Kinetics, a re-balancing suggestion
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2012-08-10 07:12 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
No thank you
Eh, Fulcrum Shift only looks incredibly overpowered on it's own, but the Kinetics set overall is "defense through offense".
It doesn't offer much in the way of safety for allies besides a Heal, an End Gain, slow protection, and limited damage resistance and mez protection. For defensive debuffs, it has a ST and AoE Damage (with only moderate values) and a ST Slow.
Instead, it focuses on speeding up battles with Siphon Power, Speed Boost, and Fulcrum Shift. Most people don't notice how fragile a set it can be because it makes battles go by fast.
I'm of the opinion that any reduction to Fulcrum Shift's abilities would make that way more obvious and then there'd need to be adjuments made to some of the other powers.
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you should probably read the post rather than just the title...
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Originally Posted by Trickshooter
I'm of the opinion that any reduction to Fulcrum Shift's abilities would make that way more obvious and then there'd need to be adjuments made to some of the other powers.
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You should probably not assume things.|
Originally Posted by BunnyAnomaly
you should probably read the post rather than just the title...
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I did read the post. I was just explaining how I feel about this line:
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| I'm sure most kinetics users would agree that fulcrum shift is a bit, umm, overpowered. The ability to easily bring an entire team to the damage cap in short order on a frequent (read: near perma) basis is imbalancing compared to every other tier 9 power. |
Maybe in a few special missions facing mirrored powersets might be ok, but for the most part player powersets tend to be fuller and stronger than NPC powers, and facing off against your own steamrolling team repeatedly would get frustrating fast.
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Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler
That...was a Herocon 09 exclusive easter egg. The powerset will not have doves associated with it.
Namely because you guys would want to color tint the damn doves, or make them hawks/ravens/flying sharks/etc and that's just a headache I do...not...want...to deal with. |
I agree that fulcrum shift is overpowered and that rebalancing the set is a landmine, but I think that making enemy groups react to overpowered sets is a bad idea.
Maybe if the devs made special mobs that had Resistance to -DMG effects? Though that wouldn't stop the team from getting buffed.
Also, FS isn't terribly powerful UNLESS you have a group of 10 or more enemies, all of whom aren't going to be able to one-hit-kill you the second you activate the power. most Controllers have a way of getting around this; a Defender has much fewer ways, same with Corrs.
If you don't have someone else taking alpha, or high defenses, or some good AoE control, using FS can be a death sentence. THAT'S how it's balanced.
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
With all the +damage out there already, I find speed boost being the more useful power from a kinetics teammate.
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It's one of those powers with a very large gap between ideal performance and unideal performance.
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Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
Also, FS isn't terribly powerful UNLESS you have a group of 10 or more enemies, all of whom aren't going to be able to one-hit-kill you the second you activate the power.
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I have no problem with there being enemy groups with a Kinetic user or multiple users.
Or a problem with any enemies being made with any of the carious powersets.
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Forcefields lets the team hit the defense softcap to all positions AND provides all the squishies with mez protection.
Sonic Resonance lets the team hit their various resistance caps AND provides the squishies with mez protection.
In fact, the only Buff/Debuff set that doesn't let you hit a cap of some kind is Trick Arrow and IMO is the only support set that needs a re-balance.
All the others do exactly what they are supposed to do the way they are supposed to do it.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
This is a silly thread.
But, just to go with the flow and pretend it's not a silly thread, Fulcrum Shift is not particularly overpowered as long as I can do this:
Oh Hopeling, that was you.
I'm the 55,556 guy that was bidding against you a while ago.
I usually bid 55,123 for small/medium and -usually- 150,123 for large ones.
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PvP Redux is discontinued, for obvious reasons. Thanks to everyone who helped and joined.
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That would be because Kheldians really enjoyed having their own special foe, that did irresistible damage, or spawned endless legions of pets. I mean it was such fun, people used to demand Kheldians on the team.
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Originally Posted by Sensaround
So don't reduce it. Instead, share the wealth. If a kinetics character is on a team, allow for a chance of a kinetic enemy in every enemy group, similar to spawning void seekers and crystals when a kheldian is present. How's that for dramatic tension? Any given combat you could be on the receiving end of fulcrum shifted damage! Wouldn't that be exciting?
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Don't enemies resist -damage with their resistance values?
Weight training: Because you'll never hear someone lament "If only I were weaker, I could have saved them."
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Yes and no. If it's a "-x% Smashing Damage, -x% Lethal Damage, -x% Energy Damage, ..." debuff, then the individual Damage Resistances will reduce the debuff by the appropriate amounts. So if I had 50% S/L resistance and no other resistance, and got hit with a debuff that reduced each damage type by 10%, then my Smashing and Lethal damage would be reduced by 5%, all other damage types reduced by 10%, and untyped and special damage wouldn't be debuffed.|
Originally Posted by TheBruteSquad
Don't enemies resist -damage with their resistance values?
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If the debuff is flagged "unresistable", then resistances aren't applied, and all typed damage is reduced 10% and untyped and special damage isn't reduced.
If the debuff is just "-x% damage", then all damage, even untyped and special are reduced, and it can't be resisted.
What makes it even trickier is that the real numbers aren't consistant. If the power shows an individual debuff to each type of damage, then it's the former type of debuff. If it shows a single debuff, it may be the latter, but it also might be the former being displayed a different way. The only way to tell is to debuff something and Power Analyzer it, or to look it up in City of Data.
@Roderick
Fulcrum Shift has the Psychic Shockwave problem: it's better than it should be, but the rest of the set needs help, so it gets ignored. Kinetics could use a couple of changes.
1.) Increase the recharge on Fulcrum Shift. 60 seconds base, in a set with Siphon Speed, for a power that can cap a team's damage is pretty ridiculous. It's available every spawn. Increasing its recharge clamps that down without removing the strength of the power.
2.) Improve the strength of Siphon Power. It's half as strong as each stack of Fulcrum Shift. Making it more potent would give the set better debuffing power and make the early levels easier.
3.) Give Inertial Reduction +Defense. The power is practically skippable as is, especially now that travel is so much easier. Giving it some mitigation makes it valuable in battle, and it shores up one of the weaknesses of Kinetics.
4.) Increase the duration of Increase Density. The reasoning behind the low duration on most grantable mez protection is that they're supposed to be used reactively. This doesn't work for Increase Density, because you can't reactively free someone from Knockback. Making it last longer means less reapplying, and as a bonus it makes the resistance last longer as well.
We'll always have Paragon.
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I love this post so much I want to marry it.
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Originally Posted by Hopeling
This is a silly thread.
But, just to go with the flow and pretend it's not a silly thread, Fulcrum Shift is not particularly overpowered as long as I can do this: |
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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They used to do a special damage type. I think it was Nicti.
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Originally Posted by TheBruteSquad
Don't enemies resist -damage with their resistance values?
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In addendum to this, I say lower the end cost on Siphon Power. That's the one big thing that prevents me from using it, especially at lower levels.|
Originally Posted by NeverDark
Fulcrum Shift has the Psychic Shockwave problem: it's better than it should be, but the rest of the set needs help, so it gets ignored. Kinetics could use a couple of changes.
1.) Increase the recharge on Fulcrum Shift. 60 seconds base, in a set with Siphon Speed, for a power that can cap a team's damage is pretty ridiculous. It's available every spawn. Increasing its recharge clamps that down without removing the strength of the power. 2.) Improve the strength of Siphon Power. It's half as strong as each stack of Fulcrum Shift. Making it more potent would give the set better debuffing power and make the early levels easier. 3.) Give Inertial Reduction +Defense. The power is practically skippable as is, especially now that travel is so much easier. Giving it some mitigation makes it valuable in battle, and it shores up one of the weaknesses of Kinetics. 4.) Increase the duration of Increase Density. The reasoning behind the low duration on most grantable mez protection is that they're supposed to be used reactively. This doesn't work for Increase Density, because you can't reactively free someone from Knockback. Making it last longer means less reapplying, and as a bonus it makes the resistance last longer as well. |
For IR, that makes sense, but I also kinda like that Kin has a few "skippable" powers. Makes it easier to construct a build. Also, since IR is very easily perma-able (like, one recharge enhancement), I doubt the defense bonus would be allowed to be too much. If it was substantial (like over 5%), the recharge on the power would have to be increased, which would mean that it would fail in its primary function: a travel power. Unless you think it would be fun to "run out" of IR halfway through a jump, land in a pit, then have to wait 30+ seconds before you could jump out.
As per number 4, the devs have shown they can give powers different effects that last different amounts of time (like in Chrono shift, the +recharge portion lasts longer than the +Heal). So perhaps they could do something similar for ID: 2-4 minute Damage Res, 60 second mez resist. I think that would be fair enough =)
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
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What's puzzling is that for every player that does this as I do (and all you need is /auctionhouse and a moderate amount of inf, which is not THAT small a group of players... er, I think), there has to be dozens or even hundreds of players that look at a Righteous Rage and say "this isn't useful, I'd rather have a paltry sum of influence".
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I love this post so much I want to marry it.
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A lot of players treat inf like it has some intrinsic value, like gold bars, rather than as a currency which has a value exactly equal to whatever you use it to acquire.|
Originally Posted by Hopeling
What's puzzling is that for every player that does this as I do (and all you need is /auctionhouse and a moderate amount of inf, which is not THAT small a group of players... er, I think), there has to be dozens or even hundreds of players that look at a Righteous Rage and say "this isn't useful, I'd rather have a paltry sum of influence".
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And I know many players have the same weird attitude about inspirations themselves- that they're something to hoard just in case rather that use to ease your path through the game.
I once had a similar attitude about inspirations, until my farming forays into DA with my fire blaster showed me the light. You couldn't yet combine inspirations, so I would just bang on my f 1-4 keys as things dropped, pausing every so often to delete those annoying Awakens, and at any given time I'd be cruising along with eight or ten random buffs stacked on me.
Other than squishies keeping a break free or two in reserve, I'm a full blooded advocate of BURN 'EM IF YA GOT 'EM.
And the ability to buy up huge reserves of giant inspirations DIRT CHEAP on the market is one of the games great underutilized resources.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Damage buffs are easy to come by.
Did you know that any full team doing Hero Tips can achieve +320% damage for 30 seconds at the mere cost of a 3.67s animation?
That's Call To Justice, the alignment power, that applies a team To Hit and Damage buff.
But how many times have you seen a team do the "Avengers Assemble" before a group, or even an AV?
I find Kinetics to be a really well balanced set. It's fast and dicey and you never feel safe like you do with almost all other support sets, but Transfusion props it up in the early game. It offers Transference and Fulcrum Shift later on, and then in the late game performs surprisingly well against AVs due to the damage debuffs.
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You forgot repel. Carnie bosses stacked in a corner ftw.|
Originally Posted by Trickshooter
Eh, Fulcrum Shift only looks incredibly overpowered on it's own, but the Kinetics set overall is "defense through offense".
It doesn't offer much in the way of safety for allies besides a Heal, an End Gain, slow protection, and limited damage resistance and mez protection. For defensive debuffs, it has a ST and AoE Damage (with only moderate values) and a ST Slow. Instead, it focuses on speeding up battles with Siphon Power, Speed Boost, and Fulcrum Shift. Most people don't notice how fragile a set it can be because it makes battles go by fast. I'm of the opinion that any reduction to Fulcrum Shift's abilities would make that way more obvious and then there'd need to be adjuments made to some of the other powers. |
On topic, I think the OP is overlooking that Fulcrum Shift still requires some skill to use well. If it were a toggle that said "Everyone I know and their cat is now at the damage cap with a press of this magic button" then yeah many fewer would argue. He also assumes a team.
It's not how many times you get knocked down that count. It's how many times you get up.
I'm sure most kinetics users would agree that fulcrum shift is a bit, umm, overpowered. The ability to easily bring an entire team to the damage cap in short order on a frequent (read: near perma) basis is imbalancing compared to every other tier 9 power. But I think that nerfing it is a terrible idea. People are very attached to kinetics, it would create a lot of ill will among the players if this beloved power was reduced in effectiveness.
So don't reduce it. Instead, share the wealth. If a kinetics character is on a team, allow for a chance of a kinetic enemy in every enemy group, similar to spawning void seekers and crystals when a kheldian is present. How's that for dramatic tension? Any given combat you could be on the receiving end of fulcrum shifted damage! Wouldn't that be exciting?
While we're at it, I think other sets could benefit from similar treatment. How about some super strength/fire enemies? Better be careful going toe-to-toe with these guys. Enemy electric or kinetic stalkers? As long as kinetic combat is bugged crit-wise, let's keep it interesting. So many fun possibilities.
I can imagine seeing this message in the LFG channel:
Level 50 team LF5M. No kinetics!
Just a thought. :-)
Sensaround
Superhero in his spare time.