City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Obsoleted by Incarnate powers

Amerikatt

By Amerikatt,
Posted on: 2011-04-08 09:09 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wanted_NA View Post
What I'm worried about isn't those powers making ATs or powersets obsolete. But all this incarnate stuff is making the entire game obsolete. The game was TOO easy as is, and now with all this...it's just child's play. No challenge, not much fun in doing the content when every toon on the team is an artillery tank.
The cool down on the Incarnate nukes are reasonable for now, but if a second nuke is introduced in the future, as an example, then you can stagger the two Incarnate nukes between each spawn, which then would make other powers obsolete for sure.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by RemusShepherd View Post
I didn't think my original post was *that* long.

Okay for you tl;dr people, listen up --

It's not whether your incarnate powers help your character. It's whether you are made obsolete by the powers on the rest of your team. All ATs can now buff, rez, and nuke. Is that healthy for the game?
only if they do it as well, a few buffs arent going to nullify the force mutliplier effects of a defender, nor are judgment shots going to remove blasters. people generally didnt recruit buffers on the premise that they would be there to rez, they looked for the ability to contribute multiple buffs, i dont think that will change, a def or well slotted troller will still be in demand, just like a nasty blaster will for sustained artillery.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by RemusShepherd View Post
IIt's whether you are made obsolete by the powers on the rest of your team. All ATs can now buff, rez, and nuke. Is that healthy for the game?
I'm not much of a min-maxer, and I tend not to play the very most powerful powerset combinations. I was already redundant on most teams long before incarnate abilities. For instance, the other evening, I was playing a plant/thorns dominator while teamed with an electric/stone dominator. Both were perma-doms; the plant guy was one of my rare min-maxed, performance-built characters. Even so, the other dominator did everything I could do, only better. Similarly, I can't count the number of times I've been playing scrappers and blasters who never get to fight anything other than AV's because teammates have always wiped out the rest of the foes with higher-damage, more effective powers before I even get there.

There are many, many things that irritate me or worry me about the endgame system, but being made irrelevant isn't one of them. I crossed, or maybe it's better to say "burned," that bridge a long time ago.

"Bombarding the CoH/V fora with verbosity since January, 2006"

Djinniman, level 50 inv/fire tanker, on Victory
-and 40 others on various servers

A CoH Comic: Kid Eros in "One Light"

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by RemusShepherd View Post
I agree with almost everything you wrote, because you carefully avoided the problem cases. For example you didn't mention rezzes -- the Barrier power *is* superior to an empath's rez.

But what you wrote above is the one thing I can disagree with strongly. A single incarnate with the huge Destiny buff *can* cover the team as well as a forcefielder and with much less effort. The buff is *that* huge. Consider -- a well-slotted FF shield gives about +40% defense for 4 minutes. The Destiny buff gives +30% defense for 1 minute out of every 2, or about 50% of the time, *in addition to* +30% resistance and a brief period of +90% to both that's easily timed for the start of a fight. And it's *one click*. Do you know how hard a FFer needs to work to keep his team buffed? On its own the Destiny buff almost obsoletes the entire FF powerset.

When you consider that every AT can get the Destiny buff, and you will be playing on Leagues of 16+ people... The FF powerset is now a fossil. It serves no purpose in the high-level game.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall destiny had a rapid decline in power so that they have a high peak that rapidly weakens into a valley. All support characters' shields are at 100% as long as they are activated.

For the incarnate content, the big +damage, +tohit buffs enemies get mean that the only thing better than destiny is a shielder layering even more +defense/+resistance to counter enemies. 'Extraneous' defense even counters cascading failure by -defense attacks.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by RemusShepherd View Post
I agree with almost everything you wrote, because you carefully avoided the problem cases. For example you didn't mention rezzes -- the Barrier power *is* superior to an empath's rez.

But what you wrote above is the one thing I can disagree with strongly. A single incarnate with the huge Destiny buff *can* cover the team as well as a forcefielder and with much less effort. The buff is *that* huge. Consider -- a well-slotted FF shield gives about +40% defense for 4 minutes. The Destiny buff gives +30% defense for 1 minute out of every 2, or about 50% of the time, *in addition to* +30% resistance and a brief period of +90% to both that's easily timed for the start of a fight. And it's *one click*. Do you know how hard a FFer needs to work to keep his team buffed? On its own the Destiny buff almost obsoletes the entire FF powerset.

When you consider that every AT can get the Destiny buff, and you will be playing on Leagues of 16+ people... The FF powerset is now a fossil. It serves no purpose in the high-level game. The only thing keeping Sonic Resonance relevant is its debuffs.
*ahem* +47% defense buff, thank you very much. Not that hard to do either. Needs Maneuvers and the Nerve Alpha tree, but that should be standard issue for a FF Defender, really.

Also the difference between 30% defense and 47% is huge, especially on the trials as the enemies have ToHit buffs. They cut through a softcapped character like the defense wasn't even there. Is Barrier good? Yeah, it looks awesome. Am I getting it on my Forcefielder? Of course, I'm letting no one be better at Defense Buff than her. Before, Rose was near the pinnacle of teamwide defense buffs, when I get Barrier on her, she'll be the ultimate defense buffer in the entire game. Which is exactly what I want for her. Triple digit defense buffs, here we come! Just need to figure out if I want the side with the rez or the long lasting side...

Of course, she's getting the ToHit/Regen debuff Interface, too. Because no NPC is going to get an easy shot if she can help it.

In short, to me it's not obsolescence; it's making a big strength even stronger. If other people in the League has Barrier? Great! I get to be decently buffed, too! It's the fun irony of being a Forcefielder, after all. Everyone is nigh untouchable, except you.

Aegis Rose, Forcefield/Energy Defender - Freedom
"Bubble up for safety!"

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by SteelClaw
I don't currently have a 50 so I'm unsure of the answer but.... Don't you lose all your Incarnate abilities if you exemplar down below 45th level? If that's the case then respeccing out of so-called "obsolete" powers would leave you completely without them should you team with lower level characters.
I don't play lower level content with my 50s, except for one or two WSTs. But even if I did -- is it worth taking a power (buff, nuke, rez) if it's only relevent when exemped down?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gemini_2099
Yeah there isn't anything Incarnate wise that impedes on the Sonic Resonance...yet.
There's an Interface slot ability that debuffs resistance *and* applies a fire DOT. But the numbers seem small enough that Sonic Resonance is still superior. For now.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gemini_2099 View Post
The cool down on the Incarnate nukes are reasonable for now, but if a second nuke is introduced in the future, as an example, then you can stagger the two Incarnate nukes between each spawn, which then would make other powers obsolete for sure.
You don't need a second nuke per character. Let's say three simultaneous Judgement nukes can clear a spawn. (It will almost certainly clear the minions and Lts.) A well-coordinated League can have their players work in teams of three, each nuking in unison. With a 24-person League, that's 8 spawns cleared every 2 minutes, or 15 seconds per mob spawn. That's an impressive clear rate for normal play. It becomes ridiculous when you realize that performance is reached without using ANY other powers. It's '3-2-1, hit a button, move to the next spawn and repeat'.

A coordinated Judgement League can turn CoX into a one-button game. Are you feeling obsolete yet?

...
New Webcomic -- Genocide Man
Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass slaughter can be hilarious.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Seldom View Post
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall destiny had a rapid decline in power so that they have a high peak that rapidly weakens into a valley.
I was watching some Destiny buffs on my characters last night. It appeared to be something like this:

+90% for 10 seconds
+30% for 50 seconds
+5% for 30 seconds
then 30 seconds downtime.

Of course I had distractions, and there's a question of how often my client displays the numbers. It could be changing and I'm not seeing it, or I could have missed a fourth stage in there. But that gives a rough idea of the power of the buff.

Quote:
For the incarnate content, the big +damage, +tohit buffs enemies get mean that the only thing better than destiny is a shielder layering even more +defense/+resistance to counter enemies. 'Extraneous' defense even counters cascading failure by -defense attacks.
Even with the new, more accurate enemies, the defense soft-cap is around 80% defense. If you're soft-capped to the old content, one Destiny buff will soft-cap you to the new content for 1 minute out of every 2.

The resistance hardcap is 75% for squishies, so you'll need about 2 Destiny buffs to get there. For tanks it's 90% but most of them will already have high numbers.

The FF shielder is obsolete. Would you rather have one teammate give you +47% defense, or seven teammates give you a stackable +30% resistance and defense, each of them half of the time?

...
New Webcomic -- Genocide Man
Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass slaughter can be hilarious.

 

Posted

Hmm. Wonder how long it'll be before "just bum rush him" is an effective solution to Tower-Buffed LR in the STF...


Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

 

Posted

Honestly, i'm not seeing the big deal about Judgement *In trial situations*

Even with three players firing off judgements we're barely denting The AC9's in the BAF, for instance.

"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arilou View Post
Honestly, i'm not seeing the big deal about Judgement *In trial situations*

Even with three players firing off judgements we're barely denting The AC9's in the BAF, for instance.
They'll make more of a difference once people get the other level shifts. Also, the Judgement nukes aren't effected by damage buffs, but you can do more damage with them from resistance debuffs.

I love it on my Fire/Rad for that reason, drop EF before I use it.

[U][URL="http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=251594"][/URL][/U]

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by RemusShepherd View Post
A well-coordinated League can have their players work in teams of three, each nuking in unison. With a 24-person League, that's 8 spawns cleared every 2 minutes, or 15 seconds per mob spawn. That's an impressive clear rate for normal play. It becomes ridiculous when you realize that performance is reached without using ANY other powers. It's '3-2-1, hit a button, move to the next spawn and repeat'.

A coordinated Judgement League can turn CoX into a one-button game. Are you feeling obsolete yet?
This is so far from how I play the game that I have zero worries about my feeling obsolete.

However, it turned out that Smith was not a time-travelling Terminator

 

Posted

But take those 3 judgment characters and run through the ITF with them.
That's the Op's concern.

Also for the 9CU's I believe the higher judgment tiers do significantly more damage than the earlier tiers.

So while Tier 1 won't dent the 9CU's Tier 3 wipes em out completely.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by RemusShepherd View Post
I was watching some Destiny buffs on my characters last night. It appeared to be something like this:

+90% for 10 seconds
+30% for 50 seconds
+5% for 30 seconds
then 30 seconds downtime.

Of course I had distractions, and there's a question of how often my client displays the numbers. It could be changing and I'm not seeing it, or I could have missed a fourth stage in there. But that gives a rough idea of the power of the buff.

Even with the new, more accurate enemies, the defense soft-cap is around 80% defense. If you're soft-capped to the old content, one Destiny buff will soft-cap you to the new content for 1 minute out of every 2.

The resistance hardcap is 75% for squishies, so you'll need about 2 Destiny buffs to get there. For tanks it's 90% but most of them will already have high numbers.

The FF shielder is obsolete. Would you rather have one teammate give you +47% defense, or seven teammates give you a stackable +30% resistance and defense, each of them half of the time?
You're assuming that everyone takes Barrier. I'm seeing a lot more Clarions and Rebirths around than Barriers.

FF Defenders aren't obsolete, you said it yourself. I'd be happy to admit that seven Incarnate teammates can do one Forcefielder's job. Because that means that one Forcefielder is enough to let seven teammates focus on their own strengths. Let's the specialists do what they do best. Besides, when everyone else is offering 30% buff, I'm offering 77%. (Not counting the 137% spike at the beginning.) That's near softcap for trials from a standing start for half to three quarters of the time. On my own. You can call that obsolete if you want, but we'll just have to wait and see. I'm thinking that a burst of triple digit defense will be quite useful in some fights. Like Marauder and his Nova Fist.

Forcefields will still be able to do what it's always done: Make teams a lot safer. Although I hope we get a "Defend the object!" trial soon. I'd love a 24 person Terra Volta style trial as that's where Forcefields shine the most. That and the final battle on the STF. I'll let you figure that one out on your own. Hint: It's a "useless" power that no one should take, and it can temporarily shut down a tower in one hit.

Aegis Rose, Forcefield/Energy Defender - Freedom
"Bubble up for safety!"

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by DMystic View Post
But take those 3 judgment characters and run through the ITF with them.
That's the Op's concern.

Also for the 9CU's I believe the higher judgment tiers do significantly more damage than the earlier tiers.

So while Tier 1 won't dent the 9CU's Tier 3 wipes em out completely.
And that's as much of a concern as me street-sweeping greys in Atlas.

"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by McNum View Post
Hint: It's a "useless" power that no one should take, and it can temporarily shut down a tower in one hit.
I respecced my Elec/FF troller into detention field when we got inherent stamina and I have to say it's a lot more useful than I thought it would be. Besides the "OMG overwhemled, take one boss out of the mix" situations, I find myself using it on summoned pets all the time, especially the ones that despawn anyway when you kill the summoner. Things like Carnie Dark Servants, Animated Stones, or buffers like DE Quartzs and Cairns...

It also came in handy on the alpha unlock mission when you get 2 AVs at once... Just kept Captain whosherface in a bubble while we beat down Hero1.

That or "saving" a Nemesis lt. from my aoe-happy team before he buffs the fakes and warhulks to even more godlike levels

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by RemusShepherd View Post
I didn't think my original post was *that* long.

Okay for you tl;dr people, listen up --

It's not whether your incarnate powers help your character. It's whether you are made obsolete by the powers on the rest of your team. All ATs can now buff, rez, and nuke. Is that healthy for the game?
This was my point in my other two posts in that "other" thread. I don't want to feel like I've been obsoleted. I don't play my tank because she dies an inconceivably large amount of times, and half the time the rest of the team isn't even affected as badly as I am.

-------
Hew in drag baby

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by MTS View Post
I respecced my Elec/FF troller into detention field when we got inherent stamina and I have to say it's a lot more useful than I thought it would be. Besides the "OMG overwhemled, take one boss out of the mix" situations, I find myself using it on summoned pets all the time, especially the ones that despawn anyway when you kill the summoner. Things like Carnie Dark Servants, Animated Stones, or buffers like DE Quartzs and Cairns...

It also came in handy on the alpha unlock mission when you get 2 AVs at once... Just kept Captain whosherface in a bubble while we beat down Hero1.

That or "saving" a Nemesis lt. from my aoe-happy team before he buffs the fakes and warhulks to even more godlike levels
Yeah, it's an unappreciated gem, really. It's not an every fight power, but it has its uses. I also hope we get a trial where caging an opponent offers an advantage. Can't see a suitable candidate on any of the current trials, though as it doesn't work that well on AVs, as far as I can tell.

Aegis Rose, Forcefield/Energy Defender - Freedom
"Bubble up for safety!"

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by DMystic View Post
But take those 3 judgment characters and run through the ITF with them.
That's the Op's concern.

Also for the 9CU's I believe the higher judgment tiers do significantly more damage than the earlier tiers.

So while Tier 1 won't dent the 9CU's Tier 3 wipes em out completely.
Higher judgement tiers DO NOT do more damage. They just get more/better side affects, better range, more targets, etc. All secondary effects.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptSammy View Post
Higher judgement tiers DO NOT do more damage. They just get more/better side affects, better range, more targets, etc. All secondary effects.
The tier 3 and 4 judgement powers say in the description that they do more damage than tier 1.

So yeah, the higher tiers DO do more damage.

Uber Talgrim - level 50 emp/dark defender
Uber Rod - level 50 dark melee/regen scrapper
Rod Valdr - level 50 invuln/SS tanker
Talgrim - level 50 ninja/dark mastermind

OMG!! Please add these costume designs now!

 

Posted

Guess I was wrong on Judgment Tiers increasing damage thanks for that info.

Although one path in Void has a chance to do more damage against certain enemy ranks. the very Rare is a chance to do more damage against all Targets.

Of course that depends on how often that chance occurs, so it may be more like the Inferno power.

 

Posted

I do suspect there'll be some kind of nerf coming (most probably in the cooldown department for Judgement and Destiny)

"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by RemusShepherd View Post
I didn't think my original post was *that* long.

Okay for you tl;dr people, listen up --

It's not whether your incarnate powers help your character. It's whether you are made obsolete by the powers on the rest of your team. All ATs can now buff, rez, and nuke. Is that healthy for the game?
I feel the need to also point out that you're assuming everyone takes barrier. I might take it on a scrapper, but for my trollers/blasters, I plan on taking Clarion. Other characters will be taking Ageless (the ones that need moar recharge, anyhow). A sometimes up defense/resist buff would be nice on certain AV fights, but I see it as largely unnecessary in the grand scheme of things.

As to every person having a nuke...like others have said...it's not that great. Very nice burst damage, but it won't invalidate damage ATs.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by McNum View Post
*ahem* +47% defense buff, thank you very much. Not that hard to do either. Needs Maneuvers and the Nerve Alpha tree, but that should be standard issue for a FF Defender, really.

...It's the fun irony of being a Forcefielder, after all. Everyone is nigh untouchable, except you.
My FF Defender has the Cardiac Core Paragon Alpha instead of the Nerve line. Why? I give characters a +45.2% defense buff, +19.3% ToHit buff, and a +18.75% damage buff without Nerve. The 1.8% difference is balanced by my own character ending up with minimal endurance issues and better resistance to Smashing/Lethal.

I mitigate the Force Fielder Defense irony with a 46.8% defense vs. ranged, 47.1% defense vs. Energy/Negative, and 32.4% defense vs. everything else. Add on top of that a Smashing/Lethal resistance of 47% before the Alpha +20% resistance. He's one tough "squishy".

FF helps a team, and the Incarnate powers won't render that moot. They do help make characters a little less dependent on them, but it doesn't completely negate their value.

- B.

Crey Threat Assessment: Bayne
Virtueverse: Bayne
The Defenders of Paragon

 

Posted

FF has been getting marginalised almost since release.

The beta / release era devs seem to have envisioned the game as having a significant single target, tactical component. Keeping mobs detained / KBed / repelled fits into this play style. The players, by and large, saw the game as an AoE-fuelled zergfest where keeping mobs clumped and available for AoE carnage trumps the 25ish% pseudo damage debuff you can get from Force Bubble.

Right off the bat, most of FF was written off by the vast majority of players.

FF's niche became team-wide mez protection and team-wide def buffs. It was, until Issue 5, the only set that could provide mez protection and a whole lotta' def to an 8 person team.

With I5 came Sonic, and the niche was further pared down with Sonic Dispersion. Throw in the GDR ... and ... ugh.

I6 (IIRC, could be wrong on the issues, but timing's not crucial to my argument) brought us Traps and Cold ... and further watered down FF's niche.

And yet ... people still roll bubblers and other people invite them to teams.

At the end of the day, I think most players don't invite players to create the most massively efficient team possible -- they just invite who's available. Further, some people simply like the laidback playstyle of FF.

That said, I haven't played my bubbler, seriously, in a year or two. I think FF could do with a couple more team-friendly powers.

 

Posted

I wouldn't say no to a guaranteed stun on Repulsion Bomb or a low unresistable knockback portion to Force Bolt, but I can see why not, too. Forcefields is really good at what it does, it's just not that versatile. There are pretty much only two ways to mitigate that when you play one. Pool out and get some extra abilities, or hyper-specialize and go all out Defense buff. I chose hyper-specialization. Well that and the Medicine pool. Decent defense and Aid Self is another way to stay afloat.

I'm not sure I'd call the playstyle laid back, though. It's true that the 4 minute time on the bubbles gives some breathing room, but that's just more time to spot-heal, blast, use epic holds and so on. If people do die, there's also Vengeance, rezzes and re-bubbling the rezzed to consider. And that's for normal play, not when something needs to be caged or an area needs a Force Bubble. Sure it's not the frenzied blender style play a well built Scrapper provides, but it's still pretty busy.

As I see it, Forcefields is pretty much a buffer for mistakes. If a Blaster draws aggro from a full spawn, he'll die more often than not. With bubbles, he'll have 15 seconds to live. Easily enough to get them off him. This makes forcefields good on PuGs. Plus a brightly colored Dispersion Bubble is a great visual aid to see where you need to be.

Aegis Rose, Forcefield/Energy Defender - Freedom
"Bubble up for safety!"