Unlocking Power Pools at Level 0 on earned respec
By
Ad Astra,
Posted on: 2009-12-30 09:59 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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LOL ... though I have to say, as a veteran with veteran powers ... I would love to be able to take Taunt at the start if I was not allowed to take the pool powers.
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Originally Posted by Sir_Zane
So, if Taunt was the first power in the Tanker secondaries then I could understand being forced to take it. But, that does not happen for a whole host of reasons.
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That. Far too many people just think someone is a bad or new player because he does something un-conventionnal. As soon as people have to adapt a tiny bit the way they fight, they'll complain. As long as it gives good results, i'll accept any weird build!
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Originally Posted by ketch
It won't do what you expect it to do on teams, but it will often do things that you don't expect as well.
I credit magicj with thinking outside the box. It's something I wish more people would do and it's something that I think would be more possible if we did have access to pools at level one. |
"It's a scrapper. If he can't handle it, no one can." -BrandX
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I play some of my bubbling toons with the bubs and some without, according to the whims of my concepts / designs. Sometimes I like certain powers in a bubbling set, but I don't want the toon to be a buffbot, so I skip the ally shields.|
Originally Posted by ketch
I'm currently munching though my 95th level as a troller with forcefields; I too have fairly strong opinions on the topic.
I think it's been demonstrated pretty well by PK and magicj that forcefields can be much more than a buff set. I had read through their guides as well as Fulmens before finding a playstyle with forcefields that I enjoy. I believe my build would fall in line with what magicj dubbed the wartroller. It won't do what you expect it to do on teams, but it will often do things that you don't expect as well. I credit magicj with thinking outside the box. It's something I wish more people would do and it's something that I think would be more possible if we did have access to pools at level one. |
I feel like I'm free to explore my options on toons, to see if I can get something to work. I've tried the tauntless tank, and I've tried the henchmanless MM, in addition to the bubless bubbler. Not everything works to my satisfaction, but I like to give it a try.
One of the things I really resent in the game, though, is when someone looks up my power selections and tells me that since I don't have X power I don't know how to play. Invariably, that's my cue to move on, as I've never enjoyed spending my time with disrespectful, closedminded people.
While for the most part I don't see why having power pools earlier would matter, at least for certain powersets I can understand the attraction of having pools opened earlier IMMENSELY. Jab comes to find as a good first option, as both boxing and air sup are better options, being as good or better than the attack and leading in to other powers that are often desired. On my ice/storm controller, at level 4 I had to decide between snow storm, o2 boost, and frostbite, none of which are particularly appealing on that build for various reasons.
I also don't really see why it would matter NOT allowing access to pools earlier. New players might have some issues, true, but that could be dealt with fairly handily by implementing konshu's warning idea, and it would allow experienced players HUGE amounts of increased flexibility in builds by not 'forcing' primary/secondary picks that may not be desired simply due to the level at which powers become available.
Maybe solve the problem of true newbs having problems with it by rolling it into one of the earlier vet badges(6/12 months?). The people who still have no idea how to build will still gimp themselves, but given that would happen anyway, and the REAL problem with them is playing ability and not build style, who cares?
My initial knee-jerk reaction to your idea was a huff and "why is that even needed?"
But after reading through and really thinking about it, I would not be opposed to it. Allow that emp defender to NOT take any attack powers? Well, I probably only view them as a filler to start a TF/ trial anyways. Allow SS tanks to skip Jab? Please! Allow Gale to be skipped? Heck! Sometimes even I shouldn't be allowed to use it. LOL
I understand worrying about bad or awkward looking builds. Bah, its gonna happen anyways. BUT.... It's not the build but the person behind that toon that matters. A bad player with the "standard" looking build for the powersets can still suck.
Anyways. Give me more options to customize my hero/ villain. More options = better game. That's my $.02
To be able to pick pool powers as your first power choice even in an "earned" respec, I'm going with a "no", however when respec'ing post lvl 20 (when all power pool choice are "unlocked") then maybe after making your 1st primary and secondary choices (your 3rd power pick can start your pools) would seem more apropriate. Just think of all the "pure healers" that already only take a single attack, without forcing them to take that initial attack they would be all but useless, now if you could skip the "weaker" blast for the stronger blast then that would definately be something, which brings me to my next point.
I'd also be all for letting you choose either your 1st or 2nd power from your secondary upon character creation.
Being able to take Energy Punch on a tank instead of Barrage, or your damage aura on a scrapper would be excellent and much appreciated QoL change, however foregoing all lvl 1-2 powers when respecing just seems to have and written all over it. IMO.
Active 50s:
Zero Defex: DP/MM//Mace Blaster
Mutant X-7: Fire/MM//Mace Blaster
Running my Kin/EA gloriously
Come on I21!!!
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Sure, the devs are supposed to listen to their customers, mister business 101 out there. And if I decide to start suggesting that the devs change the game from being about superheroes and supervillains to being about clowns that is my right as well, and technically Paragon Studios is supposed to pay attention to me. But I hope strongly that they assume a meth-head somehow managed to hack into my forum account and make paper airplanes out of my posts, because I hope they recognize stupid when they see it. I assume they will recognize futile just as accurately.
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And when this passes through... Let's just go ahead and take off the Power Pool Limit...
That way I could just skip all my Primary and Seconday powers... Tons of fun there
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Man-build Xtreme?
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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
That way I could just skip all my Primary and Seconday powers... Tons of fun there
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I would much rather see:
The developers make tier 1 and 2 power not suck: boxing, kick, air superiority, etc...
or
The developers open up the pool powers and allow us to choose them as we see fit.
Way back when the current system was neccessary, all travel powers had a debuff to accuracy or to-hit? so you needed the lower tier travel powers to help out with movement. That was changed so it no longer did that and applied a speed suppression. The current system is more of a punishment, take the crappy power so you can get the good one.
Virtue: @Santorican
Dark/Shield Build Thread
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Wait... are you claiming that Air Superiority sucks? It's one of the most useful pool powers in the game. It's certainly the best pool attack power in the game.|
Originally Posted by Santorican
The developers make tier 1 and 2 power not suck: boxing, kick, air superiority, etc...
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Originally Posted by Santorican
lower tier travel powers to help out with movement.
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- Combat Jumping increases your jumping speed by a whopping 1%
- Hover decreases your speed until you add enhancements, and even then it's slower than Sprint
- The Teleportation and Speed pools do not contain any T1/T2 powers which relate to personal locomotion
The only pool which increases your speed by any significant amount before level 14 is Fitness.
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Originally Posted by Santorican
take the crappy power so you can get the good one.
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- Concealment: Both Grant Invisibility and Stealth are extremely useful. Stealth is not as strong as Invisibility, but you can keep Stealth toggled on.
- Flight: Air Superiority is one of the better pool powers, and it's the best pool attack power.
- Fighting: Boxing and Kick are both fair attacks. Not great, but neither suck.
- Fitness: Hurdle and Swift both increase your speed at no cost other than a power selection.
- Leadership: Assault and Maneuvers are both extremely useful.
- Leaping: Combat Jumping allows for increased mobility (though only increases speed by a unnoticeable amount), and ever since Jump Kick was changed it is equal to Air Superiority except in the reliability of its secondary effect.
- Medicine: Aid Other and Stimulant are both useful. They pale in comparison to equivalent powers in a fully-fledged powerset, but they are perfectly normal when you consider the higher tiers in the pool.
- Speed: Hasten is a requirement in some builds. Flurry is generally poor, particularly because of its animation time, making it the first power in this list I would call "crappy". Even so (although you'd probably get laughed out of the zone/arena for putting it in your build) Flurry actually does a fair bit of damage in PvP: between 150.56 (Stalker without crit) to 255.52 (Dominator). To compare, Headsplitter from a Scrapper does 186.02 damage in PvP.
- Teleportation: Recall Friend is frequently useful when stealthing missions or otherwise getting the team together. Teleport Foe is the safest way to pull, though not necessarily the fastest.
- Presence: Tankerminds, some Brutes, and a few Tankers love Provoke... there's probably a few other character types that use it as well. Challenge isn't quite so popular, landing it as the second (and last) low-tier pool power I would be willing to call "crappy". And part of that comes from the fact that the first two powers in the Presence pool (Challenge/Provoke: taunt powers) are entirely unrelated mechanically to the last two powers (Intimidate/Invoke Panic: fear powers).
In fact, throughout all of the power pools, the ONLY cases I can see where you're forced to take a "bad" power to get a "good" one are Presence, if you want fear powers; Leaping, if you only want Acrobatics; and Fighting, if you have little to no S/L resistance, you want more defense, and you've got plenty of attack powers.
(There are a couple of cases where you'd have to take a good power to reach what most would call a bad power: Group Fly and Whirlwind, for example)
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
I've seen a Stone Tank with Whirlwind... yes it was comedy 
OK, correct me if I am wrong... but wouldn't the points of choosing to avoid your mandatory power picks during an earned respec be:
1) You earn the respecs from TFs/SFs starting at 20ish. You have a lot of power picks now, and getting the chance to avoid a never used tier 1 secondary power means getting to all of your favorite powers that much easier (especially if you feel that you need to blow three picks on Stamina).
2) Greater flexibility all around, not at level 1 or 2 as people above seem to think, but after you've played the character a bit. Long enough to run a respec TF/SF, anyway.
I'd happily dump my Tier 1 secondary on most of my non-Scrapper/Brute characters. Heck, bundle this with a game-wide Inf/recipe vault and I'd buy that Booster Pack faster than you can say "Wow! Quantum Evil, you sure do like spending ten dollar bills!"
@Quantum Evil Rad/Rad Corruptor
Making the world safe for maleficent particles since 2004.
Easy example is a fire/kin controller. I don't really want repel cage of fire or siphon power (since I get FS) but I'm forced to take one of 'em.
I would definitely go for this.
I've made a few builds where I've run into a choice between three powers I dont really want, and end up effectively wasting a power pick due to ordering.
Example: My current FF/NRG Defender I planned to build first for personal survival, team survival and single target damage.
That ruled out PFF (I'd soft cap later), Force Bolt (partially redundant with Energy Blast secondary) and Energy Torrent (avoiding AoE until later) once I'd got Deflection Shield, Power Bolt and Power Blast.
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I agree that giving new players access to power pools at level 1 is a bad idea because it can lead to a general lack of understanding of AT/powerset mechanics. Having to pick at least a few powers from your primary and secondary is like having training wheels to keep you from falling as you learn to ride a bike. As such, I don't think new players should ever be able to bypass picking from their primary/secondary from the beginning.|
Originally Posted by je_saist
This means that even the worst players have to have the basic powers for their archtype. Allowing players to select power pools from level 0, even on a respec, would allow some players to completely bypass a primary or secondary power set choice.
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HOWEVER, I do believe that after a certain point, having such a restriction places an unnecessary limit on your builds--especially if you are using set bonuses (like Global Recharge enhancers, etc) or if you have a "late blooming" set that has lousy choices up front but better options later on. As such, I think you should get the option to use power pools at level 1 as a veteran reward.
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| As of now, if I ever see anybody with more pool powers than their primary or secondary powers, I know automatically to one-star them and never work with that player. |
I would never one-star someone because they had a strange build, even if I was convinced it was gimped. Sometimes odd builds have synergy you never would have expected. However, if after teaming with that individual, they ACTED or PLAYED like they were gimped, I might lower their rating a bit.
Feel free to try out my AE mission arc, # 473452: Praetorian Redemption
@Valerika
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Do you have any idea just how aggressively stupid some people are? There are people out there that would intentionally gimp themselves into uselessness, then complain that they can't complete a mission set to -1/x1. They are out there. I have had to "deal" with them when they came through my drive-thru window at McDonald's. |
Originally Posted by Solicio
HOWEVER, I do believe that after a certain point, having such a restriction places an unnecessary limit on your builds--especially if you are using set bonuses (like Global Recharge enhancers, etc) or if you have a "late blooming" set that has lousy choices up front but better options later on. As such, I think you should get the option to use power pools at level 1 as a veteran reward.
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The AT/Power-set system was set up because of those people. (wild speculation on my part
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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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That really sucks |
Originally Posted by Twisted Toon
Do you have any idea just how aggressively stupid some people are? There are people out there that would intentionally gimp themselves into uselessness, then complain that they can't complete a mission set to -1/x1. They are out there. I have had to "deal" with them when they came through my drive-thru window at McDonald's.
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I worked at an amusement park, and I can definitely vouch for people's stupid behavior. I'm sure that you're right--people would use this to gimp themselves. That's why I'm hoping that making it a vet reward (preferably a much later one) would minimize that a bit.The funny thing is, I've seen people complain about gimping themselves, and then other people complain because they became TOO STRONG. "I'm too powerful! Nerf me!" Ugh. I know they think they're doing what's best for the game, but it always reminds me of the kid in class who begs the teacher to give everyone more homework. I mean, can't you just do more homework on your own? This is for casual gamers, not hardcore players, so it's SUPPOSED to be easy! If you want a challenge, don't call for nerfs, just stop min/maxing! Actually, I'm ranting, so I'll stop
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The AT/Power-set system was set up because of those people. (wild speculation on my part )
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Feel free to try out my AE mission arc, # 473452: Praetorian Redemption
@Valerika
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Those people will gimp themselves into uselessness whether they are allowed to spec out of their entire secondary or not. They will whine pointlessly about how terrible the game is for allowing them full scope to exercise their ineptitude regardless of how hard the devs try to force them to play adequate builds. Take away all player input into builds and stick everybody with a standard reference build, and they will *STILL* be sub-terrible players, they'll just exercise their incompetence in those areas where player input is allowed.|
Originally Posted by Twisted Toon
Do you have any idea just how aggressively stupid some people are? There are people out there that would intentionally gimp themselves into uselessness, then complain that they can't complete a mission set to -1/x1. They are out there. I have had to "deal" with them when they came through my drive-thru window at McDonald's.
The AT/Power-set system was set up because of those people. (wild speculation on my part ) |
Since you can't stop bad players from being bad, how about we let the good players make informed choices about whether the first secondary power is worth taking in an earned respec? The real difficulty is that it makes freespecs, vetspecs, and iospecs relatively worthless if your preferred build needs to skip your first secondary power or otherwise to use this ability, which means over time, you'll end up running out of earned respecs and be forced into a build you don't like.
TEH WERDZ ON SKREEN HURTZ MI BRANE!
Well how about just allowing the earned respec to serve as an unlocking mechanism. After that, freespecs, vetspecs and the like would follow suit - but not before.
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This, I could get behind. About half the reason that I don't have a /Storm Controller can be summed up with "Oh boy, Gale!"
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Originally Posted by Dispari
The only low-level changes I'd make would be allowing the tier 2 power in secondary available at level 1, so we don't always have to get stuck with lame power choices we aren't going to use.
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Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
The only low-level changes I'd make would be allowing the tier 2 power in secondary available at level 1, so we don't always have to get stuck with lame power choices we aren't going to use.
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This. The defenders get some truly useless mandatory powers in their secondary sets. I'd also have a minor tweak to defiance to go with that, in that it would it cover the first 2 primary powers you take and the first secondary power you took not just the tiers.
This is something I can get onboard with. We have a game that gives up the greatest customization for our toons. Then we get to a point where we all get in line like when we get shots in the service. ok you take this power; you have to take this one. Oh no! what are you doing with that one your to low to understand that. I really thought that we are making our toons to fit what we are making not what everyone else wants or needs. I love the fact that I can use the p/p and I have a thug m/m that doesent use any thugs becouse the toon I made used gund and that was the only way to make her. From what I read some people wouldnt let me on their team because I am not playing my at right. So here's a thought. (hey cyclops sorry you cant go with us on the next mission becouse instead of useing your optic blasts you did a 2 fisted overhand wack to that guys head we cant be having that. And Colossus your sapose to be just beating up every but you stopet to help Kitty again this just cant be going on). My point being that this would greatly allow much more customization for us and if we mess it up then we remake the toon again. Belive me I have made more than played like many others I know. In the end this is about roleplaying and having fun.
Enjoy and hope to see you guys out there
At this phase in the game, it's pointless. You'd have to have earned respec, meaning you'd be at the least lvl 24 IIRC. Now a days, you get 5 lvls of powers over and above whatever lvl you RSK too... so even if you rsk down to 1 you'd have access to your very first power pool pick anyways. So in effect, if you train a power pool at 0 or lvl 6, you'll have access to it when you rsk now a days. Meaning, it's a pointless change. If your not planing on RSKing down to lvl 1, it's even MORE pointless as the same power pool rules will apply, meaning you don't benefit AT ALL in ANY WAY from training them eairly. So why bother?
@KingSnake - Triumph Server
@PrinceSnake
My common sense is tingling... ~ Deadpool
If you can't learn to do something well... learn to enjoy doing it poorly...
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I thought this as I re-specced a very low level character so I could level her with my friends. I got to lvl6 in no time and picked Hover - and I am glad to say I appreciated the time spent on foot, learning how to use my powers and my way around the city. If I had Hover/Fly at level 1 I would probably still be level 5, flying around like a goombah and not levelling my character!
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Originally Posted by Sir_Zane
I personally would LOVE the option of taking Air Superiority at Level 0/1 instead of Jab. That option is nothing but WIN.
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I have 135+ levels of Force Field defenders. I have fairly strong opinions on the topic.
I think it's been demonstrated pretty well by PK and magicj that forcefields can be much more than a buff set. I had read through their guides as well as Fulmens before finding a playstyle with forcefields that I enjoy. I believe my build would fall in line with what magicj dubbed the wartroller. It won't do what you expect it to do on teams, but it will often do things that you don't expect as well.
I credit magicj with thinking outside the box. It's something I wish more people would do and it's something that I think would be more possible if we did have access to pools at level one.