Time for renewal!

As I have had a past in alt-ism, and I can't help it but thinking that I'd like to see some new support powersets for a change! What I'm mostly thinking is something that does not bring THAT much buff, but more debuff and team buffs. BUT:: I am perfectly aware that that description fits Radiation Emission pretty much, but allow me to let you in on a secret: Rad is used A LOT these days, so I'd like to see some progression.

I would though like to say that I am not going to give any build ideas, since I have put this thread here and not in the Suggestions & Ideas Forums, as I'd like to hear about other player's thoughts about a new support, for example your own wishes for a new support set.

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@Global: Difficult One
Playing on European Servers (Union, Defiant)

If a person turns down an idea, he turns down an opportunity to evolve himself

Suggestions and Ideas is the place to put this. really. only when you do come up with some powers and descriptions and numbers. if not you WILL be told to go flesh out the idea and come back. as long as it is presented in a well thought out format and you can handle taking criticism and roll with it you will be fine.

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This forum seems like as good a place as any to ask.

So what hasn't been done before? Most sets offer some -Res, quite a lot give some -To Hit or +Def.

Some of the rarer effects are:
Storm gives -Range
Kinetics stacks -damage, especially nice on big targets (AVs)
Cold and Poison debuff special effects like mez duration and heals
Cold and Storm offer -Recharge
Empathy suits small teams since you pick favourrites with the best buffs.
Sonic adds Resistance
Traps has a lot of laoctaion based effects
Rad is a mixed bag with two enemy-targetted debuffs.
Trick Arrows is a bunch of AoE long recharge debuffs with maybe less damage mitigation than most sets.
Sonic has two ally-targetted debuffs, bad idea IMHO because it excludes solo-ers.

There's currently no set that protects primarily via -Recharge. Cold and Storm and Kinetics use it with everything else on offer.
That by itself leaves the team vulnerable to alpha strikes, so I'd add a bit of the relatively rare - Damage in there to soften the alpha.

There are also relatively few PBAoE toggles.

Maybe a short lived AoE -Dam (for 10 seconds) on a per spawn recharge (60 sec base) to cover alpha strikes.
Add a PBAoE toggle -Recharge debuff, possibly with some movement debuff too.
These two powers provide a decent reduction of incoming damage. Complement that with a PBAoE +Regen like Mastermind Pain Domination's Soothing Aura.

For ally buffs, I'd add a +Recharge buff along the lines of Accelerate Metabolism. Unlike AM and Speed Boost though, there's no +Recovery, so teammates can burn through their END pretty quickly.

Most teammates. Add in a single target +Regn/+Recovery like Adrenalin Boost/PainBringer and some selected teammates now have all the end they can eat.

What else?
A single target -Recharge to stack with the AoE one.
A single target -Dam perhaps.
The whole thing is starting to feel like a Time Manipulation set, so maybe a hold of some kind? Plenty of precedence there in Dark Miasma, Posion and Rad. Maybe a single target hold with an AoE debuff that reduces speed and Recharge, or Damage? maybe even a modest -To Hit on it?

That's where I'd kick off from if I was asked to design a new support set that played differently from existing ones.

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If I were designing a new support set, I'd look at possible concepts (like an Electric Buff set) and then after that, look into the possible effects it could have and how to make them different.

So, I'd think of a concept (we'll say Earth Affinity), and what could it possibly do (it could most definitely have a FF-like team buff you could apply, but to differentiate it from the other 2-shield buff sets, just give it 1 that protects from mixed things but not full protection. In exchange, it could have other effects).

Once you get something started, you can start forming things around it:
-the shield, Stone Barrier, gives resistance to lethal, cold, energy and defense to smashing, fire and neg energy with protection to knockback
-throw in a 'Spirit of the Earth' PBAoE buff that boosts regen and max HP
-add in something offensive, either a team dmg buff or a foe -res...

And so on and so forth. Probably not the best approach but it's the easiest approach I think.

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Actually Leo I htink your idea was rather interesting...

Though, you must understand fellas that I don't wanna make a supportive set, I just wanna see your thoughts of what you'd like to see in new sets.

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@Global: Difficult One
Playing on European Servers (Union, Defiant)

If a person turns down an idea, he turns down an opportunity to evolve himself

Possible power ideas for Electric Manipulation... (Being manipulating combat with electricity; as opposed to electricity manipulation, which is manipulating electricity and already shows up under the blaster secondaries. Probably too subtle, needs a better name.)

Main theme seen in elec powers is +/-end. As already being an issue with most of the -end powers in the game, the npcs don't have decently scaled end costs so it's all or nothing. This leaves us with alpha dispersal as a mechanism. Hit a spawn with enough -end to drain a boss (when slotted) and apply a random duration -recovery so they can start attacking again over the next 5-10 seconds.

At the moment in team endurance management we have AoE +endurance in transference, AoE +recovery in accelerate metabolism and heat loss; and single target +recovery in speedboost, adrenalin boost and painbringer. A single target +end power for spot 'healing' blue bars would fill a gap. Synaptic Transfer maybe, 5 second base recharge, +30 (enhancable) endurance to target while applying a 20 second stacking -50% recovery to the caster.

Single target ally buff, long recharge (1 minute), +40% (enhancable) resistance to all for 2 minutes +50% recharge. Would love this to turn the target into a gremlin, but that might be technically problematic and having your character completely replaced by a lilac/mauve electric man is even worse than having it covered by pink/orange fire. Only just though. The elec response to fortitude.

A ranged single target sleep with a -recovery side effect so you can stack it with the earlier -end drain to keep one target out of end for longer.

Giving us a more limited version of the blue mito bouncing end drain/fear bolt might also work.

A PBAoE -recharge aura with chance for sleep would help with longer battles but might not synergise well with the end drain, there's not that much point in depriving targets of the endurance to use powers that aren't recharged or of powers to use with endurance they haven't got.

While there is no reason to expect such a power from the other sets, thematically an elec buff/debuff set ought to have an ally rez; it's one of the few methods that sort of works after all. Could be something along the lines of calling a lightning bolt down to strike the corpse, raising it on partial health, full end and dealing aoe damage+knockdown.

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