Is Superior Invisibility's endurance cost a bug?

Superior Invisibility, which uses 1.04 endurance per second and 0.53 at the ED cap of 3 SOs, seems more expensive in endurance than it should be.

A) I remember a patch a while back that adjusted incorrect and too expensive endurance costs. I'm not sure if this was one of the powers adjusted or to what.

B) It really doesn't seem worth an endurance cost higher than 2 applications of Shadow Fall or Time's Juncture or the same as Enervating Field.

Sure, the power has some benefits, but the benefits are extremely limited.

1) Any stealth radius over 65ft is wasted because the special enemies that can see farther usually negate stealth entirely, such as Rikti Drones.

2) The controller stealth cap cuts it almost in half in pvp anyway. Anybody with a single perception buff can then see the controller a long way off, perhaps beyond the controller's own perception. This should be considered a bug since the single best stealth power is not even close to what it should be in pvp, but that's a different topic.

3) It doesn't provide any more defense than the power stealth from the concealment pool.

4) It doesn't provide anything but stealth radius and a small amount of defense, unlike powers such as Steamy Mist and Shadow Fall which have half the endurance cost of SI and provide more always on defense and 15% resistance to each of 3 exotic damage types AND ARE AOE.

5) The stalker power Hide provides about the same benefit, at least in PVE, but doesn't cost any endurance.


Sure, Superior Invisibility provides stealth that is easily high enough for all but special enemies and doesn't suppress in combat, but that does not seem like it earns it one of the highest endurance costs of any toggle power ever.
Just look at Shadow Fall and Steamy Mist. Combine those 2 on a team and your WHOLE LEAGUE has 70ft of stealth(more than needed for most of the game), much more defense and a LOT of resistance to 5(?) damage types, all for half the endurance cost per character using those powers and costing the league nothing as far as endurance.

I think Superior Invisibility either must be bugged or needs an adjustment down to 0.52 endurance per second, maximum 0.66 endurance per second(double Stealth's cost).






Now, I know there are certain arguments that will be used to say "its endurance cost is fair and right where it should be", but a couple of the above points, namely the ones about Steamy Mist and Shadow Fall, refute some of them.

1) Illusion Control has Deceive, a confuse power, to go with Superior Invisibility.
So? Does that hurt Arachnos Widows who go down the Fortunata path and get Mask Presence, 40ft stealth, plus mez protection and high defense with very high scaling resistance and the exact same confuse power all while doing more damage?
Confuse also doesn't help you get experience without fighting. You still need to do damage to each and every enemy to get experience from them. It may be safe, but it's not the fastest or best way to lots of experience without a lot of damage(which drains endurance a lot too) to back it up.

By the way, confuse can be used for the same thing regardless of having stealth or not. It pretty much is stealth, if cast from far enough away which is easy due to its long range of 80ft.

The argument that they have confuse doesn't justify the huge endurance cost.

2) It doesn't suppress in combat.
Yes it does, but not "actual" suppression. First, the defense benefit is cut in half(which is the same benefit as the cheaper Concealment.Stealth in all situations) as soon as you attack or are attacked. Second, every enemy that is part of the same spawn group will immediately notice you as soon as you use anything on them besides confuse.
Pretty much you just avoid extra aggro which is easily already provided by being aware of your surroundings. It's not exclusive to Superior Invisibility.
Most ambushes can also see right through your stealth, and they follow you through the entire mission.

Lack of suppression in combat is both practically untrue and not worth the endurance cost when other characters get the same benefit without using endurance at all through obvious and simple strategy.

3) You can stealth missions.
First, this is not exclusive to SI because even Stealth alone can do this so long as you keep some distance from enemies, even Teleport can do this without even being hidden by porting past enemy groups.
Second, you're not getting experience for the enemies you pass by.
Third, most ambushes can still see right through your stealth.
Fourth, specially perceptive enemies can still see you.



Superior Invisibility is the single most expensive buff toggle I can think of. It really should not be that expensive, especially considering the comparatively little it can do versus other powers and what players can do with more than half a brain.

Superior Invisibility must be bugged or in need of an endurance cost adjustment to about half of what it currently costs.
It would still cost more than any other stealth toggle by about double, before and after enhancements, but it would be more in line with the benefits it provides.
It would definitely improve the low level capabilities of Illusion Control which frequently drains my endurance dry before and after DOs.
It would also make it easier to use secondary powers and more of the primary powers, without having to toggle off SI to be able to stay in a fight that is guaranteed to last longer than the already intended length of fights for every archetype(because controllers are slow and Illusion is slower).



Why is it so expensive to use Superior Invisibility for such obviously little benefit above other cheaper powers and strategies?

Ok, it has to be a bug.
I HATE the fact that every group of just 3 enemies on lowest difficulty uses up all ym endurance in about 30 seconds, unless all I use is confuse and let them take out themselves.

Even if I don't use Superior Invisibility, the default 3 powers(Spectral Wounds, Deceive and Blind) take all my endurance(before slotted with at least one DO endurance reduction) all too fast.



I have always hated the way this game handles the enhancements we are supposed to use.
And the developers wonder WHY we don't use things like range enhancements?

I'll tell you why. There is no room for them.

1) We start out with a pitiful one enhancement slot per power, which does not increase very fast and certainly always lags well behind our amount of powers.

2) Power Numbers, as far as accuracy and endurance and recharge, do not scale with level. They always suck.

3) Every power needs at least one SO worth of accuracy(enemy affecting powers of course) and one SO of endurance reduction, but most are made to need at least 2 SOs of accuracy and 2 SOs of endurance reduction.

4) The more recharge you slot the more endurance you need, at least somewhat, so slotting recharge makes the endurance reduction demands higher.
(It seems endurance cost is more tied to recharge than anything else like actual effectiveness of the power, which is stupid.)

5) In a power that has damage as its primary function, enhancing for any secondary effect is usually a stupid move. The only time enhancing for anything besides damage is a good thing is when the mez effect of the power is more valuable or the power has another valuable effect like resistance or defense buffs.



Here is my standard basic slotting for every attack, minimum:
2 accuracy, 2 endurance reduction, 1 recharge, 1 damage

I need accuracy and endurance reduction, so those never change. I slot 1 recharge in one because almost every power is purposefully designed too slow, but I can't slot more recharge because I don't have the slots. I slot 1 damage because damage is the most important aspect of an attack, after accuracy and sustainable endurance usage.


Here is the average slotting for every toggle:
2 endurance reduction, 0-3 main effect(resistance/defense/to-hit debuff)

Too many toggles, like Superior Invisibility, require too much endurance so they get 3 endurance reduction, but I would slot 4-6 endurance reduction if it would work in toggles like Superior Invisibility.







I think every power needs to be rebalanced to need maximum of one SO accuracy(maybe 2 SOs for incarnate stuff and other +5-10 level enemies) and maximum of 1 SO endurance reduction, period.

1) They're "needed" which means they are guaranteed to take slots away from "choices" we have.

2) Who do you think is going to not slot accuracy and endurance reduction, especially in sets that suck endurance like a starving animal such as Illusion Control?

3) You would not need the stupid low level inherent accuracy buff if you just raised the base accuracy of everything so that they needed less enhancement. You also would not need inherent fitness with stamina at level 2 if endurance cost wasn't so horrible before endurance reduction SOs with plenty of slots to put them in.
(Which still isn't enough, so I would have completely hated Illusion Control before both of these additions.)



We have plenty of enhancements to choose from, all of which we will want to use to fill 3 slots each.
How about you reduce the "need" for the "necessary" accuracy and endurance reduction enhancements so we can actually "choose" other enhancements to slot?

It's like you designed the game to focus on combat and then designed most of the power sets to completely fail at combat until maximum level when they can finally be fully enhanced with HOs to a "satisfactory level" instead of a "super" power level.


If you want to see where you got the balance and fun right in this game, look at brutes. They're fun because Fury makes up for the lack of slots to put damage enhancements in and the fact that they get great damage and great defenses.
You gave the melee archetypes everything and left the support archetypes to suffer, mostly, because they "can affect others".

I think melee archetypes, with all their high defense/health/resistance/damage, should not have mez protection and the ranged and support archetypes are the ones who should get mez protection because of their lack of damage/resistance/defense/health.
It's the non-melee archetypes that really need mez protection.

Also, why is it that minions get 1 magnitude mez protection, lieutenants get 2 mag, bosses get 3 mag and so on yet players, who are supposedly boss class(for Fury calculation for example) get 0, ZERO, magnitude mez protection unless they're a melee character???
No wonder we feel a lot less "super" than "ordinary thug" NPCs.







So in summary:

1) Reduce accuracy and endurance reduction enhancement NECESSITY across the board to ONE single origin enhancement, at most, per power.
OR
Recalculate accuracy and endurance usage based on "effectiveness per animation time", such as "damage per animation second", and actual effectiveness in comparison to other powers(like Superior Invisibility is about the same as Stealth yet costs 3 times as much) rather than recharge time and "arbitrary expensiveness".
(Actually, you should do both so that sets actually function well rather than getting as bad on endurance as Illusion Control or Radiation Emission. It's funny that even though melee archetypes have a lot more toggles they still use a lot less endurance, while doing more damage and surviving much easier.)

2) Give every player boss class magnitude 3 mez protection, minimum.
(Players should probably be considered at least Elite Boss level though, with the same mez protection Elite Boss NPCs get.)

3) You probably should take mez protection away from melee archetypes and give it to the support and ranged ones, or rebalance support and range all to compensate for the obvious lack of everything(much more defense, much more resistance, much more health, more damage) melee archetypes have.



Edit:
Actually, you should essentially do for PVE what you did for PVP(but without the mistakes) so that every power set combination is viable and fun, though not every build because it would still be possible to avoid taking damage powers or whatever weird idea.

There is a reason first person shooter games are so fun, despite the obvious lack of variety or customization in powers. They are so well balanced, with players being much more powerful than NPCs(yet still needing to be careful), that players don't ever think about number balance. They just have fun and can work out strategies to overcome even the most powerful weapons and enemies.

This should be in Suggestions and Ideas

Solution: Don't run Superior Invisibility all the time. Are you off your nut? It's practically worthless once you're in combat anyway (you lose a very minor defense buff by turning it off).

flash is a good "oh ****" power, i dont really use it on my ill cold but it has saved me a few times (its also a mass hold not a mass sleep)

leveling up my ill cold was bloody awful because of the low dmg output, once i got heat loss end problems started to dissipate and now that i have a fully decked build with 218% rech, perma heat loss means i have 0 end problems and perma PA means i rarely take aggro

the phantasm ive found kind of meh, he actually doesnt seem to do all that much dmg and is your only pet that can actually die, but he is great for keeping the aggro while your PA is resummoning especially since he spawns his own decoy

just using blind->spectral wounds is prolly the best attack chain you will have till you get epic powers (and even then its pretty much one of the best attack chains illusions has)

You're making the mistake of comparing powers in a vacuum. Don't do that. Sets are balanced as a whole, not on a power-by-power basis.

One of my first Heroes (and my oldest remaining) was an Illusion/Storm Controller. The endurance is fairly heavy, but it's definitely managable (and I did this with only SOs! no IOs back then). Hilariously enough, it violated your rule of needing 1/2 SOs worth of endurance reducation (I slotted 2 acc, and then either went 3 damage 1 recharge, or 2/2 split), and Ill/Storm is hardly an... endurance fiendly powerset combo. Oh, and I ran SI pretty much 24/7

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

(Edit: I don't have IO access. I'm limited to SOs, as are most players other than VIP or those willing to pay for a "psuedo-subscription" now. So perma-PA is a myth for me and them.)
First, this isn't just a change "for my own selfish wants". This is a change to the design of this game that NEEDS to happen for everyone to have more fun and have the options given to us actually be "options".

How many times have you ever actually had to decide "should I add another accuracy or should I add a hold duration to Total Focus?" ?
That "choice" never comes up because you either need accuracy or you don't. The same situation happens with endurance reduction. You slot as much as you need and then you "use the leftovers" for actual enhancement choices.


And you can't tell em that you find it possible to play with only the base single slot in every power. Try that sometime, even just below level 12 when it is guaranteed to be the way you play.

City of Heroes is the only game I know of that makes attacks and other abilities unsustainable and weaker than necessary unless you "make choices" to add to them.


This game is supposed to be about "which power do I want to make better?" and not "which power do I want to make 'not horrible' while leaving the others worthless?" as it actually plays.









Also Kitsune,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight You're making the mistake of comparing powers in a vacuum. Don't do that. Sets are balanced as a whole, not on a power-by-power basis.

That is the problem. You CAN'T design powers as a set that way because it will break the powers individually, especially when paired with pool powers.
Imagine if Power Boost was allowed to function with toggles for the full "always on" duration of a toggle, or imagine if any other power combination purposefully nerfed was allowed to work again because they balanced as a set rather than individually. It would be a broken mess.

And anyway, I'm not even comparing different sets. I'm talking about the performance, as a whole, of Illusion Control.



What am I supposed to do with Superior Invisibility?

....run to the end of a mission and "not defeat anybody" and somehow complete a mission that always requires defeating at least one group, especially on newspaper and radio missions that require clearing the end room for a blinky mission?
....not use it to avoid aggro from extra groups other than the one I am attacking because it would cost too much endurance to attack and use it?
....not use it at all because I have to escort an NPC that can't follow me stealthed, while others can, even though it would work "in the story" because I would be speaking "turn left", "keep following me or I'll kick your butt" and other directions even while stealthed that would let the NPC know I'm still there?
....use only Deceive(confuse) with it, because the endurance cost of using anything else with a 1 endurance per second toggle is much too high, until the last guy is dead(after a really long time because they miss each other so often and do so little damage to each other often) and then only get xp for the last guy which is a LOT LOT LOT slower than every other character gets xp?


Either they purposefully designed Illusion Control to be super slow and painful to use or they designed it to work ina game that is not City of Heroes's combat based gameplay.

When has this game ever rewarded "non-combat" gameplay and avoiding combat?
When has this game ever encouraged avoiding combat?
When has every ambush in the entire game not seen through stealth and followed players everywhere in the mission?




They need to admit that they made mistakes, like they did with PVP originally and with the most recent changes, and make an effort to improve things.

The first thing they can do is make accuracy and endurance reduction less necessary so we don't waste at least 1/3 of our slots on just those.
The second thing is they should either make non-combat gameplay or make every power set viable in combat.

Those are not suggestions. They are necessary to the design of this game since it is already combat based.




FYI:

1) I don't use flash. It sucks.
1a) Flash can and does miss often, requiring more accuracy than normal powers and leaving me wide open for far too long.
1b) Flash has such a long recharge that it can't even be made close to "half up-time". That means it is absolutely useless as an "everyday use" power.

I don't need panic buttons because I should not be panicking. Seriously, do we panic every few minutes in real life? Do we see a need for 911 every 4 minutes, or even every 4 hours?
No, we avoid the situations where we would tend to panic or need emergency help.

2) Flash sucks compared to its Peacebringer cousin Pulsar that is actually made correctly and a lot better.



3) I don't care if you insult me or laugh at what I post or whatever.

I have given this enough thought, along the lines of "what would make this game more fun?", "how can they change the powers to keep what they do and what the archetypes are meant to do the same while making them as fun and viable as they need to be?" and "where does paper beat scissors seemingly inexplicably all too often?".

I came to the conclusion that melee archetypes have it much too good(coming from someone who loves playing brutes, and Fortunatas, for that reason).
1) They get much higher defenses and resistance and health and regen(which is proportional to health).
2) They get practically unbreakable mez protection on top of #1, not just "mag 3 protection" or some other basic number like the NPCs get. They regularly get 10-16 mag protection to everything that matters and then some.
(Honestly, mez protection powers should cost a full 1 endurance per second, at least, because they're 10 times as valuable as any other toggle.)
3) Melee powers, especially on melee archetypes, get great damage. Scrappers get often enough critical hits for double damage. Brutes get Fury for consistent up to 200% damage boost. Stalkers get guaranteed criticals at least periodically. Every other character that uses melee powers gets high numbers for them(and blasters get the ability to use some attacks while mezzed, unique among squishies).


You know what everybody forgets about ranged and support characters?
1) They can't attack or use support powers while mezzed, and every offensive toggle turns off(and waits for the annoyingly long recharge).
2) Their support powers affect everyone but them as much or more than they affect the support character.

You have melee archetypes that can solo things the support and ranged characters need a team for. They just become godly with a team while support and ranged characters finally become "normal" while teamed.
(Yes, you can't tell me that a support or ranged character becomes better than a melee character with the same buffs. They have a lot more to start with and then you just stack buffs on top. Support and ranged characters are just catching up finally when on teams, and they still need mez protection to do so.)


So, either melee characters need a sever nerf, with a small buff to ranged and support characters, or ranged and support characters need a huge buff, which could mostly be done with the enhancement necessity changes I posted here that would affect everyone equally.





Tell me?
How do you judge a character's strength in this game?

Is it how fast they go through enemies?
Is it how much "reward per time" they get?

Is it how safe they are stealthed and using only confuse when they could be just as safe by sitting in Ouroboros hiding from the world and never playing the game while getting about the same "reward per time" rate?

The latter doesn't sound very fun being forced into. It certainly is not what most people view as "fun" and "awesome performance".
At best, stealth and confuse is a "novelty", outside of PVP, because it is fun to say "stop hitting yourself" a few times until you have done it 1 million times and would actually like to feel like a "superhero" or "supervillain" for once.





You know what would solve the problem? I do:

Make confuse grant full xp to the player for any enemy the confused enemy defeats. They kill each other slower than the players do(aside from Illusion Control and other rare situations) so they wouldn't get more xp. It would just be more cautious.


If you don't want to do that then you should find a way to actually make "avoiding combat" rewarding and more fun, without making it annoyingly more complex and risky.(I HATE ambushes that see through stealth, especially on the missions they just keep coming and too fast. It just breaks all immersion and "suspension of disbelief" and throws the character concept of stealth out the window. Rikti Drones and other such enemies also do that.)
If you are going to have stealth then you need to make it work as advertised(no aggro, even from other enemies in the same group as your target), or you need to remove most of the other "sacrifices" you baked into the powers the stealthed player is using because they are just "adding insult to injury" at that point.






Edit:
FYI, nerfing melee archetypes wouldn't even make them unplayable. At worst, it would encourage them to team, thus giving support and ranged characters the help they need for those annoyingly difficult ambushes, mezzing bosses and Elite Boss/Archvillain/Hero enemies.
Something is seriously wrong when melee archetypes can commonly and easily solo Elite Bosses and, all too often, Giant Monsters while ranged and support characters need "the best build with the best power sets" to even get close.
I had an old Willpower/Super Strength Tanker that I almost soloed Babbage with just SOs. I could keep Babbage at or below 50% health, after getting him there myself, but I just could not bring him below 5% for some reason. Maybe I just got tired after 5 minutes and had to renew my focus.
I haven't yet tried to solo Babbage on a Willpower Brute with SOs, but I bet I could finish him of then.


Edit 2:
I do use Deceive, but I don't get xp if I don't use the other powers. I also get less xp per unit of time than other characters even when I use confuse, unless I skip to the end of the mission(if possible) and do the absolute minimum(feeling real "super" about "running and hiding" rather than "having my way with enemies that can't see me").

Spectral Terror comes too late int he set to be very useful when it is needed most, at lower levels with fewer enhancements. It also aggros everything and sends one enemy at a time running out of the AoE fear to snap out of it and take pot-shots from range. It just makes stealth useless.
Illusion needs an actual AoE immobilize or something to keep the enemy in range of Spectral Terror, but it doesn't have that.
Sure, you can use confuse on the guy who ran out, but it's still painfully slow and requires a lot of attention and endurance to defeat as fast as you can as well. Other characters don't have that much trouble or at least defeat foes much faster, earning faster rewards.

And that only works if the enemies are susceptible to fear and no enemy has a leadership power.

As for Phantasm, he is too stupid right now to be of much use. He just pushes enemies out of Spectral Terror's fear AoE and gets killed. He also comes much too late to help the poor low level or exemplared performance.
(I absolutely hate exemplaring for Ouroboros arcs because I need to get help before starting them if I need help. I lose most of my effectiveness as well and all the SOs degrade to less than what they should be individually at the level I am exemplared to. Essentially, I end up needing more accuracy SOs while exemplared than I needed when actually at that level.)

Here is the heart of the problem with the numbers of this game:

Certain numbers are binary(on or off, good enough or not good enough) while others have gradations(slow, faster, fastest).

Accuracy is binary.
You either have enough accuracy to hit every time(or at least as often as possible) or you don't. So, players enhance to a "minimum amount" of accuracy for every situation they would get into.

Endurance is binary.
as long as you have enough endurance to keep everything you need/want active and activate powers then you don't need to worry. Players just enhance endurance reduction and modification as much as they need to be sustainable then ignore it.

Recharge is both binary and has gradations.
You don't need recharge most of the time. You just use some to make things faster. Sure, some powers encourage slotting to the ED cap to make them "perma", but it's not necessary and sometimes not possible even then. You can have "good enough" but it's also rarely "not good enough".

Damage has gradations.
Powers are all designed to do a basic amount of damage, if they do damage at all. They'll defeat enemies if you can survive long enough to do so. More damage just means "faster".



Essentially, there is no choice whether you enhance for accuracy and endurance or not. You either have enough or you don't.
That's not a choice and not fun. It just takes away from other choices that actually are choices.

Choosing whether to enhance for damage or recharge or mez duration or resistance debuff are all choices and vary wildly. There are reasons for each one that make them at least as valuable as any other choice.
It's the same choice somebody makes when they choose either a defense based armor power set or a resistance based set. They each have advantages and disadvantages.



There is only disadvantage to accuracy and endurance. You either have enough or the disadvantage of not having enough.
And, you still have to find a way to slot the actual "choices" of enhancements.





Now, if they wanted to make accuracy and endurance gradient choices they could change how they work.

Accuracy could be changed from "hit or miss" to "how much of the damage hits", like 75% accuracy would mean the attack hits for 75% damage.
That avoids that annoying "MISS" with a PbAoE in the face of the enemy while making it much easier to balance.

Endurance could be changed to work in a similar metering way to recharge. In the same way that weaker powers have such a short recharge as to be negligible, weaker powers that are used often could have no endurance cost so that they could be used at all times.
That would eliminate the issue of "no endurance = dead" for both players and NPCs. They could still fight for their lives even if they use a big endurance crash nuke.
The stronger powers would drain endurance still, making slotting for endurance reduction still worthwhile, while making the crashing nuke powers more commonly used.

As for toggles, the ones that affect only the user, and do not detoggle when mezzed, should probably be made auto powers for 3 reasons.
1) They're always on anyway, especially for melee archetypes with mez protection.
2) It would reduce the "particle effects overload" of the game as well as network lag somewhat. It's one less thing to track. The graphical effects could all be rolled into the remaining toggle powers such as aggro toggles, as customization options possibly, s players can keep them if they choose.
3) It would make aggro toggles easier to pick out and check to see if they are still active, without looking at the power trays.


I think there are a lot of changes for this game that would only improve it, and some, like the idea of changing "beneficial self only toggles" to auto powers, are long overdue.
Both of the above ideas actually work out well for the competing superhero games, making their combat fun and never "I'm held so I'm dead".







I truly just want CoH to be the best it can be.

As for a response to the Original Poster: I would love to see the endurance cost of Superior Invisibility reduced, but it is not nearly as bad as you describe.

First, comparing SI to Steamy Mist, Arctic Mist or Shadowfall isn't really a proper comparison. Those powers provide half-stealth instead of full stealth. They work great from a short distance away, but you can't /e dance right in the face of most foes the way you can with SI or GI. To reach the stealth cap with those powers, you need more stealth, like Super Speed or a Stealth IO in a travel power or Sprint. When you combine the endurance cost of both Steamy Mist and Super Speed, the endurance cost is nearly that of SI -- SI is 1.04 per second, Steamy Mist+Super Speed is 0.975 per second.

You really shouldn't fight with SI running until you have higher levels of Recovery. The defense is cut in half and the endurance cost doesn't merit the small benefit you get. SI works great to give you a chance to Deceive a foe or two, and then throw out PA or an AoE control. Then drop out of SI to do your attacks. If your secondary has some kind of endurance or Recovery buff (like Rad's AM or Cold's Heat Loss), it makes running SI easier. But with some proper management, the endurance situation can be managed without having to slot 2 EndRdx in each attack. Just turn it off once you have used your first attack or control that disrupts the invisibility.

Other then the Aura stealths, which as said before arn't full stealth, people don't run with them on all the time. I can say that for my dark armor characters that SI is far better on end. And SI is for stealthing what about that do you not get. Either stealth to a boss you have to kill, avoid aggroing till your ready, or like I did a travel power. Mine is Illusion/Kinetics and as soon as I got SI I could travel without being seen and could stealth TF/SF before anyone else. You get SI at a low lvl so it makes me think it was to help you with how back in the day it was dangerous to get from point A to point B. Many people would take hover just so they were safe low level and take forever to get where they needed to be. Illusion is a old set of course it could get some refinement but complaining about a set that is really easy on end use. Summon pets then do what you want till you need to summon them again. Oh for reference I started playing the game with the release of City of Villians. The game has gotten way way way easier since then and endurance management was a big thing you were supposed to have to deal with.

PS:SI is the best stealth power out there and it is by far better then all the other self stealths endurance wise.

And why do you like to spam post after post after post in a row?

SI isn't that great when you consider how stealth works in this game. It suffers because of the "200ft stealth" when it really only needs 65ft because that is how it works in almost every situation.


I post multiple times, rather than making a LOT more edits, because I think of other things to post. It keeps things a bit easier to read and makes it less easy to miss things I would have edited in.



Edit:
I, for one, keep powers like the Dark Armor stealth on, same as Energy Cloak and Stealth, if I have the endurance simply because they add defense in addition to making it easier to start combat on my terms.
Superior Invisibility is even more likely to stay on for combat because of the fact that it does not suppress the stealth. I can avoid additional aggro from close groups and ambushes without "heat-seeking noses".

Here's why I believe SI is as expensive as it is:

1) It is CHEAPER than pool power invisibility and BETTER.

2) SI hides you from virtually every mob in the game including snipers. The only things it can't hide you from are things that ignore stealth entirely... which consists of 3 types of mobs: Rularru Watchers, Rikti Drones and Knives of Artemis (who are going extinct it seems thanks to the talons of vengeance).

3) SI let's you get close enough without aggro to any of the mobs who ignore stealth to Deceive them and walk right past them. Deceived mobs do not alert those who cannot see you.

4) You can turn it off. In fact the prohibitive cost indicates you are likely intended to do so. It's not intended to be a "turn on and leave on forever" toggle. If there happens to be a nearby mob tough it out and pop a blue for that one and leave on SI if you have to or simply adjust your position so as not to aggro them.

There's really nothing wrong with the cost. What is wrong is how you seem to want to use it. SI + Deceive when dealing with those 3 mob types lets you bypass ANYTHING. There is NOTHING you can't bypass through use of those two powers. Stealth won't hide you in cramped quarters where you can't help but get close to mobs. At least not without stacking either an IO or super speed. Stacking those two powers would cost you .79 end per sec unenhanced and won't hide you from snipers.

Ultimately you're acting like a monkey crying that his hand is stuck in a jar by a fistful of cookies. The answer to any end issues you may be having is to simply turn off SI once you engage your foes. It's what I did before IO's were a twinkle in the devs eyes.

If all else fails you can still either spring for VIP or an invention license to use IO's and build for recovery. Unlike you my ill/rad can run SI all the time without endurance issues even when running ALL her other toggles (enervating field, radiation infection, hover, temporary invulnerability, combat jumping) Though to be fair I DO turn off SI when I hit EM Pulse because my recovery stops for a lil bit and I am still running my debuff toggles.