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Posts
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RE: Synapse, this setup looks much more promising to me.
I will miss the quirk of being able to get to 100% proc rates under special circumstances, but I will also live without it.
Quote:Many high global recharge builds already avoid slotting recharge enhancement in as many powers as possible to conserve slots for other benefits; it's a major reason that high global recharge builds are popular. Personally, I only ever slot anything heavily for recharge on a high global recharge build if I have to to make my desired attack chain or a permanent buff/debuff.That sounds... reasonable. I wonder how much this becomes something people will try to game, by avoiding enhancing certain powers' recharge, and instead heaping on global buffs more than they already do, but in general, this seems like it'll work.
Thanks for giving us all the heads-up, and listening to the feedback. -
Quote:Thank you.Some very good points have been brought up regarding outside buffs to your recharge affecting your proc chances. While we have considered this, after really taking a look at how this affects a great deal a power, the original proposed changes might be too punitive considering this. I'm going to take a look at some options and I'll get back to you all (hopefully later today.)
TL;DR: I'd like to make the formula less punitive for players with global recharge bonuses and for powers with large area factors.
Synapse
Good question. I hope not. -
Most versions of the Rain of Fire power summon the same pseudopet as the Blaster version (such as the Dominator Fire Mastery version), or, one with the same damage values as the Blaster version plus special archetype mechanics (such as the Corruptor Fire Blast version, which does full Blaster base damage plus double-Scourge).
The Defender version of Rain of Fire, however, got its very own copy of the pseudopet made for it, with it's base damage reduced by about 33%. -
Quote:There is a difference between "isn't good" as in, increasing your statistic of Recharge doesn't benefit you anymore, and "isn't good" as in, increasing your statistic of recharge actively hurts your performance.I have to disagree. The amount of Recharge a build can get at this point is insane. I think it is fabluous that there will be (or could be) a balance point at which more recharge isn't good.
Being buffed by another player should NEVER be detrimental to you. It is bad design. Period.
Edit:
Quote:It is an inescapable fact that quantitative balancing problems and solutions will have the most dramatic effects at the margins of performance. Anyone who lives there will be the most affected by game balance changes over time. That's a truism. You can disagree, in the same sense that you can disagree with arithmetic. The only question is whether any dev team would expend far more resources to address those issues at the margins than they would everyone else combined, and the answer is essentially always no.
Looking for a way to mitigate the issues at high recharge is a reasonable step in this case because I believe that mitigation comes at low cost in resources and design impact. However, if that were not true, the high end performance area would lose. They always have, and always will. You can argue with me about it, but I'm not in any position to change it. I'm only commenting on it.
Since you went on to discuss the fact that consideration should and easily could be given to that playstyle in this particular instance, I will assume that you just chose your words poorly in the first post. -
Quote:I would have to disagree with this statement. Every playstyle is an important consideration for game balancing.I would think min/maxers would have learned by now they are not the important consideration for game balancing.
Edit:
Quote:Irrelevant. There will be changes. Synapse stated that all procs will have their PPM value increased.
Regardless, basing it on modified recharge still seems dumb without introducing a floor to the proc chance equivalent to the current flat chance procs. That would at least make it so recharge wasn't as much of a penalty. I'm not sure how often the new versions will be better, but it's very very important that they are never worse.
And stuff the snark while you're at it. -
Quote:Without changes, at the very least giving current% rate floors to the proc chances, I fear this is going to really hurt some characters.Edit2: And yeah, having lots of global recharge for other powers decrease your PPM rating is also very sucky. The more I think about this, the more I would prefer lower, but static PPM rates, plus a floor.
My Ice/Storm/Ice Controller has nothing to work with but very short activation+recharge powers to make an attack chain with, and has very high global recharge to leverage Storm Summoning better.
She currently runs Chilblain -> Block of Ice -> Ice Blast -> Repeat
177.5% Global Recharge.
Chilblain, 4s base Recharge, 1.17s activation time- 89.9% Damage, 0% Recharge
- Trap of the Hunter: 20% Chance for Lethal Damage
- Impeded Swiftness: 20% Chance for Smashing Damage
- Actual Recharge Time: 1.44s
- Cycle time: 2.61s
- 22.989 uses per minute
- 66.3% Damage, 89.9% Recharge
- Unbreakable Constraint: 33% Chance for Smashing Damage
- Actual Recharge Time: 2.18s
- Cycle time: 4.05s
- 14.815 uses per minute
- 97.5% Damage, 42.4% Recharge
- Impeded Swiftness: 20% Chance for Smashing Damage
- Actual Recharge Time: 2.5s
- Cycle time: 3.5s
- 17.143 uses per minute
Currently, 20% proc rates are given a value of 3ppm in the market. 33%s are given a value of 4.5ppm.
At those rates:
The Unbreakable Constraint in Block of Ice would go down to a 30.4% proc chance.
The Trap of the Hunter and Impeded Swiftness in Chilblain would go down to 13.05% chances.
The Impeded Swiftness in Ice Blast would go down to a 17.5% chance.
That will theoretically be increased by a nebulous amount by the PPM value increase, but any external recharge buffs will reduce them more, too. -
Quote:No, it does not, because once you've reached a recharge rate where you're firing your powers off as fast as the animations allow, any further recharge gained decreases your proc chances without increasing your performance in any meaningful way.But if you're firing off you powers more frequently, doesn't that make the chance for proc go up?
Edit: What he said ^ -
Quote:My concern is that, in the huge swathe of characters I have, many of them have 170%+ global recharge and sometimes upwards of another 130% in certain key powers. Some have over 200% global. The fact that procs are going to be diminished in my primary attack chains because of that value, when that amount of recharge isn't necessary for those attack chains to work but is useful for the rest of my powers, is not acceptable. The fact that buffs will reduce our proc rates is just insane.You need to recognize that in a huge swath of powers, existing PPM procs are significantly better than standard procs. About the only single-target powers this is not true for are the most extreme of fast-cycling powers, such as Neutrino Bolt. If they both normalize on actual slotted recharge and increase the PPM rating, it could still work out that PPM procs will still be break-even with flat-rate ones in most T1-style powers that have around 4s base recharge times and get better in slower-cyclying powers.
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I'm really shocked that this isn't a more prevalent concern, but I've said my piece on the matter already. Anything further would probably be considered spamming.
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A quick point, Vauluur, being attuned does nothing for procs. They function based on character level, not enhancement level.
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While I don't disagree that this is an unsavory thing to do to people who've paid money for these procs, you don't own the characters or items on your account. You have access to them, but they are the property of NCSoft.
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3 is the one that's a real problem for me. I cannot emphasize enough how bad I feel it will be for the health of the game if there is suddenly a downside to having "too much Recharge," especially when, in group play, you can get FLOODED with Recharge buffs. It's not unusual for me to see my recharge rate hit the hard cap in League play doing iTrials.
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Quote:Awesome.1) All IO procs will have their flat percentage chance to trigger updated to use Procs Per Minute.
Quote:2) Proc chance will cap at 90%. This means that there is always a small chance for the proc to not trigger even if slotted into a power that would previously guarantee a proc.
Conversely, I do think there should be a floor to the chance to proc in any given power of no less than the current flat rate of each proc (so no matter how short a recharge+activation time, say, a melee attack has, Touch of Death would never fall below a 15% proc chance, for example).
Quote:3) Procs Per Minute will use modified recharge instead of base recharge. The reason for this is that the whole idea of Procs Per Minute goes right out the window when we keep the base recharge even though that value can be dramatically altered.
4) To compensate for this, the Procs Per Minute on all enhancements will be increased.
Recharge buffs will become a penalty as soon as you go down this road. We will have to built to a specific "cap" of recharge rate for any given build, very carefully not exceeding the optimum value for our attack chains. Speed Boosting a character who is already at their optimum attack chain will decrease their performance. Performance in a League will be HUGELY impacted when you can get tagged with multiple SBs, Chronishifts, Accelerate Metabolisms, et cetera. -
Assuming you mean Speed Boost, the Kinetics buff, yes, that will basically give your pets infinite endurance, much as it will a player. The enhancement for that end. mod value comes from the caster, though, not the target, so your alpha choice won't affect that.
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My FM/SD Scrapper was 50+3 before DA launched, so she never experienced it without shifts, but she sits at about exactly 45% to all positions and walked all over all the DA content at 4x8 easily. She uses Rebirth, does not have OWtS, and mostly only used insps for the Arachnos AVs. Granted she is up there in terms of my most expensive character builds, but, that's another factor entirely.
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Quote:I hope it helps. I've made a few edits to try to make it clearer-er since the initial post, which may matter depending on when you started reading :PMaybe saying the same thing twice helps!
I appreciate the 35+ game takes a lot longer to get through than the earlier levels and that is obviously worth consideration.
Thanks for taking the time to spell it out
-H
Edit:
Found the guide that attempts to quantify the value of Scourge. The long and short of it is:
Quote:Conclusion
If forced to say a simple number, I’d be forced to still split it between ranks but say:
Minions average +7% damage.
Lts average +11% damage
Bosses average +17.7% damage
EB average +19.7% damage
AV average +20.3% damage
GM average +20.7% damage
Note that means that against the hardest targets, a Damage-capped Corruptor will have an effective damage scale of about 3.75 * 1.2 = 4.5, or, in other words, do about 42.2% more total damage than an equivalent Defender counterpart over the course of the fight. -
Quote:I'm not really sure how much better I can explain, but I'll try.However I'm not sure I understand Draeth's post about Corruptor damage being vastly superior to Defender damage. Am I missing something?
Quote:From 1-31, solo, I get a 30% damage bonus on Defender attacks which takes the base damage higher than a Corruptor. However a Corruptor gets scourge which means low health enemies will die slightly quicker. Siphon Power is 5 percentage points better on a Defender. In my mind, the defender is slightly better. (Is that because I don't understand maths?)
From 32-37 the defender has access to FS. In team and solo mode this makes the Defender far superior.
Also an important thing to consider, my characters, at least, tend to see a lot more playtime from 38-50 and post-50 than they do getting to 38, but YMMV. Performance also tends to matter less the lower level you are, as lower level content is less demanding.
Quote:From 38-50 both toons have access to FS. The Cor can buff to higher amounts due to the damage cap, but I'd need a lot of enemies to hit that cap. Fine & possible on a team, but unlikely solo unless I invest a load of cash into a S/L defence build (which would be easier on a Defender due to better bonusses from Leadership etc). In my head, this puts the Def & Cor on relatively even terms - for solo play only. In a team, I can see how the Cor is better, but I'm not sure vastly superior describes it, nor "100% better".
I don't generally build for optimal team play, because no-one ever notices, and my powers aren't always needed. I can plink away and have funIt's solo where I'd want to see the most benefit.
Meanwhile, if you'll refer back to my previous post for the math, a Corruptor at the damage cap has an effective damage scale of 3.75, and a Defender has an effective damage scale of 2.6. What that means to you is that a Corruptor will be doing (3.75 - 2.6) / 3.75 = 30.67% more damage than the Defender... without considering Scourge, which is a huge advantage in and of itself.
You will *definitely* be stronger as a Corruptor solo or teamed past 38, and the difference won't be very big before then, because the damage buffs the Corruptor is generating from Siphon Power increase their damage by a larger absolute value than the Defender.
To provide another example assuming Beauregard's numbers are correct above for a Kin against a single target (+260% Damage from the Corruptor, +350% Damage from the Defender), the Defender is far and away above their cap, so they're at +300%. The Corruptor has 260% + an assumed 95% from Damage Enhancements (again, ED soft cap) in their attack powers for a total of +355% Damage.
That puts the Defender's effective damage scale at 2.6, as previously explained, and the Corruptor's at 4.55 * 0.75 = 3.4125, again, not considering Scourge. That means the Corruptor is doing 23.8% more total damage before Scourge. This also assumes the Corruptor has no other Damage buffs at all (such as Inventions, Assault, red inspirations, et cetera), which the Defender couldn't benefit from. If that doesn't qualify as "vastly superior" I'm not sure what does. -
Quote:Perhaps I should have said "blue side zones" rather than "zones in Paragon City." What I meant was "zones that only heroes can get to that... none bother to." The Shadow Shard would be a prime candidate.Personally, I'd rather not see any more Co-op zones in Paragon City. Future co-op zones should take place somewhere it makes sense for both sides to show up. Like the Shadow Shard. I would very much like to see that get a complete revamp (and I'm still vaguely disappointed that the Shadow Shard wasn't the focus of issue 22).
The one thing I don't like about a Shadow Shard revamp is the idea of fighting the Rularuu enemy group becoming common again. Ugh. -
I don't really want to see the Villain zones redone. I would rather see the various near-to-totally unused zones in Paragon City get converted into Co-Op areas like Dark Astoria was. I think they did a fantastic job with DA and making Co-Op zones is a more efficient use of development time, meaning more content for everyone.
We have a ton of zones that would be good candidates for this. Practically every Trial zone except for RWZ and the Hive could be used.
There is a major design direction change that I feel needs to occur with future Co-Op zones, though, which is to correct the biggest flaw in the Dark Astoria remake: the content needs to be made repeatable WITHOUT USING OUROBOROS. The fact that it's Co-Op is totally defeated when the only way to run it again restricts you to side specific teams. -
Yes. Note that 100% damage is base. Effectively this means that if you have 95% Damage enhancement in your pets, they can benefit from 205% in +Damage buffs.
Player Questions would have been a better location for this post, by the way. -
Hm.
The original City of version of Draeth Darkstar who's been sitting unplayed in the Vanguard Base in the Rikti War Zone since it became the Rikti War Zone is an Energy/Energy/Force Blaster... Novel, and common, but certainly not a high-power built, and totally unfitting with his real powers (he's a shadow mage; this version's backstory is that he turned to light magic after ending up in Paragon).
With Issue 22 I finally rolled a new Draeth Darkstar on Virtue, as a Dark/Dark/Mace Dominator. It's not the OMGWTFBBQ BEST EVAR Dominator combo, but is pretty potent and a lot more fun to play.
Other than my namesake, my favorite is probably a Bots/Force Mastermind. One of the better combos, but mechanically inferior to Bots/Traps with no noteworthy upside; he also very recently received a reincarnation as a Bots/Time, but unlike Draeth I still play the original.
Other characters who I really love, but with no particular order of favoritism, are an Ice/Storm/Ice Controller, a Dark/Dark/Mace Corruptor, a Fire/Shield/Pyre Scrapper, a Willpower/Super Strength/Pyre Tanker and his Titan Weapons/Fire/Body Brute Praetorian counterpart, a Demons/Thermal/Mace Mastermind, and a Thugs/Traps/Mace Mastermind.
These range from pure-concept to full-on power gamer. I've had a tendency towards respeccing characters into Mace Mastery for the last year or so, though, primarily for Scorpion Shield. It's just such a great power - it isn't intrusive on your costume like Frozen Armor and it provides defense against the most common damage types. From a roleplay perspective I typically just ignore that it exists, too, and that's not too hard since it's visually very concept-generic. -
I prefer sets with minimal clicking to pair with weapon-based attack sets. Energy Manipulation, Cold Domination, Force Fields, Sonic Resonance, Traps and Radiation Emission are probably the lightest redraw sets you can pair it with.
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Bonus! Fire Blast got a super-nerfed version of Rain of Fire on Defenders, and Rain of Fire also does triple-damage on Scourge instead of double.
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Quote:Pets don't need -def debuffs to hit consistently, they already have absurd accuracy which is fully enhanceable to make it even more unreal.Control/Pets would be brokenly overpowered I think.
Earth Control paired with something like Bots?
Your enemy won't be able to fight back at all, and the bots would never miss due to all the -def in Earth.
Fire Control and Demons? 9 pets running around beating on things that are completely locked down and helpless....no that's not overpowered at all.
That said I'd still happily play henchmen/control and do it gleefully just to have access to large, consistent AoE immobilizes which become significantly more useful when you have an AI army following you around and chasing things everywhere. Even better, they'd be great to make use of burn patches.