The Presence Pool.

They are not useful at all. They can only affect minions, and have horrible endurance, recharge, accuracy, and duration. There is always a better power choice than presence fears. Always.

Sadly I have to agree with this...

if they were like other controls that typically affect minions and lieutenants I could overlook the end costs and recharge times but as they are they basically suck.

You can use the Presence pool to stack with inherent fear powers to take out bosses right off the bat...I did that on a toon. Takes max slotting etc though to be effective.

...Unless you're a Dominator looking for more 6.25% Recharge - Heck, you even 6 slot the taunt!

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

During the Power Sets and Player Abilities Panel at the Player Summit, attended by Positron, Black Scorpion, Arbiter Hawk, Tunnel Rat, Synapse and Zwillinger (in a room so *small* we had to tell people to leave for fire code safety reasons ... and I enjoyed telling Black Pebble he had to leave when he came in late, which made ALL of the Red Names practically die laughing!) ... I brought up TEH SUCK that is the Presence Pool Fear Powers. I pointed out that "way back when" they'd been nerfed into the ground to the point where the ONLY way to make them viable was to (practically) 6-slot them, and even then you had to take Both Fear Powers and 6-slot them for a miserly marginal performance that just simply didn't stack up to other options with respect to Return On Investment. Essentially, you HAD TO spend and spend and spend and spend on the Fear Powers (plural) in order to get ANYTHING out of them, and that it was such a high hurdle that no one was meaningfully willing to make it for so little payoff.

I invited the assembled Devs to datamine how many characters actually even HAD the Presence Pool Fear Powers ... and Positron (loudly) interjected at that point with what essentially amounted to (and I'm paraphrasing, obviously, since it's been 6 weeks) a very mournful "been there, done that" to indicate that such research has already been done, and that the results of that datamining were ... not desirable ... on the issue of Presence Pool Fear Powers acceptance by the playerbase.

I then made the case that sticking the Presence Pool Fear Powers *after* the Taunts created an extra "layer" of unnecessary investment to be able to access them, which made them even less desirable, even before getting into the fact that they were really only meaningfully useful when double stacked (due to low Mag 2 values) and that their Accuracy, Recharge and Duration values (ie. the entire reason to even use the powers in the first place) had been NERFED SO HARD in the first place that they were practically useless "out of the box" and required ridiculous investment(s) in Slots to even turn them into a minimally usable tool.

I swear I *tried* not to WHINE about the situation ... but it was really hard not to given that the spreadsheet values and requirements for the Pool's Fear Powers were so incredibly NOT USEFUL.

Positron then spoke up a second time on the point that I was making ... and he did so in reference to my previous question (about reorganizing the combo requirements for Dual Blades for Stalkers so that they aren't dependent upon Assassin Strike and Placate for some of them, which basically renders those particular combos "moot" in the current game) that essentially involved what we know of as The Cottage Rule. So a bit more context becomes necessary for his answer.

My previous question about Dual Blades Combos for Stalkers was essentially, "don't change the ordering of the Powers in the Tiers ... just change the sequencing of the powers required for the Combos so as to avoid using Assassin Strike and Placate and Build Up" and would that be possible? Positron invoked the Cottage Rule for not wanting to reorganize the Powers on the Tiers, but then when I clarified that I was only talking about shifting around the attack power chaining (1-2-3) used in combat to actually DO the Combos, rather than shuffling Powers in their Tiers, there seemed to be some interest shown in that idea by Positron, Black Scorpion, Arbiter Hawk and Synapse (ie. The Powers People) and notes were taken (on the spot) as something they should look into.

My follow-up question about "Doing Something" with the Presence Pool's Fear Powers *immediately* invoked the Cottage Rule again ... but Positron said something VERY INTERESTING.

Positron said (and I'm paraphrasing from memory again, since this is 6 weeks later) that the Cottage Rule is far less stringent, and more likely to be "waived" for Power Pools (such as Presence, in this case) which are determined to be Underperforming and widely seen as "Gimped" by the playerbase as a whole, and especially when such negative views are deemed as reasoned and reasonable by the Devs.



What made this exchange all the more interesting is not only the context of the Before And After (as in, you really had to be there in order to appreciate everything being "said" during it), but also Positron's *tone* in how he said it ... which doesn't exactly come across all that well in plain text like this. The underlying subtext of Positron's *tone* in how he was saying that any changes to the Presence Pool and its Fear Powers was not only supportive of the points being made (that the Presence Pool Fear Powers were severely underpowered/gimped) but also of the broader notion that those Fear Powers were further structurally hampered by being "behind" a pair of Taunt Powers which you were required to take (one of) before "reaching" the Fear Powers. He was effectively "conceding" the point that these Pool Fear Powers were both "poorly placed" in the Presence Pool and "unfairly penalized" by a round of nerfs that happened (now) many years ago ... and he was quite supportive of the notion that "something should be done about that" and that that SOMETHING could very easily (as in, more easily than when dealing with a Primary or Secondary powerset) involve *breaking* the Cottage Rule in order to "make things better" than they have been for the Presence Pool. And it was the way he said it that made it sound like he (Positron) was rather in favor (privately, although he didn't come right out and state this at the time, or later, explicitly) of doing just that ... *breaking* the Cottage Rule so as to "liberate" the Presence Pool Fear Powers from the ghetto they've been in for so many years so as to make them relevant and useful again. I could tell, just by hearing him speak, that Positron very much appreciated that bit of Player Feedback at the Player Summit.



Now, to be *CLEAR* ... there was no commitment made at the time (or later on) to "do something" about the situation with the Presence Pool Fear Powers ... and honestly, I'd be surprised if they had, since Black Pebble was in the back of the room being all Frowny Faced and making sure no one said anything they shouldn't (which, to be fair, IS HIS JOB!). But with the *way* that Positron answered the question of "can anything be done for the Presence Pool Fear Powers?" I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that because of that bit of Feedback ... Live and In Person at the Player Summit ... that "doing something" about the Presence Pool gets put on the Development Schedule sometime this next year. Reading between the lines, I wouldn't be too surprised to learn (a year from now) that the Presence Pool is being broken up into Two Pools ... one for Fears and one for Taunts ... with each having a Ranged Single Target, a PBAoE, a Cone and a Target AoE power in them for Fear or Taunt. Or they might do something else entirely ... like combining the Taunt and Fear effects into all of the powers in the Presence Pool, such that they both Taunt AND Fear simultaneously.

My basic point is that I don't have any idea of exactly what the Powers Team *will do* about the Presence Pool ... but I get the idea that they're going to do SOMETHING about the situation, given the way that Positron very positively answered the question about the Pool.



Go Positron!

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

I think adding a fifth power would be a great idea. They could make it a PBAoE Toggle power that taunts and fears enemies around you.


...I'll be honest I just want a taunt aura for my non-Brutes/Tanks/odd Scrappers.

That's a good point. I did a little test run on mids, and for the equivalent of six slotting it, I get the same values of pulsar (completely unslotted -_- )

And Pulsar is a horrible power. (It's also a stun, not a fear.)

NOPE.

If you're going about a character based on fear, this would be the absolute last resort. Roll up a Mind troller or dom, a dark defender or corrupter, even a melee AT with Touch of Fear and Fear Incarnate. There's nothing alright in any sense of the word with the huge endurance cost, low magnitude, poor duration, low accuracy, and opportunity cost to reach the fear powers.

Even with concept on the line, I wouldn't touch these stinkers.