Just saw that. No clue what it means. The word "absorb" does not appear in the patch notes.
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
Some of the new powersets on the horizon contain an Absorb mechanic (think temporary hit points that don't actually get added to your bar). Instead of making a new category of enhancement, they jsut made all 'heal' sets 'heal/absorb'.
Yep. Basically "absorb" turns an amount of incoming damage into a pool of temporary HP from which additional damage will be deducted instead of your HP. And as BMA mentions, powers that do this will take heal/absorb enhancements, rather than have a category of their own.
The Defender proc from the "leaked" second wave of ATEs has a chance to grant +absorb, which is mostly why we have any idea what the mechanic does.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Just for comparison purposes, most other games that use what CoX is calling Aborb call it a "damage shield".
Choose Your Own Analogy!
Absorption is like:
-Power Word: Shield
-Temporary Hit Points
-Protoss Shields
-lots of other mechanics from other games that are less noteworthy
And yeah, they're just lumped into the same enhancement type as healing powers. Existing heal powers don't suddenly do absorption, though. It's more like when endmod and end drain enhancements got rolled together.
Or to describe it without resorting to an analogy:
Absorb is ablative armor. It takes the hit for you, then falls off.
@Roderick
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That could be confusing. In some games, a 'damage shield' is an aura around you that harms the enemy when they hit you.|
Originally Posted by Caulderone
Just for comparison purposes, most other games that use what CoX is calling Aborb call it a "damage shield".
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Originally Posted by Roderick
Or to describe it without resorting to an analogy:
Absorb is ablative armor. It takes the hit for you, then falls off. |
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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Oh, I didn't say I liked that some games call it a Damage Shield. As you noted, I think of those as reflective/reactive shields that do damage to an enemy attacker.|
Originally Posted by Ironblade
That could be confusing. In some games, a 'damage shield' is an aura around you that harms the enemy when they hit you.
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But, some do it anyway. I also used "most" when I meant "some" and apparently I can't spell Absorb correctly.
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Wait, is that how it actually works in its CoH incarnation? It absorbs BEFORE your resists are applied? That seems extremely silly, since it renders resists ~useless if the healing is absorbs.
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Originally Posted by Ironblade
That's what I would have called it, particularly since it's 'outside' of your damage resistance. |
That's what I've heard, which makes it a different kind of mechanic from extra hit points like Frostworks grants.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
Quote:
Hardly. Absorb reduces damage by whatever amount it reduces it by, and you resist what's left.
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Originally Posted by Plasma
Wait, is that how it actually works in its CoH incarnation? It absorbs BEFORE your resists are applied? That seems extremely silly, since it renders resists ~useless if the healing is absorbs.
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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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That makes it extremely weak, relative to healing.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
Hardly. Absorb reduces damage by whatever amount it reduces it by, and you resist what's left.
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Normally, you take damage after resist and then are healed, meaning each point of healing is healing "effective damage" of (1*(1-resists)).
So, say a tank has 2000 health and 65% resists. They take 5000 raw damage, which is -1750 health. They have 250 health, receive 1500 in healing, and are back at 1750/2000.
Now, consider the same as an absorb. They get a 1500 pt absorb, and they take 5000 raw damage. The absorb removes 1500, leaving 3500; they resist that down to 1225, leaving them with 775 health.
So, same raw # amount of healing / absorbing, but the heal leaves the tank with 1750 health, and the absorb shield leaves them with 775.
On the flip side, where there are no resists, heals and absorbs are effectively equal, except that absorbs can't overheal so they'd be preferable. (Although they could, conceivable, "expire", and you might be tempted to place absorbs on people they don't end up using, thus wasting animation times.)
Point being: for those to be balanced, absorbs really need to be applied after resists.
Moreover, absorbs being applied BEFORE resists screws up defense vs resistance enormously, as it means that a defense set with 45% defense would still be mitigating 90% of all damage (getting hit only 1/10th as much as they would be base), and getting the FULL BENEFIT of the absorbs (since no absorb is "used" on a miss, whereas a resist set at 90% resists would burn the entire absorb before mitigation applied.
In short, if this is really how it mechanically works, it should be strongly reconsidered. I can only point to one game (an mmo) that has absorb mechanics, and absorbs definitely are removed as a last step, after all other mitigation occurs. (ie, in said other game, if you take 1000 damage but have a cooldown up that is reducing damage 50%, you take 500 and THAT is the amount counted against your absorb shield).
It's not meant to be like healing. There's no reason for it to be on par.
It's its own mechanic that happens to also use the same enhancements. Don't let that fake you into thinking it needs to be "equal scale" with healing.
We don't know what the magnitude of Absorb powers is going to be that the enhancements will be boosting, or how often we'll be able to apply them.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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True, but we don't know how Absorb is going to work yet - i.e. it might be one of the powers in a resist-based set so there would be no way for a defense-based character to have it. Or it may be an ally buff available in a defender set. Dunno yet.|
Originally Posted by Plasma
Moreover, absorbs being applied BEFORE resists screws up defense vs resistance enormously, as it means that a defense set with 45% defense would still be mitigating 90% of all damage (getting hit only 1/10th as much as they would be base), and getting the FULL BENEFIT of the absorbs (since no absorb is "used" on a miss, whereas a resist set at 90% resists would burn the entire absorb before mitigation applied.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
We don't know what the magnitude of Absorb powers is going to be that the enhancements will be boosting, or how often we'll be able to apply them.
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Nega Pendragon in the Magisterium trial has it.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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Oh, I know. Actually ShadowHunter gets it too, when he turns into a dog/wolf thing.|
Originally Posted by Ironblade
Well, the one place we've seen it so far, it's pretty scruffy.
Nega Pendragon in the Magisterium trial has it. |
But I figure there are strong limits to what we should infer about how it will work for players based on those early examples. While not an example of new mechanics, per-se, Cimerorans looked like they were going to be early indicators of what Shield Defense might be like, but would actually have been pretty awful to use for that projection.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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The magnitude of the absorb is somewhat irrelevant to the balance, and one could argue (especially in a mixed set) that absorbs don't need to be on the same scale as heals. (I'd suggest they should be, but that doesn't matter.)|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
It's not meant to be like healing. There's no reason for it to be on par.
It's its own mechanic that happens to also use the same enhancements. Don't let that fake you into thinking it needs to be "equal scale" with healing. We don't know what the magnitude of Absorb powers is going to be that the enhancements will be boosting, or how often we'll be able to apply them. |
What matters is that, if absorbs ablate before resists, then absorbs are up 10x as effective for a defensive set vs a resist set. (And while real-world cases won't be 10x, there will be real comparisons that are >5x)
I think it would be better to compare Absorb to Resistance at this stage.
The problem with healing is that it's completely ineffective if you're at full HP, and it doesn't help with an alpha strike.
Resistance and Absorb are effective at full HP and help against alpha strikes.
If a tanker is at 2000 HP and 65% resistance, adding on 1000 "absorb" would be the same as raising it to around 70.2% resistance. Nothing to major.
Take a tanker that's at 3500 HP and 90% resistance, adding 1000 "absorb" would be the same as raising it to around 90.2% resistance. I don't know why I was expecting more.
Add 10,000 absorb and you get 92.2% resistance. That's a bit better, since it's 32% damage off. I doubt they're giving away 10,000 absorb buffs though.
Maybe if the amount of absorb scaled with the players resistance...but it's too complicated and unnecessary to implement. There's also no way they're scaling a buff from one player to work differently on each player either, I wouldn't want to even try and code that.
Absorb could also be compared to +HP, with (Absorb*(1-Res)) being the +HP added, but even then you get small amounts. The first tanker with 2000 HP would have it's HP raised to 2350 HP. The 2nd Tanker with 3500 HP would only get 3600 HP. The 3rd tanker would go from 3500 HP to 4500 HP, which is actually useful, but again, it takes +10,000 absorb to get that.
Aside from all that, I agree with Plasma that it's not balanced for resistance and defense.
Here's hoping absorb was well thought out and includes resistance, unless they do something silly like drop your defense to the negatives for the amount of time absorb survives. As in, absorb doesn't factor resistance, and everyone has a 95% chance to hit you while you're in it. If that's the case, they better make the absorb values extremely high.
Unless resistance is factored, I don't see myself enjoying this mechanic.
@Sentry4 @Sentry 4
PvP Redux is discontinued, for obvious reasons. Thanks to everyone who helped and joined.
Ya more hit points no matter how small just suck and I would not take them no mater what.
Rage quit
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However, healing is reactive, and so it is also never entirely wasted. If you spend animation time on casting an absorb, and then it goes unused, it is wasted. (This assumes the absorb has a time limit, which is the case in every other game I've played with that.)|
Originally Posted by Sentry4
I think it would be better to compare Absorb to Resistance at this stage.
The problem with healing is that it's completely ineffective if you're at full HP, and it doesn't help with an alpha strike. |
I'm not saying one is better than the other, just saying that each can be wasted.
With what little information there was, I don't believe it was stated that Absorb ignores resists or has damage calculated first before taking into account resists (or defenses).
It would seem to me it'd be easier to balance it around taking both defense and resistance into account the same way heals and other Max HP powers do. Then again we do have the rebirth destiny that provides a static +HP value rather than a % across all AT's. 50 HP to a 3500 HP tank vs. 50 HP to a 1000 HP controller when the other branch of the tree has a regen % that works off a characters max HP.
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Resistance primarily comes from toggles that take endurance even when not necessary?|
Originally Posted by Plasma
However, healing is reactive, and so it is also never entirely wasted. If you spend animation time on casting an absorb, and then it goes unused, it is wasted. (This assumes the absorb has a time limit, which is the case in every other game I've played with that.)
I'm not saying one is better than the other, just saying that each can be wasted. |
Haha
but honestly, absorb looks more like a +res shield with a timer, like Sonic Barrier, or +HP like frostwork. You don't see your friend at red HP and think "I need to absorb him before he dies". Rather, you Absorb Shield/Frostwork/Sonic barrier -before- the damage.
That's what I meant, it's preemptive.
It's difficult to compare Sonic Barrier or Frostwork to Heal other. It's not the smoothest comparison.
@Sentry4 @Sentry 4
PvP Redux is discontinued, for obvious reasons. Thanks to everyone who helped and joined.
FYI - I'm about 90% positive that Absorb inherits a player's resistance. Its basically a second set of HP that you lose before your main HP total, and your resistance affects it as well - I can test this with the defender ATO2 Proc on beta later.
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Formally Dragos_Bahtiam - Abbreviate to DSL - Warning, may contain sarcasm
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Originally Posted by Shubbie
Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.
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I apparently should get back in the habit of reading patch notes.
Did they change anything else when they changed the heal powers to be "heal/absorb"?
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