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/
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[ 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 Monday at 11:53 PM 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 yesterday at 12:31 AM 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.

[Ghost]

I’ve always found it strange that someone will pick powers (and to a degree, ATs) - knowing the benefits and limitations (that are all well documented, so “not knowing” is not an excuse), and then want to change those limitations. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 17 hours ago by Ghost

[tidge]

4 hours ago, Ghost said:

I’ve always found it strange that someone will pick powers (and to a degree, ATs) - knowing the benefits and limitations (that are all well documented, so “not knowing” is not an excuse), and then want to change those limitations. 

 

Right or wrong, I classify a lot of this sort of comment content as having its nativity in (a) limited game experience and (b) "I just thought of this and couldn't do it""/"Lemme share my most recent fleeting peeve".

 

I can't think of a single recent "relook" thread where the OP led me to believe that there was ever a "first look".

[Psi-bolt]

8 hours ago, Ghost said:

I’ve always found it strange that someone will pick powers (and to a degree, ATs) - knowing the benefits and limitations (that are all well documented, so “not knowing” is not an excuse), and then want to change those limitations. 

 

Back in 2004, I started a Storm Defender without carefully reading the descriptions and realized very quickly that some of the powers couldn't be used on my character.  Within 20 minutes I was playing a Regen Scrapper and never looked back.

 

I think it's fine to want to see changes, if those changes make sense.   Personally, as I discussed earlier in the thread, I think there would be no harm in doing this, but I also don't think there would be anywhere near as much of a benefit as some folks think.  

[MsSmart]

12 hours ago, Ghost said:

I’ve always found it strange that someone will pick powers (and to a degree, ATs) - knowing the benefits and limitations (that are all well documented, so “not knowing” is not an excuse), and then want to change those limitations. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

So by your standards, if I buy a house and then experience a lot of power failures from the utility company, you would find it curios to petition the utility company to address the issue?

 

The truth to the matter, is that we are fortunate enough to be in a living game, a game that evolves and changes, with many not being able to see the picture on how it has changed. Let me assist...

 

During live days, melee could solo but only to an extent before they would need support to buff them up and heal them, after the inception of IO Sets melee could use IOs and address their relative shortfalls and now they comfortably can solo missions at +4/8, and solo very gifted players can solo at those settings entire TFs! Rendering their use for support moot. I myself go to ITF at +4/8 brake out of the group and take a different tunnel and open a can whoop ass while being quite safe, despite their defense debuff! and after the incarnate system was implemented, it made my melee even more awesome. Now from the support perspective, the star trek equivalent of red shirts in the game. With the introduction of IO sets, made them much more survivable, not nearly as well as melee, but very survivable, I have no issue doing ITF at +4/8 with my storm/dark defender and have no issues soloing portions for the mere fun of it. With the introduction of incarnates my DPS for my defender became reasonable. When you think what is was like back then and is now, it should be obvious the game has changed.

 

In the old days, the developers had a mentality that melee did the dirty work and the support, well did just that. As a result protections and what not went to the dirty worker camp, which made sense, and the "extras" needed none and thus got none. The initial architecture, made sure there was an inter dependency between melee and support, melee was tough but not totally tough and support if they wanted to survive they had to ensure their tank was well at all times.

 

Today there is no such interdependency, which I actually applaud, for it allow the support classes to aspire to be more than just support, mere extras in this movie. by the inception of IO sets, they enabled the new transition of game play. So what I usually advocate for is for the next step in the evolution of the game, so that the support classes who were "nurfed" by design to be brittle so they would focus on being, just that,  support focused to the melee. Yet, now that role is no longer as important as it used to be. I am not saying that doing support functions is needless and unimportant, they are very valuable when done wisely but it is frankly not a full time job, after you bubbled and buffed the melee, what do you do next? What you do now, is to contribute to the overall DPS in the manner your class has you set, for instance most holds do damage, so not only are you helping by controlling the field, you are also adding significant damage with the IO sets that empowered you to do! 

 

In conclusion the game is evolving, why resist a good thing and support its evolution? A more capable support alt only makes the team even more capable, so what is so wrong with that? Why prevent it?

Edited 8 hours ago by MsSmart

[Ghost]

36 minutes ago, MsSmart said:

So by your standards, if I buy a house and then experience a lot of power failures from the utility company, you would find it curios to petition the utility company to address the issue?

 

The truth to the matter, is that we are fortunate enough to be in a living game, a game that evolves and changes, with many not being able to see the picture on how it has changed. Let me assist...

 

During live days, melee could solo but only to an extent before they would need support to buff them up and heal them, after the inception of IO Sets melee could use IOs and address their relative shortfalls and now they comfortably can solo missions at +4/8, and solo very gifted players can solo at those settings entire TFs! Rendering their use for support moot. I myself go to ITF at +4/8 brake out of the group and take a different tunnel and open a can whoop ass while being quite safe, despite their defense debuff! and after the incarnate system was implemented, it made my melee even more awesome. Now from the support perspective, the star trek equivalent of red shirts in the game. With the introduction of IO sets, made them much more survivable, not nearly as well as melee, but very survivable, I have no issue doing ITF at +4/8 with my storm/dark defender and have no issues soloing portions for the mere fun of it. With the introduction of incarnates my DPS for my defender became reasonable. When you think what is was like back then and is now, it should be obvious the game has changed.

 

In the old days, the developers had a mentality that melee did the dirty work and the support, well did just that. As a result protections and what not went to the dirty worker camp, which made sense, and the "extras" needed none and thus got none. The initial architecture, made sure there was an inter dependency between melee and support, melee was tough but not totally tough and support if they wanted to survive they had to ensure their tank was well at all times.

 

Today there is no such interdependency, which I actually applaud, for it allow the support classes to aspire to be more than just support, mere extras in this movie. by the inception of IO sets, they enabled the new transition of game play. So what I usually advocate for is for the next step in the evolution of the game, so that the support classes who were "nurfed" by design to be brittle so they would focus on being, just that,  support focused to the melee. Yet, now that role is no longer as important as it used to be. I am not saying that doing support functions is needless and unimportant, they are very valuable when done wisely but it is frankly not a full time job, after you bubbled and buffed the melee, what do you do next? What you do now, is to contribute to the overall DPS in the manner your class has you set, for instance most holds do damage, so not only are you helping by controlling the field, you are also adding significant damage with the IO sets that empowered you to do! 

 

In conclusion the game is evolving, why resist a good thing and support its evolution? A more capable support alt only makes the team even more capable, so what is so wrong with that? Why prevent it?

Your analogy is nowhere close to what I said.

 

It would be more akin to you buying a house next to a trailer park, and then complaining to the city that there’s a trailer park next to your house and demanding it be torn down.

 

There is no resistance to the game evolving.  My personal resistance is to making all the ATs equally powerful, and therefore taking away any sort of strategy or thought process when it comes to choosing and playing an AT - which is where suggestions like this would have the game headed.

 

“Emps should be able to use Heal Other on themselves.”

”Not fair, Time/Rad only have aura!  They also need an individual heal to make it fair!”

It’s all part of the evolution that will eventually see all the ATs play exactly the same, and then followed up with cries that “this is not fun anymore because there’s nothing to differentiate any of the ATs”.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 8 hours ago by Ghost

[Ghost]

Suggestions can be spun a million different ways.  
The truth is, the majority are about one thing and one thing only - Give Me More Power!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 8 hours ago by Ghost

[CoeruleumBlue]

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.

 

There are entire support sets where every power in them can affect yourself. I've just been preferentially using those except for a few specific builds that I heard are how the game used to work where you really need healing on content without incarnates and I picked Pain Domination for most of those. This is part of why I think we need badges to be account-wide, because those builds are probably never going to run all the content in the game, but even with that, just making it so things like Clear Mind, Enforced Morale, O2 Boost, or Spirit Ward from Sorcery can work on yourself would make them much more useful in my opinion. Because of what you said, it's basically just better to take debuffs than buffs except for the sets where all the buffs also work on yourself, which also often have debuffs. The only sets that don't have debuffs are also ones where all the buffs don't work on yourself which tends to make those not favored. 

[tidge]

I've certainly played Defenders that are very good solo... and for Defenders I want to play solo I typically pick primary/secondary combinations (and powers from those sets *1) that will allow me to play solo. I'm confused why someone would pick a power set that focuses on allies, and then expect it to work on themselves. It isn't as if there is only one primary to pick (for non-Kheldians!).

 

(*1) One thing I like about Defenders... if I pick a primary that is mostly team-focused, I can delay (or skip) certain powers to concentrate on the secondary. I've done similar things with Corruptors, focusing more on offense early and fitting in the team-friendly powers later. If I want a "blasty" character with self-protections and buffs... there are Sentinels.

[MsSmart]

1 hour ago, Ghost said:

Your analogy is nowhere close to what I said.

 

It would be more akin to you buying a house next to a trailer park, and then complaining to the city that there’s a trailer park next to your house and demanding it be torn down.

 

There is no resistance to the game evolving.  My personal resistance is to making all the ATs equally powerful, and therefore taking away any sort of strategy or thought process when it comes to choosing and playing an AT - which is where suggestions like this would have the game headed.

 

“Emps should be able to use Heal Other on themselves.”

”Not fair, Time/Rad only have aura!  They also need an individual heal to make it fair!”

It’s all part of the evolution that will eventually see all the ATs play exactly the same, and then followed up with cries that “this is not fun anymore because there’s nothing to differentiate any of the ATs”.

 

 

 

 

 

Now we are making progress, you do not want all ATs to be equally powerful, despite they would accomplish it in different ways? Just because ATs are equally powerful, does not mean their contribution is identical to any others, just equal in effectiveness. Have you considered, if the ATs were truly balanced, equal, where a controller has the 50/50 chance of beating a tank for example, then PvP would not need weird biased balancing acts, and could be a true go in and get it done, sounds like fun ah?

[CoeruleumBlue]

2 hours ago, Ghost said:

Your analogy is nowhere close to what I said.

 

It would be more akin to you buying a house next to a trailer park, and then complaining to the city that there’s a trailer park next to your house and demanding it be torn down.

 

There is no resistance to the game evolving.  My personal resistance is to making all the ATs equally powerful, and therefore taking away any sort of strategy or thought process when it comes to choosing and playing an AT - which is where suggestions like this would have the game headed.

 

“Emps should be able to use Heal Other on themselves.”

”Not fair, Time/Rad only have aura!  They also need an individual heal to make it fair!”

It’s all part of the evolution that will eventually see all the ATs play exactly the same, and then followed up with cries that “this is not fun anymore because there’s nothing to differentiate any of the ATs”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This isn't the problem though. The problem is some sets work great on yourself and others don't. Time and Rad are actually sets that work great on yourself and no one is asking for an individual heal at all on them because of that. People are just asking for the powers that can't be used on yourself to also be able to be used on yourself. The auras work on yourself and for that reason they are better for using solo than the individual heal powers, notice no one is actually asking for the reverse. I think it would be OK for sets to only have an individual heal if you can use it on yourself. Controllers are already OP, people just don't take sets like Empathy, Thermal, or Electric except for really specific content because you can't use many of the powers on yourself and controllers aren't good main healers. I pretty much only play Pain Domination, Electric, and Storm Summoning on defenders now and even then I'm annoyed the buffs don't apply to yourself unlike the buffs from literally Time and Rad which do and which can be perma-ed fairly easily. 

[Rudra]

34 minutes ago, MsSmart said:

Have you considered, if the ATs were truly balanced, equal, where a controller has the 50/50 chance of beating a tank for example, then PvP would not need weird biased balancing acts, and could be a true go in and get it done, sounds like fun ah?

When everything is the same, it is boring. For instance, Controllers are terrible tanks, however, Controllers are excellent at locking enemies down and keeping them from even fighting. A debuff based Defender or Corruptor excels at hampering foes, but some foes are resistant (or effectively immune) to some debuffs and debuffs are less effective the higher the level difference between the PC and the higher level mob, even before you add in the Purple Triangles of Doom. (Edit: For instance, good luck slowing any of the 5th Column/Council wolves.) A buff based Defender or Corruptor loses out on some abilities when running around solo, but those buffs never lose efficiency/power no matter how much higher level the ally receiving the buffs are compared to the Defender/Corruptor. And in many cases, like Force Field, that buff based Defender or Corruptor is going to be more help to the team on higher difficulty missions than the debuff based Defender or Corruptor.

 

When it comes to support characters, there are sets that are easy to leverage while solo and there are sets that are restricted in their ability to be leveraged while solo. If your intent is to run solo, then either don't take the more team focused sets or learn how to leverage the powers they have. If your intent is to team, then take any set and learn to leverage its powers. Every set has its strengths and weaknesses, or are better optimized for certain situations than others. And that makes the game more interesting and gives players more options for how the game can be played. Not all power sets should play into the same play style.

 

Edited 6 hours ago by Rudra
Edited again to correct "Controller" to "Corruptor".

[TheMoneyMaker]

Maybe we're looking at this all wrong. Instead of insisting that powersets that have others-only effects should also affect the caster, maybe we should look at the debuff sets and insist that affected enemies don't suffer the debuff against the caster.

[Psyonico]

1 hour ago, MsSmart said:

Just because ATs are equally powerful, does not mean their contribution is identical to any others, just equal in effectiveness.

Different ATs do different things... you can't have equal effectiveness in every way because of this fact. 

 

For example, a defender is more effective at boosting a team than a Scrappers, but the Scrappers is more effective by itself.  

[CoeruleumBlue]

39 minutes ago, TheMoneyMaker said:

Maybe we're looking at this all wrong. Instead of insisting that powersets that have others-only effects should also affect the caster, maybe we should look at the debuff sets and insist that affected enemies don't suffer the debuff against the caster.

 

Why would that make any sense at all whatsoever? If the enemy is weakened by a raygun or a psychic scream or getting hit by a boulder or whatever they are objectively weakened. The powers that don't work on yourself were mostly just based on Empathy and the idea that you have to have an empathic link. What next, do you want Controller, Defender, and Corruptor powers to not do damage, or get rid of the -rech and -tohit since that gives you extra protection too? This is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. I want powers to represent real things happening, not totally video-game-ified mechanics like "if you're a support class your powers can't help yourself at all" even though they were always designed to help yourself, even some of the powers in Empathy. 

[CoeruleumBlue]

13 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

Different ATs do different things... you can't have equal effectiveness in every way because of this fact. 

 

For example, a defender is more effective at boosting a team than a Scrappers, but the Scrappers is more effective by itself.  

 

My scrappers all suck by themselves because they keep dying and my defenders are great by themselves because they don't. There's a joke I've heard, "controllers and defenders get pets starting at level 1, they're called scrappers." 

[Rudra]

7 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

 

My scrappers all suck by themselves because they keep dying and my defenders are great by themselves because they don't. There's a joke I've heard, "controllers and defenders get pets starting at level 1, they're called scrappers." 

Then you need to re-evaluate the powers you are prioritizing on your Scrappers, the enhancement slots you are assigning to said powers, the enhancements you are putting in said slots, and/or your approach to combat with the mobs defeating you.