Keeper of the Lost Cities Thoughts

Ability Limitations

I'm just going to go through a bunch of abilities that are often portrayed as OP (overpowered) and then explain why they aren't actually. Or are, but still have major weaknesses.

Pyrokinetic:

Super-powerful, but got some huge limitations. Like all elemental abilities, you can totally lose control and destroy everything. This doesn't exactly make it weak, but it means that Pyrokinetics need to put a lot of focus on control and they can't really work with their instincts too much or the fire will take them over. Emotions can also cause a lot of a mess. Not to mention the ban situation (which better get fixed soon or I will...er, it just better get fixed).

Additionally, the more fire around, the harder it is to control. Finally, I'm fairly sure that Pyrokinetics are only resistant to fire, not immune. Why? Brant got burned a lot when he killed Jolie. From what we know about Pyrokinetics, that would only be possible if he summoned Everblaze, which he clearly did not. Therefore, Pyrokinetics must also be able to be hurt by normal fire, though obviously not as easily.

Shade:

It is slightly annoying that magical shadow powers are always a lot weirder than just "controlling the absence of light." Yes, shadowflux is mega-powerful, but keep in mind that most Shades can't control it. Tam and Umber are the only two we know of that can. With just shadowvapor weirdness, Shades' powers are a lot more varied than other ability powers, but not really dangerous. As far as I can tell, you can't actually hurt someone with shadowvapor.

Inflictor:

Most Inflictors can't target a particular person, which means it can hurt your own side as well. In fact, Sophie's ability to target only one person is a bit of a weakness because, as we all know, there is more than one member of the Neverseen. Unless she can switch back and forth. That would be cool. Additionally, Psionipaths can just block inflicting. Psionipathy, a specific but very underrated ability (and everyone already thinks it's super powerful).

Since Inflictors use emotion as a weapon, then I suspect that someone who's already feeling strong emotion or is emotionally unstable (or, like Vespera, feels no emotion) would be less susceptible or maybe even immune to inflicting. And since Infictors are always channeling emotion energy stuff, I'd suspect that they would be more vulnerable to other people's inflicting. We can't really tell that though because there are only two Inflictors and apparently, Sophie is immune to inflicting. Sophie powerful.

Mesmer:

Mind control. Seems really powerful, right? Except it's really hard to focus it on more than one person. I'd assume that mesmerizing is even harder to use when you want to get different people do different things. And it seems like a pretty draining ability. Not to mention, as someone (can't remember who) said: Mesmerizing doesn't make any permanent solutions.

Also, you can fight it. And if you do, even if you fail, you really exhaust the Mesmer. This ability is powerful, but limited. I'd also suggest that Mesmers can't get someone else to use their ability because abilities, even the physical ones, rely primarily on mental control, with the exception of contact abilities like Enhancer.

I might do more of these later but I feel like these are four of the main abilities that are more limited than they seem.