Lit. Rod/Shield Charge for Brute, Tank, Scrapper

EvilGeko · 10-20-2009 03:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JuliusSeizure

But here's the deal. The existing AT structure for Scrappers denies criticals from their secondary. This is universal and across the board. Whether it's fair or not is a separate debate-- but that IS the current AT structure, and a Shield Charge without criticals adheres to the way the current Scrapper AT plays.

And Shield Charge with a 400% damage cap does as well.

Quote:

Having isolated skills that are pseudo pets and don't follow existing AT rules is completely different.

No, it's really not. It's well known that there are exceptions to AT "rules". Scrapper secondary attacks is one of them. There's no justification for that exception given that pools crit, but it's still there. Likewise, Brutes have this exception that they are stuck with.

Quote:

Shield Charge and Lightning Rod are two notable exceptions to a rule that applies to all Brute damage skills. That is that there is an 850% damage cap, and they are all affected by Fury.

Right. But just because it's an exception doesn't mean it should be changed. LR and SC do a very respectable amount of base damage. How do we know that Castle didn't set the damage scale where he did with full knowledge that Brutes (and to a lesser extent Scrappers) can't enhance the things as well as they could with other attacks?

Quote:

There's no reason that a Brute player should have to hit Build Up and unknowingly have it add no damage to their Shield Charge simply because it's one of two skills that ignores what everything else in the AT does properly.

Well, there are a lot of things that happen in the game that those who don't know the mechanics don't know. For people who really care, they'll figure it out.

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Grey Pilgrim · 10-20-2009 05:02 PM

I was going to post on this earlier, and I'm glad EvilGeko took this direction. I could agree with this thinking if Brutes really needed it. Scrappers and Brutes are probably among the most solid and easy ATs to play right now, so giving them a buff like this is probably not warranted, even if there is logic to giving them the said buff. Getting to a 400% buff on Shield Charge is quite nice as is.

Who knows, maybe you could make it fly, since they upped the damage on Shield Charge (which was already ridiculously good for Tankers and Scrappers): but I really do doubt Castle and co. are going to run with that.

Frankly, I'd rather see an argument for Lightning Rod working more like Shield Charge... having the LR weaken the farther you go from its center makes it harder to use and not quite as good as it should be. We'll see if it happens, though... I've been wishing for some tweaks to Fiery Aura, as its minor inconsistencies are all the more glaring after Shields came out (and now Elec).

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Castle · 10-23-2009 02:17 PM

Caps are tied to AT. Powers that summon pets use the Pets AT modifiers. While we can manually adjust scales to mimic the effect of AT mods on the class tables, we do not have the capability of doing that with Max values; the Caps.

In addition, both Lightning Rod and Shield Charge are highly modified powers. They do not follow the normal rules, for a variety of reasons, the largest being the fact that they are not designed to be used as part of a normal attack chain. If you do use them as part of an attack chain, that's great, but they are not intended to be used that way.

Siolfir · 10-23-2009 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim

Frankly, I'd rather see an argument for Lightning Rod working more like Shield Charge... having the LR weaken the farther you go from its center makes it harder to use and not quite as good as it should be. We'll see if it happens, though... I've been wishing for some tweaks to Fiery Aura, as its minor inconsistencies are all the more glaring after Shields came out (and now Elec).

I've been pushing for that pretty much every time the topic has come up... it still makes no sense to me whatsoever why there's a limited area for a bolt of lightning, and yet a shield that barely covers someone's forearm can hit a 20' area.

Originally when I saw the Scrapper numbers (I didn't realize it was pulling the Scrapper numbers since I was on a Brute at the time) I thought that the increased damage for LRod was a means of addressing the discrepancy - the area outside of ground zero was doing slightly over what the full damage was, plus it still had the center tick. I thought that was cool that it would do more damage, since it's in an attack set instead of a defense set and all.

Then I noticed that it wasn't pulling the numbers for the power on the AT I was using, and poked around in the character creator. Then I went

, then

, and then made a post in the training room section that if they were going to change it just for Scrappers and Tankers (which was all that had been changed at the time) they should hit the Stalker version and Shield Charge - which later happened. What I hoped would happen would be they'd just use the Scrapper version for everybody and call it a "fix", since it'd have the extra damage and would do roughly the same as Shield Charge to the same 20' AoE. Basically, hoping that what I originally thought would be made true since they already created a new pet for it.

What I expected was that it would get set to the same pet that they already had used, because as it is now the Scrapper version does as roughly much damage as Thunderous Blast does for a Corruptor if all of the ticks hit (208.55 for TBlast, 200.2 for SC/LRod), only more often (90s rech vs 360s), for less endurance (13.52 vs 15.6), and with no endurance penalty; on average Scrapper Shield Charge will do nearly the same damage as any of the Corruptor nukes (average of 203.22 due to 75% tick and 50% tick) except for Inferno and Blizzard, just in a 20' AoE instead of 25'.

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JuliusSeizure · 10-24-2009 02:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Castle

While we can manually adjust scales to mimic the effect of AT mods on the class tables, we do not have the capability of doing that with Max values; the Caps.

Thanks for the clarity. I just thought it was an oversight rather than being out of the engine's reach.

Supernumiphone · 10-24-2009 02:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Castle

Powers that summon pets use the Pets AT modifiers. While we can manually adjust scales to mimic the effect of AT mods on the class tables, we do not have the capability of doing that with Max values; the Caps.

I'm not sure I'm understanding this. Are you saying that there is a single damage cap value for pets that applies to all pets, and you can't change it for one pet without changing it for all pets? Not what I would have expected, but it would explain why even pseudo-pets have never shared the caps of the ATs that get them.

UberGuy · 10-24-2009 10:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Supernumiphone

I'm not sure I'm understanding this. Are you saying that there is a single damage cap value for pets that applies to all pets, and you can't change it for one pet without changing it for all pets?

That is indeed the way it works.

To overcome this, they would need an entirely new category of pet.

Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

Ethric · 10-25-2009 03:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Castle

Caps are tied to AT. Powers that summon pets use the Pets AT modifiers. While we can manually adjust scales to mimic the effect of AT mods on the class tables, we do not have the capability of doing that with Max values; the Caps.

This isn't very fair to Electric Melee Brutes, who are at the bottom of ST damage (even at high Fury, the numbers aren't great), yet aren't top of AoE damage and the mitigation from end drain just doesn't work unless you have a truckload of -recovery and other better sources of enddrain such as Power Sink.

Quote:

In addition, both Lightning Rod and Shield Charge are highly modified powers. They do not follow the normal rules, for a variety of reasons, the largest being the fact that they are not designed to be used as part of a normal attack chain. If you do use them as part of an attack chain, that's great, but they are not intended to be used that way.

Does it have to use a pet to deliver its stuff? If it's too game-breaking to create new pets that have higher damage caps, would the "power granting mechanic" work? Say, after 1s delay (or however long the teleport portion takes, an auto power would be granted that would then automatically do its stuff.

UberGuy · 10-25-2009 07:17 PM

"Game breaking" almost certainly has nothing to do with it. The pets have to be maintained from that point forward. They're likely reluctant just because it represents an increase in things they can break when making future changes, and therefore have to test and validate.

It's not really clear to me why these powers are delivered as a pet. It might have something to do with the teleportation aspect of the power.

Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

Another Space · 10-25-2009 11:29 PM

Suppose they could set a pseudo-pet to not gain damage bonuses from the person who summoned them (in this case, a Brute)? If so, would be interesting to have the Lightning Rod/Shield Charge gain 0% damage boost from the Brute, but send it the brute's current total damage bonus as a value which is then used to dynamically change the fake AT mod.

e.g. Brute with 300% damage bonus turns the pseudo-pet's AT mod from .95 to (.95 x 4) = 3.8.

Yeah, I didn't think so. ._.