[Harden] - trading Activity for Mitigation

A while ago, there was some heavy discussion of issues with [Stone Armor.Granite Armor]. Conceptually, I like the underlying idea of this power a lot. As I see it, the intended role of Granite Armor is to offer a "defensive mode": a way to trade away a significant amount of offense and receive a significant amount of mitigation. I like having that choice available. And I was led to think about what other ways one could offer that tradeoff in a power. I thought of this:

[Harden]
Click: Self +Def, +Res
Animation time: 1 second
Recharge time: 5 seconds (Unaffected by buffs or debuffs)
(Note: total cycle time 6 seconds if used whenever available.)
Endurance Cost: 5 Endurance

Effects:
+5% Resist (Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative) for 30 seconds
+2.5% Defense (Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative) for 30 seconds

Allowed enhancements: Resistance, Defense, Endurance Reduction
Allowed sets: Defense, Resistance

In play, there are a number of ways that this power could be used. Doing fine? Don't touch it. Need a little extra mitigation? Hit it whenever it's about to expire. Need a lot of extra mitigation? Hit it whenever it's up. The penalty to activity is simple: time spent activating Harden is time spent not activating other powers, and there's no way to buff oneself out of that. If you want the maximum bonus from Harden, you will spend 1/6 of your time activating Harden.

Obviously this is not likely to see the light of day as a replacement to any existing power in any existing set. But if a new set were to be created including this power or something like it, would you want to play it? For an idea of how it would work out in practice, consider [Katana.Divine Avalanche] or [Broadsword.Parry] as analogous.

First thought

I know it will never happen, but damn would I love to play Stone Armor with Harden. Not only would it be a great utility power in a set that is a bit lacking in non-Granite mitigation, but it's a creative solution that also removes the non-penalizing penalties that Granite currently has.

Clearly the name needs work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leo_G What's the duration on this, exactly?

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan +5% Resist (Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative) for 30 seconds +2.5% Defense (Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative) for 30 seconds

These values are specifically calibrated to let the bonus stack up to 5 times, for a total bonus of 25% resist and 12.5% defense before enhancement, or about 39% resist and 19% defense with three SOs of enhancement. Of course, these values are for illustrative purposes only - the cast time, recharge time, duration, and bonus applied could all be tweaked for balance purposes. Changing the cast/recharge from 1 and 5 to 2 and 4 would leave the stacking the same, but double the activity penalty, for instance.

I like it, though maybe not as an alternative to Granite Armour. The main issue I have with Stone is that it's very dibilitating, even without Granite. The endurance cost is high, the run speed and jump debuff in Rooted can be crippling both to a character and the freedom in the build (Stone Armour? Get teleport! You wont have any problems then! Except the problem of having teleport as a travel power or using up one of your power pools).

In fact, add 2 mags of mez protection, a small amount of +regen, a small amount of -runspeed and replace Rooted with it. That'd take away a lot of the out-of-Granite problems by giving another way of upping stats and removing a toggle, plus you can actually -jump-. It'd make out of Granite play easier, and when in Granite it'd be at the cost of even more runspeed.

Leo, you're missing one thing, what if these ideas were combined?

All for Stone Stalkers, say aye.

Two things.

1. Although not specifically intended as a replacement for Granite, this mechanic did come from consideration of activity penalties in the context of Granite. The well-known problem with the way buffs and debuffs work is that although they are expressed as a percentage, they are in fact a fixed numerical value whose net effect depends heavily on what other numerical values are being applied to the stat in question. For instance, Granite Armor's -0.65 recharge penalty and -0.30 damage penalty can result in an activity penalty that ranges from more than -75% (in the extreme worst case of an attack with zero slotting and zero buffs) to literally nothing (in the extreme best case of being buffed to the damage cap and the recharge cap). In more reasonable scenarios it can range between -70% (no buffs, 95% damage enhancement) and -36% (Hasten, Rage, 95% damage and 60% recharge enhancement). Harden, on the other hand, has a fixed activity penalty that cannot be circumvented by any means - but it can be reduced in exchange for a commensurate loss in benefit.

2. Full disclosure: If I were the King of Paragon, I would replace Rooted's penalties with a requirement that the character be on the ground for the buff to apply (as with [Electric Armor.Grounded]), and I would probably do something like this in place of Granite Armor. The former is probably within the realm of possibility, since I can't think of anyone who actually likes the Rooted runspeed penalty and the requirement to be on the ground is at worst exactly as onerous as the current -fly/-jump penalty (with one notable exception: because Rooted's -fly penalty is strong enough to beat the auto-Hover from Teleport, it actually ends up granting more mobility when used in conjunction with Teleport and enough runspeed bonuses). The latter is pretty much a fever dream. But I could see this mechanic appearing somewhere in some context.

Not a bad idea for something like say some type of metal armor similar to stone.

Kinda reminds me of regen where you have to do silly things like pay attention to what is going on to make sure you stay alive.