Countering with over 100% power

[Omnires]

This question as more to do with the idea of counterattacks in melee and reflector shields for range. Do to the popularity of things like "The Art of War" one the most common phrases everyone has heard before is "Use your enemy's strength against them." And in many games I have seen things like counterattacks and reflective armor always doing some percentage of the enemy's own attack by at them as damage. This is all well and good as I personally hate blocking and would rather counter all attacks that come my way than trying to absorb the damage. And in many games in the higher levels of skill use, ability ranking, and gear you start to see stats of dealing 100% of the damage back onto the enemy plus some of your own power thrown into it too. So in the top levels you are throwing over 100% of the enemy's attack back at them as damage.

Here are my questions.
Well there be counterattacks and things like reflector shields in Em-8er?
When damage is reflected back onto the enemy is it the same damage that they used or is it converted to a different type of damage or is it true damage (in many games "true damage" is a flat amount of unblockable damage that bypasses all defense stats and armor.)?
And with the right level of skill and/or gear could the amount of reflected damage go over 100% of the enemy's attack?

 

[Pandagnome]

What if the damage absorbed the energy to power up your melee weapon this would be great for berserker type mek's to big super WAAAYAAA big chops or like the raiden in mgs multiple precision chop chop chop chop!.

WHat if you were not in the chop mood and wanted to have super thrusters to dodge directing the damage energy to enhance the movement.


What if the damage could be stored up and can see on your screen a damage power bar. Once you have enough can super charge your specialist ability but taking too much damage could result in critical damage to yourself so it is worth checking out that the damage power bar doesn't get to that point.

What if damage received was tethered to several targets with the damage divided by that number e.g. 4 enemies this could be useful against the mightily annoying mobs.

What if your decoy ate some of the damage and became a temporary becon hilighting invisible enemies for a short time before it blew up.

What if your medics alt-pain gun absorbed the damage from the direction of the enemy damage and could output improved healing to others or specific target, but this would mean the medic would have virtually no dps but can switch back to its normal shotgun style weapon if needed.

What if your damage could be manipulated to an elemental type so an engineer could for example seal a door where the enemies are coming with a cold elemental.

What if the damage was so powerful, attempt to lure this thing far away and initiate mek self destruct sequence.... make sneeky escape in g-suit with iceskate and dive into a hole!

 

[FenrisAmarok]

I like the idea, but I also love the idea of soaking up tons of damage without necessarily dealing it back. I also like pandagnome's ideas. There could be many different ways of absorbing damage and doing different things. A heavy unit gaining extra defenses as he takes damage could ease a healer's job over time while having an in-built diminishing returns, since the tank will be taking less and less damage.

I think just completely blocking 100% of damage AND counterattacking for 100+% of damage would be a little too overpowered. I think blocking, say, 50% damage and dealing 100+% could be fine, but blocking like that would have to preclude you from doing other types of damage at the same time. like, you can't be counterattacking for that much AND be shooting at the same time. I LOVE thorns builds just as much as I love face-tanking, but they need to be balanced. They tend to be either overpowered (diablo 3) or severely underpowered (almost any other game).

 

[Omnires]

The way I see it there should be two groups of counters. One type of counter where you are unable to do nothing else (outside of movement) and the type that can do other things at the same time. Each one has pros and cons just like everyone else in reality. When comes to the ones that disable your ability to do other things while it active or readying for the act means that you can't do much else other than move but at the same time it allows you to control the flew of energy better to channel it into other things or to add in more of your own power into the count for all the more damage. While with the other type of counters you can still do other things like attack or block at the same time, both the counter and other thing are going to be weaker for it because you are doing two contrasting things at once. And the reason for is being how much focus you are able to use and the amount of power you are able to dedicate to something.

An example of a counter that still let's do other things while doing it would be having the ability hit projectiles away with your melee attacks. Your freedom of options are not limited in this kind of counter but even if you are still able to reflect 100%+ of the damage away from you, what you lose in the process is control and power. Do to the nature of this kind of counter your ability to aim the projectile is reduced as you only have a moment of contact to redirect the attack making precision go down. And likewise because you only have a moment to adding in your own power to the attack the amount of power you can is reduced as well. Plus the speed and power of the melee attack you used to counter the projectile reduced because of the amount of force needed to redirect the projectile. With more powerful projectiles needing more energy to redirect. Meaning that if you was also hoping to melee another target within that same counter that attack would be weaker than normal. But on the up side, this kind of counter also has the effect of making impromptu tennis matches between players as they keep throwing the same attack back and forth between them. The impromptu tennis matches can also happen with NPCs if they are also able to counter projectiles by hitting them away.

An example of a count that would need to focus all your energy on would like using your energy shield to redirect or convert the force of an attack somewhere else. Like say a boss does a massive AOE that you and your team can't dodge and there is a good risk that the attack itself will push everyone back into something really dangerous. The heavy could try use their shield to protect everyone while redirecting some of the force of the attack into the ground and converting some of the energy into power for their jets as they use to keep from being pushed back. While the medic could also leech some energy out of the attack and covert it into power for the heavy to use to make the make the shield stronger or using it in a cooling beaming to make sure the heavy systems don't overheat and shutdown. While the sniper could also try to cover energy from the attack into batteries and capacitors to super charge their gun to make the next shot way more powerful the moment the heavy lowers the shield. The downside is each of them can only focus on one task while using their counters, but on the upside counter itself is more powerful and they have for more control over the flow of energy.