Crashout T9s?

[Glacier Peak]

Hopefully most of the players who read these forums have seen the new T9 armor approach the Homecoming Team is proposing on Open Beta. What are your thoughts? Crash or no crash? 30 seconds versus 120 second duration? Homogenize or maintain powerset with mutually exclusive powers?

 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

I hate crashing T9s so much that even my human only Peacebringer doesn't have Light Form. Soooo, all for the change.

[Aracknight]

I'd rather they kept the crash and left them alone rather than what they altered them to.

[Biff Pow]

I'm all for reduced T9s that we would actually use, but it is a little weird to have shorter durations than the Origin Pool click defenses.

[Frozen Burn]

I prefer crashless.  I don't take the T9s except for Will Power's Strength of Will (no crash - they did that one right straight from the get-go). 

 

Moment of Glory from Regen - I hate it.  Doesn't last long enough to regen enough back and the recharge is too long.  The activation seems to take a long time too - long enough that I've died while trying to activate it.  The defense isn't high enough (it seems) as I've died while it's active, 

 

But I do take Invuln's T9 despite the crash - it's too good and it lasts long enough that you can clean house (typically) and then pause for the crash.  I'd be open to a balance of a crashless version of it.  

 

Elude from Super Reflexes - it's a waste of a power pick.  You can already get to the incarnate defense soft cap with pool powers added on, as well as good end management, that Elude's high defense and recovery (and the crash it has) is entirely not useful at all.  

 

 

[Glacier Peak]

Good diversity of opinion here, glad to see that.

[FupDup]

I can deal with "medium crashes" like One With The Shield on live, or softer ones like Meltdown. Of course I prefer none, but I can live with medium to soft. 

 

I definitely will not put up with hard crashes that drain your full blue bar and disable recovery for 20 seconds, or extreme ones like Unstoppable that do that plus also delete 90% of your health bar. 

 

The sticking point of the beta changes is mostly the new durations being too short. This game is paced a lot slower than most others, so 30s goes by a lot faster than it sounds on paper. Should probably be 60s, or at minimum like 40-45s. 

[Glacier Peak]

What do you use T9s for anyways?

[Sebastian]

Hate all the ones that have a crash except one with the shield which you can get around fairly easy

 

rwmoving the crash 100% good idea

 

now, 30 seconds feels low, going from 90 to 45 would feel a lot better, this should come with halfling the recharge AND halfling the animation time. 
30 seconds doesn’t feel like long enough, 45 feels like a fair middle ground and enough time to recoup when needed. 

[Biff Pow]

27 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

What do you use T9s for anyways?

 

There are times while leveling up, pre-final build, that Unstoppable is useful when you're getting endurance drained or majorly debuffed,

[Bill Z Bubba]

19 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

What do you use T9s for anyways?

 

Been pondering that since I read the patch notes, and based on how I've been using MoG on a new scrapper, I suspect that alpha soaking will be main use case for most of them. Elude I'll use just for the recovery/regen, maybe between conserve power uses. Be nice to be able to run rebirth instead of ageless on my brute and tank SRs.

[Hogunn]

11 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

Good diversity of opinion here, glad to see that.

Yes

[ZemX]

In general, I am just not a fan of emergency-use-only powers.  They took the right direction when they went crash-lite with stuff like Meltdown so it becomes a power you might choose to use on cooldown instead of just in an extreme emergency.

 

But since they have the mutually exclusive option now, there's no reason to change what's there when they can just add something new and crashless or crash-lite and then see what the players pick.

[golstat2003]

2 minutes ago, ZemX said:

In general, I am just not a fan of emergency-use-only powers.  They took the right direction when they went crash-lite with stuff like Meltdown so it becomes a power you might choose to use on cooldown instead of just in an extreme emergency.

 

But since they have the mutually exclusive option now, there's no reason to change what's there when they can just add something new and crashless or crash-lite and then see what the players pick.

 

This has been said multiple times, but the devs keep saying they won't do that.

 

At this point I would say they should just do nothing and let those who enjoy the T9s as they are, to keep enjoying them.

[Uun]

• The biggest buff is Strength of Will. The live version is skippable or used as a mule. They massively increased the resist buff, basically allowing you to cap all your resists for 30s (less useful for tanks, but quite good for brutes), and added a damage buff. 
• The biggest nerf is Parasitic Aura. They reduced the duration, increased the recharge and massively reduced the absorb, regen and recovery buffs after the first target. Note, this patch guts Bio in general. 
• Meltdown's duration was cut in half and up-time was slightly reduced but added nothing. The crash they eliminated was minor to begin with. Net nerf.
• Unstoppable had its duration and recharge cut massively (slightly reducing up-time), added some debuff resistance and eliminated a suicidal crash. Net buff.
• OWTS had its duration and recharge cut by about 2/3 (slightly reducing up-time), added some debuff resistance and an absorb buff. The crash they eliminated was pretty manageable. Net buff.
• On live Overload (non-tank) had a use to cover Energy's psi/toxic hole (the other defense buffs weren't really needed). The crash was easily overcome with Energy Drain. With the psi/toxic defense cut by 55%, I don't think this use case still exists, especially with the duration cut to 30s (just pop an inspiration). The only thing of value remaining is the additional DDR and HP buff. Nerf.
• I still see little use for Elude or Kuji-In Retsu despite the addition of regen/absorb buffs and elimination of the crash. Net buff.

[Arbegla]

Personally I would like longer duration (60s minimum) for the T9s so they aren't out performed by a mess of inspiration popping, or the level up buff you get. A T9 should be meaningful and not overshadowed by pill popping.

[Frosticus]

The devs have lost the plot with these t9 changes in a convoluted attempt to make everything fit neatly into a spreadsheet.

 

If they don't understand the power fantasy that most of the t9s were crafted to fill then there is not really a path forward trying to argue them back.

 

Honestly if you can't find a way to modernize these powers while still satisfying the power fantasy then just leave them alone.

 

Ex: New unstoppable is a good power. It has nothing to do with being "unstoppable" in the power fantasy sense. It would be a solid t7 power or something in a different set. 

[arcane]

The new versions will nearly all be desirable whereas before only a few T9’s were desirable.

[PyroBeetle]

1 hour ago, Uun said:

• The biggest nerf is Parasitic Aura. They reduced the duration, increased the recharge and massively reduced the absorb, regen and recovery buffs after the first target. Note, this patch guts Bio in general.

Bio is getting hit to the point that at the Endgame you just cannot run in Offensive anymore, which arguably will make the set more...diverse? I dont know but will hopefully now find a reason to form change, because dog walking everything in Offensive isnt going ti be a thing anymore.

 

25 minutes ago, Frosticus said:

The devs have lost the plot with these t9 changes in a convoluted attempt to make everything fit neatly into a spreadsheet.

 

I dont necessarily see this as the point either. Most of the T9s were only usable to niche builds, builds that would rotate "the cycle" all you needed was a blue to pop after the crash and you were fine in all scenarios, often just invalidating or making irrelevant any slotting beyond slow resistance and procs from your attacks.

 

I did this on a vast majority of my builds too, some combination of RoP and Melee Hybrid and Barrier on cycle covering the time period the T9 was down. Eliminating this as a playstule makes for more variation, not less, and I think it is a good thing overall.

 

Will I have to find new toons to enjoy or change the ones I play, yes, but honestly, isnt that part of why most of us have been playing this game for 20 years.

Edited yesterday at 07:14 PM by PyroBeetle

[arcane]

2 minutes ago, PyroBeetle said:

Buibisbgetting hit to the point that at the Endgame you just cannot run in Offensive anymore, which arguably will make the set more...diverse? I dont know but will hopefully now find a reason to form change, because dog walking everything in Offensive isnt going ti be a thing anymore.

Lol, I’ll believe it when I see it. I have no plans of adding the other adaptations to my tray over the current changes. 

[Uun]

18 minutes ago, PyroBeetle said:

Bio is getting hit to the point that at the Endgame you just cannot run in Offensive anymore, which arguably will make the set more...diverse? I dont know but will hopefully now find a reason to form change, because dog walking everything in Offensive isnt going ti be a thing anymore.

The devs shot themselves in the foot on this, as you can't use DNA Siphon to heal in Efficient Adaptation in the current beta build.

[Myrmidon]

Getting rid of that janky crash crap is definitely my vote.

[hejtmane]

Feels like a lot of the changes are making it's worst versions of Unleash Potential, Unrelenting, Rune of protection

[BasiliskXVIII]

I hate the crashes, but they could occasionally be nice to hit as an "oh shit" to get out of a bad situation. I usually skipped them The mid-range "light crash" T9s like Strength of Will and One with the Shield were my favourite, as they stepped up survivability enough to be useful, often in a direction not covered by the set itself, but also didn't require you to watch for the crash like a hawk or die horribly.

 

The revamped versions, though? Easy skip. I just don't see the value to wasting a power pick in order to get an effect that you can more or less replicate by popping an insp or two.

[arcane]

2 hours ago, hejtmane said:

Feels like a lot of the changes are making it's worst versions of Unleash Potential, Unrelenting, Rune of protection

I assume you haven’t looked at the actual numbers.