Adeon Hawkwood

Well it's more a low level buff cast on a higher level character is weaker. In general they balanced it so that for most abilities the the actual benefit remained relatively constant across levels. So the amount of Rating provided increased as you leveled at about the same rate as the amount of Rating required for 1% improvement also increased (i.e. using made up numbers a level 10 might have a 100 Rating buff giving 5% To Hit while a level 50 might have a 700 Rating buff giving... 5% To Hit).

The original reason they implemented the Rating system was for gear. They needed to provide higher level gear but had pretty much reached a cap for how high it could go without breaking the game. Changing to a rating system allowed for low level gear to get worse, similar to out-leveling enhancements in CoX.

Pretty much. I've often felt it would be interesting in this game if they changed to a Rating system so that buffs scaled with the AT of the character they were used on. There would, however, be less need to grow rating as you leveled since the primary purpose of such in other games is to make low level gear obsolete.

Changes to Snipes affect 6 different ATs. A valid discussion of the changes needs to include both a discussion of the change itself and a discussion of the relative impact to the different ATs.

The Snipe change as currently stated by the devs are creating a situation where some ATs have significantly better access to the changes than others. Do I think that Blasters should all get perma-FastSnipe? No, I'm fine with it being a perk for Devices. However, I also don't feel that Defenders and Corruptors should get perma-FastSnipe as easily as they currently do. This has nothing to do with thinking Blasters needing a buff relative to Defenders and Corruptors since while they need buffing I don't think a damage buff is needed. I do think, however, that giving Defenders and Corruptors perma-FastSnipe devalues the concept of FastSnipes in general.

If Defenders and Corruptors get perma-FastSnipe virtually out of the box (they can have it at level 22 if they want) why are the Snipes still Snipes anyway? At that point it seems to me that it would make more sense to just change the snipes to regular attacks. If the devs want to have the FastSnipe mechanic then I think it needs to be more heavily restricted than it is now. So either open it up to everyone (by changing the snipes to standard attacks) or more heavily restrict it than it currently is (by making certain powers trigger FastSnipe mode rather than a generic 22% ToHit Buff). This current setup where some ATs can get perma-FastSnipe with a minimal build impact while others can only get it with specific powersets (or a specific APP for Dominators) is going to end up a horrible mess.

EDIT: I'm also not a fan of having AT specific ToHit bars since that would end up favoring Time Manipulation which has the ability to stack Farsight and Tactics.

Sooooooo many possible responses here .

I'll be good though. Suffice to say I'm not as convinced as you seem to be that a DR system could be implemented that would have a noticeable effect on team play without marginalizing the lower performing support sets. I'm not going to say it's impossible but I am extremely skeptical.

I think we'd likely end up in a situation where either some support sets become "useless" (especially Force Field) or where the diminishing returns on buffs are to low to have a noticeable impact on play.

Now if DR were combined with some other changes in the form of a major overhaul of support sets to account for DR then I could see it working but i don't see it working if it's just stacking DR on top of the current sets.

How exactly? Yes, you can limit the ability of debuffs to stack with each other but I don't really see how you could avoid debuffs stacking with buffs.

Time Manipulation is a good example. It combines a strong Defense Buff with a strong To Hit Debuff. Now assuming you DR'd the Defense Buff int he manner you discribed the To Hit debuff is still at full strnegth and, effectively, fully stacking with any Defense buffs you have.

Sonic and Trick Arrow are the other two that spring to mind. While neither of them are quite as much a one-trick pony as Force Field they both have issues which make them fall behind the other sets.

Trick Arrow suffers from being a pure-debuff set which lacks any strong team survival tools. Most of the good sets use buffs for survival and debuffs for damage. Trick Arrow is trying to use Debuffs for both and suffers because of it (it's a lot stronger on Controllers where it can stack its control with that of the Controller's primary). Diminishing Returns wouldn't directly hurt it but I think that its Jack of All Trades, Master of None approach will get hurt by the fact that the debuffs it does have will lose effectiveness since at least some of them will be stacking with debuffs from other players.

Sonic Resonance is slightly better than Force Field in that it does provide some resistance debuffs along with it's resistance buffs but the fact is most Defender sets can pump out decent resistance debuffs and provide a wider variety of other tools (it doesn't help that Sonic has 4 powers with very questionable design decisions).

Overall I think DR would leave the top support sets relatively unchanged (Traps, Cold, Time, Rad, Dark) while lessening the benefit of lower tier sets to teammates. The only set I see really benefiting is Thermal since it's Resistance buffs get stronger relatively speaking and it's other powers are unlikely to encounter as much DR as some sets.

That's fine. I have no aversion to deliberately tanking my endurance to get AB cast on me.

I don't see stack limits having much impact without also adding some form of diminishing returns or getting really complex. For example stopping two Force Fielders from stacking their defense buffs doesn't really help if a Force Fielder can still stack with Cold Domination, Traps or Time Manipulation. It wouldn't solve the stacking buff issue, it would just create team composition elitism (sorry, we already have a FF, we need a Cold or Traps for Defense Buffs).

You could probably do it but I think it would need to be more exclusionary than simply like cannot stack with like. So (for example) Deflection Shield doesn't stack with Ice Shield but does stack with Force Field Generator and Force Field Generator doesn't stack with Farsight, Dispersion Bubble or Mind Link but does stack with Deflection Shield and Insulation Shield. So you can get one buff of each general "type" (in this case two single target shields and one AoE shield).

Well yeah what we have now is insane. However if we are positing an alternate reality where we had stacking limits from the start I don't think that the various buff/debuff sets would exist in the form that they do now. Either they would have been design differently or would have been changed significantly by now.

Fine, it would be necessary to avoid people leaving in droves. Adding in DR now without revamping the support sets (and to a lesser extent the armor sets and Destiny powers) would completely screw with the balance of the game. Frankly I just don't see it surviving that (*cough*PvP*cough*).

If DR was introduced and accompanied by a significant revamp of the Support sets then I could see it having a strong benefit to the game.

Whoops yeah sorry, I had only been skimming the thread and mis-interpreted your post, sorry about that .

Would a Scrapper, Brute or Stalker who just took their first secondary power be "wrong"? I mean they aren't Tankers so they shouldn't need to worry about taking damage right? What about a Dominator who skipped all of their attacks? Or a Mastermind who didn't bother with their support powers?

As someone once said in the defender forum: you have a primary set and a secondary set, not a primary set and an unnecessary set.

Yes, you can build a character that completely neglects one of their powersets but that doesn't make it a balanced character. the game is balanced around the idea that characters have two powersets and are using both of them. Power Pools exist to allow character to round out their build and take powers their AT can't otherwise have but they aren't intended as a replacement for actual powerset powers.

Speaking for myself I tend to think that if you can't find four powers that you like in each of your sets you should probably select different sets.

Trick Arrow has Oil Slick Arrow, Force Field has Repulsion Bomb, Storm Summoning has Tornado and Lightning Storm, Radiation Emission has Fallout and Traps has Trip Mine (it also has Time Bomb but we don't talk about that). So overall 5 out of 13 Defender primaries have something I would class as an attack (using the rough definition of "I'd slot it for damage").

OSA, Repulsion Bomb and Tornado are useful for reasons other than damage they both also deal damage that is on a par with the AoEs in Defender secondaries while Lightning Storm and Trip Mine are basically pure attacks (yes, they deal knockback but the main reason to use them is for damage, both sets have better options for enemy positioning). Fallout is comparable to a Nuke.

Additionally, Sleet, Caltrops, Gale and Freezing Rain all deal damage but none of them deal enough to really be worth enhancing so I don't count them (althoguh YMMV).

I think that the reason Dark Armor has a bad rep is that Dark Regeneration is somewhat odd compared to self heals in other sets. Powers like Reconstruction and Healing Flames are generally intended to be used pretty much whenever you take a little bit of damage. They heal about a quarter of your health (ignoring slotting and MaxHP boosts) but have a low end cost and recharge fast so you can pretty much spam them.

Conversely Dark Regeneration heals about 30% of your hit points per target and has an even shorter recharge than other self heals. It's endurance cost is, however, through the roof because of this. The end result is that DR is not a power you want to use immediately, it's a power you wait to use until your health is relatively low since you know it's going to bring you back to full health pretty much no matter what (assuming you slot for accuracy). The problem is that while DR has about the same HP/End ratio as other powers (assuming three targets) it's a lot more likely to over-heal since unless you're down at about 20% health you probably aren't actually getting three targets worth of healing. Add in that is has a short recharge encouraging people to use it a lot more and you have a power that is perceived as having an unreasonable endurance cost.

Ok, assuming I think you mean what I think you mean (Diminishing Returns) I honestly don't see it working very well within the context of support sets as they currently exist. The problem you end up with is that it starts becoming necessary to start stacking not support sets but different support sets and that will get messy.

In a certain other MMO they had a similar issue. Buffs of the same type don't stack which for the most part works well. The problem is there was one particular buff that was only available to one class. The result? People wouldn't run content without having at least one member of that class along to provide the buff. The devs eventually realized this and did a major overhaul of buffs where each buff could be provided by multiple classes and every class had access to at least a couple of different buffs (often making them mutually exclusive to limit the number of buffs provided by a single character).

I think if a similar system was implemented here it would be necessary to do a MAJOR overhaul of the support sets to provide a similar distribution of buff types and handle the issue of support sets that are one-trick ponies (i.e. Forcefield) and deal with the issue of certain abilities being hard to find (i.e. Nature is the only support set with Absorb at the moment). Now I guess the devs could do it if they decided that it was necessary I just don't see them doing it.

Speaking for myself I have no issue with the fact that some powersets can leverage FastSnipe better than others. However I'm not particularly thrilled about the fact that some ATs can access FastSnipe better than others.

If FastSnipe just applied to Blasters I think it would be ok. The problem is that Defenders and Corruptors get relatively easy access to FastSnipe for all sets while Blasters only get it for two (and any Defender/Corruptor can get ToHit Debuff Resistance through their Epic Pool while only Devices Blasters get it). Dominators are even worse off since only one set has any inherent access to FastSnipe (Elec Assault) and other sets have to leverage Tactics + Power Boost to get it but then a sufficiently IO'd Domiantor can get it perma using their Epic Pool so at high end play they are potentially better off than Blasters.

So overall I think the problem is that that while the mechanic is relatively well balanced within Blaster combos it's somewhat unbalanced when comparing ATs. I have no problem with the idea that Devices is getting buffed relative to other Blaster secondaries the question is why are Defenders and Corruptors getting buffed relative to non-Devices Blasters?

Personally I think that FastSnipe should be changed so that Tactics is taken out of the equation. To that end here is my suggestion (cross-posted form another thread):

I would like to eliminate the 22% ToHit requirement and just add a FastSnipe Trigger to certain powers with the same duration as the normal boost from the power, specifically:
Aim
Build Up
Targeting Drone
Power Boost
Soul Drain
Power Build Up
Embrace of Fire
All the other Set-Specific Build Up/Aim/Power Boost style powers
[EDIT]Accuracy Inspirations, but not for the full duration. Maybe 10/20/30/60 for Small/Medium/Large/Super[/EDIT]

That way Blasters get the best FastSnipe time out of the box since they generally have a FastSnipe power in both their primary and secondary and Devices and Energy Manipulation become the only powersets with PermaFastSnipe (except for AR/Energy). Defenders, Corruptors and Dominators would have one FastSnipe trigger in their attack set (except for Assault Rifle, see below) and would have the option to take a second one in their Epic Pool (which generally has worse uptime than the Blaster powers).

Now there is an issue with this system which is that Assault Rifle gets left in the cold. I'm not really sure how to handle that. AR/Dev would obviously be fine and I think AR/Energy would be ok but for other Blasters and especially for Defenders and Corruptors AR gets left in the cold. I'm not really sure how to deal with that to be honest. The obvious solution is to add an AR-specific FastSnipe trigger somewhere, the question is where?

Speaking as a suicidal blaster: Heck Yeah! Fortitude and Adrenalin Boost are some of my favorite buffs. I'll even admit to deliberately crashing my endurance to encourage Empaths to give me AB instead of someone else (for some reason a lot of Empaths seem to distribute AB based on who needs the Endurance rather than who benefits from the recharge).

One time I was playing my TA/A Defender on a team with an Empath. Now normally on my TA/A I don't use EMP Arrow all the time, I tend to save it for when the team needs a bit of a boost. However in this case I noticed that whenever I used EMP Arrow the Empath would see my endurance drop a lot and immediately use Adrenalin Boost on me. End result: I used EMP Arrow whenever it was up for the rest of the Task Force.

Yes, with a high-recharge IO build and a specific APP Dominators can hit it but that's not the entirety of the game. Blasters get access to Aim & Build Up quite early and even with SOs can alternate them for pretty good FastSnipe up time. Prior to APPs most Dominators have to use a Power Boosted Tactics to hit it without needing inspirations.

So in terms of overall difficulty I'd rate the ATs as:
Defenders (Tactics + Kismet, Aim in their secondaries)
Corruptors (Tactics + Kismet, Aim in their primaries, need more slotting than Defenders)
Blasters (Aim and Build Up)
Dominators (mostly have to use Power Boost and Tactics, some exceptions)
Scrappers/Stalkers (can hit it with Build Up but don't actually get snipes until APPs anyway)

Agreed. One option would be ot scrap the idea and just convert the snipes to standard attacks. Now if that won't fly then my suggestion is to eliminate the 22% ToHit requirement and just add a FastSnipe Trigger to certain powers, specifically:
Aim
Build Up
Targeting Drone
Power Boost
Soul Drain
Power Build Up
Embrace of Fire
All the other Set-Specific Build Up/Aim/Power Boost style powers

That way Blaster's get the best FastSnipe time out of the box since they generally have a FastSnipe powers in both their primary and secondary and Devices and Energy Manipulation become the only powersets with PermaFastSnipe (except for AR/Energy). Defenders, Corruptors and Dominators would have one FastSnipe trigger in their attack set (except for Assault Rifle, see below) and would have the option to take a second one in their Epic Pool (which generally has worse uptime than the Blaster powers).

Now there is an issue with this system which is that Assault Rifle gets left in the cold. I'm not really sure how to handle that. AR/Dev would obviously be fine and I think AR/Energy would be ok but for other Blasters and especially for Defenders and Corruptors AR gets left in the cold. I'm not really sure how to deal with that to be honest. The obvious solution is to add an AR-specific FastSnipe trigger somewhere, the question is where?

Yeah, I LOVE the shadow shard. I just wish that there were more reasons to go there. I would seriously love to see the Shadow Shard TFs revamped.

No it doesn't. It increases the damage of Sniper Rifle but not the snipes in other sets (and even for Sniper Rifle it's only a 19.4% damage buff).

Heh, I missed that you'd already suggested that .