Super Boost: Excuse for bad manners?

I'm not sure what you mean by 'toggle', but IMO the easiest way is to setup binds that'll target a specific teammate (based on which number they are in the team), and apply speed boost. I have NUMPAD 1-8 setup to apply SB to the teammate in that spot and it allows me to apply it to the whole team incredibly quickly, as well as apply it to someone in a moments notice (if, say, they'd been out of range previously when I'd SBed the rest of the team).

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

I've never understood the concept of the numpad making things easier. Perhaps you can explain it to me. I place my left hand on W-A-S-D and my right hand on my mouse. Shift-2 targets the player in the 2nd slot and Shift-3 the 3rd etc. First I target using shift + number then I press the power for speed boost: perhaps control-1 or alt-1.

How does using the numpad make that easier? You have to move one of your hands away from its normal position, I assume. Personally, I consider that "not good". I'd really like to be able to walk around with my left hand and look around with my right at all times. Is using the numpad easier than pressing shift-2 to target for most people? What benefits does using the numpad give you? Do you place your hands at different keys?

Shift+Number, Power is two steps while a dedicated bind lets you do it in one (technically you need to press it twice, but I always repeatedly tap the keys anyways 'cause I'm impatient ). But that's really secondary.

With my keyboard (and most others I've used), I can only quickly use out to about the 4 key without moving my hand away from the WASD keys or twisting it. To use Shift+Number to cycle through the team wouldn't be a problem for about the first 3 or 4 players before I had to start twisting my hand to get both the shift key and the number key. I can press all the way to shift+8 (shift+9 would end with me pressing the keys adjacent also, since I can just reach the edges), but both shift+7 and shift+8 are highly uncomfortable (shift+6 isn't fun, either).

It's much easier and faster for me to move my right hand a couple of inches to the keypad (and start tapping the number keys (which makes it much easier to quickly go between SBing and using other powers without adjusting either hand). Also, I've upped my rotation speed high enough that I can turn using Q & E fast enough that I can normally keep up with people bouncing off the walls and going in random directions, and normally the only thing I use the mouse for (directly related to gameplay) is adjusting my camera/turning (I often keep the RMB down, so the mouse operates in a bit of a FPS style).

So yeah, using the number pad is just a LOT more comfortable for me, as well as easier. Plus, it's even better on characters with multiple powers I apply to the entire team (rotating bind files ftw! )

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

I find shift plus number to be difficult for most to the combinations very hard on one hand.

I use arrow keys (right hand) for movement over the wasd set though <shrug>

I'm incredibly paranoid that I'll accidentally hit 'Quit' when doing that... and I've seen it happen quite a few times (I think I might have done it a couple times on accident myself ). Plus, I use a tiny laptop mouse with no extra buttons (I bought a 'gaming' mouse once... but it made my hand feel like I was being stabbed repeatedly!)

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

I play with my right hand on the arrow keys mostly, going to to the mouse as necessary for clickies. My left hand targets and activates powers. It's not a stretch to reach the NUMPAD numbers.


If you put a +$$ before the power in the bind it'll activate upon pressing and again upon release of the key meaning you don't have to press it twice.

Strawman

Here are Ketch's numbers.

This is what they parse out to be.

from 240 to 131 = 55% reduction @ 84.8% invested
from 131 to 95 = 27% reduction @ 70% invested
from 95 to 79 = 17% reduction @ 50% invested

When I was using the quoted "real world" I meant real world. These numbers actually state that I was giving more to SB than it actually gets.

Are you assuming these people have Hasten? If so, the numbers should be better than this. Any time you Speed Boost someone with Hasten (or Accelerate Metabolism to a lesser extent) the base boost is actually better than +50% Recharge. That's because Speed Boost decreases the Recharge time of Hasten which itself decreases Recharge time further. The net effect is extremely noticeable. The reason people chase perma-Hasten is that once you hit it your overall Recharge time of all powers is a flat +70% base at all times rather than 70% some of the time and 0% the rest of the time.

7.5% recharge is worth 150 million. One SB (for my Emp) is the difference between one more person getting that 30% damage/23% def fortitude and keeping AB perm on that nuke crazy blaster. One SB shaves precious seconds off of my next SC on my scrapper, which might mean the difference between once every 3 groups to once every 2 groups on a fast team.

And recovery is (as always) the difference between fighting sensibly while managing your end and opening a can of whoopass with the best attacks you have at all times.

I beg to differ on this one. I was playing a blaster the other night and was about to team wipe. If I hadn't had SB and been able to attack as fast as I could we would have had a team wipe. Me and a troller were the only ones alive oddly enough, but I cleaned up the mess real fast thanks to SB. If I didn't have it on I would have wiped really fast!

Are you honestly trying to tell me that you had, what I believe was a Kin Troller, backing you up during a team wipe, and all you believe they had contributed was the SB that they had put on you. What in all hells was this Troller doing during this time. Hiding behind you, shacking in fear.

That Kin has IMO the second best AOE Heal in the game, and in a group wipe one of it's disadvantages is overcome by having the MOBs in your face.

That Kin probably has a descent single target Damage buff/debuff, that can give a 20 - 40% damage buff to the group.

That Kin probably has a descent single target Recharge debuff/self buff.

That Troller probably has a 4 second single target Imob, unless they were Illusion or Mind.

That Troller should have a 8 second single target Hold.

That 20+ Troller should have other mez type powers to play with.

That Troller does have Containment, and had damn well be taking advantage of it during a team wipe. Hells if you are in a team wipe, your heavy duty damage dealers are probably already used up, and you are not dealing much more damage than the Troller with containment.


Spirits people, I'm not saying that Recharge Reduction or even SB are a bad things. I'm saying that Kins and especially Trollers with the kin secondary can give more to the group than just SB. And I'll be straight up and say that IMO during a team wipe SB is the least of their tools, because it has already failed most of the team.

The problem is no one is arguing that Speed Boost is a better option than controls. We are saying that not using Speed Boost--let alone coming to the boards to brag about not using it--is a mistake, because the power has huge benefits. And the main benefit is not, as some have claimed with staments like "I only use it on people who are struggling with endurance" or "everyone should already have their endurance under control at that level", the endurance reduction. Nor has anyone said you should use Speed Boost and nothing else; such an argument would be ridiculous because the whole point of Speed Boost is to enable other powers, including the controls you're fond of.

To be thoroughly blunt, I think Kinetics may be the only powerset in the game where people come to the boards eager to announce how poorly they play it. I don't mean that as harshly as it may sound, but I feel like if we could show that using the power would bring about world peace they'd say "but no one really needs world peace because the economy is good, and that's a fact" as if that argument had any logic to it.

My example was actually quite poor and only demonstrated the benefit of SB under the effects of Hasten. As you have stated, it's benefits are far greater when you consider the down time most individuals experience with Hasten.

Using Arcana's method, I've calculated the recharge time of Hasten with 3 level 50 IO's with and without the benefit of constant SB.

Hasten without Speed Boost: 183.9 seconds recharge
Hasten with constant Speed Boost: 147 seconds recharge

What's this mean for recharge of other powers? Hasten's 70% recharge only lasts for 120 seconds so we can estimate an average recharge bonus by multiplying percentage of time up by the Hasten's 70%.

Hasten without SB contributes an average recharge bonus of 45.7%.
Hasten with SB contributes an average of recharge bonus of 57.1%, additionally SB will be providing 50%.

Going to our previous example of Total Domination:

An average with Hasten and two level 50 recharge IO's: 104.5 seconds
An average with Hasten, Speed Boost and two level 50 recharge IO's: 82.5

Now I consider a 20 second difference in recharge on an AoE hold a not insignificant difference. For powers with longer recharge such as Recovery Aura, Unstoppable, or a blaster's nuke the difference becomes even more pronounced.

Blizzard: 360 seconds base recharge
An average with Hasten and 2 level 50 recharge IO's: 156.7 seconds
An average with Hasten, Speed Boost, and 2 level 50 recharge IO's: 123.7 seconds

Recovery Aura/Regeneration Aura: 500 seconds base recharge
An average with Hasten and 2 level 50 recharge IO's: 217.7 seconds
An average with Hasten, Speed Boost, and 2 level 50 recharge IO's: 171.8 seconds

Unstoppable: 1000 seconds base recharge
An average with Hasten and 2 level 50 recharge IO's: 435.4 seconds
An average with Hasten, Speed Boost, and 2 level 50 recharge IO's: 343.6 seconds

Again, we see what I consider some significant increase in the availability of powers. Blizzard is up on average more than 20 seconds faster. Recovery and Regeneration Auras come around more than 40 seconds sooner. Unstoppable can be used a minute and a half earlier.

I will admit it is difficult to express the benefit of additional recharge with a simple number because of the diminishing returns. Neither the ingame numbers or Jeuraud's "real world" numbers convey it's impact very well. The actual impact however, I feel, is very evident in the game however. When those key powers are up for use again most of the team knows why.

SB, on its own, is 100% entirely USELESS. What Speed Boost does, though, is make all your other powers far more effective, as they can be up more often, and be used with ill regard of the blue bar. The tools that could have prevented the team wipe, but were still recharging, are improved by Speed Boost and are up more often, and usable more often.


Speed Boost is the poster child of Force Multiplication

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

Actually this statement says otherwise,
and it's not the first time I've read this viewpoint. Despite my forum join date, I have been in and out of CoHv since May, 2004, and the SB issue has been in the forums multiple times since that date.

And I say that the power does not have the earth shattering affect that is being promoted. That most players see the fricken huge run speed buff, and think that their getting this kind of buff to their reduction time, and as the numbers have pointed out numerous times, they're not. Something to note, I play mostly on the red side. Guess what, SB does not even exist in the pre-20 game there and only one AT has it available in the post-20 game, yet we still seem to team effectively on the redside, even in the pre-20 game.

My problem is not with the power though. My problem is that for some reason some of you believe you have the right to dictate to a group of players that have this power in their set that they must take this power. That they must support your "want" for the benefits of this power. That if they do not take and use this power, they are not being good little heroes. Also I often see those with this attitude, not run Kins in the ATs they play that have this set available, and not run Hasten with every character they have. If the need for cycle reduction is so important that they have the right to dictate to other players, then they should be doing everything in their power to support this issue. Not doing so is just being a hypocrite.

For some reason this belief that you have the right to dictate to any group of players, stomps all over my sensibilities (I don’t much like hypocrites either.). Maybe this has something to do with having spent 10 years in the US Military. Hells maybe it's just because I have authority issues.

In the long run it does not matter, because no player or group of players have the right to dictate to other players, how they will play their characters, and that is what my argument boils down to. You do have the ability to boot a player if they do not play the way you wish for them to play (If you’re the team leader.), and I have the right to remove myself from your group, and note you when you do.

I have posted numbers that I feel make a fair case for Speed Boost. Perhaps, that 20 second reduction on a nuke is unimportant to you. Perhaps, RA's recharging 40 seconds sooner means little in your play experience. In my experience, it makes teams more efficient and enjoyable. I suppose one man's trash is another man's treasure...

Admittedly, we run across this attitude. I've seen it in other threads. However, I don't feel the people you've responded to have said this. We may try to convince you that Speed Boost is a very good idea. I may even try to convince you that it's a better option than controls at times. What we present is merely an attempt to convince you, not an edict that you must play as we do.

This is true, however...

You see, you have expectations from others as well. Your expectations of a controller to lockdown mobs is as much a demand of how they should play as my expectation that they should maintain Speed Boost on the team. Of course, I'm sure neither of us views our stance as something players must do, but rather as something they ideally should do.

That is an uphill argument on these boards. Especially when the overall reaction when people see something that can be played in way they don't think it should be, is to call for nerfs to make it impossible to play any other way.

Strategizing is not "dictating." I'm not trying to make this personal. But I categorically disagree that all methods of playing a power set are equally effective, which is essentially an absurdist notion. If this discussion was about Force Fields and we said it's in the interest of the team to keep Force Fields active it would not be "dictating" to say that to do otherwise is not a good strategy. It would also be roundly false to say that it comes down to a choice between putting up Force Fields or using controls. The same for Thermal, Sonic, and all the other sets.

As to the reason you've received so many replies about the nature of the power, its because you requested it:


We've shown you what you're missing, but rather than refute those numbers, you're changing the argument. I understand that you feel like you're being attacked, so that explans some of it. But I don't get why you requested the information if your "real" argument was that you don't like being told what to do.

OK who pissed in your Cheerios? Stop getting so angry when people disagree with you. I wasn't even talking about anything that you were talking about. Did you ever stop to think that a troller could be anything other than a Kin? All I said was if I wouldn't have been able to attack as fast and kept my endurance as well we would have team wiped. The troller still alive was NOT the Kin troller. The Kin troller got wiped pretty fast because some idiot ran into at least 3 or 4 mobs at once, and so yes the only contributing factor on my Blaster from the Kin was the SB. I don't know how you assumed that the one still alive was a Kin from what I said...

The PLANT troller and I were even separated and firing off as many powers as we could. The holds kept the troller alive long enough for me to finish my group of enemies and help them finish theirs off. Maybe you should get your facts right before you try to argue a point that's not being made next time.

Again I say: If I had not had SB on I would have died because I couldn't have attacked as quickly or as efficiently thanks to the extra endurance I had. My comment was about WarronPeace comment that said SB didn't have much to do with survival. Obviously it does or my team would have team wiped in this instance. Why don't you go back and read my other comment... Maybe it will click in your head then!!

Please don't tell that guy he is angry when his post doesn't read as angry. I'm assuming you are just creating a Straw Man.

And to Tex's point about bragging about not taking SB. I don't think anyone is bragging about it. It is to point out that other players behavior has become so irritating around SB as to render the power detrimental to our own enjoyment of the game. Is it every player? No, but it is certainly enough.

Having Speed Boost became like searching the internet without a pop up blocker. More trouble than it was worth. Extreme reactions like demanding to be thanked or dropping the power altogether are just that, reactions.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

On these boards? Really? Never noticed that.