Black Hole is still broken...
By
Arinara,
Posted on: 2005-02-21 21:59 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
Ditto for Dimension Shift. 
I wish it marked the enemies better. Purple blob looks, well, just like every other Dark Miasma effect. 
A black force field sphere would work.
Plus the other stuff you mentioned.
Yes it does need some help. It was stated by Geko that it and similar powers would be turned into Toggles but that it would be some time before that was done. But havent heard anything else sinse.
Yeah, that was back before issue #2 was released. It's now issue #3 and we're rather impatiently waiting for issue #4 to hit the test server.
I think the idea of turning it into a toggle is terrible anyway. The last thing dark miasma needs is another endurance-draining toggle.
I think one of the biggest problems is that, with the changes to fear, you can get the same effect with fearsome stare. I've had entire groups of enemies stop attacking us and patiently wait for us to finish with the group we were currently on. The only difference is that your team won't waste any endurance trying to hit phased enemies and FS has an accuracy debuff. So the power really is useless, there's just no point in having it any more.
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I've had entire groups of enemies stop attacking us and patiently wait for us to finish with the group we were currently on. The only difference is that your team won't waste any endurance trying to hit phased enemies and FS has an accuracy debuff. So the power really is useless, there's just no point in having it any more.
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amen
i never took it, and after reading all the posts about it, i'm glad i didn't
I'm running out of things to say in order to keep this post's head above water. I mean, seriously, black hole is broken! There's no two ways about it, it's broken. It being useless is another beast entirely and we can deal with that later.
I wish the developers could at least show some interest in the power, which has been broken and useless ever since it was created AFAIK.
Argh! Don't worry, Black Hole, I care about you.
Has anyone tried PMing Geko or Statesman on this?
Well, Geko doesn't accept PMs and I did PM statesman and gave him a link to this thread.
I would very much like to see a response acknowledging that this power is broken/useless. What they do to it and when they do it is up to them, so we'll just have to see.
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Well, Geko doesn't accept PMs and I did PM statesman and gave him a link to this thread.
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At least he knows we're here. 
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and it seems to ignore magnitudes altogether (quite unlike dimension shift from gravity control).
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Actually Gravity's also ignores magnitude. It wil snag bosses, lt's and minions. The only thing that skews it is that bosses are harder to hit, so if you don't invest any acc enhances at all in it it might miss the bosses more often. IF you invest Acc again it will snag bosses, lt's and minions.
And to boot, Dimension shift has a longer base duration.
An important note I always see left out about the phase out alpha strike. Despite the unaffected message that pops up this does cause agro transfer. Gravity can switch agro to singularity and dark defenders I'd imagine cud switch it over to fluffy.
Phasing enemies still stinks.
I think the devs are going to wait until PvP is out before making any changes. Because there's no resistance to this kind of effect, it has the potential to become very potent in the Arena. It's usefulness in PvE still needs work, but only after they know how to not gimp it in PvP.
We don't know if there will be any resistance to this kind of effect. Somewhere in there it says that scrapper and tanker toggles are going to get new resistances and whatnot. Phasing could be one of the things they get resistance to. Although I'm not sure how since the phasing powers ignore magnitudes altogether.
Black Hole is not broken:
Accuracy is normal at a base of 75%. It does not have an accuracy penalty.
Black Hole is not a Controlling power to be used in every encounter. Like most high level power, it is situational and is very powerful when suddenly faced with more foes than you can handle. It is very potent to remove half of your enemies for 30 seconds when used correctly.
Black hole is a Magnitude based power. That means Enhancements will not increase the duration, but rather the Magnitude. What this translates to is the more Intangibility Enhancements you slot in, the higher rank and level foe you can affect, but the duration is constant.
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Its endurance cost has been reduced in Expansion 4 to 11.25.
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That will help.
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Black hole is a Magnitude based power. That means Enhancements will not increase the duration, but rather the Magnitude. What this translates to is the more Intangibility Enhancements you slot in, the higher rank and level foe you can affect, but the duration is constant.
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Could you make that a little more clear in the power's description, then? We've all been operating under the assumption that intangibility enhancements enhance intangibility duration, not intangibility magnitude. What is the reasoning behind this? Would you be amenable to making these enhancements duration-based instead, if this is how your player base would prefer to use the power?
And on a separate note, prior to the release of Issue #2, you had mentioned the possibility of making Black Hole (and "similar powers," which I believe includes only Dimension Shift) a toggle power. Has this idea been scrapped?
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Like most high level power, it is situational and is very powerful when suddenly faced with more foes than you can handle.
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Geko, if you don't mind, could you elaborate on this statement? What do you mean by situational? How often should a situational power be used in your mind? And finally why are the higher powers, particularly with several builds like storm or force field situational whereas other builds contain useful powers most of the way through? Like why are some situational powers/powersets more situational than others?
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Could you make that a little more clear in the power's description, then? We've all been operating under the assumption that intangibility enhancements enhance intangibility duration, not intangibility magnitude. What is the reasoning behind this? Would you be amenable to making these enhancements duration-based instead, if this is how your player base would prefer to use the power?
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Well its understnadable since the enhancements say "Enhances Intangibility Duration"!
Please tell the art department to give Black Hole a different effect, then. If you have even one other Dark Miasma power, it's nearly impossible to tell which mobs are phased out, reducing the power's usefulness immensely.
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Like most high level power, it is situational and is very powerful when suddenly faced with more foes than you can handle.
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Well, that clears up that. Black Hole and Dimension Shift are designed to be panic buttons.
Consider that carefully before choosing either of these powers.
"Destiny's powerful hand has made the bed of my future, and it's up to me to lie in it. I am destined to be a superhero. To right wrongs, and to pound two-fisted justice into the hearts of evildoers everywhere." -- The Tick
Uh, isn't that obvious? When else are you going to use the powers? To grief newbies in Atlas who don't understand what 'unaffected' means?
It's sort of a backup incase you have a bad pull.
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Black Hole is not broken:
Accuracy is normal at a base of 75%. It does not have an accuracy penalty.
Its endurance cost has been reduced in Expansion 4 to 11.25.
Black Hole is not a Controlling power to be used in every encounter. Like most high level power, it is situational and is very powerful when suddenly faced with more foes than you can handle. It is very potent to remove half of your enemies for 30 seconds when used correctly.
Black hole is a Magnitude based power. That means Enhancements will not increase the duration, but rather the Magnitude. What this translates to is the more Intangibility Enhancements you slot in, the higher rank and level foe you can affect, but the duration is constant.
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What happened to making it into a Toggle too?
Still here, even after all this time!
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Could you make that a little more clear in the power's description, then? We've all been operating under the assumption that intangibility enhancements enhance intangibility duration, not intangibility magnitude. What is the reasoning behind this? Would you be amenable to making these enhancements duration-based instead, if this is how your player base would prefer to use the power?
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Well its understnadable since the enhancements say "Enhances Intangibility Duration"!
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Not to mention that it's different from every other magnitude-based effect in the game, AFAIK....
Correction. End Cost was not reduced to 11 in Expansion 4. I was mistaken. We are considering this now, but nothing has been changed yet. My apologies for the confusion.
As for making it a toggle power, we looked into it, but it was not technically possible. Since a toggle power basically reapplies an effected every server tic, it would make the target intangible on one tick, but then it could not apply the intangibility on the second tic b/c the target was unaffectable. So making an intangibility power that was a toggle resulted in the targeted phasing in and out every other tic. This does not occur in a power like Phase Shift b/c you are able to affect yourself when shifted.
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Since a toggle power basically reapplies an effected every server tic, it would make the target intangible on one tick, but then it could not apply the intangibility on the second tic b/c the target was unaffectable.
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Corinna, this logic is sound, the buff could not be mantained properly.
The problem still remains tho. If i use this power on a group of tightly packed enemies and it doesn't hit all of them. how am i to know which are intangible and which aren't? because i sure cant tell the difference just by looks. By the time w've figured out which ones aren't intangible to attack them or subdue them by other means the affect has worn off and we're back to the way we were before and no better off.
It has occurred to me that I haven't complained about black hole in a while, so I think I'll bring it up once again in a post dedicated to either getting it fixed or getting it changed completely.
In its current form, Black Hole is a targetted AoE with a short range and an endurance cost of about 30 that phases enemies for a short amount of time.
Here's a list of the ways in which it's just plain broken:
It accepts phase enhancements, but they do nothing. There is no magnitude increase, no duration increase, nothing. As far as I know there is no way to increase the duration of the power and it seems to ignore magnitudes altogether (quite unlike dimension shift from gravity control).
When attempting to phase opponents that are +5 or higher, they merely turn invisible and function as normal (you can hit them and they can hit you). If this was intended, then it's a cruel joke. Wasting 1/3rd of my endurance on absolutely nothing when the power hits and functions as planned just isn't right.
Here's a list of its flaws:
The accuracy is terrible, it must have an accuracy penalty even though it is never mentioned in the power description.
The endurance cost is terrible
The enemies undergo the same animation as petrifying gaze, the hold power from the same set and the two are very easily confused.
No matter what, there is downtime in the phasing which leads to a second alpha strike onto the defender who applied black hole which can be very dangerous. Attempting to reapply black hole while the enemies are phased results in "unaffected".
The whole premise of phasing enemies has a limited use at best, at least make them untargettable or something that will prevent wasted shots and mass confusion throughout your team.
The idea of scrapping the power alltogether and getting a completely new one is quite appealing and has been mentioned many times on these boards. I don't think we've ever come up with something that we've all agreed on. Status resistance, resistance debuff and an endurance regen/heal that works like howling twilight were all popular ideas.
This power was completely ignored during the issue #2 overhaul of Dark Miasma, and it remains ignored until this date (as far as I'm aware). It may have use in PvP, but it's still broken. Please fix this power. Maybe then we can work out whether or not it's remotely useful.