Reasons for changing powers when they are ported to other ATs
By
AnElfCalledMack,
Posted on: 2011-02-19 24:05 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
It's as simple as you said; the AT's respective inherent powers need to be considered and accommodated for when porting.
As for Claws, it's always had lower recharge and end costs for its damage, from the start. That's it's "secondary effect," like Fire sets have extra DoTs and Ice sets do slows. Dual Blades is based on Claws, but its secondary effect is the combo mechanic, so it doesn't have the reduced end cost and recharge.
Issue 16 made me feel like this.
Warning: This poster likes to play Devil's Advocate.
I would assume for Rad blast the powers were changed to make them identical to the other primaries tier ones and twos so they would be identically effective for defiance. (You know when you get stunned, slept or held, you can still fire off tier 1 and 2 powers from the primary and tier one of the secondary?)
-Largo
Founder of A.G.O.N.Y. Supergroup on Victory
Member of Thought Sanctum VG on Victory
Member of St0rm Batallion SG on Guardian
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Even with this I wish that they had gone with the 3s and 6s recharges of Sonic Blast instead of the typical 4/8.|
Originally Posted by Largo
I would assume for Rad blast the powers were changed to make them identical to the other primaries tier ones and twos so they would be identically effective for defiance. (You know when you get stunned, slept or held, you can still fire off tier 1 and 2 powers from the primary and tier one of the secondary?)
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One of Rad Blast's distinguishing features (on defenders/corruptors) is the rapid fire play of the lower tier blasts, I wish that they had preserved that Feel for the set when porting it to blasters even though they did have to modify the recharge.
@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too
Most of the time the devs seem to not want to change Sets when they are given to other ATs, but on occasion they will run into the case where the Set is just overpowered or underpowered. It can be something related to their Inherent, or just individual powers having to be changed, like the Eviscerate example. Very rarely are just base mods the issue, though. The ATs are balanced around their base mods, that's the point, that's what preserves the ratios between the ATs.
I always believed that the reason Claws got adjusted, though, was because it has such short animation times and fast recharge rates that it was extremely effective in building Fury. It may still be. Note that DB looks like it's a very fast set, but in point of fact it has very long animation times. You are just striking several times for each attack.
As for Rad Blast, there are pretty much two different fire rates for Blasters' first two attacks, but that's a lot less variation than with Corruptor and Defender blasts. The devs did not want one set to be less effective than any other when the Blaster was held. While Neutrino Bolt is nice for sustaining DPS or slotting with procs, when you are held you want to kill the foe holding you as soon as you can so he doesn't kill you. OTOH, it is odd that the devs went that far in the other direction, instead of just using the faster 3s/6s recharge.
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If I remember right, when claws was straight ported from Scrappers to Brutes, taking in a certain amount of fury (I think it was 65%), the set completely outstripped the Scrapper version in DPS. So to bring the two (Scrapper claws and Brute claws) closer in line like the other comparable sets, the recharge, endurance and damage were increased for some powers. Notice, higher damage on a lower mod doesn't result in as huge a leap as you'd think.|
Originally Posted by Emberly
Hello, I was just engaging in a discussion with another player in a global channel about claws, dual blades, and how they were or were not changed when ported to Brutes. My understanding was that claws was given higher recharge and damage to shore it up when it got the lower Brute base mods, and that DB didn't get this treatment which is why many feel it is subpar on Brutes. The person I was talking with said that this was incorrect, and that claws was tweaked because on Scrappers, it has Eviscerate with a 15% crit rate. This means that the set was balanced around that, and when it got ported to brutes it lost enough oomph that it needed some love.
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Brute Eviserate may not have a 15% crit chance, but it had -def added to it instead.
As for Dual Blades, it uses normal damage>rech>end formula for its powers (and its animations aren't inherently fast). It was easier to port because the set's secondary effect is combos while Claws' secondary was adjusted rech/end costs. One will directly screw with DPS while the other might in an indirect way.
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We also talked about Rad Blast, which I thought was tweaked for blasters due to tiny numbers, but the person I spoke with said that Rad blast was changed for blasters due to Defiance for some reason. So, why were these powers changed or not changed? I'm curious. |
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Actually, that's another point. I mentioned the reduced recharge above, but Brutes also get a benefit from reduced End cost, as that enables them to maintain Fury longer relative to other Sets with the same damage levels. That's probably honestly still the case despite the tweaks, it's just been toned down a bit from their initial testing.
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Originally Posted by Leo_G
... while Claws' secondary was adjusted rech/end costs.
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So if fury increased the damage so it could easily outstrip scrapper damage with a direct port, the way to combat that was to increase the base damage so that fury would have an even greater effect on each attack? Sure each attack also has longer recharge but it does not take much effort to get those numbers down once you start slotting IOs. |
Originally Posted by Leo_G
If I remember right, when claws was straight ported from Scrappers to Brutes, taking in a certain amount of fury (I think it was 65%), the set completely outstripped the Scrapper version in DPS. So to bring the two (Scrapper claws and Brute claws) closer in line like the other comparable sets, the recharge, endurance and damage were increased for some powers. Notice, higher damage on a lower mod doesn't result in as huge a leap as you'd think.
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The fact is that not counting criticals, with typical slotting any direct port from scrappers to brutes will have the brute doing similar damage at 65% fury. Once you factor in critcals a brute at full (read 75%) fury does right around the same damage. Build up and any other +damage for the scrapper will easily push them ahead. Since this is not an issue for any of the other sets the 2 ATs share it would seem the fury arguemnt does not hold water, or else you would see modifications to other sets as well.
So what was the reasoning? I don't know. Maybe just to make it feel more brutish.
Well, the problem was that this was old fury - full was more like 85%, and Claws being a fast-animating, fast-recharging set let it push up towards 90% fury and keep it there. And at that point, Claws Brutes outclassed not just Scrappers, but pretty much all other Brutes, so they toned it down by making the recharges longer. That means it's much harder to run the same chains that make Claws Scrappers into single-target death machines (and keep your fury bar pushing up against the top), but you can build up a big head of steam and let Spin level spawns.
With any decent amount of recharge you could get at and beyond the 85% fury mark before fury 2.0. Claws was not an exception in this case. If anything, the increase in recharge times caused more people to take swipe instead of skipping it like most do with the scrapper version. Swipe recharges faster and animates faster than any every other attack in the set making fury even easier to build up by having an attack constantly up.
So once again, in order to keep fury down for claws, the devs decided to make it easier to build fury compared to other sets and give fury a greater effect on the set as a whole by giving it a higher base damage vs a direct port. Sure Ill buy that.
Hello, I was just engaging in a discussion with another player in a global channel about claws, dual blades, and how they were or were not changed when ported to Brutes. My understanding was that claws was given higher recharge and damage to shore it up when it got the lower Brute base mods, and that DB didn't get this treatment which is why many feel it is subpar on Brutes. The person I was talking with said that this was incorrect, and that claws was tweaked because on Scrappers, it has Eviscerate with a 15% crit rate. This means that the set was balanced around that, and when it got ported to brutes it lost enough oomph that it needed some love.
We also talked about Rad Blast, which I thought was tweaked for blasters due to tiny numbers, but the person I spoke with said that Rad blast was changed for blasters due to Defiance for some reason.
So, why were these powers changed or not changed? I'm curious.