[ QUOTE ]
... Many rants about Hasten hit the boards before most people even tried out the changes. Also, many of the upgrades and improvements to other powers were not even considered. So, for now, I am simply asking you to try things out for a while, and we will do the same. I promise things will ebb and flow until we hit a sweet spot. My guess is Hasten will not be reverted, but the pendulum will probably swing back the other way a little bit. ...
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm going to dive in on this as someone who watched, but was not terribly affected by the great turbo nerf of Earth and Beyond. As the saying goes, been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
Very briefly, this arose because turbo in E&B worked like hasten does here, it reduced the reload time of guns. Due to one of the devs misunderstanding this, a collection of devices were created that allowed 84% turbo. Reducing the reload time of guns by 84% had a devastating effect. It meant the player was doing about 500% more DPS.
The Devs realised the mistake, and subsequently fixed Turbo so that 84% turbo meant your net DPS was 184% of non-turbo, not 600%.
Of course, this lead to a HUGE outcry from the 84% turbo gang, who claimed that the game was no longer playable, they were going to quit, the game was doomed, blah blah blah. Anyone here remember Avenicus?
All because they couldn't solo mobs that were designed to be group material.
Well guess what. The change was made and we carried on, business as usual.
I WILL add an editorial comment to the effect that the devs should look into adjusting it so that haste does not decrease recharge time by the specified amount, but instead increases net rate of fire by the specified amount. I know it sounds like a purely semantic change, but as shown with 84% turbo in E&B, it makes a vast difference.
In the current system hasted recharge time = normal recharge time * (1 - haste percentage / 100 ).
OK, so what's the problem? As haste percentage tends towards 100, rate of fire tends towards infinity, which is what caused all the trouble for E&B in the first place.
The formula that E&B settled on was hasted recharge time = normal recharge time / (1 + haste percentage / 100).
Anyway, coming back to the current discussion.
According to Pips hero planner, haste reduces your recharge time by 58.8% right out the gate with no enhancements of any type slotted. If that description is accurate to the letter, that means haste increases your dps to about 240%. Plug 58.8 into the original E&B turbo equation if you don't believe me. Now, if Pips is wrong, I need to know, because that means that this whole argument of mine is null and void. So, could someone who has hasten state exactly what it does?
If you have a power that does 10 points every 10 seconds, that's 1 DPS. Reducing it by 58.8% means it does 1 point every 4 seconds or almost 2.5 DPS.
People, that is one almighty big increase in damage output. And you're complaining that you can't have it turned on 24/7?
I don't think the devs ever intended that this power be on 24/7. It has all the hall marks of a "boss killer" power, something that you turn on to take out that red or purple con mission boss.
OK, If Geko (or any other Dev) gets to the bottom of this rather long diatribe, can you comment on whether this is a correct assessment of the INTENDED use of Hasten?
Thanks.
