Energy Mastery: Power Boost Not Effecting Fade (Beta Server)

[Catalyze]

Beta Server on 9/15 : I created a character and boosted it to Level 50. It is a Pyrotechnic / Darkness Affinity / Energy Mastery Controller. With all enhancements slotted and defensive powers toggled on,  Fade is showing 14.81% defense. Clicking Power Boost and immediately clicking Fade does Not change the defense amount as it should. The amount of increase should be 11.53% to total 26.34% and it never changes. I copied a controller from Excelsior onto Beta that has Time Manipulation as a secondary also with Power Boost.  Farsight is showing 16.15% toggled on and 27.68% when Power Boost is activated and Farsight activated.  It stays at 27.68% for the full duration of 120 seconds. Farsight and Fade are the same equivalent powers and should respond the same to Power Boost. I have used and come to depend on Beta for character creation on Live servers. Please advise me why the above is happening. Thank you. 

[Riverdusk]

7 hours ago, Catalyze said:

Beta Server on 9/15 : I created a character and boosted it to Level 50. It is a Pyrotechnic / Darkness Affinity / Energy Mastery Controller. With all enhancements slotted and defensive powers toggled on,  Fade is showing 14.81% defense. Clicking Power Boost and immediately clicking Fade does Not change the defense amount as it should. The amount of increase should be 11.53% to total 26.34% and it never changes. I copied a controller from Excelsior onto Beta that has Time Manipulation as a secondary also with Power Boost.  Farsight is showing 16.15% toggled on and 27.68% when Power Boost is activated and Farsight activated.  It stays at 27.68% for the full duration of 120 seconds. Farsight and Fade are the same equivalent powers and should respond the same to Power Boost. I have used and come to depend on Beta for character creation on Live servers. Please advise me why the above is happening. Thank you. 

 

Farsight and Fade are not equivalent powers.  The difference is fade also has an enhanceable damage resistance buff component, farsight does not.  Pretty sure it is a hard rule that powers that have an enhanceable damage resistance component are not affected by power boost. See also cold's ice and glacial shields that work the same and are also not affected by power boost. Not sure there are any exceptions. 

 

So, in order for fade's defense to be affected by power boost, the damage resistance buff part of it would have to be set to not be enhanceable.  Not a trade I'd be willing to make personally.   

 

[Hedgefund]

The boostability of Fade was taken away early in the HC days.  One could find it in old patch notes, I'll leave that to someone else.

 

Here's an example of how it was broken, I could consume a red insp (damage), hit PB then Fade and the damage resists would go up, not insignificantly.

[Catalyze]

Thank you both for taking time to offer opinions on this situation.  I do know that in the description for Power Boost, it does not list itself as boosting anything Resistance wise.

 

Hedgefund, I did try to dig into old patch notes and I don't have the skill to find anything close to 5 years ago when Power Boost was "Patched" (developer's term for the nerf). I did find several Reddit threads discussing that action and it seems to have happened around 2020 or so. I find it humorous that I have never tried to Power Boost Fade in over 100 alts and 5 years of returning game play. Again, hats off to both of you for attempting to help me find game zen.

[macskull]

On 9/17/2025 at 1:18 PM, Catalyze said:

I do know that in the description for Power Boost, it does not list itself as boosting anything Resistance wise.

It doesn't, as far as damage resistance goes, but here's a bit more info for those who are curious about some under-the-hood stuff about how this game works:

 

Power Boost and its variants provide increased strength to a variety of buffs. On its own, PB does nothing - it just makes some of your other powers stronger. The game considers that an "external boost." There are a lot of other types of external boosts, like inspirations and ally buffs. The way the game handles these external boosts is on a per-power basis: either the entire power is able to be affected by those boosts or none of it is. In the case of Fade, here's what you have:

• A defense portion which can be enhanced.
• A damage resistance portion which can also be enhanced.

Because of some weird quirks with how the game was originally written, damage and damage resistance are very closely tied together, so any power that affects your damage resistance and can be enhanced has to be flagged to ignore external boosts otherwise the amount of damage resistance it gives would be affected by your damage bonus.