Diellan_

Super-Powered Mid's Keeper
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  1. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    From the wrong spreadsheet. That's an "experimental number" I grabbed by mistake analyzing a mechanical change to cones.
    Too bad. 1.195 is an acceptable AoE mod for Piercing Rounds.
  2. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    The nasty catch to pencil cones is that they benefit stronger players. I wish both power bolt and power blast were pencil cones: I'd take a hit in damage but I would get to hit multiple targets with them. At the difficulty levels I play on, I can easily beat the AoE factor of 1.195. But the average player would probably have a more difficult time doing that with a blaster.
    Yeah, I do have a lot of issues with cones, and Piercing Rounds is even more bizarre than normal. It has a range of 80 feet and an arc of 4 degrees, which means that the formula would dictate an AoE mod of 2.56 (for those playing at home, the AoE mod is what the damage is divided by, so that is the number of targets required to break even). Meanwhile, Energy Torrent, a 40 foot cone with an arc of 45 degrees, has an AoE mod of 2.38, a smaller number. Which one of these is easier to target multiple enemies is rather obvious. It's an outlier case, but the same thing happens with Night Fall, 60 feet and 19 degrees, which has an AoE mod of 2.498 (also bigger than Energy Torrent's).

    Thankfully, the Devs tweaked the formula for Piercing Rounds in specific, and treat it as if it has an AoE mod of 1.74, which is still way too high. Not only is it generally difficult for this power to hit more than one target, it has a target cap of only 3 enemies, so even the best player is only going to see a limited benefit of this power, when compared to other cones.

    The formula is just plain bizarre. Buckshot and Flamethrower have the same range of 40 feet, while the first has a 30 degree arc and the second a 45 degree arc; their AoE mods are 2.16 and 2.38 respectively. One of those powers is much more likely to get more foes than the other. From what I see playing with the radius and arc, it has a valley shape to it, where any extreme values throw it off entirely (e.g. doubling the arc versus multiplying the radius by sqrt(2) only give equivalent modifiers for specific values - outside of that, one will win over the other).

    I think Starsman had put together a more reasonable estimate for useability of aoe powers way back when he was trying to analyze aoe performance of dominators, that takes into account spawn dispersion and enemy size.

    P.S. Yeah, the degenerate case bothers me. Only an attack of radius 0 will have an AoE mod of 1. Melee attacks have a range of 7, which would be a mod of 1.126 if you had an arc of 0. Pendulum, with an arc of 180, should have an AoE mod of 1.588, but it does slightly more than that.

    P.P.S. Where does an AoE factor of 1.195 come from? At the 80 feet of Power Bolt, even an attack of 1 degree has an AoE mod of 2.4693.
  3. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Edana View Post
    I'm not sure this would help that much. VS seems to love staying slightly behind you and not joining in when you move on to a new spawn; yet making it more aggressive would just increase the problems caused by an uncontrollable aggro magnet.
    The duration change is a QoL feature more than anything else. Having to constantly recast this power is, frankly, annoying. Perma pets generally last for 1000 seconds, though they can be killed. If they can make it work with their new weird tech, I'd say it should be a toggle (that does not suppress when mezzed) like Dimension Shift and Lifegiving Spores in Nature Affinity, that way people wouldn't have to resummon it all the time, have the ability to dismiss it and resummon it at will, and still get the ability to have it zap things while you are mezzed.
  4. The damage-end-recharge formula is a real thing, though.

    I don't think anybody says "all sets must have a copy of Blaze". Tier 3 attacks range from 10 to 12 seconds and have varying secondary effects. Blaze has one of the best DPAs in the game, and I don't think we're going to get another Tier 3 that matches it, nor should we. But that doesn't mean other Tier 3 powers should be mediocre (like in Sonic or Energy).
  5. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Circuit_Boy View Post
    Regarding AOEs, once again, City of Theory rears its ugly head. Sure, you can create an attack chain using AOEs... ...and then wait for their recharges. That's one major reason you don't do that apples-to-oranges comparison in the first place.

    The whole point of a single-target attack chain is that it's repeatable, and so not only does Damage-Per-Activation matter, but Damage-Per-Cycle (where "Cycle" equals "Activation + Recharge") matters, too. That's a place where other sets start to fall short, because they can burst out a lot of damage, and then they lose it as the big attack powers are on their 20-second recharge cycle (or are we considering +Recharge buffs for them, but not for Electric?).

    I see you're minutely focused with Static Discharge's damage here--both you and Edana. Yogi_Bare has the right of it--if you want to pick on Electric, then use the chain he proposed, rather than the chain I use. (By the way, you assume Controllers even have their Hold powers. I'm finding more and more skip them--I have no idea why. They also seem to think that the AOE Immobilize is a great pulling tool.)
    If you read any of my other recent posts in this thread, you'll see that I have been coming up with alternate chains and including recharge slotting.

    Quote:
    The assumptions that have to be made to position Electric as "needing help" include the following:
    1) All damage types are resisted in-game equally.
    2) No one in their right mind uses Zapp.
    3) No one in their right mind uses Voltaic Sentinel.
    4) AOE powers only hit one target.
    5) Endurance Drain is irrelevant in game-play.

    The fact is that Electric Blast's single-target, once you include Voltaic Sentinel and Zapp in the mix, is on par with Energy Blast's single target, with Electric Blast being very slightly weaker. However, Electric's AOE--because its primary non-nuke AOEs (Ball Lightning and Short Circuit) can (and frequently do) hit 16 targets outpace Energy Blast's in terms of raw actual damage (Damage * Targets). It exceeds Ice Blast's non-nuke AOEs by a country mile.

    I ran all these numbers years and years ago.
    Yes, I remember the last massive Electric Blast discussion, and my position hasn't changed from what it was before: Short Circuit's long recharge and animation time means that no, Electric does not have better raw actual damage than Energy Blast, because Energy Blast can cycle Energy Torrent in almost half the time of Short Circuit. Energy Torrent has a problem with keeping enemies clumped together, yes. The other issue is that since Electric Blast's AoE damage is focused on long DoTs, it winds up being terrible for mitigating alpha strikes, a primary function of AoE attacks on Blasters. My suggestions back then were:

    1) Change Short Circuit's damage to be up front.
    2) Give Tesla Cage damage equal to a 10 second recharging attack.
    3) Increase Voltaic Sentinel's duration.
    4) Front load more of Ball Lightning's damage.

    Very small, minor changes, that will result in providing the set with a significant ease-of-play boost.
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Yogi_Bare View Post
    Why are we adding an EPP power, pool powers and incarnate abilities to basic set DPS?

    Shouldn't the chain be Zapp, Lightning Bolt, Charged Bolt, VS and Ball Lightning?

    And then just calcing in for basic damage; procs as a separate set of comparisons; Incarnate Buffs as a separate set of comparisons?
    Edana was using CB's chain.
  7. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei View Post
    I thought that's what the devs were going for something unique. Hey, if they decide to change it I don't care anymore. I am just tired of people constantly calling for this or that agenda driven personal vendetta nerf when it appears that the devs have logical reasons for some of the things being the way they are.
    My desire to nerf DP is because the power is so crazy that it makes it difficult to look at other things. It's like how the Devs aren't able to make tweaks to Stone Armor or Super Strength or Kinetics because there is no way that they can buff the underperforming powers in those sets without nerfing the overperforming ones. Also, most of these problems were inherited from other Devs who aren't the current Devs.
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Circuit_Boy View Post
    Again, one of the problems of playing City of Theory is that it results in conclusions like this.

    Damage-Per-Activation is not the be-all and end-all in determining an attack chain. Sometimes, there are other considerations--like trying to stack Holds on an Boss, or just making sure there's a Hold up for when the PToD drop on an AV. Of course, if you just played City of Theory, you wouldn't really know that.
    Hence why I specifically said that it should be a situational power. Stacking holds on a boss is one such situation. There's a difference between "attack chain you use when beating down an AV while buffed to the gills on a team of multiple controllers who surely have it handled" and "soloing a Rikti Mesmerist". But when people ask us about damage, then we're going to talk about damage. I listed the caveats, please do not ignore them.

    Quote:
    Similarly, Static Discharge shouldn't be considered as a single-target attack for the purposes of Damage-Per-Activation. If you do that, every AOE comes out looking very poorly indeed. The people who play City of Theory have always--always--done poorly at calculating the true damage an AOE power does.
    Thank you for making my point for me, which is that the fact that two AoE powers you have access to are better than this ST power when it comes to making a damage oriented attack chain, meaning that not only are you choosing to do less damage against a single target, but you're missing out on the ability to do much much more damage by hitting extra targets.

    I have no problems calculating AoE powers, which is why I always suggest them to people, even the long recharging ones like the cone breath powers.

    Quote:
    But so be it. It's things like this that have led me to not post on these boards for about two years or so. I prefer to actually play the game.
    Well, if you're going to resort to Ad Hominems, be my guest. If it makes you sleep better at night to think that people who can do math don't play this game, don't let me stop you. I just ask that you keep your wounded feelings and holier-than-thou attitude away from reasonable discussion. It's very easy to just put everybody that you disagree with into a box, give it a label, then stereotype them away. Yes, I like math. Yes, I care about game balance. Yes, I am a programmer and I work on Mids. I'm also a heavy RPer and writer, and spend more time doing that than crunching numbers.
  9. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Yogi_Bare View Post
    It's been awhile since I've done the numbers (and have probably lost the notes), so I would appreciate if one could redo a ST DPS calc that includes VS. Thanks.
    Actually, VS is really easy to account for. The little guy deals 44.49 damage every 3.82 seconds (given ArcanaTime), giving it a total contribution of 11.65 dps that is unaffected by recharge or damage buffs (outside enhancements) including Defiance. So you just add that to whatever your chain is, and you're done.

    A build operating at +140% recharge can do LB > CB > BL > CB > LB > CB > Zapp for 629.36 damage over 13.068 seconds, which is 48.16 dps. VS bumps that up to 59.81 dps. This is without factoring enhancements, which would bump that up to almost double. The theoretical best chain for LB is CB > LB > CB > BL, which takes a ridiculous amount of recharge to pull off (+278%), and deals 291.53 damage over 5.544 seconds, for 52.58 dps - 64.23 dps with VS.
  10. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Garent View Post
    That chain does about 77 dps before procs and voltaic sentinel. You definitely want to change that chain. An SOed defender can do more than 77 dps.
    Yeah, wow, that's terrible. Shocking Bolt has ridiculously bad DPA, even worse than Static Discharge, a long animating cone. Short Circuit is better than Shocking Bolt for damage. In fact, Brawl has better DPA. I cannot in good faith suggest to anybody to make Shocking Bolt a regular part of their attack chain, rather than a situational power used for holding annoying targets. Unless you play Devices, you certainly have a single target power in your secondary that is better than that.

    Zapp, on the other hand, is not nearly as abysmal. It's still very poor, but it's got twice the DPA of Shocking Bolt.
  11. Quote:
    Originally Posted by theduke24 View Post
    another thing... i never understood why Dominator DP was stronger than blasters. Can anyone explain this? (the +regen AND the -regen)
    Because the Dominator version came first and because it was in a set with the original overpowered Psychic Shockwave, when Psi Assault was revamped, it didn't get touched (yeah, PS was so good, it eclipsed DP).

    Then when the Blaster version was added, they reduced the value because the existing one was too powerful. They didn't know how much to reduce it, because, well, the Devs aren't very good at measuring out +Regen and -Regen. They're learning, but still.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei View Post
    I don't see any reason to change DP.
    I do. It starts with removing the ability to enhance the -Regen. It is the only regen debuff (that I know of offhand) that can do this.
  12. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Edana View Post
    Or to reduce the recharge time/endurance cost and leave the damage as is for the DoT bonus.
    That's less simple in that it requires them to decide how much of the DoT is normal and how much is bonus, which isn't something that's ever been standardized. Changing it to frontloaded damage also helps with the big problem the set has on blasters, which is that the aoe damage is sustained damage, not burst damage. Currently, from the time you hit the button until the time the last tick of damage is dealt, seven seconds have passed. That's an eternity when alpha strikes are considered.

    Ball Lightning, for example, does scale 1.02 damage, whereas it should be 0.9, so it gets a bonus of 0.12 damage. It deals only scale 0.3 damage immediately, and the rest over a whopping 3.1 seconds. Short Circuit deals 0.9 damage, whereas it should be 0.89, so it gets a bonus of 0.01 damage. It deals all 0.9 damage over 4.1 seconds.

    For comparison, Irradiate has the same 20 second recharge and 20 foot radius, has an animation time of 1.07 seconds, and deals scale 1 damage over 4.6 seconds (a bonus of 0.11).
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood View Post
    I wouldn't want to see the recharge on Short Circuit lowered since that would mean also lowering the damage or the radius.
    Right now, Short Circuit does the right amount of damage for its radius and recharge, but it does it as a long 4.1 second DoT, and usually DoT damage comes for "free" to one extant or another. I think the simple solution to the power is to change it from DoT to straight damage. It also needs to have the animation time reduced, but that's a bit harder to get from the Devs.
  14. Quote:
    Originally Posted by StratoNexus View Post
    How does Assault Core not work with Ball Lightning? How does Support fail to add benefit?
    I'm guessing he's talking about (a) the fact that Ball Lightning is an AoE, so the AoE modifier lowers its proc rate and double hit damage; and (b) Support won't buff VS.
  15. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Rakeeb View Post
    Its' DPA is not good - it's sitting at 48.34 DPA when using Arcanatimes' activations. That's not a good attack. A good attack is at 65-70 minimum. Gravity Well is 74.57. Smite is at 76.64. Bitter Ice Blast is at 108.1. Blaze is a staggering 159. Assassin's Strike in Kinetic Melee is at 166.1. No Electric Blast attacks exceed 55 DPA.
    Well, Voltaic Sentinel is basically 11 DPS for "free" on top of your chain, which is supposed to allow for the overall lack of good DPA attacks. The problem is that the set is short one ST attack power from having a full chain at all (even the top chain with Ball Lightning assumes that you spend some time doing nothing and waiting for recharge).
  16. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Shining_Path View Post
    Regarding Blazing Aura (which as others have noted has always been a pretty worthless power), could someone confirm that Mid's is still showing inaccurate damage from Interface proc's? It shows a net increase of 50 points of damage when Interface is turned on (same with Hot Feet). My understanding is that it should actually be +10 points (67 * .75 / 5).
    Mids is accurate in most cases. The issue with Blazing Aura is that it deals its damage once every 2 seconds, while the Interface will proc only once every 10 seconds.
  17. Quote:
    Originally Posted by BrandX View Post
    So ELB suffers from the same fate as Spines. People aren't thinking of using the AOEs in their ST DPS.

    Spines does better with ST DPS when one relies on it's st blast, melee cone, ranged cone, and damage toggle, than relying on any of it's strictly ST melee attacks
    Yeah. Which is really funny, because the melee AT players consider Ball Lightning to be one of the better epic powers. The issue, though, is that it has a 16 second recharge, making it really difficult to use in a regular chain before high recharge.
  18. Quote:
    Originally Posted by BrandX View Post
    I wondered the same thing, and it's aboutusing the targetted AOE in the chain for one thing.
    That's exactly what it is. Ball Lightning has a really fast animation time, and on an "IO" build (which I'm guessing means perma-Hasten), it recharges fast enough that you can make a chain that includes it. Only in that case do you wind up significantly better than Energy Blast, and that's only because Energy Blast sees almost zero improvement from recharge, because its single target blasts all have very similar DPA.
  19. Have you considered increased the Blaster Melee_Buff_ToHit mod to be the same as Scrappers? It's odd that Blasters are the only AT with a value of 0.075, with every single other AT having higher values. Even moreso, nobody is a "specialist" in Melee_Buff_ToHit (e.g. 0.125) - even Defenders are 0.100 (same as Scrappers, Tankers, Brutes, Stalkers, and VEATS). Giving Blasters a 0.125 Melee_Buff_ToHit would mean they can take better advantage of Build Up and Aim for the Snipers, but still would be poor for Tactics (which uses Ranged_Buff_ToHit).

    (Yes, I know ArcanaVille had the same idea.)
  20. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Energizing_Ion View Post
    Hope this hasn't been asked yet...only skimmed through the first page!


    But Water Blast...the one attack's range (forgot name, Water Jet?) went from 80 ft. to 40 ft.


    Will this be turned back into an 80 ft. ranged attack when i24 hits or no?
    Synapse already said yes on the beta forums.
  21. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Starflier View Post
    Okay, this is bugging me.

    Does TD give Sniper Rifle a damage bonus? TD's in game description says yes. Mids says yes. Another poster said no. Since TD's numbers don't list it, I can't really figure it out without respeccing to pick up sniper rifle (which I'll be doing, just don't want to do it now).
    http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/power...argeting_Drone

    http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/power...e.Sniper_Rifle

    Yes.
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    It may place some limits on manipulation balancing, but I don't think the situation is all that analogous. The amount of sustain we're getting is closer to what the devs feel compelled to add, not the maximum amount we could credibly get. And that means sustain doesn't really reduce the options for buffing manipulation sets by more than a small amount.

    For example, I would feel perfectly comfortable asking the devs to buff Frozen Aura to not be ridiculous. I would be genuinely surprised to hear them say that they'd like to, but they'd have to nerf Frigid Protection if they do. The manipulation sets have enormous room for improvement and I don't think sustain took even a third of the room available to buff them, particularly on the damage and offensive mitigation side of the fence.
    Well, either they're going to give the "right" amount of sustain, which means that Blasters will still be below par, or they'll give them too much sustain, which means that Blasters will be "good enough" and then they can't balance the sets without nerfing those powers. I fear they're going to put themselves in between a rock and a hard place when I24 beta comes around, in that if they choose the first option, there'll be too much complaining about the powers not being strong enough, driving them closer to the second option.
  23. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    No matter how fantastic the secondaries were, if blasters were still insufficiently survivable there would still be a need to add survivability somewhere, and the devs believe that is in the secondaries. That's completely independent from any perceived lack of utility of the secondaries.

    That survivability would either come in one power or be split up into more than one power. I would prefer it come in just one, to the point of advocating changing it if it was split up.

    Its never necessary to give anything an overpowered anything. However, I don't see where that was done in any of the secondary changes slated for I24. The survivability levels being added are entirely reasonable, and in fact within the limits I calculated should be added in the past.
    The survivability levels are completely reasonable, but putting everything into one power is going to make things worse in the long run: as we can see from Stone Armor and Kinetics, powersets that have one extremely amazing power become impossible for the Devs to tweak in the future, as there is no way to buff the crap powers without nerfing the uber power. What I don't want is for these powers to be so strong that they won't ever be able to tweak Blaster secondaries again.
  24. Quote:
    Originally Posted by StratoNexus View Post
    Voltaic Sentinel should be a high performer against Tyrant, especially once you get to the actual hard part, since the Olympians will be gone and it will only have one thing to shoot at (although it may also sometimes shoot at the Lights if Tyrant ends up near them, I haven't monitored that on my Emp/Elec).

    VS isn't a very good power for spawn to spawn racing and killing mass groups, but it is very good against hard targets. It still should be improved for QoL, but it's strength vs. AVs is not an issue.
    DPS of Electric's ST attack chain, including Voltaic Sentinel, is almost exactly tied with Energy Blast (Electric Blast is something like 4% better).
  25. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tenzhi View Post
    I would rather it be an additional way of achieving the effect. I personally like the idea of being able to achieve a constant improved snipe with Targeting Drone without having to lead-in with other powers. Of course, they could always have Targeting Drone constantly reapply a Defiance buff, I suppose.
    So does that mean we can finally implement my idea of Defiance 3.0: replacing the damage buffs with a meter, and then give all Blaster powers a Double Hit mechanic that is based upon this meter. That is, all Blasters powers would have an extra damage effect whose magnitude is a function of their normal damage and the percent of the meter.

    Then we can just make it so that BU and Aim would fill the meter by x amount, and make the Improved Snipe work based upon this meter (of course, that wouldn't work for other ATs).