Target Cap Absorption

This is a suggestion I've made in various posts over the years but never officially written down.

One of the things I'd like to see added to a few powers is "Target Cap Modification." This is an attribute that causes a target to count as more than 1 target for the purposes of calculating Max Targets in AoE powers. This is a way of increasing the survivability certain characters bring to teams without directly increasing defenses or resistance caps.

Note that "counting as multiple targets" does not mean you get hit by the power more than once. Rather, it means you have the ability to disrupt/deflect/absorb/refract part of the attack so that it is incapable of hitting as many targets as usual.

I see it in the following powers:

Tanker inherent. -- Tankers automatically count as if they are 6 targets instead of 1.

Kheldians & Brutes -- These ATs automatically count as if they are 3 targets instead of 1.

Force Field --> Dispersion Bubble -- Every target inside the bubble counts as 2 targets instead of 1. In large groups, this cuts down on how many people are hit by AoEs.

Super Reflexes --> Lucky -- Your contagious luck adds an additional 3 targets to your base (so a SR Tanker counts as 9 targets instead of 1).

Sonic Resonance --> Disruption Field & Trick Arrow --> Disruption Arrow Every enemy inside the field counts as if it were 80% of an enemy instead of 1. This raises the effective target cap of a power that hits 16 to approximately 20, as long as the enemies fit in the area.


Special notes:

• The bonuses are additive. A Tanker inside a Dispersion Bubble counts as 6 (inherent) + 2 (dispersion bubble) = 8 targets. Two Force Fielders next to each other count as 6 targets total.
• Nukes ignore target modifiers and are capable of hitting the full group.
• When calculating the targets hit, the mechanic is inclusive. For example, if an AoE power with a target cap of 5 rolls on a Blaster(1) and then a Tanker(6), both are hit by the AoE because the Tanker was partially included. If instead it first hit the Tanker (6), it would never hit the Blaster because the target cap was completely absorbed.
• This mechanic applies to most AoEs except those specially flagged, not just damage powers. For example, it affects control powers, AoE endurance drains, Ghost Widow's self heal, etc.

Since nearly every power in the game is at the standard cap of 16, I don't think this would make as much difference as you hope. Either that, or it's so unbalanced that it would make too much difference and fundamentally break the game.

A bit of jiggery pokery could abuse this mechanic to the point that no one else on the team would ever get hit, you'd quickly see less need for buffs and an almost complete negation of the usefulness of the AoE buffing mechanic they just added, not to mention heals, rez powers, and about half the types of inspirations most players use all the time.

Two SR tankers and a Force Fielder, and everyone else can bring a tray full of Reds and Blues and never need to do anything but attack. Took me about 6 seconds to come up with that example. Did you put some time into thinking about what that kind of imbalance would mean to teams and other ATs? Welcome back to City of Blasters.

No thanks.

You really shouldn't be laughing at how broken your own suggestion is. And it did in fact take me 6 seconds. It took me longer to write my post, because I'm cooking dinner.

Doesn't change the fact this would be a horrible change, or that you're explaining it horribly.

Yeah, sounded like an interesting idea until LL brought me back to reality.

Ok, I see the key breakdown now. You don't understand how AoEs work that well. An AoE processes who gets hit based on who the NPC aimed at. If a Tanker has aggro and counts as 10 targets, and a second tank is second on the aggro table and counts as 10 targets, that soaks up nearly every standard AoE before the attack even calculates who else would get hit.

Even if the second tank isn't figured in the calculation that way, all a team has to do is make sure those 2 tankers are in the front, with the Force Fielder behind them, and everyone else on the team behind them and targeting though the tankers. The taunts of the two tankers soak all the single target attacks for 2 spawns, and your little broken mechanic soaks all the potential AoE spillover.

Thus, everyone else on the team is in perfect safety and doesn't have to worry about any sort of mitigation. To get a mechanic like you suggest to work, it would require a fundamental re-engineering of AoEs and aggro. This is not something smart developers do to a seven year old game.

Saying a broken mechanic is broken isn't being nasty. I'm being factual, not personal.

Both the healing Nictus and Ghost Widow would benefit the most from this...

Quote:

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

Just out of curiosity, since I've never really looked into this, but do enemy attacks even have a target cap? I know that player attacks do, but I wouldn't think there would have been a reason for the Devs to code enemy attacks that way.