More Pool Power Changes

No against enemies that are mezzed I mean.

You mean will debuff/damage toggles stop affecting mezzed enemies? No, they will continue to affect enemies.

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

Are you entirely sure this is true? I've never noticed my tracked stats decreasing beyond my own self toggles when I am mezzed. Group wide toggle buffs like leadership powers and dispersion bubble still seem to be providing their benefits when I am slept but the toggle user is not.

Have you tested this or are you simply assuming it works this way?

This is how it was described by one of the developers when we got the changes. People brought up how unintuitive it was, and were told that it was a limitation of the engine.

If you read the wiki, it also seems to agree:

"In PvE, a suppressed toggle will stop providing all buffs except mez protection. For example, a Force Field Defender is hit with a Rikti Mentalist's Mezmerize. The Defender is now sleeping and her Dispersion Bubble is no longer providing her with any defense. It is still providing mez protection and if the Defender is next hit with a Dominate she will not be held. In this situation, the Defender's teammates will still benefit from the defense and mez protection so long as they themselves remain un-mezzed."

If it doesn't work this way, then it was described to me (and several other people) wrong, and is documented on the wiki wrong, as well.

Now, after discussing it with someone else and really looking at Soothing Aura (the main issue it came up about), Soothing Aura might be exempt from this just because a Heal is not a continuing effect that can be "canceled" (like actual buffs) because it doesn't have a duration. But I don't know, testing will probably need to be done. >_>

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

Technically they can flag powers to ignore mezzing effects (Sleep, Stun, Hold) - they did so for Entropic Aura, and the Defiance powers for blasters (T1, T2 primary and T1 secondary powers). So it COULD do that, but I've seen ZERO indication it was done.

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

Trickshooter and the wiki are correct on how it works. If you take a look at one of the powers on City of Data(Dispersion Bubble for example) you'll notice the defense portion flagged(The red X icon) to cancel on sleep/hold/stun. This occurs per target, as the buff is cast per target. So if the target, whether the player who has the buff or an ally being hit by it, the effect will suppress on them.

Just to make sure, I did a test in-game with a ninja/sonic MM and an AE custom boss that only had mesmerize. I set myself to be invincible and untargetable, set the pet to passive, and let the boss have at it.

As you can see in the following screenshots, the pet has the resistance buff while normal, and has it removed while slept even though it's still within the radius(The Icon is still in his buff bar, too).

Screenshot 1: Without Sleep
Screenshot 2: With Sleep


Note: I do not have a pain dom corruptor, so I can't test that one for sure. However, Supress Pain's Heal does have that same flag according to City of Data

When nothing critical is affected, it goes to the bottom of the priority heap. But when it prevents a new power working, it jumps to the top.

It may be it's already fixed in issue 24, and a developer does actually know what he is talking about!

Otherwise, if fixing isn't possible, then you simply have to change the new power to work in a different way.

One way or another, by the time issue 24 hits live, this power will either buff all self heals, buff NO self heals (included in the description), or be changed for a different power.

That is amazing. I never knew that my ally's toggle buffs ceased working on me when I got mezzed. Thanks all for the edumacation.

Seriously, I was beginning to wonder if I'd had it wrong all these years because no one else was agreeing.

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

This is huge. For many of my toons, it free's up even more powers.

Probably because it's a 'in the heat of battle' thing.

What, really? I was just coming here to complain about how the changes to Fighting didn't make me any more willing to burn a power pick on an attack I don't want just to get a toggle I want, but... If that's true, then can I pick Tough without having to pick Kick or Punch?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Nope. You have to pick either Kick or Boxing. But unlike now where if you want Weave, you have to pick 2 powers (like Kick and Tough), when the changes roll in you can just pick Kick and Weave.

Other outliers: If you like Vengeance, instead of picking Maneuvers/Assault + Tactics, you can simply pick Maneuvers/Assault + Vengeance.

For Concealment, if you wanted Phase Shift (a very nice power to have on a squishy) right now you have to take Stealth/Grant Invisibility + Invisibility. Soon, you can just take Stealth + Phase Shift.

Are you entirely certain it's going to work this way cause right now on live with the travel pools it doesn't.

To get Afterburner or Group Fly (the 4th and 5th tier powers) you have to have 2 powers from the earlier tiers.

The leaked screenshots from Sorcery also show the 4th and 5th tier power descriptions saying they both require 2 powers from earlier tiers.

Not for nothing but it almost seems like people are getting their hopes up.

If you go by precedent, Then nothing is going to change except for their being a 5th power in each pool and you'll still need 2 earlier powers before you can pick the 4th and 5th tier powers.

Then again you could be right and they could use the APP/PPP model where only the 5th tier power requires 2 previous picks. If you're sure can you cite where it was specified? I may have missed it in one of the coffee talks.

Yes, it is certain it is goin to work this way in i24. Unless the devs change their minds, they have explicitly sated that it is going to work this way.

ok cool... it'll be interesting to see how builds change when this happens then.

Good lord I wish.

Boxing is a completely useless* power to my characters (mostly Defenders) and I'd much prefer being able to drop it than Tough, which is actually useful. Unfortunately now that I'll actually want to take Snipes and Nukes, I'll probably have to drop Tough to fit them in. All the while having Boxing sitting there in my power list, spiting me.



*Outside of being a set mule.

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

That's no longer going to be an issue. The single target taunt is being eliminated.

Presence will be:
Pacify - Single Target Placate
Provoke - AoE Taunt
Intimidate - Single target Fear (Increased to mag 3, chance for mag4, reduced end cost.)
Invoke Panic - PBAoE Fear (Increased to mag3, reduced end cost, increased Accuracy, increased "range" (I assume the mean Radius as it's a PBAoE))
Unrelenting - Self +Damage, +Recharge, +Recovery, HoT, Self Rez if defeated.

Unrelenting honestly seems entirely out of place to me. In a pool dedicated to agro management and control you get a self buff?

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

So I'm behind times, apparently. That progression is a little better since it offers a taunt for people without one or a placate for people with a taunt. Not a bad choice, though I wonder what'll happen to the characters I already have with Challenge on them. Respec? Still, it's less of a useless pick, I admit.

But yes, Unrelenting is... Weird. This is what I mean when I say having to take powers that have nothing to do with the power you want. It seems to me like the powers team are trying to cram as much regeneration and recovery into everything these days. Blasters get them in every set and now every new addition or change to pool powers comes with regeneration and recovery. Why? I can see that in the Medicine pool, but in Presence? What does hitting harder have to do with "presence?" Presence as a concept is the ability of a person to command the attention and control the reactions of people around him through sheer force of personality or physique. This is a "me acting upon you" type of pool where a self buff just doesn't belong.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Or more likely: Field Medic will buff self heals except when those self heals take resistance enhancements. I will be very surprised if the fact that having resistance means that powers have to be set to ignore buffs things gets fixed in I24 (fixed eventually, maybe, in I24 no way). I also can't see the devs going through ALL self heal powers in the game and making them immune to outside buffs (which would be a specific nerf to those powers) just to make them all behave the same with one power.

Heck, Aid Self doesn't have an "unresistable" tag on its heal so it will benefit from the heal resistance portion of Field Medic while the majority of other self heals won't but I really, really doubt that the devs will change that either although for a different reason. It's done that way so that self heals in armor sets work when your healing is debuffed by enemies (such as Hamidon) whereas Aid Self shuts down. This is a case where game development has overtaken the original goals. Powers with negative healing resistance are pretty new so originally having a power be immune to healing resistance was an unquestionable bonus. Now it's still probably a bonus overall (since situations where you have healing resistance debuffs tend to be more dangerous than the opposite) but it's not as clear-cut.

Done

Ok, http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=293444

If you like the idea of having a taunt aura in the presence pool please support my post in the beta forum