A relook at support powers

[MsSmart]

Earlier during live, I had always had an issue with powers that a player could only use on others and never be able to use upon themselves,  like I know how to heal everybody, but I too darn stupid to heal myself! I can boost your con, but have no earthly idea to boost myself, seems intellectually stupid.

 

I can get the background reason, during live and the old days, the developers wanted the support to focus on being support, like a movie needs support cast who will never be stars. And in those old days as the classes, were designed, it made sense. But that was in "those days", now all the melee for instance, have been refurbished, given IOs sets that frankly they can go about dealing chaos havoc and destruction without any need for support at all, not even remotely. So with this in mind, why not let the support benefit from their own abilities?

 

I know, there will be the crowd that will loudly cry, that will break the balance! Sadly that balance you so cherish, was broken long ago. In fact by allowing the support from benefiting from their own abilities, is in fact reducing the unbalance gap.

 

Any thoughts, only looking for an intellectual discussion here, not really an endorsement or otherwise

[kittowam]

9 minutes ago, MsSmart said:

Earlier during live, I had always had an issue with powers that a player could only use on others and never be able to use upon themselves,  like I know how to heal everybody, but I too darn stupid to heal myself! I can boost your con, but have no earthly idea to boost myself, seems intellectually stupid.

 

I can get the background reason, during live and the old days, the developers wanted the support to focus on being support, like a movie needs support cast who will never be stars. And in those old days as the classes, were designed, it made sense. But that was in "those days", now all the melee for instance, have been refurbished, given IOs sets that frankly they can go about dealing chaos havoc and destruction without any need for support at all, not even remotely. So with this in mind, why not let the support benefit from their own abilities?

 

I know, there will be the crowd that will loudly cry, that will break the balance! Sadly that balance you so cherish, was broken long ago. In fact by allowing the support from benefiting from their own abilities, is in fact reducing the unbalance gap.

 

Any thoughts, only looking for an intellectual discussion here, not really an endorsement or otherwise

 

I agree. Other servers have done this and I don't think it broke the game. But... this is Homecoming, so... I wouldn't hold your breath. You could post it as a Suggestion though.

[Glacier Peak]

So no. 

[Ukase]

What is this madness you speak of? 
As an example, the empath power set:
An empath defender giving themselves Adrenaline boost instead of the scrapper? Are you nuts? 

In all seriousness, if I could do this, I probably still wouldn't play an emp ever again. And it's really because the tools in the box aren't as useful as other support sets in the content I play. Occasionally an absorb pain or heal other would be useful, and of course, AB is always useful - but that particular set is woefully outshined by nature (in my opinion) for most of the content I play. 

From an RP perspective, it kind of doesn't make sense for an empath to absorb their own pain. 

I'm sure many of us could go back and forth over this. And candidly, it wouldn't bug me if an emp could give themselves clear mind and fortitude and AB. 
It seems fair, in that the natty can give themselves overgrowth. 

And of course there are other sets that could use some work as well as emp. So, I wouldn't shut the door on it, but I wouldn't hold my breath either. 

[MsSmart]

56 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

So no. 

not much of an intellectual discussion...

[MsSmart]

35 minutes ago, Ukase said:

What is this madness you speak of? 
As an example, the empath power set:
An empath defender giving themselves Adrenaline boost instead of the scrapper? Are you nuts? 

In all seriousness, if I could do this, I probably still wouldn't play an emp ever again. And it's really because the tools in the box aren't as useful as other support sets in the content I play. Occasionally an absorb pain or heal other would be useful, and of course, AB is always useful - but that particular set is woefully outshined by nature (in my opinion) for most of the content I play. 

From an RP perspective, it kind of doesn't make sense for an empath to absorb their own pain. 

I'm sure many of us could go back and forth over this. And candidly, it wouldn't bug me if an emp could give themselves clear mind and fortitude and AB. 
It seems fair, in that the natty can give themselves overgrowth. 

And of course there are other sets that could use some work as well as emp. So, I wouldn't shut the door on it, but I wouldn't hold my breath either. 

Love the always assume the most possible negative variation attitude, way to go!, how about making them PBAOEs, its actually better for the whole team rapidly gets the benefit...

[TheMoneyMaker]

Support powers are meant to support others not the user, and letting the user benefit would be unbalancing

 

Except debuffs grant their benefits to the user and others by affecting opponents. You can gain the benefits of opponents reduced dmg resistance and the benefit of being harder to hit by reducing their ToHit, but you can't enhance your own defense or damage bonus--you can only affect your allies like that. That seems unbalanced.

[Psyonico]

An Empath buffing itself would have (permanently with just SOs):

 

950% regen

800% recovery

+100% recharge

80% resistance to -recharge

Status protection against hold, sleep, stun, immobilize, fear, confuse

22% defense to all

31.25% damage buff to all

18.75% bonus to hit

 

From 3 powers.  Then, on top of that, they'd have

+950% regeneration 

+200% (unslotted) recovery

These would be up 90 out of 137 seconds (by taking Hasten).

 

And on top of that a 511 point heal on a sub 2 second cooldown

 

Please tell me how this is not unbalanced.

 

Force field defenders would have 38% defense to everything and mez protection against  hold, immobilize, and stun, again, just with SOs and 3 powers

 

Thermal defenders would have:

30% resistance to S/L/E/N/C

60% resistance to F

Status protection against hold, sleep, stun, immobilize, fear, confuse

+50% damage

+38% tohit

A 511 point heal on a ~2 second cool down.

 

Again, all of this is on SOs only.

 

For comparison, an SO'd out SR Scrapper gets 30.42% defense to all 3 vectors. And this takes 6 powers (7 with practiced brawler)

 

Heck, an SR tanker only gets 40.5% defense with just SOs.

 

 

[MonteCarla]

I'm mostly a no here.

Rather than approach this from a balance perspective, what you're asking for here is taking away a particular player choice.

 

Firstly, if I run a Task Force an no-one's health bar budges because of my Force Fields, how am I not the star of the team?
I feel that way when I play my buffers. I probably get someone on my team saying how great it was to team with me. And I've chosen to play in a support role. That mindset of winning the game through making my teammates better really speaks to me, and in no way makes me "just a sidekick" to my Blaster or Scrapper buddies.

 

I actually prefer the older support sets that have "only use on ally" powers. eg I prefer the single target heals in Storm and Empathy to the cone heals in Nature and Marine. They don't work on me, but they're WAY easier to save a teammates dipping health bar than something that requires me to face them. Even a PBAoE needs me to pay a bit more attention to finding the dying teammate and getting into range.

If I need to heal myself, I have insps, I have the Med Kit temporary power, and healing procs to lean on. None of which help me with healing other players- I need my powers for that.

 

Most powersets, you can get your powers to work on yourself if you invest in slotting.

 

Force Fields has enough personal +Def to allow you to softcap yourself through slotting. If you only ever intend to solo, make an /Energy Aura Sentinel.

Empathy allows for some self healing, and you can augment this by slotting for defence. Or make a /Regen Sentinel.

Kinetics has a self +End tool in Transference, and you can slot to your heart's content for +Recharge to effectively give yourself Speed Boost.

 

Sonic Resonance - OK, this one does need help 🙂 

It's the worst soloing support set in the game, and there's no good reason for not allowing you to use Disruption Field on yourself.

 

So I think what you're asking for is already available - you can make a buffer character who doesn't miss out on their own buffs via slotting.

And I really don't want to see one of my favourite playstyles taken away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MonteCarla]

3 minutes ago, TheMoneyMaker said:

Support powers are meant to support others not the user, and letting the user benefit would be unbalancing

 

Except debuffs grant their benefits to the user and others by affecting opponents. You can gain the benefits of opponents reduced dmg resistance and the benefit of being harder to hit by reducing their ToHit, but you can't enhance your own defense or damage bonus--you can only affect your allies like that. That seems unbalanced.

I think buffs and debuffs are balanced.
1) Debuffs get hit by the purple patch and AV purple triangles, unlike buffs. I'd rather have the +Def of Force Fields than the -To Hit of Dark Miasma if I'm fighting Jurrasik. 
2) Debuffs need to be applied to enemies once combat's started. This leaves gaps in time when your powers aren't helping. Freakshows and other rezzing enemies need to be re-debuffed. A surprise group of adds or an ambush need animation time to debuff in a way that a buffed up team don't.

 

[Chance Jackson]

25 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

An Empath buffing itself would have (permanently with just SOs):

 

950% regen

800% recovery

+100% recharge

80% resistance to -recharge

Status protection against hold, sleep, stun, immobilize, fear, confuse

22% defense to all

31.25% damage buff to all

18.75% bonus to hit

 

From 3 powers.  Then, on top of that, they'd have

+950% regeneration 

+200% (unslotted) recovery

These would be up 90 out of 137 seconds (by taking Hasten).

 

And on top of that a 511 point heal on a sub 2 second cooldown

 

Please tell me how this is not unbalanced.

 

Force field defenders would have 38% defense to everything and mez protection against  hold, immobilize, and stun, again, just with SOs and 3 powers

 

Thermal defenders would have:

30% resistance to S/L/E/N/C

60% resistance to F

Status protection against hold, sleep, stun, immobilize, fear, confuse

+50% damage

+38% tohit

A 511 point heal on a ~2 second cool down.

 

Again, all of this is on SOs only.

 

For comparison, an SO'd out SR Scrapper gets 30.42% defense to all 3 vectors. And this takes 6 powers (7 with practiced brawler)

 

Heck, an SR tanker only gets 40.5% defense with just SOs.

 

 

Ok make the powers weaker when applied to self

[biostem]

You'd have to recode all powers to be able to affect yourself, then you'd have to adjust the self-affecting portion to grant lesser values.  Next, you'd have to adjust power costs, recharges, and durations to further limit how powerful they'd be.  Just play an AT or powerset that already has self-affecting buffs/powers...

[kelika2]

take power

get two powers

they trigger one anothers cooldown

fortitude as we know it is the same

bravery new power, can cut its power some if you want

[ShardWarrior]

The only things I would change about Empathy is to convert CM from single target to AoE so it is applied to anyone in range, and reduce the truly absurd long recharge time on Resurrect.  Other than those two things, I think Empathy is fine as is.  It is a very fun and very beneficial set to have on lower level content.  

 

Most all support sets in general suffer from the same issue in my opinion - they become superfluous at higher levels.  That may change now that focus is being put into higher difficulty settings and content.  

[Kai Moon]

On one hand, basically all other MMOs let support characters buff themselves.

On the other hand, basically all other MMOs have buffs like "Increase Stamina by 5%" or "Reduce damage taken by 10% (for 20 seconds on a 120 second cooldown)" or shield/overcap HP that's more mechanically similar to healing than buffing.

I can't say for sure CoH having actually good buffs is the tradeoff we get for not buffing ourselves. But it might be the tradeoff.

Edited 6 hours ago by Kai Moon

[Maagic]

1 hour ago, Kai Moon said:

On one hand, basically all other MMOs let support characters buff themselves.

 

Well let's just make our precious MMO just like EVERYONE ELSE'S THEN! 

 

 

No thanks!

[Scarlet Shocker]

15 minutes ago, Maagic said:

 

Well let's just make our precious MMO just like EVERYONE ELSE'S THEN! 

 

 

No thanks!

 

Exactly this. Just because other MMOs do it, doesn't mean we should. 

 

One reason this is such a great game is that it's not generic and has its own rules and charms. 

 

It works as it is, and the proposed suggestion doesn't add anything to the player experience and as others point out would seriously unbalance the game and ruin it

 

/jranger

[Snarky]

11 hours ago, MsSmart said:

Earlier during live, I had always had an issue with powers that a player could only use on others and never be able to use upon themselves,  like I know how to heal everybody, but I too darn stupid to heal myself! I can boost your con, but have no earthly idea to boost myself, seems intellectually stupid.

 

I can get the background reason, during live and the old days, the developers wanted the support to focus on being support, like a movie needs support cast who will never be stars. And in those old days as the classes, were designed, it made sense. But that was in "those days", now all the melee for instance, have been refurbished, given IOs sets that frankly they can go about dealing chaos havoc and destruction without any need for support at all, not even remotely. So with this in mind, why not let the support benefit from their own abilities?

 

I know, there will be the crowd that will loudly cry, that will break the balance! Sadly that balance you so cherish, was broken long ago. In fact by allowing the support from benefiting from their own abilities, is in fact reducing the unbalance gap.

 

Any thoughts, only looking for an intellectual discussion here, not really an endorsement or otherwise

yeah, what i want is a toon with a bunch of powers, maybe all, that are completely useless to me.  

 

I am seriously glad dark miasma for Corr is not that way.  so many Corr secondaries are team bitch powers.  A villain, and you end up being the waterboy?  F that.

[Riverdusk]

I wouldn't mind at least some of the support powers being looked at in this way and/or with lessor effects.  There's a reason why a lot of support sets I only play as a MM.  At least then when solo I still get use out of them.

[Ghost]

Sorry you died.  Absorb Pain was still on cooldown after I USED IT ON MYSELF

[Psi-bolt]

14 hours ago, Psyonico said:

An Empath buffing itself would have (permanently with just SOs):

 

950% regen

800% recovery

+100% recharge

80% resistance to -recharge

Status protection against hold, sleep, stun, immobilize, fear, confuse

22% defense to all

31.25% damage buff to all

18.75% bonus to hit

 

From 3 powers.  Then, on top of that, they'd have

+950% regeneration 

+200% (unslotted) recovery

These would be up 90 out of 137 seconds (by taking Hasten).

 

And on top of that a 511 point heal on a sub 2 second cooldown

 

Please tell me how this is not unbalanced.

 

 

But you know you're still a Defender with the crappy damage to match.  AND you have to cast most of these powers to keep them up.   And your health is still much lower meaning you could get one-shot (or quickly taken down) through all that pretty easily.

 

My guess is that if this were to happen, that Empathy would be the last set people would start soloing.   Now as to Force Field.

 

Quote

Force field defenders would have 38% defense to everything and mez protection against  hold, immobilize, and stun, again, just with SOs and 3 powers

 

Again, all of this is on SOs only.

 

For comparison, an SO'd out SR Scrapper gets 30.42% defense to all 3 vectors. And this takes 6 powers (7 with practiced brawler)

 

Heck, an SR tanker only gets 40.5% defense with just SOs.

 

Really the only thing that would change would be that the Defender would get an extra 23.4% defense to all.    They already get the mez protection (ADD SLEEP PROTECTION DEVS) and 15.6% of the defense.   If we made the bubbles, which are AoE already affect the caster, I just don't see how that would be so broken.    Again, you're still a Defender with the damage and that SR should be doing significantly more damage than you.  They also have more health, which matters a lot more than most folks give it credit for.  I was just doing an Market Crash and nearly got one-shot multiple times by Tank Smasher even though I'm at the soft-cap for defense on my FF/Elec Defender.   Finally, you would still have to cast two powers on a 4 minute cycle, although this would be significantly easier than the Empath.  

 

I really don't care at this point whether they devs did this or not.  But I don't think it would be unbalanced.   The necessity to cast all those powers as an Empath would be annoying as hell, and you wouldn't be anymore of a tank mage than you can create now with IO sets.   I know the whole canard about "balance is based on SOs," but that's just not true.  There's no way that any competent developer isn't considering the multitude of options that exist outside of SO enhancers.   

[Psyonico]

8 minutes ago, Psi-bolt said:

But you know you're still a Defender with the crappy damage to match.

If i remember correctly,  Sentinels do the same base damage as defenders,  meaning a defender would now completely outclass a sentinel (since you'd have better range and other buffs/debuffs at your disposal)

[lemming]

4 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

If i remember correctly,  Sentinels do the same base damage as defenders,  meaning a defender would now completely outclass a sentinel (since you'd have better range and other buffs/debuffs at your disposal)

Quick look at power selection and you do not remember correctly.   (Just a quick check of Lightning Blast comparison in creation, but a dive into city of data would be a better source of info probably)

[Psi-bolt]

27 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

If i remember correctly,  Sentinels do the same base damage as defenders,  meaning a defender would now completely outclass a sentinel (since you'd have better range and other buffs/debuffs at your disposal)

 

IIRC, Defenders are at .65 ranged damage Scale damage and Sentinels are at .95.  

Edited 1 hour ago by Psi-bolt

[Riverdusk]

1 hour ago, Psyonico said:

If i remember correctly,  Sentinels do the same base damage as defenders,  meaning a defender would now completely outclass a sentinel (since you'd have better range and other buffs/debuffs at your disposal)

 

55 minutes ago, Psi-bolt said:

 

IIRC, Defenders are at .65 ranged damage Scale damage and Sentinels are at .95.  

 

I think that was the old value.  Actually 1.1 now.  Very close to blaster level at this point, way ahead of defender.

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Damage