Time to allow ally shield on self?

[PaxArcana]

15 minutes ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

This is a fair statement and I'm sure the rest of us feel the same way. However, the idea that a character has powers that it simply CANNOT use solo is a dated system. MMs are a different animal entirely because their whole AT is built around the team THEY THEMSELVES bring to the table. A MM and their 6 pets is a team of one so their buffs make sense.

Come to think of it ... that's actually a great argument in favor of Defenders and Corruptors, at least, being able to affect themselves with those powers: Masterminds already can, in a very real and tangible way.  Those pets are essentially extensions of the MM himself - even to the point of being more hitpoints for the MM (Bodyguard Mode).

 

The MM can protect those extensions of himself - extensions that have hitpoints, that do most or all of the attacking, that get and can hold aggro - with those shields.

 

Is it fair to Corruptors or Defenders, that - if they plan to mostly solo - there are "dead" powers in their list, powers that can't be used on themselves?

I say: no, it's not.

Edited September 13, 2019 by PaxArcana
spelling is hrad

[EyeLuvBooks]

1 hour ago, PaxArcana said:

Come to think of it ... that's actually a great argument in favor of Defenders and Corruptors, at least, being able to affect themselves with those powers: Masterminds already can, in a very real and tangible way.  Those pets are essentially extensions of the MM himself - even to the point of being more hitpoints for the MM (Bodyguard Mode).

 

The MM can protect those extensions of himself - extensions that have hitpoints, that do most or all of the attacking, that get and can hold aggro - with those shields.

 

Is it fair to Corruptors or Defenders, that - if they plan to mostly solo - there are "dead" powers in their list, powers that can't be used on themselves?

I say: no, it's not.

A good point and very well said

[WumpusRat]

2 hours ago, PaxArcana said:

.... but you do have Sets at all, right?

 

As pointed out previously: the game is balanced around SOs, not IOs, and especially not Sets.  Put together an Alternate Build, slot with all SOs, and see what you're like then.

 

Also, look at my comparison of what SR brings to the table, and what FF does.  An /SR Sentinel is still going to be better protected than an /FF Corruptor or Mastermind, and at least comparably so to a FF/ Defender (and will have much more DPS than the Defender).

To be honest, the argument that "the game is balanced around SOs, not sets" is a bit outdated at this point. It's kind of akin to arguing "well, the rules for racing were made back when we used cars that couldn't go more than 40mph, there's no need to update them to reflect the current state of things". At the very least, you have to balance things around basic IOs, which provide a lot more bang for the buck than SOs do. 

 

Also, with my FF MM using just SOs and her current build (which includes weave, maneuvers, and scorp shield -- because remember, MMs get access to defenses in the patron/epic pools, something that Sents don't get) is sitting at 56% S/L def, 49% NRG def, and 35% to all positionals/other typed damage (except for psi, which she's only at 23% against). If you allow her to cast her bubbles on herself, that cranks her S/L def up to well over 70%, and her positionals to 53%. 

 

Now, a comparable SR Sent would have around 42% to melee/ranged and 46% to aoe. This is including, just like the MM, maneuvers, weave and hover, but also adding in CJ on top of it. The def of scorp shield doesn't factor in since they're positional rather than typed, but even then the MM pulls far ahead once you allow them to cast their bubbles on themselves.

 

So with personally-castable bubbles, the /FF MM has superior defenses to the /SR Sentinel, can buff teammates as well, and has several other options that the /SR character doesn't have, such as force bolt, repulsion bomb, etc. All SR brings to the table is personal defenses. FF brings defenses and other tools. And all its defenses would require fewer slots to achieve. The two bubbles and dispersion bubble. That gives you all your defense and status protection. SR requires 3 toggles, two passives, and either a clicky or master brawler to give you status protection. So 6 power picks compared to 3, AND would provide LESS defense.

 

And that's for Corruptors/MMs/Trollers, who have lower values than Defenders. A Defender with SOs could have almost 40% positional defense at 22nd level. They'd have around 30% at TWELFTH, if they use DOs. Sure, they do a lot less damage, but their buffs and debuffs are far stronger. And if you're just soloing, you get +30% damage, which isn't anything to sneeze at.

 

Like I said, I'm willing to try it, but I have a feeling that allowing "support" sets to self-buff would make Sentinels nothing more than a novelty AT, as both Corruptors and Defenders could ALSO do the "tankmage" thing, and do it better since they'd be providing much more use to a group. And once you DO start factoring in sets, they'd blow Sentinels out of the water defensively. And be damned close offensively. Sure, they might do a bit less damage solo, but that would be the slight tradeoff for better defenses and better utility, right? 

 

<edit> I think you could balance it if you made the self-castable buffs weaker than the buffs you cast on other players. After all, it's a SUPPORT set, not a tanking set. You could play with the numbers and make it more balanced. But I think just saying "you can now cast ally-only buffs on yourself" would be a bit much.

Edited September 13, 2019 by WumpusRat

[Replacement]

Yeah I think I'm going to double down on this idea of having a separate buff gifted to caster when they use these powers. It could even be a single buff that's simply thematically appropriate. Example: no matter which cold domination party buff you use, you also grant yourself a (non-stacking) generic ice shield.

 

This would let us really decide what a fair amount of self protection looks like and just go straight for that.

[PaxArcana]

6 hours ago, WumpusRat said:

To be honest, the argument that "the game is balanced around SOs, not sets" is a bit outdated at this point.

No, it isn't.

 

Because to balance the game around IOs and sets, several things would need to happen.

(a) you would have to re-examine the balance of every single power set, power pool, and individual power in the entire game;

 

(b) you would have to re-evaluate the difficulty and XP curves for every character level, from 1-50 and beyond;

 

(c) you would absolutely cheese off a lot of players as either their high-level characters got nerfed, or, the challenge level rose further than they could handle with their low- and mid-level characters.

 

6 hours ago, WumpusRat said:

Also, with my FF MM using just SOs and her current build (which includes weave, maneuvers, and scorp shield -- because remember, MMs get access to defenses in the patron/epic pools, something that Sents don't get) is sitting at 56% S/L def, 49% NRG def, and 35% to all positionals/other typed damage (except for psi, which she's only at 23% against). If you allow her to cast her bubbles on herself, that cranks her S/L def up to well over 70%, and her positionals to 53%. 

... past 45%, you're just buying insurance against -Defense debuffs.

 

Also, please post that build.  I'm doubtful that those numbers are "just SOs", and not including set bonusses - I just can't see how you can achieve that much.

[TheAdjustor]

So nice to see this thread here. I remember back on live starting a similar thread on live. Let me make a comment to those that feel they like difficulty associated with not being able to do this.

 

DON'T

 

If you want the challenge of not having full benefit of your characters abilities don't use them. 

 

It's a very easy thing to see especially with the benefit of time that the original devs gimped entire ATs in a goal to get players to pound their heads against a wall trying to get them into the average zone.

 

Let's take the example of  FF/Blank defender. Solo they lose about half the benefit of their primary and on teams they are dependent on whoever is holding aggro to actually hold aggro.  It's garbage. This is hardly the only example, what I would not give for a blaster secondary that is DAMAGE AT RANGE, not pretend to be a melee toon to do good damage.

[biostem]

12 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

what I would not give for a blaster secondary that is DAMAGE AT RANGE, not pretend to be a melee toon to do good damage

Well, it's more controls/debuffs/self buffs, but tactical arrow is all ranged stuff...

[TheAdjustor]

1 minute ago, biostem said:

Well, it's more controls/debuffs/self buffs, but tactical arrow is all ranged stuff...

I actually have an Archery/TA that's incarnated out and has a reasonable build. The damage just isn't there. I am not sure but I doubt even fire can break 300 dps all at range.

[biostem]

Just now, TheAdjustor said:

I actually have an Archery/TA that's incarnated out and has a reasonable build. The damage just isn't there. I am not sure but I doubt even fire can break 300 dps all at range.

Noted, but I think that goes back to the old mentality of "safety at range", thus the reduction in damage vs melee...

[WumpusRat]

1 hour ago, PaxArcana said:

No, it isn't.

 

Because to balance the game around IOs and sets, several things would need to happen.

(a) you would have to re-examine the balance of every single power set, power pool, and individual power in the entire game;

 

(b) you would have to re-evaluate the difficulty and XP curves for every character level, from 1-50 and beyond;

 

(c) you would absolutely cheese off a lot of players as either their high-level characters got nerfed, or, the challenge level rose further than they could handle with their low- and mid-level characters.

 

... past 45%, you're just buying insurance against -Defense debuffs.

 

Also, please post that build.  I'm doubtful that those numbers are "just SOs", and not including set bonusses - I just can't see how you can achieve that much.

You don't need to balance it around 50th level IOs. You balance it around 25's, which is where they first come into play. Which is roughly the same level as SO's, which frankly nobody uses anymore anyway to my knowledge. Nothing needs to be nerfed. You can call the current state of the game, with current builds at 50th with just standard IO's "the balance point". People already complain the game is a walk in the park at 50th with incarnate and full set bonuses, that's why you see people farming +4/8 content, or doing +4 PI runs and inviting anyone to come join them, because they can solo the entire map. I just find it silly to claim to be balancing the game around an enhancement that nobody uses.

 

Given that /FF for Masterminds doesn't have any -def resist, buffing past 45% is a good way to prevent the occasional cascade fail. Not to mention it means you can solo into incarnate content, as the soft cap is higher, without having to constantly be chewing on defense inspirations.

 

I'm at work right now so I can't post the build, but I can give you a breakdown of where it's all coming from, using Mastermind values:

Dispersion Bubble: 7.5% base defense

Maneuvers: 2.65% base defense

Weave: 3.5% base defense

Protector Bot: 7% base defense

Hover: 2.25% base defense

Scorpion Shield: 12.5%(?) base defense S/L, slightly less against energy

 

Before any slotting at all,  you're looking at ~22% positional defense. Adding +50% from SOs,  you bump that up to ~33% positional. I don't remember the values for scorp shield off the top of my head, as I haven't touched my masterminds for a few months, but I THINK it's around 12.5% base against S/L, and 9%ish against energy, or 19%/14.5%ish after SO's, bringing your smash/lethal up to ~52% and energy to 46%ish. 

 

Pretty much exactly what I quoted, which was read straight from mids. Trust me, if I had set bonuses in there, it'd be MUCH higher. Which is where the numbers I quoted originally were from, with her sitting at ~50% to positionals. 

 

I'm pretty sure you have mids, Pax. You could very easily toss some SO's onto a bot/FF build in 30 seconds or so and check for yourself if you still think I'm trying to be deceptive. I have a feeling you didn't remember that the prot bot can bubble the Mastermind as well (though only one bubble, rather than the double stack on the other minions), which is probably why you were questioning the numbers.

Edited September 13, 2019 by WumpusRat

[Jeuraud]

8 hours ago, PaxArcana said:

Is it fair to Corruptors or Defenders

Hey, don't forget about the Controllers.

 

8 hours ago, PaxArcana said:

, that - if they plan to mostly solo - there are "dead" powers in their list, powers that can't be used on themselves?

One of the worst of these "dead" powers is Kinetics's, Speed Boost... the power that everybody in the group wants, and many expect from the Kinetics AT (Including the ATs that has Kinetics as a secondary.).

There have been thread storms in the old forum about people not carrying this, because there were people that where adamant that because Kinetics is 'support' that if you grouped even 1% you should carry this power. Of course most of these people had never run, nor ever would run Kinetics.

 

 

 

[Jeuraud]

27 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

I'm at work right now so I can't post the build, but I can give you a breakdown of where it's all coming from, using Mastermind values:

Dispersion Bubble: 7.5% base defense

Maneuvers: 2.65% base defense

Weave: 3.5% base defense

Protector Bot: 7% base defense

Hover: 2.25% base defense

Scorpion Shield: 12.5%(?) base defense S/L, slightly less against energy

 

Before any slotting at all,  you're looking at ~22% positional defense. Adding +50% from SOs,  you bump that up to ~33% positional. I don't remember the values for scorp shield off the top of my head, as I haven't touched my masterminds for a few months, but I THINK it's around 12.5% base against S/L, and 9%ish against energy, or 19%/14.5%ish after SO's, bringing your smash/lethal up to ~52% and energy to 46%ish. 

And even though FF is the ultimate Def Power Set... the FF should be required to to select 1 specific AT and be paired with 1 specific power set (Out of 43.), and 4 specific Power Pools, and 4 specific Pool powers (Including one power that affects the way a character moves?), and spend 18 slots, to get to Cap... really???

Maybe Super Reflexes should be tweaked to account for the Tank AT, and Dark Melee power sets, and for all of the pool powers that provide Def, and have to spend 18 slots as well???

 

It's time for the "support" mentality to go back to the other MMO's, and allow the Buff/Debuff ATs to buff the fricken user of the Buff/Debuff set.

 

[PaxArcana]

1 hour ago, WumpusRat said:

You don't need to balance it around 50th level IOs. You balance it around 25's, 

... so, in other words, leave things as they presently are.

 

A Schedule A SO, at +0 levels relative to your character, gives a bonus of 33.330% (a +3 SO gives a bonus of 38.330%).

 

A Schedule A common IO, at level 25, gives a bonus of 32.000%.

 

In other words, the game is already balanced the way you just suggested it be balanced.

1 hour ago, WumpusRat said:

You can call the current state of the game, with current builds at 50th with just standard IO's "the balance point".

A Level 50 common IO gives a bonus of 42.400%, significantly more than you first suggested the game be balanced around.

 

So, which are you going to balance the game around?  Those Level 25 common IOs you first suggested?  Or the level 50 IOs you subsequently suggested?

 

1 hour ago, WumpusRat said:

Before any slotting at all,  you're looking at ~22% positional defense. Adding +50% from SOs,  you bump that up to ~33% positional. I don't remember the values for scorp shield off the top of my head, as I haven't touched my masterminds for a few months, but I THINK it's around 12.5% base against S/L, and 9%ish against energy, or 19%/14.5%ish after SO's, bringing your smash/lethal up to ~52% and energy to 46%ish. 

First point: you didn't say your MM was Robotics/Force Field.  You only mentioned /FF.  The extra nearly-11% defense potential from the Protector Bots makes a big difference, after all.

So, I plugged all those powers in to the Hero Designer, and triple-slotted them with SOs at equal level.  With the Protectors three-slotted with +0 Defense SOs, their bubble should give you 10.92% defense, for a final total of:

• S/L ... 50.72%
• Energy ... 46.22%
• Everything else (including Positional) ... 37.22%

So your estimate is pretty accurate, after all; I sit corrected.

 

However, I have to question the wisdom of sacrificing three entire power choices on the Fighting pool, just to get Weave and it's net 7.02% Defense.  🙂  Well, okay, and it's ungodly protection against Immobilize effects, but still ...

Also, I would like to point out that not all /FF masterminds take Robotics as their primary. 🙂

[GM Sijin]

I don't know where I'd stand on this issue. There's a lot of arguments for and against various things that are fairly valid. The disparity in solo-usefulness has always existed. Let's compare two of the worst offenders:

Empathy vs Dark Miasma.

 

Literally every power in Dark Miasma benefits the user solo (arguments around Black Hole's usefulness not withstanding). All of which (excepting the offensive effects of the rez) have good uptime/availability.

The 3 auras are the only powers in Empathy that benefits the user solo, two of which have bad uptime.

 

This disparity is absolutely incredible. But I've never had a problem with that, as I understood that the support sets were designed, and balanced, around having a team.

 

I just asked myself: Is that an acceptable game design?

And I find I have two incompatible answers:

In an MMO? I'd expect it.

In City of? I'm... not sure.

 

I challenge myself with the question "Why is it ok for debuff-focused sets to almost exclusively work solo, where buff sets are mostly the opposite?" I don't have a satisfactory answer to that.

[WumpusRat]

1 minute ago, PaxArcana said:

... so, in other words, leave things as they presently are.

 

A Schedule A SO, at +0 levels relative to your character, gives a bonus of 33.330% (a +3 SO gives a bonus of 38.330%).

 

A Schedule A common IO, at level 25, gives a bonus of 32.000%.

 

In other words, the game is already balanced the way you just suggested it be balanced.

A Level 50 common IO gives a bonus of 42.400%, significantly more than you first suggested the game be balanced around.

 

So, which are you going to balance the game around?  Those Level 25 common IOs you first suggested?  Or the level 50 IOs you subsequently suggested?

 

First point: you didn't say your MM was Robotics/Force Field.  You only mentioned /FF.  The extra nearly-11% defense potential from the Protector Bots makes a big difference, after all.

So, I plugged all those powers in to the Hero Designer, and triple-slotted them with SOs at equal level.  With the Protectors three-slotted with +0 Defense SOs, their bubble should give you 10.92% defense, for a final total of:

• S/L ... 50.72%
• Energy ... 46.22%
• Everything else (including Positional) ... 37.22%

So your estimate is pretty accurate, after all; I sit corrected.

 

However, I have to question the wisdom of sacrificing three entire power choices on the Fighting pool, just to get Weave and it's net 7.02% Defense.  🙂  Well, okay, and it's ungodly protection against Immobilize effects, but still ...

Also, I would like to point out that not all /FF masterminds take Robotics as their primary. 🙂

I suppose part of it is pedantic. To me, saying "the game is balanced around SO's" seems stupid since, as I said, nobody uses them anymore except as occasional filler if they get a drop during a mission and happen to have an empty slot.  And when I said "a 50th level with standard IOs", I meant 25th level IOs, since upgrading to 50th level IOs is stupidly expensive. I don't know anybody who does it, they just go for sets at that point.

 

And taking the fighting pool is always something I consider to be a kind of "required cost" if I'm building a heavy defense character. The smash/lethal resist is nice, but if you've got capped defenses, you don't get hit much. But then again, if you DO get hit past the def, you're not quite as squishy. Plus it's a convenient place to mule specific IOs, such as steadfast protection and gladiator's armor, for +6% more defense.

 

And actually I did say  that my mastermind was Bot/FF. That was in the very first post I made, which is what sparked our back and forth. You even quoted the part of my statement where I said "my Bot/FF Mastermind..." 

 

The thing is, if you allow self-buffing via the two shields in FF, you wouldn't NEED to be a Bot/FF mastermind to achieve really high defenses. The MM values for the FF shields are 10% base, so with simple slotting, that's an extra 15% defense. With just those and Dispersion Bubble, you're looking at 26% defense to everything. That's with just three powers. A Defender is even stronger (of course), having 25% to all positional defense at level TWELVE, without ANY slotting. Once they get to 22nd and start slotting meaningful enhancements, they'd have 37% positional defense, again with just three powers. Toss in maneuvers and you'd have ~30% positional defense with four powers for non-Defenders, while the Defender would have capped defense with those four powers. Most defense-oriented sets can't do that with four powers. SR requires 6 at a minimum, and then also needs to pick up maneuvers and possibly weave to get capped defense (unless it's on a Tanker, which has higher numbers, but still can't do it with just four powers). 

 

I suppose a lot of it is that I don't want a change like this to make another AT (Sentinels) completely irrelevant. The Sentinel is the "tankmage" AT right now, having blasts and defenses. If you allow support sets to become support/defense, what purpose does a Sentinel really have anymore? They'd basically be inferior version of the Defender/Corruptor, since their secondary is entirely selfish, whereas the support sets typically provide lots of team utility in addition to resist/defense buffs. Similarly, you CAN build a Blaster to be a "tankmage", but it requires specific builds, sets, incarnate abilities, etc. And you're still going to be pretty squishy against some things. So it takes dedication to turn a squishy into the tankmage type. 

 

Given how powerful the defense/resist buffs are in the support sets, allowing them to simply be self-cast would be too much, IMO. Maybe a weak version of them might work, though. 

[PaxArcana]

3 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

And actually I did say  that my mastermind was Bot/FF. That was in the very first post I made, which is what sparked our back and forth. You even quoted the part of my statement where I said "my Bot/FF Mastermind..." 

No, you only said "my FF MM":

 

10 hours ago, WumpusRat said:

Also, with my FF MM using just SOs

 

---

 

Anyway; I just have a kneejerk opposition to any powerset being almost completely about teaming up.  Especially, when other powersets that the exact same archetype could have chosen instead, are not similarly restricted.

Edited September 14, 2019 by PaxArcana

[Warlawk]

3 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

To me, saying "the game is balanced around SO's" seems stupid since, as I said, nobody uses them anymore except as occasional filler if they get a drop during a mission and happen to have an empty slot.

Taken from the Tanker focused feedback thread

23 hours ago, Warlawk said:

Last time I joined a group (mid 30s) 2 of 8 had IO sets slotted, everyone else had zero set bonuses. Those people aren't the ones coming into these threads and arguing their points endlessly so it's very easy to forget that they represent a large portion (if not the outright majority) of the player base.

My anecdotal experience from playing the game is that while leveling, players with significant IO set bonuses are in the minority by a wide margin. People who want to advance their character at level 50 are a different breed but for leveling builds... most people don't bother in my experience. The problem is, that majority of players are also not the ones who are going to come to the forums and end up arguing their stance in a suggestions, likely not visiting the forums at all.

[WumpusRat]

Just now, Warlawk said:

Taken from the Tanker focused feedback thread

My anecdotal experience from playing the game is that while leveling, players with significant IO set bonuses are in the minority by a wide margin. People who want to advance their character at level 50 are a different breed but for leveling builds... most people don't bother in my experience. The problem is, that majority of players are also not the ones who are going to come to the forums and end up arguing their stance in a suggestions, likely not visiting the forums at all.

I'm not talking about set bonuses while leveling. I'm talking about generic IOs. Accuracy, damage, endurance reduction, etc. The "set and forget" types, where you drop it into the power and don't have to look at it again until you want to swap it out for a set bonus, unlike SOs that you need to replace every couple levels.

[WumpusRat]

3 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

No, you only said "my FF MM":

 

 

---

 

Anyway; I just have a kneejerk opposition to any powerset being almost completely about teaming up.  Especially, when other powersets that the exact same archetype could have chosen instead, are not similarly restricted.

I'm trying to figure out how to multi-quote, but my forum-fu is failing me. But on page-2, our very first interaction is my mentioning my bot/FF mastermind, and that's the part that you first quoted. Perhaps I was lazy in assuming that when I kept referring to it you'd remember what I said in my first post. 

 

Oh believe me, I don't LIKE the fact that a lot of the support powersets can't use many of their powers on themselves (I'm glaring in your direction Empathy). I just feel that allowing self-casting with the buffs at their current level would be too much of a swing in the other direction, and would kick the Sentinel AT square in the junk. 

 

I'd be quite happy to test out an idea of allowing the various support sets to cast weaker version of the buffs on themselves, and we can fiddle with the numbers to see where a good balance point lies. I just don't want to jump all over another AT's shtick, you know?

[PaxArcana]

To multiquote .... highlight the snippet you want to quote, a little pop-up labelled Quote Selection appears.  Click it, then move on to the second post for whatever you want to quote from there.

 

And, if you mentioned it earlier ... it did indeed slip my mind.  I may not even have realized it was the same person making both statements.  Oops. 

Edited September 14, 2019 by PaxArcana

[TheAdjustor]

2 hours ago, Jeuraud said:

Hey, don't forget about the Controllers.

 

One of the worst of these "dead" powers is Kinetics's, Speed Boost... the power that everybody in the group wants, and many expect from the Kinetics AT (Including the ATs that has Kinetics as a secondary.).

There have been thread storms in the old forum about people not carrying this, because there were people that where adamant that because Kinetics is 'support' that if you grouped even 1% you should carry this power. Of course most of these people had never run, nor ever would run Kinetics.

 

 

 

Brings up that big gap in sets in the Castle era, where debuff oriented sets would have almost all their powers available to them solo while a buffer would lose half their abilities without a team . If you look at time or nature though(both post castle sets) the powers are pretty much all available and useful solo and overall both are very comparable to older top end sets.

 

Controllers at least have the pets though.

 

Edited September 14, 2019 by TheAdjustor

[WumpusRat]

1 minute ago, PaxArcana said:

To multiquote .... highlight the snippet you want to quote, a little pop-up labelled Quote Selection appears.  Click it, then move on to the second post for whatever you want to quote from there.

 

And, if you mentioned it earlier ... it did indeed slip my mind.  I may not even have realized it was the same person making both statements.  Oops. 

Neat.  ididn't know that, thanks. :)

 

And here I thought my little rat avatar was so distinctive... *sniff*

[PaxArcana]

<--- Memory like a steel ... um ... seive? 😄

[Jeuraud]

1 hour ago, WumpusRat said:

Given how powerful the defense/resist buffs are in the support sets,

I'm going to push this... my Corrupters, Controllers, and MMs do not 'support', we have Buffs/Debuffs and Damage. My BDs will buff sure, but my focus is on debuffs and damage, as much and as often as possible. I'm not on the back line with pom-poms, dropping the occasional heal on the Tank.

 

1 hour ago, WumpusRat said:

, allowing them to simply be self-cast would be too much, IMO. Maybe a weak version of them might work, though.

I do not understand this thought process; why should the numbers for the Buffs be lower for the individual, than for the group? Shouldn't it be the other way around; the group has multiple people adding to its power, while the individual only has themselves to add to their power.

The only purpose I see is to make the BDer weak so they are forced to group, which was the original intent of the original CoH Devs.

 

Again... BDs should not be forced to group, nor should they be a weak link in a group, just because they have buffs.

[WumpusRat]

2 minutes ago, Jeuraud said:

I'm going to push this... my Corrupters, Controllers, and MMs do not 'support', we have Buffs/Debuffs and Damage. My BDs will buff sure, but my focus is on debuffs and damage, as much and as often as possible. I'm not on the back line with pom-poms, dropping the occasional heal on the Tank.

"Support" is a definition of a powerset, not a playstyle. My "brutes" aren't all mindless rage-monsters who flip out and punch things while screaming like the Hulk. My "corruptors" aren't going around constantly trying to despoil and ruin things. You're getting hung up on the name of something.

 

5 minutes ago, Jeuraud said:

I do not understand this thought process; why should the numbers for the Buffs be lower for the individual, than for the group? Shouldn't it be the other way around; the group has multiple people adding to its power, while the individual only has themselves to add to their power.

The only purpose I see is to make the BDer weak so they are forced to group, which was the original intent of the original CoH Devs.

 

Again... BDs should not be forced to group, nor should they be a weak link in a group, just because they have buffs.

Defense sets focus on protecting the user. Support sets have buffs, debuffs, and often attacks as well. Should a set that focuses on self-defense not do that thing better than a set that has a wide variety of abilities and functionality?