Starsman
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Quote:I must have been thinking either stone melee or Elec Melee... I know one set somewhere had a 0.53 cast time...Originally Posted by Siolfir
It was .63 seconds. And you're excluding Hasten in your "use it tops" rate for ET; you weren't likely to get perma-Hasten without external buffs or going really far back in builds but you could use it a lot more often than every 12 seconds.
Hasten I dont count for various reasons, but it would also bring down the uptime of Energy Punch.
At the end of the day, Energy Punch suffered about a 30% DPS loss, on a power that was spammed like crazy in every shain.
I don't think the set suffers drastically in Single Target damage, but I do think the set has many issues, some playability ones, others in plain design (lack of AoE, issue any set with just one AoE power suffer.)
It's the worst, sure. But it's not a bad DPA attack at all. It nearly has 1ds per second damage. The "worst" attack in the set, has a 1dpa! Most sets would look at that and get angry about anyone considering it a complaint.Quote:Barrage is still the worst DPA attack in the set despite the damage increase and DPA reduction in Energy Punch
I agree Stun is useless. If there was not the cottage rule to think about, I'd dump the power and turn it into a cone or targeted AoE. -
Quote:Yes, every tanker attack had it.Originally Posted by Ultimus
Wasn't that a gauntlet issue?
The issue was a bit technical. Power effect lines can have variable radius. That's how Gauntlet was originally implemented.
Taunt covers the full attack base radius.
Single target damage component had a 0ft radius.
This resulted in two odd buggs, one is that sometimes foes where close enough to eachother for multiple foes to be standing in the exact same same spot that your attack makes contact, effectively applying full base damage to all of those enemies.
The second issue, was a strange behavior where, should an enemy move during the animation of the attack, he would no longer be in the position of the attack and therefore no enemies would be hit.
At somepoint they added a functionality that flags an attack as "only affects target", meaning that no longer is the single target component based off a zero range radius, but instead off this flag.
It's also the way that they make a cone like the T1 in Titan Weapons apply Bruise to a single target.
During those days Energy Transfer did get a highlight, not because the insanity of hitting multiple stacked enemies with an AoE Energy Transfer, but because every enemy you hit meant an extra self damage. Few tanks ended up killing themselves accidentally in extremely packed herds. -
Quote:Interesting note: Internally, the Presence Pool is called "Manipulation".Originally Posted by Cheetatron
A placate in the concealment pool makes sense, in the presence pool? not really I think a taunt aura makes sense
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Quote:The following will sound too radical, but may point in an interesting direction. An old MMO, cant remember for sure but may had been DAoC, had a system where you had "toggles". These cost no endurance but you had a maximum amount of concentration to use up. Some toggles cost more concentration than others. Eventually you may be limited how many toggles you can have running at once.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
No, its true. Since most powerset combinations are endurance-limited, decreasing endurance burn rates increases damage potential. But the difference is not unmanageable.
Also, to clarify a point: the point wasn't to say "if I were designing the game I would make all defensive toggles cost zero." The point was to illustrate that the current costs are arbitrary, and any value from their current value all the way down to zero still work. The question, then, is what should they cost given *real* balance concerns, and not whether temp invuln should cost endurance because its numerically higher than RPD. That's an invalid concern, or would be if the defensive sets were designed as they should have been, with base strength and optional enhanced strength in powers that could actually be turned off, rather than base strength in the powers that could be turned off and the optional enhanced strength in the powers that cannot be turned off. That's illogical.
In a way, this is true right now, but turns out this "concentration" is the same pool used by attacks to drain endurance, and relative to that game it's much more bigger pool.
There are some apparent rule of thumb already.
Almost all self-buff toggles cost 0.26 endurance per second.
Almost all damage auras cost 0.52 endurance per second.
Almost all scaling/taunt/debuff auras cost 0.208 endurance per second.
Standard Pool Travel powers costing 0.455 end per seconds.
Ancillary and Pool power versions of the above seem to cost 25% extra endurance.
There are a few exceptions. Some logical with a reason (Dark Armor gets a 20% discount on self-buff toggles.) and some entirely off the wall (Stone Armor's Mud Pots is 50% too expensive) and Chilling Embrace costing the same as self-buff toggles.
Other pool toggles seem to be all over the place.
Some self-buff toggles turned taunt auras like the ones in SR and Energy Armor are also exceptions, but those keep granting a benefit even if enemies are far away (my theory on why other scaling/taunt/debuff auras cost less than normal.)
Overall there seems to be a bit of consistency, though, one similar to the concentration system I mentioned. Toggles are not meant to cost based on their performance, but to take room in your endurance budget.
That brings me to this sudden idea: What if a toggle did not cost endurance, but instead shaved off your maximum endurance for it's duration? I'm sure we can come up with numbers that make things sort of match the current state of the game.
In the process toggles can be rebalanced to cost a more logical value. Toggles will never, ever, toggle drop due to endurance, but they still will in a new more thought out fashion limit your offensive endurance budget. -
Quote:Sure. I just mentione it in case you are building with things like soft capping a specific stat in mind.Originally Posted by Black Dawn
I know it's not finished yet but I believe we can do some basic planning for it in it's current state. Unless they do a major revamp and basically completely redesign it I would say it's pretty safe assuming it's just the final numbers left to do, so which power gets which set shouldn't change that much.
However, having a basic build now gets you a good stepping stone once it does go live.
I know I may want to refine/change the build later, because I have done so while I've leveled characters.
One thing I noticed already is the verion im Mids was missing a power (a third adaptation power) and counts the -resistance along with the resistance that is granted by Evolving Armor. -
Quote:Oh yea I remember that now.Originally Posted by EvilGeko
Total Focus was a MAG 4 stun. It was reduced to MAG 3. Which for Blasters was one of the most unjustified nerfs I've ever seen.
Energy Transfer nerf was big. It did 4.56 damage per activation second, but on a 20 second recharge. In an SO world, you would use it tops every 11.26 seconds.Quote:Originally Posted by EvilGeko
lolwut?
Energy Punch, though, I think h ad a cast time of 0.53. That means it did 1.89 ds per second, on a 4 second recharge. Usable every 2.58 seconds.
This REALLY hurt the set's sustained DPS. -
Quote:Edit for correction:Originally Posted by Arbiter Hawk
These abilities will be affected by the Heal Strength buff from Field Medic's active use, but will not be affected by the -Res(Heal) portion of Field Medic.
Are these powers (that usually but not always grant Toxic resistance) not also flagged to ignore outside buffs and strenght? -
Quote:$$$Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
Here's what I REALLY want to know:
Why is it that the 800-lb Gorilla Game has a back story even richer than that of Paragon City, and they don't just publish all of it inside the game but they award you "badges" for finding and reading it all? How is it that they are able to continue publishing new material without constraint, yet our studio is somehow put into a straight jacket if they so much as jot down a piece of historical info, let alone incorporate it into the game where anyone who wished to could find it? -
I recommend you hold on the build planning. The numbers in Mids are not final and you may want to do things a bit different once the set is ready for production. Also mids seems to have issues with some powers that only work inside specific adaptations.
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Quote:During the patch that all weapon attacks had their animation times "cleaned up" (removing pauses between attacks) a lot of attacks got looked at.Originally Posted by Ultimus
EP was changed? How?
Any attack that used the Energy Punch animation (think its the same used in Brawl and Charged Brawl) was discovered to be animating faster than intended and cuttiong off the animation too early. That was fixed.
It's also the same patch that Stone Melee got some nerfing for the same reasons.
The change is too small to be percievable by anyone without some careful video recording and frame by frame analysis, but it was big enough to drop the damage per activation second considerably. -
Quote:Just went back to reread your post and I read it wrong. The first read I gave it I took only the second statement was out of character.Originally Posted by Mazey
And I still don't understand what your post was trying to show. I said the statements about Wednesday and Thursday had to be completely out-of-character, while your example was still from the perspective of one of the characters.
I still can see ways a writer can make it work IF he did it intentionally. An out of character narrator can still lie or missrepresent facts. If it never gets mentioned throughout the entire story then it indeed is inconsistency.
I'm not saying inconsistency does not occur, just that it can be caught and you can recover from it should you decide to, without having to go back and rewrite the previous events.
This can be especially true in serialized stories, where inconcistency is the most likely but you get future chances to clean up the stains. Even as an out-of-character narrator.
BTW, the theory of creating separate timelines is just one of various theories. Some say you actually rewrite history. Most accepted theories I have gazed at simply state that all time travel that can happen would already had also happened so there is no actual changes or branching of timelines possible.
As far as fiction goes, it's a bit of a bad point to focus on unless you are the writer of the story that can set the rules for the universe in that story. You seem to be doing that right now, but you are doing it in responce to some one catching a potential hole in the forced inconcistency. Since you want to force the inconsistency you going back and enforcing rules that were not stated at first.
Oh and a link: DuhemQuine thesis -
Quote:My point is: Venture is right: any inconsistency can be handwaved if you're willing to swallow enough codswallop. This is the point.Originally Posted by Mazey
I'm really not sure what you're trying to get at there. Could you explain it please?
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Quote:I found out I been wrong about my belief too! "Oh.. wait you are right... my calendar was wrong... we DID meet on a Wednesday!"Originally Posted by Mazey
Which is why I specified that those claims were made out-of-character.
I may also be told I am doing something, go do it, for years later to find out I was fooled into doing something else. It's a bit cheap for storytelling (mostly due to abuse) but it can be valid.
Everything can be cheap in the long term if abused, though.
This game does not have much out-of-character narration, though. -
Quote:AVs/Giant Monsters. Pretorians. Hamidon. Etc. Those are the problems. Content designed to be extremely mez resistance or nearly entirely mez proof.Originally Posted by RosaQuartz
So what's the difference between a mob getting "chain-taunted" by PA as opposed to any other control?
Ever seen an AV fallng back over and over on an Ice Slick?Quote:As someone else pointed out, enemies can't defeat Ice Slicks, Earthquakes, etc. Why aren't these powers a problem for Dominators? It's because of the little-to-no direct damage they cause. -
Quote:In real life, I see this happen all the time. Sometimes someone is lying. Sometimes they just remember things wrong. Reality is not inconsistent, though.Originally Posted by Mazey
That is factually not true.
If, for example, a story says two people met on a Thursday, and then later contradicts that by saying they met on Wednesday, and those claims are made out-of-character, then that story contains an inconsistency.
Unless it's an omnipotent being narrating things, most inconsistencies that come from a character's mouth can be justified to bad memory, lies, or total guesswork from the character's point of view.
What gets harder to accept are things like red kryptonite turning superman evil in one issue, but then a year later it happens to turn kryptonians into flying donkeys, not via character's narration or claims but actual in your face events.
Even that, though may be able to have a long term explanation. -
Quote:The reason stated in the chat was precisely "inmortal tanks", not damage.Originally Posted by RosaQuartz
If Phantom Army has value as a "taunt control" but the damage output is problematic, could they just reduce their damage? Alternatively, have Dominators put out two phantoms instead of three, and call the power Phantom Duo?
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Quote:Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino
If they had higher HP, it would depend heavily on exactly how survivable they would turn out to be. For me the entire point of rolling an illusion dom would be to use PA to tank PToD EBs (note - talking about solo, and EBs rather than AVs).Curious: how many dominators have the control powers needed to have an EB entirely locked away during purple triangles? (I actually think the Purple Triangles in EBs is an issue with EBs in general, btw)Quote:
Basically, my take on the whole 'is PA overpowered' debate is that you have to not focus just on the edge cases and to recognize both its strengths *and* weaknesses relative to other control powers.
These may sound like edge cases, but as it stands today, PA completely breaks high raid encounters. I am not sure if they have started to give these the ability to punch through phase shift, but my first grudge with PA was the day they took over my tanker's role in a Statesman Task Force fighting Lord Recluse.Quote:People often seem to take it as a given that PA is overpowered, but I think that conclusion isn't necessarily always defensible, and I would like to challenge those who believe that to quantify why and in what areas they believe it to be overpowered.
But those dont taunt, cant even be attacked. Would you be fine with a Phantom Army that does not taunt and cant be attacked? If they were just given Holds and stuns instead?Quote:I think people get way too hung up on PA's invulnerability. PA is not killable, it is true. However, it's not like the baddies can kill the ice slick patch or the volcanic geyser vents either.
And I may agree with you. However you cant ignore the insane capabilities of PA against AV and the like. These entities should be able to dispatch the army relatively quickly, just like they can shrug off holds or (in occation) put a world of hurt on tankers and brutes.Quote:I will strenuously argue against any conclusion that PA is overpowered in terms of its use against regular spawns of foes.
Fighting AVs and mosnters are not edge cases. They are a significant point of the high end game and usually the main reason to have a tank in any TF team.Quote:If PA is overpowered, it is only so when used on things like AVs/monsters/etc, and mostly when used by extremely high recharge builds - in other words, the edge cases.
I don't think they will be nerfing controller's PA any time soon, but a dom vesion will deffintively be different and not unkillable.Quote:Therefore, if it is to be nerfed, I would *extremely* strongly prefer that it be nerfed in a way that actually targets the edge cases instead of the overall use. -
Quote:Dont recall Total Focus getting any nerfs.Originally Posted by MisterD
Yep..changed it ages ago. As if a little damage could make up for destroying Et and Tf. Count the number of EMs you have seen lately..
It was Energy Punch that was hit the hardest, despite people just screaming about Energy Transfer. -
Clarifying a bit on my point:
As an invuln character (be it brute/tank or scrapper) you consume about 0.73 endurance per second (no end redux in toggles). With 3 sloted stamina you get 2.48 endurance per second. 1.75 endurance per second + your base endurance, are your entire budget to spend during a fight. Once a fight starts, you start eating through that endurance and eps allowance.
However my point is that non-melee has their entire 2.48 end per second + base endurance to dish out damage.
Interestingly, without stamina your budget was 1.67 endurance per second (so I see why Arcanaville says inherent fitness negated this "balance")
My point is not that there was a balance set for how much endurance melee were allowed to allocate into damage, but simply that toggles subtract from your offensive budget. You remove that endurance burden and you add to the offensive endurance budget.
It does fix the issue of running out of endurance killing your toggles, but introduces a damage increase to all melee that may or may not be acceptable (that is the point I WANT to be convinced off not being an issue for the devs.)
The other issue is that without endurance cost there is no reason to not have them as passives that happen to suppress while mezzed, and that in turn changes how toggles work. Not to mention the entire idea of having IO set endurance discount be redundant and meaningless for most powers now (always true for current passives but those where the minority.) Well... I guess visual FX may be a reason to keep them as toggles, but that’s a bit odd reason.
If the devs find these issues, then the only acceptable solution I can think of is for toggles simply not to drop if you run out of endurance. Instead that pulse of the toggle just grants no benefits.
Toggles pulse every half a second (most.) Today, during a pulse you have no enough endurance to pay for that pulse, the toggle drops. What if instead of dropping it decided "well, there was no endurance for me...? I won’t apply any of these effects, be them benefits or negatives, maybe next pulse I will find endurance to do this again"
This would work elegantly for buffs, taunt auras and damage auras.
This would justify keeping toggles as toggles (since they cost endurance) while removing the issue of a binary survivability shutdown in the case of running out of endurance. -
Quote:Other than jab, what power is inferior to boxing?Originally Posted by Fireheart
Air Superiority is a bit of an outlier, but in general, if Tier 2, 3, 4 powers are being out-performed by Pool powers, then perhaps there is something wrong with those powers.
Punch, the Tier 2, has a .83 damage per activation second.
Boxing, the best of the two pool fighting attacks, has 0.75 damage per activation second.
I think Jab and Spines T1 were the only two powers with that issue, off the top of my head.
We know Spines is getting a buff. With SS there are issues. I would not buff Jab too much because part of what keeps SS in check is that it has a lot of low-dpas attacks and only one AoE attack.
Rule of thumb is that a set with only one AoE attack has poor AoE performance (*cough* Stone Melee, Energy Melee, Martial Arts *cough*)
Rage increases the Damage per activation second of these attacks to the point it balances them out. Buff Jab too much and that may become an issue. I would increase recharge to 3 seconds and damage to 0.84, that may make it a decent power without overbuffing the set. It also would set Jab at 0.79 ds, making it better than Boxing.
What you describe are set specific issues though. Those sets are also in the hands of brutes. Tankers should, with equivalent sets, perform a bit better damage wise when compared to brutes. Not an average tie, just... closer than now.Quote:I would not argue that the whole Tanker AT needs to be revamped, in order to increase damage output - there are many upper-tier powers that are frankly awesome. However, being able to replace those early-tier powers with Pool attacks and actually Improve Performance... that's just not right. -
Quote:That would not be alternate animations, more like alternate FX and more likely to happen.Originally Posted by Zyphoid
Now that this can be done, I personally would pay for alternate animations for some pool powers. Lightening for hasten instead of fire, I would pay for that.
In general I have no issue with paying for alternate power animations at all.
I'd love to see all the existing path auras as potential Super Speed FXs for one.
Would love to see thematic elemental particles for all pool powers. The basics (currently all seem to have an energy theme) Electric, Fire, Ice/snow and darkness (not just dark energy but Dark armor like thendrils.) -
Quote:Because we would no longer be talking about replacing it, but simply toning it down.Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino
Um..... my apologies, but I sincerely fail to see why that's an interesting question.
HP may be tweaked, perhaps lts instead of minions, or just h ave inherent higher HP powers. Unless you just toss them over the spawn, in the middle of a fight such pets would still add damage, and taunt everything they attack (they are single target attackers.)Quote:At that point the power wouldn't be worth taking even if you did roll the character - what would be the point of the power in that case? They'd just die the instant you summoned them into the spawn. That'd honestly be *worse* than an illusion set where they just replaced PA with some sort of alternative control - it'd be like asking if you would like to play a mastermind set that had no boss pet (and was otherwise on par at best with the other sets).
Lets say the HP is high enough to survive an alpha if they are tossed in the middle of an iddle spawn. Tough enough to perhaps survive for long enough that you can go in and Flash.
Alternatively drop a Spectral Terror and then drop the Army for damage.
The main point is, though: they will no longer be inmortal and nor will they get tanker level HP. They will be buffable, though.
Forgot to say: this version really should have lower recharge time. -
I have a more interesting question:
Would you play a Dominator Illusion Dom that has phantom Army, but his army:
Can be hurt and killed.
Have Minion level HP.
Have Minion level damage.
They still taunt but are no tanks.
I also would review a couple other powers. Superior Invis and Grant Invisibility to be precise. Many control sets tend to have a team buff/support power like Healing Tree or Smoke (that lowers -tohit.) Illusion dom's closest thing is Grant invisibility but it suppresses the minuscule defense entirely if you are attacked (making it useless as team support power.)
I'd make sure that power gets defense levels more in line with smoke's tohit (5%) and didn't suppress. -
Quote:Thats why I did not stop there and continued to mention the toggle drop mechanic that was universally hated.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Stop right there. Currently, toggles cost endurance. Currently, the game isn't designed around zero-cost toggles. But there's also no need for them to cost material end either. They could all cost 0.03 eps and still be detoggled by drain.
Not to mention, it would require nearly all content to be redesigned to somehow do a form detoggilng.
And yes, I can see a very low end cost also still detoggling, but it goes back to the comments about endurance cost entirely killing your survivability, would not that retain some of the issues you noted at first?
My point is more about blasters always having all their endurance pool dedicated to damage, while melee are forced to dedicate some of their endurance budget to toggles. Would you denny that removing endurance from toggles would also result in increased damage potential?Quote:If melee had the right endurance burden before, didn't inherent fitness then cause that to break?
Again, I agree with the core of the idea, I have thought of making a case for it many times. But these two points always stop me because I have no answers that would explain why those are not problems. -
Quote:Masterminds have horrible damage modifiers, so they have very bad damage/endurance ratio, but on top of that I think every single power, regardless of source, cost more endurance for Masterminds due to a mastermind endurance modifier.Originally Posted by Fireheart
I can report that a Mastermind's personal attacks are grossly unbalanced on a End-per-Activation scale. Except for Demons. I'm not even considering DPE.
You may be able to argue about their damage being too low, but then you may also have to ask if their pet damage is too high, that is, after all, the reason for their low personal damage modifiers.
I always found it was a bit counter productive since other than secondary effect, the mastermind ended being discouraged to take part of the fight. He is better off standing back buffing the pets while they do the damage, an odd practice to encourage.
I assume you meant secondary since SS is a tanker secondary.Quote:On the other hand, I'm a bit disturbed by the idea of SS Tankers that could/would/should choose the Fighting Pool, instead of their Primary. I question the... correctness of Primaries that can be (apparently Easily) out-performed by Pool Powers.
The only power that has an issue is Bruise but, at least for tankers, it happens to do something Fighting can't: land a 20% damage resistance debuff. I would never use any pool power over that (although before that patch I used Air Superiority and Jab was parked as an IO donkey.