Please Devs can you widen melee cones a little?
By
Arcanaville,
Posted on: 2006-05-16 08:48 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
we never should have benefited from HOs in those powers. it was a bug.
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I think this need to be on a case by case basis though.
Slice and its Katana equivalent have wide cones already. Shadow Maul is about in the middle and Headsplitter is a tiny cone (basically they need to be bunched up).
I'm not sure either of the BS/Katana cones needs to be buffed, but Shadow Maul should be IMO.
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I also agree. It seems cone attacks are generally weaker then single target due to thier being able to hit more then 1 target. But seriously, how often does dark maul hit more then 1 target? Evicerate is also "supposedly" a cone... which would give claws a 3rd attack that can hit more then 1, making up for some of it's weakness... But with the cone so small it makes evicerate one of the less impressive attacks in the set (especially with new claw animation timing).
I gotta make pain. I gotta make things right. I gotta stop what's comin'. 'Least I gotta try.
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I also agree. It seems cone attacks are generally weaker then single target due to thier being able to hit more then 1 target. But seriously, how often does dark maul hit more then 1 target? Evicerate is also "supposedly" a cone... which would give claws a 3rd attack that can hit more then 1, making up for some of it's weakness... But with the cone so small it makes evicerate one of the less impressive attacks in the set (especially with new claw animation timing).
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/agree... also add Ripper to the list!
Gah. I hate wasting time trying to line up foes just right so shadowmaul hits even two targets, all the while I'm getting pummeled. God forbid if one of them moves.
Blech! Blech I say! 
Not to mention there is no AoE power in that primary, for brutes anyway. Never tried a scrapper....
lining up 2 for Shadow maul is painfully easy.
3 or 4 is not.
Agreed, if the mobs are in melee range and not oversized it's almost too easy to get 2 in a Shadow Maul. Just target the one in the back, line up the front one between you and the target.. and enjoy the pile of orange numbers flying up. To me it's a fun challenge that adds an element of skill to using a powerful attack.
Evil Ryu is correct, the tiny and annoying cones encourage herding. The developers dont want herding so changing the melle cones to be 180 degrees up front, but have a severe limit to how many targets you can hit might be better. Im biased because I find the melle cones annoying, and illogical. Id love to see a change there. Almost anything would be better.
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I have noticed that most melee cone powers have an extremely tiny cone. You pretty much have to do the stacking herding exploit just to hit more than one mob consistantly. Since melee cones are limited to 5 targets why not widen this cone? This would be extremely useful on teams when you are trying to save your teammates. Since we can no longer get the benifit of HO's that had the range component in them we should get a wider cone.
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I agree. With Ripper and Dark maul to hit more than 2 targets I have to spend many seconds on setup. Make sure I have proper alignment - 2 seconds, make sure I have the foe in the rear targeted - 2 seconds, make sure all of them are in melee rainge - 2 seconds. ::sigh, nevermind, just attack and hope for the best::
In teams my melee attacks don't contribute much damage for the group. If they expanded the melee cone my increased damage contribution would help make my melee scrapper more desired on teams.
HO's increasing Range was a bug.
The cone sizes for the melee powers is part of the Recharge/Damage/Endurance calculation. Increasing Cone sizes means reducing Damage & increasing End costs or increasing Recharge time to compensate.
In general, though, this probably will not happen.
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HO's increasing Range was a bug.
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But such a fun bug
My Headsplitter weeps for the loss of its Damage/Ranges come Issue 7
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I have noticed that most melee cone powers have an extremely tiny cone. You pretty much have to do the stacking herding exploit just to hit more than one mob consistantly. Since melee cones are limited to 5 targets why not widen this cone? This would be extremely useful on teams when you are trying to save your teammates. Since we can no longer get the benifit of HO's that had the range component in them we should get a wider cone.
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I agree. With Ripper and Dark maul to hit more than 2 targets I have to spend many seconds on setup. Make sure I have proper alignment - 2 seconds, make sure I have the foe in the rear targeted - 2 seconds, make sure all of them are in melee rainge - 2 seconds. ::sigh, nevermind, just attack and hope for the best::
In teams my melee attacks don't contribute much damage for the group. If they expanded the melee cone my increased damage contribution would help make my melee scrapper more desired on teams.
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Generaly any attack that hits more then 1 target does less dmg then one that is a single target only. Some of those tiny cone powers are realy single target attacks, that, sometimes affect more then 1 target as a bonus. But, it shouldn't happen all the time. Nor should you feel like you wasted it when you don't hit 2+ targets, but when you do great, more power to you.
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Some of those tiny cone powers are realy single target attacks, that, sometimes affect more then 1 target as a bonus. But, it shouldn't happen all the time. Nor should you feel like you wasted it when you don't hit 2+ targets, but when you do great, more power to you.
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Headsplitter is a good example of this. Damage/Ranges really don't make me hit *more* targets -- they just make it easier to get more bang for your buck from the cone. That and hitting something while it really is blatantly obvious it's not in Melee Range is just fun as hell.
Didn't a lot of these used to take 'cone range' enhancements when they existed though? I can't remember for sure but I could swear that at least headsplitter did (though I can't recall for sure).
That's how I found the previous problem out with the HO enhancements - I put a damage/range in it to see if the cone range would widen, but then it would activate outside of the normal range and nothing would happen - no hit, no miss, just a failed firing.
Again though I'm not absolutely certain if they did in the past - I'm getting forgetful these days... heh.
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HO's increasing Range was a bug.
The cone sizes for the melee powers is part of the Recharge/Damage/Endurance calculation. Increasing Cone sizes means reducing Damage & increasing End costs or increasing Recharge time to compensate.
In general, though, this probably will not happen.
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Um, could we just get Shadow Maul turned into a single target attack then? It's way too expensive for a very, very stupid cone that it has right now.
Still here, even after all this time!
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HO's increasing Range was a bug.
The cone sizes for the melee powers is part of the Recharge/Damage/Endurance calculation. Increasing Cone sizes means reducing Damage & increasing End costs or increasing Recharge time to compensate.
In general, though, this probably will not happen.
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Um, could we just get Shadow Maul turned into a single target attack then? It's way too expensive for a very, very stupid cone that it has right now.
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AGREED. The cone on this attack is soooo small that it's virtually impossible to hit more than one mob, yet the amount of end it uses seems to be based upon the assumption that it WILL hit more than one.
If adjusting it so that it's easier to hit multiple targets means increasing the end cost or decreasing the damage, then I'm all for changing it to a single-target attack, which I would assume would either lower it's end cost and/or increase its damage.
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HO's increasing Range was a bug.
The cone sizes for the melee powers is part of the Recharge/Damage/Endurance calculation. Increasing Cone sizes means reducing Damage & increasing End costs or increasing Recharge time to compensate.
In general, though, this probably will not happen.
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Um, could we just get Shadow Maul turned into a single target attack then? It's way too expensive for a very, very stupid cone that it has right now.
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Just because you can't easily hit 5 mobs with it doesn't mean others can't. No, I'm not talking about me, I usually average 2-3.
Hitting many mobs with your melee cones just takes practice and a little elementary trigonometry. 
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HO's increasing Range was a bug.
The cone sizes for the melee powers is part of the Recharge/Damage/Endurance calculation. Increasing Cone sizes means reducing Damage & increasing End costs or increasing Recharge time to compensate.
In general, though, this probably will not happen.
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I have an idea. Since if you raise the number on one aspect, you have to lower the numbers on another, let's get creative with where we lower things.
Melee cones effect a max of 5 targets. Lower that to 4, and you've cut the power by 20%. Nerf! But we'll be ok.
Now raise the size the the cone that those 4 possible targets could be in by 20% of a circle.. or 72 degrees. Viola, problem solved. Heck, even half that would be fantastic.
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HO's increasing Range was a bug.
The cone sizes for the melee powers is part of the Recharge/Damage/Endurance calculation. Increasing Cone sizes means reducing Damage & increasing End costs or increasing Recharge time to compensate.
In general, though, this probably will not happen.
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Um, could we just get Shadow Maul turned into a single target attack then? It's way too expensive for a very, very stupid cone that it has right now.
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Disagree. Find it very useful.... my wife uses it after I herd/knockback/push mobs into a corner and gets 3-4 easy.
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HO's increasing Range was a bug.
The cone sizes for the melee powers is part of the Recharge/Damage/Endurance calculation. Increasing Cone sizes means reducing Damage & increasing End costs or increasing Recharge time to compensate.
In general, though, this probably will not happen.
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Um, could we just get Shadow Maul turned into a single target attack then? It's way too expensive for a very, very stupid cone that it has right now.
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Actually, I would say that most of the time when a larger cone would have had any chance at all to hit something, I generally hit at least two. When I'm hitting one, its usually because one is in melee range, and the other one is standing off, and virtually no change (that wouldn't turn it into energy torrent) would allow me to hit the other one anyway. It takes more practice and skill to hit more than one than a wider and deeper cone would, but I would definitely prefer the current SM to a single target one, and I would probably prefer it to a wider cone version that had either less damage or more end cost.
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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Just target the one in the back, line up the front one between you and the targe
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Actually, I only found this "easy" when the mobs were stupid and weren't moving, and /or I was on a team and herded.
Otherwise, after soloing quite a few levels (now 31), I've found that it's next to impossible to hit more than one in a small spawn, unless you want to waste time trying to line 'em up just right, and don't move (and they don't move). With certain foes and maps, it's not that hard, but most other instances, it's terrible. And if they angle is just slightly off, it doesn't work.
Thankfully, I found that shadowmaul has such a painfully long animation, that I can recover some of the end back that it uses, so it's not a complete waste
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.
Level 50 is a journey, not a destination.
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Um, could we just get Shadow Maul turned into a single target attack then? It's way too expensive for a very, very stupid cone that it has right now.
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Uhm... I really don't think you want to go there...
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HO's increasing Range was a bug.
The cone sizes for the melee powers is part of the Recharge/Damage/Endurance calculation. Increasing Cone sizes means reducing Damage & increasing End costs or increasing Recharge time to compensate.
In general, though, this probably will not happen.
[/ QUOTE ]
I have an idea. Since if you raise the number on one aspect, you have to lower the numbers on another, let's get creative with where we lower things.
Melee cones effect a max of 5 targets. Lower that to 4, and you've cut the power by 20%. Nerf! But we'll be ok.
Now raise the size the the cone that those 4 possible targets could be in by 20% of a circle.. or 72 degrees. Viola, problem solved. Heck, even half that would be fantastic.
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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.
I have noticed that most melee cone powers have an extremely tiny cone. You pretty much have to do the stacking herding exploit just to hit more than one mob consistantly. Since melee cones are limited to 5 targets why not widen this cone? This would be extremely useful on teams when you are trying to save your teammates. Since we can no longer get the benifit of HO's that had the range component in them we should get a wider cone.
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