Chain Induction Needs Help

(According to Mids & CoD)

At level 50, Chain Induction currently does 92 damage for a scrapper, 51 Smashing, and 41 Energy.

If the attack hits, the power then waits .5s and discharges to the nearest enemy (?) within 10 ft. The target stays "charged" for 3 s in order to have a window to deliver this damage. If the Jump hits, it does the energy portion of the original attack, 41 damage.

IMO, this power needs some tweaking.

You may ask why.

Here's why:

1) CI has to hit every time it Jumps. Instead of an AoE that has the same accuracy for all foes in the area it affects, CI HAS to hit in order to effect all possible 5 targets. If any jump misses, the chain ends.

2) There is a delay in the Jump. .5s, no big deal right? Wrong. If the target dies during the delay, the chain ends. If CI kills the first target, there is no jump. If the 1st jump kills the second target, there is no 2nd jump, and so forth. Or, if outside damage from another player kills one of the CI targets, there is no jump. It's practically impossible in a team situation to rely on CI performing like an AoE.

3) The target can still move while it is charged. Meaning, when I queue up CI, thinking I have a nicely bunched group of targets to hit, and my target starts running as CI starts, he's likely too far away from the pack to be able to hit the rest, or suppose a teammates power Knocks him back. Not the same as a regular AoE, when you initially start the power, if the bad guys move or are moved, it doesn't matter. If they were in range when you pressed the button, they still get hit. Again, that .5s delay is detrimental. In the case of an enemy like the retarded Sky Raiders, if they TP at the same time you hit CI, they're long gone before being able to affect the rest of the group. Not only that, but since the charge lasts for 3s, if they happen to TP into an unaggrod group, you now have problems.

4) You are charged for an AoE. This power is scaled for damage/recharge/end as an AoE. Yet it is the most unreliable and unpredictable AoE I've used in this game. I can throw fireballs, and hit whirling sword all day long and have a very good idea of what I'm going to hit regardless of whether I'm solo, on a team, or whether the initial target is low on health. CI is a big question mark every time. It has the end cost of Thunderstrike, but only does the damage of Havoc Punch.


The Fix.

1) Decide whether this power is an AoE or a ST.
2) If ST, it needs higher damage, and perhaps a longer activation. We already have Havoc Punch, so it needs to be a tier 3 damage power. It has the end cost but not nearly the reliability of Thunderstrikes AoE. Give it a slight penalty for it's AoE potential, but the current recharge penalty is too high. A 1.64 damage power with 8s recharge and 8.5 end is a good place to start. 1.64 also fits nicely between the 1.32 of HP and 1.96 of TS. Maybe increase the damage to 1.64 and the recharge to 10 and call it a day. Currently it's 14s recharge and 10.2 end. Heck, if there was a way to link the Jumps to extra end usage I would take that as well. Charge an extra 3 end per successful jump.
3) If it's an AoE make it work reliably like an AoE. Get rid of the .5s delay and make it jump seamlessly. Get rid of the 3s charge as well. Make it also work if an enemy in the chain is defeated.

Please do something to help this power. I love the idea and the concept, but just using it in actual gameplay, regardless of the balancing numbers is frustrating to say the least.

In reguards to targets dieing disrupting the jump... that doesn't really hold water when comparing it to an AoE. Fact is, the target's dead... hitting it with an AoE wouldn't do any damage either. Granted, it could have hit 3 instead of 1 if it jumped a 2nd time, etc... but small melee AoEs miss a lot of hit opportunities do to team play... I don't think there's that big of a discrepency.

However, I agree 100% that this power should not cost the same as an AoE. It also should cost more then a ST because it can hit multiple targets.

Thing is.. that's where it's at. Compared to Typhoon's Edge and The Lotus Drops, it's damage output per endurance is better. And it's slightly less efficient then Flashing Steel (a cone attack). It's a pretty expenseive single target, and Electric Melee seems to need to use it as a single target attack. But the endurance cost/damage seems balanced to me.

I like CI, it is kind of cool and I really like that it uses the old ET animation as I've been missing that attack ever since they made it look stupid on EM.

I didn't realize it rolls a tohit chance on each jump. In fact I've been using it to hit really hard to hit targets like the raider FFgen's by hitting a foe next to it and the jump seems to always go over to the FFgen.

I wouldn't object if it jumped faster, but I find it to reliably hit a lot more targets than jacobs and even thunderstrike (unless I corner stack them). I just make sure I always use it early so that it has the best chance of doing ring around the rosy on the spawn before someone dies and breaks the chain.

Yeah, I've had the same beef with CI. I mostly try to use it as my opener to an AoE chain, and I prefer to open it with lieutenant, but since I'm running 0/0s right now those aren't exactly abundant. The game senses this tension, I'm sure of it, because 90% of the time I will pull out a crit and outright kill a minion. No jumps, no chains. Even after I've worn down a group with lieu's I still cant use it reliably because it will kill the first lieu and result in no jumps.

In terms of single target it does okay damage, but the cost and recharge are very hindering. I do appreciate that it's slotted as a single target because I can squeeze out that 3.75% range defense bonus from Mako's instead of a 3.13% elsewhere, but I really would prefer that it be treated more as a single target ability with an AoE perk, than an front loaded AoE that frequently does much less damage than it's capable of.

The major premise of the OP is that this attack costs the same as an AoE but doesn't work as well as an AoE. However, it DOESN'T cost the same as an AoE, so I still fail to see the problem here.

Chain Induction costs 1.5x as much as an equivalent damage ST attack. If you can hit one additional target at least half the time, it's paying for itself. Many melee cones break even at around this point, costing 1.1 to 1.5 times as much as an equivalent damage ST attack. Jacob's Ladder, notably, gets its AoE for free, costing exactly as much as a ST attack of the same strength would; so does Thunderstrike. Most PBAoEs do not break even unless they hit at least 3 targets.

Considering that CI is frequently used as part of a ST chain on a single hard target, I wouldn't consider it unreasonable to have its cost multiplier reduced to 1.25x. But I don't think it's nearly as terrible as you are making it out to be. Now, if it had a 2.5x multiplier, you would have a case.

I feel everyone has already made their point but I just want to clarify something I said: