Making Stamina non-mandatory {a brainstorming thread}
By
Catwhoorg,
Posted on: 2009-08-11 23:04 in Suggestions and Ideas
IO set bonuses provide a means for any character to increase regeneration and/or recovery rates; between that, the sets that have recovery powers, end mod enhancements, Stamina, and plain old endurance management, I think the field is pretty well covered. Stamina has always been a nice-to-have, but never mandatory.
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I'm still a fan of the "Let's make Endurance Reduction enhancements Schedule something-other-than-A" idea.
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Arc 55669 - Tales of the PPD: One Hell of a Deal (video trailer)
Arc 64511 - The Wrecking Ball
Arc 1745 - The Trouble With Trimbles
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I'm not really feeling this idea personally. I don't team much so it wouldn't affect me and I'll still make my build to be functional without other people even if I did.
Besides, I have many different kinds of characters that don't use Stamina at all. With set bonuses, careful slotting, and various powers that increate endurance, I can get away with it now and then.
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It doesn't quite solve the problem. It takes a little more sting out of the most costly powers, but as endurance reduction is asymptotic, it doesn't help quite as much as it should.
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Originally Posted by IanTheM1
I'm still a fan of the "Let's make Endurance Reduction enhancements Schedule something-other-than-A" idea.
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We'll always have Paragon.
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That premise is a personal subjective opinion made by each individual player, Or foisted on them while they were still learning the game, by players who think that they can't play the game unless the Endurance bar is always full, and therefore don't know that there are, in fact, viable builds that do not utilize Endurance recovery powers, such as Stamina.|
Originally Posted by Quinch_NA
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I expect a lot of negative rep from this stance!
There I was between a rock and a hard place. Then I thought, "What am I doing on this side of the rock?"
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Blue inspirations are the secondary/tertiary means of end management
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Originally Posted by Quinch_NA
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@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
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Allow for negative endurance.
Of course, there would be a penalty like -regen based on the amount of -endurance, or -def, -res whatever. Maybe a mandatory visit to the hospital if -50% endurance is reached (similar to being defeated with xp penalty and such).
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Sonic Hoolahoop?
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Currently, endurance reduction slotting is more than enough to mitigate the consumption of all but a few sets (and the ones it isn't enough for typically have absurd-cost powers for no real reason). It is logical to say that increasing the power of endurance reduction enhancements will allow endurance slotting to help even more, or help just as much for fewer slots invested. As the biggest argument for Stamina over endurance reduction is the large investment in reduction slots, I think it should mitigate the problem enough.|
Originally Posted by NeverDark
It doesn't quite solve the problem. It takes a little more sting out of the most costly powers, but as endurance reduction is asymptotic, it doesn't help quite as much as it should.
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As a general thing, reducing the cost of your most costly powers is actually BETTER at mitigating endurance lost fighting than Stamina is, though that's only mitigating loss, not creating gain, which in turn means better fights but more downtime-inbetween. However, with lots of reduction, endurance replenishment, such as through the Catch a Breath family of inspirations, are worth more because the endurance they return can be used to fire off more powers.
And on a more theoretical topic, could you describe exactly what you mean by "asymptotic?" From what I've seen, final cost as a function of endurance reduction is a fractional function, whereas what I can find on the 'net about "asymptotic analysis" seems to talk about fractional multi-function limits, which I'm not able to correlate to the problem at hand.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Asymptotic in this case means it approaches zero, but never reaches it - the formula for reduction is 1/(1+reduction). So 100% endurance reduction will actually be 1/2 endurance cost, 200% {hypothetical, natch} would be 1/3 cost, etc.
I'm not sure Stamina is mandatory.
I choose to have it on toons when I want to fight fight fight without pause for breath. I see it as a way to alternatively slot my powers with non-End reduction. (Procs, more damage, intense recharge etc). If someone elses playstyle is "fight fight fight", then I can understand how it could be seen as mandatory though.
I have it on toons who do definitely need it (Fire/Storm controller)
I have may ways of getting around taking it:
- Blue insps (as mentioned above)
- Slotting for +Recovery. Not difficult to get +10-20% recovery inexpensively
- Slotting for End redux in attacks
- Epic pool choices: Conserve power/Consume/Power Sink, etc
- Pretty sure there's a Day Job, and a Base Enhancement that increase recovery too.
Looking at how easy it is to get recovery in set bonusses, I wonder if the Devs considered this when they initially wrote up the IO sets.
Pool powers are supposed to be generic, and unless you're thinking of adding this as a 5th Leadership power, I can't see where it would fit.
And yes. Add me down as someone who wants a sonic hoolahoop.
-H
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Gotcha. Unfortunately, good as my English may be, I studied mathematics only in Bulgarian and I'm sadly unfamiliar with English terminology for most things mathematical. To me, the formula for endurance reduction would be a fractional function, where final cost is a function of reduction. This one is offset one "to the right," but other than that it's an almost classic example of a fractional function, inheriting all properties thereof.
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Originally Posted by Quinch_NA
Asymptotic in this case means it approaches zero, but never reaches it - the formula for reduction is 1/(1+reduction). So 100% endurance reduction will actually be 1/2 endurance cost, 200% {hypothetical, natch} would be 1/3 cost, etc.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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There's actually something interesting to note about that - attacks, especially small, fast, cheap attacks, are the biggest drain on endurance a character can have. Knowing what to slot for endurance first, foremost and most heavily is actually key to getting around Stamina with not too many slots devoted. In a sense, I had to become smarter and plan a little more not to be better, but to be just as good (or bad) as I always was, only do it more easily.
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Originally Posted by The_Laughing_Man
to get +10-20% recovery inexpensively
- Slotting for End redux in attacks |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Right. |
Originally Posted by Quinch_NA
Asymptotic in this case means it approaches zero, but never reaches it - the formula for reduction is 1/(1+reduction). So 100% endurance reduction will actually be 1/2 endurance cost, 200% {hypothetical, natch} would be 1/3 cost, etc.
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In essence, endurance reduction naturally has diminishing returns built into it; each point of reduction does less than the one before it. In cases of powers that cost a lot of endurance, this doesn't matter as much, but the bread-and-butter attacks that one uses all the time don't cost much anyway. Reduction in those attacks tends to only shave off a point or two of endurance, and their drain is smaller but steadier, so the effect of the enhancements isn't as large as you'd think.
Endurance reduction and recovery also magnify each other, so increasing reduction would make Stamina an even better choice than before. I do like the idea of making reduction enhancements more powerful, but it's not going to suddenly make everyone's endurance woes vanish.
We'll always have Paragon.
There are some people who will always have "endurance woes" because they have an Endurance bar. no amount of +recovery would be good enough for them. And to them I say, "You made your choice of how to play the game. Endurance management is one of the challenges."
There I was between a rock and a hard place. Then I thought, "What am I doing on this side of the rock?"
- Premise 1: Endurance management is a handicapping factor to be considered at all levels of gameplay and should remain that way to maintain gameplay complexity.
- Premise 2: Outside of teammate buffs from a few specific powersets, most powersets lack the ability to increase their recovery and regeneration rate.
- Premise 3: Bullet points are sexy.
- Premise 4: With Premise 2 in mind, it is considered mandatory for most characters to take pool power Stamina or slot heavily for endurance reduction to remain functional.
- Premise 5: Any aspect of the game that forces a character or a high percentage of characters into investing into a specific part of a build takes away from gameplay complexity.
- Premise 6: There's no such thing as a free lunch.
- Conclusion: There needs to be a secondary {or tertiary} avenue for managing endurance consumption and recovery available to and for non-buff oriented powersets.
Discuss.My proposition is that of a pool power which allows a character to augment a teammate's recovery rate at the cost of his own. "But!", you might say, "Isn't that what empaths and kineticists do? They put in their endurance to buff your own?" Well yes, but that falls within their specific portfolio.
Instead, what I propose is an ally toggle power, like the Sonic Hulahoop {I forget the name} that simultaneously increases the target's recovery rate at the commensurate and drains the user of his own endurance. There might be some math-fu needed to equate the numbers {slotting for endurance mod would increase both the boost and the drain}, but on the whole, I believe it might be a good way to close the gap between the have-lots-of and have-nots as well as tightening relations between teammates.