You cannot use this power on yourself

And I still dont see why this is a problem, your still going to have piss poor damage as a defender/controller/corrupter so its kind of pointless if your hard to kill or your attacks recharge faster. It flatout needs to be changed to allow self buffing. It would put support ATs as well as melee on the same level for a change.

I think the powers team has better things to do than try to fix all the problems and rebalance all the powers that would be affected by the change. I just don't think its a technical limitation. Its more of a practical one.

By the way, my own favorite self-buff anomaly seems to be missing from the Empathy laundry list. Heal Other grants approximately a 25% heal with a base cycle time of 6.27 seconds, plus or minus based on combat level. In regeneration terms that's equivalent to over 900% regen, which is stronger than Instant Healing.

And you'd get it at level one (its endurance costs are also curiously close to Instant Healing's old costs when it was a toggle).

Of course, as ridiculous as empathy self buffers are, I think there are other interesting corner cases. Cold, for example, does not have status protection. But it does have frostwork. A cold defender could easily perma self buff to the health cap, which would be somewhat higher than brute health. That, plus the ability to soft cap (it would be easier for cold defenders than SR scrappers, and we know how easy it is for SR scrappers) and the fact that half of their defenses cannot be detoggled, makes for some interesting possibilities.

Frostwork kinda takes a lot of the sting out of the alpha strike vulnerability implicit in a low health archetype.

If you're hard to kill and have unlimited endurance, like a self buffing Empath would, the fact you're doing maybe only 2/3 of Blaster damage doesn't matter. You take 50% longer to defeat the enemies, but you're leaving with full end and health tanks. You'd have a point of it was say 1/4 of Blaster damage, but it isn't.

The recharge bonus does matter, because your AoEs and heavier attacks recharge faster.

I've done the sums on paper, and played a mutually buffing Empath/Energy duo to 40, and they were massively powerful. Its way too much power to give to a solo Defender.

Just a quick thought, and I haven't read all of the thread, so I apologize if this is off topic now, but I never really saw it as unbalanced that the Defender couldn't bubble himself. I mean, if it's unbalanced for him to have 39% Defense, how is it not unbalanced for the Scrapper to have 69.47% Defense (his own defenses plus the bubbles)?

I'd agree the total is a bit high for unslotted defenses (and clicks too, not toggles), if the Defender was to be made able to buff himself, the power of the bubbles would probably need to be adjusted a bit.

Self Absorb Pain! Weee!

And I could see Pain Dom Corrs hitting Share Pain on themselves to keep up the the +dmg bonus.

Depending on which order the effects come in when you use those two powers, you could end up just damaging yourself and negating the heal that comes afterwords when you use those powers.

I don't know enough about the engine to say. I don't have any idea whether we're talking massive and fundamental problems, or a few unintended effects that would need to be nerfed.

I can say that it's been no big deal in other games, but they have different engines. I would guess that in a hypothetical CoH 2, they'd probably fix it from day 1, though.

You still wouldnt be soloing anything like AVs or GMs regardless, thats my point and even if you could how is this any different than what scrappers do now with IOs. My point is the game is in a completely different place now than when this artificial limitation was put on the support ATs. Its time to remove these shackles, even if its done at half strength on various buffs. It would go a very long way in making this game compete with other MMOs. Think about it like this, it took the devs creating the VEATs to create a supporting AT that doesnt have damage penalty and gets great buffs/debuffs. That in itself was huge in them finally making dominator damage not suck anymore. So why cant this be applied to the other ATs?

This had occured to me as well, since I have spent alot of time looking at defender numbers lately. But I simply ignore it because I know getting all powers available for self-buffing is not going to happen. Its been 7 years, and if no one has come up with valid reasons why by now, its likely because it is overpowered.

Something should be done, just not to EACH and EVERY team-only buff in the game. There are just too many ways that the game will get broken by it.

Did you bother to read my earlier post? By my calculations, a Kin/Ice defender able to self-speedboost would have a single-target attack chain at least as good as a fire blaster's, a godmode active two minutes out of every four, and a nuke better than anything a solo blaster can manage ready every 85 seconds -- and all of it without endurance issues.

I know it's an article of faith around here that defenders have "piss poor damage", but that's only before you start self-buffing. I'd love to see the solo blaster who could manage that level of survival and damage.

The reason that its not that big of a deal in other games is the relative SIZE of buffs in other games, as well as the overall difficulty of individual enemy critters. I dont have numbers lying around for the last game I played, but the differences are in orders of magnitude like 10:1 what this game's buffs contribute by comparison.

CoH was my first MMO and when I played a few others I was like OMG, you can do good damage and self buff? Why do our devs make our characters suck? Outside of technical limitations it defies all logic for self buffing to not happen. Just think of all the characters in various comics that can help their allies with their abilites as well as themselves. By not allowing self buffing it goes against what this game is based on which is comics. Its crazy to be able to give your team awsome defense but yet you are the weakest link on the team if your a bubbler. You toggle up personal force field and your team suffers for it while you still cant attack. It makes no sense what so ever. I hope in CoH 2 they address this in some way.

Yeah I read that, and you know how much work that is to keep that maintained? Alot. Most folks including myself are too lazy to do all of that on a defender if you could. It be just easier to play the blaster.

Its really going to depend on the game. This one game I play (not going to mention the name other wise the ocho will lock the thread). I was shocked at how their range ATs do so well compared to our blasters. While the critters had range attacks the damage they did wasnt enough to put you in any serious danger. You could pretty much drop any of the standard mobs well before they got to you, and that AT got crowd control abilities. I was like why do every single mob in the game out ranges blasters unless you slot range in your attacks plus have boost range.

As for as buffs go my biggest gripe is the duration on ally buffs. There is no reason why the ally bubbles cant be 10 to 20 minutes long. This would give us something else to do with the endurance instead of worrying about attacking too much and not having the end to rebuff. Buffs in our game arent really significant unless its the defense buffs and even still with all the debuffing goin on those lose alot of their value. I still think we have room to allow self buffs at least at half strength. If not then change things up, like say let dispersion bubble give more defense than the ally bubbles so the defender/controller/corrupter/mastermind isnt practically butt booty naked.

In Spirit, I completely agree with you. The methods used for the initial AT balancing were "Odd" to me then, and still are to this day, but its way too late for them to "re-do" this. So CoH2 would be my hope for the future of this issue.

Here are a couple ideas that (hopefully) make it to the table when they start looking at this again;

Self-Buffing should be a given. There are plently of ways to balance support characters against other ATs without this limitation (Hit Points, Damage Scales, Vulnerabilities, Stacking Limitations, etc...). What this would mean is that the overall strength of buffs would be less, which has a by product of encouraging inclusion of all AT types rather than multiple buffer super-teams.

Debuffers should have their effects be "sticky" like Lingering Radiation and all the secondary effects of the game. Anchor Toggles are a horrible way to establish debuffs. Just like buffs, these debuffs should have lower levels of effects. Their current values are too strong for normal content, such that they had to implement the "purple patch". Not to mention the huge "disparity" in solo performance of the Defender powersets.

For both Buffs AND debuffs, if you begin the game launch with these effects set at the low-end of performance, the developers can always "tweak" upwards and the players will be happy as clams. If they start too high on the values and then have to "nerf" the effects, then of course lots of people will cry.

Not sure if you are including my last post with your reference Dr.Mike, but you did know that I was referring to the idea of making a completely NEW COH game, not what I feel they should (or should not) do in this game. I really feel that its too late to make any sweeping changes in how buffs and debuffs work in this game.

As far as wanting to play team-centric characters, I have nothing against that personally. For me the question has always been how fun that character is during all aspects of the game, because although I PREFER to team, there are times when you end up solo, so I enjoy the challenge of soloing as well.

Overpowered is only one reason not to do something. In this case, I don't think its even the most important reason. That's why comparing what a self-buffer could do to what some other thing could do hasn't been convincing to the devs for over six years. Its because its not really the critical issue.

That other superhero game that blithely discarded archetypal boundaries without fully appreciating the function they served - which was not the function they were originally designed to serve, by the way - proved unequivocally to me that my assertion that eliminating restrictions on options without providing an alternate way to distinguish options is at best a neutral option and at worst a poor one was absolutely correct. You'll make the game more attractive to some, but make it less attractive in the long term to at least as many people, if not significantly more. I consider it a settled principle.

Hmmm, very interesting take on the "Skills-versus-AT" debate Arcana.

My RL brothers and I have been playing PNP RPGs since 1980 and MMOs since 2000, and this whole debate has been one of our primary topics of interest for quite some time.

My assertions (within my circle of friends) have been that although this type of system would lend itself to "very gimped" arrangements because someone would attempt an "all-defensive" or "all-offensive" framework of skills and be "absurdly convinced" that such "builds" should be allowed to function, the core balance issues come down to two things;

1) No two powers are exactly equal, so there is a tremendous "weight" of responsibility for game balance on "point-buy" or "cascading-unlocks", and unless you literally spend years testing, there will somehow be "min-max" nightmares just waiting to be exploited. This has been the core reason for failure to me. No one has spent the proper amount of time and testing to make a "good" one yet. The Archetype-based system is "tried-and-true" and can get on the ground running much quicker.

2) No power should be completely useless in over 90% of the game. This means that the game focus being typically about combat should focus it's main system on those kinds of skills. Other skills, like crafting, gathering, or what not can be used/improved under a seperate system that does not reduce the available skills in the "Combat" categories.

There should always be "Standardized" frameworks available for people to use as newbies accompanied with warnings to those that try to create truely custom frameworks. I feel no sympathy for a person that has the opportunity to use a standard set-up which is a known quantity, but chooses to ignore warnings and make a "custom" character anyway.

Having said all that, the current "common-ground" amongst my gaming friends is that there is the opportunity for a "Hybrid" system in which you choose an AT affinity (Such as Tank, Support, Control, or Assault) and then within this affinity you could create a cascading set up of skills/powers/talents etc... which allows for a much greater flexibility WITHIN each AT/Affinity, but would feel less restricted like the current standards of approach to Classes/Archetypes. Oddly enough, City of Heroes (to my knowledge) has come the closest to being this type of system. They would not have to move very far in order to achieve the kind of Hybrid set-up that I envision.

Did that make any sense ?

P.S.: Another MMO out there (which I played for 3 years) had tremendous potential to explore this idea of AT-Hybrid-ization with its Talent trees for each Class. In the begining, it seemed that this was an affirmation of what I had been seeking in these games. But over time, as the end-game matured and took on it's own life, my "hybrid-centered" voice was drowned out by all the "Role-focused" voices to the point that the game became just like every other AT-centered realm. You COULD make 3 different flavored Paladins, but other aspects of the game "forced" you into following the "status-quo" of what your "role" was meant to be. This is what I call "inflexibility", and not what I was hoping for from the system. They even removed "gear" options from the game with the "reasons" that these options are not generally utilized and are "cluttering" up the market. This a great example of a catch 22. The Status Quo says that these are not "typical" so we shall remove them as choices. So, in essence, you no longer HAVE a choice.

Yeah I was referring to your post, Biospark, mainly because it was the last one I read.
I find enemy toggles downright wierd, but they do seem to work, so I guess I'd include them in the ammo for a CoX 2. (If it were up to me, it would have a power construction framework, eg you could choose the same power effects as a click, toggle, single target buff or debuff etc for different costs modifiers on the buff/debuff. Kind of like Champs PnP or Freedom Force, bit I digress...)

As to your other point, any character you pick is going to have their strong and weak points. eg a Stone Tank is a team centric character - if they solo they probably have a hard time challenging their massive defences. True for any Tanker really, solo they're going to be a low damage Scrapper with more defences than they need. Stances/Dual Builds help a bit, but I guess at character creation you're picking your character's strengths and weaknesses. Like you're setting sliders on Offence/Defence, Solo/Team, Ranged/Melee, Control/Damage etc and other axes of "build-space"

I like where CoX is now in that way in terms of inter-AT balance. Its pretty hard to make a truly unsoloable character (you have to resort to power choices and slotting, not just powersets), but even a team-centric Defender can solo on the lower difficulty levels at a reasonable speed if they're well built.

I completely agree. AT balance is so much better today than it was at launch.
And within each AT they have made very good "targeted" changes to improve playability of each powerset. For the most part, nothing has been done to completely make me "seek greener pastures", so as long as we don't see another ED or GDN, this game is a very balanced example of SOLO-to-TEAM parity.

If anything that I state on the forums appears to contradict this statement, it is only because I feel that no game is ever "perfect" or "finished". There are always ways to improve without "de-constructing", and I personally enjoy that type of discussion.

Well, at least until the "trolls" crawl out from under the bridge.

We got a long way before inter-AT balance is even remotely where it needs to be. Some sets its blatantly obvious where they still need fixing. For instance if you take masterminds, the ninja powerset is the most squishiest pet. In theory they are supposed to have the highest melee damage. Alot of good that will do if the pets die way before they get to do that melee damage. I find it odd that they get paper thin defense but yet stuff like thugs and bots who are range are way more durable. You pretty much have to pick an extremely active secondary to make ninjas work for you. If you look at defenders trick arrow still lags behind many years after the fact. All because of the fear of controllers having another hold in the set. Seriously who gives a crap about that when the set has no real way of keeping you alive till the damage you need to do is done.

I wont say that inter-AT balance isnt getting better. They have done wonders to the martial arts powerset and dark melee, sets that I said I would never play again till they were changed. I think for all of the rest of the sets to see a change the devs are going to have to step out of their little dev world and see the game as players do. A good example of how out of touch the devs are is with stalkers. On the beta boards I asked Castle to repost his response in the stalker forums. The response is that stalkers problem on teams is the shared aggro issue, but from a player perspective that could be the least of our issues on teams. We all wanted a better way to contribute on teams be it more damage or utility in some way. If they saw the game as to how things actually worked instead of how things are supposed to work we would be so much better off right now with balance in general.

Lastly I wanted to make a comment on the soloing thing. There are just some sets where soloing just isnt a viable option. It doesnt make sense to do it at all because its faster watching the grass grow. Whenever you get a combination where its faster to watch grass grow or paint dry then its a non-soloable set in my eyes.

I understand what you're saying, but that's not the point I was getting at.

In City of Heroes, some build choices have strict unavoidable consequences. No such choice has more unavoidable consequences than your choice of archetype. If you choose to be a blaster, you've made a serious decision about the level of personal defense you will be able to buy. If you choose to be a scrapper, you've placed fairly tight limits on the amount of effective ranged offense you'll likely be able to possess. Your level of control will be limited unless you choose to be a controller or dominator, say. The *reason* those choices are meaningful is that they have *limits*. You can't just have whatever you want.

When you remove those limits and attempt to laudably give players almost unlimited discretion to choose any power and any ability, you have the strong potential to destroy the meaning of some choices. Which means ironically, by trying to eliminate the restrictions on choices, you can eliminate many of the actual options to choose from. For example, in CoH there is a distinct and obvious choice between becoming a blaster and becoming a scrapper. In that other game, there is no such thing as a blaster *or* a scrapper. You might say that there is: you can pick ranged attacks and no defense, or all melee attacks and a defensive passive. But that's missing the point. The game doesn't present that as an either-or option. It actually allows people to make ranged scrappers. To make a CoH blaster or scrapper, you actually have to deliberately self-nerf the prototypical ranged scrapper that that game presents to players.

In effect, CoX has fourteen archetypes (or sixteen, depending on how you count) and that other game has one. *IF* that one had a number of different local maxima of effectiveness then that one archetype could conceivably simulate a wider number of archetypal choices but without CoX's power choice limits - the best of both worlds. But although I'm simplifying greatly, it doesn't.

If that doesn't make sense, this should illustrate the point. Suppose I were to add a new archetype to the game, called ranged scrappers. This archetype was exactly identical to scrappers, except on top of all the melee primaries this archetype could also pick powers from the blaster primaries. In all other respects, the archetype was identical to scrappers. Question: have I added an additional archetype choice to the game? In the literal sense, I have: hero side now has six standard archetypes instead of five. But in a real sense, I haven't: I've replaced scrappers with this new archetype. Scrappers are no longer a legitimate choice, because they are a subset of the new archetype. The new archetype makes the old scrapper archetype completely redundant. Scrappers offer nothing the new archetype doesn't, while the new archetype offers everything Scrappers do, and more. So even if the Scrapper archetype still exists, in a real sense from a game design perspective, they don't any more. They are a design vestige.

Analogously, by eliminating archetypes without carefully engineering a different means of generating local maxima of choice, that other game eliminated fourteen choices and replaced them with one. For people who want that one choice to have the maximum number of options, that would be attractive. For people who want many different such initial choices, that would be highly unattractive. The notion expressed often on these very forums was that this was a ridiculous notion: that the former would be the far more common reaction than the latter. They were wrong.

Sorry about that. I simply chose to elaborate on the second part of your response.
But I do agree that there is more to consider than power balance when it comes to the "self-buffing" changes being suggested. Some of them have been brought out in this discussion too; like powerset "theme".

Absolutely. This is the core strength (to me) of an Archetype system. Having limits to characters overall power can preserve the most important aspect of any RPG, which is "enjoyment". Is it truely fun to have a "walking diety" of a character that stomps everything in their path and earns every reward with little effort ? Some would say that is fun, but the vast majority of players would play that game for a very short time and move on to other games with greater personal challenge.

I understand your point here, but no matter what arbitrary AT restrictions are in place, someone is going to have their concept character (not meant to be overpowered, just playable) removed from the "choice" list. For example, in this game I want a Melee Defender. My choice(currently) would be to take an assortment of pool/vet attacks and "cobble" together an attack chain which will have completely "sub-par" performance. So from a min-max perspective, I don't really have the ability to create that concept with even a "minimum" level of performance. From a "stylistic" standpoint, I cannot create the concept at all if my vision were a "Healing Monk".

Very good Illustration of your point.

I agree with you on this point. However, I will again submit that the attempt to do this has yet to be done "well". When you make the decision to "toss away" archetypes, you must consider how this effects "team role" and solve this issue from the begining. You must also solve every balance concern down to the lowest fraction of choices. That amount of testing has not been done on any game(that I know of). Every "skills" system that has ever worked depends very heavily on the GM to manage the game and ensure that whatever "un-balanced" choices that players come up with (and they will !) is dealt with, perhaps even "ruled out" on future campaigns.

Skills versus ATs is like talking about Communism and Democracy where you imagine a line between the two and place each at the opposite endpoints. No system would truely be considered at the actual endpoint. They would all lie somewhere on the line between the two endpoints.
If you "evolved" AT systems to allow more "flexibility" of concept, you would keep adding more ATs until there were no major distinction between some ATs (only minor ones) and on a "Skill-based" system you would keep adding "skill trees" and "cascades" to eventually "morph" the whole system into one "giant" AT with different paths down the skill trees. Each "pathway" could be considered an AT at that point.