Liliaceae

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I know I have a list of powers that gets an automatic 1 star from me.

Any summoned pets, glue arrow, caltrops, confuse, basicly powers that really slow you the heck down really tick me off.

So no matter how good a story is any of those powers show up and its a 1.

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How do you even play the game at all? That rules out a lot of the standard enemy groups:

Malta, Knives of Artemis, Carnies, Sky Raiders, Rikti, Paragon Police, Circle of Thorns.

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I never ever ever leave comments on arcs I rate low.

Im not taking the chance of retaliation low rates.

Just for note, ive not played your arc, but I also cant be the only person whose come to this conclusion.

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I'd suggest a comment and no rating would be more appropriate. Maybe they'd fix the arc then.

Actually, I think your system is actually good for the ratings system. No one is going to pay you a million unless they think the arc is good and they're making a go of it. It lets us sort out the arcs people have put love into from those that are just a joke. I'd pay you, but I have plenty of friends to 5 star my arcs for me already.

Read's Frost's post.

Read's Frost's sig.

*laughs*

Best to set the bar high and lower it if needed, than to have to raise it later.

I think the best solution would be to preserve ratings when an arc is unpublished, in case you wanted to republish it again later. This would allow people to rotate through arcs without losing ratings etc. They could even keep a dozen unpublished arcs on the server they take up so little disk space.

I seem to recall a dev comment about this, is there an official stance on whether giving unwarranted poor ratings could be griefing? Are the devs interested in us reporting potential cases of this? Obviously anonymity of who's giving what ratings makes this impossible for us to be certain about.

I only ask because my first story arc (4336) received a 1 star rating (and no comment) after the first play, but is now up to 4 stars.

Of course there are other reasons for giving it 1 star, maybe they just don't like Sky Raiders. But the lack of comment made me suspicious. I'm guessing that the whole rating system has been heavily discussed including the potential for forming griefing alliances etc. Yet another form of PvP added to the game.

Some wall glowies don't appear.

I discovered this using the Bulletin Board glowie on the cargo ship map. I put up an arc on test to demonstrate the bug. My suspicion is that the thin glowies are hidden inside the wall.

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I still think that guaranteed knockdown + Stun to start with, followed by guaranteed Stun, is fine if the resulting guaranteed Stuns aren't strong enough to perma-Stun a boss, but too strong if it can perma-Stun the boss.

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I on the other hand think it's fair if it's on a control AT in a set that's under performing for damage. Not something worth arguing about, since ultimately that's not our decision to make.

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Predictable mez on your secondary is, quite simply, something you will never see implemented, regardless of whether it's balanced or not. I also don't think it's balanced, but that's just my opinion.

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Why not? Total Focus has it. I don't want to ignore your opinion, but I'll have no choice if you don't explain further. The arguments for 100% stuns is that Dominators are a control AT, and that the undependable stuns might as well not be there for the good they do.

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Anyway, you've already seen my earlier post on what NRG needs to bring it out of the basement, my views have not changed.

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Ignoring the cottage rule is pointless.

Not my definition of useful, what about yours? especially on that long recharge.

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Numbers are overpowered (lower down to 2/3 values for all except Whirling Hands).

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Remember that the numbers scale down against higher level enemies, and people are unlikely to enhance for this aspect. Using this against even-cons I think you could keep one elite boss stunned, keep two bosses on their back or stunned, or control 2 lieutenants and a few minions. Given that it doesn't give you much time to use your primary, scales pretty poorly to +2 enemies, and your damage is fairly weak, I think it's probably fair, but wouldn't complain about slightly shorter durations.

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I'd much rather that Total Focus actually kill things, for all the fuss it garners.

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You sir, ask for too much.

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Sonic melee attacks don't really make sense...

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You've clearly never had a 3 year-old screech in your ear.

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What extras or discounts could you give it?

[/ QUOTE ]Additive changes to the snipes might help (might might might might might, I must reinforce) as I stated a beelyun years ago. Also, Claws gets a discount on its recharge/end/damage formula - allowing it lower costs and lower recharge for its damage. The same might not be an unreasonable addition to energy - a change that's still halted by DPA.

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Do you remember what you came up with for Sniper Blast? A phase effect. That's not going to do much for Energy Assault. Even if you gave /Energy a discount for rech/end/dam somewhere, what would be the result? I'd expect to still have slightly above average single target damage with mostly useless secondary effects.

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And another idea comes to me:

100% low-mag stun on every attack. Interesting stun stacking possibilities.

[/ QUOTE ]Similar to the -res, this is stuff that only works when you're getting sequential attacks against things. Not generally as useful as it sounds. But don't get me wrong, it's not a bad idea at all, though perhaps better on a fast-attacker than an Energy Assault dom.

I do think the identity of /EA is 'the single target control guy,' so we should probably expect changes to adjust that.

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Ok, so working with "/Energy's strength is single target control", and what we've learned that "chance of is pretty worthless, when you've got 100% controls in your primary". How can we arrange 100% effects in the controls to not be overpowered, but to still be useful.

<ul type="square">[*]Power Bolt - 50% knockback, 50% mag 1 stun for 4 seconds. The one exception because it's the weakest.[*]Bonesmasher - 100% mag 2 stun for 12 seconds.[*]Power Push - 100% knockback, unchanged[*]Power Blast - 100% mag 1 stun for 8 seconds, 100% knockdown.[*]Whirling Hands - 100% mag 2 stun for 4 seconds.[*]Total Focus - 100% mag 3 stun for 15 seconds. 100% knockdown.[*]Sniper Blast - 100% knockback, 100% mag3 stun for 15 seconds.[*]Power Burst - 100% mag 2 stun for 12 seconds, 100% knockdown.[/list]
Domination would probably add mag 1 to everything instead of doubling it.

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So, why are you opposed to -Res?

[/ QUOTE ]A couple of reasons:[*]Total Focus as an attack is already long-animating and delivers its punch at the end of the animation. Saying that the 'extra damage' of the set then comes after you do this kind of extraordinary attack sounds like it wouldn't make me happy - I'd much rather a king hit feel like a king hit.


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Sure, I didn't even suggest that -Res be given to Total Focus of course. Wouldn't it be nice to apply a bit of -Res before the TF?

[ QUOTE ][*]-Res doesn't just up your damage, it ups everyone's damage. This is why the attacks tend to be made (a bit) weaker to compensate.

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Yes, and they already are weaker, that's why we're talking about it.

[ QUOTE ][*]Accumulating debuffs is only viable on single hard targets; single targets that are already either trivialised (bosses) or are very much not trivialised (ptods). For the other 99% of the game, the -res would be most likely negligible.

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Which is part of the point. Energy Assault becomes the set for dealing with single hard targets, which is what people expect of it anyway.

[ QUOTE ][*]It further niches Doms up - if this -res is good enough to be valuable to the dom, it's good enough to be valuable to a team and suddenly, doms offer something to a team provided they are this specific powerset.

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Argh. Currently Energy Assault is the worst secondary in all categories. -Res would make it possibly the best in the specific scenario of a single hard target, but leave it pretty poor in the others. Don't you think each secondary should have its place where it shines?

[ QUOTE ][*]It doesn't have any thematic connection. Energy is about raw force thumping into things; Surely it's better to stick to the thematic that is very, very well established rather than trying to shoehorn in something extra from another set.

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Yes, this is probably the strongest point against it. I wouldn't suggest breaking theme like this if it the available themes weren't so absolutely dreadful.

[ QUOTE ][*]The 'me too' effect; if Dom energy bolt and dom bone smasher do -res, without any thematic justification, what's to stop blasters, corruptors, brutes and stalkers asking for same? Even if it's unjustified (which it is) it still generates a dissonant feeling.

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Just to reiterate, i was suggesting for ranged attacks only. Yes, that could be an unfortunate consequence, and another strong point in favour of the status sucking quo.

[ QUOTE ][*]Energy doesn't have good coverage. It has slow-animating single-target - which means you'll never be able to spread this -res out, and you'll be dispensing it very slowly.

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Yes, agreed, which greatly reduces the risk of making it overpowered.

So, why are you opposed to -Res? What extras or discounts could you give it?

And another idea comes to me:

100% low-mag stun on every attack. Interesting stun stacking possibilities.

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my current favourite suggestion, replacing the %knockback in the blasts with a -Res debuff.

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Except that it would walk on the toes of a potential future sonic assault.

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I'm surprised more people didn't respond to this suggestion of -Res.

It's definitely not part of the Energy secondary effect themes. But it seems we all agree that %kb and %stun aren't very useful for Dominators.

I did consider the impact on a future Sonic Assault, but concluded that it would be ok to share, much like -Def is shared by so many sets. A Sonic Assault set is certain to have more AoEs.

Yes, but is it useful? you have to trick them into flying close to it.

Recent PvP discussions raised another PvP issue.

The knockback protection granted by Block of Ice and Gravity Distortion really affect the viability of Ice Control and Gravity Control in PvP. Particularly because the duration is much longer than that of the hold. This also affects the AoE holds and most of the Immobilizes to a lesser extent.

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For some builds, and some play styles, it may be true that it wouldn't amount to much of an increase in DPS, but what about paired with a primary with some decent attacks? What about those who play more like a Controller, mostly focusing on locking things down, and throwing attacks when it's convenient?

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Yes, that's a good point, my focus has been on secondary as pure damage. So, the case where the Dominator is busy using their primary and pool powers a lot, heavier hitting slower recharging attacks are good. What would it take to get the DPA of Power Burst to match Blaze? And Bonesmasher to match Havoc Punch or Charged Brawl? I don't know the Damage/Recharge/Endurance ratios off-hand.

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Yeah, but they're your rules. You said we couldn't break the rules and we couldn't replace powers. With those two limitations, */Energy can really only be given some better burst via increased DPA.

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From what I understand, those are Castle's rules, correct me if I"m wrong.

Yeah, I haven't taken Energy to 50 yet though. Only 47.8.

Using something from an earlier discussion as the other premiss, the conclusion is "The identity of /Energy is to be the set to use if you're bad at playing Dominators".

Hmm, I could get behind that. 100% chance for kb in all blasts, and 100% chance for stun in melee attacks, with Power Push having both. Makes it the go to set for the "I keep dying at villainous" crew.

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Just give the set some more damage, that's all it needs IMO.

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But how? The thing about changing powers to have greater recharge and greater damage is that it doesn't increase their DPS. That's how the whole thing is balanced. The Dominator attack chains aren't quite full enough to really take advantage of such a change. It does help in the case of large amounts of global recharge, but not by a truly significant factor. If you're curious try out the Attack Chain Generator linked in my sig, it can help shed light on the situation.

My observation has been that by staying within the rules, Energy can't surpass /Fiery for single target damage because of Blaze and Fiery Embrace, and can't surpass /Electricity because of Havoc Punch and Build Up. Fiddling with recharge and damage on all the powers is just a dead-end.

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Not much else you really can do if we're trying to be realistic. If I were really trying to fix */Energy I would remove the KB from everything but Power Push and add a chance to disorient instead.

But then you have the KB lovers screaming that you nerfed their set.

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I'm sure we can push harder to come up with something reasonable. At the bottom of the very first post I put my current favourite suggestion, replacing the %knockback in the blasts with a -Res debuff.

I can't imagine there are very many people who love Energy Assault for its knockback, but they still have Power Push, the king of knockback!