Stupid_Fanboy

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now tell me the heal on fire is why elecs numbers are So mutch bigger

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because fire has been around since launch and the devs take forever to fix broken things?

howabout you lay off the nerf talk if your only point is that other sets could use a little love too. no one disputes that fire needs help and has needed it for a long time now. it is not a reason to try and rain on other people's parade.

except the powers don't have a high end cost, at least, no higher than demanded by their damage. so there is no necessity in the use of the cone. it's a bonus, a free bonus.

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I honestly just can't see ANY reason to complain about the set anymore. It's golden in my book.

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QFT

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QFE, QFT +1

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it's not like this won't stop people from btichin, as we've already seen.

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Looking at Spines though, however, we see that Ripper is actually balanced a cone attack. Why is that? Because if you look at Spines attacks, the toxic DoT component is considered bonus. Lunge has a damage scale of 1 and a recharge of 4 seconds, in line with BS->Slash. Same situation when we look at Impale vs. BS->Hack. The current incarnation of Claws->Eviscerate is also balanced as a cone, but as we know it is getting a huge discount in I7.

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i don't know what they did for ripper and evis actually. they seem to be balanced as half a cone really. that's the closest the numbers get anyway.

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PBAoEs are actually balanced for 3.5 targets in term of recharge and 2.5 targets in term of endurance usage. MA->Dragon Tail and Claws->Spin (pre-I7) both confirm this, and if we consider the lethal DoT component on the swords' as bonus, they match the pattern as well. The only odd man here is Spines->Spine Burst, and I have no explanation for that.

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no, it's 2.5 for end and 2.6 for recharge.

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The thing is that the cones as they are currently are not balanced for the maximum amount of targets they can hit. It seems to me that by looking at the endurance and recharge of these powers, they are balanced to hit 1.5 foes in average.

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devian, you are correct.

shadow maul, eviscerate, ripper, headsplitter, golden dragonfly

these are balanced strictly as single target attacks. their tiny cones are icing on otherwise great powers. if they really started balancing these attacks as cones, trust me, none of you would like it at all.

true cones, of which we have very little access to as scrappers, are balanced in terms of 1.5 targets.

if they did widen the HS cone, how'd you like a new end cost of 20.28 end and a recharge time of 22.125s? pass.
for shadow maul, the 8s recharge and 8.528 cost would jump to 18s and 16.848 end. pass again.


the only true cones are Slice and Flashing Steel.

these attacks are AoEs and are balanced for 2.6 targets on average.
shockwave, throw spines, spin, whirling sword, lotus drops, dragon's tail


treat the small cones as a bonus you don't have to pay for, not an essential use of the power.

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HO's increasing Range was a bug.

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I thought that when cone range enhancements were combined with range enhancements that this was applied to HO's too. Or, was the cone enhancement removed altogether from all enhancements?

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none of these powers ever took cone enhancements. The powers that this was a poblem for, shadow maul, slice, evis, HS, GD, ripper are all fixed melee cones. a few(HS, GD, SM) have slightly longer ranges. they were never ever meant to be enhanced or buffed.

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If I was going to advocate any change to SM at all, it would be to speed its activation/running time up a bit. And hey, Castle, since activation times aren't factored into those attack balancing equations (like they ought to be), what do you say? Slightly faster SM, call it even?


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Actually - animation times are part of the factor in balance equation, although Castle left it out.

They admitted that claws was underperforming in some areas, and what did they do to balanace it out? Shortent he animations

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no, they only did that because it fit the theme of claws. otherwise, it is not a standard balance point at all.

to improve the DPS of claws, they could do one of two things.

1. give more damage to powers with very low dps, in claws case, this meant long animations.
2. shorten those animations

claws is obviously not about the big hitters and in order to properly increase the DPS to where they wanted it, they would have had to make swipe and slash into monster attacks, broadsword end of set type damage. that obviously wasn't an option. so they went with lower times.

i promise you, they do not take animations into account for balance 95% of the time. The rule is "whatever looks cool".

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FYI: Electric Shields' Grounding Power will have Immobilize and Knockback Protection added. The set will still not have a Heal power or HP Buff power.

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this is gonna need lots of testing. how is a passive resistance, low mag power gonna behave?

i don't like saying this, but if you can't hit multiple mobs with Shadow Maul more than half the time, then you either have horrible, crippling lag or you simply stink at using the power. it's not that difficult to use guys, honest. hitting two people is routine, or it should be.

also, Shadow Maul is already balanced as a single target power and is not, as some said, expensive. Actually, SM recharges 3 seconds faster than it really should. I'd keep my mouth shut about Shadow Maul considering how awesome it is.

we never should have benefited from HOs in those powers. it was a bug.

actually, you have to multiply brawl by 36 to get rid of all of the repeating decimals.

or, you can use the iakona's exact system which multiplies by .36 and results in a bunch of very nice values which are never more than 2 decimal places and also happen to agree with the devs in posts where they have quotes what their internal dmg numbers are(2.777=1, 4.555=1.64). since iakona's stuff matches exact with a dev quote, i'm using his stuff. and i encourage everyone else to as well.

I've finally managed to test a bit in pve since i can get into missions now. I've noticed something about the zone itself.

Teleporting in Grandville is a major pain in [censored]. i get red circles and no circles all over the place. It's really annoying and not fair to users of TP.

edit: this appears to be a general Teleport bug not related to Grandville. i'm getting this in every zone. the target reticle disappears if you target something too far away, even though it may be in range.

i've been thinking...

stop running away.

anyway, I've been thinking. An interesting point with brought up about healing and regen in another thread I was posting in, namely- the way that heals and regen react to HP buffs like DP. so i have a question that I think is interesting.

if the devs could set it up so that our regen only keyed off of our base HP, i.e. it ignored the extra HPs of DP and accolades, then do you think they would be willing to play around with the recharge of IH and also perhaps fix MoG finally?

think about it. Right now, at 50, with the accolades and DP slotted, I can get 2400 HP. That's over 1000 extra HP that directly fuels my regen rate. Those two minutes make my regen 80% faster than the baseline. And that's exactly the time of situation that they are balancing us against. We can achieve that 2/3rds of the time. It has to be taken into account.

but, if the regen rate didn't rise so dramatically due to the HP buff, I think that leaves a lot of room for buffing MoG and lowering the recharge of IH, severely.

with everything running, fully slotted, and recon kicking, we can regen and heal back about 880% of our HP for 90s at a time. For comparison, before all the nerfs started we could get 1222% per minute, all the time. So for those 90s, we do pretty darn good. making regen work off the base HP would lower that 880% to about 570%. That's about 3 full bars of HP per minute that we'd lose.

This also ties into what Arcana was saying about regen and MoG and that it's tough to get a real buff to MoG when the rest of the set is so damn good. This opens the door for a version of IH that has a shorter recharge and maybe a longer duration. it also gives them room to make MoG really good.

so what are your opinions? honestly, I'm mostly fine with regen right now so it doesn't really matter to me if this happens or not but I do think its something interesting to think about.

I don't wan to get in the way of all the doom here, but do we even know for sure if this isn't a bug?

yes, but Follow Up really became useful when i6 and ED took away 5slotting damage and hasten.

it is a good buff for your scrapper and using it will make you do more damage and use less end in the long run. The new changes make it even nicer because you can fit more into the buff, which you should perma (2acc/2rchrg/2dmg)

it gets close, but no 1shots outside of BU. and the base recharge is 14s.

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The endo cost for the electric melees is notably lower than EM and Stone for certain (as it should be, lower damage) and I think it is likely they're on the cheap side compared to all the sets except maybe Fire, I don't think you have a lot of room to complain about endo costs with this set.

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all the sets have the exact same end costs so this is a bit inaccurate. No tanker or brute set has more end efficient attacks than any other.

I'll try get someone to root around and get the real numbers. But i do agree, no one should be complaining about the costs just yet. we'll see about that once we get the numbers.

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Hmm well I'll give it a try anyway and see, 28 isn't really that far in *cringe*

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i've got a dark/nrg brute doing this. it's rough. i've got 1 end rdx in my attacks, one in my toggles and DC slotted 1acc/3rchrg and I still can't wait till i hit 28. but once i do (5 more bars), it's gonna be sweet.

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I would rather they combine hurdle/swift into one power (without reducing either power), change travel power SOs to a generic "Travel Speed" SO.

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I'd 6slot it

i dunno. pvp, where EM is the uber? sure. but I can't say i ever felt like anything close to gimp in PvE.

probably not till we get some sort of general weapon customization.

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I believe all your posts that Claws is fine... for Scrappers. That doesn't necessarily mean it's fine for Stalkers and I'm somewhat bewildered that they need to be identical save for the two powers that were taken out of the Stalker set when one of those powers has such a large impact on what makes the set a damage over time machine.

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I've got a level 40 claws stalker as well. I have also tested with him, it warburg. he uses less end, had a tighter attack chain(i already had slash) and doesn't need to rest as much. Shockwave is more of a crowd control than an attack for my stalker and now it recharges faster and is cheaper. So I'm also a little safer than before. I like the changes very much for my stalker.

as i already said, the problem people with claws is that it is not Energy Melee or Broadsword. People like burst damage and want big numbers. That's not Claws. So then we get into a discussion like this every few weeks.

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Obviously you haven't read the Electric Armor boards lately. Even better, every play a Fire Tanker or a Ninjitsu Stalker?

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i have been in that thread, alot actually. The argument is over whether or not the goodies outweigh the costs (-kb, -immob) and side effect of "forcing" people into a particular travel power. Complete status protection is one set of pluses, partial status protection plus exotic effects is another. It's a trade off. I really don't want to drag this into this thread because the electric armour thread is doing a fine job of kicking this particular horse.

Suffice to say, my view of the game and my expectations of powersets are drastically different from the average powergamer. Considering your remarks about laughing with your buddies, I feel fairly confident calling you that. In fact, pretty much all of your responses and your amusement stem from the fact that your expectations are much different than mine. Part of your dissatisfaction with Claws, and no doubt a bunch of other sets, is that what you expect and what the devs have envisioned, is radically different. I get it, I used to think that way too. I just don't anymore.

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Stop it, you're making me laugh. First off, it is an ARC not a true AOE (just nearby attackers, 2-3 on avg.). Secondly the AOE dmg. is low: a 2.7 BI and a 4.7 BI and no where near as good as Spines at 6.4 BI, 4.0 BI, 3.3 BI AOEs.

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Eviscerate is an arc, the same size as Ripper in fact. I notice you didn't make that ARC comment about ripper. Shockwave, also an arc, has the same size cone as Throw Spines. Both cover a huge amount of ground and it is not difficult to max out my target limit when using it. Convenient that you leave out the 3rd claw aoe, spin. Also convenient that you quote the spines numbers when taking into account the full 5 ticks of toxic damage that is not a guarantee and not a common occurance. Anyway, this is besides the point because nothing in spines has anything to do with the fact that Hasten lets Claws use its AoE's more often. That is a fact and numbers in other sets do not affect that.

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Um, Super Strength has this nifty power called Rage, have you heard of it? 80% dmg and 50% accuracy.... not too bad, huh. Also, alternating between BU and AIM provides superior benefits to Follow Up with an overlap of only 14 secs. Finally, only Scrappers have Follow-Up, but I personally believe for PvP BU is better anyways.

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super strength. great. i'll go right out and create a SS/SR scrapper. oh, wait. That's a tanker powerset and we're talking about scrappers. My bad. It'd be silly of me to compare outside that AT like that. It's a good thing I stopped before I stuck my foot in my mouth.

But at least I can take out my BS/Dark scrapper and alternate between build up and aim to really kill stuff! Oh, darnit. There I go again making comparisons to other ATs that have no bearing on whether or not Claws does well for a scrapper or stalker. Phew, close call!

PvP. Like i said before, PvP is all about burst damage which is not what Claws is built for, much to the resentment of many a pvper out there. But in PvE, Follow Up will provide a greater damage and tohit buff over time than Build Up. That's another fact. Claws effectively runs around with 4 Dmg SOs slotted while the other scrappers have 3. That most definitely adds up in the long run.

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Um, any set that is /regen will rarely run out of end if slotted correctly. Come on, the benefits from Claws on the DPE is scale is negligible. You make is sound as if Claws DPE is 50% less than its peers, with the same DPS. Remember to generate the same DPS, Claws must recycle through its attacks multiple times and the Claws attacks, even on the low end are 3.3, 4.5, 5.2, and 13.5. Compared to a real dog like Broad Sword at: 8.5, 5.2, 8.5, and 4.3. The averages are not far off one another, but the dmg. certainly is.

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My point was that a claws/anything will use less end when played well than the other primaries. Regen's just the clear example of that.

Also, Those are the old numbers. The first four claws attacks, right now, are 2.9, 4.1, 5.5(slash used to be 5.9, you were a bit off) and 9.1. And by the way, those 4 Broadsword attacks all have a lower DPE than the claws attacks, by an average of 25% and also have a longer animation time, by about half a second on average. And claws has a pbaoe in there too which can and does hit more people than slice. All in all, it looks pretty nice to me. The individual attacks might be lower dmg, but over time? i'll take claws.

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Are you familiar with the term "wanton ignorance." How much time do you have to spend with a dog to know its a dog? Come on, you can't possibly tell me that Claws is even close to its peers in either PvE or PvP. If you feel I haven't shown you enough evidence, please PM me and we can log onto test and I will kindly demonstrate the sucktacular aspects of Claws in either PvE or PvP (lvls 40-50).

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Actually, that's pretty much exactly what I've been trying to tell you. I have a feeling that I'm beating my head against a wall here though. Look, it's pretty clear that regardless of what I say, you are of a very different viewpoint. I really don't think you or people who share your particular view would really ever think that claws isn't "teh gimp" and "sucktacular", which btw, is a great word. It describes my job perfectly. I'm going to steal that one from ya.

I've played the set for a long time and I know that in the game, with these changes on test, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Claws except for the fact that it doesn't play like how some people want it to because it doesn't fit very well into the myopic view of gameplay that lots of people have developed. It's shame that people let their misconceptions get in the way of fun and engaging gameplay.

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to get back to the actual topic of the Thread, I'm still doing the happy dance over the new animations. The set plays a lot faster and it's much more fun. Thanks Devs and thanks Castle for twisting Geko's arm to get this stuff done. I'm really looking forward to when this issue is live. I haven't said that in quite a while.

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Having an advantage at lvls 1-24 does not justify late-game inefficiencies or weaknesses. In addition, the benefits gained by Stamina are Hastern are FAR greater than the inherent benefits of Claws.

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1. you're the only one saying it has late-game inefficiencies or weaknesses. I don't feel that particularly right now and I know that some of the problems I do have with the set will be gone in i7
2. Why should sets be designed around pool powers? They shouldn't and they aren't. if you really believe this, I'll expect you to start a thread about how overpowered Broadsword is because it makes better use of hasten and stamina than the other sets. By making the suggestions you have, you're essentially saying that in light of the benefits of pool powers, any powersets that off a similar benefit need to be redesigned. that's not how it works.

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In summary, no one is forced to use Stamina or Hasten, but they do remove the inherent advantages of the Claws set by offering ALL OTHER MELEE SETS access to greater benefits (+recharge and +endurance rec). If there were pool powers that offered +Dmg (above 20%), additional Debuffs, or unresisted dmg features, then Claws could become more competitive within the melee peer group.
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However, the truth remains that Claws main bonuses (+recharge and end efficiency) are easily replicated and outclassed, without any external offering (power pools) able to bring Claws up to its peers in dmg, utility, or debuffs. Furthermore, slotting SOs favors Dmg and Acc, while Recharge and Stamina are relegated in importance (both PvE and PvP).[/

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Claws does get a very nice benefit from hasten. Its longest recharging powers are all AoEs. I don't think I need to remind anyone of how efficient and powerfully useful AoEs are in this game.

Any bonus that the other sets get from Stamina is also useful to a Claws scrapper. A Claws scrapper can afford to run more toggles than any of the other sets, save DM. A claws/regen scrapper will not run out of end if slotted right and played correctly.

I strongly disagree that claws is lacking good buffs/debuffs and utility. What other set has a perma dmg buff that is worth more than an SO? None. Follow Up provides a 37.5% dmg buff that can easily be made perma. It also has a 10% tohit buff that is numerically equal to the combination of (+5% acc + -5%def) that the swords get. Spines and DM get no inherent acc. MA gets 5%. MA's effects lose their effectiveness where Claws becomes strong. MA can't reliably stunlock a boss. The knockdown and knockback of Focus and Shockwave are the most consistant and useful secondary effects in the AT. Claws is the safer against Bosses than any of the other sets because of them.

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My arguments are not to homogenize Claws, it's to simply illustrate why it is doomed to mediocrity. Hey, a lot of cars are sold each year that look nice, but have average performance. Some people think those buyers are suckers, but most of the suckers are pleased with their purchase. In the end, the press and car magazines can't change the auto industry or the consumers, but the media has an obligation to point out a substandard offering.

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your analogy is poor because you have not shown that claws is actually performing sub-par. I know this is me being sensitive, but I don't take kindly to being called a sucker either, particularly when you don't have enough experience to back up your claim. You are theorizing that it's sub-par but my experience says it isn't, not once these changes hit. Even on live, Claws is very competitive in the higher levels.

big reason i don't like it is because it's not thematic. i just don't see an electricity based super getting immobilized by conventional means.

KB i can see because there isn't much heaviness associated with electricity in my mind. The goodies it gets fit but I'd like to see some slow resistance that really means something. (ditto for ice tanks and SR)