You've only got a handful of suggestions that aren't "reduce endurance cost". Not that I'm complaining, it's just funny. 
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Prescence
 Feck only knows how to fix this 'un... |
- Delete Challenge; replace with Intimidate.
This allows a player to skip the Taunt effect entirely. Perhaps also reduce the endurance cost of Provoke to make up for the fact that the ST Taunt is gone. - Replace Intimidate with Placate.
Don't include the 'return to Hide' effect of Stalker Primary's Placate, just the Placate effect that takes you off an enemy's threat list. - Increase duration of Intimidate and Invoke Panic to somewhere between 12 and 15s.
- Mind Control's Terrorize is 27.94s
- Spectral Terror's Terrorize and Dark Miasma's Fearsome Stare is 22.35s
- Spectral Terror's Cloak of Fear and Dark Armor's Cloak of Fear is 7.45s
- Intimidate and Invoke Panic are both 8.34s, barely more than a single pulse of CoF.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
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There's only so much you can do to improve things without;|
Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
You've only got a handful of suggestions that aren't "reduce endurance cost". Not that I'm complaining, it's just funny.
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1) Stepping on the Cottage Rule
2) Stepping on the toes of people that like powers, even if they seem horrifically broken/useless
I like the proposed Intimidation changes though.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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For this to work you'd have to get rid of NoPhase. I don't know if it needs the back and forth mechanic, but I'll get behind anything that kills NoPhase and throws it out to rot away, never to return.|
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Concealment
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Medicine
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Travel Pools
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Favorite Hero: Computer (Empathy/Energy Blast Defender)
Favorite Villain: Gimp Computer (Fire Control/Psionic Assault Dominator)
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You'll probably get some resistance on this one. For one thing it's handy to suppress enemy-affecting toggles while stealthing without having to re-toggle those powers.|
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Invisibility: Vastly Reduce Endurance Cost, remove 'Only Effect Self' penalty, reduce recharge
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Then there's Brutes. Because of the way Fury is implemented, it notifies nearby mobs to the Brute's presence. Entering OAS is the only way to avoid that.
I would personally vote to leave Medicine, Leadership, and especially Fighting alone. Whirlwind is a Repel and Repulsion Field clone so whatever is done to it needs to consider those two powers, which should be better at it.
I agree on Stealth losing the Speed penalty. Stealth also needs to stack with other sources of Stealth, like Steamy Mists. It's bizarre that Super Speed is better Stealth than Stealth itself is (and obviously quite a bit faster).
Secondary possible change to Stealth, if possible: you are invisible until you move. If you stop moving again you become invisible again after 3 seconds.
Invisibility lets you move while stealthed. Agree that only effecting self aspect is no longer needed.
5th power added to Stealth as part of the second tier: Distract. To use you must be Invisible, or be Stealthed and still for 3 seconds. Placeable power, 40ft range. You toss an object onto the ground that distracts enemies briefly. Mechanically, the power summons an invincible pet with a 25ft Taunt aura that lasts 6 seconds. This makes enemies cluster around it and maybe blow their alphas. You have 6 seconds before they figure out what's going on... This power should also be given to Stalkers as inherent.
One of the two Presence powers should be the ability to dump aggro, via Placate. Going forward, Placate and Taunt powers should share IOs and enhancements. By proxy, currently unenhanceable Placate powers available to Stalkers become enhanceable.
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Not to mention it doesn't suppress when attacked. But I guess if that was kept, it'd basically be a duplicate of Energy Cloak/Cloak of Darkness for unsuppressed combat invisibility. Not sure if the power was balanced to do such a thing.
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Originally Posted by Supernumiphone
You'll probably get some resistance on this one. For one thing it's handy to suppress enemy-affecting toggles while stealthing without having to re-toggle those powers.
Then there's Brutes. Because of the way Fury is implemented, it notifies nearby mobs to the Brute's presence. Entering OAS is the only way to avoid that. |
I like to change the phase powers in PvP to match the PvP ones, that you can then attack phased creatures if you are phased.
The overall reduction of End cost, meh. I dont think its needed.
I don't suffer from altitis, I enjoy every minute of it.
Thank you Devs & Community people for a great game.
So sad to be ending ):
I didn't know that Invis was used that way, so, fair enough. Fact f'today
I'm...puzzled as to why people are 'meh'ing endurance reductions.
Take a look at [Tough]. Then, say, [Fortification]. Look at the endurance costs. Yes, I realise that Tough can work on any AT, and can add a lot of those who already have armour.
But the endurance cost doesn't scale. Tough will pretty much always give more survivability to an armour set, much as weave will give more to those with defence. And yet something like a Blaster is paying the exact same cost for them, often for even lower armour values. The same is true for the Leadership pools.
I would heavily advocate an endurance cost cut across the board for them. There is no need for them to cost that much. That sort of mentality belongs in the Jackinist era.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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I've long thought that many of the power pool powers cost too much endurance... and that Stealth's movement penalty should be removed.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
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I threw something together.... eh, must be at least a year ago now. |
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Prescence Feck only knows how to fix this 'un... |
Only way I can think of "Fixing" part of what's wrong with it is to break how it grants powers. I think it's vastly unfair that, if I want an AOE taunt, I can get to it right away (for all intents and purposes,) but if I want the AOE fear, I *have* to take a taunt and waste a power pick. The fear's not that powerful or accurate without dumping slots into it... and you're already dumping an extra power pick into it (seriously. My Dark/Therm corruptor took this for concept on a solo build... so she has a taunt.)
Either:
(Fix A)
- Rearrange powers so that you can get Fear/Fear and Taunt/Taunt
- Add a 5th pool to the power, or
(Fix B)
- Massive rework to the powers so they accept both Fear and Taunt enhancements (possibly "exclusively," if it's technically possible)
- Replace one power (ranged, single target) with... something.
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
But the endurance cost doesn't scale. Tough will pretty much always give more survivability to an armour set, much as weave will give more to those with defence. And yet something like a Blaster is paying the exact same cost for them, often for even lower armour values. The same is true for the Leadership pools.
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The same is true of every power. Defenders don't spend less endurance to blast even though they do less damage than a Blaster, and Controllers don't spend less endurance than a Defender even though they buff worse. The value-add of being able to access something normally outside your sphere is a factor in resultant power; Tankers don't benefit at all from pool Taunts, and some Masterminds might benefit a lot, simply because its their only route to them.
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This is true, and I appreciate that part of the goal.|
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
The same is true of every power. Defenders don't spend less endurance to blast even though they do less damage than a Blaster, and Controllers don't spend less endurance than a Defender even though they buff worse. The value-add of being able to access something normally outside your sphere is a factor in resultant power; Tankers don't benefit at all from pool Taunts, and some Masterminds might benefit a lot, simply because its their only route to them.
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However; even for those that benefit most, I feel the endurance costs and other issues seem far too much like the 'balance by inconvenience' that was common seven years ago than the 'balance by actually working ok' that the Dev team at Paragon has developed since Cryptics day. The Devs have stated before that they wanted to encourage people to diversify and experiment more (Inherent fitness and other changes being proof of that) so, why not give some love to the pools?
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
This is true, and I appreciate that part of the goal.
However; even for those that benefit most, I feel the endurance costs and other issues seem far too much like the 'balance by inconvenience' that was common seven years ago than the 'balance by actually working ok' that the Dev team at Paragon has developed since Cryptics day. The Devs have stated before that they wanted to encourage people to diversify and experiment more (Inherent fitness and other changes being proof of that) so, why not give some love to the pools? |
Some of the pools could use the love, yes, but there is also a risk of making them too good. Rather than encourage diversification, it could just shift optimal build strategies to make certain pools essentially required. This is the current role Hasten plays and Fitness used to. Fighting is teetering on the edge for many builds due to recent massive reduction in endurance restrictions.
Stealth and Pressence could definitely use some help, as could some of the travel powers (esp Fly, because its duplicated by a perma-temp power). The others have their uses. Stealth you need to be especially careful with buffing though due to being an extremely desirable set mule that is currently kept out of most builds because the utility isn't there.
This is also true. In a way, now would be a good time to not only balance the current pools a bit more 'fairly', but also introduce new ones to spread the load.
Really, I think the reasons that Fighting and Hasten especially are becoming more prolific right now is purely because there is so little in the other pools that is actually worth going after in current iterations.
People take Fighting because it boots sets like Shield, WP, heck any armour set. People take medicine for extra versatility and a self heal on sets like WP and Shield. People seem to take stealth for LotG muleing and Hasten for recharge boosting. And Leadership because it stacks well on teams and can help boost defense based builds.
Other than that? Besides certain niche usage (MMs taking taunts etc, and even then I've NEVER seen that happen in game myself) the 'non-FTM' pools are mostly ignored. The only time I've ever seen whirlwind was when someone was griefing RP in PD during the winter event. I've never seen Phase Shift used. Stealth was in PvP to boost stalkers Hide. I've never seen TP team used, Group fly once in a blue moon.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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PVP.|
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
I've never seen Phase Shift used.
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That said, Phase Shift was used a LOT more before it was given the (original) 30 second timer way back when, if nothing else than to explore.
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The thing that sparked me finally putting thoughts down to typing was I was trying to design a 'phase-walker' character who basically hunted all the nasty, awkward things with tricks up there sleeves to mess people up.|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
PVP.
That said, Phase Shift was used a LOT more before it was given the (original) 30 second timer way back when, if nothing else than to explore. |
Like Carnie illusionists. How do you hurt them when phased? Phase yourself.
That...kinda of went out of the window and onto the rocks when I saw the insane recharge time, end cost and general lack of general use.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
This is also true. In a way, now would be a good time to not only balance the current pools a bit more 'fairly', but also introduce new ones to spread the load.
Really, I think the reasons that Fighting and Hasten especially are becoming more prolific right now is purely because there is so little in the other pools that is actually worth going after in current iterations. People take Fighting because it boots sets like Shield, WP, heck any armour set. People take medicine for extra versatility and a self heal on sets like WP and Shield. People seem to take stealth for LotG muleing and Hasten for recharge boosting. And Leadership because it stacks well on teams and can help boost defense based builds. Other than that? Besides certain niche usage (MMs taking taunts etc, and even then I've NEVER seen that happen in game myself) the 'non-FTM' pools are mostly ignored. The only time I've ever seen whirlwind was when someone was griefing RP in PD during the winter event. I've never seen Phase Shift used. Stealth was in PvP to boost stalkers Hide. I've never seen TP team used, Group fly once in a blue moon. |
The other reason Fighting is so tempting is its the perfect storm of IO options for many characters who lack access to certain kinds of powers. One popular slotting configuration grants +18.75% Recharge and +6.13% Ranged defense. The resistance and defense are pretty nice to have, but when you start kitting it all together, patterns emerge that make Fighting really tempting.
True enough, Tex.
However, and I feel this is an important however, there has to date been no reneging of the Devs Official stance that the game was and still is balanced purely around SOs.
I just want to point out I feel that everything, pool, set or otherwise, should be funtional, useful and 'wantable' with just SO slotting.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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My issue with your list is that I do not believe these are QoL fixes. They are balance issues.
That's not to say I'm disagreeing with any of the suggestions. I just don't agree with the classification. Particularly the changes to Invisibility and Aid Self/Other make these powers much more powerful than there current versions.
I could see invisibility getting changed, but I absolutely disagree with the Aid Self/Other interrupt removal.
I like the idea to change Presence pool by moving Intimidate up and adding a Placate as an option. That seems very reasonable.
Overall, I think you're going in the right direction, but there's a fine line here you have to be careful of. If anyone can replicate something in the pool powers with their primary/secondary powers, then you have to make the pool power a less powerful version. This can be done by making the endurance costs higher or the base values lower. In many cases, it was too much of both. In the case of Presence, they just made it horrendous.
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This. Even with its current interrupt time, Castle said Aid Self was a little too good. |
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I would personally vote to leave Medicine, Leadership, and especially Fighting alone.
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Leadership simply does not need any kind of buff. It's a pure power multiplier set no matter what AT you take it on, and once you start stacking it...
Fighting I could see being tweaked, but only in step with much-needed tweaks to set bonuses.
Also /unsigned on changes to Stealth. Aside from the slightly higher end cost and slow effect, it's equivalent to Cloaking Device. Get rid of those, and it's no longer balanced. I also wouldn't touch Invisibility. Grant Invis could be slightly cheaper and the whole Phase Shift tangle would be nice to address at some point, though.
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Provoke doesn't have an endurance cost, its like all Taunt powers and is endurance free to use.
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Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
Delete Challenge; replace with Intimidate.
This allows a player to skip the Taunt effect entirely. Perhaps also reduce the endurance cost of Provoke to make up for the fact that the ST Taunt is gone. |
Member of GGRRR, a SG on Defiant - check out our website - GGRRR
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
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Add either slow fly speed or jump height to Whirlwind and let it be (another) way for speedsters to get more vertical movement.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
The biggest QoL boost for PPs I can think of (outside of customization) is getting rid of the Stupid Required Power picks. I HATE having to pick Boxing/Kick before I can get Tough. On 9 out of 10 toons it's a complete and utter waste. Come level 14 I should be able to get Fly without first having to get a Flippy Haymaker Clone (yeah I could get hover, but I'll never use it on a Melee toon - at least Air Superiority gets some use...)
The level restrictions should be enough (They're enough for our Primaries and Secondaries). Yes, this would enable us to pick other more useful powers. And what's the problem with that? There doesn't seem to be much concern in the game lately about us becoming Too Powerful.
This should apply to Epic Pools as well, IMO.
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I think taking the 'Only Effect Self' off of Invis would make it just like 'Superior Invisiblity', which would be breaking some Power rules. Primary>Secondary>Pool Power. Taking the interrupt out of the medicine powers would be the same problem, so you'd have to adjust numbers somewhere else in the powers to keep them below the strength of Secondary counter parts. |
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
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But I'm all for improving pool powers so long as they aren't better than their counterparts. Also, get rid of the phase rule, or keep it in PVP only.
@Rylas
Kill 'em all. Let XP sort 'em out.
Numbers only, I'm afraid, not customisation.
I look at the more recent power sets, and then I look at Power pools in general. Aside from the travel po- No, even that,s not true. ALL the power pools suffer from seven year old stagnation.
What I'd recommend for fixes;
Concealment
Leadership
Fighting
Medicine
Prescence
Feck only knows how to fix this 'un...
Travel Pools
So, there we have it. I'd love to see a bit more useability added to the Power Pools