I thought this was just about the best idea in I5, so far. I was glad to see an AT being given a unique, interesting twist. So, last night, I logged on my level 20 Ice Blaster, and gave it a shot.
My first test was the direct approach. I flew up as high as I could go, and dropped like a twig. As expected, I lost every hit point I had, save for one. And, my Defiance bar maxed out.
*WOO!* i cheered. I queued up a respite so that I could at least hit something before I died, and charged a group of baddies.
And, as *SOON* as i hit the respite (taking me to 25% HP + 1, still all sorts of below 40%), My bar cleared out to empty.
Dismayed, I grabbed a buddy for some teamplay action to see if i could make it happen again. For maximum pain to myself (to arrange for the bar to be as useful as possible), I had a good friend bring out his Illusion Controller.
Together, his mighty Illusion Blaster and my Mighty Ice Controller suffered through the mission, both being amazingly effective at things we should not have been effective at. I'm now a far better controller than my friend was, but he's doing double my damage (without slotting). This was, well, disturbing. In any case, we did still take a crapload of damage and undergo entire piles of death and debt. We went through several missions (mostly vaz), so there were plenty of times when i was at next to no health, very little health, half health, 40% health, a bushel and a peck of health, and any health arrangement you could imagine.
I never saw any noticible increase to my damage output, and throughout the entire thing no matter how damaged I became, I only ever saw my bar go up to .1 . Yes, thats right, one tenth of a point.
Maybe there's some secret trick to make this useful, but i even tried yelling "SHAZAM!", "SHAZBOT!", "NOT THE FACE, NOT THE FACE!!", and "Blatherin BLATHERSKYTES!!". I did nearly turn into Gizmo Duck, but my defiance bar remained puny and useless, much to my chagrin.
As mentioned- i think this is a neat, interesting idea to promote different ATs being, well, different. I believe it's been poorly implemented thus far, as in an entire night of low health it did me zero good.
