let's talk about Force

xkagearashix · November 2017

Force is a set that imho needs to be looked at closely. It's not a set that plays nice with others. Force is the king of KBs and tends to throw enemies all over the place. toons with Force gets meleers frustrated as when we are fighting, force users come and start throwing enemies all over the place making us have to chase them down.

I stopped using force powers when I heard a lot of complaints about this. Now the only force powers I really use are things like PFF, Field Surge, and bubbles.

what do the rest of you guys think? Especially melee ppl when it comes to the KB associated with Force? Yes I know other sets have some KB, but from my experience the KB from other sets are nowhere near as bad as from Force.

I feel the KB should be lessened, just my thoughts on the matter

flowcyto · November 2017

You can always build knock resistance up on trash w/ knock ups or knock downs before throwing out the KBs. Force could use more of those, perhaps, but Force in general just needs a serious re-vamp imo.

xkagearashix · November 2017

I agree on the revamp

servantrules · November 2017

Needs more Knock ups, knockdowns, Knock tos, holds, snares, and roots. Less Knockbacks. Maybe add Stagger or Disorient debuffs and effects that take advantage of them to synergize with Earth and Might (since these are its closest cousins in the Powerset). And possibly some Sonic damage/effects, too.

pantagruel01 · November 2017

Hm. Prior relatively recent threads with proposed (major) force revamps:
Force Revamp (me)
Powerset Boost: Force (Bluhman)
[Suggestion] Adjusting The Force Power Set (theravenforce)
A Complete Force Overhaul (sergeantmahoff1)

theravenforce · November 2017

I've been using Personal Force Field and the Force power set consistently since late 2009 and a major Force revamp is something I personally have been thinking about for a while but came to a head in February 2016. That's when it got a little on the unbearable side when it came to certain things...

I cooked up a document and posted it on the forums (linked in my signature) in March 2016, a few months later other threads regarding a Force Revamp did pop up. (As time has gone on, and I've thought more about stuff, I have edited or added in powers etc)

Naturally I am biased towards my own revamp, but having looked at one or two, there are some elements of others I'd like to see for the Force set revamp.

It feels like mostly "offensive" sets are getting focus now, to try and get them on the level and gimmicky sets like Force, Archery(maybe?), Wind, Earth & Gadgeteering would be dealt with in a different phase and then perhaps after that Supportive Sets, but there isn't much to support that claim, that's just a random thought...

legendarylycan · November 2017

i wouldn't exactly have called sorcery 'offensive' before its revamp...the individual sets that made up sorcery back then were overloaded with support powers and not much in the way of offense, so if they're choosing to do offensive frameworks first, that was a rather odd choice to make

or maybe not so odd, since i think the revamp happened at some point around the release of doctor strange, so that could've been a one-off capitalization of a film release

pwestolemyname · November 2017

I have a Force build that I've retconned any number of times. My methodology is "never boot something to the otherside of the map unless that shot is going to kill it." In normal story combat FC can one-shot most stuff, so it is not a problem. For Alert content, I use Force Wave until they get low enough to finish with a shot of FC. Of course, facing a Cosmic, knock isn't a problem.

Force, I think, though, is more of a soloist's set. The reason is not the blocks because a decent player can mitigate this in any number of ways, but because of the charge time of the main power. In regular content, I have found that by the time you fully pump an FC, most stuff is already dead. In Cosmics, I have yet to find a build that has decent enough DPS to make it feel like I'm actually contributing.

But, soloing story content, it is great. Stand 100' back, line up the shot and drop the whole mob spawn in one hit. It's like super EZ mode. QWZ content gets a little dicey because 1) the spawns doe not line up, well, and 2) the number of HP they have means they mostly survive and stomp you out while you are charging the next shot. But, backup powers can help that problem.

Unknown · November 2017

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magpieuk2014 · November 2017

I find Gravity Driver to be a more team friendly solution these days.

Force could certainly be expanded to be a little more Support friendly (Redirected Force doesn't work, for example) but otherwise it's one of my favourite powersets.

xkagearashix · November 2017

gradii said:
The knockback on force is fine and absolutely appropriate. Same for Might and Haymaker. Just becuase some people can't learn to use knock in a way which isn't annoying to the team, or becuase other people have no tolerance for the occasional knockback, should not be a reason to ruin the fun and feel of a thematic set.

you misunderstand, I'm not talking about getting rid of the knock entirely, its the knocks that send enemies flying halfway across the map, maybe change it to kncok down with stun. or reduce the knock back distance, also I haven't noticed if it already does this, but additional damage if they knock gets stopped by slamming into a wall or something similar as that would make sense. Wouldnt make to much sence if someone got flung into say a wall or a car with great force only to stand up and brush it off as if they just tripped...lol

Unknown · November 2017

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pantagruel01 · November 2017

Knockback on master villains and enforcers is a problem -- they're immune to falling damage, but can still be knocked back. This makes doing knockback almost totally detrimental on them.

legendarylycan · November 2017

so then the solution here is either make them NOT immune to falling damage, or make them immune to knockback

and cryptic will probably go for the latter

pantagruel01 · November 2017

Wonder if they could be coded to take partial damage from falls. Though really, falling damage is a gigantic annoyance, should probably eliminate falling damage for all targets and then just increase the damage of powers that do knockback.

legendarylycan · November 2017

falling damage is just cosmetic anyway - it can't actually kill players

i know this because i've jumped off miles high skyscrapers in ren cen and didn't so much as bust an ankle when i hit the ground

pantagruel01 · November 2017

shadowfang240 said:
falling damage is just cosmetic anyway - it can't actually kill players

It cannot kill players, but it can kill NPCs.

Unknown · December 2017

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spinnytop · December 2017

Definitely don't be goin' around getting rid of knocks. They're really powerful in the right hands. Up, back, towards, all good stuff.

Unknown · December 2017

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xkagearashix · December 2017

spinnytop said:
Definitely don't be goin' around getting rid of knocks. They're really powerful in the right hands. Up, back, towards, all good stuff.

key words there are 'in the right hands', however quite often ppl with force or other knock powers fling baddies away from meleers, making them have to chase them...

this is very frustrating

spinnytop · December 2017

That's no reason to get rid of them. Other than Smash alerts ( and not even most of them ) you don't actually have to chase the knocked mobs, you can just go attack something else.

xkagearashix · December 2017

what about adding an adv that gives the option to have the power do a knockdown instead of a knock back?

Unknown · December 2017

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spinnytop · December 2017

Eh, not so hype about the advantage idea. That seems to be the low hanging fruit people always go for. A more interesting solution is found with another power, Typhoon. Typhoon can knock or repel a target depending on if it has Staggered on it. Something similar could be done with Force knocks.

So it's likely Force will get a debuff. What if that debuff is what prevents a power from knocking? Let's call the debuff "Enhanced Gravity".

Enhanced Gravity

Prevents targets from being knocked by your Force knock powers - when struck with a knocking power they are repelled instead
Striking the target with a Force power that could knock causes the target to take extra damage

So what we've done here is two things. One, we've created a way for the Force player to decide dynamically when they want something to be knocked - they can decide in battle if the attack should knock or not, rather than having to decide that beforehand at the powerhouse meaning they retain the utility of the knock for when they want it. Two, we've created a debuff for the Force power set that doesn't add yet another Crushing damage debuff to the game.

aesica · December 2017

Or you could have knockback on powers meant to be utility-based, but knock up/down on powers meant to be more for damage. There is absolutely nothing desirable about knockback powers that scatter foes or that send the target flying away in a team setting, or even in a solo setting when want to aoe down several things at once.

Here's some examples of knock/repel mechanics that would be desirable and group-friendly on main-attack powers:

Single target or AoE attack that knocks targets up or down.
AoE attack that knocks all targets toward the primary target
AoE attack that knocks all targets toward the player
Maintained single target or AoE that repels targets up to a distance about half as far as its maximum distance. (Crushing Wave knocks targets out of its range, I believe)
Maintained AoE that repels targets toward the primary target.
Maintained PBAoE, single target, or maybe even cone AoE that repels targets toward the player

And so on. You don't need to add some weird "using this power grants targets immunity to your knock effects" nonsense in order to make force an effective knock/movement controlling framework.

legendarylycan · December 2017

or just put all the KB on ST attacks and knockups/downs/tos on AoE

Unknown · December 2017

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aesica · December 2017

gradii wrote: »

Nice idea but some powers just make no sense to knock down or up by default. Such as Force Cascade.

Force Cascade is one of those powers that's going to need to decide what it wants to be: It's fine with its horrendous knockback it wants to be an opening strike, like sniper rifle, but for a main nuke, it's going to have to give up the knockback. A large blast of force could quite believably knock down its targets instead of sending them all the way to the moon.

legendarylycan · December 2017

the knocks wouldn't even be THAT annoying (though, they'd still be when one occurred just as you were setting up a charged AoE like defile) if the knocks themselves were toned down in strength a bitlot...superhero game or not, a simple frag grenade or shotgun blast shouldn't be flinging people across a football field's length

Unknown · December 2017

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aesica · December 2017

gradii wrote: »

force would need a good 100 foot aoe AND a good 100 foot single target attack before that happened. Stop hating on knockback its fun as long as its not happening to you.

It's fun when you're the one using it, especially during solo content. It's less fun when you and everyone else have everything grouped up, only for The Force Guy to waddle up and scatter everything. It makes the whole thing take longer than it needed to because knockback doesn't play well with groups.

When the revamp comes around, you can be pretty sure Force will get both a proper single target ability and a proper aoe ability since that's been the standard for revamps thus far. It's highly unlikely that force cascade will get to remain as is, though. Force doesn't get to have one ability for both single target and aoe.

Unknown · December 2017

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spinnytop · December 2017

aesica said:
There is absolutely nothing desirable about knockback powers that scatter foes or that send the target flying away in a team setting, or even in a solo setting when want to aoe down several things at once.

100% false. In fact, Kagami, who is now TK melee, starts every encounter in QWZ with a fully charged TK eruption for the specific purpose of scattering everything. The utility of knockback is the obvious one: crowd control, and it is strong when wielded well both solo and in group content. If your argument is "the group content is too easy to need crowd control" then it's also so easy that anybody who doesn't want to chase knocked targets can just go attack a different group of enemies.

Also, my solution solves your very problem so I'm not sure what issue you're taking with it. If you want your powers to not knock, then you would be able to make them do that - meanwhile I can still have my powers knock. It's a wonderfully versatile solution that allows the player to choose for themselves.

aesica · December 2017

spinnytop wrote: »

100% false. In fact, Kagami, who is now TK melee, starts every encounter in QWZ with a fully charged TK eruption for the specific purpose of scattering everything.

aesica wrote: »

There is absolutely nothing desirable about knockback powers that scatter foes or that send the target flying away in a team setting, or even in a solo setting when want to aoe down several things at once.

Note the conditionals. Scattering a bunch of foes while soloing for the purpose of CCing some while you take out others a few at a time is perfectly valid. My point is that it sucks when you want things clustered together for an aoe burndown.

spinnytop wrote: »

Also, my solution solves your very problem so I'm not sure what issue you're taking with it.

I'm actually not taking any issue with anything other than the fact that knockback can be annoying in team settings. I'm just stating that the most likely outcome of the force revamp, when it comes, is that force cascade won't get to be the set's primary single target attack, primary aoe attack, and super-mega knockback power all in one. Some part of it will likely end up having to go. Your suggestion is one way, although it seems kind of weird and not sure it'd end up like that. I'm not really for or against any particular solution, just pointing out that something like that is likely going to change when the devs put the framework under the knife.

Edit: Force Cascade as the set's primary single target with a knockback would be fine

Unknown · December 2017

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magpieuk2014 · December 2017

It can be. Part-charged it doesn't knock your target back..... and does more damage than a Force Blast from the equivalent charge time.

100% false. In fact, Kagami, who is now TK melee, starts every encounter in QWZ with a fully charged TK eruption for the specific purpose of scattering everything.

Oh, naughty Spinny, you told me to take that power off my QWZ build (I ignored you). It works especially well there with Elder Worms and the Shadow Cult lot, with their interlocking passives and the like where you just need them to buzz off to the other side of the map and stop buffing each other. (Ooer Missus).

spinnytop · December 2017

Yeah, knocks are awesome.

Also FC already does that. If you tap it, no knock. Thing is, FC is a power you wanna charge.

chuckwolf · January 2018

There is another "solution" .. use Grav Ripple on the enemy groups then cascade the survivors. the ripple's "vortex" effect causes the mobs to yo-yo right back to where you knocked them from.

legendarylycan · January 2018

except gravitic ripple itself sucks and is not readily available, requiring a massive investment in a lousy system to be able to purchase it

magpieuk2014 · January 2018

That sounds like a cool solution but I don't have that power. I don't open enough lockboxes or have enough G for those ultimates.

eviltwintwo · January 2018

I would use the force energy builder if it didn't knock back. Such a weak power should at most knock down--if you hit while approaching you can knock mobs out of range. I'm saying this because Force Bolts would be a good energy builder in general (no chaining, fits with melee crushing damage for those who prefer to damage while approaching, etc.). The advantage, Energy Refraction, is cool but won't proc as much if you keep knocking targets away.

shadowolf505 · January 2018

magpieuk2014 said:
That sounds like a cool solution but I don't have that power. I don't open enough lockboxes or have enough G for those ultimates.

Gravity Ripple is from Onslaught...

let's talk about Force

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