Stats Revamp 1.5: Iconic Abilities

Batarang and Throwing Knives should be just as viable as Guass Grenade and Cryofoam. The difference for Hard Light Shield is that there are multiple substitutes for damage abilities, but no power set has over 6 shields to choose between. Shields are very strong personal survival tools, so most power sets only have 1 or 2 available. Shields also have very limited scope for differentiating their mechanics and making interesting choices, hence there will naturally be fewer variants.

The intention for any ability, including movement mode and iconics, is that it is a viable choice in your loadout. Hard Light Shield should fill the gap of an emergency survival tool to supplement your other survival options. Given your feedback, we may increase the power cost and damage cap for it, but it's unlikely we would lower the cooldown since Hard Light Shield's role is a situational ability, rather than a rotational one.

Hope that makes sense!

So wait? Am I to understand I can finally use my speedster moves on a Flash inspired toon and still do great damage?


I think I need to be pinched if I'm reading this correctly.

Are you willing to accept suggestions for improving some of the Iconic abilities? I'm finding the most useful offensive Iconic powers are the ones that have power interactions. I'm finding these to be lacking though:

Batarang Multi-Shot
it does the appropriate amount of damage for a 200 base cost power, but there isn't much reason to take it. It doesn't provide synergy with anything else. It is just a melee range cone-based power. It would be more interesting if it applied the Terror PI.

Sonic Cry
Was mildly useful in the past for being a PBAoE stun. I'm not sure if it performs the stun anymore though. It does about as much damage as any other medium-cost burst power. Like Batarang Multi-Shot, it doesn't provide synergy with anything else. Might be interesting if it used or leveraged a power interaction.

Sonic Shout
Making it mobile would increase its utility. Giving it a Dazed or Terror PI would fit thematically.

Freeze Breath is useful because of its CC and PI abilities. Amazonian Deflection and Hard Light Shield are useful situational shields. Robot Sidekick provides supplemental damage on weapon-heavy builds. Lasso can be used as a supplementary taunt/pull. Heat Vision is very 'meh', but you can use it to setup a PI quickly. Gag Glove works on certain Earth/Gadgets/Mental builds because of its Dazed PI setup. The Supercharges are useful depending on the situation. Anyone can use Word of Power to help restore power. Neo-Venom Boost provides a nice Defense and Damage boost for 15 seconds. Clownbox is very 'meh', but can work as a shield/stun.

I proposed an idea a while back to have iconic abilities have their own sub-tree, similar to the way the weapons tree has innate abilities. Each point spent on one power could grant bonus effects/damage/variant or more powerful versions. I don't know if the devs could look into this as a way to prevent players from having the best of both power trees while still making both useful.

As Quantum: Please test this combination out for me. If it works, then my shield would get swapped out as a Troll.

You will need to test this with at least one other person.

1. Have Quantum Tunnelling + Amazonium Deflection.
2. Have someone in your group die on purpose.
3. Clip Quantum Tunnelling into Amazonium Deflection so that you would teleport to the person downed.
4. Try to see if you are able to pick the person up while Amazonium Deflection is activated.

Tried this with a vendor and with the Riddler boxes in the Deathstroke solo, both of them cancel you out of Amazonium Deflection, so picking somebody up would be the same.

Tested it on an open world add on the side of east end after you logged, it got stunned so I'm assuming it's still there.

Sure! The whole point of this thread is to give feedback about how Iconic Abilities perform or could be improved for the Stats Revamp.

It looks like the overall theme of this feedback is: add PIs to Iconic Abilities. This is something we will definitely consider

Any chance on looking into the tier effect I presented a few comments up? I feel like that would add more variety and loadout options as opposed to the current iconic tree that is available. This could work in a number of different ways from adding a combo system to some powers or having the final point be either a supercharge or final tier level damage power, similar to current power tree tier set up. I feel like there should be some sort of benefit/investment options to run iconic powers opposed to our regular powers.

Not sure how much effort your team is willing to put into this, but I feel it's well overdue.

This might sound like a crazy idea, but what about giving Iconic powers their own unique PI? There are people (not sure if it's a lot of people or a little) that would like loadouts filled with just iconic powers. We've seen already that some abilities can benefit from multiple PIs, like Electrocute in Electricity doing extra damage to Polarized or Electrified enemies. Since the abilities know to only apply the extra damage once, no matter how many PIs are on the enemy, I don't see a reason why this couldn't work.

You could even make the PI name be a play on the initials DC, like "Applies Detected Correlation to the target" or something. As an example, you could use Batarang Multi-Shot to apply Detected Correlation to multiple enemies and then Sonic Shout would do extra damage to any enemy suffering from Detected Correlation. You could even extend it so that movement abilities can take advantage of the PI too.

why not a PI with sonic shout and sonic cry (looking at flight: low pressure/high pressure)
also: why not adding a PI for heatwave to benefit from frostbite and frostbite benefit from burning?
then again: why not also add some PI's to certain movement powers to fit with iconics?
swoop attack benefit from dazed for example. or downdraft slamming levitated targets to the ground!
also a finisher would be nice to have.
and how about adding powers to iconics you could take from legend characters?

I second this as far as Batarang and Throwing Knives, The kicks ect go.

You do not know how you have made a happy person!
My day is much better now!
Thank you very much!!

I would love to see anything done to make super-strength more significant. It's such a fundamental aspect of so many super-heroes and the entire concept of being a super-hero that it's a shame the game treats it essentially as a minor cosmetic after-thought.

On a similar note, I'd love to see more destructability of environments, including building parts. Being able to do the tear-a-chunk-of-rock from the earth should be part of super-strength. Multiple levels of super-strength and thus damage done would be awesome.

And I second all practical suggestions (perhaps not all at once) for improving Iconic Power interactions. Consider being imaginative about this and open to new ideas.

It would be nice if sonic cry could inflict a PI, and Sonic Shout could benefit from it.

Amazonian Deflection was broken for SOOOOOOOO long, and now it is useful again!

Heat Vision / Frost Breath -- they both set up a PI... but neither of them are mobile. Any interest in turning them into supercharges?

Neo Venom is extremely powerful now. It's much better as a supercharge IMO.

Need to play with word of power a bit more, but with healer and movement super charges no longer returning power it seems pretty useful.

I agree for the most part, other than turning Heat Vision/Frost Breath into a SC. That seems like it would only limit how and when you'd be able to use it, and that doesn't make much sense to me.

Making Freeze Breath viable in an Ice DPS build would be a dream come true

I approve of said build, let our imaginations run loose. That's what the stats-revamp should let us do, If you wanna play freeze breath in an ice build then please devs let this happen.

I have to admit I actually had a lot of fun making an all iconic loadout and playing through the seeing shades mission. Damage was good, although you can tell they're definitely not designed to be all used together, but that makes sense from a superhero standpoint anyway. Unless you're trying to make an all-in-one lol. Here are a few notes regarding specific DPS powers.

Heat Vision, nice damage, awesome range, definitely getting interrupted though in any situation without a tank. That's OK. Damage is on par with other 100 cost powers p/second so I can see these being used in PftT loadouts while you have a DoT burning or something. The major issue with this power is it's only single target. So not useful at all in most situations.

An idea, not sure if possible, is to make it a finisher, with 35% double damage or something.

Freeze breath, also amazing range, really nice utitility, solid damage. I can see this being a nice power if you want to freeze enemies in place. The PI is just icing on the cake.

Batarang, pretty much hate it. Damage is meh versus multiple enemies for the cost. And the stun doesn't take effect immediately (unless that's just the server lag tonight, that could be), so it's primary purpose is pretty much gone. And you have to be pretty close to use it too.

Used SS vortex attack too, that also did pretty good damage with the utility. Nice for solo content and will be especially nice for weapons only playstyle because of the stuns. Brought back memories of Legends PVP, lol. In a good way. Not that I was one of the spam Flash's BB guys, but still. It was fun.

I had a suggestion concerning Iconic Powers and Skill Tree Powers a few months back, but I'm not sure if anyone saw it.

How about making Iconic Powers and Skill Tree Powers useful for every Role?

For example: When a Tank uses Lasso, it's a single target taunt, but WHAT IF a Controller uses the same Lasso power? It should no longer act as a taunt when used by a Controller, but maybe a DEBUFF of some sort instead??? Not quite sure what Lasso can do for Healer Role, but I'm sure others can come up with IDEAS!!

Iconic Powers' and Skill Tree Powers' properties should change depending on the Role (Tank, Controller, Healer, DPS) using it.

I think this would be great! Thanks for reading!!