Silencer7

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Well, I didn't think it was that worth discussing because like you say, the functionality is already in the set. I do think it's somewhat redundant and maybe that should change, I just didn't see it as that relevant to my point.

If you did make the change I suggested, the +speed portion would still have utility as a supplemental travel power (if you want teleport or fly, it could give you some horizontal movement.)

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Ah. So you're still not even going to address the point that having two powers whose sole function is increasing travel speed and nothing else is redundant and silly, and instead ignore the fact that the powers you're seeking to change have other uses that reduces that redundancy.

Ah well. :/ And here I was hoping for something far more interesting.

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Man, I'm happy to discuss it. I don't see what the problem is. It's functionality that's in the set right now. It's not like I'm saying the good stuff in /kin should be replaced by a bunch of redundant ghettotravel powers.

Well, I didn't think it was that worth discussing because like you say, the functionality is already in the set. I do think it's somewhat redundant and maybe that should change, I just didn't see it as that relevant to my point.

If you did make the change I suggested, the +speed portion would still have utility as a supplemental travel power (if you want teleport or fly, it could give you some horizontal movement.)

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And talen, I tried addressing you in good faith once; if you're not actually interested in a conversation, take your dumb trolling somewhere else.

[/ QUOTE ]No, you didn't. You said, in essence, 'I am not addressing X, but did I mention X X X X X X X X X X?'

I am pointing out that you simply saying that something is a design failure doesn't actually make it a design failure, especially since you don't seem to understand what, exactly a design failure is. This is one of the vices of terminology, when people who don't understand it use it, it puts a veneer of intellectualism on the same old tired nonsense.

To dismantle your posts point by point and indicate every place you are wrong would take a great deal of time and effort, time and effort you would disregard because you have stepped into this discussion with the prior assumption that you are right and that people who know better than you are 'dumb trolls.' So I make do by pointing out large and obvious ways in which you are wrong and find to my surprise and delight that you can't even answer those, instead choosing to throw out accusations.

You have proven everything I thought of you when I read your opening post.

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You wanted a definition of fun, so I provided one. I also asked why people thought ST buffing was fun, which you also didn't respond to. If you'd like to respond to anything in a substantive way at all, that'd be nice.

The design failure I'm talking about is the power incentivizing behavior no one likes. Even if you're one of the people that's comfortable ignoring players who spam chat with things you don't like, you can't really make the argument that needing to do that is a good thing.

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You'd have to ask the devs why they gave it two, I suppose.

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You're the one suggesting they do it, so therefore you seem the more logical one to ask in this matter. What's your reasoning?

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No, it already has two. Three, I guess, if you were to count SB, siphon speed, and IR. All I suggested doing was rearranging the effects the set already has a little bit WRT siphon speed/speed boost.

You'd have to ask the devs why they gave it two, I suppose.

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It's all stuff you have to take into consideration. It seems almost like you're looking at the set in a vacuum, or just unaware of the interplay between powers in a set. Or some third option I won't speculate on at this time, because there's honestly a grab-bag of stuff it could be that may be more or less accurate, depending.

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I'm not sure if I've been unclear somehow, or what. What I was trying to say is that you'd leave siphon speed as it is, but give it an aoe "splash" recovery and recharge boost equivalent to SB. To keep it balanced around /kin's self buffs, you could keep the self component of the buff the same as siphon speed's is currently. Then take speed boost, and just make it a pbaoe +runspeed power, similar to inertial reduction. You haven't jostled the set around, and haven't upset balance in any way I can see.

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To yuri's point, I think that would make more sense if siphon speed wasn't already a very similar buff. Although I suppose if you were to make it pbaoe in some way, you could either just have it not affect the caster or apply the lesser siphon speed buff.

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Similar, but not equivlant. Each time you apply Siphon Speed, you only get a 20% recharge boost. It's beyond trivial to stack it twice, especially if you happen to pick up Hasten (+70%). Adding another 30% or 50% on top of that means that, in two power activations, you suddenly have a total buff of 120% or 140%, which is more then enough to make Hasten and, I would imagine, the new Speed Boost permanent as well (assuming a 96% Recharge Reduction in both powers, for a total of 216% or 236%). And that's assuming you don't have Siphon Speed set up for Recharge as well (I don't, and I can still stack it).

And that's before we get into the real fun math (which the game isn't balanced around - specifically, IO Recharge bonuses).

Bit overpowered? I'd certainly say so. Two Kinetics on a team playing well together and buffing each other can be downright disgusting, and I know this from personal experience.

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Well, the idea being that you'd make one buff pbaoe, and remove the single target buff.

And talen, I tried addressing you in good faith once; if you're not actually interested in a conversation, take your dumb trolling somewhere else.

I didn't really want a thread full of more arguing about the necessity of SB. SB's a great buff, and ideally we'd have a situation where it was quick and enjoyable to put up, rather than something that feels like a chore for so many people.

To yuri's point, I think that would make more sense if siphon speed wasn't already a very similar buff. Although I suppose if you were to make it pbaoe in some way, you could either just have it not affect the caster or apply the lesser siphon speed buff.

At some point it's a design failure, though. I mean, when I play a /kin I ignore those people too, but it's not like that's a good situation. I'm irritated, I'm sure they're irritated, and the team is less effective than it could be, cause SB is a really effective buff.

Which is why I think SB should be changed something other than a single target ability.

Like I said I thought this was sort of obvious, but okay.

When you attack, or really use any ability that's targeted at an enemy or is pbaoe, you make a series of decisions about what position enemies/players are in, how much health they have, which of your cooldowns are up or down, and so on. There are probably a bunch of other choices involved I'm not mentioning, but the broad point is that all these mental processes that are going on basically combine to make the act of fighting mobs more interesting than just hitting the same six or eight keys on the keyboard over and over. My position is that this series of decisions is what makes the game "Fun."

Speed boost (and other ST buffs) remove all that by asking me to use the same, quickly recharging skill a set number of times on everyone whose name shows up in a green bar. It's repetitive, there's no real thought involved, and it consumes a nontrivial amount of the /kin player's time.

And it's made worse in SB's case because if you lapse at this little chore at all, people get frustrated with you.

I didn't bother defining "fun" because that isn't the point of the post. Quite honestly, I thought that in the only MMO that's managed to make basic gameplay interesting I'd be able to make the axiomatic statement that maintaining single target buffs on short timers wasn't fun (in comparison to, really, every other thing every AT does.)

If you can actually help me understand what's redeeming about the mechanic, I would be interested.

In light of the rash of trollish threads regarding speed boost in the last week or so, I wanted to suggest some changes. My goal is to make a powerful, fun buff less irritating for /kin players to apply, and more dynamic in general.

First, why does SB need to be changed?

1) Speed boost only has a two minute duration. Assuming it takes 20 or so seconds to rebuff an 8 person team (standard recharge time plus a couple seconds for targeting, range, etc.), a "good" /kin that maintains their team buffs will spend 15-20 percent of their time buffing speed boost. This is tedious and almost universally regarded as Not Fun™.

2) Let's face it, the buff interface in this game isn't the best. You have only a string of small symbols stretching out from a player's name to go on, with no long-term timer or indication of when buffs will fall off. /kin players are forced to either scrutinize this interface, or use a third party app to time their buffs. This problem is exacerbated if you're like me, and choose to play with your UI substantially scaled down.

3) To summarize #3, "sb plz." Speed boost is the game's most powerful and noticeable buff, and letting it fall off for an extended period of time leads to more "team aggro" than anything else in the game. This makes the previous two points glaringly obvious, and irritating.

Okay, so how should SB be changed?

As you might imagine I have several ideas.

1) Make siphon speed work just like siphon power does. A pbaoe +recharge/+rec buff with a single ranged hit check. This follows what's already a unique and interesting kinetics mechanic and makes things easier and more fun for the /kin. Speed boost could either be replaced with something else, or made into a pbaoe +runspeed buff a la inertial reduction.

2) Just make speed boost a pbaoe buff with an appropriate cooldown. Accelerate metabolism is another popular, important buff that doesn't cause half the trouble refreshing SB does, because it's quick and easy to refresh in between spawns or using a "gather" macro.

3) Increase speed boost's duration. Speed boost's duration is short because it's a powerful buff, but I don't see any real reason it couldn't be longer. It's trivially easy to keep SB "perma" on a team anyway; the only issue is how much time the /kin has to spend doing it, and I don't see why we couldn't shorten that time.

If other people have fun or interesting suggestions for making speed boost more Fun™, I'll be happy to add them to the OP.

There are two really simple things that could be done to all but kill AE farming (powerleveling at least, which seems to be the real issue.)

1) Remove the auto-SK from the AE, or force everyone to auto-SK to the same level. Powerleveling is currently easy because the AE can be used to mass "bridge" seven people at the same time.

2) Diminishing returns on MA rewards. This won't be popular, but if daily DR starts kicking in after two arcs and reduces rewards to zero by the end of (say) four arcs, that would kill the kind of egregious farming that seems to be what the devs take issue with.

It seems to me that one or both of these solutions would be really easy to implement; I don't understand why it hasn't been done.

The point isn't that SBing the team is hard, the point is it's not fun.

I say it over and over again, but the best solution would be to make siphon speed work like siphon power does, and give /kin something else to occupy the spot speed boost is in.

I have a level 50 arch/ice/muni that I have a good time with.

Archery is pretty simple: three ST attacks that form a good chain, three simple aoes (cone, targeted aoe. targeted nuke), a stun and a snipe. Ice is also pretty simple: shiver and ice patch are good controls, buildup, and an ST hold and sort of an anemic aoe sleep if you want them.

I skipped the stun in the primary, because it's really slow and without something in the secondary to stack it with it's a bit useless. You could also skip the snipe if you wanted. In ice, the ST hold is useful if you can stack it with something from your APP, otherwise it's sort of hard to justify, too. The aoe sleep is useless for anything but soloing and it's only mag 2, but if you find yourself desperately needing it for control you could take it (or, use it as a set mule.) Couple of the APPs have better aoe sleeps, though.

Get rid of your dmg slots, get rid of your recharge slots. Slot your attacks for endred, then accuracy. I tried four or five brutes and was frustrated with their low level play until I realized this simple truth:

Fury gives you more of a damage buff than damage enhancements will ever provide. To keep your fury up, you need to be constantly attacking. To constantly attack, you need to have endurance. To have endurance, you need to slot for endred, not damage and recharge. This is especially true for /mace, which is an end hungry secondary. Prioritize endred; you don't have to actually hit anything to build fury. Once your end situation is such that you can comfortably maintain a half to 3/4 full fury bar, start worrying about accuracy.

Something I like doing with a low level brute is fighting large numbers of lower level mobs. They are easier for you to hit, the large number of incoming swings helps keep fury up, and their low damage means you can skimp on your defensive toggles. Especially with mace's relatively early aoe (whirling mace), this might be effective for you.

So I'm thinking I'll roll a mind dominator, but I need to be sold on a secondary. I'm not a big fan of thorns, I am informed /nrg is bad, and I already have a /psi, so that's out.

So, fire, ice or elec? Don't have a concept and I'm open to any of them; convince me!

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Either way, it's you who has the silly sense of entitlement: that you can join a team and be so unilaterally concerned with your own playstyle and refuse to adapt to those of your teammates.

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This is so dumb it's ridiculous. Last I checked it wasn't the /kin characters running around telling people to 'taunt plz' or whatever.

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I don't think anyone is saying that buffing SB is somehow inefficient or suboptimal, so we can stop that argument right there.

The point is that stopping every couple minuets (often during combat) to rebuff an entire team sucks. It's boring, the buff interface is terrible, and it feels really contrary to how the rest of the set plays. That, and SB is essentially the only buff that people will whine about constantly if it falls off for five seconds. I've never seen someone spam /g with 'ice armr plz.'

That, and it's not as though the difficulty of this game makes it at all necessary to worry about to the extent people apparently do, and it doesn't justify the sense of entitlement that is only exhibited WRT /kin. I don't play the set anymore because I got tired of exactly this sort of stupid [censored], but when I did I mostly kept SB up on the brute(s) and let everyone else handle themselves.

And it is a sense of entitlement on the part of people asking for the buff. If you run around with the attitude that a large number of other players exist only to buff you, I'm amazed you find teams at all.

Man, I bet DB/stone is hilarious to watch.

Thinking about blasters, I don't believe I've ever seen a elec/mm blaster before.

/fire seems to be pretty rarely combined with anything that isn't fire/, so you could go that way too.

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Either way, it's you who has the silly sense of entitlement: that you can join a team and be so unilaterally concerned with your own playstyle and refuse to adapt to those of your teammates.

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This is so dumb it's ridiculous. Last I checked it wasn't the /kin characters running around telling people to 'taunt plz' or whatever.

Yeah no one is saying it's difficult to buff a team.

The fundamental idea that, "oh hey, the gulf between dominators with permadom and all the other dominators is too wide" is obviously one they intend to address. I'm pleasantly surprised that they seem to want to do it by buffing more pedestrian dominators, rather than nerfing the high end ones.

Given that, the mechanics of the i15 changes aren't that important to me.

News flash: /kin has many other useful buffs!

I quit playing /kin because people are so obnoxious about speed boost.

Let's face it, the buff display in this game is [censored] terrible, and having to spend 10 or 20 seconds rebuffing everyone every two minutes is lame.

They should just make SB work like siphon power does. Shorten it's duration, make it a pbaoe buff with a ranged hitcheck, and it would be a much better fit for the set.