Ever going to be able to SB, Shield, Buff ourselves?!
By
A Man In Black,
Posted on: 2011-06-13 10:30 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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It has been confirmed that the AoE buffs will not affect the caster.
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Originally Posted by Lukros
Anyone know a definite answer to if the upcoming AoE aspect of the buffs affect us?
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Okay, I have to ask...middle of the week at any time, Ive been able to get teams.|
Originally Posted by Lukros
As a primarily solo player, after 51 months, I am finally getting to the point where I am fed up with having powers that I cannot use on myself.
Speed Boost, Ice/Thermal/FF shields, Single Heals... it is becoming slightly ridiculous. Let's face it, City of Heroes subs aren't booming out of control, and there are points where teaming is hard to pull off, due to lack of people or become or off-times on the servers. So, when myself, who plays mainly during the middle of weekdays (offtime) and primarily solos, takes a secondary but finds I have to skip 2 or 3 powers because they are useless to me, it gets frustrating. Now, with the fact that these powers are becoming AoE (excluding ST heals), will they affect us if we are within the 30' radius of the powers? If this is the case, that means we are forced to team to be able to hit ourselves with the buffs we want. If this isn't the case, we still get the benefit of being more involved through other powers and less end use, but are still excluded no matter how you look at it. I just think it is about time that we should be able to use these powers on ourselves, and I don't think that is too much to ask, or is being unreasonable. Has anyone heard of ANY change to this? Anyone know a definite answer to if the upcoming AoE aspect of the buffs affect us? I love this game, but find it silly needing to make one build for solo, and one for team, because I am a "Bad player" since I didn't take my ice shields even though my play-time means I am solo 95% of the time. Sorry, just needed to vent this frustration... My apologies... |
So, is it you can't find teams, or you just don't want to team, as you prefere to solo.
And what's silly about a solo build and a team build? You get 3 builds. Team build, set it for SOs, solo build, IO it out!
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Originally Posted by Lukros
As a primarily solo player, after 51 months, I am finally getting to the point where I am fed up with having powers that I cannot use on myself.
Speed Boost, Ice/Thermal/FF shields, Single Heals... it is becoming slightly ridiculous. |
Eh?
My shield tanker soloed a lot and I think all of her Shield powers are useful on her personally. Seriously, you take team oriented buffers and then complain that your team oriented character isn't useful solo? Duh?
Take something with solo/self oriented powers if you want to solo.
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Short answer: no...|
Originally Posted by Lukros
As a primarily solo player, after 51 months, I am finally getting to the point where I am fed up with having powers that I cannot use on myself.
Speed Boost, Ice/Thermal/FF shields, Single Heals... it is becoming slightly ridiculous. Let's face it, City of Heroes subs aren't booming out of control, and there are points where teaming is hard to pull off, due to lack of people or become or off-times on the servers. So, when myself, who plays mainly during the middle of weekdays (offtime) and primarily solos, takes a secondary but finds I have to skip 2 or 3 powers because they are useless to me, it gets frustrating. Now, with the fact that these powers are becoming AoE (excluding ST heals), will they affect us if we are within the 30' radius of the powers? If this is the case, that means we are forced to team to be able to hit ourselves with the buffs we want. If this isn't the case, we still get the benefit of being more involved through other powers and less end use, but are still excluded no matter how you look at it. I just think it is about time that we should be able to use these powers on ourselves, and I don't think that is too much to ask, or is being unreasonable. Has anyone heard of ANY change to this? Anyone know a definite answer to if the upcoming AoE aspect of the buffs affect us? I love this game, but find it silly needing to make one build for solo, and one for team, because I am a "Bad player" since I didn't take my ice shields even though my play-time means I am solo 95% of the time. Sorry, just needed to vent this frustration... My apologies... |
Long answer: The targeted AoE aspect change to shield buffs, SB, etc. will only hit other players and not on your, even if you are within the 30' range because they will still be tagged as "cannot be used on self"...which pretty much includes any and all targeted buffs and heals as you cannot "target", IE click on, yourself.
The change to the buffs mentioned in the Overview was done to help ease the "suffering" of many buffers who spent what they felt to be an inordinate amount of time buffing allies, particularly in the new iTrials, and less time actually participating in said trials. Granted not everyone felt this was needed, as well as some people aren't entirely pleased with it due to potential problems (see Memphis_Bill's concerns in the official thread).
Sadly...as stated...you're still not going to be on the receiving end of any buffs you dish out to your teammates. But then...many Defender primaries/'Troller and Corr secondaries, are much more geared towards team play than solo efforts. Among them are FF, Sonic Res, Thermal, Emp, and a couple of others. That's just the way they are...they're MADE that way (kinda like Lady Gaga...but that's a whole other bag of weird we won't go into).
As a slight aside...several of the Def/Troller/Corr buff/debuff sets are also available to MM's, so the powers you'd skip on a solo def/troller/corr cuz you get no use from you could take to buff pets. .....Jus' sayin'.
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Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe
::looks at RaikenX's signature::
Something funny. |
I am mainly solo because of the difficulty I have finding teams during the day.
So, as of late, I have been creating characters that solo well, and secondaries such as Cold Domination and Kinetics for my corruptors, for example, have abilities that are fantastic for solo play.
My frustration comes from excellent abilities such as ice/glacial shield, speed boost, increase density, and frostwork, that end up unused for me, and I am sure I am not the only one.
Yes, I know they are built for teaming, but I am suprised there doesn't seem to be an issue with not being able to use these powers if you are soloing for either the time-being, or always.
Apparently I am in a minority here when it comes to wanting the most out of my powersets whether teamed or solo...
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Eh?|
Eh? My shield tanker soloed a lot and I think all of her Shield powers are useful on her personally. |
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Seriously, you take team oriented buffers and then complain that your team oriented character isn't useful solo? Duh? Take something with solo/self oriented powers if you want to solo. |
I am not out here attacking anyone... just don't see how being able to buff ourselves is game-breaking... but apparently I have hit a nerve with a few of you...
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the powers were created and balanced with a not to be used on self condition it may suck but thats how the devs want it from a balance standpoint. Traps/Rad/Dark are all excellent substitutes almost every power in those 3 are usable solo
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Originally Posted by Lukros
I am not out here attacking anyone... just don't see how being able to buff ourselves is game-breaking... but apparently I have hit a nerve with a few of you...
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Because being a tank mage is bad.|
Originally Posted by Lukros
I am not out here attacking anyone... just don't see how being able to buff ourselves is game-breaking... but apparently I have hit a nerve with a few of you...
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ex; Fire/Cold corruptor
Would approach the softcap to most damage positions. all while keeping the same high damage and excellent debuffs. Without any set bonuses.
This is the very definition of too strong.
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Buff powers like these are balanced around only working on others; if they were changed to work on you they'd be seriously nerfed.
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Originally Posted by Lukros
... just don't see how being able to buff ourselves is game-breaking...
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Arc #40529 : The Furies of the Earth
Use a dual build. Make one solo, one team. Solo, skip the team-only powers and fit in others that are more useful to you. Fit Leadership in earlier, toss in an attack like Air Superiority, maybe the (so-so) fears from Presence, or powers you might otherwise skip as "not as useful on a team."
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For what it's worth I agree with you in regard to the shield powers and at least some of the other single target power (although I disagree with regard to Speed Boost and the mez portection powers). I think it would be a good way to help even out the solo capability of the different buff/debuff sets without really impacting team balance. However, it's a minority opinion around these parts so I've pretty much given up arguing for it.
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Originally Posted by Lukros
I am not out here attacking anyone... just don't see how being able to buff ourselves is game-breaking... but apparently I have hit a nerve with a few of you...
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It's amusingly ironic to me that this same line of reasoning was constantly used to explain why SB and the single target shield buffs remained single target rather than being AoE buffs. |
Originally Posted by Obscure Blade
Buff powers like these are balanced around only working on others; if they were changed to work on you they'd be seriously nerfed.
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I know that the two cases are distinguishable, but still. The devs, with their newfound focus on AoE buffing and Incarnate nuking, seem to be all about gift-giving without attaching any strings. Normally I'd agree with you. But nowadays.... I dunno. Anything's seeming possible with these devs.
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Sadly, I can see this happening at some point.|
Originally Posted by Little_Whorn
It's amusingly ironic to me that this same line of reasoning was constantly used to explain why SB and the single target shield buffs remained single target rather than being AoE buffs.
I know that the two cases are distinguishable, but still. The devs, with their newfound focus on AoE buffing and Incarnate nuking, seem to be all about gift-giving without attaching any strings. Normally I'd agree with you. But nowadays.... I dunno. Anything's seeming possible with these devs. |
I'm still not a huge fan of the AoE buffs, but at least they haven't changed much. I suppose at this point if they decided to make it so those AoE buffs did get cast on the caster, they could make it a weaker buff for the caster somehow, and keep them at the current levels for the rest of the team.
�Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play!� - Thomas Gray
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Then I guess they don't need to be self buffing themselves if they do that well already.
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Originally Posted by Lukros
If you haven't noticed, AV/GM soloers and Solo farmers have been using Kinetics and Cold Dom for a bit now.
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Empathy. |
Originally Posted by Lukros
just don't see how being able to buff ourselves is game-breaking
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Seriously, Empathy would become the most overpowered set in the game if you could buff yourself with it.
You could give yourself enough recharge for perma-hasten/perma-AB with very few set bonuses.
You could softcap to practically everything with self-Fortitude (which will give you around 23% defense to ALL types/positions by itself). Pair that with Defender Maneuvers numbers (7% to all) Hover (2-3% to all), and Weave (4-5% to all) (with a Res/Def in Tough) and you suddenly find that you only need a few set bonuses to be softcapped to everything you can possibly have defense to. I did the math before. If an Empathy defender could self buff, they would be capable of hitting 35-36% defense to everything, with no outside help.
Regeneration Aura will be permanent or nearly so, giving you levels of regeneration that will surpass a Willpower character in a large crowd. You could almost surpass a Regen running Instant Healing with permanent Regeneration aura.
Oh, and you can hit yourself with a rather large self heal every 4 seconds or less and have stackable mez protection.
Pair that with a secondary like Sonic and you have a tankmage in the making.
So, yeah, self buffing characters would cause a severe nerf to a number of powersets. Empathy would go from one of the weakest offensive defender primaries, to the strongest.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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You don't even need Weave and stuff like that. PBU Fort with HO's can get you to the softcap.|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Empathy.
Seriously, Empathy would become the most overpowered set in the game if you could buff yourself with it. You could give yourself enough recharge for perma-hasten/perma-AB with very few set bonuses. You could softcap to practically everything with self-Fortitude (which will give you around 23% defense to ALL types/positions by itself). Pair that with Defender Maneuvers numbers (7% to all) Hover (2-3% to all), and Weave (4-5% to all) (with a Res/Def in Tough) and you suddenly find that you only need a few set bonuses to be softcapped to everything you can possibly have defense to. I did the math before. If an Empathy defender could self buff, they would be capable of hitting 35-36% defense to everything, with no outside help. Regeneration Aura will be permanent or nearly so, giving you levels of regeneration that will surpass a Willpower character in a large crowd. You could almost surpass a Regen running Instant Healing with permanent Regeneration aura. Oh, and you can hit yourself with a rather large self heal every 4 seconds or less and have stackable mez protection. Pair that with a secondary like Sonic and you have a tankmage in the making. So, yeah, self buffing characters would cause a severe nerf to a number of powersets. Empathy would go from one of the weakest offensive defender primaries, to the strongest. |
But even if you become invincible, you still have the issues of aggro control and damage dealing. Will Empathy become more powerful for soloing than other defender primaries? yes. Will it become better than the current best soloers? No. SS/FA Brutes will still reign supreme.
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Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Empathy.
Seriously, Empathy would become the most overpowered set in the game if you could buff yourself with it. You could give yourself enough recharge for perma-hasten/perma-AB with very few set bonuses. You could softcap to practically everything with self-Fortitude (which will give you around 23% defense to ALL types/positions by itself). Pair that with Defender Maneuvers numbers (7% to all) Hover (2-3% to all), and Weave (4-5% to all) (with a Res/Def in Tough) and you suddenly find that you only need a few set bonuses to be softcapped to everything you can possibly have defense to. I did the math before. If an Empathy defender could self buff, they would be capable of hitting 35-36% defense to everything, with no outside help. Regeneration Aura will be permanent or nearly so, giving you levels of regeneration that will surpass a Willpower character in a large crowd. You could almost surpass a Regen running Instant Healing with permanent Regeneration aura. Oh, and you can hit yourself with a rather large self heal every 4 seconds or less and have stackable mez protection. Pair that with a secondary like Sonic and you have a tankmage in the making. So, yeah, self buffing characters would cause a severe nerf to a number of powersets. Empathy would go from one of the weakest offensive defender primaries, to the strongest. |
^This. It's pretty much why a team of Empaths (or even a pair of Empaths) can be ridiculous. It's like the poster child for Force Multiplier.
Having said that I've always thought that the Defender inherent should have been made into some sort of "feedback", whereby when you buff someone you'd get a non-stacking (ie only one of) minor version of the buff cast on yourself too (which actually is useless for the OP come to think of it
)
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Bingo! was just about to post that. This guy, however, is always on.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Use a dual build. Make one solo, one team. Solo, skip the team-only powers and fit in others that are more useful to you. Fit Leadership in earlier, toss in an attack like Air Superiority, maybe the (so-so) fears from Presence, or powers you might otherwise skip as "not as useful on a team."
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Its the way the game work. You cannot target youself. Single target buffs and heals are balanced around the fact they cannot affect the owner. AoE buffs/heals are either less effective or have long cooldowns or have some limitation that make them less powerfull than single target buffs/heals.
Seriously do you realise how freaking easy it is to cap def a FF Fender? Self buffing bubbles would get them to cap at lvl 22, Scrappers/Brutes/Tankers have to build for it!
The whole balance on CoH is based on teamplay, thats what makes it different to other games.
I think the issue is that the devs are afraid of what it will turn the buffing ATs into. To me thats a load of bull. Practically every other MMO allows for self buffing of most buffs. I do not see it unbalancing defenders/controllers/corrupters/masterminds simply because they already do piss poor damage to begin with. Its like they are given a double penalty for being a buffer. You take a damage hit and you cant buff yourself. Of those ATs I mention masterminds at least get the benefit of the pet damage. Personally all this fear of overpoweredness needs to be thrown out considering what they have given us at the incarnate level. Its not going to hurt anything to let us buff ourselves even if its allowed at half strength. The VEATs are reason enough to see its possible to do a support AT and not be overpowered. Lastly its been stated by some that the reason we have no self buffing is because we have no self targetting but thats a load of bull too because npcs can bubble themselves and I am not talking about the personal bubble either. I have seen Dr. Aeon do this at one point. So if they can self buff that means they can self target therefore the whole arguement of that is null and void. The whole reason players cant self target is because they do not want us to self buff its not the other way around.
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
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And what about nightwidows? They do this now already. We have so many other sets that completely break the mold on this now there is no point in keeping things like the way they were. Allow for self buffing already even at half strength so people have reason to take the powers.
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Originally Posted by Chaos Creator
Because being a tank mage is bad.
ex; Fire/Cold corruptor Would approach the softcap to most damage positions. all while keeping the same high damage and excellent debuffs. Without any set bonuses. This is the very definition of too strong. |
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
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Exactly. So much has changed since the begining so alot of the old ways of balance simply do not work because its not fair. Basically if you break the rule in one way you have to do it for everything else to be fair.
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Originally Posted by Little_Whorn
It's amusingly ironic to me that this same line of reasoning was constantly used to explain why SB and the single target shield buffs remained single target rather than being AoE buffs.
I know that the two cases are distinguishable, but still. The devs, with their newfound focus on AoE buffing and Incarnate nuking, seem to be all about gift-giving without attaching any strings. Normally I'd agree with you. But nowadays.... I dunno. Anything's seeming possible with these devs. |
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
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And what about the already existing melee sets that are "tank mages" now that already do some of these things? There are already combinations that literally cant die unless 1 shotted by something like hamidon. If you allow any powerset combination to do it then you might as well allow it for all. There is absolutely no legit balance reason to not have|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Empathy.
Seriously, Empathy would become the most overpowered set in the game if you could buff yourself with it. You could give yourself enough recharge for perma-hasten/perma-AB with very few set bonuses. You could softcap to practically everything with self-Fortitude (which will give you around 23% defense to ALL types/positions by itself). Pair that with Defender Maneuvers numbers (7% to all) Hover (2-3% to all), and Weave (4-5% to all) (with a Res/Def in Tough) and you suddenly find that you only need a few set bonuses to be softcapped to everything you can possibly have defense to. I did the math before. If an Empathy defender could self buff, they would be capable of hitting 35-36% defense to everything, with no outside help. Regeneration Aura will be permanent or nearly so, giving you levels of regeneration that will surpass a Willpower character in a large crowd. You could almost surpass a Regen running Instant Healing with permanent Regeneration aura. Oh, and you can hit yourself with a rather large self heal every 4 seconds or less and have stackable mez protection. Pair that with a secondary like Sonic and you have a tankmage in the making. So, yeah, self buffing characters would cause a severe nerf to a number of powersets. Empathy would go from one of the weakest offensive defender primaries, to the strongest. |
self buffing. Its the lack of self buffing and reduced damage due to being a support AT that has screwed this game up and caused so many players to gravitate towards the FoTM builds. Shouldnt we play are characters because of concept and not because its a grand canyon size gap in soloability and survivability?
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
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This doesn't make much sense. Dr Aeons bubble is a toggle shield or self-buff, like the myriad of toggle shields we already have in the game. There's no "self targetting" involved, he just activates a power.|
Originally Posted by EvilRyu
I think the issue is that the devs are afraid of what it will turn the buffing ATs into. To me thats a load of bull. Practically every other MMO allows for self buffing of most buffs. I do not see it unbalancing defenders/controllers/corrupters/masterminds simply because they already do piss poor damage to begin with. Its like they are given a double penalty for being a buffer. You take a damage hit and you cant buff yourself. Of those ATs I mention masterminds at least get the benefit of the pet damage. Personally all this fear of overpoweredness needs to be thrown out considering what they have given us at the incarnate level. Its not going to hurt anything to let us buff ourselves even if its allowed at half strength. The VEATs are reason enough to see its possible to do a support AT and not be overpowered. Lastly its been stated by some that the reason we have no self buffing is because we have no self targetting but thats a load of bull too because npcs can bubble themselves and I am not talking about the personal bubble either. I have seen Dr. Aeon do this at one point. So if they can self buff that means they can self target therefore the whole arguement of that is null and void. The whole reason players cant self target is because they do not want us to self buff its not the other way around.
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If the game was being designed now then yep, i'd agree with the idea of "let us target ourselves", but the no-self-targeting has been a feature of the Cryptic engine for years now and I'd imagine (like things like reflecting damage) it'd be near impossible to patch in now.
I'd be all for adding a secondary buff to yourself (not at full strength though) but I'm not sure how you'd get it to work solo. Fudge it in some way so that you could use an enemy/corpse to bounce it off perhaps, it wouldn't buff them, just provide a target for the power to fire off. Or some sort of pseudopet summon inherent power which is only there to use as a target dummy for the self-buff portion of the power.
As a primarily solo player, after 51 months, I am finally getting to the point where I am fed up with having powers that I cannot use on myself.
Speed Boost, Ice/Thermal/FF shields, Single Heals... it is becoming slightly ridiculous.
Let's face it, City of Heroes subs aren't booming out of control, and there are points where teaming is hard to pull off, due to lack of people or become or off-times on the servers.
So, when myself, who plays mainly during the middle of weekdays (offtime) and primarily solos, takes a secondary but finds I have to skip 2 or 3 powers because they are useless to me, it gets frustrating.
Now, with the fact that these powers are becoming AoE (excluding ST heals), will they affect us if we are within the 30' radius of the powers?
If this is the case, that means we are forced to team to be able to hit ourselves with the buffs we want.
If this isn't the case, we still get the benefit of being more involved through other powers and less end use, but are still excluded no matter how you look at it.
I just think it is about time that we should be able to use these powers on ourselves, and I don't think that is too much to ask, or is being unreasonable.
Has anyone heard of ANY change to this?
Anyone know a definite answer to if the upcoming AoE aspect of the buffs affect us?
I love this game, but find it silly needing to make one build for solo, and one for team, because I am a "Bad player" since I didn't take my ice shields even though my play-time means I am solo 95% of the time.
Sorry, just needed to vent this frustration...
My apologies...