Inherent Fitness

Well, I'm back after another hiatus, and I return to find that the Fitness pool is going to be made inherent.

Now, I'm sure my usual detractors will think me delighted with this, but I'm afraid I'm not. I'll explain why.

As I've said elsewhere, Endurance management is far too onerous. It undermines the enjoyment of the game. It's most noticeable at lower level, prior to Stamina, but it doesn't exist ONLY there. Part of the reason for this is that the ATs and Power Sets are not balanced for endurance use. As an example, consider the Defender and Blaster power sets for Energy Blast. The Defender version does less damage, but uses the same endurance. Certain ATs suffer more than others for this (eg. Tankers and Defenders).

However, their method of dealing with the problem is far from ideal.

First, it does nothing for characters that have Stamina anyway. That is, higher level characters that suffer endurance issues despite Stamina will see no difference in their play.

Second, it does nothing to address the disparity between ATs and Power Sets.

Third, it forces Hurdle and Swift on people. Since these are Autopowers, we can't turn them off, even if they're inappropriate to our character concepts.

All this does is help lower level characters with endurance issues. As I say, it's a laudable goal, but it's not the right way to go about it. What they should have done, and it would be a half measure as well, in my estimation, is simply raise the global recovery rate. That is, EVERYONE would recover endurance faster. Those with Stamina at L20 would recover it EVEN FASTER than that, perhaps to the point of not needing to worry about endurance unless faced with sappers or very long fights.

It hasn't gone live yet, but I hope they'll reconsider this.

It hasn't gone live yet, but I for one cannot hardly wait. I have several Alts just hanging around doing nothing so they can play through the low levels with this change and see how it goes.

The change does not address any disparities that may exist between ATs and Powersets, but I am not sure that was the purpose for the change.

The biggest thing that this change DOES in my personal opinion is change DRAMATICALLY which powers you will pick and at what levels you get them. Currently, at level 20, you will have 12 powers, and will have access to 7 of your primary and 6 of your secondary powersets. If you are like me, 5 of those 12 powers will be consumed by Fitness(3 powers) and Travel (2 Powers), leaving ONLY SEVEN powers to pick and choose from 13 available primary/secondary choices. That means just over 50% of your main-course choices can be on your power tray and the rest have to wait till your 20's or 30's. With this change, you could have 10 of those 13 available powers (just over 75%). Not to mention many, many other subtleties that this makes possible. For instance, Scrappers who want Tough. Think about it for a minute.

So, Inherent Fitness at level 2 = 1 more power pool to choose from,
Slotted Stamina at level 3 = soloing lower levels just got much easier,
3 more Powers on my Tray at level 20 = PRICELESS !

I agree, it does do some good things. Having three more power slots, especially at lower level, will be nice. Actually having Stamina at lower level will be nice. It just doesn't fix what I see as the actual problem, and it creates some new ones (albeit rather minor ones...).

There have been several threads on Fitness since it was announced, and one idea of mine was to drop a power at the top end and move up the ancillary/patron level minimums similar to the following;

Tier 8 Secondary power at level 34
Tier 9 Secondary power at level 36
Tier 1 Ancillary/Patron at level 38
Tier 2 Ancillary/Patron at level 41
Tier 3 Ancillary/Patron at level 44
Final Power choice at level 47

At levels 48, 49, 50 you would get 3 slots each level.
Then add 1 more slot to levels 3, 11, and 21

Currently we get 24 powers, 67 slots
This would become 24 powers, 70 slots

I chose levels 3, 11 and 21 carefully, based on when characters get enhancements and when those enhancements naturally "kick-in". At level 2 you have 3 powers, so at level three you can put an extra slot on each power. Its minor, but it feeds well into later improvements. At level 11 you are on the verge of DOs. So being able to plan ahead for them and throw some extra slots into the build will smoothly increase the character.
And of course level 21 is the "cusp" of SO-level enhancements.

One of the biggest complaints with this change is that we are getting 3 more powers but "zero" more enhancements for the added powers, unless we scrape them off Health and Stamina. I agree with the sentiment, but with Incarnates right around the corner, I think that everyone will soon find that they could afford to move slots around from other powers. For example, Biospark is "Heavily" recharge focused. When I have an "Alpha" slot available and can sink a "global recharge" into it, this could very well free up 1 slot in each of the following powers: Hasten, Regen Aura, Healing Aura, Heal Other, Adrenaline Boost, Fortitude, Recovery Aura. Thats a potential of 7 new slots that can slide around to other powers. In reality, I will be surprised if I get 7 slots to "re-assign", but 3 more slots is VERY reasonable to expect.

I'm not sure why you think it's unbalanced that Defenders deal less damage for the same Endurance than Blasters or Corruptors. DPE (damage per endurance) is what matters early on in the game because most builds will run out of endurance eventually. Usually quite soon. This balances high damage ATs with low damage ATs early on, because this way high damage ATs get to deal more damage when the constraint is endurance rather than time.

In the end-game when you can build characters to be more sustainable even with SOs only due to the higher number of slots and possibly available utility powers, DPS is what matters. Again, high damage ATs get to deal more damage than low damage ATs.

Balanced as I see it.

One thing about Inherent Stamina that I rarely see mentioned is that you're not only getting three power picks freed up, but that you're getting your level 20 power freed up.

Most secondaries have a very good power become available at level 20. Before i19, players are forced to choose between that power and Stamina. If you exemplar a lot, that's a significant choice. Does your /kin controller want Stamina or Speed Boost for Posi runs? Does the /SR scrapper want Stamina or Quick Reflexes? Now, you can have both!

If you don't like the lower damage ATs, just dont roll them.

All the ATs have the same DMG/RCH/END formula (roughly) and what makes the difference is the Damage Mod.

So yes, higher damage mod means better DPE...untill...you know...later levels, when some of those low damage ATs are putting out more damage than the higher damage ATs.

I guess I was wrong when I said: oh, free stamina? nobody can hate that! guess you can't please everybody.

I'm not sure what the problem is..

1. Lowbies get free recovery, faster regeneration (which some actually needed for less down time) and faster traveling, once more very useful for less downtime as a lowbie.

2. 3 more powerslots for those of us who already took stamina. There is no negative here. can't think of 3 powers that would help your build? Whining that you can't slot those powers? Why did you make a build that required those 3 powers to be slotted in the first place?

3. Swift and Hurlde have no impact on concept. Considering everybody already runs faster than a car and can jump, like, 7 feet, I doubt this will ruin any of your character's concepts.. unless they are slow and boring or something.

4. I agree with the idea that there was a simpler way to do this. I was thinking of simply reduing every single power's endurance use by exactly 30% but I understand that would take awhile. We also wouldn't get the other lovely bonuses that come with free fitness.

For us who will have to respec characters to make fitness inheritent, I'm not sure what all the fuss is considering these 3 powers not having slots. Some powers don't need slots, heck, some powersets have too many slots to go around! (I'm looking at you Forcefield... and Dark Miasma).

Not all powers can naturally be 6 slotted so mabye people just need to get out of this mind set that 'if a power isn't 6 slotted, it isn't worth taking' or something similar. We already take many powers that don't need more than 3,4 some are 1-slot wonders. These include powers such as Combat Jumping, Vengeance, Teleport Friend, Teleport Foe, and other powers. So, I'm not what the problem is here.

Lets also not forget IO Sets which can easily fill in the gaps left behind by not having 6 slots in powers. Most IO sets have better percentages with only 5 IOs becuase usually the 6th one is a proc or something similar. So, in a way, this encourages IOing out your character. I soubt this came up on the drawing board for I19 but the option is definantly there.

If you honestly can't think of what to put in those three slots go for Aid Other, Aid Self and Resuscitate. Already got them? Pick up Teleport Ally, Stealth and Grant invisibility. Already got Super Speed (so no stealth), then pick up Combat Jumping.

The list goes on. There are plenty of powers to choose from so theres honestly no reason to complain about this shear buff to every character.

Higher level character who suffer from endurance issues have a lot of options to solve this problem already.

They have plenty of slots. They can slot for end reduction over recharge, say. Do you want to be able to go all out for brief periods of time, or keep going at a steady slower pace? Choice is yours if your attacks are 6 slotted. Thats just with SOs.

They can get the best of both worlds with IOs. They can also build up global recharge. eg Thunderstrike in a Blast set = 2% Recovery global AND 60% End redux in the power.

Lots of Epic pools have extra end management tools. Everyone can get some endurance help with the right epic, either a Consume clone, or Conserve Power, Physical Perfection or Hibernation. (OK, everyone except khelds...)

The inherent Fitness change is to take the edge of the lower levels when you don't have all these choices, and partly aimed at new players too.

If a high level character is having end issues you already have all these avenues with which to solve the problem. I'd rather have build options than just a blanket raise for everyone.

I absolutely love the change, and I've been hoping for inherent Fitness for roughly 5 years now. I really like that I'll have access to another 3 powers, but the biggest problem I'm facing is a lack of slots. Even now with my current build I am hurting for slots So even with those three new powers, there is not much I can actually DO with them as I would need to take slots from other powers.