How much does redraw actually matter?

Not really. Based on info BaBs released in a couple of threads a long time ago the method used to prevent redraw in Brawl is a rather nasty hack. It would be technically feasible to do so for Kick (and other similar powers) but doing so would be a lot of work for limited return.

Correct. Perhaps I was too cautious in not asserting that I knew all the sets, but I know for sure that Spines appears to redraw your spines but that it does not make any difference whatsoever in your attack times -- because it was never changed when they changed the other powersets. This was expressly discussed by a dev -- Castle, iirc.

Although "redraw penalty" is a penalty that was added to the game essentially at player request, as Luminara says, it is a good thing, because we used to have the time penalties all the time, even if we were chaining the attacks, and now we only pay the time penalty when we actually do something that causes redraw.

I did say it was dislike, which is preference. I don't know on performance as my performance is much more impacted by my reflexes than my character's stats. =)

However, I do think that if you compare the numbers between a BS/Regen and a BS/WP there will be a noticable difference in damage output. But I suspect it will be far less than if you compare kat/regen to bs/regen or kat/wp to bs/wp.

I have a fire/bs and even spamming burn, heal and fiery embrace it's not so bad on the redraw as /regen has been. I guess because I open with burn and fiery embrace, then unload on attacks, whereas /regen my attacks are reliably getting interrupted for a heal. But I'm not really sure.

Not just min-maxers. I dislike it as an annoyance regardless of what it does to the numbers. But I'll grant you I don't think it actually matters a whole lot in the numbers. Would be curious though over time what the top DPS is for BS/WP compared to BS/Regen or /fire, and DP/WP compared to DB/Regen or /fire, and Kat/WP compared to Kat/Regen or /fire. Any other secondaries really clicky?

Well, Claws needed additional tweaks, and they did them. They took a considerable amount of time to tweak Claws, and got what they wanted. So that wasn't an issue if they were serious about it. I suspect the issue is not performance tweaks, though, but code. There is something about the Spines code that makes it operate differently from "drawn weapons". That's why it couldn't be tweaked.

In other words, it's more like Sheilds. I'd like to know what effect redraw has on Shields, although since most of the powers are toggles, and the sheild DOESN'T have to be put up to draw another weapon, that redraw is very rare. I wouldn't be surprised if all Shield toggles have redraw time "baked in" as well, though.

Well, my response is above. I think the point I was trying to make, though, is that even though Spines may still be "baked in", it is a mistake to assume there are still other weapon sets that have redraw time "baked in", and that the devs are neglecting to address them due to laziness or disorganization.

I guess that I did forget about Spines, but that's only because I knew it was an exception, not the rule, and an intended exception, and so I disregarded it.

Actually, for the longest time, the players assumed that there was a redraw penalty when you redrew a weapon. And in some cases, there was. The original coders of the game were inconsistent about whether they "baked in" redraw, and the changes that followed release (such as to Katana) essentially all took the path of including the redraw time. So by the time Dual Blades was being planned, it was extremely inconsistent.

BaB went back and looked over the sets and found that they had no unified design. So he redesigned all of them, making sure the redraw was not included on attacks where it was, and making sure (with quite a bit of help from the players) that the times where the redraw was not supposed to be included, that it actually matched up with the actual animation time of the attack. Since in many cases that was off as well.

So in a sense the players did ask for it, since they could also have asked for all of the sets to have the redraw time "baked in", if that's what they wanted. But mainly it was fixed from being inconsistent to being consistent.

IIRC, the animations of toggles not rooting you if they were only personal defenses was also changed about the same time, and again, that was something the original devs had been inconsistent about and just had them root or not as they felt like it.

Active Defense, a Shield click power, causes the need for weapon redraw. Annoying.

I would expect that is also the case with Practiced Brawler, though, isn't it?

I was thinking more of actions that make you redraw the SHIELD. AFAIK, the only thing that makes you redraw the sheild is toggling all your shield powers off.

Yep. Essentially Brawl has a separate full set of animations (male, female, huge, male flying, female flying, etc...) for every single weapon type in the game. Well, more specifically every combat mode, and each different weapon uses a different combat mode plus I think a couple other things do too. That means there are literally dozens of Brawl animations that are all slightly different depending on what weapon is to be held in the off hand, plus the shield bash, sword pommel strike, and kick animations. That's an awful lot of new Kick animations to create (even if they can be mostly just cut and pasted with a few tweaks) to eliminate redraw from one pool attack.

It's not quite one stance for each weapon type, similar weapons use the same base animation set. For example both Assault Rifle and Pulse Rifle use the same stance and the various single handed weapons (broadsword, war axe, war mace) are the same stance.

No, Castle said right out that the "problem" is that Spines has lots of nifty additional effects, moreso than other sets get, and is in his opinion overpowered. Consider that Spines attacks slow recharge and movement and add toxic DOT...and some of them also do knockdown or immobilize.

Removing the "baked in" penalties would speed Spines chains up, exaggerating the imbalance of the set. Castle said he'd be inclined to "rebalance" it (i.e. nerf the damage or remove effects like the slows) to compensate, and while he might still do that, it's not as urgent as it would be if he speeded up the set's attack chains. Of course it would be wildly unpopular, which may be a factor in his letting sleeping dogs lie. But it's a deliberate decision, not a technical limitation.

What we have here is a failure to communicate. I'm not "assuming other sets have redraw time baked in," what I did do was "not assume I know everything about powersets I don't play and make sweeping statements." Thus I caveated my statement in case there was something I didn't know. I realize that one hardly ever sees that on the forums; it seems like the typical poster makes all sorts of patently untrue assertions about the game mechanics based on personal assumptions, prejudices, other games, and hunches. And I'm for damned sure not accusing the Devs of laziness.

It's not "in a sense." The players very specifically argued for it in overwhelming numbers. I was there and read the threads. The reasoning was twofold:

• Redraw feels like a penalty even when it's not, and so many people were already chaining attacks in such a way as to minimize redraw
  
• Once people saw the "new style" attacks without redraw "baked in" they realized just how many pauses were in the old style sets and found the dleays irritatingly unnecessary

So true!

But here is the question. Why do we MUST have redraw? I am asking because sets like Stone Melee and Icy Assault don't cause redraws even though they "draw" out something. You still get that "drawing graphic" but minus the animation time.

Why can't we just get rid of all redraw delays for the sack of balancing? If Stone Melee and Icy Assault can bypass redraw, why can't other sets do it too? That's what I really want to know. I know Dual Pistol's redraw looks nice but still...

BaBs tried. He thought he had it working, and discovered that it horribly broke something with Shield Defense. We don't know what it was. For the time being, it seems to be a limitation of the power animation system.

The only way they could make it work with the current system just isn't practical. Every possible power that could force redraw would need a version of its animation with every weapon it might force redraw with, times three body types. It'd eat too much animator time, and every new weapon powerset or redraw-causing power would make it worse.

This.

For all we know, BaBs may have figured it out before he left and they've been quietly working on it ever since. Since it's so incredibly time-consuming, even if they are working on it, we may not see results for another year or more.

Edit: They would need to do 42 separate animations for each power that causes redraw. 7 combat stances X 3 body types = 21 X 2 movement modes (standing and flying) = 42 animations. And they would need to do that with every power in the game that causes redraw. So if they fix whatever the issue is with Shield Defense, it is still a LOT of work to do.

If they do decide to devote the resources to it, it is probably going to take a long time to do, as I doubt they will cease working on other things while doing it.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

BaB left? What?!! Where? @_@

To work on DC Universe? :P

*IF* they are even considering redraw removal anymore, and I've heard nothing to suggest they are, I don't think they'd waste the time with that route. *IF* they are, I'm pretty sure that they'd keep on the path BAB was taking with having the combat stance create a situation where the redraw animation is never called.

So instead of weaponattack, nonweaponattack, redraw, weaponattack we get weaponattack, nonweaponattack, weaponattack.

My guess is that when attempted, it caused the shield, which stays present in or out of combat mode, to do something bizarre when combat mode was activated. But that's nothing but a WAG.

Actually, he now works for Cryptic.

Oh.. Champions Online and Star Trek then. bummer... good luck to him.