If I would change something about blasters.. Something just doesn't seem right with Electric Blasters. It might be perception but it doesn't feel like it does as much damage as other sets. I think the secondary effect of end drain needs to be revisited.
Energy is right in the middle of the pack. Explosive Blast and Energy Torrent are very " meh " powers IMO that a lot of people hate because it scatters foes. Power Push seems to be more of a secondary power rather than something that should be used in a primary.
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
@ aura:
as ive said before about the comparison, it's not that blasters *do* more damage, its just that other AT's can *approach* their level of damage output, while having other perks like control or survivability.
thats why the comparisons are made <.>
well, not all classes can acheive the damage of a blaster. Fire/Kin controllers and Scrappers are the closest i can think of.
Blasters have come along way since the beginning of the game. With IO sets teh blaster can become much more sturdy due to all the +defense and with +recharge, the blaster can free up more attack slots for defensive powers.
I've yet to see a class that can match a Blasters when it comes to burst damage or AoE (other than the Spines/Dark -or- /fire scrapper)
Whining about everything since 2006.
Ammo switching for Dual Pistols was my idea:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=135484
Personally, if there's one buff I'd give Blasters and not be ashamed one bit is a buff to Snipers up to 3.56 scale damage (up from 2.7 now). Right now, a Snipe is not worth the time it takes to animate. Unless I want to pull, I have no use for a Snipe, because my regular attacks do more damage in less time. A Snipe's DPA is terrible, and that's assuming you use it as soon as it recharges, which isn't possible with an interruptible power.
To me, Blaster Snipes pay the cost of performance they don't really need. Their recharge is faster than you typically need or want it, and while the range is good, the damage isn't worth it. If Blaster snipes underwent the same treatment as Dominator Snipes, with associated balancing, I'd say Blasters would be just about right.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Personally, if there's one buff I'd give Blasters and not be ashamed one bit is a buff to Snipers up to 3.56 scale damage (up from 2.7 now). Right now, a Snipe is not worth the time it takes to animate. Unless I want to pull, I have no use for a Snipe, because my regular attacks do more damage in less time. A Snipe's DPA is terrible, and that's assuming you use it as soon as it recharges, which isn't possible with an interruptible power.
To me, Blaster Snipes pay the cost of performance they don't really need. Their recharge is faster than you typically need or want it, and while the range is good, the damage isn't worth it. If Blaster snipes underwent the same treatment as Dominator Snipes, with associated balancing, I'd say Blasters would be just about right. |
/signed
Blaster Snipes need a boost... This has been the case ever since ED happened. Used to be you slotted a snipe with at least 4-5 Damage SO's so you could take out a dangerous LT or Minion.. Isnt that what a Snipe is supposed to be about.. a one shot takedown of a target ???
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
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I suggested the exact same thing for at least a year now. Blaster snipes need a 60% damage increase, and 40% recharge increase (meaning recharges longer) in order to put the snipes DPA, and DPS in line. Currently the animation is just FAR too long for the damage the snipes do. If that were made to be in line snipes would finally be ACTUALLY worth using. Which aside from a lower than 3 month vet/noob who hovers far above the fight can be reasonably unused for most any blaster i've ever had.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Personally, if there's one buff I'd give Blasters and not be ashamed one bit is a buff to Snipers up to 3.56 scale damage (up from 2.7 now). Right now, a Snipe is not worth the time it takes to animate. Unless I want to pull, I have no use for a Snipe, because my regular attacks do more damage in less time. A Snipe's DPA is terrible, and that's assuming you use it as soon as it recharges, which isn't possible with an interruptible power.
To me, Blaster Snipes pay the cost of performance they don't really need. Their recharge is faster than you typically need or want it, and while the range is good, the damage isn't worth it. If Blaster snipes underwent the same treatment as Dominator Snipes, with associated balancing, I'd say Blasters would be just about right. |
Its a power that exists in this game so of course "some" people are going to use it. But for most of us, and numberwise, its just far too weak to use for its animation time and interruptibility.
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Agreed. Blaster snipe should be able to one shot a Lieutenant.
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Originally Posted by Airhammer
/signed
Blaster Snipes need a boost... This has been the case ever since ED happened. Used to be you slotted a snipe with at least 4-5 Damage SO's so you could take out a dangerous LT or Minion.. Isnt that what a Snipe is supposed to be about.. a one shot takedown of a target ??? |
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Here's the bad part, though - making a power "bigger" actually reduces its DPA if it's balanced with "average" in mind. That's why, say, Head Splitter has worse DPA than Slash (though not by too much). The problem with Blaster Snipes, however, is that they are balanced without their incredibly long animation time in mind, and balanced only on base animation time (which is animation - interrupt). Three seconds of wind-up on a power that's barely 14 seconds in recharge is actually quite a bit, and that drives their overall numbers quite low.|
Originally Posted by Windenergy21
I suggested the exact same thing for at least a year now. Blaster snipes need a 60% damage increase, and 40% recharge increase (meaning recharges longer) in order to put the snipes DPA, and DPS in line. Currently the animation is just FAR too long for the damage the snipes do. If that were made to be in line snipes would finally be ACTUALLY worth using. Which aside from a lower than 3 month vet/noob who hovers far above the fight can be reasonably unused for most any blaster i've ever had.
Its a power that exists in this game so of course "some" people are going to use it. But for most of us, and numberwise, its just far too weak to use for its animation time and interruptibility. |
The other problem is that Snipes aren't something you can reasonably want DPA out of. It's like trying to calculate the DPA of Nova. I mean, you could, but what would that tell you? DPA tends to distort very badly when a power isn't used a lot and spends a lot of time recharged and waiting, which snipes do simply because not every opportunity is applicable to using one. Sniper Blast, for instance, has an unenhanced DPA at 50 of 10.574, which isn't actually TOO bad, but good luck getting THAT kind of performance out of it. You'd need to snipe every 14 seconds. On the other hand, Power Bolt's unenhanced DPA at 50 is around 12.512, which is actually higher AND easier to achieve.
Here's the big thing - Snipers, as they are currently designed, are best used as openers and single big hitters when the situation permits. They aren't very appropriate to be repeated hitters because of how slow they are and because of how easy they are to break. They are, however, balanced as a medium-size, medium-speed attack, instead of the big hitter they seem to be. This both misleads people into thinking a Snipe will hit hard (a misconception, since you can hit HARDER in the time it takes to snipe) and that sniping often is a good strategy, when a lot of the time it wastes time and energy more than it actually helps.
I could live with Snipes being relegated to big-hitter openers. Nukes are the same, and I've never complained. However, I want them to be an opener that will do MORE damage in time it takes to activate than I could replicate with any of my other powers (short of Nuking), such that I don't feel like a big idiot when I hit Aim + Build Up + Snipe and realise I'm cheating myself and that I could have done more damage with a couple of other powers. Their range just isn't benefit enough to justify that, specifically since your snipe is the ONLY thing you can use at that range and most things outrange snipes anyway.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Thats DPS, not DPA. power bolts DPA is 62.56, its DPS is 12.512. Big difference in which number you are calculating.| The other problem is that Snipes aren't something you can reasonably want DPA out of. It's like trying to calculate the DPA of Nova. I mean, you could, but what would that tell you? DPA tends to distort very badly when a power isn't used a lot and spends a lot of time recharged and waiting, which snipes do simply because not every opportunity is applicable to using one. Sniper Blast, for instance, has an unenhanced DPA at 50 of 10.574, which isn't actually TOO bad, but good luck getting THAT kind of performance out of it. You'd need to snipe every 14 seconds. On the other hand, Power Bolt's unenhanced DPA at 50 is around 12.512, which is actually higher AND easier to achieve. |
Will also go to show, why when my suggestion increased the damage of snipes to be equal to their dpA, (activation), it was also necessary to increase their recharge to i forget but either 16 - 20 seconds to keep their DPS in line as to not overboost the power.
Due to the interruptibility, and still the long animation time, this would keeps snipes at a perfect balance, not being used every chance its up, but still actually WORTH using in an attack chain, or in general whenever you would go to use it.
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Just curious, but do you think buffing snipes in such a way would upset intra-AT balance with sets that don't have snipes?
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Sonic Attack and Ice Blast? They can afford to miss out on a buff.|
Originally Posted by Leo_G
Just curious, but do you think buffing snipes in such a way would upset intra-AT balance with sets that don't have snipes?
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I'm looking more at Defenders and Corruptors, who also have snipes, and aren't exactly the strongest ATs right now. One and one together, I don't see why any love for snipes can't be shared equally over all the ATs.
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It appears I misunderstood the term, then. It seems the game treats it the same, as well - damage per activation time, whereas what I was looking at was damage per activation CYCLE, which the game calls "cast cycle." Oh, well.|
Originally Posted by Windenergy21
Thats DPS, not DPA. power bolts DPA is 62.56, its DPS is 12.512. Big difference in which number you are calculating.
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Let me ask this, then - what use is DPA if that's all it measures? A high DPA doesn't really mean much, because it could be an extremely powerful attack, an extremely fast attack or somewhere in-between. And, more importantly, it doesn't give you a good example of the power's uptime cost, or how much of your time spamming it requires. For instance, Power bolt has a 1 second animation and a 5 second cycle, so spamming it takes exactly 20% of your time (give or take time lost to ping delay). Sniper Blast, on the other hand, has 4.33 second animation (even with interrupt reducers) and a cycle of 16.33 seconds, meaning it takes around 26.52% of your time, which is actually comparable over time, only Sniper Blast does a LOT less damage for an actually higher uptime.
I guess if you're looking for shock damage that would matter, but even then certain powers get into their cycles before Aim and Build Up have expired. Though, I guess, in the VERY short-term cycles don't really matter and only DPA counts, but I'm not sure I see how that goes. I'll have to think about it.
*edit*
After contemplating some grade-school mathematics, I was able to prove to my satisfaction that that there is no situation where the sum of two fractions was greater than a third fraction and yet the third fraction can still somehow end up being greater. What this means in practical terms is that the sum of powers with the greatest DPA is the best approach to shock damage, and that slow, powerful attacks can be matched up to small, quick attacks using elementary addition. With that in mind, let me have a look at Fire Blast as that's an easy example:
Ignoring additional damage components (because it gets worse) and using scale damage, Fire Blast's Blazing Bolt has a DPA of 0.591. By comparison, Blaze has a DPA of 2.12 Hmm... I thought I had that understood, but here's the problem - Blaze has a significantly higher DPA than Blazing Bolt because it's just under five times faster, but JUST Blaze doesn't do more damage than Sniper Blast, because it has lower damage. You'd think using just Blaze instead of just Blazing Bolt would be better... Four times better, in fact. But the fact of the matter is you can't make that assessment based on DPA numbers, because that only gives you time-efficiency, not actual delivery. And you're never comparing JUST using one attack to using JUST one other attack when dealing with shock damage. You're comparing one attack string to another attack string, often trying to fit as much damage as possible in the 9 seconds that Aim and Build Up are active. And you can't just extrapolate damage per second of animation into a full 8-9-second block because attack animations are monolithic and non-dividable and non-repeatable (you can't get an attack to recharge instantly).
Just DPA gives me time-efficiency on a VERY small scale, but I can't seem to make use of it in the only situation where such small scale is relevant - shock damage. I know Blaze + Fire Blast deals more damage than Sniper Blast in less time, but NEITHER of the two deals more damage than Sniper Blast, period, even if their DPA may suggest they do. On the larger scale, DPA becomes irrelevant in the face of DPS. So what can I do to make use of this metric? What, specifically, that uptime won't do better?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Nope, as the attacks would be normalized to have their damage actually worth the animation time, it would be the same intra-AT balance that exists now between sets that have a 3rd tier blast like blaze/shout, versus sets like elec who do not. And would actually help to equal out the balance between sets like for elec who could actually worthwhile include their snipe in their attack chain.
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Originally Posted by Leo_G
Just curious, but do you think buffing snipes in such a way would upset intra-AT balance with sets that don't have snipes? |
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
It appears I misunderstood the term, then. It seems the game treats it the same, as well - damage per activation time, whereas what I was looking at was damage per activation CYCLE, which the game calls "cast cycle." Oh, well.
Let me ask this, then - what use is DPA if that's all it measures? A high DPA doesn't really mean much, because it could be an extremely powerful attack, an extremely fast attack or somewhere in-between. And, more importantly, it doesn't give you a good example of the power's uptime cost, or how much of your time spamming it requires. For instance, Power bolt has a 1 second animation and a 5 second cycle, so spamming it takes exactly 20% of your time (give or take time lost to ping delay). Sniper Blast, on the other hand, has 4.33 second animation (even with interrupt reducers) and a cycle of 16.33 seconds, meaning it takes around 26.52% of your time, which is actually comparable over time, only Sniper Blast does a LOT less damage for an actually higher uptime. I guess if you're looking for shock damage that would matter, but even then certain powers get into their cycles before Aim and Build Up have expired. Though, I guess, in the VERY short-term cycles don't really matter and only DPA counts, but I'm not sure I see how that goes. I'll have to think about it. *edit* After contemplating some grade-school mathematics, I was able to prove to my satisfaction that that there is no situation where the sum of two fractions was greater than a third fraction and yet the third fraction can still somehow end up being greater. What this means in practical terms is that the sum of powers with the greatest DPA is the best approach to shock damage, and that slow, powerful attacks can be matched up to small, quick attacks using elementary addition. With that in mind, let me have a look at Fire Blast as that's an easy example: Ignoring additional damage components (because it gets worse) and using scale damage, Fire Blast's Blazing Bolt has a DPA of 0.591. By comparison, Blaze has a DPA of 2.12 Hmm... I thought I had that understood, but here's the problem - Blaze has a significantly higher DPA than Blazing Bolt because it's just under five times faster, but JUST Blaze doesn't do more damage than Sniper Blast, because it has lower damage. You'd think using just Blaze instead of just Blazing Bolt would be better... Four times better, in fact. But the fact of the matter is you can't make that assessment based on DPA numbers, because that only gives you time-efficiency, not actual delivery. And you're never comparing JUST using one attack to using JUST one other attack when dealing with shock damage. You're comparing one attack string to another attack string, often trying to fit as much damage as possible in the 9 seconds that Aim and Build Up are active. And you can't just extrapolate damage per second of animation into a full 8-9-second block because attack animations are monolithic and non-dividable and non-repeatable (you can't get an attack to recharge instantly). Just DPA gives me time-efficiency on a VERY small scale, but I can't seem to make use of it in the only situation where such small scale is relevant - shock damage. I know Blaze + Fire Blast deals more damage than Sniper Blast in less time, but NEITHER of the two deals more damage than Sniper Blast, period, even if their DPA may suggest they do. On the larger scale, DPA becomes irrelevant in the face of DPS. So what can I do to make use of this metric? What, specifically, that uptime won't do better? |
DPA means a LOT. It is in lots of builds one of the deciding factors in your attack chain in how much damage you can deal. Since you can only have s much activation time in your chain, it makes a HUGE difference in how much damage each attack is doing.
If you need an example, just pop over to the scrapper forums and look at some of the DPS calculations for things like pylon soloing.
And you almost seemed to grasp it, but while sniper blast may do more damage for one cast, it does it in such a longer time period. So the damage you'll get out of the power is severely reduced overall. In a set like fire blast, trying to fit it in the attack chain is a non-issue.
Even if you have a small gap, where blaze won't recharge in 2 seconds, its still worth it more to wait for blaze, than it is at that point to cast sniper blast, due to the limitation of DPA.
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this.
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Originally Posted by Vel_Overload
well, not all classes can acheive the damage of a blaster. Fire/Kin controllers and Scrappers are the closest i can think of.
Blasters have come along way since the beginning of the game. With IO sets teh blaster can become much more sturdy due to all the +defense and with +recharge, the blaster can free up more attack slots for defensive powers. I've yet to see a class that can match a Blasters when it comes to burst damage or AoE (other than the Spines/Dark -or- /fire scrapper) |
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
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What I mean is I don't get how you can actually use DPA as a statistic to come up with a meaningful solution. DPA is a comparison of ultimately incomparable things, because a high DPA attack may be fast, or it may be slow, or it may be somewhere in-between, and there's no way to tell that from DPA. It's like asking if 10 metres per second is more than 10 kilometres per hour (it is, 10 mps is 36 kph).|
Originally Posted by Windenergy21
DPA means a LOT. It is in lots of builds one of the deciding factors in your attack chain in how much damage you can deal. Since you can only have s much activation time in your chain, it makes a HUGE difference in how much damage each attack is doing.
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If I'm going to try and figure out how to pump the most damage in a limited time slot, I may as well go by damage and recharge separately, because just DPE doesn't tell me over how long this damage is taking place. I could grab three powers, add up their DPE together (say, Assassin's Strike, Total Focus and Energy Transfer, to make a point) and get some large number, but without any concept of how long that's actually going to take.
DPS is a lot like that, admittedly, but DPS takes part over a much longer period of time, over which it's easier to calculate things in fraction without running afoul of the limitations of the discrete nature of damage contribution too much.
When I look at DPA, I'm seeing efficiency, but I'm not seeing a good way to draw a broader conclusion off that. I can look at a power's DPA, see it's more than normal and say "Hmm... Using this power saves me endurance" or "Hey, if I hit three people with this power, I'm actually saving endurance." All high DPA tells me, however, is how time-efficient a power is on single application, but it doesn't tell me how LONG it actually takes to animate. And since the only use I can think of for this is to try and calculate short-duration burst damage and it doesn't include duration in it, it seems to be not as much worth it as one would think.
The thing is, how much damage you can dish out depends on a lot of things. It depends on power recharge, it depends on power animation speed, it depends on power damage. You may do great DPS by alternating many powers, you may do so by repeating one power over and over. It comes down to how much time cycling a power takes off your total, really. The problem with that, however, is that even if calculations suggest you should be able to fit all powers in your available time, that isn't always possible. In fact, it's fairly easy to prove that, but taking a power with an uptime of 1/2 and a power with an uptime of 1/3. There is no way to cycle those without having one wait at some point over and over, which then distorts DPS.
Let me put it this way - how can you use just DPA to demonstrate that just Blazing Bolt does more damage than Blaze or Flares, but Blaze and Flares do more damage in less time and, more importantly, can you do it in such a way as to give me some concept of the relative difference? Because here's what I'm seeing:
Blazing Bolt has a DPA of 37.831, Blaze has 132.630 and Flares has 63.190. Together, Blaze and Flares have a combined DPA of 195.820, while Blazing Bolt has only 37.831, or just under 20% of that of Blaze and Flares. So... What does that mean? Blazing Bolt is five times less efficient per second than the total duration of two powers, but for how long a duration are we talking about? Is that for Blazing Bolt's full duration, or do Blaze and Flares take longer to execute? Is that a more efficient use of Build Up? I don't know. Looking at the actual power numbers, both Blaze and Flares have a one-second activation, while Blazing Bolt has over four and a half, so they don't even take up half of its duration, meaning I can stick in more stuff, like, say, Fire Blast, and have even more DPA for the same time that Blazing Bolt winds up. But again, if I'll be looking at recharge and damage numbers, why not look at recharge and damage numbers themselves? Why bother with DPA? What does it bring that just looking at the numbers doesn't?
Honest question.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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DPA (or DPAS, Damage Per Activation Second) is best used in actual attack chains. It is optimal to figure out which of your attacks have the highest DPA (which might need to include procs). Then string together the highest DPA attacks. Then figure out how much recharge you need to get there. If you could cast Blaze-Blaze-Blaze, you would. Since you can't,, you have to fill those seconds between Blaze with lesser powers, but you might choose to shoot for recharge (and most, if not all, optimized builds do) so that you can drop the lowest DPA powers from your chain (and maybe your build).|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
If I'm going to try and figure out how to pump the most damage in a limited time slot, I may as well go by damage and recharge separately, because just DPE doesn't tell me over how long this damage is taking place. I could grab three powers, add up their DPE together (say, Assassin's Strike, Total Focus and Energy Transfer, to make a point) and get some large number, but without any concept of how long that's actually going to take.
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Since recharge is something you can slot for, figuring out your DPC (damage per cycle) is irrelevenat in most circumstances, since you can alter the recharge of powers a lot.
Tactical powers, like snipes, fall outside of discussions like this, the question with snipes is whether or not they do their job of elimnating an enemy without retaliation (and whether or not a power like that is a good idea from a game balance perspective). If it has a good tactical use, it is fine if its DPA might be lower than "normal" attacks.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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Here's the thing, though - a specific chain with a specific DPA gives me a number on how efficient it is, but gives me no concept on how long it takes to activate. Could be the big-numbers chain I picked is actually too long to fit in-between Blaze repetitions. But I guess I can see why that might be very important if you lower your powers' recharge so much that it becomes comparable to their animation times. Personally, I stick to DPS and EPS because while powers can be slotted for recharge, they can be slotted equally, and slots work on a percentage basis, which will keep correlations intact given equal slotting. Besides, damage can be slotted, as well, so won't that throw off DPA calculations?|
Originally Posted by StratoNexus
DPA (or DPAS, Damage Per Activation Second) is best used in actual attack chains. It is optimal to figure out which of your attacks have the highest DPA (which might need to include procs). Then string together the highest DPA attacks. Then figure out how much recharge you need to get there. If you could cast Blaze-Blaze-Blaze, you would. Since you can't,, you have to fill those seconds between Blaze with lesser powers, but you might choose to shoot for recharge (and most, if not all, optimized builds do) so that you can drop the lowest DPA powers from your chain (and maybe your build).
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That said:
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| Tactical powers, like snipes, fall outside of discussions like this, the question with snipes is whether or not they do their job of elimnating an enemy without retaliation (and whether or not a power like that is a good idea from a game balance perspective). If it has a good tactical use, it is fine if its DPA might be lower than "normal" attacks. |
To my opinion, such extreme range that you can use no other power than the same snipe again as soon as it recharges is meaningless, especially on a Blaster, since Snipes have such terrible damage over time and don't make for a good attack chain on their own. The safety of such range is also questionable, given that many enemies can outrange Blaster Snipes, but even if we concede that safety exists in range, the point of a Blaster, as it were, is to deal damage, which a Blaster plain and simple CANNOT do at Snipe range. Put it this way - Sniper Blast's DPS is 10.574. Brawl's DPS is 4.613. So sitting outside of enemy retaliation range and Sniping is about as good as two Blasters Brawling. Yeah, I can see why hover-sniping is dead.
Simply speaking, Snipes aren't powerful enough to take out the truly meaningful threats (within reason), which would be lieutenants, and the range they provide isn't really good for much other than pulling. Worst of all, what contribution they add to the fight is overshadowed by other powers which can make a BETTER contribution for LESS time. I'm not sure what the point of Snipes is, but aside from pulling, I can't honestly really see one. And trust me, I tried. I use my Snipes whenever I can, but I do better when I DON'T.
To me, Snipes should be the kind of powers that you need reasons NOT to use, not the kind of powers you need to invent reasons to justify even taking, let alone using.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Were not talking about endurance here. That is an overall toon consideration yes, but is aside from what we are showing to achieve here.| When I look at DPA, I'm seeing efficiency, but I'm not seeing a good way to draw a broader conclusion off that. I can look at a power's DPA, see it's more than normal and say "Hmm... Using this power saves me endurance" or "Hey, if I hit three people with this power, I'm actually saving endurance." All high DPA tells me, however, is how time-efficient a power is on single application, but it doesn't tell me how LONG it actually takes to animate. And since the only use I can think of for this is to try and calculate short-duration burst damage and it doesn't include duration in it, it seems to be not as much worth it as one would think. |
And DPA DOES tell you exactly how long it takes to animate and cast off powers. Thats where the "A" comes from in DPA. The activation time, the time it takes to cast off a power.
As Strato said, no we can't just chain blaze > blaze > blaze. So yes recharge plays a part, but for example with flares/fire blast/blaze. You can steady stream those 3 powers with some rather minimal recharge and frankenslotting.
When you get to that point, the higher the DPA is on an attack the better it is to use in your attack chain, because it means more damage for all X timeframe, ALSO incorporating into that is the fact that, lets say flares, is a shorter animation, meaning you aren't waiting for it to finish so you can use your next blaze for example.
DPA is THE liming factor in most attack chains. I'm not really sure how else much between me and Strato to clarify that. We're not talking about DPE, and DPS only factors in to mean that the power is going to be up often enough to fit in the attack chain when its DPA is worth using, where is not going to be slowing down your daamge in the least amount of time by having to wait for its animation to finish before you can use another power that has a higher DPA.
Think about it this way, you have a gun, the other guy has a corkscrew drill. Who do you think is going to go down first? The guy with the corkscrew, because he just takes too long to attack you when you shoot him dead in no time flat. The same damage (ie end result dead in this situation) in less time, means a higher DPA, end result win.
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And again, DPA is speed. It's like saying you're travelling at 60mph. That's a lot, granted, but it gives you no concept of how far you need to travel or how long the journey would take. You cite an attack chain of Flares -> Fire Blast -> Blaze, which I don't really know would be possible and what it would take. Calculating the DPA values of Flares, Fire Blast and Blaze is easy. Adding them together is even easier. That, however, will still not tell me if they form a consistent attack chain, or indeed if an attack chain of then cycled in this order is even possible. After all, Flares is a fast attack on a short recharge, Blaze is a fast attack on a long recharge and Fire Blast is a moderate attack on a moderate recharge. I still suspect I'll be firing Flares much more often than Blaze, something like Blaze -> Flares -> Fire Blast -> Flares -> Fire Blast -> Flares -> Blaze or some such.|
Originally Posted by Windenergy21
And DPA DOES tell you exactly how long it takes to animate and cast off powers. Thats where the "A" comes from in DPA. The activation time, the time it takes to cast off a power.
As Strato said, no we can't just chain blaze > blaze > blaze. So yes recharge plays a part, but for example with flares/fire blast/blaze. You can steady stream those 3 powers with some rather minimal recharge and frankenslotting. |
Of course, I don't know either way. I'm not too well-versed in what recharge does to powers and how to predict it, but I DO know I can't glean an idea from just DPA. Like I said, a high DPE chain may actually be very, very slow, running out of Build Up buff duration or plain old exposing the Blaster to too much risk while executing it.
I'm not criticising the use of the metric or even the people who use it, but I keep failing to see the step between knowing DPA and forming a solid attack chain. Even if I go for the highest DPA I can find, it's quite easy to add more powers to the equation than I can consistently use, and I won't really know it.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I'm not sure why you keep bringing up DPE. Nothing about DPA has anything to do with endurance. IMO you need to cut the whole DPE though out of your head and look fresh.
And on lots of toons with 3 tier blasts, i use those, plus one hard melee attack from the secondary and its seamless with less. On my fire/dev for example though, he uses Devastation acc/dam/rech, acc/dam/end/rech, t-strike: dam/rech, acc/dam/end, acc/dam/rech, dam/end/rech. The t-strikes are fairly cheap, especially if you use off levels, and you can fill the devastations with other frankenslot IOs if you want.
Granted its overall about 90% recharge in attacks. But as shown is easy to do, cheap with t-strikes, and you can find other than devastation if you want a cheaper alternative. With fire blast this will give pretty much a seamless attack chain. I think someone has a formula to do it out there, but you can also think in your head "ok this power recharges this fast, and animates this long, so i have x amount of time to fit in other attacks before it recharges, then the 2nd attack i use recharges in x time etc"
DPA just lets you know which powers to put IN your attack chain. Then you figure out their animation times and recharges and lower their recharge to get what you need to get the most seamless attack chain. Even if there is lets say a 1 second gap after using flares > fire blast > blaze > flares > fire blast > 1 second gap > blaze, due to DPA its more worth it to wait for that 1 second gap before using the next blaze than it is to use a snipe attack.
Figure it this way, first calculate the DPA of the powers, then figure the max recharge you can get per power. Once you do that then try to formulate an attack chain, using the powers with the highest DPA first, then if due to their new enhanced recharge there is a gap, add the next highest DPA, until there are no more "holes" or there is not another power thats more worth using in those holes than it would be to wait that short while for the next higher DPA power to recharge and be used.
I can say this much, with every blast set that has a tier 1/2/3 blast, with the slotting i provided, i've never had a problem stringing an attack chain with the 3 blasts, and the very slight possible use of one heavy DPA melee attack. In any blast set, the snipe is NEVER worth using in the attack chain.
The only sets that come close are AR and Elec, who lack a 3rd tier blast. My elec makes up for it with 3 super hard hitting fast activating (ie high DPA) melee attacks, and the AR is ice, but has the slotting i provided and a few recharge bonuses that he can for the most part string just burst and slug.
All of my blasters with the 3 tier 1/2/3 blasts don't use hasten either and can still achieve this. Add hasten in and i guarantee you wont have any gap in your attack chain. The 3 attacks unslotted with hasten is almost enough to do this on its own just for your reference.
The attack chain: Tier 3 > tier 1 > tier 2 > tier 1 > tier 3 > tier 1 > tier 2 Is usually the easiest seamless chain to do without having to think about it. The 2 tier 1 and one tier 1blast activate in 3.67 seconds. So you have to figure what recharge you're having on the tier 3 blast to see what gap you have in your attack chain. Some rech frankenslotting + hasten pretty much gaurantees there is none. But if you're like me and hate using hasten then figure it like this:
With my suggested slotting + some minimal recharge bonuses, like 2 from positrons blast, maybe a crushing impact set in a melee attack, On my energy/fire blaster for example, Power burst is on a 4.48 second recharge. This means that there is a .81 second gap before i can use power burst again.
To figure out in the snipes case if its worth it to use the snipe, add that gap time to your activation time of power burst, then figure out which is more damage during its activation time, power burst, or the snipe. I can tell you right now Power burst is still going to win out.
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The one time I used DPE in my previous post was actually a type. It should have been DPA, as well. My bad.|
Originally Posted by Windenergy21
I'm not sure why you keep bringing up DPE. Nothing about DPA has anything to do with endurance. IMO you need to cut the whole DPE though out of your head and look fresh.
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| I think someone has a formula to do it out there, but you can also think in your head "ok this power recharges this fast, and animates this long, so i have x amount of time to fit in other attacks before it recharges, then the 2nd attack i use recharges in x time etc" |
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| DPA just lets you know which powers to put IN your attack chain. Then you figure out their animation times and recharges and lower their recharge to get what you need to get the most seamless attack chain. Even if there is lets say a 1 second gap after using flares > fire blast > blaze > flares > fire blast > 1 second gap > blaze, due to DPA its more worth it to wait for that 1 second gap before using the next blaze than it is to use a snipe attack. |
I will freely admit that haven't worked on recharge-sped-up player powers, but I did spend a significant amount of time (read: one full day, so you be the judge) fiddling around with trying to figure out a consistent attack chain for stock NPCs. I think I worked with the soldiers of the Nemesis Army. What I found, by and large, was that their longer-recharge powers were being used, on average, less often than their shorter recharge powers if I wanted to formulate a seamless attack chain. For Werfer Jaegers, I believe I worked with three powers, at 2, 4 and 6 second recharges, and for the most part, the 2-second recharge power fired off a lot more often than the 6-second recharge one, simply because it was available to launch more often.
This is what I actually don't get - I can draw a highest DPA estimate and even predict an ideal attack chain, but I have never, for the life of me, seen an attack chain that was ever as linear as Attack 1 -> Attack 2 -> Attack 3 -> Repeat. They typically go 1 2 3 2 - 2 1 2 3 2 - 2 repeat, with the smallest attack occurring rather more frequently than the biggest attacks. What I'm saying is that I can plot a theoretical best attack chain, but I have both no guarantee that that'll fit, that powers won't wait while recharge while still leaving gaps open and, above all, I cannot predict if such a chain will even mesh.
Let me give you an example: We have two powers. Power 1 animates in 1 second and recharges in 1 second, and Power 2 animates in 1 second and recharges in 2 seconds. There is simply no way for those to mesh without stepping on each other's toes and having one power wait while recharged and STILL leaving a gap anyway. And even then, it won't go like 1 2 1 2 repeat, but more like 1 2 - 2 1 2 - 1 etc. or 1 - 2 1 2 - 1 2 - 1 and so on. There is no way to avoid the gaps AND keep the powers from overlapping AND have them alternate.
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| To figure out in the snipes case if its worth it to use the snipe, add that gap time to your activation time of power burst, then figure out which is more damage during its activation time, power burst, or the snipe. I can tell you right now Power burst is still going to win out. |
I'm not sure what they were intended to do back at Launch, but right now Snipes are a gimmick. You can pull with them, or you could open with them provided you don't have buffs counting down (say, when Aim and Build Up are still recharging and you don't want to wait for them), but beyond that, they actually exact a higher cost for less damage over a longer time. I'm aware there are instances in battle when a Blaster can Snipe and not be interrupted, but short of having "just another attack," it's typically better to just fire off one or two conventional attacks, rather than waste time and energy on a Snipe that may not even fire.
This actually reminds me to the jokes of old, like Nukes which, in addition to draining you, also STUNNED you for 10 seconds when you used them, or Elude as a power which turned off your offence but boosted your defence so you could literally elude your opponents. Interesting items in terms of concept, but badly unworkable, bordering on useless in actual execution, especially in a game before Break Frees existed. Snipes seem to be a similar awkward concept that appears to have simply been forgotten by evolution. They are simply not very useful, a point with which Castle seems to agree, since he boosted Dominator Snipes to 3.56 scale damage, which is comparable to the game's actual big hitters like Seismic Smash, Knockout Blow and Total Focus. In fact, Dominator Snipes now outdamge Blaster Snipes, albeit by not very much, given the difference in ranged damage mods.
In my eyes, Snipes don't deliver anything. They don't deliver sufficient damage over time, they don't deliver sufficient shock damage for how long they take to fire, they don't deliver heavy-hitters in combat and they deliver only ignorable utility which can be replicated by other powers, anyway. About the only thing they're good for - shooting at extreme range - is actually a BAD tactic to play with if you want to actually KILL stuff, like a Blaster should. Giving Snipes enough damage to at least be worth the cost of admission would really fix them in my eyes. These are supposed to be the big hitters. I don't mind aiming a long time, but let the payoff be worth it. If they're gonna' be as slow and fiddly as they are, then let them at least deliver. Again, these powers should be something we WANT to use.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Actually, in this case, you need 100% recharge on power 2 and no recharge whatever on power 1 and your attack chain can be 1-2-1-2-1-2 until you run out of people to hit. Assuming the damage from these two powers is sufficient to warrant excluding other powers from your chain.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Let me give you an example: We have two powers. Power 1 animates in 1 second and recharges in 1 second, and Power 2 animates in 1 second and recharges in 2 seconds. There is simply no way for those to mesh without stepping on each other's toes and having one power wait while recharged and STILL leaving a gap anyway. And even then, it won't go like 1 2 1 2 repeat, but more like 1 2 - 2 1 2 - 1 etc. or 1 - 2 1 2 - 1 2 - 1 and so on. There is no way to avoid the gaps AND keep the powers from overlapping AND have them alternate.
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Exactly.| So, essentially what you're saying is start from the powers with the highest DPA and add more from there until I have enough for them to loop, do I have that correct? |
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This is what I actually don't get - I can draw a highest DPA estimate and even predict an ideal attack chain, but I have never, for the life of me, seen an attack chain that was ever as linear as Attack 1 -> Attack 2 -> Attack 3 -> Repeat. They typically go 1 2 3 2 - 2 1 2 3 2 - 2 repeat, with the smallest attack occurring rather more frequently than the biggest attacks. What I'm saying is that I can plot a theoretical best attack chain, but I have both no guarantee that that'll fit, that powers won't wait while recharge while still leaving gaps open and, above all, I cannot predict if such a chain will even mesh. Let me give you an example: We have two powers. Power 1 animates in 1 second and recharges in 1 second, and Power 2 animates in 1 second and recharges in 2 seconds. There is simply no way for those to mesh without stepping on each other's toes and having one power wait while recharged and STILL leaving a gap anyway. And even then, it won't go like 1 2 1 2 repeat, but more like 1 2 - 2 1 2 - 1 etc. or 1 - 2 1 2 - 1 2 - 1 and so on. There is no way to avoid the gaps AND keep the powers from overlapping AND have them alternate. |
And on the 2nd paragraph, this is why tier 2 attacks have a 1.67s activation, not 1 seconds. Youre right, currently there is no way to avoid gaps and overlaps with 1-2-1-2 or whichever attack chain, or any for that matter, because recharges arent 100% exact on time. There will always be some minor overlapping, even if you eliminate the gap time with a melee attack completely. What this means is you have to figure out which power is overlapping, and by how much.
Just like you figure for your attack chain the highest DPA attack you have, you want to also start with that power and then try to complete your attack chain around it, then the 2nd highest DPA etc.
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| I'm not sure what they were intended to do back at Launch, but right now Snipes are a gimmick. You can pull with them, or you could open with them provided you don't have buffs counting down (say, when Aim and Build Up are still recharging and you don't want to wait for them), but beyond that, they actually exact a higher cost for less damage over a longer time. I'm aware there are instances in battle when a Blaster can Snipe and not be interrupted, but short of having "just another attack," it's typically better to just fire off one or two conventional attacks, rather than waste time and energy on a Snipe that may not even fire. |
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Having gotten multiple blasters and scrappers up to 50, both are fine for the roles that are meant to do.
I actually find all the comparisons to be silly at best.
And saying the self protective mitigation that blasters bring to the table isn't relevant when talking about balance. . . good luck convincing the devs and multiple players that.
EDIT: I'm not inviting a blaster to a team to control, to tank, to taunt, etc. I'm inviting one to bring damage. That is all, and they do that just fine.
Blasters DO NOT need further buffs. Sorry.
EDIT 2: Now if you want to talk about buffing INDIVIDUAL powers in various primaries or secondaries, that's a different story.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!