Inertial Dampening Field Slotted Passive: What was the point?

typemoon

I wasn't active when the Force revamp and change from Inertial Dampening Field being a buff form to a slotted passive was made, so yeah I didn't get a chance to give 'feedback'. But I am still baffled everyday as to why it was done.

In all my time since I returned (a few months+), I have not seen a single person use it. Not even 1, let alone a 'theme' character. Earlier it had good utility mainly for off-tanks, in exchange for damage/threat compared to a regular damage increasing buff form. So it already had a niche, had a big trade-off, and was far from broken OP. But now there is literally no use case for it, unless the group already has AoPM, AoAC, AoED, AoRP, Med Nanites, but somehow only lacks IDF to be successful.

If the point was to make it a shield support - there is no strong AOE shield power that can be spammed or maintained (to my knowledge), and the existing single target shield powers aren't useful enough in endgame group content to be a primary support method, as they vanish at any hint of damage taken. And AoPM/AC/ED/compassion etc. will likely buff the shields a decent amount anyway, while being way more versatile and useful to the group.

Not sure what else to say, I know it wont be reverted back, so I can only suggest kindly to remake an equivalent buff form - as was previously. You can make it so the slotted passive and buff form both can't be used/stacked at the same time if you wish. Thanks.

phasestar

I don't see it ever reverting back, but I agree it needs something more. Perhaps if it had some additional base resistance, like Medical Nanites, that would help. I wish it would also just buff shields more so that if you commit to IDF you get more of a boost to your shielding to make them maybe be able to take a couple of hits.

Agree that it would also be nice for the Force set to get a better AOE shield than Redirected Force, or buff Redirected Force so that it has a more significant effect when you're focusing on it. You can do the combo attack to shield all of those around you, which I use, but even with a dedicated IDF / Vital Shielding bubbler the shields just aren't very strong.

Healing can also get quite spammy. Might be nice if force fields allowed for a bit more of a relaxed style, with stronger shields (that cost more energy I'd assume) but which end up in a similar place in terms of damage mitigate over time compared to spamming heals.

Considering how strong some of the other auras are, it does feel like an IDF support should get some kind of additional boost to shielding.

thisiscraftaaa

The point was, as we got confirmation of, more to nerf "sit back and bombard with uncontrollable/temporary pets" multiboxing setups like... I'm not sure if we're allowed to name-drop on here in this sort of context even if it's not for the sake of name-and-shaming, but like the one that swept the Undead Heroes during, what was it, Blood Moon 2021? That was at it for, like, twelve hours a day all event long and singlehandedly devalued their drops to near-nothing (outside of the ones always in endless demand like Thorn Shield and WotTC?)

The change to auras stacking so that they'd only apply if you yourself were directly in combat and only one could ever apply at a time was another one meant to do the same; preventing you from simply floating out of combat range endlessly dropping pets down onto the pile from five accounts at once and letting them do all the work, circumventing the need for... basically anyone else. Sure, it meant that group content- especially large group content like Cosmics- would unnecessarily suffer due to hybrid auras and support auras flip-flopping back and forth and screwing with defense, energy and the likes, and many builds utilizing IDF for more specific, gimmick-y purposes would just absolutely crash and burn for it, but people were already harping hard on how literally everything has a dedicated pet-wiping AoE built into it these days, so some other, more permanent solution was required to shut them up, no?

But don't worry. In exchange for that, and for IDF genuinely giving a smaller chip damage reduction bonus than it gave as a toggleform and so not even being as defense-boosting a passive as it was a toggleform, it gives knock resistance! When everything in the endgame is scripted to ignore knock resistance, which is why you can have 1000%+ of it and Vargulfs will still grenade you all the way through the walls and outside of the map in TT. (But that knock resistance is soooooo useful, says all the people who refuse to play anything harder than DRA because "CO is all a skinner box anyways" or something like that.)

Also, obligatory "it makes shields stronger as long as you keep stacking them so it's very very good!" as if shields- which don't care about Def% still, last I checked- are good enough to warrant building around them when the only time you can get meaningful use out of them is when they push to silly numbers that nothing can reach, even IDF, unless you're a healer popping shield devices on yourself to hit 30k, 40k, 50k or more. (Which handily gets eaten through in three to six seconds by trash mob crowds in most lairs anyways, depending on which ones you look at, and THOSE numbers have a near-minute cooldown timer tied to them.)

So, that's... the current IDF.

Thing is, there's a myriad of potential ways to go about making IDF more interesting and more useful without reverting to its previous state which "encouraged abusing game mechanics in unintended ways" but IDF is just one of those things that our current dev crew memory-holed and is unlikely to see any sort of changing. It got tied into making the entirety of Force hybrid-bait with a weird enemy-shield-rupture-mechanic, so "it's already reworked and doesn't need any further rebalancing and is perfect as-is."

Personally? I'd like to see more in the way of both IDF and different auras getting an energy-burning unlimited-duration toggle of some kind built into them that can be aimed at/tethered to self or to another player to provide some added bonus to them directly that'd involve physically staying close to them, or constantly changing who's tethered. Things like IDF providing drastically increased chip damage reduction and a small-ish (read: 1k-2k) shield that quickly regenerates itself, AoED providing a base damage bonus- or a critical chance and critical severity bonus- to the selected person, AoPM providing an additional bonus to superstats in particular, so on and so forth. It's something that's been brought up by a few other people around that I've latched onto and seems interesting, especially if given 50' range so it isn't literally just a fire-and-forget "everyone buff the Burning Chi Fist DPS and go afk" type deal.

But other ways to fix IDF could involve playing more into the utility aspect of it. Maybe make the chip damage bonus proximity-based, climbing higher at close range and decreasing at long range to encourage grouping while still not being viable for fire-and-forget pet spam from 100' up right on top of the heads of one of the few world bosses that doesn't already delete pets every ten seconds for making the mistake of existing.

Perhaps being affected by IDF could also provide a multiplier to healing received, which granted would be useless for Iniquity healers but would still be helpful for non-Iniquity healers having to maintain friendlies with much slower, weaker heals, and would help (though not all on its own obviously) turn IDF into something of a support for supports? Maybe for good measure, pair that with the idea of shielding targets while under the effects of IDF also providing a buff that temporarily increases max health by a value determined by the healer's total healing strength. Literally anything that rewards IDF for doing more than just existing, because as it is, IDF was punished for being too good at being beneficial while just existing, but was never compensated with giving it any means of being rewarded for being beneficial while actively playing and doing its job, except "haha lol force gimmick that nobody sane uses!"

Honestly, there's other ways to go about it too. But since IDF's been memory-holed... oh well.

typemoon

Good ideas as always. The more energy used for bigger shields is decent idea to lean in on the endurance stat side of the force tree.

However I forgot to add and recently realized, shields don't even count for score at cosmics and people will have to rely on something other than shields to get score - invalidating any benefit of mildly stronger shields from their IDF slotted passive. So most IDF users won't even manage to meet the score threshold especially in short fights, to be able to gear up being an IDF shield support.

Alas, changing IDF to slotted passive for shield/bubble support somehow managed to be even more useless than I originally thought. Blimey.

spookyspectre

Direct shields should be counting for scoring at cosmics since the revamp for the Force framework and Release Notes from 9/1/2022. It may not be a lot but it should be something. Otherwise, it's a bug.

Shield Effects

• Direct Shields and Personal Force Field now credit during open missions.
• Note: Some open missions may not credit damage taken, please call those out.

jaazaniah1

Yep. It sure be nice if shielding counted for something at cosmics. I stopped bringing my shielder because half the time I could not make score.​​

phasestar

spookyspectre wrote: »

Direct shields should be counting for scoring at cosmics since the revamp for the Force framework and Release Notes from 9/1/2022. It may not be a lot but it should be something. Otherwise, it's a bug.

Shield Effects

• Direct Shields and Personal Force Field now credit during open missions.
• Note: Some open missions may not credit damage taken, please call those out.

Yes, that should be a bug. Right now the only way to get a decent score is to lean on healing powers and less on shields. Wouldn't be a big deal except that for those who focus on bubbling, it can be bad enough that they don't meet the minimum score for rewards.

warcanch

In addition to not receiving proper credit at Cosmics (which I think is pretty much verified), bubbling the Main Tank and/or the soaks does them a disservice. As the bubble drastically reduces the reflecting damage if the target is wearing a Spark shield or one of the other reflected damage devices.

I was noticing this about a month or 2 ago when I was checking the logs.

This may not seem much, but I feel some tanks really rely on that extra bit of reflecting damage to help maintain aggro. Not just those that turtle up for extended times.

While this doesn't sound like too much of an issue, it does undermine the tank players' meta, to a degree. Especially if the Main Tank isn't rocking those expensive, high-end threat mods.

ansemthedark

phasestar wrote: »

spookyspectre wrote: »

Direct shields should be counting for scoring at cosmics since the revamp for the Force framework and Release Notes from 9/1/2022. It may not be a lot but it should be something. Otherwise, it's a bug.

Shield Effects

• Direct Shields and Personal Force Field now credit during open missions.
• Note: Some open missions may not credit damage taken, please call those out.

Yes, that should be a bug. Right now the only way to get a decent score is to lean on healing powers and less on shields. Wouldn't be a big deal except that for those who focus on bubbling, it can be bad enough that they don't meet the minimum score for rewards.

The biggest issue with shields yet is still that certain damage simply ignore the shield completely, see VIPER or ARGENT, shield still need a heavy buff in such regard, because you can't count support if no damage was blocked by the shields. One of the main reasons PFF is and always will be in a bad state in general. Since you can't count on it, same with dodge in a way too. Both need at least a certain fixed % that always apply to all attacks or so.

renegade0

It'd be perfect if Protection Shield were 100ft like Bionic Shielding instead of 50ft.

jaazaniah1

renegade0 wrote: »

It'd be perfect if Protection Shield were 100ft like Bionic Shielding instead of 50ft.

There will probably be an Ultimate Power Replacer/Variant Device at some point that does just that. Work on real power revamps has withered and gimmicks are all the rage.​​

chuckwolf

I for one hate the change. My main was a forced based hybrid that relied on the IDFs blocking of DOT's and minor damage to buffer his PFF for survivability. Used to be with the 2 stacked could completely ignore Kiga's ice storm effect. I haven't even re-speced that character since the change. as PFF alone or IDF alone doesn't provive enough protection IMO.
What's worse is by making IDF a Support passive the only character that doesn't benefit from their Main defensive ability being buffed by IDF is the character actually using IDF in team up scenarios.

theravenforce

Personal opinion...

As someone with PFF for a very long time, I've liked old IDF but new IDF can provide a higher FDR than old IDF. It can also allow you as a support to eat pretty strongish hits (around 15k for me), turning you into a fairly self sufficient support.

I have both an IDF support and of course my main PFFer (no Compassion/Vital Shielding/Shield buffing specs -10k PFF).

I think the passive could be a bit better but when you look at the mechanics of the passive it isn't that terrible. You just need to build around it to some extent.

It'll really suffer vs %HP damage however because it cannot protect against that.

chuckwolf

I just find it disappointing that IDF is no longer usable for it's intended purpose when I helped the devs develop it all those years ago. To be stacked on top of an existing passive to provide a slight bit more protection from DoTs and smaller attacks.

theravenforce

I see what you mean, however the solution for a Defensive Passive like PFF should never have been (and never should be) a whole non innate power/mechanic to help it deal with regular issues. It should be something baked into the actual passive itself. That's how you fix the situation without forcing people into a specific build.

phasestar

I'll just say that I wish Redirected Force counted for Vital Shielding. It's always a bit of a bummer to use it to shield everyone in the area, but then have to lose all your stacks.

ansemthedark

As I always say on Shields, they have an issue in general, since they can be fully ignored by attacks like Brickbusters, VIPER and Argent in general. They need a base resistance, same goes for dodge, since dodge can fail and full damage gets trough at the wrong time, and not get me started on pets not blocking and being useless today, even some sidekicks die on some hits in open events. The damage calculation vs resistance is a big issue, and also not get me started on such for knock and hold resistance too.

theravenforce

ansemthedark wrote: »

As I always say on Shields, they have an issue in general, since they can be fully ignored by attacks like Brickbusters, VIPER and Argent in general. They need a base resistance, same goes for dodge, since dodge can fail and full damage gets trough at the wrong time, and not get me started on pets not blocking and being useless today, even some sidekicks die on some hits in open events. The damage calculation vs resistance is a big issue, and also not get me started on such for knock and hold resistance too.

1) I've not encountered an ARGENT mob that ignores shields.

2) I think the day that shields get base resist, is the day they get giant CDs lol. (For clarity's sake...we all know that Bastion shields, Defensive Combo, Redirected Force and Personal Force Field already benefit from your resistance, but shields like...Hardened Particle Matrix, Protection Field, Mindful Reinforcement, Field Expulsion, Shield Generator, Energy Refraction etc...do not.) Shields just take raw damage and it requires a fair bit of work to make them nice but with IDF you can have pretty good shields.

Pets are...another matter lol.

areee

Well now I know why IDF was taken from my summoner build.

Still I wish there was a form that affects my summons in some way for how squishy they are I have to use the passive Medical Nanites just to give them survivability and that gets boring quick