A relook at support powers

[MonteCarla]

9 hours ago, Snarky said:

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.

So... buffing other players is somehow... emasculating? 😄

[MsSmart]

14 hours ago, Kai Moon said:

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.

I feel if the buffs and abilities are made into PBAOEs, then support can buff themselves, but the other classes also gets the buff as well and they are the much better for it and do not become inferiors as a poster above noted. There are some buffs that are already area like the forcefield ones as mentioned above, would be nice for other abilities for other support classes to have that benefit, the recipients would just be as grateful for a PBAOE buff as a personal (target) buff. Also a PBAOE given to say O2 would get all the players at a time and heal them as opposed to the defender doing one at a time in a spammed status effect battle... There are team efficiencies in a PBAOE over a single target effect, the world is not perfect for the PBAOE area of effects is likely not as ranged as a targeted one, so there is no perfect solution which requires adjusting play style to maximize your ability.

[MsSmart]

I do want to thank  you all for posting and providing reasons for your position

[Snarky]

52 minutes ago, MonteCarla said:

So... buffing other players is somehow... emasculating? 😄

good question.  first response... who cares?  feminine, masculine, tripartite...  who gives a flying flipper?

 

i was on a Posi 1 today on my Dark Dark Corr and those fools needed my pbaoe heal a lot.  i was annoyed, but i spammed it.  not fun, but necessary.  second response... not fun

 

on that same Dark Dark Corr i ran a Master LGTF (we got the badge!) and they needed no heals.  i debuffed, did AoE attack chains, had a blast.

 

third, and last response.  This is a Villain Archetype.  Villains are not nice.  They do not seek out power so they can patch up minions or the random co conspirator they meet.  buffing other players is, say it with me, NOT VILLAINOUS

 

Meaning of villain in English
 
villain
noun
uk  /ˈvɪl.ən/ us  /ˈvɪl.ən/
Add to word list 
[ C ]
a bad person who harms other people or breaks the law:
 
[ C ] UK informal
a criminal:
 
[ C ]
a character in a book, play, film, etc. who harms other people:

[MonteCarla]

Superman and Batman harm other people! Everyone in this game harms other people! Its how we get XP! 😄

So I must respectfully disagree with your thesis that damage and debuffs are for naughty villains and buffs are for nice heroes.

 

There's plenty of precedence for villains who empower their minions and sit back and let them take the lumps. Lex Luthor does it. Mystique and Destiny leading the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants do it. Morgana le Fey enchanting Mordred to go out and be her *ahem* little bitch on the battlefield does not make her less of a villain.

There's an entire villain AT in this game dedicated to doing exactly that. 

 

If you can do a Positron Task Force on your villainy villain, you can surely justify buffing the odd teammate in character too. 

 

If you don't find the playstyle fun, that's totally cool, and I'm glad that there are debuffing powersets for you to enjoy. Just like I'm glad that there are buffing sets for me to enjoy.

[MsSmart]

On 11/15/2025 at 10:39 PM, 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.

So the melee, whose buffs are essentially what support classes provide more of, should they not affect the melee user. by  your own definition, or you gonna pull the oh that is different?

[Rudra]

33 minutes ago, MsSmart said:

So the melee, whose buffs are essentially what support classes provide more of, should they not affect the melee user. by  your own definition, or you gonna pull the oh that is different?

It is different. Melees and Sentinels get armor sets. Armor sets are personal use only and cannot be shared with your teammates. Support sets are for helping allies. A support character is supposed to be providing others support. That is kind of the whole idea behind "support". To aid others in accomplishing goals/objectives. If a support character wants to solo? They still can. They aren't going to be as effective solo because their powers are geared towards helping others, but they can still do it. (Edit again: Just like on the battlefield, you can treat your buddy's sucking chest wound, but no way you can treat your own. You provided support, but you need someone else's support for the same thing.)

 

(Edit: You are drawing a false equivalency.)

 

Edited 9 hours ago by Rudra

[Skyhawke]

1 hour ago, MsSmart said:

So the melee, whose buffs are essentially what support classes provide more of, should they not affect the melee user. by  your own definition, or you gonna pull the oh that is different?

 

It...is different. Dunno where your disconnect on that one is, but Rudra pointed out how wrong that statement is. As for Support sets, just gonna leave these here.

 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/support

 

 

Edited 9 hours ago by Skyhawke

[TheMoneyMaker]

Some support sets provide benefits to the team only, not the user.
Some support sets debuff the enemy, which benefits the entire team including the user.

 

All support sets are great for team play. Only some are useful for solo play, or even to keep oneself alive so that one can continue to benefit the team.

 

I don't think that support sets should be turned into the superior solo players, but I do think that they should be able to gain some of the benefits that can offer.

  

2 hours ago, Rudra said:

It is different. Melees and Sentinels get armor sets. Armor sets are personal use only and cannot be shared with your teammates. Support sets are for helping allies. A support character is supposed to be providing others support. That is kind of the whole idea behind "support". To aid others in accomplishing goals/objectives. If a support character wants to solo? They still can. They aren't going to be as effective solo because their powers are geared towards helping others, but they can still do it. (Edit again: Just like on the battlefield, you can treat your buddy's sucking chest wound, but no way you can treat your own. You provided support, but you need someone else's support for the same thing.)

 

(Edit: You are drawing a false equivalency.)

 

Rudra talking about false equivalencies while making blatantly incorrect statements with regard to game mechanics. If you have the equivalent of a sucking chest wound in this game and you are a defender/corruptor, you absolutely can treat your own wound as long as you haven't died and you have a group heal power. If you have Empathy or Rad.Emission, you can group heal and treat your own injuries, but if you Poison or Storm Summoning, you can only heal one target that isn't yourself... for some reason you can't fill your own lungs with healing air or benefit from the healing Alkaloid that you can lob at others. If you're Force Field, you can put up protective bubbles on allies which they can attack through, but you can only put a bubble on yourself that stops you from attacking.

 

I get having support powers, but I'm questioning the validity of the ones that specifically cannot target the user. "Game balance" as an explanation sounds as about as reasonable as having soldiers in the army who only carry ammo for other soldiers and aren't allowed to use it themselves.