Buffs with Debuffs attached?
By
Captain_Freak,
Posted on: 2010-07-01 07:38 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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Might lead to either more min/maxing if the buffs are interesting enough to do so, or to not being used if the traditional buffs are overall better. | Any thoughts about this? |
Doesn't seem to be something that's in line with the current philosophy of the game as we keep seeing less drawbacks. For example, old T9s, be it blaster nukes or scrapper godmodes, had huge crashes ; new T9s are not as powerful but recharge faster and have lesser/no crash. Also see WP and Shield with their complete mez protection, as opposed to other sets who always have a hole of some kind - fear, knockback, confuse. It's the same with attack sets, knockback doesn't exist in melee powersets (well, if you want to get technical there is knockback, just low mag enough that it actually does knockdown against most foes you should normally fight).
I'm not a mindreader, but looking at all of this I think the idea of buffs with debuffs or debuffs with buffs doesn't seem to fit into the current trends.
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Which is exactly the point of this thread, lol. The current trends seem to be leading to rather bland play; with no major drawbacks, there's no major challenge. I'd just like to see some thought needed before using powers, rather than "OK, everyone's buffed, I'll just nerf these guys and we'll do the same thing to the next spawn."
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Originally Posted by Nihilii
I'm not a mindreader, but looking at all of this I think the idea of buffs with debuffs or debuffs with buffs doesn't seem to fit into the current trends.
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I think the main issue with debuffing teammates is the fact that currently non-temp buffs can't be denied by the ones having the buffs cast on them. So in theory a few players could stand around (a raid lets say) and debuff the bejesus out of players without "permission" and ruin things for a lot of people.
@Mental Maden @Maden Mental
"....you are now tackle free for life."-ShoNuff
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Do we know that only temp powers can prompt? I mean, Teleport Friend does it, too. Still, I can see powers that require prompts never becoming widespread just because it'd be a pain in the butt to have to click through a dozen prompts every few minutes during a raid or something.
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Originally Posted by MentalMaden
I think the main issue with debuffing teammates is the fact that currently non-temp buffs can't be denied by the ones having the buffs cast on them. So in theory a few players could stand around (a raid lets say) and debuff the bejesus out of players without "permission" and ruin things for a lot of people.
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Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
My reason wasn't due to mechanics I just meant that the only buff that has a prompt is magic fortune (a temp power) and all standard buffs from primaries or secondaries don't use prompts. Teleport isn't a buff therefore I didn't mention it. In a world with debuffs attached to buffs would need prompts for all buffs, which will lead to either a bunch of annoying pop ups (not fun in combat) or getting debuffed without choice.
@Mental Maden @Maden Mental
"....you are now tackle free for life."-ShoNuff
This would lead to the to speed boost or not to speed boost debate being extended to every buff it was applied to - and that's just an imagined debuff and not even a real, mechanical one.
Maybe you'd be interested in this armor set I suggested back in January: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=204621
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You do realize that you can up your level of challenge?|
Originally Posted by WarronPeace
Which is exactly the point of this thread, lol. The current trends seem to be leading to rather bland play; with no major drawbacks, there's no major challenge. I'd just like to see some thought needed before using powers, rather than "OK, everyone's buffed, I'll just nerf these guys and we'll do the same thing to the next spawn."
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Using the Fateweavers and the Hero Corps Analysts, you can fight more enemies, you can fight higher level enemies.
If you really want to challenge yourself, you can flashback in Ourobouros and load up on the challenges (no inspirations, no temp powers, buffed enemies, etc.)
You can also build a character around a theme, rather than min/maxing the best build you can. Just because you can solo x8 / +1 maps with a Fire / Kin doesn't mean that you must play with a Fire / Kin. You have the option of playing a Grav / Storm Controller and seeing if you can make it work.
Once you take "fastest xp gain" off the table as your main goal in play, you can make the game as challenging as you like with the options already available to us.
New story arcs coming soon (ARC IDs will be aded when I finish the arc):
So, you want to join the Hellions? (level 1-14 Villainous arc)
Sparks & Steel (level 5-20 Heroic arc)
and
So you want to join the Skulls? (level 1-14 Villainous arc)
We have Mutation in the Radiation Emission set.
Sounds like an interesting idea to keep in mind when designing a new power though.
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Given the sh!tstorm that the minor debuffs in the tarot power caused, I have to say No to ally powers that debuff.
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You mean the two percent tohit debuff that comes with The Fool? |
Originally Posted by Weatherby Goode
Given the sh!tstorm that the minor debuffs in the tarot power caused
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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
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I didn't say it was a legitimate concern, I just said that people got all riled up about it. |
Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
You mean the two percent tohit debuff that comes with The Fool?
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Upping enemy levels and/or numbers is only so effective. There gets to be a point where 2-3 people capable of fighting +4/x8 isn't challenging. (And yes, that's possible. Give a scrapper softcapped defense via Force Fields and capped damage via a kin def/troller and you'll melt everything, providing accuracy is taken into account. Which two defenders stacking Tactics will provide...)|
Originally Posted by Lightfoot
You do realize that you can up your level of challenge?
Using the Fateweavers and the Hero Corps Analysts, you can fight more enemies, you can fight higher level enemies. If you really want to challenge yourself, you can flashback in Ourobouros and load up on the challenges (no inspirations, no temp powers, buffed enemies, etc.) You can also build a character around a theme, rather than min/maxing the best build you can. Just because you can solo x8 / +1 maps with a Fire / Kin doesn't mean that you must play with a Fire / Kin. You have the option of playing a Grav / Storm Controller and seeing if you can make it work. Once you take "fastest xp gain" off the table as your main goal in play, you can make the game as challenging as you like with the options already available to us. |
I would just like to see challenges where real strategy is involved, beyond pulling or herding. Katie TFs with a /dev blaster (or traps/ def) tossing down a literal minefield while the team works on Mary, so as to nuke the heck out of the next wave, are very fun to me. STFs with an FF or Sonic fender/troller who actually cages towers to kill their ability to buff Recluse make for a fun strategy. It just seems to me that if a team isn't solid enough, the answer is to toss more buffs/debuffs at it, with no cost to doing that.
Most fun ITF I've ever had was when RO ran it with scrappers only. The autohitting Mire nictus was killing the softcapped scrappers, which in turn made Rommy able to smack us down. I ended up tanking Rommy with my spine/regen, thanks to the Wedding Band and Cryonite Armor temp powers. I didn't have Confront or any other taunt effects, I just kept him on my by beating on him. Many times I was jousting to buy time for Recon/DP/IH to come back, leveraging new MoG for extra time. (No IOs on this scrapper, no tough/weave, in favor of Leadership buffs to help the entire team. I built for this challenge, and even then it was tough as hell.)
That's an example, to me, of true fun. It wasn't just dogpile on the Big Bad sack of HP. I like challenges where you have to think, to use strategy. The current game is very lacking in that, unfortunately.
Yeah, I can see players griefing with buffs that debuff, but the whole thing is that it'd be balanced. You wouldn't get capped resists but floored accuracy so you can't die but you can't kill either. Recharge and Endurance would still be used to balance things out, but they wouldn't be the only balancing factors. Right now, it's pretty easy (expensive, but inf literally rains from the sky, it's just a matter of knowing where the clouds are) to get insane amounts of recharge and recovery, so that long recharges aren't as much a factor, and endurance costs can be annihilated. Add to that the fact that most people can get enough defense (softcap is common, but even 30-35% defense stacked with other mitigation can be enough) and waiting 10s more for the uber power to come back isn't a problem. And enough recharge can be added that giving powers long recharges just isn't an effective means of balance anymore.
Increase Density (Target Ally Buff/Debuff)
Granite Armor (self buff/debuff)
Oppresive Gloom (Self damage/ PBAoE toggle for enemy stun)
Disuption Field (Targed Ally PBAoE Foe -res, all agro from this goes not to the caster of DF, but to the ally its toggled on)
I think the rez in /poison for MMs debuffs after a while, as someone said Mutation from Rad.
EM Pulse and nukes / melee god modes all debuff after a time, an acolade power or 2 debuffs yourself too.
Group Flight
in short, debuffing or negative affecting yourself/allies for a benefit that is (see last one) somewhat situational exists in the game a plenty, would more of it be bad....no, would the potential for more of it (say a whole set based on it) be a potential stigma for those players...yes.
Hard to balance I think, but maybe fun.
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Originally Posted by VoodooGirl
[*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*
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Well, the problem with attempting to buck the current trend is that you're assuming it's got no legitimate basis. The devs have started to apply their more crashless/crash-lite design to so many things specifically because they've found that a vast majority of players don't like and/or use those powers. The crashless and crash-lite powers are substantially more popular despite their substantially lower contributions because they aren't nearly as situational.|
Originally Posted by WarronPeace
Which is exactly the point of this thread, lol. The current trends seem to be leading to rather bland play; with no major drawbacks, there's no major challenge. I'd just like to see some thought needed before using powers, rather than "OK, everyone's buffed, I'll just nerf these guys and we'll do the same thing to the next spawn."
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Similarly, how are you assuming that adding counterbalancing debuffs to powers would lead to more interesting play? It would make play more complex (balancing the buffs with the debuffs), but I doubt it would make it more interesting (or, at least, interesting in a good way). You could make the claim that attaching debuffs to certain powers would allow them to offer substantially larger buffs, but, once again, the problem comes in balance: if it's easy to get around the debuff, the debuff doesn't really mean anything and you're simply getting a large buff for no real cost. If the debuff is so large that it's not playable while the effect is active, then there is little point to using it (beyond simply annoying one's team, which is going to happen, and we all know it). Furthermore, you can't simply state that one or the other is going to happen because the utility of a power is entirely situational: in the presence of many buffs, it might be useless, or vice versa, and the devs have to think of that. Of course, there is always the question of control: should the target have the right to accept or decline the de/buff regardless of the fact that the caster is the one that chooses it? If it's an effect on a long timer, how do you deal with the fact that, if the target ignores it, the effects of it are lost for the entire duration (which, if it's a buff, would be a bad thing)?
If a design like this were to be implemented, I would expect it to be the specific shtick of a single set, for those debuffs to be comparatively low to the size of the buffs, and for that set have mechanisms inside it specifically for counteracting specific side effects within it (such as having 2 powers, one that provides +tohit and -def and another that provides +def and -tohit so that you could choose to have either both to a smaller extent or a higher buff to one to counteract the lesser debuff of the other, though this would be the simplest; I'd prefer the set to be designed around a "cycle" of counterbalancing of around 3-4 powers).
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Uninterruptable hold as the newly-rezzed starts throwing up, as I recall.
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Originally Posted by Mega_Jamie
I think the rez in /poison for MMs debuffs after a while,
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1000-mag hold and dam/tohit debuff, actually.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Uninterruptable hold as the newly-rezzed starts throwing up, as I recall.
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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
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Having ally buffs that also apply a debuff to them will be bad news, see Mystic Fortune: The Fool and all the discussions about it in various threads. That's only a severely minor debuff accompanied by a rather decent buff and people hate it with a passion, I think integrating something like this further into the game would be likely to drive players away rather than keep them. |
Originally Posted by WarronPeace
Take Accelerated Metabolism, for instance.
What if we made the recharge and recovery more powerful, easily permanent, but at the price that something else is debuffed? Say a regen or resistance/defense debuff, so you can fight and fight and fight, faster with no endurance issues, but you do so at the risk of dieing quicker? Any thoughts about this? |
If anything, maybe you should play a /Pain Domination Corruptor, using some of the buffs/heals in that set also debuff YOU, but not your team. Alternately, some of the new content in the pipeline is supposed to be more difficult than anything we've seen yet, so maybe that will cure your boredom.
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I think it's more of a case that the description doesn't say just how minor the tohit debuff is (and they're too lazy to check the real numbers), and some people hate speed buffs.|
Originally Posted by Mystic_Cross
That's only a severely minor debuff accompanied by a rather decent buff and people hate it with a passion
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Originally Posted by Mystic_Cross
If anything, maybe you should play a /Pain Domination Corruptor, using some of the buffs/heals in that set also debuff YOU, but not your team.
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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
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you make it sound like theres a setting other than -1 x1.....you crazy kids and challenging yourself
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Originally Posted by Lightfoot
You do realize that you can up your level of challenge?
Using the Fateweavers and the Hero Corps Analysts, you can fight more enemies, you can fight higher level enemies. If you really want to challenge yourself, you can flashback in Ourobouros and load up on the challenges (no inspirations, no temp powers, buffed enemies, etc.) You can also build a character around a theme, rather than min/maxing the best build you can. Just because you can solo x8 / +1 maps with a Fire / Kin doesn't mean that you must play with a Fire / Kin. You have the option of playing a Grav / Storm Controller and seeing if you can make it work. Once you take "fastest xp gain" off the table as your main goal in play, you can make the game as challenging as you like with the options already available to us. |
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I would personally consider Speed Boost's +runspeed to be an unintended CHARACTER CONTROL debuff. The added run speed is high, and can cause problems.|
Originally Posted by rsclark
This would lead to the to speed boost or not to speed boost debate being extended to every buff it was applied to - and that's just an imagined debuff and not even a real, mechanical one.
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EDIT: And to the OP's idea, I might have to vote 'nay'. It's in another game, but I'll use the DDO spell "Grease" as an example. The spell has a very tangable and benefitial effect: enemies will keep falling down unless they make a balance check. It also has a very tangable harmful effect: the same thing happens to players, who tend to have low to non-existent balance skill rating. In addition anyone in the grease patch will slide downhill if on an incline.
Players rarely use this spell outside of pulling (dangerous) pranks on the team/raid. Pranks such as centering Grease under the entire team, when the team is on a slight incline that goes down to a lava pit (that will kill everyone). Or that causes the team to slide into a fight vs a beholder when their not prepared. There's also some pets/henchmen which you can get that spam Grease. These rarely get used too due to the annoyance of your team falling on their rear, while the enemy keeps making the saves.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton
Madam Enigma's History
I think there is a nice niche of buffing/debuffing that doesn't really get touched in this game: Buffs that carry Debuffs with them. And I don't mean things like Fulcrum Shift or Heat Loss, that debuff enemies and buff allies, I mean powers that you use to buff allies, but come with a debuff of another sort, or powers that hit enemies with one kind of debuff but also give them another buff.
A lot of the powers in this game balance their effects by number of targets or recharge/endurance cost. The more powerful the effect, the longer it's recharge, so that it doesn't become game breaking. Or take powers like the Leadership toggles, which are pretty awesome on the right ATs, and downright sick when stacked by most of the team. They are balanced by higher endurance costs, so you have to make some sort of sacrifice to run them. But what if the cost was a loss to some other aspect?
Take Accelerated Metabolism, for instance. It offers a 30% recharge buff and 30% recovery buff, as well as 25% damage and some resistance to mezzes. It's on a long recharge, because it affects all allies in range (teamed with you or not) so it can be game breaking if it was perma out of the box, particularly on Raids or Zone Events. What if we made the recharge and recovery more powerful, easily permanent, but at the price that something else is debuffed? Say a regen or resistance/defense debuff, so you can fight and fight and fight, faster with no endurance issues, but you do so at the risk of dieing quicker? It then becomes a power that you use every time it's up to a power that is situational, but when the time is right for it, it's insane. Or perhaps sonic could have shields that nigh-cap everyone on the team, at the cost of lowering damage output; in this case you sacrifice killing ability for survival.
Or debuff an aspect of enemies while buffing other aspects. Hit them with a nasty damage debuff that's paired with a moderate tohit buff, so they hit easier, but for much less each time. Neuter their accuracy, but give them +dam so that when they do hit, they hit harder.
Of course, balancing this is a whole new ballgame, but it'd make things interesting, for sure. As it is now, it can be a bit tedious teaming; buff everyone, toss out debuffs, dish out damage, move on to next spawn, lather, rinse, repeat. There are very rare instances where tactics actually make a big difference. A team of friend who play together often can usually steamroll no matter what the builds, because everyone knows what to do and what's expected of them. Adding some risk in using buffs and debuffs means you have to think before you fight. Some enemies hit so hard that it may be better not to lower their accuracy if it means that they'll 1-2 shot the scrappers or even tanks/brutes.
I'd like to see a set balanced this way. I'm not suggesting that we go through and change everything around, but maybe give folks a new option that's not just more of the same old thing. More powerful at the risk of being weaker if played wrong.
Any thoughts about this?