New efforts!

[srmalloy]

On Blasters the funniest thing to ever watch in the early days was a blaster with their tier 9 paboe and 6 slotted damage during a dumpster dive. Yes that is right early days no aoe limit, 6 slotted damage with no ED hundreds of dead freakshows in about 5 seconds.

One of the funniest things I remember was the old-style wolf farm on the 'northeastern Boomtown' instance map -- the mission where Unai Kemen sent you to close the dimensional rifts. The technique was a /Dev Blaster dropping into the dumpster to plant Trip Mines as fast as they could while the Tanker ran around aggroing the map, then the Blaster would fly up out of range. Because of a quirk in the game mechanics, the Trip Mines wouldn't go off unless the Blaster that placed them was within a certain radius, so the Tanker could jump in and get all the wolves to follow him in, then the Blaster would dive down, and the Trip Mines would all go off when he got in range. What made it hilarious was that, if you were too close to the dumpster when the Trip Mines went off, you'd get a Windows-style pop-up from the game engine saying "Too many effects to render".

[hejtmane]

One of the funniest things I remember was the old-style wolf farm on the 'northeastern Boomtown' instance map -- the mission where Unai Kemen sent you to close the dimensional rifts. The technique was a /Dev Blaster dropping into the dumpster to plant Trip Mines as fast as they could while the Tanker ran around aggroing the map, then the Blaster would fly up out of range. Because of a quirk in the game mechanics, the Trip Mines wouldn't go off unless the Blaster that placed them was within a certain radius, so the Tanker could jump in and get all the wolves to follow him in, then the Blaster would dive down, and the Trip Mines would all go off when he got in range. What made it hilarious was that, if you were too close to the dumpster when the Trip Mines went off, you'd get a Windows-style pop-up from the game engine saying "Too many effects to render".

I knew a Dark scrapper that killed themselves on accident in a dumpster dive forgot to turn of Oppressive gloom you took minor damage for each target hit while no aoe limit almost instant death  :) lets just say it went badly  :P for them

[Gibbering]

Dr. Vahz, maybe.  A level 50 AV resisting 85% of all drains and with a 53 point recovery tick would need to see 353 points of drain more or less simultaneously to nullify their endurance recovery tick.  Did you have a build that packed that kind of drain?
A team of drainers can do that.  I don't think a single character could sustain that kind of drain.  I'd love to see someone post a build that could.

I've been messing around with this concept a bit, and it's just as wicked a problem as Arcana suspects. Powers that seem to have good potential for constant drain tend to be burdened with bad activation intervals, bad activation chances, or some combination of the two (Poison Trap from /Poison and Static Field from Electric Control, I'm looking at you!). That being said, I think you might be able to get...well, kinda sorta close. Maybe.

Disclaimers: I'm bad at math, I used Mids + RedTomax + Windows Calculator to run the numbers, and my assumptions may or may not be valid.

Assumptions:

• Since recovery debuffs don't reduce the actual endurance number recovered (just the time interval involved), focus needs to be on drain, rather than debuff (which is too bad, because otherwise Heat Exhaustion was looking damn promising).
• Taking Arcana's numbers, you need to drain 353 points basically every second to keep an AV from using powers. Translating to powers that drain a % of endurance, that's something like 45% endurance drain per second.
• Before you can even worry about keeping an AV flatlined, you first need to take care of their starting 800 points of endurance.
• Pet endurance drain works the same against AVs as PC endurance drain.

It looks like an Electric/Kinetic controller might have a chance. Add Primal Force epic for Power Boost, Agility Core Paragon alpha slot for endurance+recharge, and a lot of high-end slotting (more recharge, general utility).

Keeping in mind the caveats, it appears that during the first activation of Power Boost, cycling Transfusion, Chain Fences, and Transference will knock off something like 67% of a lvl 50 AV's full endurance bar. Once Power Boost runs out, these powers get supplemented by Conductive Aura, Electric Fence (which packs a useful 4 separate ticks of drain-over-time), and Jolting Chain (as needed to fill any attack chain gaps). You can toss in Static Field as well, though it's not much contribution overall.

The real star, though, is Gremlins. Both attacks pack endurance drain (7%/10% base), they cycle quickly...and you've got 2 of them!

Will all of these factors always line up to always equal 45% endurance drain each and every second? I doubt it...but it's certainly a lot of fun to contemplate.

A potential build:

Spoiler for Hidden:

Code Select Expand

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
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[Eskreema]

I knew a Dark scrapper that killed themselves on accident in a dumpster dive forgot to turn of Oppressive gloom you took minor damage for each target hit while no aoe limit almost instant death  :) lets just say it went badly  :P for them

That reminds me of /EM tanks using ET on mobs that were directly on top of one another and ET would hit all of them - instadeath

[Arcana]

One of the funniest things I remember was the old-style wolf farm on the 'northeastern Boomtown' instance map -- the mission where Unai Kemen sent you to close the dimensional rifts. The technique was a /Dev Blaster dropping into the dumpster to plant Trip Mines as fast as they could while the Tanker ran around aggroing the map, then the Blaster would fly up out of range. Because of a quirk in the game mechanics, the Trip Mines wouldn't go off unless the Blaster that placed them was within a certain radius, so the Tanker could jump in and get all the wolves to follow him in, then the Blaster would dive down, and the Trip Mines would all go off when he got in range. What made it hilarious was that, if you were too close to the dumpster when the Trip Mines went off, you'd get a Windows-style pop-up from the game engine saying "Too many effects to render".

The first place I saw that error was in Infernal's portal room.  Let the room fill up with spawns, then Nova them.  If you let a little too many demons spawn before hitting them, render error.

[Pyromantic]

Enhancement boosters are better seen as "slot savers" than simple power increases.  You still had to know how to use the IO's to benefit from them, because once a power was hitting ED, the boosters made no difference.  But what you could get per-enhancement was pretty big for minor powers.

The other benefit of them was you could lower your endurance costs when it was possible to do that already :/.  Generally any build I had that was the only benefit of them.  I always had very high accuracy, so much so that any increases to accuracy was pretty meaningless(even more-so on toons with +to-hit, there is only so much a godlike accurate toon has in benefit, fighting +5 or worst even hitting them every time your damage was flattened).

I still feel it was probably a hair to much of an issue pay to win wise.

Saving slots often can turn into power increases though.  I can think of a lot of potential benefits, such as:

1.  For powers like Hasten or Stamina that only have one meaningful attribute to enhance, you can hit ED caps with only 2 slots using level 50 common IOs and enhancement boosters, potentially applying a saved slot elsewhere, or getting more benefit if you were willing to use only two slots anyway.

2.  In some cases you slot a set for the bonuses, knowingly giving up something in enhancement values.  Boosters can often circumvent that issue.

3.  Many powers benefit from having additional enhancement in secondary characteristics.  This can, for example, make it easier to get enough recharge for a particular attack chain to work.  There are also some powers like Siphon Life that really benefit from getting multiple attributes to ED caps (damage and healing in this case).

Is it huge?  Maybe not.  I expect the actual benefit varies pretty significantly from build to build.  This issue definitely wouldn't be enough to drive me away from the game considering how much I miss it these days.  It's just something that feels out of place to me.

[Arcana]

It looks like an Electric/Kinetic controller might have a chance. Add Primal Force epic for Power Boost, Agility Core Paragon alpha slot for endurance+recharge, and a lot of high-end slotting (more recharge, general utility).

Keeping in mind the caveats, it appears that during the first activation of Power Boost, cycling Transfusion, Chain Fences, and Transference will knock off something like 67% of a lvl 50 AV's full endurance bar. Once Power Boost runs out, these powers get supplemented by Conductive Aura, Electric Fence (which packs a useful 4 separate ticks of drain-over-time), and Jolting Chain (as needed to fill any attack chain gaps). You can toss in Static Field as well, though it's not much contribution overall.

"Cycle" transference?  Taking your mids build, I get the following for the cycle times and drain for the primary drainers you mention in the primary chain:

Transfusion: -19.8%, 3.18s
Chain Fences: -19.8%, 3.22s
Transference: -95.63%, 9.82s

Outside of powerboost, that's a total drain of 10.56%/s.  Ignoring the issues of exact timing, that's still about a quarter of the drain you'd need.  Power boost (up about half the time) would increase that to about 16.08%/s, still only about a third of what you need.

The real star, though, is Gremlins. Both attacks pack endurance drain (7%/10% base), they cycle quickly...and you've got 2 of them!

Each Gremlin is probably going to add maybe about 2.5%/sec of drain base, maybe 5%/sec slotted and on a really good day (because pets rarely attack optimally).  Assuming they stay alive while punching an AV in melee range, they might get you another 10%/sec of drain.

That's actually pretty good not because its very high but because it doesn't cost you any activation time to get it.  And the other such power is one you mentioned in passing: Conductive Aura.  It generates about 10%/sec of drain also for free (in terms of cast time) although it requires you to stand dangerously close to the AV.

With Gremlins and CA, you have potentially 20%/sec of drain (assuming they always hit: they won't of course).  You only need 25%/sec more.  Unfortunately, even that's out of reach of the build, even with power boost up.

Siphon speed could help, except it would be difficult to spam Siphon speed when you're also spamming Transfusion and Fences.  At this point, ignoring Arcanatime and power collisions completely, you're spending 36.8% of your time spamming Transfusion and 36.4% of your time spamming Chain Fences.  Add in the 23.1% of the time you're spending activating Transference and that's 96.3% of your overall time.  There's not even enough time to consistently activate power boost (3.75%) and hasten (0.6%).  That also means its hard to gain additional benefit from other draining powers unless they drain more per activation second than these.  Static field seems promising because it lingers around but its a average drain seems to be about 10.5%, and that means its drain per activation second is only about 5%/sec unslotted, about 10%/sec slotted.  That's lower than your main two drainers.

In fact, look at it this way.  To achieve 45%/sec of drain, its obvious that you have to have drain powers that deal that much drain per second during their activation window or better.  With Gremlins and CA, 25%/sec.  If all of your drains deal less than that during activation, there's no way to assemble them into something that will work.  Transference gets there: 95.63% drain in 2.27s of activation is 42%/sec of drain.  But the other two powers are used way more often and deal way less drain: about 17%/sec for each power.  Even when you tack on 10%/sec from the Gremlins** and the 10% from Conductive Aura, its clear that even at the recharge cap those powers will never get there.  Admirably within the same zip code, but not really very close in absolute terms.

Two of these guys have a shot at it, though.  Especially since you could speed boost each other (speed boost does nothing for the pets though, just in case you were not aware: pet attacks are flagged immune from recharge buffs).  Timing would still be problematic, and you also have to consider that I don't think you have enough damage to defeat the AV when you're draining like this.


Edit: I used Gibbering's  numbers without verifying them.  An AV recovers 6.67% per tick, which requires about 45% drain to drain out completely, but not 45%/sec.  At the recovery floor you only have to drain that amount every 40 seconds.  The problem is not that the build can't do that, but rather that with the cast times involved make it difficult to do that reliably right at the recovery tick moment.  However, there's the separate problem of whether that build can bring an AV to the recovery floor, and it doesn't look like it although that would require a separate more complex analysis.  I don't think the build can meet in the middle, but I can't be 100% certain without running the numbers.  Also, transference has a problem in that its drain is *higher* than one recovery tick, so you can't get its full benefit averaged out.

Edit the second: misquoted

[Arcana]

Is it huge?  Maybe not.  I expect the actual benefit varies pretty significantly from build to build.  This issue definitely wouldn't be enough to drive me away from the game considering how much I miss it these days.  It's just something that feels out of place to me.

Most F2P models have a subscription tier in which many in-game benefits accrue to players that subscribe.  Is subscription "pay to win" if it allows things like access to the invention system, the incarnate system, and the like?  These are all far more powerful objectively than enhancement boosters are.  Even if they are, and just on a different place in the pay to win continuum, in what way are things like enhancement boosters "out of place" in an F2P game that has subscription tiers that already offer significantly more benefit for a price?

[Pyromantic]

Most F2P models have a subscription tier in which many in-game benefits accrue to players that subscribe.  Is subscription "pay to win" if it allows things like access to the invention system, the incarnate system, and the like?  These are all far more powerful objectively than enhancement boosters are.  Even if they are, and just on a different place in the pay to win continuum, in what way are things like enhancement boosters "out of place" in an F2P game that has subscription tiers that already offer significantly more benefit for a price?

Invention and incarnate systems were both included in subscriptions.  As you mentioned in a previous post, expectations of the player base are key, and I believe there was a reasonable expectation given the game's subscription history that maintaining a subscription would allow you to access the peak character potential through in-game play. 

The most significant difference between those systems and enhancement boosters, however, is that those systems are account-wide unlocks.  Enhancement boosters would require you to sink (effectively unbounded) funds into characters one at a time. 

[ivanhedgehog]

Invention and incarnate systems were both included in subscriptions.  As you mentioned in a previous post, expectations of the player base are key, and I believe there was a reasonable expectation given the game's subscription history that maintaining a subscription would allow you to access the peak character potential through in-game play. 

The most significant difference between those systems and enhancement boosters, however, is that those systems are account-wide unlocks.  Enhancement boosters would require you to sink (effectively unbounded) funds into characters one at a time.

One of the great things about COH was you could still make awesome, powerful characters without sitting up at night in mids cram sessions, crossing every T ad dotting every i. you didnt have to have those boosters to make a perfectly capable solo farmer, hami tank, or incarnate running toon. we had so many options that many of us never actually realized what we had.

so get to negotiating!! chop chop!! or no pudding for you!!( this was a joke, you still get pudding)

[Pyromantic]

One of the great things about COH was you could still make awesome, powerful characters without sitting up at night in mids cram sessions, crossing every T ad dotting every i. you didnt have to have those boosters to make a perfectly capable solo farmer, hami tank, or incarnate running toon. we had so many options that many of us never actually realized what we had.

so get to negotiating!! chop chop!! or no pudding for you!!( this was a joke, you still get pudding)

Oh, I agree.  I liked that the game allowed you to feel powerful without having to do that if you didn't want to.  But I also liked that you absolutely could spend time with Mids crossing every "t" and dotting every "i" and feel like you saw a genuine benefit from it.

[Arcana]

Invention and incarnate systems were both included in subscriptions.  As you mentioned in a previous post, expectations of the player base are key, and I believe there was a reasonable expectation given the game's subscription history that maintaining a subscription would allow you to access the peak character potential through in-game play. 

The most significant difference between those systems and enhancement boosters, however, is that those systems are account-wide unlocks.  Enhancement boosters would require you to sink (effectively unbounded) funds into characters one at a time.

Those two facts seems relevant to the question of whether the purchases have reasonable value, but irrelevant to the question of whether a purchase is pay to win.  Something can't be pay to win based on whether its a good value, can it?

[Pyromantic]

Those two facts seems relevant to the question of whether the purchases have reasonable value, but irrelevant to the question of whether a purchase is pay to win.  Something can't be pay to win based on whether its a good value, can it?

I was never debating whether inventions or incarnates are pay to win.  As I said in an earlier post, I accept that pay-to-win exists on a spectrum, and the only way for a game to truly have no pay-to-win at all is if there is absolutely no mechanical relevance to anything you can purchase.

I say that enhancement boosters seem out of place compared to inventions and incarnates not because one is pay-to-win while the others are strictly not, but because they exist in different places on that spectrum.  To me, the former crosses the line while the latter does not in what I consider reasonable.  I acknowledge that this is a subjective matter.  But, considering that an actual no-expense-barred use of boosters would require a substantial investment of real money, per character, while incarnates and inventions could be unlocked account-wide for the same subscription players had been paying since the beginning of the game, I see a significant difference between them.

[Arcana]

It looks like an Electric/Kinetic controller might have a chance.

So I thought about this more, and the key to making this work even on paper seems to be to have a power that drains enough in one go to knock out a single AV recovery tick, combined with enough -recovery to slow those ticks down enough to meet or exceed the cycle time of your big drain power.  I don't think Electric/Kin controllers can do that.  Interestingly, I believe Electric/Kin corruptors have a shot at it (also Kin/Electric defenders, but I looked at corruptors first).  Here's a scratch build:

Code Select Expand

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
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The key is actually Tesla Cage.  Controller Tesla Cage has only a chance to debuff recovery but defender/corruptor cage has a 100% chance to debuff recovery.  That means it can be slotted to debuff a continuous (assuming it hits) -200% recovery.  Short Circuit can do the same, for a net total of about -400% recovery.  AV resistances should bring that down to about -60% recovery, which means the AV will be recovering at 40% of normal rate.  That means its recovery ticks will slow down from once every four seconds to once every ten seconds if I am recalling the numbers correctly.  And that means Transference, which has a cycle time of ten seconds in this build, can just about hit the AV every time it recovers just as it recovers (at least theoretically) which would nullify that recovery tick every time it happens.  You now have, at least on paper, a drained AV.

There are still problems.  You still have to drain the AV to zero in the first place, and you're doing if with a build not designed to survive damage from an AV.  You have to have perfect timing and hit the AV just as the recovery tick happens - if you wait to actually *see* the tick show up in its endurance bar that's probably too late, and the build is not fast enough to offer a second chance.  I'm not sure the build is good for anything else.  It probably won't actually work in practice.  It just *barely* gets there at all.  But it seems its at least mathematically possible, if not really credible.

[Arcana]

I was never debating whether inventions or incarnates are pay to win.  As I said in an earlier post, I accept that pay-to-win exists on a spectrum, and the only way for a game to truly have no pay-to-win at all is if there is absolutely no mechanical relevance to anything you can purchase.

I say that enhancement boosters seem out of place compared to inventions and incarnates not because one is pay-to-win while the others are strictly not, but because they exist in different places on that spectrum.  To me, the former crosses the line while the latter does not in what I consider reasonable.  I acknowledge that this is a subjective matter.  But, considering that an actual no-expense-barred use of boosters would require a substantial investment of real money, per character, while incarnates and inventions could be unlocked account-wide for the same subscription players had been paying since the beginning of the game, I see a significant difference between them.

The question I asked, or at least a component of it, is just precisely what line are you defining that boosters cross on that continuum.  It seems odd to me to consider expensive pay to win unacceptable but inexpensive pay to win acceptable, because I don't understand what line that crosses.  It almost sounds like you're okay with things on the pay to win continuum that are inexpensive enough for a majority of players to spend money on.  Egalitarian pay to win?

[blacksly]

Edit: I used Gibbering's  numbers without verifying them.  An AV recovers 6.67% per tick, which requires about 45% drain to drain out completely, but not 45%/sec.  At the recovery floor you only have to drain that amount every 40 seconds.  The problem is not that the build can't do that, but rather that with the cast times involved make it difficult to do that reliably right at the recovery tick moment.  However, there's the separate problem of whether that build can bring an AV to the recovery floor, and it doesn't look like it although that would require a separate more complex analysis.  I don't think the build can meet in the middle, but I can't be 100% certain without running the numbers.  Also, transference has a problem in that its drain is *higher* than one recovery tick, so you can't get its full benefit averaged out.

Look at this power (Poison/Poison Trap): http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/summon.php?id=Pets_Poison_Poison_Gas ... the web page shows it as a 100% Endurance Drain with a mag of 10. Mid's displays this at 1000% Drain. It can easily be made permanent since it has a 30 second duration (plus more... gas lasts for 30 seconds, but the stats don't show how long the debuff lasts, I assume at least 1 second so that it's permanent while the gas is active). So if I understand the power correctly, it can deliver a permanent 1000% debuff, which is enough to floor a level 50 AV's Recovery.

In addition, it might be interesting to try an Ele/Psy perma-Dom if you slot up Drain Psyche so that it gets at least 600% Endurance Drain, as that will also floor an AV's recovery.

I think that if Poison Trap works, a Ele/Poison can effectively drain an AV, even if they can't prevent it from attacking. With the AV's recovery ticks only coming every 45 seconds, you get about 20%/second end drain just from the Gremlins and Conductive Aura and stacked Static Fields. Add about 5% from attacking, and multiplying by the AV's 15% debuff rate and 800 End, and we're at a rough 30 End drained per second. It's coming from enough sources that you don't have to worry too much about having a very spiky drain cycle, and wasting a high spike right before an AV's recovery tick.

With that, the AV gets to swing twice at best, because you should have its tick drained in 2 seconds. Considering the endurance used by its first attack and that it's likely to take more than 1 second to activate it, and it's likely that it only gets to attack once. With 1 attack every 45 seconds, the only issue is keeping BFs ready in case it hits with a mez. Otherwise, I don't think that there is much reason to worry about it killing you in 1 hit (Ghost Widow excepted).

[Zerohour]

Any snippets yet?

[Sinistar]

Look at this power (Poison/Poison Trap): http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/summon.php?id=Pets_Poison_Poison_Gas ... the web page shows it as a 100% Endurance Drain with a mag of 10. Mid's displays this at 1000% Drain. It can easily be made permanent since it has a 30 second duration (plus more... gas lasts for 30 seconds, but the stats don't show how long the debuff lasts, I assume at least 1 second so that it's permanent while the gas is active). So if I understand the power correctly, it can deliver a permanent 1000% debuff, which is enough to floor a level 50 AV's Recovery.

In addition, it might be interesting to try an Ele/Psy perma-Dom if you slot up Drain Psyche so that it gets at least 600% Endurance Drain, as that will also floor an AV's recovery.

I think that if Poison Trap works, a Ele/Poison can effectively drain an AV, even if they can't prevent it from attacking. With the AV's recovery ticks only coming every 45 seconds, you get about 20%/second end drain just from the Gremlins and Conductive Aura and stacked Static Fields. Add about 5% from attacking, and multiplying by the AV's 15% debuff rate and 800 End, and we're at a rough 30 End drained per second. It's coming from enough sources that you don't have to worry too much about having a very spiky drain cycle, and wasting a high spike right before an AV's recovery tick.

With that, the AV gets to swing twice at best, because you should have its tick drained in 2 seconds. Considering the endurance used by its first attack and that it's likely to take more than 1 second to activate it, and it's likely that it only gets to attack once. With 1 attack every 45 seconds, the only issue is keeping BFs ready in case it hits with a mez. Otherwise, I don't think that there is much reason to worry about it killing you in 1 hit (Ghost Widow excepted).

Going off a dusty memory here as I briefly played poison then junked it, but the trap power in it was not what it should have been but that TRAPS had the functioning poison trap.

[blacksly]

Going off a dusty memory here as I briefly played poison then junked it, but the trap power in it was not what it should have been but that TRAPS had the functioning poison trap.

I think that may have been fixed. I do recall the Poison version of the power being absolutely garbage, but I know it got changed when they went and changed the single-target debuffs (Envenom & Weaken) to have a half-strength debuff radius. I do not recall if the changes actually fixed the power.

And I don't think that the -Recovery was ever questioned, because the main problem was that it just didn't do enough status effect to make it worth using... a strong -Recovery debuff without major draining ability (and this was before Electric Control, so the only ones who had use for that were Electric/Poison Corruptors) is just not that useful. Mobs don't usually survive long enough to drain their own Endurance just through attacking you, so pure -Recovery is not very useful. And with very weak status effect, it was rightly panned as a worthless power at the start.

But as I recall, the changes made it a very good power: able to do solid damage through IOs, a good AoE Hold with a guaranteed 8-second or so base Hold plus some rare pulses afterwards, and a short recharge actually gave it a better Mez/Recharge ratio than a standard Controller AoE Hold. I think it was originally a Sleep, perhaps, though I don't recall for certain.

[Pyromantic]

The question I asked, or at least a component of it, is just precisely what line are you defining that boosters cross on that continuum.  It seems odd to me to consider expensive pay to win unacceptable but inexpensive pay to win acceptable, because I don't understand what line that crosses.  It almost sounds like you're okay with things on the pay to win continuum that are inexpensive enough for a majority of players to spend money on.  Egalitarian pay to win?

To be honest I'm not sure I could precisely put it into words, as it is a matter of feel.  I'm not expecting an objective test to verify my sense of "reasonableness" in this case.

However, "egalitarian pay to win" may not actually be that far from the matter.  I think inventions and incarnates provide a good baseline for more than one reason.  Firstly, they came with a subscription that was exactly what old-timers were used to paying anyway.  I consider it reasonable to expect that without a subscription you are playing a stripped-down version of the game, which may include a reduction in power level.  Not unlike the way some games will level-cap you without a subscription; CoH was just particularly generous in this regard.  Also, inventions/incarnates were on/off levels of improvement as compared to the incremental nature of boosters; to a large extent boosters were "keep paying a bit more money, keep getting a bit better" (an effect made more pronounced by their per-character nature, especially considering how common heavy alting was in CoH.)

I suppose my point is that the line being crossed is not one of value for money, but one of fairness, which is not quite the same thing, but is difficult to pin down. 

I'm also aware that there are some perfectionist tendencies at work here.  For me part of the fun in the game is trying to see just how far I can push a build.  Squeezing out a little more effectiveness here or there is part of the joy.  Boosters really mess that up because the endpoint of trying to squeeze out that little bit more becomes "how much money am I willing to spend?" instead of "how much more can I do with the opportunities available in game?"  That's also why I wouldn't have had any problem with them at all if you could collect boosters through a reasonable amount of play (even if someone else had to pay real money for them and I paid inf, similar to the way you can buy PLEX in Eve.)