Should We Remove Crashes from Defensive T9s?

[Sunsette]

I would like to exclude T9s that do not crash at all or have a very soft crash, as in Radiation Armor, from this discussion.

 

Why remove the crash?

• Part of what makes many of the newer sets so strong is that they effectively have 9 powers to work with, not 8.
• ATs with defensive sets presently reach very durable status in most situations anyway. T9s can't be permaed, though some may need recharge increased to balance. Many T9s maintain psiholes, so this will improve performance chiefly where strong solo ATs already are doing quite well.
• It increases build freedom since you may not feel as much of an imperative to cap if you can press a button when you get over your head and not regret it. 
• Precedent from Blast sets having their crash removed. 
• Reduces the effect of the Blaster<>Sentinel<>Scrapper design space being crowded due to increasingly durable blasters and increased ranged damage beginning to reach parity with melee. 

 

Concerns:

• Increases the design space crowding between Brutes and Tankers. As most T9s do not significantly increase offense, Tankers may feel more marginalized, while Brute tanks can survive in more difficult scenarios. This could potentially be off-set with a buff to tanker offense during a T9's active period. 
• Although it is a power boost chiefly in areas where Stalkers, Sentinels, Scrappers, Brutes, and Tankers were already designed to excel, it is still a power boost that may be unnecessary. 
• How to handle T9s ported to another class via epic pool?

Edited July 27, 2019 by Sunsette

[Zepp]

I was thinking about MoG from regen, and I decided to look at the ratios between effect length and base recharge and 200% recharge. Hopefully this compilation can better inform us about balance issues.

 

 

Power Set	Power	Base Recharge	200% Recharge	Defense	Resistance	Crash	Other
Electric Armor	Powersurge	18.00%	54.01%	None	All but Psionics	-100% End,  No Rec	Status, EMP
Energy Aura	Overload	18.00%	54.01%	ABP	None	-100% End, No Rec	+HP. +Absorb
Ice Armor	Icy Bastion	10.00%	30.00%	None	Weak ABP	None	+Reg, Status
Invulnerability	Unstoppable	18.00%	54.01%	None	ABP	-100% End	Status
Ninjitsu	Kuji-In Retsu	18.00%	54.01%	Positional	None	-100% End, No Rec	+SPD
Radiation	Meltdown	16.67%	37.50%	None	Very Weak All	-10% End, No Rec	+DMG
Regeneration	Moment of Glory	6.25%	18.75%	ABP	ABP	None	Status
Shield Defense	One with the Shield	33.33%	33.33%	None	Very Weak ABP	-60% End	*HP
Super Reflexes	Elude	18.00%	54.01%	Positional	None	-100% End, No Rec	+SPD
Willpower	Strength of Will	40%	40%	None	Very Weak All	-50% End	Status

 

 

 

[Sunsette]

Thank you, I think that's very helpful to have on hand! 

[Heraclea]

Also missing from the discussion are t9s that work on entirely different mechanics like Bio Armor's Parasitic Aura, easily the best t9 in the game right now, which leaches health and endurance from surrounding mobs.  Then again you have Fire's Rise of the Phoenix, which blasts mobs if you're dead.  Dark Armor gets something similar whose name eludes me. 

 

I have never taken Unstoppable on a tanker and never will.  Had it for a while on my i23 SS/Invuln brute; respecced away because of non-use.  It just isn't useful, especially not in situations when you need to put your defenses into overdrive, like tanking the fully buffed Lord Recluse.   It will not last long enough, you are sure to detoggle and die instantly, and the team will quickly wipe.  Better just to stock up on purples and have a defender pet. 

 

The Willpower crash is somewhat manageable, at least if you are paying attention to the little icon and know when it's about to fall.  Its penalty is probably disproportionate to the slight benefit it gives.  It is useful as a mule for some of the resistance uniques; Invulnerability has passives for that, so Unstoppable isn't needed for them. 

[Sunsette]

I was thinking about Bio Armor and Radiation Armor when I mentioned explicitly excluding some from consideration. Those are extremely powerful T9s that work on a completely different paradigm, with only a tiny and manageable end penalty. I think Fire and Dark have somewhat weak T9s but I am not sure how the heck to cottage rule that, and they're both very thematically appropriate.

 

Will I think needs to be considered though -- the crash is somewhat manageable, but as you say, the benefits are slight. Also I think at the very least, Icy Bastion needs to be a choice at T9 alongside Hibernate for all ice sets. Cottage rule for the people who like Hibernate but that is like, awful for most of the ATs that get ice.

 

If we were looking at giving benefits to the crashing defensive T9s beyond removing their crashes, I think the benefits should be AT specific. e.g. increased scrapper critical rate, fury bar doesn't decay, boosting both defense and resistance for tankers, perma-opportunity bar for Sents, no idea for Stalkers. Not an official suggestion, not at this stage, just something. Because the more I look at that table, the more I realize that -just- removing the crash is really not going to matter for tankers at all for most of these.

Edited July 27, 2019 by Sunsette

[Xaeon]

Meltdown was probably meant to be a testbed for a newer design philosophy for "click to godmode" T9s. A decent but not massively overkill click buff that while you can't make permanent recharge quickly enough to be available in a solid portion of the fights you get into with a very soft crash; almost unnoticeable actually since it expends endurance in a set that has plenty to spare. And IMHO Meltdown is a much better designed power than most of its counterparts. Cutting down the magnitude of the buffs the T9s give in exchange for having softer or negligible crashes would make them far more usable and easily placed into builds rather than basically a long form means of committing suicide. You almost never need a buff as extreme as Unstoppable or Power surge, especially not at high levels where you should be at or approaching caps in the most important areas. Those big meaty numbers end up being unnecessary overkill so you're essentially penalising yourself with a giant crash for negligible gain.   

 

While Tankers might not really need meltdown as they can reach their resistance caps for most things with radiation armour with some doing, it's a good option for brutes or if you're a bit antsy about having to sacrifice other set bonuses or procs you'd rather have in your build. Meanwhile I can't really remember the last time I've ever sat down and said "I wish I had unstoppable right now." Being basically worthless for a whole minute or more, or worse; worthless and on the verge of defeat from anything that so much as looks at you funny, is not fun gameplay, it's basically a time out where you have to stop playing. That's not good and there's a reason why modern game designers tend to avoid this sort of ability in games these days. 

 

Sure invuln tankers are probably still going to pass over unstoppable or power surge if you cut their numbers and made the crash much more pleasant/removed entirely (and honestly probably would pass them over even if they were at full power and had no crash since by level 50+3 they really don't need to spend a whole power slot on a temporary resistance buff), but it'd be more of an option for scrappers and brutes.  

 

It'd also fit into the later era powerset design philosophy of "ideally you should be taking every power in your primary and secondary" as Paragon Studios tried to do away with "skippable" powers in primary and secondary sets and instead worked to try and make every power in a set useful and good. Being generally speaking, less than fond of the idea of it being considered optimal to disregard a big chunk of what should be the character defining powersets of a toon in favour of pools. 

 

Using meltdown as a basis we can probably figure out the preferable new buff range for reworked T9s.

Edited July 27, 2019 by Xaeon

[Zepp]

I included rad as it is a similar power and it is nice to know what we are comparing the other powers to. I did not include Rad because of the lack of defensive component making it more difficult to compare.

 

MoG I had on a scrapper back in the day for taking Alphas, but I respecced out of it because I needed the slot. The way I see it, these powers need to be considered on multiple fronts: reliability (what percentage of time will they be up?), scale (how much protection do they actually offer?), crash (what's the hangover gonna be like?), and other affects.

 

Other T9s, Stone Armor's barely mobile, barely meat, shield; Parasitic Aura's second-rate Instant Heal knockoff (although the -Dam is nice), Dark's and Fire's Rezzes, etc. should also be considered, but let us face the cold hard truth, Armor T9s are generally the most skippable power in the set.

[Zepp]

I would argue that we should be looking at Icy Bastion's Resistance numbers, as Meltdown, One with the Shield, and Strength of Will are a little too weak to be considered as seriously as they ought to be.

On the other hand, I would argue that One with the Shield and Strength of Will have more manageable crashes because they lack the -Recovery.

None of these powers are reliably up at the moment, so the question is, how can they be more useful?

 

I would argue that in addition to limiting the crash, it would also be better to flip most of them between resist and defense. I'm looking at Regen. Regen does not have Defense or Resist, MoG fills that gap. So, why have a resist buff in a resist set? Why have a defense buff in a defense set? It would be better if the T9 actually filled a hole in the set by addressing the need not addressed well by the set.

Edited July 27, 2019 by Zepp
The default font is ugly.

[nihilii]

One aspect missing from this discussion so far is duration. 180 seconds > 120 seconds > 60 seconds, as tough spots where you need a T9 are likely to last long and activation time is a constant. Then we've got Icy Bastion and MoG, their use case being more along the line of alpha strike absorber and/or a breather click.

In a sense we have a blueprint for soft crashing T9s if you look at Zepp's chart, and that blueprint roughly says:
- less uptime
- lower duration
- less of a defensive buff

I feel so much time has been spent balancing the game with godmode crashing T9s it'd take significant rework to make a crash removal balanced. EA and Invul are on the sturdier end of the scale, for example. A hypothetical crashless Overload would let EA run at capped HP most of the time with ludicrously high defenses, with all the other nice tools EA has. Where does SR (or even Nin) fit then? Psi? Even the Nin <-> SR comparison becomes iffier, as the DDR advantage from SR pales if characters are running at 100%+ defense for most of their gameplay.

So, if you remove the crash but keep the duration you end up with plain overpowered options. If you lessen the duration or the strength of the buff, you're falling afoul of the cottage rule - and this is not a "victimless" change, I have a friend who systematically takes T9s on his invuls and energy armors, *and* use them with amazing results in a pinch. Tanking massive +3/x8 adds in mayhems with no help on SOs at lvl 40. Taking on the final LRSF 7 with no support, while the clock is ticking, only to hop out for a moment when it's about to pop, retoggle, and come back in the fight. Moments that, frankly, make him seem like a god and would be a shame to lose. :D Crash management makes for that, too.

I think the next best thing would be to soften the crashes to something that is still more punishing than lower duration/efficiency T9s, but not AS dramatic as they are now.

Endurance crashes could be -80% rather than -100%, with -recovery. Giving a chance to avoid detoggle, but you can't just turn your brain off and keep spamming attacks as you crash.
HP crashes... That's a tougher one. If it crashed to 50% HP, it might end up *restoring* life, which is what we see with AVs sometimes. But then, would that be such a problem? A crash to 50% HP and -80% end seems fair enough. You're still going to have to watch your endurance consumption and manage your now lowered mitigation.

Possible balance problems:
- EA has incredible endurance management tools and would laugh at this new crash. Pop Energy Drain and you're good. Small price to pay for capped HP.
- Elec could do the same in theory, but in practice is highly limited by the resistance cap on Sentinels and Scrappers. On the flipside Brute will enjoy capped resistances, gaining even more ground on Tankers.
- Invul would gain a lot on all versions, but once again Brutes would gain the most of all thanks to their higher resistance cap. Further trivializing invul tankers.
- Nin is supposed to be SR-light with toys, but might become SR-plus with toys on Sentinels and Scrappers as they have a free clickie to regain endurance. Poor Stalkers are left in the cold.

All in all, no matter what, the changes would have repercussions. It's not as straightforward as crashless blast nukes which are mostly just added damage - and even then, crashless nukes *have* posed threats to the relevance of AR, Archery and DP.

Edited July 27, 2019 by nihilii

[Sunsette]

What about mutually exclusive T9 options -- keep the existing ones as-is, introduce an alternative with reduced numbers. Is this technically feasible?

[marcussmythe]

36 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

What about mutually exclusive T9 options -- keep the existing ones as-is, introduce an alternative with reduced numbers. Is this technically feasible?

Well, the SR Sentinel gets either/or of Practiced and Master Brawlers, and Master Brawler further modifies the behavior of other powers, so.. Id say a strong yes?

 

We might also consider how we assign bonuses to them.  My Scrapper and Brute would find a soft-crash unstoppable at current values quite nice, while the tank would find little value in additional S/L resist - but might well relish temporarily having Brute level Dambuff (as the Brute temporarily has tank level resist!)

[Sunsette]

yeah I know about SR Sent, but I could very much believe it's the sort of thing that's so randomly hacky that reverse-engineering to add to an existing powerset might cause all sorts of bugs, heh. Anyway, good points all 'round.

[Zolgar]

The problem with the crashing T9s is kind of like the problem with Granite these days:

In the olden days, before IOs, before Incarnates, crashing T9s had a place. That panic 'oh shit' button when things go sideways, or something you pop right as you charge an AV to soak literally anything it throws at you. You could gain an unprecedented amount of power, but you paid for it. They really are though artifacts of the original armor set design mindset, if you travel all the way back to when you could only run one toggle at a time, the crashing T9s were amazing.

In modern times where not only do we have IOs and Incarnates, but both are so readily available that anyone who wants to can fairly easily max out both? It's possible to get close to those levels of survival, without the penalties associated.

I, personally, feel that they need to be revised, because they have not aged well. However, I do not claim to know how they need to be revised, as was pointed out above, if we change them too much we run the risk of breaking the cottage rule.

I gotta say though, I love power sets with crashing T9s. It's nice only having 8 powers to pick from 😉

[Sunsette]

50 minutes ago, Zolgar said:

I gotta say though, I love power sets with crashing T9s. It's nice only having 8 powers to pick from 😉

YUP. I'm actually in this boat -- even if my current characters with crashing T9s got 'em fixed to simply be crashless, not withstanding @nihilii's accurate analysis, I'm not sure I'd actually take it on all of them. I like having the freedom. But I like trying to look at the game from the perspective of a new player and a friend of mine was talking about frustrating it can be when a newbie asks for build help and they don't understand why you're skipping their ultimate power. And I sat there and went, "well, hm. Wouldn't it make more sense for the powers to work intuitively?"

Obviously this doesn't have an easy solution, but if we can work one out that'd be great.

[Razor Cure]

The T9s need to fill a hole in the set, as well as add something..special (ideally).

Like the new ICe Armour one, Icy Bastion. That is sooooooooo good compared to Nubinate (so worthless on tanks especially). The set is defence based, and the t9 gives you good resists..a perfect hole filler, since when your def fails..you want the resists as back up.

LIkewise MoG..a stack of def and res, in a set that has very little. And a short power, which makes sense when IH is a long duration.

As another example..Unstoppable. ALL Resist..in a set with good resists anyway. Its mostly pointless as people have noted.

 

Suggestions.

Dark Armour. Said this before. COmbine CoF and the stealth into one power, give it Shadow Meld as a t9. Fast, short power, giving a good hit of defence.

Elec. All resists again..stupid. Give it something with +speed/rech, maybe elec damage in attacks as you channel power, with a big hit of regen and absorb?

EA: Its all def again..silly. The +hp is nice. Some resists and absorb would be much better.

WP: Not bad. But boring.

Shield: Decent. I'd give it a lil def hit too (since shield generally has lower def than other sets). Maybe a stacking +def, from AaO.

Regen. Good. But ive the self rez a +hp, so it becomes another tool.

Stone: A whole seperate can of fish!

Fire: Give the rez perhaps a +damage and absorb, make it useable when alive.

Rad: APparently good!

Bio. Great.

SR: ALl def again. Give it a +rech and more speed, with a refreshing absorb and +regen mechanic since the set has no heal.

Ninjitsu: A bit of rech and some resists, also status prot (in case case of dying trhen having no mez prot when you get up).

 

[Voldine]

Honestly, if there's talk about reworking t9 defense set powers to make them better complement the set they are in to form a more complete defense, even if only for a limited time, then Granite Armor still needs to be part of the discussion because its nature as a t9 armor toggle is 90% of the reason the rest of Stone Armor feels so painful to level up.

 

Frankly, I think Granite needs to have the -damage aspect removed at the very least.

[Zepp]

Granite armor is a whole other issue. The movement penalty is tough (TP is a good workaround), but the massive recharge penalty and the fact it is not compatible with half the set is insane. Then you have a -damage penalty on top of that? That is the T9 in greatest need of a rework.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Bloody Hell! Where do I even begin. T9s crash or not being made perma was a goal for every and I mean every good player pre ED, and losing Perma did not make them less worthwhile to take. Likewise the holes in various defense sets should not be getting filled by T9s, Those holes in those sets are there by design for a reason. A very good one and filling those wholes by clever pool, and IO set bonus build choices is something to praise not to replace by no brainer power choices in the sets themselves.

 

Lets start with Moment of Glory though, as my toon Demetrios Vasilikos was a BS regen with no peer on virtue for years and lead countless TFs with puggs composed often of mostly first time TFers and always lead them to smooth fun completions.

 

as every power set has by design optimal pairings lets look at Regens. Dark, Katana/Broad Sword are the natural superior choices for regen for well established reasons. And MoG compliments those choices making it a clear must to take for smart builders.

 

In Darks case MoG used at the opener gives you time to apply your to hit debuffs with impunity, with the sword sets it gives you time to stack your parry def bonuses. It also will allow a quick button hitter a perfect combo with self rez to get back up even solo surrounded by tons of mobs and get your arse out of there so you can retoggle as needed and prepare for round two.

 

Now lets take SR, Dont even think about frelling with Elude. T'Keron Valmaz was legend on Lambda Trials for soloing the turrets while the teams cleared the streets. I could do so because my eludes down time was so low that phase shift covered the down time, and a simple blue was all it took to counter the end crash. Its not some big deal its something you have to simply plan for and that is a good thing, that is tactical preparation. I literally only use hte autos and elude on my SR scrapper. The toggles are the powers to ignore if your a good builder and playing an SR user.

 

Ice armor is the best partner to super strength, Hibernate is the perfect counter to the rage crash issue. Again every set has ideal partners and bad partners.  The issue perceived to exist in rage on SS comes from too many wannabe superman builds using a less optimal partner with it like Invuln or WP.  Use bad power combos and get less then epic results.

 

Yes Bio armors is basically an OP game breaker that clearly was not ready for live play. Hence why EVERY META GAMER is using it now.  Frankly I hope the HC team breaks the knees on it sooner then later. Its cool but way too over performing.

 

Basically it sounds like you just want everything to fit your narrow view of good, rather then see that having a variety of mechanics increases diversity in build and rewards build ability rather then catering to those who dont want to have to work for superior performance.

 

As the HC devs have said in other threads they dont want to remove current build options. And this proposal would kill many great builds out there either by reducing the power of T9s to compensate for no crashes, or make defense sets OP by removing their intentional and thematic weaknesses.

[Razor Cure]

33 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Now lets take SR, Dont even think about frelling with Elude. T'Keron Valmaz was legend on Lambda Trials for soloing the turrets while the teams cleared the streets. I could do so because my eludes down time was so low that phase shift covered the down time, and a simple blue was all it took to counter the end crash. Its not some big deal its something you have to simply plan for and that is a good thing, that is tactical preparation. I literally only use hte autos and elude on my SR scrapper. The toggles are the powers to ignore if your a good builder and playing an SR user. 

No offence but..what? You NEED almost perma elude to do that? Elude is like 45% def OVER and above all SR already has. IE..an utter waste. Also, Phase on a melee. That is totally a great indicator of how 'good' a t9 is! Of course, my opinion and everything. If it works for you, go nuts.

As too you talking about not wanting to 'fix' a powersets holes...I kinda agree with your there, but the whole argument is rendered utterly moot by IOs and incarnate stuff. Like you can build an Invul to have like 40% (or whatever) Psi resist, which is stupidly awesome to a set that normal gets utterly spanked by Psi. How is that not 'breaking the design?'

Also, newer sets like Bio and to an extent WP and shield have VERY few holes, getting +hp, regen, rec, def, res etc etc> Obviously nothing gets everything. Well..Besides bio with heal, rec, rech, res, def, heal, AND absorb. So why play anything but Bio Armour?

Oh wait..cause we all love different sets and would like them tweaked in a variety of ways (whether realistic or not).

Also, if every t9 was tweaked a bit, with no crash and maybe Unenhanceable rech (on the long duration ones), that would totally eliminate any outcry about 'plugging the power sets designed weakpoints' because nothing would be perma, but everything would and could be actually useful.

Edited July 31, 2019 by Razor Cure

[Zepp]

I played both Regen (Spines/Regen Scrapper), and SR (Katana/SR Scrapper). I tried the T9s on both (with north of 200 recharge in my final builds), and the T9s were meh at best.

 

With Regen, the T9 was only useful in TFs, but not to the degree where it couldn't be replaced by a better power choice.

 

With SR, the T9 did squat because I had softcapped defense without it. For the short time I used it, I used it between missions for the speed boost. It then spent a short period as a mule, before being removed entirely.

 

I have played these sets at high levels, and I understand the role the T9s are supposed to play, they just do not fit that role. MoG is likely the best of the lot (because it patches holes), but the other T9s just add to the percentage above the cap.

 

As I stated before, the T9s should be shifted to cover holes, rather than accentuate what already exists in the sets.

[Sura]

For everyone mentioning Icy Bastion, or looking at the chart in post 2, remember Icy Bastion is not an option for Tankers.  Tankers are stuck with Hibernate, which is completely antithetical to the role of Tankers on a team.  

 

I've mentioned T9's several time on these forums, and I'm glad to see a thread opened about them.  Here's just some random thoughts, all IMO:

• I think it's worth discussing changing only defensive T9's in Primaries.  I think you're spot on to be worried about "design space crowding" if all the T9's were to change, but changing only Tanker T9's might be a way to un-crowd that space.     
• I completely think T9's, especially primary T9's, should be powers that the player is excited to get.  Like Fulcrum Shift.  
• I agree that the T9's should be covering holes, rather than making sets often uselessly better at what they're already good at.
• For my purposes, I skip anything with a crash.  They just don't make sense in today's game.

 

[Varkarrus]

What I'd do with T9 Abilities is take everything about them and make it quicker.

 

You pop the T9 defensive buff, maybe it should only last for 20-30 seconds. Then, the crash afterwards should be significantly easier to recover from. Finally, it'd then only take a few minutes to recharge. You can then get into a rhythm; pop the buff when you need to be the most aggressive, then fall back to a defensive position to recover, then get back into the fray until you need to use that buff agin.

[Yoru-hime]

I'd take Elude on my Scrapper if the crash were removed, but I'd be taking it for recovery and speed, not for defense, which sounds completely silly. Unless there were some sort of major rework of the set (which I am NOT advocating for by the way), I'm already covered on defense. Resist or absorb or something would certainly be a functional improvement, but in addition to being out of theme, it's not one I can really claim to NEED. When my SR scrapper was fully leveled on Legacy, I ran +4/x8 with little trouble unless something was exploiting a weakness and I'm not some sort of master build maker.

 

It is a little sad that the Tier 9 feels so unneeded, but that's a side effect of the raw power of IO sets and the diminishing returns of protective powers. I always want more damage, but once I have enough protection to hit the AT cap or fight what I want safely, adding more on top of it provides very little value, so the T9 tends to seem extraneous.

 

A buff to Primary T9s as a way to help out Tankers would make sense to me, though. Give them a way to either create more of a meaningful gap defensively or bridge some of the gap offensively with the other Melee classes.

[Galaxy Brain]

Even without IOs the t9s were often overkill 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

A few things seem to not be taken into account.

 

1:Debuffs. certain builds like SR for example being pure def need to be overkill to help have enough to when combined with debuff resistance not be overwhelmed. For those ATs that dont possess such debuff resistance set resistance and defense, and that which comes from the incarnate powers does not have that protection. Many of the most feared and hated mobs in the game are feared and hated for their debuffs. That is the main reason almost no one likes to do the Shadow Shard TFs, sure they will grumble about the time sink due to travel but that isnt a real issue, the real issue is they shred defense and resistance, and hurl psi dmg, and use phasing to randomly pop you out of action, they do that on a tank or healer and most teams fold to them.

 

2: diversity within a given power sets build options. For example in my above posts something maybe that wasnt clear or something but I dont use the toggles on my SR toons. I hate toggles in general, and love SR because between elude and the autos and stealth( always on) and hover( always on with a stealth IO ) and phase shift to cover my small periods of down time with elude render me unstoppable in a fight, costs virtually no endurance outside of my attacks, and focus on rapdily destruction. keep in mind I build Melee toons exclusively as single target AV killer specialists. I leave mass mob killing to my blasters.

 

3:I find things like spine fire scrappers so squishy in actual game play on teams because they grab too much aggro, are too squishy against most mobs, and being farmers often complain alot on TFs because they tend to eat a lot of dirt. Same with Fire X 3 blaster builds. Sure in farming content they feel like gods. In actual game play not so much.

 

We all build for the content we spend the most time in. I spend most of my time in story arcs and TFs. Farmers farm, and they do not do a good job typically of turning their plows into swords.