I went to Test and was just reading through the numbers/descriptions.
I am surprised that Stone Spear is actually a "foot stomp with stone spike" coming out. I thought it was going to be like throwing a Jarvelin (like those Rome warriors) or something.
My only concern/question is a lot of /Earth's secondary effect is knockup (one knockdown?) so when Domination is on, does it become a knockback? I hope not because I have a lvl 40 Mind/Energy and one thing I dislike about using Power Push as an attack is that when Domination is on, Push becomes a very serious push. Mind has no -kb. T_T If there is a wall, I'll try to push to the wall but sometimes there is no obstacle and Power Push is pushing way too far. I hope Earth Assault has less of this issue.
Other than that, Earth Assault is pretty much what I anticipated = a heavy melee set.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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Yeah, the damage seems pretty weak for the activation it takes.
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Originally Posted by Spizzie
Or just up the damage of Stone Spears to fit better with the cast time.
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What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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I agree. I know Power Boost is great on Dominator but I was hoping something different. Something that turns Dom more "tankish". Earth Embrace is a good choice. |
Originally Posted by Obscure Blade
I personally was hoping for Earth's Embrace.
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I am rooting for Earth Embrace!
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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Originally Posted by Vimes_NA
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*Reals in terror at the memory of industrial engineering courses*
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That would make its Recharge and Endurance cost much higher. |
Originally Posted by Spizzie
Or just up the damage of Stone Spears to fit better with the cast time.
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You pretty much can't make Earth work as a ranged set. Even the animations the critters use are pretty long duration. So you have to either settle for a Basic ranged attack that lasts too long to do good damage, or recharges too slowly to be usable as a Basic attack. It's really the melee attacks that are intended to be the main ones used.
I hope we can see an animation some time, like maybe a "fling pebbles" that comes out really fast, like say in 1.67 seconds. I'd like to see an Earth Blast, but with the animations we have currently it's more like "Earth Throwing Large Chunks Of Rock Really Ponderously". Even with faster animations, I can't really see it being as fast as a true blast. Chunks of rock don't travel that fast.
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I had seen the animation, so I knew what to expect. However, I was hoping for something like "stomp, and the ground explodes into a shower of splinters that shoots towards the foe". In the confusion of a battle, it's kind of hard to register exactly what the CoT attack is doing to hit you.
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Originally Posted by Jibikao
I am surprised that Stone Spear is actually a "foot stomp with stone spike" coming out. I thought it was going to be like throwing a Jarvelin (like those Rome warriors) or something.
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I would expect a Seismic Attack set before something like "Earth Blast". There are only so many ways you can throw rocks, but extending the concept to the ground in general could -- with a little creativity -- fill a ranged set. But I digress. I've had no issues with Stone Spears, personally. I really like it, actually, due to its knock up. I've survived some sticky early level situations thanks to it.
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Originally Posted by Jibikao
I went to Test and was just reading through the numbers/descriptions.
I am surprised that Stone Spear is actually a "foot stomp with stone spike" coming out. I thought it was going to be like throwing a Jarvelin (like those Rome warriors) or something. My only concern/question is a lot of /Earth's secondary effect is knockup (one knockdown?) so when Domination is on, does it become a knockback? I hope not because I have a lvl 40 Mind/Energy and one thing I dislike about using Power Push as an attack is that when Domination is on, Push becomes a very serious push. Mind has no -kb. T_T If there is a wall, I'll try to push to the wall but sometimes there is no obstacle and Power Push is pushing way too far. I hope Earth Assault has less of this issue. Other than that, Earth Assault is pretty much what I anticipated = a heavy melee set. |
Domination and Power Boost should not be effecting Knockback. If they are you should bug it.
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
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See basically what you're saying here is that Stone Spears sometimes works as a poor man's Levitate. But we're Dominators. We can take the REAL Levitate. Our secondary ought to have attacks that are good for Damage, because our Whole primary is devoted to active defense.
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Originally Posted by MaxXavier
I would expect a Seismic Attack set before something like "Earth Blast". There are only so many ways you can throw rocks, but extending the concept to the ground in general could -- with a little creativity -- fill a ranged set. But I digress. I've had no issues with Stone Spears, personally. I really like it, actually, due to its knock up. I've survived some sticky early level situations thanks to it.
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Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
I went ahead and leveled up with the level bump they gave us, and slotted up fully with SOs. I basicly took every primary and secondary power for an earth.earth dom. I didnt find earth assualt to be all that bad, accept it does seem a tad end heavy, but then having no patrons for end regen, and no IO sets, my perception of REAL endurance usage might be kinda skewed in that i normally have my heavier attacks with an IO set that reduces its end, and have something like power sink by the time i am 50.
Overall the perception most people have is correct. Range damage IMO is acceptable, but not outstanding. But melee damage is nice. It would be nice if the animations were a bit faster, but being i have lived with gravity and energy before, they are not terrible in my opinion.
I personally find the biggest hole in the set to be mud pots. It originally sounded like a cool idea on a dominator, but frankly even spending so much time in melee range, I kinda feel like the damage it does is insiginificant in that i am still killing things faster then it really matters to have that AOE going. So I prob would be skipping it on my live build unless there is something i am missing. For some primaries it probably would be ok, like taking hotfeet, but when you already have something like quicksand it seems like overkill and isnt worth the end drain.
I was running a couple radio missions on +2/=3villians and i seemed to be doing fine so long as i played with the normal dominator "smartness" and didnt expect to just run into mobs and tear them appart. So basicly IMO for a smart dominator player, it should be a solid set to have. Less range potential, but frankly i think that is what makes it feel more unique. Its not just a copy of another set with different effects like electric was to energy etc.
Oh and its called stone SPEARS with a 's' because you create multiple spears to hit your target, not because it is suposed to hit multiple targets. Its using the Stalagmite effect so if you watch 3-4 spears poke up from the ground and hit the target, hence it being plural.
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But you do have good damage, right? It's just in melee. It was said up front that this was a strong melee set with weak ranged attacks. If you want or expect ranged attacks, there are other sets available for that. Like Fire, conversely, you wouldn't take that if you wanted to concentrate on melee. |
Originally Posted by Wavicle
See basically what you're saying here is that Stone Spears sometimes works as a poor man's Levitate. But we're Dominators. We can take the REAL Levitate. Our secondary ought to have attacks that are good for Damage, because our Whole primary is devoted to active defense.
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Hopefully with the new animation they can shave a few more seconds off of it. But that was kind of the problem, BaBs didn't want to be coming up with a bunch of new animations, since he's been busy with customization. So in fact they ended up using one of the ones he developed for customization.
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Not necessarily - contrary to what seems to be popular belief, they can break the dam/end/rech formula. It's just not likely to happen, though if it did this would be a good power for it.
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Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
That would make its Recharge and Endurance cost much higher.
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They typically break the formula in favor of lower End cost or recharge, not greater damage. This is particularly true in the case of long animation attacks. Jump Kick, for instance, got faster recharge and lower End cost than Air Superiority because of its longer animation, not greater damage. And this has not been reversed, even when Jump Kick got its animation time reduced. |
Originally Posted by macskull
Not necessarily - contrary to what seems to be popular belief, they can break the dam/end/rech formula. It's just not likely to happen, though if it did this would be a good power for it.
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This is not to say they wouldn't increase the damage, but the recharge time is probably already fairly long, and increasing it any further would make it useless for the purpose most Dom players put their first attack to, building Domination. So the attack is already pretty bad, any change has the potential to make it worse. Except reducing its animation time, of course.
I suppose the application of the modified activation time/End cost formula might be helpful, assuming it hasn't already been applied. I doubt that will raise the damage, though.
The Stone Spears is the basic 4second scale 1 blast.
I think they could push it to 6second scale 1.32 blast and be ok. Yes that would hurt your attack chain (What you have for one anyhow) a bit in the very low levels, but between your sets you should have enough powers that by the teens you have plenty to do with those extra seconds.
I also think Hurl Boulder should be pushed to a 10seconds recharge attack. Better total damage will make it's long animation less painful.
@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too
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I don't think that would be too totally outside the usual standard, and would fit with the idea of Earth at range being a bit slow and ponderous. And 10 seconds for Hurl Boulder isn't even unusual, Power Blast is a 10 sec attack now. In fact, I'm kind of surprised it is only 8 seconds. |
Originally Posted by Oathbound
I think they could push it to 6second scale 1.32 blast and be ok. Yes that would hurt your attack chain (What you have for one anyhow) a bit in the very low levels, but between your sets you should have enough powers that by the teens you have plenty to do with those extra seconds.
I also think Hurl Boulder should be pushed to a 10seconds recharge attack. Better total damage will make it's long animation less painful. |
Now, 8 seconds for Stone Spears and 12-14 seconds for Hurl Boulder, that WOULD be extreme.
I'm not sure everyone would agree with me on that being acceptable, though. There are certainly a lot of people who prefer 4 second or even 3 second starting attacks.
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Speaking as one of those people who likes to be CONSTANTLY attacking, I sort of enjoy the change of pace that Earth Assault provides, and wouldn't mind such a change to Stone Spears. I mean, really, it just flat out LOOKS POWERFUL, moreso even than the various mallet powers. I wouldn't mind a damage/endurance cost/recharge time that reflect that.
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Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
I'm not sure everyone would agree with me on that being acceptable, though. There are certainly a lot of people who prefer 4 second or even 3 second starting attacks.
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Yeah I agree. I thought for sure they were going to push Hurl to 10s since it is a very slow range attack. Maybe because of PvP reason(s)?|
Originally Posted by Oathbound
The Stone Spears is the basic 4second scale 1 blast.
I think they could push it to 6second scale 1.32 blast and be ok. Yes that would hurt your attack chain (What you have for one anyhow) a bit in the very low levels, but between your sets you should have enough powers that by the teens you have plenty to do with those extra seconds. I also think Hurl Boulder should be pushed to a 10seconds recharge attack. Better total damage will make it's long animation less painful. |
I vote Stone Spear to at least 5-6s and Hurl to 10s.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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Yeah, I was a bit surprised that Dom's Mud Pots only has radius 8 and it costs /.78end for second? Wow, that is like using Hot Feet/AA except HF and AA have big radius.|
Originally Posted by QuiJon
I personally find the biggest hole in the set to be mud pots. It originally sounded like a cool idea on a dominator, but frankly even spending so much time in melee range, I kinda feel like the damage it does is insiginificant in that i am still killing things faster then it really matters to have that AOE going. So I prob would be skipping it on my live build unless there is something i am missing. For some primaries it probably would be ok, like taking hotfeet, but when you already have something like quicksand it seems like overkill and isnt worth the end drain.
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I am not even sure if I want my dom to be constantly in melee range. Yeah, I would jump in after I throw flashfire/seeds of confusion but I usually follow up with quick AoE and most of the time it's good enough. I am not sure if I want to wait until Mud Pot kills anything. I know it has slow but the endurance cost just seems too high. (The same reason why I rarely take Chilling Embrace)
Is it too late to make changes on Earth Assault now? So what is the verdict?
1. Stone Spears needs some improvement: longer recharge, higher damage, or faster animation
2. Mud Pots: endurance cost a bit too high, small radius at 8', too little damage.
3. Hurl: It'd be nice if it's at 10s.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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While I can't see them pushing a tier1 power up as far as 8 seconds. |
Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
I don't think that would be too totally outside the usual standard, and would fit with the idea of Earth at range being a bit slow and ponderous. And 10 seconds for Hurl Boulder isn't even unusual, Power Blast is a 10 sec attack now. In fact, I'm kind of surprised it is only 8 seconds.
Now, 8 seconds for Stone Spears and 12-14 seconds for Hurl Boulder, that WOULD be extreme. I'm not sure everyone would agree with me on that being acceptable, though. There are certainly a lot of people who prefer 4 second or even 3 second starting attacks. |
On the other hand, Hurl Boulder having a recharge of 14seconds, and a damage scale of ~2.45 WOULD at least bring it up to the same DPA as standard 8second blasts. (2.45ds/2.5sec=0.98ds/sec where most 2nd tier blasts are 1.64ds/1.67sec=0.982ds/sec)
There is precedent for it, Energy Assault's Power Burst is at 14sec recharge and 2.48damage scale...
It IS however questionable if the devs would let Earth have it at level 10, where EA has to wait till level 38.
EDIT to add:Sad thing is that with an activation time of 2.1seconds, the only way they could bring Stone Spears to the same DPA as other tier1 blasts would be to increase it's damage scale to 2.1, which would put it's recharge at 10seconds.
@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too
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Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
But you do have good damage, right? It's just in melee. It was said up front that this was a strong melee set with weak ranged attacks. If you want or expect ranged attacks, there are other sets available for that. Like Fire, conversely, you wouldn't take that if you wanted to concentrate on melee.
Hopefully with the new animation they can shave a few more seconds off of it. But that was kind of the problem, BaBs didn't want to be coming up with a bunch of new animations, since he's been busy with customization. So in fact they ended up using one of the ones he developed for customization. |
I am not convinced that anything the set does in melee or with aoes is so good that it deserves to be saddled with Stone Spears and Hurl Boulder in their current form.
I wouldn't play the set as it is. Too many lousy powers: Spears, Hurl, Tremor and Pots.
The issue is entirely the animation being to long. The recharge and actual damage are fine. True for all 3: Spears, Hurl and Tremor.
Mud Pots seems pretty much completely pointless, as do all such powers for Doms.
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
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Yeah, but Energy Assault also has Power Bolt with a 4 second recharge, and Power Blast with a 10 second recharge. Earth only has TWO ranged attacks, so if you made one of them the "Burst" type, that would leave only one for fast recharge Domination building. |
Originally Posted by Oathbound
There is precedent for it, Energy Assault's Power Burst is at 14sec recharge and 2.48damage scale...
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There's also the fact that Power Burst has a shorter range than Hurl Boulder. You could bump it's damage and recharge to a 12-14 sec scale, but I think that's going a bit too far.
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| EDIT to add:Sad thing is that with an activation time of 2.1seconds, the only way they could bring Stone Spears to the same DPA as other tier1 blasts would be to increase it's damage scale to 2.1, which would put it's recharge at 10seconds. |
Actually, now that I think about it, one simple solution might be to just make Stone Spears and Hurl Boulder use the Melee tables for damage calculation. It wouldn't have to effect the recharge or End cost at all, but would increase the damage about 10%. It's not really a precedent that Hurl Boulder uses the Melee table for meleers, since that's pretty much true for all their ranged attacks, but it might fit with the theme that Earth is melee centric. (And that you actually make contact with the foe through your own direct application of muscle force)
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So the verdict is that /Earth Assault is pretty sucky? I see 1-2 powers I can easily skip, mud pots being one of them. The endurance seems very high for the damage and radius it offers. I mean I can see it on tanker/brute for some aoe while holding aggro but not on Dominator. We start the fight with aoe control, and then we try to throw out as much aoe as possible in the shortest amount of time and I can't see Mud Pots doing that well in terms of damage. As for slow debuffs, who cares if the target(s) is held already?|
Originally Posted by Wavicle
I am not convinced that anything the set does in melee or with aoes is so good that it deserves to be saddled with Stone Spears and Hurl Boulder in their current form.
I wouldn't play the set as it is. Too many lousy powers: Spears, Hurl, Tremor and Pots. The issue is entirely the animation being to long. The recharge and actual damage are fine. True for all 3: Spears, Hurl and Tremor. Mud Pots seems pretty much completely pointless, as do all such powers for Doms. |
And if it's a target that can't be held, I am sure most people would drop mud pots to save endurance for other better attack chains.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
Im lookin forward to the set. Hurl drops the enemy to the ground, spears hits. Then again Im going for perma-PBAOE hold (Including 1 hard target) Ice/Earth combo which will have tons of procs. Not a cheap build, nor "easy." The good news is, I wont have any problems fighting 90% of the game (very little flys, even less cant be grounded). The bad news, No fighting Banished pantheon (masks cant be grounded last I checked), nor could I ever hope to go on an ITF and be of any help vs healing nic.
Also the set looks fun. It looks new. And I am not really caring if it is 20% less damaging than the next set up, It still out DPSs a defender.
I wouldn't bet on it out dpsing Every defender.
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
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