Tweets of the PAX Panel

You might notice I didn't make any claim about its frequency. I stated what it would do to my play experience.

PuGs are PuGs are PuGs. The powers and builds that allow people to softcap their teams are common and readily accessible, but people still run around looking for "healers". I think the notion that some vast greater percentage of teams will be running around like demi-gods because of it is silly, because if it were going to happen, it already would happen a lot more today at later levels. "Typical" players tend to shun most conditional powers, even ones as good as Vengeance. Will more people pick up Vengeance? Yes, almost certainly. Might that have a network effect and raise the percentage of users even higher? Probably. Is it going to be a game-balance changing transition? I seriously doubt it.

The defense is the vastly more helpful and content-rolling aspect of the power. Everything else it does is nice, but I find it of distant secondary benefit most of the time. Yes, sometimes the +toHit comes in real handy. Having high mez resistance is handy, but usually being nearly unhittable covers that, too. The damage buff is pretty nice, but comparable with a lot of other team buffs that may well already be present (which reduces the final % increase in team DPS it provides, like any damage buff). I don't ever remember the heal being a pivotal event.

There are only two pieces of content I regularly see Vengeance used for where I think it makes a big different almost without question: the STF and the RSF last mission AV/Hero fights. Even in those situations, it's usually but not always primarily being used to buff summoned pets such as Shivans, who benefit far more from the +toHit and +damage aspects of the power than most player character builds, having no accuracy slotting and no damage slotting as players do. I can tell you though that with the advent of Villain epic ATs, the number of RSFs I went on that didn't use Vengeance at all went up noticeably.

I'm really not seeing that. I mean, yeah, OK, it's clearly technically possible, but ... I am really struggling to see it as something we can point to and say it's a big deal.

While I agree that this example is mechanically valid, again, it seems like you're reaching here. I just haven't seen situations like that come up that much.

I'll agree completely that if you've got a sterotypical PuG team in the 20+ range, with fairly mundane, non-Set IO builds, low to moderate experience with the game, and no one providing large-scale defense buffs, adding Vengeance to the team can make a tremendous difference. I just don't think there's going to be such an increase in the number of people using it, that these teams see a measurable uplift in performance. Time will tell.

I gave parlance examples of how the term is typically used to imply something negative. For example, saying "times are tight" is practically never used to imply good things. Ignoring how words are used is dumb. I will agree that the actual mechanical outcome we're talking about in the game is hardly a bad thing.

Originally Posted by EvilRyu Whether its powers costing more endurance or the implimentation [sic] of more critters who end drain but at lower levels. Think about fighting that crazy electric chick boss that shows up in the tip missions but at like level 5. No one would be able to beat that even with stamina.

Originally Posted by EvilRyu If Castle can promise us that there is not going to be some penalty for it in some way (more expensive power costs or more end drain critters), then I can get behind the idea of this.