Are Empowerment recipes too boring? Most of what Empowerment does is duplicatable (or even done better) by Inspirations.
The only "unique" things they have are...
Grant Invis
End Drain Resist
Regen
Recovery
Travel Buff (and those are way too weak.)
Would more unique recipes be useful?
i beleive that a few unique ones could be beneficial..maybe have them be able to for huge amounts of salvage provide an EoE type buff? and i mean a HUGE amount of salvage..including some rare stuff, but since it would last an hour and persist through death it would help raids alot..<_<
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Well, they are not very good and cost too much in salvage to be worth anything but that was before the auction house made it easier to get the base salvage and components. Now they are just not very good except for the 3 or 4 mentioned.
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I have a ton of component salvage in storage, waiting on the day those buffs get some love. I wish they would stack also.
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I wish they would stack also.
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I wish they were strong enough that we didn't consider needing to stack them.
I really like the idea of Empowerment Stations. They're pretty neat. I used to use them to craft temporary Increase Attack Speed buffs. But my biggest gripe with these crafted buffs is their duration. One hour of real time is either too short (and you have to inconveniently scurry back to recreate the buff), or else it's too long because you were only logged on for a quick mission and the remainder of the empowerment buff's duration goes wasted.
Why not make them last like two hours of in-game time?
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The Resistance buffs are 2.5%, if I recall. (Correct that if I'm wrong.)
Perhaps the Devs fear is that making too good Resistances would lead to people buffing up this way and belittling the effects of armor sets, Rugged and various teammate buffs.
How about a different balance then a low percent?
Make the typed Resistances 15%, but limit you to having 1 at a time.
So you can buff up against Energy if you're about to take on Luminary, and it will be a noticable buff. But you can't also buff up on Lethal at the same time to protect you from the Freakshow that are hanging out in the room with her.
I like the increased attack rate buff on my doms.Get's my the final %'s I need for perma without slotting more io sets.
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Why not make them last like two hours of in-game time?
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They already last for an hour of in-game time. They don't count down while you're logged off.
The major problem with Empowerment Stations is the strength of the buffs. They were designed so you could stack them to make them into something meaningful for 15 minutes. When the stacking didn't work, the devs decided to let you keep the weak buff for four times as long instead of making the buff four times as powerful.
_Castle_ has said in the past that he'd happily make player buff powers stronger if he could ensure that they couldn't be stacked. This is a prime candidate, and it's been ignored for over a year.
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They already last for an hour of in-game time.
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It's one hour of real time. It's only worth a full hour of in-game time if you're online for the 60 minutes after the buff's crafted. Look it up @ paragonwiki.
Edit: Testing this out now but looks like you guys are right and paragonwiki and I are wrong.
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If ParagonWiki says that, it's wrong. It's in-game time.
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Confirmed, it's in-game time. Otherwise, the characters who had leftover buffs after copying to test and being signed into the day after wouldn't still have those buffs on them (they did).
To verify this for yourself, open the Powers window, scroll down to your empowerment buffs in it, right-click them and click "Info". The timer clearly indicates in-game time.
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I have what may be an idiotic question.
Where are the empowerment stations in the base editor?
I've built a base before, and I know I installed one, but I was just working on a new VG base and went to the workshop tabs -- and no empowerment stations. I double-checked on the hero-side SG I'm a part of, and I can't find them there either.
Have I just come down with a terminal case of the stupids?
Please -- help!
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Tech Empowerment and Arcane Empowerment tabs.
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Why do so many people think Empowerment Stations suck?
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Cost != Benefit
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Why do so many people think Empowerment Stations suck?
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Cost != Benefit
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Some of them give a noticeable benefit.
For example, the fly speed buff is very noticeable for me. (I have 6-slotted hover and use it all the time.) Also, the invisibility buff stacks with the stealth IO, giving nearly full invisibility if you have both turned on. I use this when I need to sneak around in missions like the Thorn Tree in the STF.
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Some of them give a noticeable benefit.
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But most do not. I love the -KB empowerment - it plus my Steadfast IO makes me rock solid in PvE. But most? Most aren't even worth the time to walk to the empowerment station.
The mez resists are a meagre 18% - enough to shorten a 30 second hold by about 5 seconds.
The elemental resists are 5%. That's not even worth mentioning.
The regen increase? A little better than half what you get from Health.
The recovery increase is 17%.
And we invest how much just to get another 2.5% from a set?
I call that one "worth it".
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The mez resists are a meagre 18% - enough to shorten a 30 second hold by about 5 seconds.
The elemental resists are 5%. That's not even worth mentioning.
The regen increase? A little better than half what you get from Health.
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The mez resist from the Aegis unique is 20%. This is one of the most sought after IO recipes in the game. Right after I slotted one of these in Zube, I noticed an immediate improvement. Adding another 18% to that gives a 38% improvement total. So a 10 second hold goes down to 6 seconds. Id call that useful. Any time I go farming spiders in RV I always grab the hold resist buff first.
Taking health gives a substantial improvement in a characters regen rate. So with the buff youre adding half again as much regen improvement as the substantial increase from health. Again, this is one I always grab when I go into RV.
I view these buffs just like most things in the game. Some are good, some are meh, and some are nearly useless. But this is no different from the power selections, is it? And how about all those stupid IO sets that nobody ever slots? 
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it's different from power selections because in this case *most* are useless.
so what ideas do we have for bringing up the bad ones to the level of the good ones?
Let me make an observation that may answer that,
There hasn't been much talk of *cost*, it's all talk of *effect*. So maybe it'd be OK to buff up the weaker effects and also increase their costs? After all, like IOs, if people want something they often don't complain about what they have to pay.
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The mez resist from the Aegis unique is 20%.
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Permanently. Against all forms of mez. With the potential for set bonuses. As opposed to getting it versus just one mez type and having to refresh it every hour. The two are only vaguely equivalent, really.
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Taking health gives a substantial improvement in a characters regen rate.
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But even Health's regen boost is useful for reducing downtime - the in-combat difference is almost nil. When heavily stacked with set bonuses sure it gives a little edge, but I'd hardly call it a significant boost.
[quote[I view these buffs just like most things in the game. Some are good, some are meh, and some are nearly useless.
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This is true. But the ones that are nearly useless shouldn't be. There's no logical reason for them to have the same cost, the same availability and less utility. The numbers (to my knowledge) are what they are because the devs were expecting them to be stacked from multiple stations to reach higher. Since they can't be stacked like that, several have lost their usefulness, or have been relegated to extreme niche roles. The stations CAN be generally useful, but they need to be tweaked so the benefits are worth the costs. Not just the component cost, but also the cost of convenience - going out of the way to get the buff in the first place.
I use the knockback one all the time. I don't find the salvage cost of any of them to be ridiculous. (although I have only used the first table ones).
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The mez resist from the Aegis unique is 20%.
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Permanently. Against all forms of mez. With the potential for set bonuses. As opposed to getting it versus just one mez type and having to refresh it every hour. The two are only vaguely equivalent, really..
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Well, that's a good point, of course. You have to buy a lot of empowerment station buffs to get across-the-board mez resistance like the unique Aegis IO I mentioned.
But that's not what you said originally. You said that the 18% resistance of the hold buff was useless. And I just pointed out that this is almost as good as what you can get from the Aegis IO, and that the two of them stack nicely.
But if I'm fighting spiders in RV, I'm really only concerned about their holds. The sleeps last just a fragment of a second on me, and the immobilizes are easily dealt with using teleport, if necessary. So I usually only take the hold buff in Im farming in RV.
So the buff in this case is useful in a specific situation. But in that situation, I find it to be very useful. YMMV.
Another example of this is the invisibility buff. The empowerment station buff doesn't give true invisibility, as strong as the power pool power, but it does stack with the unique stealth IO's. Having both together means you're almost completely invisible (without having to take two powers from the concealment pool). You can use this technique when in a specific mission that you know you want to sneak through, like the Thorn Tree mission in the STF. Again, rather situational, but within that specific situation, quite useful.
What Ive just said illustrates, I think, the two main points Im trying to get across.
(1) Many of the buffs are useful, but in specific situations. And when those situations come up, theyre nice to have available.
(2) The buffs stack with other powers/buffs/enhancements. If the devs increased the effectiveness of the empowerment station buffs, they risk creating abusive imbalances when the station buffs stack with others in the game. PvP is clearly the devs concern here.
Now having said all that, I agree that some of those empowerment station buffs could use some dev love. But then again, so would Pacing of the Turtle.
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(1) Many of the buffs are useful, but in specific situations. And when those situations come up, theyre nice to have available.
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in the case of Mez protection, I think the buffs are way too specific for the situations. The majority of enemies do mutliple types of Mez. For example, high level COT can Hold, Confuse and Stun. Protection against 1 is too situational, you need to stack them if your goal is to stay completely unmez'd, not to just prevent one type.
Resistances aren't even useful situationally. If you take 1 type, most mobs do 2. So 2.5% Lethal resist against Freaks means about 1.25% reduction in incoming damage since half their attacks are Energy instead. Now you again need to stack, and even than 2.5% is pretty low.
When I think about specific situations, I think about hitting my base and getting the *solution* to a specific situation, not a minor help with it. eg, if I'm getting ripped to shreds with Fire damage, I want to pretty much ignore Fire for the duration of the mission, not be buffed to the point where I live long enough to use my tray of Respites.
Pardon me for being blunt...
Why do so many people think Empowerment Stations suck?