Should Siphon Speed (kinetics) be AoE?
By
Akuma_Hellkite,
Posted on: 2006-10-16 11:25 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
Lol... b/c we all know that trouble never befalls those who aren't aware of its existance or proximity....
How about making Increased density last longer? Maybe? My numberpad fingers are getting sore from recasting it so often.
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First, yes kinetics is a great set, it takes many more levels then other sets to really get to the meat of what it can do, but its a fine set.
What I am asking is if Siphon speed were made into a AoE power, with no stacking of the buff on the hero/villain, just the debuff effect on targets in the AoE radius would that be overpowering or require a significant increase in the recharge or endurance cost or lowering of magnitude or duration of this power. It's not auto-hit like many debuff effects from say Dark, Rad, storm, or corruptor Cold. So I think it wouldn't be imbalancing. But with a change like this I think kinetics defenders/corruptors/controllers would be able to contribute alot more in teams in the early to mid game as they would have at least one siginifcant debuff to throw in fights.
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Though I do love this idea (I do), I'd have to say that my kinetics is one of the most usefull members of the team ever. SpeedBoost is IMO the best buff in the whole game. If my toon only had SB and FS, he'd still get invited and be useful.
Solo however, is a different story. I'm not so spiffy solo.
Cool enough. Thanks for the explanation.
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Kinetics is already a very good and useful set. You also have speed boost, so an AoE Siphon Speed is just redudant.
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From what I've read, they aren't asking for Siphon Speed to be an AoE like Inertial Reduction is, they are asking for the debuff effects to be AoE and hit more then one target.
Higher chance of it hitting and you getting your buff, and slow a whole group down at the same time. Speed Boost has nothing to do with this as it can't be used on yourself and isn't a debuff.
�Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play!� - Thomas Gray
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I do see one needed change to make it more melee centered. Inertial reduction should give at least the caster knockdown, knockback resistance. It is hard to take advantage of Fulcrum shift when you get knocked back before you even get your buffs.
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Nah. True it is annoying getting knocked back as you fire Fulcrum Shift, but that is part of the challenge (and possibly a subtle balancing point given how useful the power is). Besides, given its name and what Inertial Reduction does, I'd say it would make just as much sense for it to be a Self +Knockback...as in, if you have inertial reduction in effect it is easier for you to get knocked around. And as amusing as that would be from time to time, I don't think we want to see it happen. 
I think a reasonable workaround for Transfusion would be to move the heal to the very beginning of the animation, basically closing down the window between the start of the attack and the time when the mob still has to be alive for the heal to work. It does make the power slightly more powerful than it would otherwise be, but I think that's a reasonable compromise to make for a defect in your game engine that would otherwise be very difficult to fix.
What if Transfusion was turned into a very small AoE that also worked on corpses even if you can't target them? There might be an issue with stacking the heals if you do that though.
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I think a reasonable workaround for Transfusion would be to move the heal to the very beginning of the animation, basically closing down the window between the start of the attack and the time when the mob still has to be alive for the heal to work. It does make the power slightly more powerful than it would otherwise be, but I think that's a reasonable compromise to make for a defect in your game engine that would otherwise be very difficult to fix.
What if Transfusion was turned into a very small AoE that also worked on corpses even if you can't target them? There might be an issue with stacking the heals if you do that though.
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Moving it to the start of the animation wouldn't be significantly more powerful than it is now, as long as the animation time remained the same. Sure, it would keep people alive if you miss getting the heal off by half a second, but most of the time when that occurs they're taking so much damage they plant before it's recharged anyway.
What would be far more powerful about it is that people wouldn't miss so many transfusions. While better kin players already don't miss many, that would still be a noticable boost. I always figured it healed for so much in large part to compensate for this bug. That being said, I think this solution would be good if a fix is desired. A few rare times it could fail then (If the enemy died the instant of activation, probably) but far less than now.
It would boost the power of fulcrum shift and transference even less to do this (As far as the timing boost goes, not the less-missing goes) because neither of them are directly involved in keeping people up.
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You'll notice in that quote I said "I think" -- turns out I was wrong. It's a timing issue in code and would need some serious work to address. It's still on the list, but it's low priority due to the difficulty involved.
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Couldn't you make the heal immediate, but then keep the caster frozen for the animation. Quick fix. It makes Trasfusion a little better, so drop the heal amount a little bit to compensate for the buff.
I don't remember exactly the details of the problem, but the crux is that these powers are driven off of enemies, so there is a lot of complex stuff going on behind the scenes that gets this to work. I seem to recall something about how the power creates something akin to a "pet" that does the work. As Castle said, it's a timing issue, along the lines of 1.) cast power, do accuracy check, 2.) successful check, create pet, 3.) pet then acts upon the initial target to apply power effect.
There is a short period of time, between when the power is activated and the pet tries to apply the buff. If the initial target dies during this period, the pet has nothing to work off of and the power fails.
The solution requires finding a way to either speed up this process, or find another way currently not within the game engine to accomplish the same thing.
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I don't remember exactly the details of the problem, but the crux is that these powers are driven off of enemies, so there is a lot of complex stuff going on behind the scenes that gets this to work. I seem to recall something about how the power creates something akin to a "pet" that does the work. As Castle said, it's a timing issue, along the lines of 1.) cast power, do accuracy check, 2.) successful check, create pet, 3.) pet then acts upon the initial target to apply power effect.
There is a short period of time, between when the power is activated and the pet tries to apply the buff. If the initial target dies during this period, the pet has nothing to work off of and the power fails.
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This is accurate as far I as I understand it. It is a classic "race condition" which is a better thing to say then a timing issue since it identifies the problem as one of design.
The solution is simple but let me write it out and label stuff so people don't misquote me too much.
The user power is TRANSFUSION.
It creates a pet call it TPET
The pet casts a power on the enemy call it PETTRANS
so PETTRANS is the problem. It is a twilight grasp style power. Combo heal and debuff. What needs to happen is to separate the heal and the debuff in PETRANS into two powers, PETTRANSA and PETTRANSB. PETTRANSA should be the heal aura, based on Radiant Aura style heals, no target needed. PETTRANSB should be the debuff that applies -regen to the target. If PETTRANSB fails it will be because the enemy is dead already, and we don't care anymore.
This isn't a radical solution, it is pretty simple infact. There may be limits, the type of pet spawned by TRANSFUSION today may not be one that can do multiple actions. No big deal, use a different class of pet. Overall the issue is something that could be solved by an engineer taking a little time to solve the design flaw of the power rather than patch it with a bandaid.
-Teklord
The transfusion thing doesn't seem like a bug, because the dark heal power will work from a target who dies after activation. If they can do it with dark, why not kinetics... they work very simularly. I think they planned the fact transfusion doesn't heal when target is dies during animation. If you think about the two power sets it makes sense. A dead target has no regen so where would the buff come from. Dark is sapping energy from their very soul, hehe.
Kinetics still rocks!
And for the original post question, not a good idea. Could you imagine what that would be like in PvP...... nastily unfair, and completely overpowered in PvE as well. Would cause a sharp rise in Kin defs and trollers (not that thats a bad thing).
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The transfusion thing doesn't seem like a bug, because the dark heal power will work from a target who dies after activation. If they can do it with dark, why not kinetics... they work very simularly.
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Technically, they don't work the same.
For Dark, the AOE comes from you, the caster, so the power comes from you. Only one "live" check is needed - when the power is activated.
For Kinetics, the AOE comes from the target. The game does this by summoning a pet that actually emits the heal. This results in two checks - one when the power is activated, one when the heal is activated.
Transfusion, Transferece, Fulcrum Shift, Stygian Circle, Dark Extraction and other all have this problem.
-- War
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I'm surprised at some of the things you have on your list. Are you calling for nerfs...
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Nope not at all... was simply making the point that all of these things (usually in combination with eachother) would logically preceed or accompany Kinetics in order if Nerfs started being handed out again.
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IMO, you won't have to worry about KIN being nerfed if you don't talk about it. Once you get the discussion opened up, you may need to "be happy with what you get" or lose.
GF