If a character has invested three power picks to get Fold Space, and invests another power pick to get Hasten and/or invests slots into Fold Space for Accuracy and Recharge... those sorts of characters are IMO "throwing good after bad" just to get Fold Space to reach levels of (what I consider to be) "base utility". Good for them! This is a perfectly fine choice; I don't see that choice as unbalanced, it just isn't a choice I ever make.(*1)

 

I don't even consider Fold Space to be "the go-to power for spread out mobs"(*2)... for a 3rd pick pool power I'd go Wall of Force from the Force of Will pool every time. The pros of Teleportation are Combat Teleport (which as I noted, makes Fold Space practically irrelevant for a melee character) and the greater range of Fold Space. The pros of Force of Will are a great travel power in Mighty Leap, and the other pre-req pick is either a useful debuff or a ST ranged attack (I usually skip Project Will, but not always) and a Cone attack that allows for lots of different flavor (and includes a Knockdown!)... plus Force of Will's capstone power Unleash Potential is preeety goood.

 

(*1) At some point, the player using Fold Space as often as possible simply ends up leaving spawns "spread out" either because of failed ToHit checks, +4 Bosses, whatever. For solo, they may not care, but on teams the eyes will roll, depending on what sort of powers the rest of the team has.

 

(*2) As noted... I just use Combat Teleport to BAMF to those "spread out enemies".

Yes I'm passionate about TP powers, as well as powers/methods which contribute to gathering mobs in general. It's the main factor other than damage and -res that affects fights when everyone on the team is unkillable, specializing in these types of powers/methods is my preference.

120 sec recharge is territory for being up every other pack depending on your teams speed, 90 sec is much better for this but 120 isn't terrible. I'm talking a pace of 1 pack at a time, if you have fire blasters rotating nukes that's another story. There's also double pull scenarios where it can see effective use but it really depends, on double pulls you bide more time for cd's to come up again. The cooldown approaches 30 sec with all the recharge effects.

I've argued the case of the power being effective about as much as I can so I won't drag this on, if you don't agree it's cool.

 

 

1 hour ago, arcane said:

The OP may or may not be right. I’d just be pissed if one of the seven powers I take on every single character now (Hasten/SS/CJ/SJ/TP/CT/FS) got nuked from orbit to such an extent that a respec felt necessary. Because that alone would burden me an order of magnitude more than even the current huge page in beta would. But I acknowledge that’s not an actual argument to the developers.

 

1 hour ago, lemming said:

Yea, I get respec fatigue.  I still have chars with the need to respec because of the stealth changes.

To the points above: dealing with respecs is an understandable concern, among others. It's why my opening statement suggests it's too late to make the change, but I was still interested in the communities perspective.

[Major Victory]

I just hit lvl 50 and went through the Mender missions and ready to work on my Alpha.  This character, Travel Agent, is primarily wanting to use it in MSR.  Which alpha is best to start working towards being able to pull in all those bosses in MSR?

I'm thinking it is Nerve but not sure.

And what other future incarnate powers would I need to be able to do it as well as Porchea does?

 

😀

 

Thanks

 

[Uun]

12 minutes ago, Major Victory said:

I just hit lvl 50 and went through the Mender missions and ready to work on my Alpha.  This character, Travel Agent, is primarily wanting to use it in MSR.  Which alpha is best to start working towards being able to pull in all those bosses in MSR?

I'm thinking it is Nerve but not sure.

And what other future incarnate powers would I need to be able to do it as well as Porchea does?

Bosses in MSR are lvl 54. Fold Space won't work on them regardless of your incarnates (even with a +1 level shift).

[Ukase]

My perspective about Fold Space, having used it on a few characters: 

It's just not that useful. It really isn't, except for cones, as it lines them up rather nicely. But other than that? I'm sure it saves some time. But not enough time to be really worth what you give up. If you like Combat Teleport - which so far for me is probably more useful on characters that don't have burst of speed, then you can position yourself in the midst of the mob, rather than position the mob in your midst. And frankly, super speed is just as good at doing this as CT, but you don't get the wonky tohit buff (that stacks, supposedly). 

Please bear in mind that I have only used this on a handful of characters and it's just my experience with it.

[dukedukes]

On 7/1/2025 at 8:51 AM, Ukase said:

My perspective about Fold Space, having used it on a few characters: 

It's just not that useful. It really isn't, except for cones, as it lines them up rather nicely. But other than that? I'm sure it saves some time. But not enough time to be really worth what you give up. If you like Combat Teleport - which so far for me is probably more useful on characters that don't have burst of speed, then you can position yourself in the midst of the mob, rather than position the mob in your midst. And frankly, super speed is just as good at doing this as CT, but you don't get the wonky tohit buff (that stacks, supposedly). 

Please bear in mind that I have only used this on a handful of characters and it's just my experience with it.

Jaunt is worse than combat TP primarily due to the activation time, the recharge on it could be a problem in some scenarios. The range on Jaunt is nice though. The experimentation power pool doesn't have much that interests me personally though I'm sure there's some merit. I like everything in the TP pool so my perspective is there's minimal cost in building toward Fold Space. Certainly worth the sacrifice of a defense power, for me at least.

I laid out several points already so I won't repeat myself much, but I think in the right scenario to use the power you're going to double or triple the amount of targets you're hitting, which translates to double or triple the damage, cc, debuffs, and for tank taunt auras, aggro. You seem to be reacting to the conga line that forms sometimes, an aoe (not cone) can hit a good amount of targets on the conga line, likely not every target but enough to get good value. The things other than damage I listed are important for more difficult encounters, but even on tutorial difficulty (popping Barrier, etc), the damage increase and combat simplification is enough reason for me to pick it up.

 

On 6/30/2025 at 10:10 PM, Major Victory said:

This character, Travel Agent, is primarily wanting to use it in MSR.  Which alpha is best to start working towards being able to pull in all those bosses in MSR?

Your head is in the wrong place, no alpha or other incarnate power will help you, all that matters is relative level and teleport magnitude. I'll tell you about MSR though:

 

There are two ways to group mobs in MSR, the goal is to get the mobs in the bowl where everyone is, keyword here is IN the bowl, not the rim of the bowl. The typical approach and what I would recommend is playing a tanker and getting aggro on the rikti that spawn next to the grates then pulling them to the bowl via out-ranging or line-of-sighting the mobs into the bowl. You might want to group the mobs before the bowl to refresh the timer on the taunt from your aggro aura so the mobs don't get distracted on the way in, use your own judgement but I would not park the mobs on the rim of the bowl as your team could get in the way. Usually you'd taunt a grate to initiate the start of your pull (nearby rikti become aggro'd to you) but you can Fold Space to get aggro too even if you can't TP the bosses. I won't bother mentioning the second way because it's too hard for most, mysteries can be good.

[Snarky]

On 6/13/2025 at 11:55 AM, dukedukes said:

I am suggesting a nerf here which is definitely unpopular and there would be too much outrage to make the change I suspect, so I think the damage was already done long ago now, but I'm interested in other peoples thoughts regardless. Let's list what is so great about Fold Space:

• groups up a bunch of mobs close together, naturally
• 100ft range. quite big
• 16 target cap
• mag 4 tp. speaking out of ignorance but I believe this means bosses are consistently teleported, this is what i see in practice. teleport target is mag 2!!! and takes like 4 seconds to use
• 2 minute cooldown, can be brought down to a 30-40 sec cd. Quite good!

Seems a bit too good for a power pool power, it's basically identical to Shadow Slip which I assume was changed at the same time... Shouldn't something like this power be restricted to relevant AT's? Warshade, Grav control. I think the power cheapens the AT's who get teleport powers as part of their core power sets. The numbers assigned to Fold Space as we know it suggests someone wanted a very strong power out of Fold Space, nothing like most power pool powers that are shadows of what you would get on the right AT. I accept there are some outliers in power pools, like hasten.

I think it would be nice to see control/support/hybrid AT's own the types of powers that maneuver mobs, whether it's Wormhole, Singularity, Telekinesis, Hurricane, Repulsion Field, the new black hole behaviour on beta, etc... hopefully we get more of these powers too as I think they're a ton of fun. Yes Fold Space is good on a tank but tanks have an incredible herding power in the game at their disposal: Taunt. Leave the crowd control to AT's it makes sense on. As a control/support I cannot get the equivalent of Taunt, but tankers and everyone else gets one of the strongest mob moving moves in the game. I do use provoke but it requires extra steps; out-range/LOS.

Being devils advocate for a moment I think this power is fun (because it's powerful), and no one who uses it would want to lose it. It could lower peoples enjoyment of the game losing it, but that's the same with all nerfs. The people who enjoy using this power should simply play an AT that has it in a core power set if it were removed from the teleport power pool.

compare and contrast that with Black Hole.  a tier 8 power in Dark Miasma which is a dog turd

[dukedukes]

Just now, Snarky said:

compare and contrast that with Black Hole.  a tier 8 power in Dark Miasma which is a dog turd

 
I agree and did recommend changes to make Black Hole better, hopefully it's revisited.