LordXenite
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:The product here and the service here, as this is an MMO, is merely the ability to connect to the servers and play the game with as little flaws as possible. It is however up to the Devs to decide what should be considered a flaw, a bug, or an imbalance.Originally Posted by Socorro
However, when getting a service or product, some are happy with it and others are not. The ones that aren't happy with it want want a better service/product, and we can't rightly ask, "Hey, can't we just agree to disagree?"
If any of the items on the following list were false, I'd say you have a good argument there in favor of not agreeing-to-disagree, but as things stand, I disagree with your analogy and analysis based on this following list:- Kheldians were always considered (by the Devs at least) a team-oriented class and not easily solo-friendly.
- The game is balanced around SO enhancements.
- On normal difficulty settings and most missions against most enemy groups Kheldians can solo with performance levels that are acceptable by the Devs, and when these performance levels are not acceptable the Devs do change things.
- Kheldians were always supposed to be more complex than any other blue-side class.
- Last but not least, this thread was attempting to discuss the issue of "Why do HEATs feel like fail". Emphasis on feel, you know? Not hard cold facts, but feelings. Something which people can agree to disagree on.
EDIT :: As a response to your car analogy, let me say that Scrappers are like my dad's trusty old FIAT car that would always get us to were we wanted to go, quite fast and with very modest requirements on both wallet and driver, while Kheldians can be considered a PORSCHE as they're shiny, cost a lot, impress the girls, but at the end of the day, if you use them for mere transportation, they are either overkill or performing on such inefficient levels a FIAT would suffice.
What's more is that in this game, we can all enjoy our FIAT's and eventually get our PORSCHE, so really what's the argument about anyway? Do you truly wish to bring the PORSCHE to the performance levels of the FIAT so that everyone will be able to have one without having to put in the proper investment that actually brings a PORSCHE it the level of admiration it gets from the gals?
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At last, this thread can die with the decisive conclusion that we all agree to disagree.
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I'll give you one issue that I cannot just "suck it up" about, the whole thing with the goto_tray command executing when the form-shift toggles won't shut off and revert you to Human form. The goto_tray command should not execute when the powexec_toggle_off command won't either. It is that simple, and that is a QoL issue for any Kheldian player that uses keybinds to switch forms and trays.
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Quote:Welcome back then..Originally Posted by Psylenz
First let me say I haven't posted in a long time in the Kheldian forum.
On my TriFormShade(s) I usually take Superspeed and Grant Invisibility. Superspeed so it can stack with Shadow Cloak and help me ghost missions and move around faster when I don't feel like flying/teleporting, and Grant Invisibility because it's a good mule for an LoTG +Recharge IO and also great fun making my fluffies/teammates invisible so they often get less aggro.Quote:Originally Posted by Psylenz
Superspeed on a warshade? For the stealth? I know teleport and fly are available.
Indeed, mostly for the LoTG slots.Quote:Originally Posted by Psylenz
Concealment?
That all depends on your playstyle really... how often will you try to tough it out using Dwarf? How comfortable are you hover-blasting?Quote:Originally Posted by Psylenz
Resistance in Black Dwarf, yay us! I put to-hit in Nova; I guess that's a no-go.
Don't worry, no one has enough slotsQuote:Originally Posted by Psylenz
Here is what I am working with. I will have to look at all these options for slotting. I don't have nearly enough slots either. So... are you requesting slotting recommendations? 
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Quote:Originally Posted by Obsidian_Force2
I most commonly solo on a +2/x5 setting when I don't feel like working hard, and ramp up based on how good a workout I want to get.
This is far from only on the lower settings by any definition.I don't know if many people would claim Kheldians cannot solo +4/x8 missions or not, but depending on the enemy type in the mission, the build and the players' level of alertness, comfort and commitment, I do know that results vary greatly between I cannot solo this to Tedious to No sweat, can I haz some moar please?Quote:Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim
...but if you've honestly played Kheldians, you can't say they're incapable of playing through the regular content (the difficulty setting varying by the build and player)...
Whatever the best Kheldian results of soloing a +4/x8 mission may be though, I think most Scrappers out there would probably accomplish the same results (if not better) with much less effort, and I think that's what the debate has always been about, the level of effort require to accomplish anything worthwhile. -
Quote:So what were we arguing about?Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
Yup. It never meant more DPS for me either. Funny thing that, isn't it?
Ah. I agree with that...Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
The only way to get a good analysis, in my opinion, was to do it comparatively.
It's the +0/x8 I doubt because quite frankly, I don't see the benefit of having the x8 setting factored in as useful because I think it's already been proven that Kheldians are not the best solo class in the game, as opposed to Scrappers. There's a reason why Scrappers are recommended to newcomers who want a class that's easy to solo and simple to play...Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
This requires a large sample size and a reliable test metric. Thus the idea of using +0/x8 on five separate maps. We know how much DPS a scrapper puts out. If we had a comparative time to complete, we could assume a proportional amount of DPS that is being achieved. -
Quote:Actually if you want to prove an AT is well designed and performing accordingly, you'd need a novice person playing the AT with the lowest possible knowledge. If only as a test group. You would also need to perform this test with an SO slotted build, again for the same reason of having a test group. The same goes for your Kheldian candidates.Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Let's find the best scrapper/brute player out there. Someone with the inf to purple out a character. He also has to be indisputably proficient with his powers, knowledgeable about how to use them most effectively, familiar with the best attack chains, etc.
Now, you're skewing the test-case against the Kheldians because while your Scrapper will have some critical hits and your Brute will enjoy Fury, the Kheldians will have no inherent buff to speak of. Further more, what's the point of running anything at +0/x8? This will not persuade the Devs that there's any reason to re-design or fix anything about Kheldians just because you've demonstrated that Scrappers and Brutes solo better than Kheldians in extreme situation... that's already a give since both Scrappers and Brutes are supposed to be the most damaging in melee! All you're doing is just taking a statement made by the Devs and asking them to go back on it and change the game so that Kheldians can perform on the same level (DPS-wise) that Scrappers/Brutes can. No one ever promised us THAT anyway, so why ask for it?Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Now we get them all into an AE arc two at a time. Five missions set at +0x8 with normal spawns...
What about specific Scrappers/Brute power-set combinations? What about Kheldian build variants... can't people see how complicated this issue truly is and why testing things in extreme situations isn't going to prove Kheldians require any changes?Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Referees should be present to record time. First mission against council, then freaks, then CoT, then Carnies, then Malta. Compare the times and we'll get a practical comparison of how much DPS a kheldian can pump out.
Who promised us that they even should?Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
If a kheldian comes out to be 75% as effective as the scrapper/brute...
I think most people who play this game, should be able to predict the results of your experiment, and here is my personal prediction:- Brute
- Scrapper
- Warshade
- Peacebringer
EDIT ::Precisely.Quote:Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
Nope. Kheldians are a support\dps hybrid class. There's not a Khel player out there that could keep up with any of the scrapper heavies running around these boards when you're talking about speed through a mission solo.
He did indeed.Quote:Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
And as I told LX, I'm done with this fight.
And 'fixed' here may mean different things to different people, and to me it never meant being able to dish out more DPS.Quote:Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
Me and my human-only warshade no longer care what the devs do with Kheldians. Too many folks want to keep them as is for me to waste any more time on trying to get them fixed.
And here we have it from the horses' mouth, even though it was a Demon relayed the messageQuote:Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
As Castle has told me about other topics, some times good enough is good enough. A Khel can solo pretty well on the base difficulty. That's good enough for many.
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Quote:When the Devs keep telling us that "normal" spawns should include enemies of all ranks: minions, lieutenants and bosses (AE); and when Scrappers are the ones that come up with special challenges that involve going up against +4 Bosses that hit hard and mez hard, I doubt any analysis that attempts to judge the performance of any AT when it bases itself on soloing hard-targets.Originally Posted by UberGuy
It's hard to say anything should be balanced around what happens when you solo things meant for 3 characters, of course.
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Quote:I think Alpha meant to say:Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Link noaw, pls.
My optics are good, but not THAT good.
Larger or link to larger picture.And I agreeQuote:Requirement: Link.
Enlargement: Also possible!
Target Timestream Position: Now.
Specimen Visibility: Poor.
Optics: 20/20.
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Quote:I agree because essentially a lot has already been done to compensate for this being fixed!Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
The various instant-cancel macros that Kheldian players were using were considered an acceptable casualty.
(And in my opinion, rightly so.)
However, goto_tray malfunctioning and actually changing the tray when powexec_toggle_off is not turning off the form-toggle, that's unacceptable and should be fixed! -
Quote:I don't know... what macros were broken, and are we talking binds or macros here? It's possible that macros broke because of reasons totally unrelated to Kheldians... you know?Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene
What's weird is that my two peacebringers have different broken macros. How does that even work?
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Quote:Only when everything's working according to plan...Originally Posted by Redlynne
Bah. Hasten is overrated.
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Quote:I've always felt that both PB's and WS's while including ranged attacks, weak crowed control and melee attacks, never promised me the performance of a Scrapper or a Blaster (or a percentage there-of), especially not without a team!Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
I feel that the Warshade design makes a promise that it fails to deliver - the promise that it can be played, should one prefer, as 90% of a Scrapper.
At best I expected them to match the solo performance of any of low-damage ranged character while having peaks of both survivability and damage that went above and beyond what the low-damage ranged characters could hope for.
Just because some people hope or feel that Kheldians must measure up to Scrappers does not mean that is true. I only wish the Devs would finally settle this once and for all by specifying what their current vision for Kheldians is.
Even if you are correct with your hunch and Warshades were designed to promise 90% performance of a Scrapper, the question still remains, 90% of which Scrapper power-set combination exactly were you promised...?
EDIT ::DPS is the only deciding factor if all you're going to compare is on a simple time-to-defeat curve. I'm pretty certain that if you asked the Devs how they go about figuring whether an AT performs, they would be able (had they wanted to) show you graphs and data about how the AT in question manages to complete battles on the grand scheme of things; i.e. time to mission-completion. Naturally if you put a Kheldian against a chain of single Bosses, one Boss after the other, this would be the worst case scenario, a case which normally never happens in the game as the Devs designed it!Quote:Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
The short answer here is that DPS is the deciding factor because Khelds don't have as much else going for them as you might think. The long answer takes some time to explain, which I don't have at the moment, but I'll see if I can get around to it.
I dare-say, therefore, that had you wanted to check the performance of any AT, you would check it by calculating how fast the AT in question can handle normal missions on a normal difficulty setting with normal SO slotting at Lv50. Only then, after obtaining these performance graphs for each AT, and put them together side by side and analyzed the highs and lows of each graph, only then could you say anything meaningful about the performance of AT X vs AT Y. This is the reason I've always been reluctant to discuss performance issues, because no one wants to actually analyze it the way it should be analyzed! -
Quote:But... the Kheldian Corps needs all the Khelds they can get...Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene
It's one of the reasons I stopped playing Peacebringers.
I never got a warshade that high, but if double-mire's nerfed too, well suck.
Seriously though, it's inconvenient, but it isn't class-breaking, even for an avid TriFormer such as myself.
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Now you know why...
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Quote:I never played like that even before Dwarf became a BreakFree of sorts. Without utilizing form-shifting, the whole double-Mire concept would never have emerged so clearly, people were doing that even without BreakFree inspirations. Besides, to be honest, coming from Controllers, being mezzed never phased me but I can definitely see how it would scare someone who's Lv50 is a Scrapper/Tanker.Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
The thing is, switching to human form requires not having a mez effect on you. Which requires breakfrees, to get it off, and purples, to keep it off.
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Quote:I used to be able to time it just right so that Black Dwarf Mire and Sunless Mire (as well as White Dwarf Flare and Solar Flare) would actually hit the enemies exactly at the same time!Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene
What changed, Lord Xenite.
Now however, a bind like this:when executed (by pressing NUMPAD6) just as I execute Black Dwarf Mire, would stall and leave me with my Human-tray displayed but still in Dwarf form and naturally Sunless Mire would never execute.Quote:NUMPAD6 "powexec_toggle_off Dark Nova$$powexec_toggle_off Black Dwarf$$goto_tray 1$$powexec_name Sunless Mire"
The timing is off because the commands to toggle off the forms are paused whenever a power from the current form is used until a certain amount of time (animation cast time, is my guess) has elapsed after-which the bind works at intended.
When this issue was previously mentioned, the Red-name response was that this behavior was not intended and this issue may be fixed later on, at this point however, I don't really care if things would return to how they were in regards to how precise my timing has to be... just please, fix goto_tray so that it behaves like the powexec_toggle_off command and the tray will not switch if the whole sequence is paused by the animation time of the previously executed power.
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Quote:Yeah, but even worse... imagine a VEAT without their "Leadership" buffs...Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
You mean how no one likes a stormy using gale/hurricane/tornado? Yeah, I don't want that to happen to my warshade. I especially don't want toggle team buffs that only work in human form. "Why did you go dwarf?! I lost my softcap!!!!!" No thank you.
You know, at one time, I was actually thinking about utilizing the Kheldian forms to grant team-buffs... something like Nova would grant teammates around it a +Def bonus and Dwarf would grant an automatic -Threat;+Recovery bonus to any ranged-AT character... stuff like that.Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
I was more leaning to passive contribution like modifying the inherent, or more clicky team buffs.
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Quote:Like DK said, read the guide, you'll thank him and Plasma later.Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Please, just read this. You'll thank me later.
Those powers since they are automatic will affect your Nova form for a few seconds after you've switched from Human-form to Nova-form, but the game eventually terminates their effect on your Nova-form only to re-activate it once you shift back to Human-form and spend a few seconds in Human-form.Quote:Originally Posted by HomsikPanda
so for example the pp fitness, switft, has no affect on my squid form?
You can witness all this first-hand if you open the attribute monitor and display certain properties like Health/Endurance gain and Running/Flight speed and attempt to switch forms while looking at the attributes. -
Quote:Essentially you're right, however, seeing as Kheldians can change roles on demand and pack a lot of mitigation that supplements what most teams pack, we're giving quite a bit in my opinion, although more actively than passively.Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
...I'm not really seeing what us Kheldians give back to the team. As far as blasting/controlling/tanking, even in our impressive combination of roles, isn't so much "giving back" to the team as it is "doing our part."
But see, that's where there's a difference, and a huge difference it is. If the Kheldian inherent power is modified to buff the team in return for the boosts the team grants the Kheldian, that would be awesome simply because every Kheldian no matter the build or playstyle has their inherent power!Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
I don't know about you, but I'd like to see our inherent work both ways, i.e. the PB gets a damage bonus for a tank and gives the same damage bonus back, while a warshade receives a resistance bonus and gives the same back. Perhaps cut the benefit to as low as half for each.
If however, in order to passively contribute to a team, a Kheldian will be required to take certain powers and those powers would work only in Human-form for example, this may eventually restrict Kheldian gameplay, and that's what I was cautioning against in my previous post.
I was sort-of playing Devils' Advocate to my own suggestion, wasn't I?
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Quote:That depends entirely on you and what you will find you need for your Warshade. Both my Kheldians for example never use Human-form shields so I simply ignored them in favor of other powers.Originally Posted by HomsikPanda
...i can unlock ALL the powers...
is this wise? or should i get powerpools? and if so, which ones?
Since each Kheldian you play can be built differently, or employ two builds, you can take Pool Powers instead of core powers. The choices may be tough, but one thing you must never forget: every pool power you'll ever take must be executed from your Human-form, and only click-powers may carry-over to your other forms for a short period of time.
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Quote:Well, we already do, but since VEATs do it passively, it may be considered a worthy design goal to add to Kheldians. However, do not be surprised if granting Kheldians a passive way to contribute to a team may actually end up in flames because Kheldian players will now be required to take certain powers and use them in certain ways and anything other than adhering to these hard and fast rules will cause some teammates to pester the Kheldian in question claiming that the 'squid' isn't fulfilling its intended "role".Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Hrm, I kind of like this more! It'd be nice if Kheldians gave back to a team.
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Quote:That's correct if you wish to tank them, as in to hold their attention and survive through it long enough for someone else to DPS the foe. This works well enough when a Warshade has some fluffies out there, but a PB is truly in a bind if they stay in White Dwarf through the whole fight while they solo.Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
What I'm reading here is that Dwarf form is the mode offered by the AT design to handle adverse conditions (mez in particular) and tough foes
If you're DPS-oriented, I'd say you're quite correct, however Kheldians have several tools to mitigate damage from hard-targets but these tools require shifting to Human-form.Quote:Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
...but the winning strategy is actually to ignore Dwarf in favor of handling it as a Blaster would - breakfrees, purples, control, damage.
Which is why toughing an attack in Dwarf, then shifting to Human-form to fire off some combination of attacks and then switching to either Dwarf to soak the foes' attack or Nova to blast it, works rather nicely.Quote:Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
...If Dwarf form offered some combo of defense and mez resistance, so mez could be shaken off faster and not reapplied, that would open the idea of Dwarfing up temporarily and then breaking out again, but that's not how it works - Dwarfing up is often a one way street.
You're ignoring the case where a Black Dwarf can tank for its fluffies and where a PB can use White Dwarf to momentarily resist damage, and then use White Dwarf Flare to knock down the foes and quickly switch to Human-form and fire off Photon Seekers only to re-Dwarf while the enemies are either defeated or blown away.Quote:Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
...It seems to me that Dwarf is actually only for team tanking. -
This is an interesting idea, however, I think that PB's would be quite annoyed because Warshade would gain your defense-shields plus Eclipse which may as well mean they're nearly invulnerable to almost anything because with defense shields a lot of mezzing attacks will miss, and what doesn't miss will be resisted, and what's not resisted can be wiped clean by smart use of Stygian Circle and/or the life-drain attack.
If however the Kheldians shields offered a +Def bonus to teammates around a Kheldian, now that I'd embrace even though I never take these shields on any of my Kheldians.
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Quote:Indeed that's the expected situation.Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
Analysis is still ongoing, but early results are showing that being locked in dwarf against a single target is an enormous disadvantage for a Kheld - we're talking about a literal order of magnitude drop in DPS, and that's before considering what it does to the poor guy's ability to recover post fight. Peacebringers have an edge on surviving this situation, and Warshades have an edge on damage, but both are pretty thoroughly miserable here.
And this is where Kheldian "dancing" shines, but is not easy to analyze because many Kheldian "dancers" have many ways to handle this situation, as long as we're not talking about certain enemies, including several Elite Bosses and above.Quote:Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
I would suggest that any future analysis of Kheld performance and play experience place a strong emphasis on this situation, as it's the expected survival mode for the AT
AbsolutelyQuote:Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
...while pet damage analysis is notoriously fickle, I think the worst thing to happen to Warshades in recent memory might be the change where pet attack recharge times were locked in. Particularly on high-recharge power builds.