Official Thread for Brutes: Electric Melee
By
13th_Stranger,
Posted on: 2006-05-01 11:58 in Developers' Corner
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I only got to about level 8 or so with my electric brute but it isn't very inspiring outside of it looks spiffy. Just another rehash power. More of the same with slight variations. GIVE US AN ACUTAL NEW POWER SET NOT DUPLICATIONS OF WHAT IS ALREADY OUT THERE WITH NEW ANIMATIONS!!!!!
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Well, lemme think here:
Art-Design: 2 months
Motion Capture/Armature Time : 3 months
Collision Testing : 6 months
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It takes 2 months to change the color of existing lightining animations from bluish white to red? 3 months to copy over existing motion capture from existing powers? And 6 months to test for collisions in a game where you hit your target when you are around corners and 50 yards out of melee range and when they are most likely using cut and paste collision code anyway. New NPCs are fine as long as they are not rehashed modifications of existing npcs. The new mayhem missions are good. It would be nice if they came up with a more original powerset that hasn't pretty much already been done in game.
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I'm more of an instant gratification-type person and don't really want to wait the amount of time it takes to satisfy your UPPER CASE WHINING.
I'd rather they spend the time adding new zones, adding more villain/hero NPCs, y'know.. more world affecting stuff.
I would like to see Elec balanced out more than anything else. The same animations with different flashies is good for me.
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So what about the sound issues? Are the powers intentionally weak-sounding?
Man, I really hope Castle takes a good look at electric/. All it takes is a couple changes to make the set great. Namely
1) Make Thunder Strike equal to the blaster version... but for brutes. Thunder Strike for blasters is comparable to Total Focus for Blasters. Thunder Strike for brutes is not comparable to Total Focus for Brutes. And it would not unbalance the set if it were.
2) Chain Induction. I am guessing that this power will not be able to stay the way it is. But the XP-leeching has GOT to go.
Dawnslayer on Virtue.
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FYI, Lightning Rod's Recharge Time will be being reduced.
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(tries to push luck)
can we get a dmg boost? 
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No. I should say, "Not Likely" since anything is possible. Lightning Rod, with it's Area of Effect, does about twice the damage of any other Brute tier 9 power. Against a single target, its damage is comparable to Greater Fire Sword.
EDIT: Chain Induction: We're looking at options on this. The XP loss was not intended, but may be unavoidable with the current design.
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can you make l-rod's recharge 30 secs or less? anything over that and it's damage/cost/recharge is way below the other brute lvl 32 powers
One way to fix the xp leeching on Chain Induction would be to remove the hp damage.
I think it would be effective as a 'bouncing' short-duration (4 seconds?) Hold or Knockdown power, if paired with a useful additional component such as a defense, regeneration or recovery debuff.
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One way to fix the xp leeching on Chain Induction would be to remove the hp damage.
I think it would be effective as a 'bouncing' short-duration (4 seconds?) Hold or Knockdown power, if paired with a useful additional component such as a defense, regeneration or recovery debuff.
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That combined with a slight boost in it's damage to your initial target may be ok...but I think they (the devs) want to keep Elec/ with more AoE type stuff than single target stuff.
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One way to fix the xp leeching on Chain Induction would be to remove the hp damage.
I think it would be effective as a 'bouncing' short-duration (4 seconds?) Hold or Knockdown power, if paired with a useful additional component such as a defense, regeneration or recovery debuff.
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The most simple method of solving the problem would be to change the attack to a ranged AoE with a casting range of 5' (melee). Problem solved.
Which would make it exactly like Thunderstrike. Not bad, although they would most likely adjust the damage way down.
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Which would make it exactly like Thunderstrike. Not bad, although they would most likely adjust the damage way down.
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Nah, no knockdown for damage mitigation. The damage could stay exactly the way it is.
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The most simple method of solving the problem would be to change the attack to a ranged AoE with a casting range of 5' (melee). Problem solved.
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There's no bouncing back and forth between 2 enemies over and over, which is what makes chain induction cool. Assuming that it currently does this on test. I know my sorceress in d2 loved chain lightning for this reason. Nothing like back and forth for massive damage.
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Motion Capture/Armature Time : 3 months
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Hell no. 
If you have a competent mocap team and a competent animator, nine moves (the number per powerset) should take a week, tops. Even if you needed 27 moves, a set for each body type, that's still less than a month, and 27 moves in a month is still slow.
laughing you are forgetting they have to do this for every model, every size of model, and every difference in skeletal design due to costume changes. They have already stated that animations is the longets and hardest thing to do.
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Man, I really hope Castle takes a good look at electric/. All it takes is a couple changes to make the set great. Namely
1) Make Thunder Strike equal to the blaster version... but for brutes. Thunder Strike for blasters is comparable to Total Focus for Blasters. Thunder Strike for brutes is not comparable to Total Focus for Brutes. And it would not unbalance the set if it were.
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Not happening.
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2) Chain Induction. I am guessing that this power will not be able to stay the way it is. But the XP-leeching has GOT to go.
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We have a bug report in engineerings queue to do something about this, but there is no ETA on a change, and it is possible they tell us nothing can be done. In that case, we either redesign the power, or leave it as is and add the "Warning: May cause XP loss" into the help text. Obviously, a code fix is the best case solution.
I did account for every (PC) model, and I can't imagine why the skins of the costumes would change the actual rigging. I will give the height variations considerations.
The mocap for a powerset could be done in a day, easily. There's no harsh interactions and most of them don't involve rolling around on the ground or extreme contortions. The moves are only 2-6 seconds long, each.
The nine moves then must be adjusted for heights. If the average animation time is four seconds, that's 36 seconds or 1080 frames. If you stretched those frames across a five-day workweek, that's 216 frames per day (7.2 seconds or just under 2 moves per day), and with a work day of eight hours, that's 27 frames per hour, or not even a second per hour. That's slow as heck. A competent animator could adjust six moves a day easily, which is 720 frames a day or 90 an hour.
If you assume there are 10 different heights, which I think would cover all the varying heights well enough, and three models, each set would have to be adjusted 30 times. Obviously there are initial ajdustments made to the animation that make it correct, and then there are adjustments after that to make it right for each type and size of model, therefore the adjustment time per move after the initial adjustment should drop considerably. Half is a good estimate.
So with 30 variations, and at a moderate five moves per day intially and ten after the initial adjustments per body type, that's 30 days, adjusted for a normal workweek giving six weeks. Far less than three months.
If there's any more to it, I'd say something wasn't planned correctly.
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Man, I really hope Castle takes a good look at electric/. All it takes is a couple changes to make the set great. Namely
1) Make Thunder Strike equal to the blaster version... but for brutes. Thunder Strike for blasters is comparable to Total Focus for Blasters. Thunder Strike for brutes is not comparable to Total Focus for Brutes. And it would not unbalance the set if it were.
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Not happening.
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What about slightly reducing the recharge on it (maybe down to 15 seconds from the current 20)? I personally see no problem with the damage for it, but it takes a long time to recharge given it's power. I'm basing this on comparing it with Jacob's Ladder, which has an 8 second recharge. Jacob's Ladder will do more damage than Thunderstrike against the same number of enemies if you line them up right, and has a much smaller recharge. Though on the other hand, Thunderstrike has the capability of hitting a much larger number of opponents (which I like), it just recharges so slowly that you don't get to do it very much. A 5 second reduction in recharge would help but not make it overbearing I don't think.
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2) Chain Induction. I am guessing that this power will not be able to stay the way it is. But the XP-leeching has GOT to go.
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We have a bug report in engineerings queue to do something about this, but there is no ETA on a change, and it is possible they tell us nothing can be done. In that case, we either redesign the power, or leave it as is and add the "Warning: May cause XP loss" into the help text. Obviously, a code fix is the best case solution.
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Thanks for the update on Chain Induction. In the case where you might need to redesign the power, is there any idea for the redesign that you're leaning toward? And given that over half of the set is area effect attacks, will that affect your decision?
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2) Chain Induction. I am guessing that this power will not be able to stay the way it is. But the XP-leeching has GOT to go.
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We have a bug report in engineerings queue to do something about this, but there is no ETA on a change, and it is possible they tell us nothing can be done. In that case, we either redesign the power, or leave it as is and add the "Warning: May cause XP loss" into the help text. Obviously, a code fix is the best case solution.
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Heh. "XP General's Warning: Using Chain Induction may result in loss of XP. Brutes close to level, and those with high fury bars should not use. There is no such thing as a safe Chain Induction."
It's very cool sounding as a power, but xp loss sucks. Also, if your engineers can't fix it, you should get some better engineers.
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The mocap for a powerset could be done in a day, easily. There's no harsh interactions and most of them don't involve rolling around on the ground or extreme contortions. The moves are only 2-6 seconds long, each.
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i thought that cryptic doesn't use mocap? i swear they said it's all done by hand.
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If Chain Induction can't be fixed, I'd much rather see some sort of redesign. An XP-loss power will just be a "don't take this power" power. Look at how to some degree Confuse STILL bears stigma from the days when you got NO XP from mobs killed by confused enemies.
Slightly reduced XP I can live with, especially if it helps me tear through the mobs. But NO XP...blech. I'll just take another power. And I don't think ANY set should ever have a "just skip that one" power.
I play on Virtue and have all 12 slots full and I'm tired of listing them all here so NYAH!
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Also, if your engineers can't fix it, you should get some better engineers.
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You mean worse engineers that will throw up a band-aid that will add to architecture destabilization. Bad fixes are horrible long term and add a lot of chance for bugs and increase cost of maintance. A good engineer will try very had not to break the architectore to get a change in. So it seems that Cryptic has good engineers.
Sad to hear that about Chain Induction. With Grounded being your most useful defensive power after Charged Armor now, it looks like Chain is going to slide back into the 20s.
As for Thunder Strike, ahem (cough).... ahem-ahem.... OMG! What the hell is wrong with some people!? It's FOOTSTOMP at level 8!! It's your most useful crowd control power. You'll be able to herd, knock them down/back and then go back to work with your other powers. Thunder Strike animating faster and coming back quicker would be broken. You could Jacob's Ladder and TS the mob a cycle and they'd only get in one attack every 8-10 seconds (after hasten/LR/SO recharges).
Damage? ThunderStrike has never been an uber damage dealer for it's animation time. And the PBAoE does a much higher precentage to the crowd than the blaster version.
I've always wanted more energy damage out of the attack, but considering it's knockback feels like a big smashing attack - it's logical how it works.
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Couldnt they just make Chain Induction a wide cone with a 3 target limit or something? And just have the animation jump from the targets it hits or is that too difficult to code. Im not super techy when it comes to programming.
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2) Chain Induction. I am guessing that this power will not be able to stay the way it is. But the XP-leeching has GOT to go.
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We have a bug report in engineerings queue to do something about this, but there is no ETA on a change, and it is possible they tell us nothing can be done. In that case, we either redesign the power, or leave it as is and add the "Warning: May cause XP loss" into the help text. Obviously, a code fix is the best case solution.
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Heh. "XP General's Warning: Using Chain Induction may result in loss of XP. Brutes close to level, and those with high fury bars should not use. There is no such thing as a safe Chain Induction."
It's very cool sounding as a power, but xp loss sucks. Also, if your engineers can't fix it, you should get some better engineers.
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Ahem. Confuse. Mass Confusion. Deceive.
I say leave it as is.
The game isn't all about xp. If you don't like it, then don't take the power, just like controllers who skip powers that lessen the xp.
Plain and simple. 
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As for Thunder Strike, ahem (cough).... ahem-ahem.... OMG! What the hell is wrong with some people!? It's FOOTSTOMP at level 8!!
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So footstomp deals only half it's damage in the AoE?
It saddens me that it will not see a damage buff. No burst damage = don't expect to kill anything in PVP. I invite anyone to test their or test MY elec/ brute in arena combat and see what happens.
Unless you don't actually care 'bout testing...
Dawnslayer on Virtue.
I have no idea why this isn't even being discussed.
It wasn't intended for Chain Induction to have an XP-loss. It is a bug that it does. Fix the bug, however you can. Don't go Live with this.
Thunderstrike... It's "ok". I think that all sets need one big heavy-hitter for PvP, and it would be nice if this was given a bit more... The Blaster version is both AoE and pretty punishing, how would it be unbalancing if the Brute version was the same? As long as it does less damage, and perhaps use more Endurance than Total Focus, whats the harm, right?
Thanks for eight fun years, Paragon.
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* Jacob's ladder cone is a bit narrow and short.
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I created a lv2 Elec Melee, and I gotta say, Jacob's was piece of cake to hit multiples with constantly. Far far easier than Shadow Maul actually, and from what I recall does comparable damage to Shadow Maul for half the animation time.
Shadow Maul is a 2.08 Scalar value, and Jacob's Ladder is a 1.5 Scalar.
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