Make form powers less passive -and- less annoying

morigosa

TLDR Summary: Make it so that the higher your form stack count goes, the harder it is to maintain the stack. Make it so that failing to maintain the stack doesn't reset you to zero. And make it so that ranking up your form makes it easier to maintain high stack levels.

The actual suggested mechanics:

1: Make it so that, when a form's stacks expire, the form loses two stacks and resets its duration to that appropriate for the new stack level. (Instead of the current behavior of losing the entire stack.)
2: Make form durations vary based on both ranks and numbers of stacks.

For example, consider the following potential durations for rank one enrage based on number of stacks:

1. ∞
   
2. 20s
   
3. 20s
   
4. 15s
   
5. 15s
   
6. 11s
   
7. 8s
   
8. 6s
   

Yes, these are numbers I pretty much just pulled out of a hat; if you want to suggest different numbers, feel free. But I'm going to use these numbers for the rest of this post.

Someone relying on a 14s cooldown Eruption for stacking enrage would end up oscillating between four and six stacks. Someone spamming Annihilate could easily get to eight stacks, but wouldn't stay there for long if their attack sequence got interrupted (such as, for example, by having to block some cosmic's AoE) - but also wouldn't find themselves reset to zero when that happens. In fact, going from eight stacks down to one would take a total of 52 seconds: 6 seconds to drop from eight stacks down to six, then 11 seconds to drop down to four stacks, 15 more seconds to drop to two stacks, and lastly another 20 seconds to drop to one stack.

Rank two would move the durations to one step longer: eight stacks would last 8 seconds, all the way down to two stacks lasting forever. Maybe even make r2 give you a 50% chance to only lose one stack when its duration expires instead of two.

Rank three would again move the durations one stop longer. (And potentially make that a 100% chance to only lose one stack on the form expiring.)

Obviously, you'd want to apply the same sort of mechanics to Concentration, Chilled Form, Aspect of the Infernal, Aspect of the Bestial, all of the Focus forms, and maybe even Defiance.

Equally obviously, this should not be applied to Manipulator. For a better idea on how to handle that form power, see this suggestion thread.

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morigosa

Is your objection the base idea, or are you objecting to the specific numbers? If the latter, do you have a suggestion for numbers that might work better?

pantagruel01

The base idea translates as "if your primary attack procs the form you're golden; otherwise it's a colossal effort to keep stacks up".

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morigosa

pantagruel01 said:

The base idea translates as "if your primary attack procs the form you're golden; otherwise it's a colossal effort to keep stacks up".

Err... nope. It would actually make it significantly easier to avoid losing all your stacks, and only a "colossal effort" if you want to keep yourself perpetually at eight stacks with a rank one form.

gradii said:

Also as much as some of the new bosses force you to block, makes this an even more terrible idea. Can't build stacks while blocking.

That was actually part of the point: if you do have to stop attacking, you lose a few stacks - but not the entire stack, and can build back up to where you were relatively quickly instead of having to restart from zero. Thus, "not just a passive damage bonus", which is the dev's stated goal for form powers.

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pantagruel01

morigosa said:

Err... nope. It would actually make it significantly easier to avoid losing all your stacks.

Which is a completely irrelevant metric. It means that if you want to maintain full stacks you need to limit yourself to powers that proc a stack on almost every blow.

morigosa

pantagruel01 said:

Which is a completely irrelevant metric.

It's a completely relevant metric given that most of the complaints about the current form changes are, in fact, based around the 20 seconds and then lose all your stacks.

pantagruel01 said:

It means that if you want to maintain full stacks you need to limit yourself to powers that proc a stack on almost every blow.

Or rank up your form. This is quite deliberate, and designed to conform to the dev's stated goal of making form powers "not just a second passive".

maatmons

The part where stacks fall off one at a time is a fantastic idea. Could we maybe discuss that independently of the other stuff?

morigosa

maatmons said:

The part where stacks fall off one at a time is a fantastic idea. Could we maybe discuss that independently of the other stuff?

Go for it. I did say that my numbers for durations were pulled out of a hat; if you want to discuss an alternate version of the suggestion where all those numbers are set to 20 seconds, go right ahead.

pantagruel01

morigosa said:

Or rank up your form. This is quite deliberate, and designed to conform to the dev's stated goal of making form powers "not just a second passive".

"Some powers can trivially maintain 8 stacks and others cannot" is not good design unless the buff is considered an inherent part of the power and baked into its cost and effects.

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morigosa

gradii said:

Not only that, but just HOW does this suggestion make forms "Less annoying" ????

Because you don't lose the whole stack if things go wrong.

pantagruel01 said:

"Some powers can trivially maintain 8 stacks and others cannot" is not good design unless the buff is considered an inherent part of the power and baked into its cost and effects.

Some powers have strong synergy. Others don't. If you want to use Enrage with powers that don't proc Enrage, there's a cost to that. I don't see the problem here.

morigosa

maatmons said:

The part where stacks fall off one at a time is a fantastic idea. Could we maybe discuss that independently of the other stuff?

On second thought, you may wish to open a new thread for this, because this thread seems to not be getting constructive responses.

pantagruel01

morigosa said:

On second thought, you may wish to open a new thread for this, because this thread seems to not be getting constructive responses.

Only if you think the only form of constructive response is agreeing with you.

aiqa

These ideas rely on fast stacking even more than what we have on live. So in my opinion they are terrible. People will still just make builds where you can have full stacks, limiting that to certain setups even more just limits the number of viable builds. So this will not make things less annoying at all.

There is also a big difference in what certain sets and setups need in terms of adv points.
With tgm+burst shot you can have have a fully viable single target + aoe attack rotation, without needing any additional buffs/debuff/form/eu maintenance, with only 2 powers and 6 adv points.
The new HW and Bestial (and many other sets) require far more than that.
So having forms require adv points (not that the tgm example would need concentration ranked anyway) is just going to be a "meh whatever" for some builds and a big problem for others.

raighn

pantagruel01 said:

morigosa said:

On second thought, you may wish to open a new thread for this, because this thread seems to not be getting constructive responses.

Only if you think the only form of constructive response is agreeing with you.

A complaint I've made public on CO forums quite a few times before... hardly anyone here is ever "constructive" blantant disagreement is NOT "constructive" nor is breaking down an idea and saying "no this is bad, and this is bad" that is "destructive". To be "constructive" implicitly requires you to actually propose alternatives or to attempt to improve upon an idea. What has happened in this thread has NOT been constructive.


Rant out of the way... onto the actual suggestion... and to actually be constructive.


The idea has potential. Despite their destructive behaviour they did make some valid points though about this set up restricting builds to rather specific power choices to reliably maintain stacks. However the core function of only losing a couple stacks is something that can definitely be worked with. Even your suggestion for ranks is a good idea, to be perfectly honest.

Honestly though I do like the concept behind the varied stack durations... and actually I think that concept could work. I certainly would require different numbers than what you've proposed though, that is a certainty. (I've noticed over the years that there are some who do not comprehend the concept of "hypothetical examples" and will take any number you list as a hard solid proposal, I argued with one for days about my numbers in an old suggestion only being examples, and they kept trying to destroy my suggestion based on those numbers. That said... these might be some more viable numbers:)

1. ∞
2. 40s
3. 35s
4. 30s
5. 25s
6. 20s
7. 15s
8. 10s

It's safe to say that the first couple stacks are hardly of any real benefit so letting them last for significantly longer times than the last few is of little consequence. These numbers would also result in R3 having an 8-stack duration equal to the current nerfed system (20s). It's basically taking the current round of form nerfs and adjusting them to be more of a balance than a straight nerf.

morigosa

Interestingly, your numbers would also allow perpetual giant growth builds to make some degree of comeback; a build with Offensive Expertise from Vindicator spec, a good chunk of cooldown reduction gear, and r3 in both Enrage and Aggressor could - using just Aggressor - keep themselves permanently cycling between five and eight stacks of Enrage. Given the required investment to get there, I don't find that an unreasonable outcome.

I might, however, suggest pairing that sort of change with making the number of stacks lost go as 3/2/1 depending on form rank instead of 2/1.5/1 - otherwise even at r1 enrage it'd take over a minute and a half to decay back to one stack when you're legitimately out of combat, which is probably a bit much.

aesica

No offense, but this would actually make form powers just as passive but even more annoying. Form powers essentially are passives, with the only real active aspects being that you have to deal with activating them after you dismount a vehicle, cancel a become power, or revive after dying. Other than that, the only real active element is using powers which interact with them.

Here's how I'd deal with forms and their stacks:

Rank 1: 1 base stack, 20 second duration
Rank 2: 4 base stacks, 40 second duration
Rank 3: 8 base stacks, duration irrelevant because all stacks are always active

This means that most people would have exactly what they do now since nobody ranks past 1. By this, I mean something they have to build up and which lasts for 20 seconds. (this also allows the enrage nerf to feel like less of a middle finger) Taking additional ranks would allow players to deal with less stacking and maintenance if they desire, or to opt out of stack-juggling mechanics entirely. Basically, rank 2 and 3 become far more appealing than they are now without actually making them feel like mandatory advantage point sinks.

pantagruel01

I would note that, from everything we've seen in the game, there are really only two options for how stacks expire:

1. When you get a new stack, it refreshes all your other stacks. This means all stacks expire at once.
   
2. When you get a new stack, it doesn't refresh all your other stacks. This means any given stack expires 20s after it is applied. It would probably be necessary to increase base duration or reduce the internal cooldown on stack gain, as with a 20s duration and 1 stack/4s it is impossible to gain more than 5 stacks.
   

maatmons

Can buffs have effects that trigger when they expire? If so, you could make it so that a stack expiring refreshes all other stacks. This assumes that one stack's expiration effect is fully resolved before the remaining time on the next stack is checked. If those things go on asynchronously, that approach wouldn't work.