How about the possibility of being able to transmute an opponents power /or defense over to you for a short time in battle ?
Lets say you are a very squishy defender/controller AT with this 'transmute power' and are standing facing a tank type enemy, perhaps even an AV. Now it comes at you and it might spell certain doom. Your last ditch is to hit the transmute power and for 60 seconds his uber defense stats or hit points are transferred onto your character, so you effectively gain the defense of your opponent for a short while. Giving the defender the ability to leet battle the tank/AV for a short while or make a hasty escape.
Maybe this could be used to steal or imitate an opponents attack power too ?
Mimicry pool :D
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day one vet
Problems:
1) How do you select which power to grab? This is going to be a clunky UI because there are usually a lot of choices.
2) How many powers could one steal? This is important because some powers work best when used with other powers.
3) Balance is impossible, but you knew that.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Yeah I haven't honestly sat down to calculate the numbers or consider the flaws, just a bit of creative thinking on my part really. I would assume that it being created would be more problematic than it may be worth.
day one vet
You don't even need to put numbers to it, really. Things get messy enough just at the conceptual stage.
Say there's a way to copy two powers. Then for your character to not be gimped, there need to be PCs or NPCs around from which to copy powers, and they must have powers worth copying. (This is kind of like the old CoH problem of trying to use Siphon Speed as a travel power.)
On the flip side, if the character copies nuke-level powers from two other characters, then they're possibly overpowered.
Any adjustment you make to fix one problem is likely to make the other problem worse, since these cases are kind of opposed. This is when a developer starts pulling hair out and looking for something else to do.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of awesome ideas that work in the comics because the author already knows where everything is going, and can make sure the environment plays along. Game designers (computer, pen & paper, whatever) don't have that level of control.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
You could simplify it. Make it just increase your own HP temporarily by some percentage of the targets. That sill gives you a short duration where a defender equivalent could tank something, or run. Not as flashy, but it would be a fairly cool power.
^Pretty much this.
Agreed. Escape powers, or even revenge powers for the squishy AT's seems like a fun power to add in. It at least adds an angle of surprise strength, and even living on the edge to the build. I can imagine various scenarios where it would be useful, 1: Team wipes, squishy support escapes and saves team regroup times, 2: squishy makes Tank look stupid, everyone laughs. 3: Soloing becomes a little less tedious on a squishy.
day one vet
It [i]was[/i] a [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dark_Melee#Soul_Drain]very cool power[/url]. I loved using it on my DDS.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
"Each affected foe will lose some Hit Points and add to your Damage and chance to hit."
It's not quite what is being described. What is actually being described is a change of hitpoints. As in the AV has 20,000 HP, the def has 800 HP, at some point in battle the def activates the power and his HP increases. So if he has 10% of 800 left and he activates it on an AV with 20,000 he gets 10% of 20,000 switched to him for 60 seconds. It has nothing to do with transferring it to damage output. Survivability seems the key word here.
day one vet
No, it wasn't an exact match, but I did use it for the same purpose: survivability. While it didn't increase my HP, it did slap them with a to-hit debuff and gave me a huge damage boost, especially if I could grab a bunch of minions with it.
But it's the same kind of "turn the tables" concept, without having to get into the "how is this possibly going to work?" mess of a "duplication" power.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]