Is Martial Arts messed up?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

I *think* what he means is that if an AoE can hit many targets and rack up lots of damage, single target attacks should be capable of generating similar levels of damage just concentrated onto a single target. In terms of AoE factor balance, AoEs are typically balanced around hitting something between 2 and 3 targets, in terms of their recharge and endurance costs relative to single target attacks. So if you can hit 6 or 8 targets instead, your AoEs will be doing perhaps three times the damage for the cost that a single target attack is allowed to do. So to compensate, he's suggesting that single target attacks generate that much damage so that a set of single target attacks kills ultimately just as fast as something with a lot of AoEs.

The example, though is specifically stated to be one-shotting a +3, which for a stalker requires an attack almost as powerful as total focus when slotted to +95% damage, and also requires that attack crit for (near) double damage on top of that.

This line of thought is wrong on so many levels. Mostly because few offensive powersets can make reasonably full attack chains with nothing but AoEs. Ultimately, everyone uses single target attacks sometimes, and the AoE advantage is diluted somewhat because of that. And not everyone faces the large numbers of targets necessary for AoEs to reach those levels of efficiency. By attempting to balance single target attacks based on the maximum amount of damage that AoEs can deliver, you end up being forced to grant ridiculous amounts of damage to those single target attacks.

I'm not sure I could give a specific numerical example which would make this make sense, because I'm not sure one exists. But if you wanted to follow this line of thought - and as I said, I don't buy it myself - the logical way to approach it is something like this. Pick two sets to compare, say MA and Broadsword (just to keep things a little simple, I'm leaving stalkers out of it for a second because they have additional quirks to their offensive sets). MA has the one AoE, Dragon's Tail. Broadsword has two: whirling sword and slice (not counting headsplitter here). If we say that DT and WS are similar enough, MA falls short of BS on AoE potential, because it has no corresponding AoE to Slice.

So, we take Slice and we guestimate in some manner (or just pull numbers out of thin air if we need to) how many targets we believe Slice should be "balanced for." Suppose we say six. Slice does scale 1.23 damage. Hitting six targets it would do Scale 7.38 damage. So we say ok, to compensate for MA missing an analogous cone, we'll take Storm Kick, say, and buff that attack to deal 7.38 damage but with only Slice's end costs and recharge not what the formula would predict (which would be 44s of recharge and 38 endurance). Its a single target attack with the damage potential of an AoE and the costs of an AoE. And if that's high enough to one-shot a +3 minion, well, that's cool (on a scrapper it would one-shot an even LT and come very close to one-shotting a +1 LT, and with Build Up it would blast away more than half the health of an even level boss at level 50).

As I said: I don't buy this theory. But this is the version of the theory with numbers attached.

Originally Posted by HardRider

so whats better to make then people?

Originally Posted by Jibikao

This is one of the reasons why Stalker's Assassin Strike doesn't translate too well on a larger team even though the idea being AS is to lose AoE in exchange for a massive ST damage that is equivalent to hitting 6 targets(?). It takes 5-6s to execute (and find a target) and if the team is decent, the boss you are trying to ASing may be hurt already or already held by a Dominator. Of course I don't always have to AS a boss but ASing a lieut could be overkill and once you are out of "hidden", you either do nothing for 8s or just keep scrapping like an inferior scrapper (most of the time). And some sets like Martial Arts doesn't even have any AoE. T_T

Originally Posted by BrandX

Then give DT the Burst treatment of always critting from hide.

Originally Posted by SkarmoryThePG

Last I checked, that is a bug.

Originally Posted by SkarmoryThePG

Last I checked, that is a bug.

Originally Posted by Jibikao

Oh no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I thought it's something special for Kin set on stalker.. darn it. 100% critical from Burst is a bug? T_T