UberGuy

If they are basing this decision fully or in part on how many people take Stamina, they have no way to separate those who would take Stamina alone from those who would still take Health and a speed power (like me).

Standard code rant applies, but I'm going to guess the minority is going to have to lose out on this. And I do expect that folks who actively do not want extra movement speed, health regen and/or endurance recovery (as opposed to those who don't mind them, but would accept them) are a minority. I'm going to guess that adding a completely new system to allow you to choose whether or not to accept the new inherent is probably too much effort for them to put into this. (I realize that you could just choose to never respec again, but I don't really consider that a "solution".)

And that would be a completely different change. Think of this in terms of K.I.S.S. - this is likely the least possible overall change in the balance of high-end characters, in either direction. Every alternative approach that people are proposing, including changes in endurance cost, changes in base recovery rates, etc., have completely different balance points than what we have today because of how the recovery algebra is laid out.
I just don't know how to describe it better. Doing things this way means the top end of recovery doesn't change, but more people get closer to it. Any other version of improving recovery (or end burn) is more complicated.

Maybe I missed some intense technical revelation by the devs, but where did it become clear that the graphics API layer used to code the game's graphics engine was at the root of its performance issues?

Sorry, but this sounds like mucho talking out of el posterior.

That's an interesting point.

I really have no idea how many people have dual builds. I know very few that use them, personally. Still, it'd be nice for the people that do have dual builds to be able to respec all of the when the devs make powers changes.

From what I recall, there will actually be more builds available once the Incarnate stuff rolls out.

I just reread your whole post (it's not very long, but I didn't quote all of it), and I really don't see how I did what you're saying here. Maybe I'm just not parsing your earlier post correctly.

I do agree with the rest of this post.

This might be a terminology thing. What's "significant"? Most of my characters already have 60-70% global recharge, plus 45-60% slotted, plus Hasten. If I can eke out another 2-3 LotGs (and a lot of my characters couldn't because they would run into the rule of 5) they're going to improve, but not dramatically.

I have a Scrapper who lacks Stamina today, and gaining it will be a noticeable change, but not a dramatic one.

Defense is the potential outlier here, and I did mention it earlier. if you have a lot of defense but aren't softcapped. Some builds are going to be able to fit in a few more % defense, either in powers, new places to fit a +3% unique, or both. If you're currently between about 25% defense and 45% defense, I could see the benefit being described as significant

So what do people think: is this just a disagreement about what "significant" means, or are there other examples besides Defense and maybe DR, due to their accelerating returns?

There's nothing for the devs to handle, here. They're not trying to give us a ton of new power.

If you change nothing else about your build and add three new powers, you end up with powers you didn't have before, and they're not fully slotted. While they may not be as useful as you'd like, it's hard to imagine a way it could make a character worse.

As it exists today, yes. It sounds like the powers will be granted automatically. You won't have to pick them, and that likely means you'll be able to pick a different pool if you've currently taken powers from four.

That's correct. I consider it extremely likely that this is intentional. There's no reason to expect this to allow new vistas of power to open up, and being able to decently slot 3 new powers is probably headed into that realm. This looks like a novel way to open up play in the low-level game, open up play for people who currently skip fitness for a variety of reasons, and do so while neither nerfing min/maxed Fitness builds nor making (most of) them significantly more powerful.

See above.

But seriously, this is like being unhappy that you didn't get cheese on the totally free double hamburger you were given when you were hungry. Yes, I get being disappointed if you much prefer cheeseburgers, but it's not like not having cheese on the free hamburger made you more hungry, or made the hamburger less filling.

Pick powers that don't need a lot of (or any) slots. Search for ways to move slots around. Or pick powers that could use more slots and underslot them to get some but not maximal benefit. Or try to use the powers as IO mules.

It's practically guaranteed that this will be some sort of net improvement to every character, but that improvement might be (very) small. It seems likely to me that it's not supposed to be much of an improvement to builds that already had and slotted Fitness.

It changes things for people who don't take them now, because they want other stuff instead.

It changes things for everyone from 1-20-something.

We shouldn't assume they actually want to raise the roof very far, but they might make the house inside more comfy.

Doing this at all creates power creep unless it comes pre-loaded with a nerf. Making this part of the base rates would be a nerf to everyone who has set bonuses, uniques or procs in Health and Stamina, a wash to anyone who has nothing but SOs or commons in them, and a buff to everyone with +regen or +recovery powers.

The question is which way creates the least power creep, or the most acceptable form of creep, hopefully while nerfing the fewest people. I think the option that does that best is probably the one they have chosen.

Because doing that would invalidate every high end build which relies on slotting IO sets in those powers. Doing it this way gives it as a huge freebie to everyone from 1-20-ish and to everyone who didn't have Fitness already. It does nothing negative to those with slots in the existing fitness pool, and gives them some but limited power growth, since they will not be able to slot the powers that they can now take instead of Fitness without stealing slots from somewhere else.

It also avoids changing the algebra of other powers that give +recovery and +regen, since those would be operating off of larger bases.

... but why increase it at all? Just leave it exactly like it is now, and leave it slottable. This has the least possible disruption on the existing high end, giving previously maxed out builds the same recovery potential they have today, plus room for three new powers that they can't put more than one enhancer in without taking slots out of fitness powers.

Anyway, clarified above. Being slottable doesn't clearly imply the same power strength, but it seems fairly likely.

Not that we know one way or the other, but why are you assuming they won't be slottable?

No, because what do you choose as your baseline? Fully slotted at the ED max, so that at level 20 (or level 1) you get the full recovery? What about the ability to slot IO sets in Health and Stamina?

Just removing Health and Stamina as places to slot things would decrease my effective recovery by around 35% on every tweaked out character I have. I'd really rather not have this benefit come wrapped in a net nerf.

You're referring to someone who quoted what I said, so I'm going with the idea that you're continuing his line of thought. If so, You might want to read what I actually said. I did not say it would have no effect on the high end.

I play the game on difficulties ranging from +2/x4 to +4/x8, and most of the 50s in my signature have builds worth 2-8 billion inf. I know how to min/max. The effect of this on people who have no stamina today is going to be more dramatic than the effect of giving most previously min/maxed builds three new powers but no new slots. Most builds that are already maxed out have picked all the best low hanging fruit they can get in zero slots. Adding three more powers at their base slot just isn't likely to add that much more to previously maxed out builds. In general, adding a small amount to an already large amount doesn't have a dramatic effect. The exceptions are in things like defense and DR and a lot of builds will actually already have the powers that do the most here.

That's not nearly as big an improvement as you could achieve if you could take three powers and slot them with all the slots you presumably use in Fitness today. (Most of my builds devote from 3-6 slots between Health and Stamina.)

Sorry, but for the vast majority of even min/max builds, I consider that bupkiss compared to the difference that someone will see who has no Fitness today and tomorrow suddenly gets Health and Stamina, even if they only put a base slot enhancement in it. How many seconds will that +15% recharge shave off of your key powers?

I'm not sure why this would be nice. If they're merged, anyone who has both powers today would have to spend an extra slot on the combined power to put in one slot into both effects. Today each power comes with a free slot, which can be enhanced with no slot cost.

What's the difference if you get two free powers instead of one? The only special enhancements you could slot in it would be HOs - you can't slot sets in Swift or Hurdle, and almost certainly a combined inherent version would be the same way. Other than the extremely specific case of slotting the combined power with a Micro HO I'm not sure why this is better.

That's a net nerf. People currently can slot things in Stamina (and Health) that would have no place to go on huge numbers of builds, and wouldn't be nearly as effective even on most of the ones they could still be slotted in.

That's what I envisioned also. There are some folks speaking of them as if they appear at level 1, but I don't know if that's supposition or based on Dev comments at PAX.

Making them unlock at 1 would have a lot bigger effect on general morale, IMO, but I can totally see them working as you suggest.

Based on GR beta, Incarnate slots are not slots you can add to powers. They are slots where you can place "incarnate enhancements", which are, in essence, slottable powers.

So unless that design changes, we still won't have the slots.

"Inherentness" doesn't really have anything to do with how they have to interact with the forms.

However, it would certainly be nice if they were not flagged such that they stop working in forms. Note, though, that the forms have +recovery of their own, so having both could conceivably be considered unbalanced in some way. (I'm not saying I think that, just that someone dev-side might.)