How to make sonic resonance more balanced

Seeing as how I don't see a lot of sonic (or force field, for that matter) players on my server, and having played a sonic defender, I wanted to suggest a few changes that might make sonic a bit more appealing and potentially more balanced with some of the other sets that exist out there.

Changes:

Add psionic resistance to Clarity. --- Other people have probably mentioned this, but given that sonic has no heal, it seems fair to add psionic resistance to it, not to mention that the power is about clarity of mind to begin with. It's also worth considering making clarity an aoe buff as well if the psionic resistance is added, as damage and debuffs still take people out often enough that mez isn't as much of an issue. Not to mention incarnates can get mez protection anyway, and Pain Domination gives psionic resistance in its resistance buffing power already.

Change Sonic Repulsion to a chance-for-knockdown click power. --- The devs don't want to change the core function of powers in sets, and this would help make the power useful. Take the power, cast it on an ally, the ally now has a repel field like singularity, but the power would not trigger as often and it would do knockdown instead of knockback (knockback on a click ally aura would be used too much for griefing). This change solves the problem of the current Sonic Repulsion costing way too much endo when Sonic Dispersion and Disruption Field are running, as a person can decide when they want to use the power and the endurance, as the "per target" endurance cost would be removed. A knockdown to knockback proc could always be made if someone wants to have knockback when they don't already. Knockdown is more useful.

Alter Liquefy. I don't know how to make this power more useful. If Sonic Repulsion was changed, then Liquefy stacking with it often would still cause knockback often, which would be annoying. If Liquefy did knockup and had lower debuff rates, it might be able to have the recharge on it shorter and still stack nicely with a click Sonic Repulsion. On the flip side, one could make Liquefy's hold or debuffs stronger, while lowering the knockdown rate, and perhaps this would stack better with a click Sonic Repulsion.

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Clarity would be more useful sooner. And the "It has no heal" really doesn't fly as an argument for me for any sort of change to this. In any case, by the time a Defender gets it, you're at 26, melee already has mez protection, everyone else has fairly hefty power trays. By the time a Corruptor or Controller gets it... 35? Really?

Sonic Repulsion has been exceptionally skippable on any and all sonic characters. Sonic defender? I've yet to ahve a reason to put a KB aura on another character. Ill/Sonic? No reason to put it on my pets, either. Let me put it on *myself* and I'll call it useful, since I'll be able to control it.

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...Sonic and Force Fields are two of the bar-none strongest mitigation sets in the game. Their problem isn't that they're weak, it's that all of the power in the sets is concentrated into just a few abilities, leaving the others lackluster. Of the two, I feel Sonic is actually a bit better; Sonic Repulsion and Sonic Cage are the only really poor ones, with Liquefy being merely skippable.

Edit : Hm. Looked at the numbers for Sonic again. Alright, I'll grant that it needs a buff; I had thought it provided closer to 70-80% resist all in total, but it looks like it tops out between 55-60%.

For your specific changes, I think making Sonic Repulsion a KD aura and slashing the endurance cost would be a significant improvement. Giving Psionic resistance to Clarity doesn't mean that much to me either way, since it's already an acceptable power pick and the set as a whole doesn't really need a buff. Liquefy is also already more-or-less acceptable, although I think in the current game its cooldown is too long for what it does.

I have a special hatred of Sonic Cage and Detention Field, incidentally. If they were toggle powers, or plain Holds, or worked in any of a number of other ways, they *might* be useful. But literally every time I've experimented with either, it results in a mostly dead spawn with allies beating on an Untouchable enemy for several seconds. I can imagine niche cases for the power, but they are very rare and can still be effectively dealt with in other ways.

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The biggest issue with sonic cage seems to be that nearly every instance that it would be good for it gets nerfed or it just isn't high enough magnitude. If it could lock down an AV the power would be excellent, but for the most part it just gets a few niche uses.

Although I do believe that sonic cage and clarity get a lot more use in PVP. Cage can phase which is annoying, and clarity boosts perception to find those pesky stalkers.



All in all, the suggestions the OP has are pretty good. As for Liquify, I would add one of three things to the power instead of the hold effect it currently has:

*Slow
*Immobilize
*High chance of knock up

The reason being that liquify's potent to-hit and recharge debuff are only active while in the patch that it makes. Currently there is little to nothing that stops enemies from just running out of the liquify patch, negating it's effects. So, with either Slow, Immobilize, or high chance for knock up, enemies will stay in the patch and stay debuffed.


Also, making Sonic Cage a toggle power would make it so much better.

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This is the main beef I have with Sonic...

Earth Control - Earthquake
Recharge: 90s
End Cost: 10.4
Def Debuff: -10%
ToHit Debuff: -10%

Sonic Resonance - Liquefy
Recharge: 300s
End Cost: 23.7
Def Debuff: -25%
ToHit Debuff: -25%

(The above values are for Controllers from Mids)

I know that Earthquake is a T7 and Liquefy is the T9, but... doesn't the recharge on Liqeufy seem a little extreme when they do almost the same thing?

If, to use a literal and probably non-supported comparison, Liquefy does 2.5x the debuffing of Earthquake, why doesn't it have 2.5x the recharge? By my admittedly shoddy math, that would be a 225s recharge. There's nearly a minute and a half of (in my opinion) unnecessary recharge time on Liquefy.

I never presume to speak for everyone, but I'd be willing to take slightly reduced debuff values if the recharge was made less inane.

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I took inventory for some other sets, and as far as stuff goes there are a few ideas I have been knocking around. Not necessary to implement them all, but...


Sonic Siphon: Make this a narrow cone instead of single target.

Sonic Cage: Adjust it so this power is a toggle that can selectively phase an enemy on and off. Increase magnitude of immobilize and phase. Reduce maximum duration to 20 seconds. OR, an alternate solution is to make this a high magnitude single target hold.

Sonic Repulsion: Reduce endurance drain to -1 for each enemy. Enemies suffer from low duration mag 2 stun from each hit of the repulsion field (delayed a few seconds to compensate for knockback)

Clarity: Make this an AoE power that gives lower mezz protection, or make this an AoE power that gives non-stacking high mezz protection, or make this an AoE Power that gives psionic resistance then low stacking / high non-stacking mezz protection.

Liquify: High damage, mag 3 immobilize, reduce recharge to 225 seconds



That is what I can think of for now. I think that putting ALL of these might make sonic overpowered, but nonetheless this would make some powers in the set much better. I think some of these ideas can be applied to Force Fields, which IMO needs more improvement than this set.

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My issues with sonic resonance are threefold:

1. It has no possibility to scale- it provides as much mitigation in a 15 second fight against minions as it does against a ten minute fight vs. a giant monster.
2. It has very little to no mitigation against debuffs. As it gives no defense, does very little to stop enemies from attacking/connecting with their attacks. In fact, forcefields has better debuff protection, despite bubbles providing 100% debuff protection when they work. This is the biggest weaknes sin my mind, as though allies will take less damage, they will still be slowed, sapped, have their defense debuffed, have their tohit and regen debuffed, you get the idea. In my mind sonic shields should protect against the debuffs commonly carried by the attack types they shield from.
3. It has almost no reliable attack mitigation. The best you can do is click your powers, keep your toggles on, and that's it. Aside from the long-recharging liquefy, the 'pay to toggle AND to knock back {double charge toggle} of sonic repulsion, and the 'it can't hurt you but is invincible' sonic cage, nothing in sonic will affect the enemy end of the damage being received spectrum. As liquefy is purposefully situational, repulsion uses all endurance if used to aggressively mitigate, and cage is both mitigation from AND for an enemy, I do think sonics need something always accessible.

Sonic is a good 'backup mitigation' secondary, as it fills in holes that other mitigation can't fill. It's good if healing is around. It's good if defense is around. It's good if controls are around. But standing on its own, it pretty much guarantees that after it's powers are down, there is nothing more the set itself it can do...and the lack of mitigation with only resistance means that unlike other support sets, your allies can and will be vulnerable to sustained damage, and as mentioned earlier, almost 100% susceptible to debuffs. They will last longer, but in long fights that is often not enough.

Here's what I'd do for Sonic resonance:

I completely agree about clarity: it protects the mind, so it fits both a thematic and mechanical hole. I see little reason for sonic resonance to leave allies completely vulnerable to psy damage, despite somehow shielding their minds from control. This also solves the somewhat redundant nature of a mez protection power on a set with a mez protection toggle.

Other changes I would suggest:
Rather than a KD toggle, something that can be hard to balance, I would go the route that energy aura went for stalkers: change the KB toggle to a stun toggle. This would be basically a mag 2 (minion strength) ally-targeted toggle.

Disruption field costs the same to run as radiation's enervating field, despite requiring an ally and doing half as much. As this requires an ally to get in close with enemies, I would suggest it provide mitigation for the ally that needs to do so. As such, I would suggest this be a -res, -damage toggle.

Sonic siphon: This is where I would peg the 'stackable' mitigation I think sonic needs. I would add two things: a stackable -10% damage (this is in keeping with power siphon from kinetics, but weaker as this is also a stron -res debuff) along with a +absorb to self. This means that the set could weaken the damage of a target the longer a fight lasts, making a nice mitigation scalability, and the power would live up to its 'siphon monicer, 'taking' protection from the target. This would, incidentally, give access to heal sets to sonic resonance, and allow the set to shield the sonic user better. I think this is a nice (but slight) counter-balance to how very vulnerable the set leaves solo users.

Make sonic cage a timed toggle similar to dimension shift for gravity: this is both a nerf, as things could no longer be perma-caged, and a QoL buff, as the user could decide when to make the enemy vulnerable again. Side note: have this toggle last through mez, ala the sustain toggles for blasters, so that the 'caged' foe would not be freed when the sonic user is vulnerable.

Liquefy could use a recharge reduction. Not to crazy, but I'd say down to about the same range as oil slick arrow or the like.

Lastly: all +res powers give debuff resistance to the following effects:
+energy res gives -end/-recovery debuff protection
+cold res gives -speed/-rech debuff protection
+lethal res gives -defense debuff protection
+neg. energy res gives -tohit debuff protection
+toxic res gives -regen debuff protection
+Psy res gives -recharge debuff protection
This way the shields shield against the effects that the attacks usually carry. I would leave the debuff protection on dispersion half that of what the ally +res gives, so that the debuff resistance is in keeping with the damage resistance.

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I would turn Sonic Cage into a toggle, remove the toggle cost from Sonic Repulsion (so you only pay for targets that are hit with it) and add a small damage component (so you can slot it with a kb to kd proc if you want), give Clarity an unstackable global debuff resistance of around 20%, and lower the recharge on Liquify.

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